Sometimes I like to be wildly opinionated based only on my gut. Facts, pah!

Welcome to the 80’s, and I don’t just mean the cheesy TV commercials and birthday cards that bring back fond memories of the world when I was six. I also don’t mean the fashion, because either the 80’s revival didn’t really happen here, or everyone’s over it. But since my own personal bland brand of non-fashion fits right in here, it could well be the first. It makes me feel good about my current jeans/skechers/hoodie uniform, but I’m still left wondering what the point of all these shops is if none of them sell anything interesting.

That’s not my point. I can’t put my finger on it, but I really feel like there’s a gender gap here and it drives me crazy. I’ve never felt like there was any difference between men and women other than plumbing and stance on dirt, but here, I don’t know. It seems like there’s men’s jobs and women’s jobs, and they get paid appropriately. The men in their suits and bluetooth headsets stride about being brash and secure in their own self-importance making all the money, and the admin staff are just girls anyway, so who cares? That may not be fair. Actually, I hope that’s not fair. But I can feel it hovering around, some fundamental difference in the way the country (or at least what I’ve seen of it) is made up that I can’t quite get a handle on.

I’m lucky though, in coming from what is still the only country where women have simultaneously held all the major positions of power (Queen, PM, Speaker of the House, Governor-General, Chief Justice and CEO of the biggest company were all women in 05-06). Maybe my perspective is skewed. I was feeling before I left like women had taken too much power, and were being expected to do and be everything, no matter how hard it was. Like mother had become a secondary title that shouldn’t be considered more than a hobby to complement a career and a social life and relationships where the woman seemed to be partner, caretaker, decision-maker and handyman. But if that’s true, the women of New Zealand did it to themselves because we were all taught that we could not only achieve anything, but by crikey we should achieve everything.

I was feeling at home that someone needed to go back and acknowledge the actual gender gap, and allow having a baby to be a big deal again, and admit that it’s okay to think the men should fix the sink, and the women should do the washing. In my grandparent’s day, at least there was division of labour. Women might have been locked into a role, but they did the housework and the child-rearing, and their husbands took care of the money and the heavy lifting. It’s nice that we’re at a point now where anyone can take any of those roles, but the freaking truth is that women have always done the housework for one key reason: most men don’t care if things are clean. If all things really are equal, all that happens is that women do all the things. Which sucks for everyone.

I’m sure that’s highly inflammatory and would encourage raging debate if only anyone could be bothered, and as the perpetually single person, I’m totally unqualified to say any of it anyway, but what the hell. I like to throw my opinions around.

That’s not what I think is going on here in Canada though. I don’t think there’s some homemaker/moneymaker stereotype in action, with aprons and cigar bars. I just get the unshakeable feeling that women are somehow less.

Yeah, I think there’s still a glass ceiling in New Zealand, but I mostly think it’s there because women, as women, just can’t self-promote like men can. A guy’s natural impulse when looking at something he’s never done is to assume he can do it because he’s never tried; a chick’s is to assume she can’t because she hasn’t proven she can yet. And I don’t think that’s cultural, I think that’s hard-wired, like the stance on dirt and the plumbing. Hunter-gatherer vs caretaker. Men still get better jobs because they go for them. And, as always, they don’t tend to leave their careers to have kids.

Since I’ve been over here, several people have mentioned that they think it’s cool that I do such a ‘guy’s’ job. And yeah, IT is male heavy. It always has been. Guys like technology and making things go, duh. And occasionally I’ve come across people who didn’t want to listen to me because I was a girl, or I was young. But it had never been implied to me before that web design was a boy’s club. Or that I should feel like some kind of revolutionary for working in a field where guys tend to outnumber girls. I’d never even thought about it before. The implication – at least to me – of being impressed that I do a boy’s job is that somehow it’s harder for a girl to do. Which I am going to try very hard not to think about, because it will make me very angry.

Further adventures in corn syrup and commercialism

When we last spoke, dear readers, I was on the precipice of… well, I don’t remember, because it was ages ago. Sniffing bears in the wilderness, possibly. Since then, many things have happened. I have been lost in forests filled with foot-long banana slugs and cat-eating cougars, I have been annoyed to tears by crazy drawling bastards with huge moustaches. I have been told I am Australian, seen a polar bear, attended a rodeo, walked barefoot through the streets of downtown Vancouver with Hanson, and made the world’s best risotto.

I went to a country fair in Puyallup, Washington, where even the red bull girls in their hot pants were obese. They had sheep the size of small cows, and pumpkins you could live in. I’m not sure whether all of this can be blamed on hormones fed to chickens and corn syrup, but if it can then I will erect an altar. I was the thinnest person there and it was fantastic. The rodeo was attached to the fair, and after a couple of hours of watching horses fling men about the ring like breakable ragdolls, I began to see the appeal. Pairs of men leap from full-speed horses onto a stampeding calf and wrestle it to the ground. Horses mosh to the music, and their riders flop atop them like silly decorative tassels. Then, to top it all off, they throw toddlers in helmets on the backs of crazed sheep and time how long until the sheep tramples them into jam. The winner was a 6 year old who managed 6 seconds clinging to a rampaging ewe. He rides competitively. Seriously. His parents pit him against livestock for profit. The youngest kid hurled into the pit was 3. God bless America.

I was in Washington staying with my birth-father’s sister and her husband and 2 year old son, who I met for the first time. They were super people, and took me all over Seattle and Tacoma. I saw Bill Gate’s house (or the corner of its roof, from a bridge), Greek row at U-Dub (I gots the lingo), visited Pike Place Market and watched the ferry boats, much like McDreamy. It’s very pretty and has a lot of character. B+, would use again. We went to the zoo and saw the polar bear eat a bucket of peanut butter, beluga whales and an entire building full of seahorses. Also a muskox, which is not the prettiest creature ever.

I returned to Vancouver sick, so I took a vote between working and going to my second Hanson show the next night, and Hanson kicked work’s ass all over the park. Happily, this also meant I could take the walk with them at four – it’s a thing they do before every show. You meet at the venue in the afternoon, and walk a mile barefoot in support of AIDS. Or whatever. I didn’t get to talk to them because they were pretty swamped (hundreds more people than you might expect show up for these things) and I am polite and demure… and have spoken to them before, so it didn’t seem fair. But I walked beside Isaac and Zac! They have really ugly feet. But then, they’ve now walked a mile barefoot in the streets of 80 different American cities, so I guess they’re allowed. It’s pretty cool what they’re doing – they give a dollar on behalf of everyone who walks, and you elect which of four things they’re doing you want your dollar to go towards. Takethewalk.net! Their shows were amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I had that dream where Taylor and I made out in 1998. They are amazing performers and everyone (except all the boyfriends) is so into it and knows all the words and it’s just the best fun ever. EVER. I would quit my job and follow them around the country if I could.

What else? My bored-on-Saturdays walking tour of Supernatural locations continues. This is only interesting to me.

Food is still a problem. I have worked around it by making everything I eat from scratch. This is not the most time-efficient way of doing things, but it limits my corn syrup consumption effectively and keeps me pretty happy as long as I cave and eat at least one quarter pounder combo with cow-flavoured trans-fatty fries a week. One weekend Becs and I got massively lost in the forest and spent about 3 hours trying to get back to civilisation and away from the banana slugs. Every lampost was covered in missing cat posters up there. I blame the cougars. I walked all the way up to the Capilano suspension bridge, and then figured I may as well keep going to the Cleveland Dam, at the base of Grouse Mountain. And here are some more aimless pictures from around where I live.

Anyway. Canadians, it turns out, are on the whole kind of annoying. They say “Oh sure” and “You’re welcome” all the time, and never. shut. up. But mostly, they aren’t funny. What passes for a joke here is the funniest thing about them. This is a vast generalisation which is not helped by the fact that I work with a bunch of rather old, really boring people. Although some of them have taken many an hour to explain to me the rules of football (I’ve forgotten), baseball (wasn’t listening) and hockey (didn’t understand them), for which I thank them. They’re nice, but I miss rude. I left home and accidentally became a patriot. Vancouver is just too big and full of zombies for me. I thought I’d get used to the homeless population and the people and the size of things, but kind of the reverse is true. Downtown is like Dawn of the Dead crossed with a ‘Nam movie, and I just don’t understand why no one has any legs. I love this province – I love the trees and the mountains and the sea and the animals, but, shopping aside, I don’t love the city. I don’t like knowing what the world is really like, or the noise or concrete or the crazy, crazy amputees with their flailing limbs and their sad-looking dogs. I have a new appreciation for blanket man.

Anyway, I’m busy planning my Xmas adventure in the Rockies (and our New Year follow-up in New York) with Kelly and her BF, as well as a possible jaunt to Miami next month, and hopefully a quick pit stop in Vegas in November. To finance this I will have to mortgage my soul, because the Canadian economy sucks a whole bunch, and I get paid peanuts. So, on balance of peanuts, an apartment that still has two beds and an airbed in it (although we’ve now acquired an XBox!), polite people and food that doesn’t contain any food… I could move on to the UK, but I’ve decided I’d probably rather have furniture and pets, not to mention friends and family, and save up to take a four-week trip somewhere every year from New Zealand. So everyone who thought they’d got rid of me may just be shit outta luck, since right now I think I’m going to come home in January. Actually, I’m pretty sure, since Becs booked and paid for her flight home before Xmas last night.

It’s been real, Canada, and we’re going to bleed Vancouver dry of things to do for the next 3 months, but there really is no place like home.

I have never put a shrimp on a barbie.

My workmate told me I was Australian yesterday. For weeks people have been asking me if I was, and I’ve been telling them, truthfully, that it doesn’t bother me. Canadians get very apologetic about it, I guess because everyone’s always assuming they’re Americans. It doesn’t bother me to be asked where I’m from – it bothers me to be told. Especially if you also have a mustache. And are a total cock.

He said to me ‘that might be how they do it in Australia’ and I said ‘well this is how they do it in New Zealand’. And then I punched him in the mustache.

He just came into my office and said to me ‘I fixed your design. There’s this thing called a BR, it moves things down’. I’m going to have to kill him.

(A BR is also not going to ‘fix’ my design. Which is a) not broken and b) awesome.)

Anyhoo. I told the cable guy I was from New Zealand, and he wrote Australia on his cable form. The coffee guy asked if it was offensive to refer to me as a Kiwi (do people know it’s a bird? Or do they think they’re implying something about the fruit?). And Bec had the following conversation at work:

Bec: I’m from New Zealand
Workmate: That’s like Melbourne, right?
Bec: No, it’s like New Zealand.
Workmate: I’m pretty sure it’s Melbourne.

I would get more angry, but I can’t pick my own accent anymore anyway.

Peanut butter flavoured things go a long way, but they don’t make up for it.

The salt here is bothering me.

I have spent 25 years living under the preconception that salt is a chemical compound, which I assumed meant it only comes one way: salty. Turns out, not so much. You can pour sachets of (supposed) salt on your McDonald’s fries until they look like some kind of Columbian drug orgy gone wrong, and all it will do is make them slightly gritty.

Wikipedia tells me there’s a brand of salt in Canada that contains invert sugar. This explains a lot. Also yes, clearly I am nerdy enough to wikipedia these things. The concept of a savoury muffin is lost on this continent, where everything from chips to barbeque sauce contains artificial sweetener. Leaving aside all the cancer I’m catching, no wonder everything tastes vaguely like soap.

These are my thoughts. Treatise on zombies coming soon.

And we’re back in

I fell on my face in the middle of Vancouver last night and skinned my knee, my ankle, my palm, broke my shoe and stubbed 3 of my toes badly enough to soak said broken shoe red with my blood. So then I went and had another drink to dull the pain, got hit on by a landscaping Brazilian who wanted us to go away with him this weekend, and flopped home on the ferry like a gammy daffy duck.

We had been trying to go to a street party advertised in the paper, but it turned out (once we arrived pre-liquored up on $6 pomegranate martinis) that it was less a street party and more a gay party. A limp-wristerpalooza, in fact, where the only people not wearing hot pink or hot pants were us and a couple of chicks with mullets and steel-caps. So we scarpered, and in our getaway I fell on my face.

I also gave a bum change because his sign said ‘I’m ugly and no one likes me’.

On the up, pomegranate flavoured things go a long way towards making up for the lack of chicken flavoured things. But this, I have decided, needs to be forgiven as chicken doesn’t have any flavour here, so how are these poor Canadian fools to know you can flavour things with it?

Exactly.

I’m feeling slightly shabby this morning (afternoon, whoops), and the onion rings and coke I had for breakfast aren’t doing me many favours either. I have a job interview on Tuesday and hope to manage gainful employment before I run out of money and can only eat $1.50 pizza slices from the dodgy old dude at Lonsdale Quay. If this happens it will be my own fault, as I am slightly guilty of spending with gay abandon this week since discovering it’s possible to get small appliances under $20 and body shop products for under 10. On the flip side, I am having trouble finding any sheets for under $60. It is a tangled linen web this country weaves. Liquor shops and fruit ‘n’ veg stands proliferate, but supermarkets contain almost nothing recognizable as food. And people get their heads cut off on buses. Oh Canada, you tease.

Also, I think I’m in love with Starbuck. You have to do something when you’re not sleeping.

My words, they are gone. It’s partly stagefright: My own need to have this become the funniest, awesome-est, est-iest blog ever is doing battle with, well, reality. I’d give that 40%, the fact I’m just not sure I’m capable of being all that witty or engaging right now. The other 60% is a cocktail of nerves, excitement, lack of sleep and administrative insanity that’s mostly causing the lack of wit and engagement.

2am has become my favourite time. It’s when I stare wide-eyed into the gloom of my brother’s childhood room and alternate between wishing I was sleeping, freaking out about leaving everyone and trying to fast-forward time so I can just STOP WAITING AND LEAVE ALREADY. I can’t wait to leave, I can’t bear to say goodbye. It’s not enough time and it’s far, far too much. Excitement is winning, but it’s two parts frustration at this point. It would probably be a lot easier if I thought I was coming back. But I sorta don’t.

I keep accidentally tuning out in conversations with mum or Rach. I want to listen, but my mind keeps skipping to the end, the part where we say goodbye, and I end up switching off instead. And then I realise I’m trying to turn them off, like I can make them stop mattering now and it will be easier later. I’m not playing that game anymore; feeling my feelings has never exactly been my strong suit, but it might be time to start. I love my friends and family, but I’ve wanted to do this since I was old enough to spin a globe. I hate that I’m going to miss all the important stuff with Jacob, and I might never see my grandparents again, but I’m going anyway and once I get past the goalposts of leaving, I know how badly I want to do this. If for absolutely no other reason, my writing really needs the experience – except I have a whole buttload of other reasons, and all of them are awesome. So, incessant waiting and never sleeping aside, it’s time to get me gone. What up.

It’s like that thing about builders’ homes

I got my full licence today. Without crying, which is a definite first for me and stress-related driving situations. It helped that the testing guy watched a car veer out in front of me and, while I slammed on the brakes, instead of asking me about the hazards I was identifying and reacting to, said “that’s a sweet car. Are you into cars?”.

I said, “have you seen what I’m driving?”

He said, “good point. I’m gonna take some personal calls while you fail to make your U-turn.”

And that was pretty much that.

I thought he might judge me for my crumpled, multi-coloured passenger side that’s been driven into not one but four parking garage poles since Christmas, but he just found it really, really funny. So do I. When I’m legally driving after 10pm.

That last sentence really lent itself to a booyah, but since I’m trying this new thing where punctuation is in and acronyms are out, I’m going to resist. But you know I thought it.

And so did you.

My point is really this: I’m aware I’m a web designer, and this is a lurid green default template. Do accountants account when they get home at night?

Getting out of your comfort zone is easy if you don’t have one anymore

I guess the thing about new horizons is that they, by definition, require a whole bunch of leaving stuff behind. Horizons being as expansive as they are, you can’t find a spanking new vista without putting some serious miles between you and the current one. And unfortunately the current one is filled with warm fluffy things that don’t migrate well, like pets and friends and family homes.

As it turns out, the reason they call them ‘hard decisions’ is because they’re hard.

Yesterday I decided to resign from work, sell everything I own and set out with only the clothes on my back and some empty suitcases, much in the manner of all the good ancient migrations. Or the manner they would have migrated in, had they taken several key Stephanie Plum novels and DVD boxsets, and didn’t get scurvy or only eat crackers. As a rule, I try not to consume anything that started in a barrel and isn’t an oaky Chardonnay.

So I handed in my resignation and started listing stuff on TradeMe (although, it turns out, this is extremely time-consuming and requires sorting and photographing and describing vast amounts of crap that, since you already know you don’t want it anymore, it’s hard to get excited about sorting and photographing and describing). But since someone’s already bid 15 bucks for a bunch of crappy books I got for free in 1999, I’m willing to give this operation some more of my evenings. Every penny I earn selling off the collected mass of my life is another penny I can waste frivolously on shoes in LA.

The day before, I went to see mum and burst into tears halfway through a conversation about the garden… although maybe that was the PMS. I’m veering wildly between blind terror and giddy excitement, with a side of whiny crybaby. I understand this is known as ‘freaking the fuck out’ in the original Latin.

I think I’m learning some kind of valuable lesson about the basic unfairness of life. I want to go on adventures. My cats cannot come on adventures. Ergo, I can have cats or I can have adventures. To get something you want, you have to give up something you’ve got. Or, in this case, everything you’ve got. And have ever had. Excepting of course superior hair and a snazzy suitcase set. That kind of thing Jesus permits. Otherwise I guess the whole work vs reward balance would totally go down the toilet and everyone would just sit around eating chips all day and never change their pants. But the saying goodbye part still really, really sucks.

So basically, I’m going for a rip-the-bandaid-off approach. So now I have no job, no home and no stuff to come back to, it’s really made the whole leaving part easier (aside from the mind-numbing, sphincter-loosening terror, obviously) since now I have nowhere else to go anyway.