Anyone seen a job lately?

We've been really lucky to have been able to stay with my friend Kim for the first month. She was my flatmate in Tokyo, Japan, when we were both teaching English there during 2005.

She’s now studying a Graduate Diploma in Public Relations at university here in Toronto, so we’re living in her parents basement apartment and they have treated us very much like part of the family so we’ve been very spoilt :-)

The only trouble is, town is MILES away... seriously, like an hour on the train (that’s if you’re lucky and you manage to actually get the train, I missed it the other day and have to wait an hour for the next one - but that's another blog!)... so we are busy looking for jobs just now and once we’ve succeeded in that, we can start to look for places to live downtown.

Craig’s fortunate to be in IT as Toronto (pronounced “Taronno” by the locals) is the IT capital of Canada, so he’s doing pretty well and with interviews and receives numerous calls from recruiters daily.

I on the other hand am finding job hunting quite tough. The Public Relations industry here is very much a ‘who you know’ business, but I’m ever hopeful that something will come my way.

At times it’s been hard and I’ve found it challenging to stay positive, but then I remind myself that it’s far easier to believe something won’t work out than that it will.

So I remain hopeful, and plan on trying a few different ‘tactics’ over the next week and building my contact base a bit more – surely something must eventuate sooner or later...

Will keep you posted.

Canada - the land of great TV

For the first few days we stayed in a hotel near the airport. Unfortunately that’s the ONLY thing it was near.

I was watching TV one day when a Burger King commercial came on showing juicy hamburgers… “don’t look” said Craig, “you can’t get one,” he finished sadly.

TV here is a bit different. We started watching CSI one night which is a show I quite like, so I didn’t mind that there was another immediately following it. They do that ‘marathon’ thing sometimes at home too.

But after the third episode in a row I asked Craig to check what was on next… turns out CSI was the ONLY thing on all night…

And they had this clever ploy of not putting any ad breaks between the last show ending and the next beginning, so in order to stop watching I had to quickly turn it off before I saw any of the next show.

It’s one of those shows where once you’ve seen the mysterious puzzle bit at the start, you just HAVE to keep watching to find out how they solve it at the end.

Happily I’ve found they do this with other shows as well, like Family Guy and Seinfeld, so by the end of my time here I may just have watched every episode ever.

Actually, I think TV might be one of the biggest perks since being here, well that and the weather of course. It sure ain’t the public transport system I know that much!

Usually at home in NZ I get to watch things like the Video Music or Emmy Awards the day AFTER they’ve happened. But this year I got to see them as. they. happened.

We’re also seeing all the new season’s telly about six months earlier than usual. New versions of Family Guy, The Simpsons, Prison Break, Boston Legal, America’s Next Top Model, House, Grey’s Anatomy and CSI all aired last week, so I’ve been stoked about that at least :)

I’ll let you know about a few of the more exciting things we’ve been up to in the next blog…

Stay cool till after school

After San Fran we flew to right across continent to Canada...

Since it was daytime I sat with my nose pressed excitedly against the window not wanting to miss any of the free aerial tour of the US I thought I was about to get....

Unfortunately, we didn’t appear to fly over anywhere that was actually inhabited. It was just brown, brown, and more brown....no trees, no houses, not even a single rock… just desert.

After about 30 minutes of staring at the exact same scene I finally got tired of looking... but I needn’t have worried I’d missed anything. When I woke up and checked again three hours later it was still the same – brown dust as far as the eye could see.

I found out later it was the Rocky Mountains... I was told this by the two Islamic men who were sitting next to me in turbans and robes...i was the only one sitting next to them on the flight and at first I thought ‘oh just my luck’, but later thought it was probably the safest place to be.

So, ever optimistic, I tried to make amicable conversation and hoped for the best, while the cop sitting in front of us threw repetitive nervous glances over his shoulder......

First up: “So what brings you to San Francisco?”

Oh, you’ve just been to an Annual Islamic conference...oh that’s er, that’s um, that’s great…

(planning what I don't know - I guess they could have been working on ways to fundraise for world peace or save starving children or something, but one doesn't like to question these things so instead I changed the topic hoping to talk about something uncontroversial – thank god for the weather :)

Speaking of that, I arrived in Toronto to 30 degree heat - so much for it being cold in Canada!

Everyone back home had been telling me to pack warm, so I asked Craig (who was in Boston the week before I arrived and had mentioned it being warm) to check the weather in Toronto for me.

“30 degrees” he said.

“No, no, not Boston,” says I, “Check Toronto”

“I did,” he says “it’s 30 degrees.”

Thank god I’d checked with him, otherwise I would have spent the past month sweltering miserably in woolly jumpers and thermals.

Unless you’re from Jamaica of course…

Craig and I are staying with Kim (my flatmate from Japan) at her parents place in the well off suburbs... it's all very leafy and the houses are all two story with cute little porches (they put their garages underneath their houses rather than to the side like we do as space is sparse here).

Kim’s parents had a friend from Barbados to stay recently and I was surprised to find her arriving on a lovely sunny day dressed in wool jumper and jeans, a stark comparison to my skirt and singlet.

What’d I tell ya eh – life’s all about perspective :-)

And so far, I like Canada’s weather very much… ask me again in winter though and I may have a different opinion for ya!

Stay cool till after school kids,

Till next time, Leafy.

First Impressions

After all the drama of packing the plane flight was reasonably uneventful. I seem to have the happy luck of always having an empty seat next to me. So the only other person in my row was an Australian girl, who was very friendly.

In fact everything was going swimmingly, lots of room, friendly companion, until… WHUMP!

The man in front of me extends his chair as far back as it can go…which is about an inch from my face as much as I can gather.

Why is it that they let people DO this? Whhhhy? Even if you extend your seat all the way back and then achieve the same amount of space you had before it still doesn’t SEEM like you do.

Forever afterwards it just feels like someone is leaning right in encroaching on YOUR space…

And even worse, you can almost FEEL the seething resentment of the person behind you boring into your head through the back of the seat you’ve just reclined – you can’t win!

Funnily how such a thing can so distort your perception of people. When we finally landed we found the space hogs in front of were actually a really lovely and friendly couple who talked to us for ages while we were waiting to get off.

And boy did I want to get off. It’s so cruel how after so many hours of tracking the plane inching it’s way over empty oceans and then finally, closer and closer to land… only to be stuck in that horrible tin can for another half an hour once you finally reach it.

On the upside though, we made it to San Francisco safe and sound J

Unfortunately, it’s not very pretty on first sight… that city could really do with some PR advice…

…here I was expecting a glittering blue harbour spanned by the glorious Golden Gate Bridge with the city stretching out beyond…. And we flew in the back way, over the sewerage ponds.

- didn't anyone ever tell them first impressions count?!

Well that’s been the sum total of my time in the states so far. I’ll let you know how it went reaching Canada in the next blog.

Ka Kite a No

Leaf

Never leave home without...

Well after six weeks of non-stop packing and planning before leaving, I almost didn’t make it to Canada in the end!

I was so sleep deprived from last minute panicking that I only realised an hour and a half before I needed to leave for the airport that I didn’t have my passport !!!!!!

(If I were staring at a screen telling you that right then you would have seen it zoom in on my petrified expression accompanied by that “eeh, eeh, eeh!” sound)

After taking a moment to start breathing again and managing to hold on to the nearest stable object I realised I’d packed it in a box of IMPORTANT things, which I’d taken over to my dad for storage the night before.

All the way in Waihi - an hour’s drive from where I was in Hamilton.

With a suitcase and six boxes of extra clothes still to pack (what? It gets cold in Toronto!) … well, ok maybe it was shoes, (but I neeeeeds them L) there wasn’t enough time for me to get to Waihi and back.

Actually, I wasn’t really sure my passport was in said box, but thankfully I got dad on mobile who was able to go home straight away and bring it over to me.

So after all that drama Kate finally arrived and got me to the airport on time.

It was only after another half an hours repacking kerfuffle (did you know you need to have all carry on cream/spray/toothpasty makeup things in one SINGLE clear plastic bag? And that they must ALL be in containers no bigger than 100mls? Did you hmm, hmm?)

Well you do now, so don’t try and be like me and pretend you didn’t know. They just make you repack it all…thankfully we arrived early though, so there was time.

Sigh…so after alllllllll that, it wasn’t until we sat down for a quick coffee before take off that I realised the box of New Zealand Cadbury’s chocolately stuff I’d packed to send my stuff had also been sent home to dad’s by mistake that I almost cried!

Can you believe it? After ALL that drama. After almost not having a passport; not being legally allowed to leave the country, after all that last minute frantic packing… through all of it I kept my cool.

And its chocolate I get emotional over!

Unbelievable. Even I had to shake my head at myself. …well I mean c’mon, that kind of dedication to chocolate, it’s astounding isn’t it? I guess it’s just the special gift that god gave me :-)

Thankfully I’ve managed to find replacement supplies since being over here, but that’s a whole other blog entirely, and I’ve got to tell you about the plane flight first…

I best go do that now.

Toodles,
Leafy

Canada 'o' Canada

Hello world!

I’m back and travelling again… well kinda… I got as far as Canada J Toronto to be exact. Not sure where to start with telling you about it… I guess we’ll just see where we end up J

Firstly, I’ve been here for almost four weeks now. Sorry it’s taken me so long to get in contact - I think we’re "aboot" 16/17 hours behind… so I think some of you might get quite angry if I tried to call you during my daytime J

Secondly, I have an accent again. In Japan it was fairly obvious I would have one, being a whitey and all, but here it’s not till I speak that everyone turns to STARE.

And then they get this kind of puzzled bemused look on their face for a second before replying. It’s kind of like because I look normal they think for a second that their hearing’s gone or something and also they have NO IDEA what the hell I’ve just said… you get used to saying things twice here…

It’s not much different from when you’re speaking on the phone to someone far, far away on the phone and you get that kind of delay before they actually hear what you’ve said and can answer you?

I’m not saying aboot yet, but have replaced the kiwi "eh" at the end of every sentence with a Canadian "eyh" :)

Thankfully having Craig here means I’m keeping my kiwi twang sharpened, although I am thinking of stooping to making friends with some Australian’s… (Hanging head in shame) …I know, I know, it’s not something I’m proud of – but I may be desperate for someone who understands rugby and I can watch the World Cup finals with! (Because of course we WILL be in them!)

I really, really, really do miss everyone from home though – feel like I’ve been living in a bubble these past three weeks and have come to the end of my tether for as long as I can go without talking to you.

So please write! Send me an email, tell me how you are – even if you think it’s boring I promise you it won’t be to me – I love you!

And I want desperately to hear from all of you, so please do write and I’ll leave you now to start a new blog about the flight and start from scratch… just wanted to let you know I got here ok.

Love Leafy