Principles

The streets in Canada are much cleaner than most of the cities in Russia, but the architecture is definitely a lot more boring. As a complete couch-surfing bum, I've been bouncing around from sofa to sofa, mostly with my family, while I await a new visa to Russia, and so life has been fairly boring.

With a plague of boredom, dwindling reserves of cash and clean streets, I decided to wander aimlessly around Ottawa for old time's sake.

First I went up Bank St. to Parliament Hill, a good starting point for any Ottawa excursion, and then wound over the Rideau Canal to the Byward Market where, I was hoping, a good pub with Alberta beef burgers and pints of draught would await me. Alas, most of the pubs in the Byward Market have closed down save for a couple of bigger ones. Part of a new "Alcohol-free zoning" initiative undertaken by city hall with the help of concerned citizen's groups. Nevertheless I found one decent-looking pub and stopped in to enjoy a burger and a pint of over-priced Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale.

The pub was filled with people, most of them wearing business-casual and most of them middle-aged yuppy baby boomers. I couldn't help listening in on their conversations, alone as I was, and that's when something profound occured to me. I hate my own people!

One woman was regaling her table of colleagues about her friend or sister or somebody. "Her therapist told her to take herbal sleeping pills and she got a week off work. Hitting that cat on the side of the road was very traumatizing for her." All the fat old woman high on themselves nodded in agreement. "Oh yes. Yes."

Another table consisted of two guys, one of whom, at least, was Quebecois, as well as two women. The French guy had closely-cropped greying hair and tiny round spectacles. Under his polo shirt he couldn't have weighed more than 160 lbs. He was spewing out a story, in very accented English, about the evils of eating meat. "Ourr boday's cannot deegist eet und wee prodoose carbones as a reesult, soo it iz bad four de environemant" His compatriots nodded in sheep-like agreement.

Disgusted with people, I quickly chugged back the last quarter pint of beer and asked the girl for my cheque. After paying I left the pub and walked outside, where I lit a cigarette. Immediately, before I had even finished putting my lighter back in my pocket, another middle-aged woman was in my face. "You can't smoke within five metres of a door, mister!" she barked at me. "Oh, sorry." I replied, and took a few steps away from the door (I think in feet, not metres, so wasn't really sure how far that was supposed to be). "What are you going to do? Flick your cigarette on the ground?!?" She snarled. She was flushed red with anger at my smoking.

I stood silently for a few moments, staring in utter amazement at this slug-like creature. Then, without saying a word but never breaking my hard stare, I lazily took a drag off my cigarette.

I can't help it, but being back in Canada, with all these vegetable-eating non-smoking better-than-thou idiots around has made me extremely reactionary. My sister and her fiance made burgers the other night and offered me one. I was starving and my mouth watered at the mention of the word "burger" so I leapt at the chance but, with a sinking heart, I was informed that they were veggie-burgers. One of their friends, who was visiting, doesn't eat anything that has touched meat.

"Oh, sorry." I told them. "I don't eat anything that has touched vegetables."

If we're not supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? And since when did anybody have the right to stick their nose in other people's faces and preach to them about what they can and can't do? If some yuppy preaches to people about the ills of smoking, or the ills of eating meat, or the ills of oggling women, or anything else, how do they know that they won't get stabbed in the eye? Really it's a sense of sudden, furious pain that kept people in line, but in our modern society that fear is gone and people are beginning to behave like mindless animals, despite believing themselves to be progressive enlightened thinkers.

With a huff my fat ugly yuppy assailant waddled away like an overweight penguin, and I stayed in that spot and smoked my cigarette. Then I flicked the butt on the ground. Out of principle.

Home, Home, Where Art Thou?

What is this place I call home? Who are these well-meaning people who I don't understand anymore? I recognize these symbols and flags, yet they touch no chord with me. The language is free-flowing and easy; it surrounds me on the street and in the restaurant, and I comprehend but I don't understand. Why has home ceased to be home?

Better yet, why the hell have I fallen in love with Moscow?

What is it about Moscow that has seeped into my heart and attached itself like the root of a weed? Is it the stunning array of architecture from 1200 years of history, lit up in soft spotlights in the evening, that leaves an indelible impression? Certainly there are few buildings in Canada to rival the purity of history that can be seen in Moscow. Old and new are intertwined in Moscow in beautiful Slavic glory.

Is it the Moscow Metro that I miss? That monument of human achievement which no other city can rival? The crowds at rush-hour are certainly easy to miss, but the peace of the metro in the evening, as it carries the last few stragglers of the day along chandelier-and-frieze-and-marble guilded platforms, is wonderful. At each stop another citizen, whom I will never see again, leaves the train while one or two more get on. Some read books (and how Russians love to read!), some listen to their ipod and stare at their feet, while in the corner two teenage girls yap away at each other. At the far end of the car a man is passed out drunk. I love the Moscow Metro.

Perhaps it's the constant parade of beautiful people I miss? The city is filled with gorgeous women and handsome men, and almost everybody is dressed in European fashions (save for the odd Adidas track-suit and mullet). The women glide by gracefully in stilletos or, if enough of them are running for a train or bus, clatter along sounding like a cavalry charge. Now that I'm in Canada, I notice that there are so few beautiful people in this so-called home of mine. Fashions are non-existent and people walk around with a smug air of superiority, rather than the calm confidence of Moscow, yet they are overweight and wearing jogging suits. I even saw one woman at the supermarket wearing her pyjamas, her hair a tangled mess, and she sported an extremely better-than-thou look on her face and in her demeanour. That would be unheard-of in Moscow!

Is it the feeling of freedom and hedonistic abandonment and, strangely enough for such a large city, collective experience that I miss about Moscow? In Moscow, nobody scowls at or nags strangers for smoking. In Moscow, nobody pesters people about the sins of eating meat. In Moscow, one can drink a beer in a park. In Canada the police would treat a public beer-drinker like a hardened criminal. Nightclubs and bars in Moscow are a haven of flesh and touching and flirting and grinding. When I'm on the Moscow Metro at rush hour, and babushki are pushing me with their big purses and everybody is sqeezing onto the escalators, there is a feeling that EVERYONE is going through the same thing. I can make a joke to a Muscovite about Moscow, and they will instantly understand. In Canada everybody lives in their own individualistic bubble. In Canada women think you want to rape them if you try to talk to them. In Canada making a joke could result in a lawsuit, depending on what side of the political spectrum the recipient sits. How I miss Muscovites.

What is it about the underlying current of spirituality that persists in Moscow? Surely its not only the thousands of Orthodox churches that fill Moscow, their beautiful round spires and onion domes and bright colours giving proof to the thousands of years of influence the church has had on Russian culture. Compare those to the dreary gothic architecture or tacky new-age slabs of our churches. No, there's more to it than just the churches. There is an energy to Moscow, that can be felt in every park and pounding nightclub and grouchy produkty, and seen in every random firework and bad parking job and random beautiful face. Moscow is strangely powerful on the soul.

Why does Moscow feel more like home to me? Is this just a strange transition, a normal effect of reverse-culture shock, that I am suffering through? I feel like a foreigner, uncomfortable and uncertain in my own country. Do I love Moscow simply because it was my home for so long? Would having my own place again in Canada cure me of this melancholy? I'm living out of a suitcase in a spare bedroom, at the mercy of my family's generosity while my wife trudges through her workday alone 5000 miles away. Perhaps I just need a home again.

It is all these things combined. My home (wherever that is), the energy, the freedom and warped community, the beauty and the history of Moscow all have caused me to fall in love with the city. But ultimately there is one thing I miss. I didn't realize it until I went for a walk around the Rideau Canal in Ottawa today, and that's when it hit me. The one thing that is missing from Canada, but which can be found outside any metro stop or on any corner or in any park in Moscow, is this:

Trash cans on fire.

End of Act I

Returning to Canada after a year in Russia and a week in England was, to say the least, anti-climatic. The past year that I spent in Russia was one of the most eventful and interesting years I've ever had and Canada just feels, well, boring. It's like I never left.

This fact could be attributed to being in Ottawa, the city that fun forgot. If I had returned to the west coast things would have been much different but, as it stands, my family lives in Ottawa thus I am in Ottawa.

My week touring around England may have helped to buffer some of the reverse-culture shock, as everyone there speaks English, has the same culture as my home and living standards are high, although driving on the left remains confusing. Also, customer service in England is only a few shades brighter than customer service in Russia, and I have yet to experience exceptional Canadian customer service (to be fair, the best customer service in the world is south of the Mason-Dixie Line in states such as South Carolina and Georgia).

One interesting thing about my visit to London stands out in my mind: meeting up with Quagmire!

A few days before I set out for the UK Quagmire emailed me and said he was passing through London on his way to a new destination. I told I was also passing through London at the same time! We arranged to meet at the stone lions at Trafalgar Square at 1 pm and on the specified day we met up.

The last I had seen of Quagmire was after he was canned in Mytischi for missing classes. Wonderpants, Mr. Irish and I had chipped in some cash to give Quagmire as he didn't have enough for a flight home and Language Link was cancelling his visa. He took a train to Kiev, Ukraine, and for a week or so stayed in touch but then vanished. That was in March. Now, in September, in London, England, Quagmire and I were sitting at a British pub eating steak and ale pies and drinking British Imperial pints of bitter.

Quagmire had been arrested in Ukraine for teaching illegally at a language school in L'viv and had spent some time in a Ukrainian prison, and then an immigration detention centre and then was finally booted out of the country. Naturally the police kept his laptop, cell phone and cash for themselves. He's now found a new job in Sri Lanka and while he was stopping in London on his way east I was stopping in London on my way west.

London is filled with tour companies; it is the fourth most-touristed city in the world, so Quagmire and I bought tickets for a hop-on/hop-off bus tour called "The Big Bus Company". They have open-top double-decker buses and follow a bus route which snakes through Westminster and London, stopping at every interesting site. The ticket is good for 24 hours so anybody can hop and off and catch another bus. They come by every 10 minutes.


In January Quagmire and I had conducted a beer tour of Moscow. It started when we got stinking drunk at a cafe in GUM (possibly the only idiots on the planet to get drunk in GUM) and in 12 hours saw us visit over 10 different bars and cafes and clubs. For old-times' sake, armed with our Big Bus tickets, we did it again in London. Piccadilly Circus! Drink! Soho! Drink! Whitehall! Drink! Big Ben! Drink! The Tower of London! Drink! Buckingham Palace! Drink!




At 9:30 the following morning I made my way to Heathrow and caught a flight back to Toronto and then a connecting flight to Ottawa, where it has been nice to see my family but completely lacking in anything resembling excitement, and thus the anti-climax of an epic year.

The good news, for me at least, is that I decided to return to Moscow but this time as a student of Russian. Katya and I paid for the first semester of courses and my Letter of Invitation is being processed in Moscow right now. In four weeks I'll fly back and Katya and I will rent a flat on the (cheaper) outskirts of the city, so the wonderful year I just experienced has, after all, a sequel!

Quagmire enjoys a pint of British ale

Live Bands & Angry Girls

Last Tuesday I went to Ottawa Bluesfest to see Xavier Rudd and Our Lady Peace. Those were amazing shows. I particularly liked Xavier Rudd, whom I thought put on a great show.

The Bluesfest venue was excellent. The stages were big and the sound systems were awesome. Beer and food tents were aligned opposite the stages and crowds were able to easily move around. And, unlike the Sam Roberts/Tragically Hip concert in Wiarton, we were able to watch the show AND drink beer. What a concept!

Bluesfest had a great lineup this year. My mother lives one block away from LeBreton flats, where the festival takes place, and from her balcony I was able to listen to a lot of great bands. Live, Stone Temple Pilots, Kiss, Joe Cocker, Ben Harper, Blue Rodeo, Lynyrd Skynard, Gym Class Heroes and, for some reason, Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes.

Then I broke up with my girlfriend.

Actually, it was a strange breakup and she is really pissed off at me. She had gone on a trip around the world and, while she was gone, I got the offer for a job in Russia. About three weeks ago she came back and I told her. She acted fine, letting me know that she was sad but saying she was happy for me. We still got together a couple of times (and went to Bluesfest).

Then I guess the weight of it hit her because suddenly she was cold. "I don't know how I feel about hanging out with you. I'll contact you to get my book and return your running shoes".

Then this morning those stupid church bells woke me up again! Why, Catholics, why?

Canada Day

It's Canada Day in Ottawa, which means everybody has an excuse to drink beer, watch Sarah McLachlan on Parliament Hill and view the nation's most expensive fireworks display.

I'm wearing my red "Ottawa, Canada" t-shirt that I received as a birthday gift in 2002. It has been to Banff, Nova Scotia, South Korea, Thailand, British Columbia, Seattle, southern Ontario and Ottawa with me, and driven across the country twice in 7 years. It's also an incredibly comfortable t-shirt and looks as new today as it did in 2002!

I'm not sure who the manufacturer is, but I do know that it has more travels in store for it and when it is finally ready for retirement I'm going to put it away as a memento!

Happy Canada Day!

The Summer Before I Went To Korea

The summer before I went to Korea I stayed with my ex at her parent's place in Mabou, Nova Scotia. Man, what a summer that was!

Mabou is a small town of about 500 people on the west side of Cape Breton Island and it is one of my favorite places on this planet. The food is good, the Celtic music is great and the little pub on the highway, The Red Shoe Tavern, is one of the best pubs I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot).

Mabou is home to the Rankin Family and a very lively Celtic scene. But that's not why I loved that summer so much.

The summer was great because I had so much fun! My ex and I went out of our way to be unemployed for two months, which turned out to be hard work as job opportunities kept coming our way and we had to make up excuses as to why we couldn't take them. That was pre-meditated, by the way. We had actually said to each other "Let's not work at all this summer" and laughed.

Instead of work we drank copious amounts of beer, camped on the beach, drove around Cape Breton, mowed her parent's lawn and helped her father paint a barn, went crab fishing on a boat and made many trips to Halifax. Friends came out to Nova Scotia from Ontario to visit us. We would zip around the coast on her father's 4-wheeler and hike over small mountains to pick berries on the other side. It was peaceful there, with no traffic. The trees and bushes and grass were bright green and the gravel roads would kick up little dust devils in the wind. The weather was sunny and breezy with the occasional spectacular Atlantic thunderstorm, which we would watch rolling in off the water from the large patio at the front of her parent's house.

We knew that we were going to Korea; we had signed the contracts and bought the tickets and were just waiting for the ball to get rolling.

It is similar to right now, I suppose, with the exception that I am single and in Ottawa.

But the similarities can't be overlooked. I'm off to Russia in September with the contract signed and I'm...well, okay the similarities end there. Nevertheless, six years ago I was waiting to go overseas and here I am doing it again.

Which is why I was thinking it would be such a shame if I didn't enjoy this summer.

This past weekend I went to Wiarton, on the Bruce Peninsula, to see Sam Roberts and The Tragically Hip play, and I had memories of Mabou. Very similar geography, with small towns, gravel roads, bright green all around, sunny and a cool breeze coming off Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

Perhaps I'll go camp out in Owen Sound for the summer. I have friends there and life is cheaper and more relaxed. Of course that means ditching the lease on my apartment in Ottawa but what the hell, I'll be ditching it anyways!

Sounds good to me!

Axis & Allies

So it's nealry 1 am Saturday night...or rather, Sunday morning althoug it's not that late but I always consider it the night before until I go to sleep and wake up, and THEN it's the next day to me.

Anyways, I just won a game of Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition (the one with Italy and China as seperate entities). I was playing with my brother JV and his two friends MG and C. My brother was the USSR, I was the UK and the USA and China, MG was Japan and C was Germany and Italy. My brother, as the USSR did all the hard work against Germany and fought some key battles in the Baltics and East Polan, but the USA took control of the Pacific and bombed the living fuck out of German and Italian factories. Anyways, we won.

I guess the point of the story is that while we played we drank a ton of beer and smoked a few fat joints and as I write this I'm cross-eyed and the room is spinning, and Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups is playing and I think I need some water.

Ottawa POV

I've been bashing Ottawa quite a lot recently and I wish I could apologize for it, but the fact of the matter remains that Ottawa sucks. It sucks in every way. It sucks the life out of me. It sucks the cool air out of my apartment. It sucks the fun out of doing anything. It sucks the money out of my bank.

I'll try to give some positive and negative POVs (point-of-views) of Ottawa.

Positive:

Parliament Hill & the Peace Tower. This famous landmark is the subject of millions of pictures and postcards that can be found around the world. I even saw street vendors in Bangkok selling Parliament Hill t-shirts. The old gothic architecture and the sense of national history that are found around Parliament Hill makes it well-worth the visit.

Negative:

The rest of the city skyline sucks. There's nothing but a bunch of boring, rectangular buildings jutting up from small trees. On street level the city is fairly dirty and most of the buildings throughout Ottawa appear run-down and badly maintained. If you're looking for inspiration, stay on Parliament Hill.

Positive:

The public transit system, OC Transpo, is very efficient and well-organized. The transitway is a series of bus-only express roads that run through the city, meaning that for many bus routes there's no fighting through traffic. The buses shoot along the transitway at top speed. In addition to this, there's a bus (or at least an attempt) at every stop throughout the city every 15 minutes. Unlike in other cities, where waiting for a bus requires standing outside for 40 minutes, Ottawa is fairly easy to get around in without a vehicle.

Negatives:

Traffic in Ottawa sucks. Not only was the city lay-out designed for a smaller population (the city will hit the 1 million mark within the next couple of years), but bureaucratic and political bungling means that the roads stay pretty much unrepaired and traffic congestion is horrendous. Trying to drive down Bronson St, a main artery that cuts through the western half of downtown to Carleton University, can take upwards of two hours in rush-hour. The Queensway (Highway 417), the main trans-Canada artery that cuts through Ottawa, is even worse in rush-hour. Add to that the fact that there is NO free parking anywhere in the city, and the city hires more parking enforcement officers than police officers, and you will end up with at least one extortionate (is that a word?) parking ticket a month if you have a car. I'm talking fines of several hundred dollars for letting your meter run out.

Positives:

The women in Ottawa are beautiful. Everywhere you go there's fantastic-looking women dressed in stylish skirts and pants. Women in Ottawa are very trendy and have a much better sense of fashion than they do in Vancouver, Montreal or even Toronto. As bonus, the last census data showed that women greatly outnumber men in Ottawa. There's 3 single, straight women for every single, straight man in Ottawa. The majority of them are well-educated and gainfully employed. Watch out, however, because many of them are snotty feministas who think they have all the answers and are better than everyone else around them. Nevertheless, I've found dating in Ottawa to be particularly easy.

Negatives:

The men in Ottawa suck. Any 'cool' guys I've met here are not from here. There's the egg-head square-glasses-wearing vegan-pansy new-age type, the uber-liberal fact-spewing government-bureaucrat type, the middle-aged hockey-loving have-2.5-kids polo-shirt-wearing opinionated type, and the greasy crack-head street-scum haven't-showered-in-a-month foul-language type. Where are the normal guys? You know, the ones I want to hang out with? They DON'T exist in Ottawa.

One last negative:

The entertainment scene in Ottawa sucks. I have yet to find a decent restaurant that wowed me (unlike Victoria, Montreal or Halifax, which all have AMAZING restaurants). The service at restaurants sucks here. There are a couple of pubs around and one or two decent patios but nothing to go out of your way for. There's also a couple of nightclubs that are absolutely not worth mentioning in any type of travel memoir. There's not much sightseeing once you've checked out Parliament Hill, unless you want to stare at gritty concrete houses for a couple of hours. There's a couple of decent over-priced shopping malls but, for me at least, shopping is never entertaining.

One last positive:

I have to mention the Westboro area, running down the west of Somerset St (which turns into Wellington St), and crosses Parkdale Ave. This part of town used to be trashy but over the past decade it has turned into a quaint, green, peaceful enclave filled with small businesses, old turn-of-the-century brick homes, friendly people and beautiful women. Although there's not much in the way of entertainment (see above) and there are a few too many hippy fair-trade non-smoking coffee houses, the area still has a nice touch to it. Most importantly, when you're in Westboro you feel like you've left Ottawa. Maybe that's what I like about it!

So Friggin' Hot

It is so damn hot in my apartment. The windows ALL face west, where the sun sets. Air has a difficult time circulating around this box and it's 30 degrees centigrade outside...must be close to 40 in here!

I'm sitting, doing nothing, in a pair of shorts and nothing else with the fan on high blowing right at me and I'm still sweating like a pig.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Those damn bells!

A block away from me is an Italian Catholic church and EVERY morning at 8 am they ring the bells for ten minutes! Sometimes, without rhyme or reason, they ring them again at 11 am.

Because it's June and hot out I have the windows open. Because I live on the 9th floor of a highrise there's nothing to muffle the noise. Because it's 8 in the friggin morning those damn bells wake me up every day!

I'm about two blocks away from Preston Street which, in Ottawa, is called "Little Italy" and my question is: why do Italians insist on so much noise?

The past couple of nights I've been going to bed at 3 am. I haven't had to work and I've been trying to catch up on all the seasons of "Lost". I don't know why I've been unable to get a good night's sleep. Throughout the night I toss and turn and can't seem to fall asleep, but I do know that by the time the bells start making their racket I'm in dream land.

Those damn bells!

Sidetracked

Okay, so I'm in Ottawa and not in Russia like I planned. What can I say about Ottawa? Well, I'm not particularly fond of Canada's capital city.

For starters, it is a city that lacks character. Maybe it doesn't lack it. It just hides it really, really well. There just seems to be no soul to the city, as if though it were a wasteland of bureaucrats plugging through their day so that they can afford suburban homes and SUVs (or Smart Cars) in order to make it easier to be bureaucrats getting through their day.

Wait, it doesn't just SEEM that way. It IS that way!

This city is expensive. I'm talking overpriced. The reason for this is..well, I don't know why. It just is. I can understand why Toronto and Vancouver have high prices. After all, they are metropolitan cities with millions of people living in them. But Ottawa? I think that in addition to all the self-serving bureaucracy, Ottawa has a real inferiority complex. This town WANTS to be considered a major-league town (and they do have the Ottawa Senators NHL team), but really they are like the poodle trying to play in the park with the German Sheppards and Labradors.

Another problem with Ottawa is that it is FILLED with pretentious left-wingers who blab on and on about stuff they have no idea about. I'm not critiscizing anybody's political stance, but there is a culture here where people talk to you as if though you, naturally, support their opinion.

For instance, if there's a plane crash in, say, Cambodia, people in Ottawa will say to you "Those damn conservatives, eh?". Not only is there no logical connection, but who the hell are you? How are you sure that I'm not some crazy gun-toting republican from Arkansas?

They are also filled with hypocrisy. I have had left-wing zealots preach to me about the ills of the health system in South Korea and they have never been there, let alone used the health system there. I have, and it works so much better than here. Of course an opposing viewpoint is considered sacrilege in Ottawa regardless of facts. One of the ironies about most of these left-wing crazies is that the majority of them are fairly well-off yet feel they speak for the poor.

Talking about the poor, this town is also kind of trashy. The downtown core has degenerated a lot over the past ten years and now the buildings look decrepid and crack-heads roam the streets muttering to themselves.

Oh ya, talking about crack heads and Ottawans, your typical person from Ottawa would say "Give the crack heads more crack, because that is how to cure them." or, when a crack head robs somebody, they would say "It's the system that let them down".

Why can't Canada have a labour-camp system, with wips and barbed wire and vicious attack dogs straining at the leash?

But I digress...

The main reason I dislike Ottawa so much is not the people. Aside from my family I have met lots of great people in this town (most of whom aren't from Ottawa). The thing about Ottawa, and Ontario, and places like Calgary, that depresses me is the uselessness of life. Here, you live to work. You get a couple of degrees, you work all week and spend two days relaxing and then do it again and again and again. You have a couple of kids so that they can eventually work, too. Maybe you go to an all-inclusive resort a couple of times in your life. Then you die. There's just no point to being alive.

Unless you go do something really, really stupid, like teach English overseas.

So I'm going to Russia to teach English in September.