Drinking alone is fun
Let's see, it's been awhile since I posted. What all has happened to me since last week?
1. My computer is not going to be here for another long time, so I'm still borrowing the one from across the hall.
2. I started decorating my office. We are the only zoology office with a giant periodic table on the wall. This makes me happy.
3. I was taken out on the town Saturday night. Bars are apparently open 24 hours here (or close to it) so my desire to go home at 3am met with boos and fun poking. There is no anti-smoking bylaw here, so by 3 I really needed to go home and cough up phleghm for a few hours. We went to four different places. No wait, 5. First we had coffee in a fancy coffee place by the art gallery. The waiter (who was covered in large, visible tattoos) asked me "Does that hurt?" before he asked for my order. Yes, when you get a piercing it hurts continuously for the rest of time. Dumbass. (He was the second person that day to randomly ask retarded questions about the ring - more whining about that later.)
The first bar was Arc, which was like a weird cross between Phil's and the Dandelion on open mike night. It felt like a basement, even though it was actually upstairs. There was a band called "Canadia" on the bill, but they were on last and we left before they played. Boo. No Canadia for me.
After Arc we went to a tiny former abattoir located at the end of a very dark creepy alley. Oddly enough, the inside was much classier than I expected (and the clientele older and swankier) so we left pretty quickly. Next came Pop, which was so smoke filled I couldn't stay. Last resort was Toast, a posh cocktail bar of niceness. Sure, my caramel martini thing was $12, but it was worth it for the ambience, smokelessness and quiet.
Sunday was Thanksgiving. I had spent most of Saturday afternoon grocery shopping, and man they did not make it easy for me to have my little Canadian holiday. Turkey doesn't exist here apparently. I eventually managed to find a creepy log-shaped "turkey roast". I had to buy frozen veggies because produce is so weird here sometimes. As for the pie....well...they don't do the convenient giant cans of pumpkin puree here, so I had to buy an actual pumpkin. I had never cut up a pumpkin for other than jackolantern purposes, so it was a valuable learning experience...and a time consuming one too. My flatmates had never had pumpkin pie - and they liked it, of course. It was strange having Thanksgiving dinner with people who'd never had it before, and didn't really seem to 'get' the point of the whole thing. I don't know...I didn't realize how important big thanksgiving gatherings were to me until I had to spend thanksgiving eating alone and watching a bad movie about Chuck Barris.
Buying wine was odd. Not only did I get IDed (drinking age is 18 here...) but I have no idea how to buy wine here. I mean...in Canadia, all the Australian/NZ wines are expensive. Now it's hard to tell what's cheap because it's local, and what's cheap because it's crap. Next time I will ask a random stranger to help me. Random strangers like me, it seems.
During a late night grocery store run (we do have a 24/7 supermarket, thank gods) for nutmeg, a random stranger (attractive 30ish guy) came up to me and said:
"Excuse me. I know it's probably not polite to say this out loud but...Nice ring." Then he quickly almost-ran away. Like I was going to bite him or something. Geesh.
In other random stranger news: I have already been asked for directions twice. Despite it saying "CANADA" in giant letters on my pack and my obvious accent...people still seem to think I know where stuff is...and I'm not scary and unapproachable enough to keep them from asking. Time to buy some metal studded accessories or something.
So it looks like my life for the next few weeks will be like this:
Wake up. Go to zoology. Have tea. Read papers. More tea. Find more papers to read. Read papers. More tea, maybe Milo instead. Go downtown to buy crap for my room or office. Go back to zoology. Pretend to work on PhD thesis proposal while listening to loud music and using Bastiaan's computer after he's gone home. Go home. Eat. Watch Sex and the City (or something) with Jacinta. Sleep. Repeat.
Right now I'm in between the second tea berak and finding more papers.
1. My computer is not going to be here for another long time, so I'm still borrowing the one from across the hall.
2. I started decorating my office. We are the only zoology office with a giant periodic table on the wall. This makes me happy.
3. I was taken out on the town Saturday night. Bars are apparently open 24 hours here (or close to it) so my desire to go home at 3am met with boos and fun poking. There is no anti-smoking bylaw here, so by 3 I really needed to go home and cough up phleghm for a few hours. We went to four different places. No wait, 5. First we had coffee in a fancy coffee place by the art gallery. The waiter (who was covered in large, visible tattoos) asked me "Does that hurt?" before he asked for my order. Yes, when you get a piercing it hurts continuously for the rest of time. Dumbass. (He was the second person that day to randomly ask retarded questions about the ring - more whining about that later.)
The first bar was Arc, which was like a weird cross between Phil's and the Dandelion on open mike night. It felt like a basement, even though it was actually upstairs. There was a band called "Canadia" on the bill, but they were on last and we left before they played. Boo. No Canadia for me.
After Arc we went to a tiny former abattoir located at the end of a very dark creepy alley. Oddly enough, the inside was much classier than I expected (and the clientele older and swankier) so we left pretty quickly. Next came Pop, which was so smoke filled I couldn't stay. Last resort was Toast, a posh cocktail bar of niceness. Sure, my caramel martini thing was $12, but it was worth it for the ambience, smokelessness and quiet.
Sunday was Thanksgiving. I had spent most of Saturday afternoon grocery shopping, and man they did not make it easy for me to have my little Canadian holiday. Turkey doesn't exist here apparently. I eventually managed to find a creepy log-shaped "turkey roast". I had to buy frozen veggies because produce is so weird here sometimes. As for the pie....well...they don't do the convenient giant cans of pumpkin puree here, so I had to buy an actual pumpkin. I had never cut up a pumpkin for other than jackolantern purposes, so it was a valuable learning experience...and a time consuming one too. My flatmates had never had pumpkin pie - and they liked it, of course. It was strange having Thanksgiving dinner with people who'd never had it before, and didn't really seem to 'get' the point of the whole thing. I don't know...I didn't realize how important big thanksgiving gatherings were to me until I had to spend thanksgiving eating alone and watching a bad movie about Chuck Barris.
Buying wine was odd. Not only did I get IDed (drinking age is 18 here...) but I have no idea how to buy wine here. I mean...in Canadia, all the Australian/NZ wines are expensive. Now it's hard to tell what's cheap because it's local, and what's cheap because it's crap. Next time I will ask a random stranger to help me. Random strangers like me, it seems.
During a late night grocery store run (we do have a 24/7 supermarket, thank gods) for nutmeg, a random stranger (attractive 30ish guy) came up to me and said:
"Excuse me. I know it's probably not polite to say this out loud but...Nice ring." Then he quickly almost-ran away. Like I was going to bite him or something. Geesh.
In other random stranger news: I have already been asked for directions twice. Despite it saying "CANADA" in giant letters on my pack and my obvious accent...people still seem to think I know where stuff is...and I'm not scary and unapproachable enough to keep them from asking. Time to buy some metal studded accessories or something.
So it looks like my life for the next few weeks will be like this:
Wake up. Go to zoology. Have tea. Read papers. More tea. Find more papers to read. Read papers. More tea, maybe Milo instead. Go downtown to buy crap for my room or office. Go back to zoology. Pretend to work on PhD thesis proposal while listening to loud music and using Bastiaan's computer after he's gone home. Go home. Eat. Watch Sex and the City (or something) with Jacinta. Sleep. Repeat.
Right now I'm in between the second tea berak and finding more papers.
posted by M at 2:22 p.m.
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