And now, the Canada blog. Took long enough, right? Here are some of the things I learned from my experience.

First off, the people of Air Canada are fantastic. The pilots, the desk people, the flight attendants, every one of them. Very polite, professional, helpful, etc. In fact, I was so used to helpful people in the airport that when I met the Customs agents, I was totally unprepared. The Customs people are the rudest, nastiest employees of any customer-interaction association I’ve ever seen. They actually grin evilly at you while you stammer out answers to their questions, and while you fumble for your identification. Not to mention expressing their dire hope for you to get stranded in the country by accidentally forgetting your passport, or not having one, or whatever. They didn’t exactly express it, I just got that vibe of “go die” from them.

For the uninformed: Customs people will ask you lots of odd, personal questions. The more off-put, or nervous, you appear, the nastier they will get because they will start to form more disbelief that you are not you. I was not prepared for this, even the second time through, but somehow I made it unscathed. Somehow.

Now, regarding the weather. For the people in California: Forget what you think you know about cold. Just forget it. Really. “Omigawd, it’s 20 degrees outside!” I have less sympathy after spending most of my days in MINUS THIRTY weather. Even when wearing 2 layers for pants and 4 layers for shirts/jackets, the cold slithered in and froze my ass off. The exposed parts of my body? Ice. On my eyelashes, my hair, my frickin’ NOSE. So when it was minus 10, there was rejoicing. At MINUS TEN. Believe it.

3. Coupled with the cold, of course, is the snow.

Which is everywhere.

No, really.

Everywhere.

A few downtown portions had less, this is true.

But it was still rampant.

I found it rather pleasant, aside from the strikingly-painful-at-times cold. Also, the traffic is a lot nicer — no idiot drivers despite the ice-slathered roads — and there are not a lot of times when the pedestrians and the traffic find themselves conflicting. Everything is within bussing distance, and despite the cold, most of the walk-to-only places aren’t far enough to be a bother. At nighttime…

…it’s really something.

In most of the state I live in, you see or hear Spanish almost everywhere, just because it’s becoming a fast-dominant language. However, product labels are still pretty rarely in Spanish, as are billboards. Either that, or they are a tiny size compared to their English translation counterparts. In Canada, however, French is literally the second official language of the country. Therefore, everything is in French.

I should have expected this, but I suppose I didn’t grasp the scale of it.

Listening to the Air Canada announcements in French was actually rather refreshing, even though I couldn’t understand any of it. Trying to pronounce the French words I saw everywhere? Well, now, that was just entertaining. To everyone not me, of course. (Also, I think Canadian money is cooler than American money.

Look at that! Colored, spiffy notes! OK, OK, I’m horribly culturally inept. Stop hitting me.)

Despite seeing a KFC logo right after getting out of the airport, I was surprised to find Canada very much devoid of American-based, worldwide-powerful food corporations. Starbucks is an ant in Canada, when compared to the glorious monstrosity of one chain named Tim Hortons, who controls about 62% of the coffee market in Canada (compared to Starbucks, at a shockingly paltry 7%). Tim Hortons also sticks to a different solution: rather than have fifty million types of coffee and drinks, they have a small menu of drinks made from 1 type of coffee, which is the Tim Hortons brand. This is the most addictive coffee ever, and it’s not just that way to me — the joke is that Tim Hortons puts nicotine in their coffee, because it’s so insanely addictive to anyone who drinks it regularly.

Besides Tim Hortons, there were an abundance of tasty breakfast places — no Dennys or IHOPs, though — which all serve BEER in addition to your morning pastries and beverages. Quite a few delicious places to go in Winnipeg (which is where I was), even if you don’t want to wake up and start drinking, of course.

The above pictured place (with the beer) is Stella’s, while my favorite dinner restaurant was Sushi Train, because like its name says…

…your sushi is delivered to you on a little train. If that wasn’t enough, I also discovered that the long-absent restaurant chain known as A&W is HUGE in Canada.

There are more of those than there are McDonald’s. Last bit about food: nearly everything comes in delivery mode, too. Fantastic Chinese food? Scrumptious Indian cuisine? All delivered to the comfort of your own home or apartment — and they take credit cards, too!

The record and movie stores in Canada have got it right: All the releases, new or used, have had the CDs taken out of them and hidden behind the counters. So even though there are also anti-theft sensors and all that good stuff, this struck me as some of the best preventative measures you could go to. The first confusing thing, however, was not the new degrees of preventing theft, but rather the abundance of Homestar Runner merchandise.

Both the video store and the music store had a large assortment of clothing, CDs, DVDs, and more all related to Homestar Runner, just lined up. Not even big “GET HOMESTARRUNNER MERCH HERE OMGZ” signs, or anything to that effect. I seemed to be the only person who thought this to be very pleasantly odd.

Anything else? It was a good, leisurely week. I sat on the couch watching movies and standup comedy, eating ketchup Old Dutch chips (insanely good/addictive stuff!) and enjoying the new sensation of wearing a sarong. We made snack bowls out of old vinyl records, ordered all forms of delivery food, went out for scrumptious snacks and a variety of music related merchandise — got about 10 CDs, a bunch of patches, and a new bag which is almost EXACTLY like my long lost Matisyahu bag, except it’s a Mars Volta bag instead — sauntered around the malls, styled the fashions of brightly-colored toques…

It was only once I was at the gate for my first plane back, that I realized how much I had managed to disconnect that week, and how wonderful I had felt, despite getting myself in a state of cabin fever earlier that week (due to lack of a car, and low money). The quality of life and people in Canada, or in Winnipeg at least, is a lot nicer. People seem more enthused and energized about life, less bored with life and jaded with ennui than people around here. There aren’t a lot of people with noses turned up, posh or poseur attitudes, or with social and financial responsibilities than run so rampant here. Hell, the first homeless person I met told me he hoped I was enjoying being in Winnipeg (after I told him I had no money, not having any of the there-native currency), and how often do you get a sincere wish like that around here?

Yeah, it was cold as hell, and it was a long walk from place to place. After about four or five days, however, it didn’t bother me as much. So I had to wear an exuberant amount of layers, and deal with my face going subzero — big deal! I got to walk around in a surprisingly “fresh” world, which, while busy, seemed very relaxed and peaceful. No, nobody goes out of their way to be super polite, but no one gets in your face, either. No one is annoyed by you being inquisitive, silly, or even a little off-color; the forced smiles and reeking exasperation about the most minute of social idiosyncracies aren’t present there. Is it the country, the province, or just the city? Personally, I’m willing to believe it’s all three; either that, or I’m being burned out by the rampant Americanness of my California life.

Now, after a long day of getting ready, flying back, and working all night, followed by one of the least relaxing sleeps of the past week or so, I’m ready. Ready for school, ready for putting my nose back to the grindstone. Ready to do more and not look back. She will be coming to see my country in April… I only hope that mine can hope to impress her as much as hers did for me.

What a turbulent week. Oof. Well, I think it’s calm enough for my liking, at least for the time being.

New Years’ was unexciting, perhaps for the first time in my life. True, I did drink a bit, and played the Wii almost exhaustively, but the enthusiasm about the event was far lower than the enthusiasm about what activities were going on at the time. I suppose, however, that all New Years’ celebrations have more of that focus: the party, rather than the occasion. Either way, I liked the quiet, and of course I got to practice my Wii skills, which I always enjoy. (Today, also, I got my own Wiimote, finally, so I’ll be using that to keep my scores…)

After a few uneventful days at work, it was moving day on Wednesday. I decided this time to bring only the essentials: work shirts and pants, workout clothes, some extra T-shirts and jeans, my bed, desk, computer and associated accessories, TV, and dresser. No piles of CDs, no boxes of vinyls, no tubes of posters. It’s not necessary at this stage in the game of life. This place, while it is indeed the best living option I have found yet, is only a temporary fix. I will most likely have more plans changing in May or June, when school is done.

Speaking of school, I am hoping that I will be able to get all of those details worked out within the next day or so, which will allow me ample time to pack and be ready to visit her up in Canada. Yes, Canada. Save your mockery for another blog. Anyway.

I came to a realization about what I want to do with myself, recently. I have been weighing my career options lately, based on certain things that I enjoy doing, and certain skills I excel with. My main options, when I first started looking at school again, were hotel management, photography, and sound design/engineering. I’m going to stick with the third one, for a few main reasons, which I will outline below.

Why not hotel management? Simple: I hate consumers. I can’t stand people who are allowed to get away with being idiotic in situations where I am providing products or service to them, especially people who end up benefiting through their own ignorance. I have, however, had experience with clients, which I prefer to consumers or customers. Clients are people I cater to directly; these are people I can say “no” to and they will listen to me; in some cases, I can say “you’re being a fucking idiot” and they’ll get the point without withdrawing their financial contributions. So, in the hotel management industry, I would be dealing with consumers, not clients — thus, it is not the place for me.

As evidenced by the design and the concert photography I did last year, I would have a pretty good knack in photography, I imagine. So why not? It may become a future endeavor, but not at this moment in time. As a fresh-out-of-college photo wizard, I would have 2 main options: freelance work, which in this world is extremely difficult to maintain, or selling my photos to publications… publications which have journalists.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I HATE journalists. Or rather, I hate the stereotypical ones, which are also the ones that seem to have the lowest level of actual writing ability, coupled with an incessant flood of exaggerated important-sounding verbiage so that whatever you are reading about will seem MUCH more important than you could POSSIBLY perceive. In reality, most journalism is bullshit. It’s confusing and full of metaphors and allusions, sometimes to the degree where it makes something relevant — like a news report, movie review, album critique, etc. — utterly baffling to understand. I have read countless amounts of album reviews without having a single idea what the CDs in question sounded like, and the critiques were not helpful in the slightest. I have found that customer reviews on Amazon tend to be the most informative, especially if they have unprofessional writers just giving it their all to put a description into your head.

So, the long and short of it is, I don’t want my photos to be in the same magazines that sell trite journalistic bullshit. I don’t want to support their sales, or their pieces. Perhaps one day I can be a professional photographer for a band, but until then, I’m sticking with sound design. It’s the part of the recording process I really feel I could contribute to — production, mastering, recording, mixing, and aspects of the industry. These are all things that, as an audiophile, I have craved to know about; also, as a lyricist and not a songwriter, it would allow me to have more influence on the song-creation process even when I am unable to compose for an instrument besides the vocal chords. The issue of affordance, financial aid, etc. will be worked out further down the road. I imagine the full process of school will take about 2 years, but it’s a path I’m willing to go on.

Anyway. That’s the state of things. New place, high-speed internet, new roommates, new schedule… and off to Canada within a week.

Oh, and the text is fixed. It’s not all tiny and stupid now. Woo.