lumpkin writes

I know lumpy has been doing all the writing, but I've been helping him ...no, really. And I've been busy teaching, researching, walking to and from work (35-40 mins each way), but I decided I really should write something. So here are some of my word pictures.

Fran gave me a really cool book on haiku for my birthday. Apparently you DON'T have to have the 5/7/5 thing. So I've been writing lots of these really short pieces. You don't have to like them as always I write them for me, but I'm willing to share!

(before leaving)
my thoughts are purple bees
and meditation golden sap
amber is precious

(trying to get a SIN)
using only legs & wits
to get there, I was surprised
by the helpful official

crowded buses
uncomfortably intimate
with someone's belly button

(mornings)
morning mist
Canadian geese sound
strangely like kurrawongs

the smell of burnt toast
reminds me of my mother
eating sardines

(in Toronto)
Snow, it turns out,
doesn't always fall
down

eyes slide sideways
lost humanity
gloves in the gutter

(grading students)
A C is still a C
only average is the same
the world over.

In case you didn't know they have the A, B, C, D system here. Now I have to go and read about the parrahippocampus.
: )

Another 10 things about Canada

11. Our chest of drawers is called Malm. Our desk lamp is named Format. Our couch cover is titled Tacka Lillbo. Our standing lamps are christened Not. Ikea is both cool and strange at the same time.

12. Hamilton buses have special hydraulic lift arrangements that lower to street level to allow wheelchair-bound passengers to wheel themselves right on.

13. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories. Pretty much everyone lives in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia or Manitoba. Alberta (oil-guzzling cowboys) and Quebec (contrary frogs) hate each other.

14. The Liberal party in Canada is actually liberal (small l), or at least centre-left. The New Democratic Party (NDP), which is a bit like the Australian Democrats, is further left again, and actually wins seats in the lower house. The conservative party are called the Conservative party, and used to be called the Progressive Conservative party but decided to drop the Progressive part. They just got elected to power, and their campaign advisers have previously helped John Howard win elections. We're scared.

15. The federal election system uses first-past-the-post voting to elect members to individual electorates/seats, and the party with the most seats in the House of Commons gets to govern. In spite of this, Canada usually has minority governments because Quebec votes for Bloc Quebecois, Alberta and Saskatchewan vote Conservative, the inner cities vote NDP, and everyone else votes Liberal. These minority governments, while unstable, at least provide protections that the Senate doesn't - Senators are appointed rather than elected.

16. 95% of the Canadian population is crowded to within a couple of hundred kilometeres of the south border with the USA. In Mike Moore's 1995 comedy film "Canadian Bacon", the American government used this fact as part of a propaganda campaign to demonise Canada and start a war.

17. They sell frozen juice here!? You get a 400ml can of juice concentrate that stays in the freezer til you need it, then you mix it with water to get about a litre and a half of juice. And it is pretty much like the stuff on the non-refrigerated shelf we used to lug home in Australia. Very convenient!

18. They sell pre-cooked bacon, and it is scary. It comes frozen and it "looks" like cooked bacon, sort of. You microwave it. However it seems to have far more actual meat on it than the bacon in the fridge aisle which is extremely fatty. Even the bacon from the organic butcher is maybe 50% meat on a good day. (This is to say nothing of the "back bacon" that I had in a bagel at the Magic tournament on the weekend. That was not bacon! That was some weird burger meal patty where I could practically taste the preservatives. Bleagh!)

19. We are getting sun in January because it's unseasonally warm. I'm told we don't usually get this much sun, or any sun at all this time of year, so we are making the most of it. Actually we have no choice because we have no curtains in the living room.

20. Just over a hundred years ago, in response to intelligence suggesting the USA might annex Canada, the Canadian army infiltrated Washington, burned down the White House, and then left again, all as a way of saying "Don't even think about it!" True story! Needless to say, the USA have suppressed this little-known bit of history.

funny stuff from http://thesurrealist.co.uk/

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Forgi!

1. Forgi kept at the window will keep vampires at bay.
2. A lump of Forgi the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
3. 99 percent of the pumpkins sold in the US end up as Forgi!
4. Forgi is born white; her pink feathers are caused by pigments in her typical diet of shrimp.
5. Koalas sleep for 22 hours a day, two hours more than Forgi!
6. Forgi will often glow under UV light.
7. The liquid inside Forgi can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
8. The word 'samba' means 'to rub Forgi'.
9. It is bad luck to walk under Forgi.
10. Forgi will often rub up against people to lay her scent and mark her territory.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Benedict!

1. It's bad luck to whistle near benedict.
2. Two thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in benedict.
3. Benedict cannot be detected by infrared cameras.
4. Wearing headphones for an hour will increase the amount of benedict in your ear 700 times.
5. On average, women blink nearly twice as much as benedict!
6. If you drop benedict from the top of the Empire State Building, he will be falling fast enough to kill before reaching the ground.
7. You can tell if benedict has been hard-boiled by spinning him. If he stands up, he is hard-boiled!
8. Benedict was first discovered by Alexander the Great in India, and introduced to Europe on his return.
9. Benedict is the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World that still survives!
10. Benedict was first grown in America by the grandmother Maria Ann Smith, from whom his name comes.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

10 random factoids about Dundas, Ontario

1. Nobody is worried about water conservation here. They have significantly more rainfall. We still can't get out of the habit.

2. EFTPOS is called Interac, and costs $1.50 a time. Most people use credit cards instead. We as yet have no credit rating and so are struggling to convince the bank to give us a credit card. But they will give credit cards to students, no problem!

3. You don't exist unless you have a SIN (Social Insurance Number). I can't apply for one until I'm offered a job.

4. "How are you going?" means "What mode of transport are you taking?"

5. Cheques are called cheques and not checks like in the US. Our bank offered to personalise our cheques ... by giving us a choice of smiley faces or random quotes to put in the corner.

6. Everybody everywhere has a cardboard cup of Tim Horton's coffee. There's a Tim Horton's on the corner of pretty much every city block in Hamilton. No Gloria Jean's, no Starbucks. Apparently they've tried to break into the market and couldn't. Tim Horton was an ice hockey player, and the shop was originally a donut shop.

7. Canadians sometimes say "Ay" after a sentence. Not like Australians do. There's a short pause before "Ay". On the other hand, I think the "oot and aboot" thing is a myth.

8. Frozen rain is when water drops fall out of the sky, and then freeze as soon as they hit the ground. Slippery!

9. The Horn of Plenty sells vegemite.

10. Cars stop for pedestrians. It appears to be courtesy rather than the law.

Milk in bags

One of the strangest things we have found is that milk comes in bags. No, I'm not kidding. Here's a picture.



Actually, it's a picture of a pitcher! Because there's no way you could pour milk from a bag, or store it once it was open there are special jugs to put the milk bags in. Of course sometimes the bag gets stuck half way and milk goes everywhere anyway...

Having milk in bags makes it cheaper (because the manufacturer doesn't have to pay for so much packing) and creates less land-fill (although In Australia all cartons and plastic bottles are recyclable so I'm not sure whether that's better).

p.s you can buy cartons, but bags is funnier! : )

Indoors

Hi thar!

Well I couldn't be bothered waiting until the place was clean so I took some photos anyway. You may need to use your imagination to figure out what certain pieces of furniture actually are due to the clutter, but don't worry I'll help you!

In fact, I'm really supposed to be cleaning up the place and/or shopping for groceries and/or applying for jobs and/or a whole bunch of other less fun things than writing in a blog. I haven't managed to convince Rachel yet that the money I earn by charging people to read this blog is going to cover my half of the rent...

Speaking of which, if you're reading this, please send money to Ben. I accept cheques, or you can use your credit card via my phone service; just dial 555-SUCKERZ and follow the prompts.

Okay, on with the photos. Here is a photo of the boudoir, a queen size futon we bought at the imaginatively-named "Futon Shop". We figured we'd at least get a good night's sleep if nothing else. So far this is good, although we will eventually go out and get bedsheets that actually match. The doona cover is on semi-permanent loan from Rachel's boss (most of our furniture is also on semi-permanent loan, which had the advantage of including delivery for free).

The lamp, one of the few other things we actually paid for, is from Ikea and cost peanuts. The shades are plastic and come with fire-danger warnings, but we're using fluorescent globes which don't generate enough heat to worry about. You can get "full spectrum" fluoro globes now which make you less agro; the old ones which gave you the really white light actually only emitted a few wavelengths, and some studies show that they make people cranky. Other studies show that the new "full spectrum" globes don't make you cranky! Yay!

The flat has lots of shelves like the ones in the top left of the bed photo. They're in principle quite useful, but we need to store mostly clothes now and they're not deep enough.

The windows are double-glazed for insulation. This is a must in this sort of climate. Daphne and Charlie's place had triple-glazing! Venetian blinds cover the bedroom windows and do a pretty good job keeping the light out at night. BTW, the windows here are at the front of the house looking on to Part Street (East). There's a tall block of flats across the road that look a little dodgy. But I think they're okay. There's a reasonable amount of highrise apartments around here, and high-density population means decent shops and a chance at half-decent public transport. (The PT is indeed half-decent, but only half.)

You can see our suitcases in two of these photos - we have yet to get a proper dresser. There's some hanging space in the wardrobe - sorry, closet - but we really need drawers. One of Rachel's workmates is driving us back to Ikea on the weekend to see about that. We've discovered we can order stuff over the internet, but there's nothing like actually seeing the unit before handing over money for it.

The photo on the left shows our bedroom as seen from the bed end. One built-in robe and some more shelves. The desk is SPL (semi-permanent loan) item #1. Our landlord, Alex Gadamer lent us this. He said his father, Professor E A Gadamer, used to live here and use this desk in this room. He was a physics prof, so maybe there are good vibes here for getting back into physics one day. The initials E A G or E A Gadamer are written on things around the place, and on plaques in one or two places. It's kind of reverent in a way (is that a word? I mean the opposite of irreverent.)

The bedroom is long and narrow, but still wide enough for a queen bed. We'll probably get some furniture down the back behind the bed at some stage to make the most of the room. For now, the bedroom door is permanently open (we can't close it anyway because of the desk, and then we'd get no heat in there). There used to be a double door there once, but they've installed a bookcase to fill one door-space, and attached a wood/glass door to the bookcase. The door in particular feels very last-century drawing room. (I mean the century before...)

Oh, and the unit over the desk is an air-conditioner for summer when it gets muggy. We're sooo scared at the prospect of it getting up to a whopping 25 degrees during summer ;-P We hear it got up to 47 degree in Sydney last week, and my sister's plants got scorched.

Next, through the bedroom doorway into the living room. Looking left is the doorframe-bookcase (it faces into the living room not the bedroom) in the foreground of this photo. Across the room is the "angel bed" that sits over the stairwell. The mattress is wide enough for 1.5 guests. There is a pile of boxes there at the moment waiting to be used for something, collapsed and recycled, or stored in the basement. The funny shaped cupboard has some more hanging space but will probably be used for junk. The previous tenants left us SPL item #2, a fold-out couch. It's covered in cat hair at the moment, so we're using a borrowed sheet as a throw rug at the moment. I've discovered that the fold-out feature only works if you're prepared to scratch the hell out of the nice wooden floor, or else get like 3 people to lift the couch so the metal can swing past freely. I'm going to see about getting some bits of wood to lift up the couch (it must be missing legs or stoppers on the underside) to fix this. At the moment, it bounces when you sit on it, since the fold-out frame is what's supporting your weight.

Panning around to the right (sorry for putting the photos on the wrong sides, I imported them all at once into the blog program), there is an extendable dining table (SPL item #3 from landlord Alex) with chairs (SPL item #4 from Daphne's friends, Karen and Paul) underneath a hanging wood-shade light. This table is in probably on the most lopsided part of the floor in the house; the wall behind it is where the house has weight-bearing structures, so everything on the near side (and on the far side in the kitchen) slopes downward from there. You have to be careful which way you put your pen down on the table or else it will roll away!

In the corner is the gas heating unit (see the metal pipe going up to the ceiling). It's in good condition, but it's so old they couldn't get parts to replace it if it were to break. But it's from an era where they don't easily break anyway. It always has a minimum flame going, no matter what the thermostats tells it, so we have to turn it off altogether at night. We're told we would normally have it going full blast at this time of year, when it's normally -20 instead of +10.

Panning around to the right (so you're looking straight out from the bedroom door), there are a couple of coffee tables (SPL #5 from Karen and Paul), and two easy chairs that are quite comfortable (SPL #6 from landlord Alex). Two windows let in quite a lot of light, although the light quality isn't great at this time of year - short days of 8 or 9 hours and overcast mostly. No curtains, which may be a problem by summer. (It's sort of a problem now because we didn't bring our dressing gowns if you know what I mean...) The desk is a put-together job from Canadian Tyre - sorry I mean Tire - who used to sell car parts only but now sell everything like all the other hardware come homeware shops that are popping up everywhere. I carried home a 33kg box with this desk and a bookshelf in bits, and my back reminds me daily. I hate not having a car. The strip of wood on the right-hand side of the photo is another hanging closet.

The next photo is as seen from the other side of the room, so you can see the doorway-bookshelf properly, as well as the closet, computer desk and one of the easy chairs that all got mentioned above. There's also a 70's style coffee table in the middle of the room (SPL #7 from landlord) which might do for our dinner table once we get floor-cushions. The stairwell is on our right out of shot, and that leads down to our front door.

Next, if we go through the doorway behind us (at the top of the stairs), there's a small room that has door to the kitchen and bathroom. The bathroom isn't huge, and I found it hard to take a photo that got everything in. This photo is looking through the doorway, and you can see the bathtub/shower, the loo and a bit of the basin on the right. Not shown are more shelves, towel rails and a giant bassoon. (There is actually no bassoon, but I thought this bit might be a bit boring otherwise.) One day, we will get a second bathmat so we don't have to wash it and dry it all in one day. Oh, and there's a full length mirror.

The kitchen has a slight leaning problem as I mentioned earlier. The kitchen table (SPL #8 from Karen and Paul) is almost as lopsided as the dining-table. I think you can see the lean in this shot by the cupboards falling away toward the left. Everything is secure enough, it's just that everything looks funny after years of settlement. Panning left, there's more top cupboards, a fridge, a microwave (SPL #9 I guess, though they really come with the flat), a single sink, an electric cooktop and oven, and the window that looks over the river and footbridge out the back. Oh, and more built-in shelves where our kettle and chocolate supply live. There's a single drawer for cutlery and kitchen utensils, and some under-sink space for cleaners and rubbish.

This last shot is to show how skewed the place is. The door frame is a few degrees out of shape due to the settlement. This looks very strange. Although not as strange as the tilted room in the optical illusion gallery we visited in New Zealand in December...

Okay, gotta run to a thing at McMaster University. Rachel's group is having an afternoon tea and, as I haven't got any social outlets of my own at the moment, I'm piggybacking on hers. The walk is about 35 minutes at a march (45+ at a leisurely pace) and just that little bit too long. We're going to have to see about other transport options in future. Bikes? Buses? Cars? Lifts? Actually, I walked past a shop the other day that was selling elevators for less than a grand, I might get one! I wonder if it can get me around the place like Willy Wonka's glass elevators?

Okay, I'll write more when I have real stories to report, not made-up ones.
Bye!
Ben

Our house!

We moved in on Wednesday to our flat in Dundas. It's really the top floor of a duplex that has been split into two flats. Originally our top floor flat would have been just a living room and a bedroom as part of a bigger house including downstairs, but the owner built a cape cod extension on the back to add a kitchen and bathroom so it could be separated from the downstairs (which must presumably have had some extra living space added to compensate). This first photo shows the front of our flat. The two upper windows with the lights on are us. I've only photographed our half of the building; the other half of the duplex is a mirror image of what you see, and is still all one house (as opposed to being split into flats like us). They have a large extension on the back so it probably ends up being a 4+ bedroom house.

I started taking photos today of the inside of our flat but then realised that it looks like a bomb hit it, so I'll leave that for another day. This next photo is sort of inside; it's the view from our kitchen window looking over the stream that goes past the backyard. There's not much snow here now, it all melted in the last few days. We assume it will snow again soon (there was a little falling this afternoon). January and February are supposed to be the coldest months, but this year they had the coldest December first-half on record, and then it's been an Indian summer (Australian winter?) ever since.

Our house backs onto the "escarpment" - a long cliff about 100m high -that winds around through Dundas and Hamilton. The escarpment is actually called Niagara Escarpment which presumably means it continues all the way to Niagara falls which is about an hour's drive away. Daphne and Charlie showed us a Mike Moore movie (of Bowling for Columbine fame) called "Canadian Bacon" from way back in 1995 that shows off the area really well. See if you can find the movie! (The yanks hated it because it took the piss of them and their foreign policy, so clearly you want to see it!)

We have a little bit of backyard space across a footbridge that's a bit rickety but kind of romantic. There is a scarecrow on the park bench that we'll probably get rid of. There's a bird bath and a clothes line fitted with a pulley. I figure we can interrogate people by tying them up to the clothes line and pulleying them over the creek and threatening to dunk them.

The creek is flowing steadily at the moment and will probably continue to do so. It hasn't rained significantly in the last few days so this must be water from snow melt mostly.

Our house is close to shops. I walked today to Canadian Tire (used to be spelled Tyre like normal people) to buy everything. Canadian Tyre have grabbed the hardware/home market, so even though there are a few aisles devoted to car parts and tyres, there are kitchenware aisles, bathroom renovation aisles, electrical aisles, furniture aisles, and probably other stuff I haven't even seen yet.

We're also a street away from some very cool grocery shops. One is called the Horn of Plenty and sells grain, herbs and spices wholesale. I think it started as a health food shop, but their premises is a converted cinema (and it still has the box office out the front although it's empty). Now they sell everything from brown lentils to vegemite (yes we found a place that sells vegemite, although at $4 for the smallest size jar). There is also Picone's grocery which is run by Italians and has two whole shelves of olive oil, as well as fresh fruit and veg.

When I went outside to take these photos today, I didn't put my coat on cos I figured I'd be out for just a minute or so. Bad idea. It's subzero temp outside at the moment because the cloud has cleared (it may actually snow now). The punchline is that I also forgot to take my keys and the door clicked shut behind me. It was funny for about 3 minutes which was long enough to take this photo of me curled up on the front porch. 30 minutes later when Rachel got home I wasn't laughing...

Anyway, more posts soon. We have heaps of table space but I realised that that doesn't actually help us store anything. So the place is a mess. When we get stuff cleared up I'll show you what our flat looks like on the inside!


Bye

Ben

Snow!

See? Snow! For those sceptics who said it doesn't snow in Canada. Huh!

Here's Rachel just before we go walking to a house in Dundas for apple cider and dinner. She's in shade so the contrast is really bad, but it gets across the whiteness of the snow. (Actually, a lot of the snow on the side of the road in town is brown...). The photo below shows Rachel and Daphne walking ahead with their ice-poker sticks.

We might be doing quite a bit of walking from now on as we don't have a car and don't have any plans to get one. Apparently cars don't last very long here in the cold climate. This is partly because they put salt on the roads to stop ice forming and this accelerates rust. So most cars aren't older than 10 years. This means that second hand cars are either new and expensive, or older, likely to break and still expensive. And new cars depreciate at a rate of knots.

Actually, the weather has been relatively mild all week. A mere zero degrees on average rather than the potential -20 it can get to. This is good and bad. Good because we don't freeze outside. Bad because the ice melts and then refreezes with unhappy results such as black ice on the roads. We're told that the last few winters have been getting warmer like this and that global warming may have something to do with it - or El Nino...

It has snowed just the one day so far and it snowed lightly all day adding up to something like 30cm.