Exactly seven years ago the iPod was introduced. It was also the morning after the first night Alison and I spend together. We didn’t realize then that both events would have so much impact and longevity.
Happy anniversary iPod and Alison! May the seven-year-itch be gentle on all of us.
While walking in residential Nepean, in the street where Alison’s parents live, I heard and saw this beautiful woodpecker. It was hunting for insects in the tree by waking them up with a lot of noise and wasn’t shy at all. I could approach the tree within a couple of metres and it still wasn’t flying away.
Nine months ago, in January, I was finally eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship. To be able to apply you need to have been exactly 3 years (1,095 days) physically in Canada, and since I was quite often in the Netherlands and the US after my immigration, it took some months after my 3 year anniversary for me to be eligible.
I filled out all the forms, paid a fee, made special pictures and wanted to send it off. The forms included a checklist and I duly checked all the items before putting them in the envelope.
Everything was there.
But wait, one of the items on the checklist said AND not OR.
So I needed two items of paperwork for that checkbox and I only had one.
The paper I was missing was my Record of Landing, a big, legal sized, piece of paper that they stapled into my passport when I arrived in Canada. They told me that I didn’t need that paper anymore because it was going to be replaced by a new, wallet-sized, Permanent Resident Card, that I had to buy for $100. That card indeed was sent to me a couple of months later and I removed the crumpled Record of Landing from my passport. I now was officially in Canada I thought, with a shiny ID-card with my photo on it.
But it turned out I really need that piece of paper, and that the Permanent Resident Card replacement is only for travel purposes, even though it is issued by the same organization that does the citizenship procedure, and there is no way I could have received that Permanent Resident Card without a Record of Landing.
So I paid another 30$ to get a duplicate Record of Landing. I filled out an application form and mailed it to the Citizenship and Immigration office in Montréal that handles duplicate forms.
And then the waiting began. After 2 months, in March, I thought it was taking an awful long time to make me a copy of a form so I call. They tell me that the processing time for duplicate forms is now 4 months, so I just have to wait.
After 5 months I get a letter. Ah, finally, my Record of Landing has arrived!
Nope, it is only a letter saying that my file has been sent to another office in Ottawa and the processing time will be 5 months.
I must say, they are quite fast in Ottawa, because it only took them 4 months to make me a photocopy of my Record of Landing and mail it to me. Tomorrow I’m going to make a photocopy of the photocopy and then I can finally sent my application to become a citizen of this fine country. A country were all official documents/applications/forms seems to be done on paper, and everything has to be processed by humans because none of the forms is machine readable. I fill out the forms on my computer and then I have to print them (and of course Adobe Acrobat spits out 5 copies) and someone on the other end has to enter all my info into another computer. This whole thing can be so much more efficient. It would save so much time and money. Why is Canada a third world country when it comes to bureaucracy?
When I looked first into this procedure, when I just had arrived in Canada, the processing time to become a Canadian citizen was 10 months. By the time I was eligible it was already 12 months, and now it is 15 months. So maybe in March 2009 I will become a Canadian citizen. And maybe not. Watch this space. Patiently.
Today I’m four years in Montréal. The events on 11 September 2001 had a lot to do with the fact that I ended up here. That’s a long story however and I’ll save that for a time when I’m not so busy.
The real reason for my presence in Toronto is that Alison has a team building meeting with all the members of her team. And the partners were expressly requested to come as well, and dogs and children also. I left Poupoune and Pepe at home though, since they’re not allowed in the train and I didn’t want to drive that far after a busy week at work.
The meeting was held in one of Alison’s colleagues’ cottage in the Muskokas, a two hour drive north of Toronto. We rented a car and upon arrival we found that everybody brought their toddlers, so there were enough small creatures. And they all swam, canoed, kayaked, barbecued, tanned, and chatted. So now I can put faces to names when Alison mentions her colleagues. Halfway I started to order the huge amount of toys that belonged to the son of our hosts. All cars and bulldozers (O, I wish I had those Tonka trucks when I was a kid) in a row, all the spades together. And the balls, the buckets, the fishes, the rings et cetera, et cetera. In the end I made a huge and very unstable tower of a few toys that were hard to categorize. It stood upright for a couple of minutes, until a breath of wind cased it to tumble down… People enquired if I suffered from OCD, and that made me laugh. They should see the mess in my office.
The first time I arrived in Montréal was by train from Toronto. And now, almost 6 years later I took the train to Toronto. I hadn’t been there in the past six years and since Alison was already staying there in the Royal York hotel, it was not that expensive. Through Alison I also got a free upgrade to VIA 1, so I travelled first class, with free wine and a meal. Nice. It’s so nice to be able to stare out the window and watch the landscape going by. When I drive I can never do that, since I’m never a passenger, and always have to watch the road. Maybe it’s time that Alison gets a drivers license.
(O, and on the way back I forgot my laptop again. But two days later, when the Lost & Found office opened on Monday, I had it back again. I’m so lucky. And stupid to keep testing the honesty of Canadians…)
When I immigrated to Canada I put only a few food items in my shipping container. Lots of dropjes (Dutch Liquorice) of course but also a box with twelve tin bottles of this sirup. It is grapefruit flavour (100% concentrated juice and sugar) and it’s the best sirup I’ve ever tasted. And I can’t get it here. Sure I can buy various sirups in the import stores but they’re all the regular flavours like lemon, berries and mint. But no grapefruit. And this sirup, with some water or soda water makes a perfect drink. Not too sweet and with just a hint of bitterness.
Over time the stash was used up but some visitors brought new bottles and I also brought back a few bottles myself every-time I went back to the Netherlands to visit my mother. My suitcase was usually quite heavy.
Today, when I opened a new bottle I was in for a bad surprise. It stank. And the reddish liquid had turned all brown and gooey. I checked the “best before” date and it said July 2004. Oops. I checked all five bottles I still had in stock and they all had the same date. Quintuple oops.
Apparently I had put all the newer bottles in front of the original batch of 2003 so those bottles had plenty of time to go bad. Darn. Now I have to go back to the Netherlands soon, I only have one bottle left. And my suitcase will be very heavy.
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I went with a client on a hunt today for a bathtub. He’s quite tall and wants me to make a new, larger bathroom for him, but he has a hard time finding a bathtub that fits his frame, one that is actually big enough for him to lie in.
After visiting a number of stores we both have to pee. But asking “Do you have a bathroom?” in a bathroom store is kind of awkward, and pissing in the showroom toilets is generally frowned upon (apparently it does happen though, at least that’s what I heard). So we head to a Tim Hortons nearby and have a muffin and an orange juice. Coincidentally we order exactly the same muffin and the same kind of juice.
Afterwards we drive the long way home and even though a lot of people are on vacation, there is still a lot of traffic and it takes quite a while. I drop of my client, and when I arrive at home I can’t find my bag. I search the car, but it’s a big red bag and not easily overlooked.
The dogs are barking around me while I try to concentrate and think where I remember I had my bag the last time. I think it was at the Tim Hortons. I get the Yellow Pages, but can’t find them. Wait, the internet! But on the Tim Hortons website there is no restaurant finder. Canada411.ca. No Tim Hortons in Montréal on that street. O wait, Pierrefonds is de-merged and is a separate municipality now. Yes, there it is, in the long list of telephone numbers. I call the number and start talking to the woman who picks up in English. They all speak English in the West-Island so I’m surprised when she asks “French, please?”. I repeat my question (”Have you found my bag?”) in French, she goes to look in the place I tell her I was seating and then she comes back: “Non monsieur, votre sac n’est pas là…”
Fuck.
It now really dawns to me. I lost my bag. My really nice red bag. With my camera in it, and my cigars. And my brand new MacBook Pro laptop.
I thank the woman for watching and give her my phone number just in case. Just before I hang up I ask if there are any other Tim Hortons in Pierrefonds? She answers me that she’s not in Pierrefonds but in Côte de Lièsse. OMG. I called the wrong restaurant! Yes, it is the telephone number just below the one we visited. I get new hope. It’s not even an hour ago since we left. I call again, making sure to call the right number this time.
Unfortunately my hope proved futile. My bag hadn’t been found. I call all the bathroom stores we went to, one at the time. No luck.
Shit.
I call Alison and she has no idea what to say to cheer me up.
I hang up, and I don’t know what to do. I haven’t even paid off my credit card bill of the new laptop and I already lost it. Visa will be happy. Then I remember that my bank just recently upgraded me to a new credit card that included an extended warranty or something. I frantically try to find the leaflet that came with it. Yeah, there it says: “The Purchase Security Plan protects most purchases made with the card for ninety (90) days from purchase.” I quickly try to find the line that says what is meant with that word most. I’m sure I will find a line saying that “computers are excluded”. But there is no such line. I call the toll-free number, and someone takes my card number, address and the value of the item I lost. Thanks to Apple’s online invoices I can still find that information. She’ll send me a form that I’ll have to complete. Wow.
For the first time in an hour I can sit and calm down a bit. There is a possibility I didn’t lose a huge pile of money, but just some.
I eat a cracker with cheese and try to recall what I’ve lost, what haven’t I backed up yet.
Some photos, obviously. But for the rest I just lost the changes I made today and last night to the drawings of my client’s bathroom. Just a couple of hours to re-create those, so that’s not too bad. A good thing I worked on woodworking projects the past week and that I make regular backups. But not daily, even though I bought a new hard drive just for that purpose. But I haven’t had time to set it up yet.
I even manage to look at it from the bright side: I now have an excuse to replace my 6 year old camera.
Our nice tranquil lake, with boats nor cottages, surrounded by pristine forests, dotted with majestic boulders, with its beautiful sandy beaches, its coconut palms…
Okay, I’m carried away a bit. But our very nice secret lake, an hour from Montréal but almost never frequented by any other living creature than deer, moose and otter… Oops, there I go again. Anyway, that lake is going to be spoiled. A developer lay its filthy hands on it and now he’s going to build cottages around it.
We went there today and found big signs with “Domaine Privé” and “Défense de circuler”. We ignored them for now, since it’s construction holiday and also to investigate. The lake is just as pristine as ever, but there was doom in the air. The doom of big trucks, by and builders coming in, to build monstrous houses. (For some reason people who can afford a second home in the Laurentians have no taste.) Followed by loggers on a mission to create lake views for the owners by logging all the trees between the lake and said houses.
It’s only weeks before they put big steel fences around it and declare it a real No-go area.
So I’m going to spill the secret and give you all detailed instructions how to get there. Rent a car and enjoy this really nice lake while you still can get in, albeit by ignoring some signs. If somebody tells you to go away tell them you come here for years and nobody ever told you to go away. They probably tell you that things have changed but I bet you can stay for the day if you tell them you came all the way from Montréal.
First locate the lake on this Google Maps map. Follow the included driving instructions from highway 15 North to the parking area in Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard.
From there:
Lakes should be public and not private. They’re part of the land that our ancestors stole from the natives. Well, maybe not my ancestors exactly, but you get my point.
If you don’t get my point you can always go to the developer’s site and buy one of the lots and have your dream house built. Be quick, they’re going fast. If you do, please invite me over once in a while. In return I can do some maintenance, I’m quite good at that. Then at least I can lay my eyes on “our” lake once in a while.
If you have access to other lakes please do not hesitate to email me.
Invariably one of the first things people ask me when I tell them I’m from the Netherlands is if I smoke. I tell them I smoke cigars, but that wasn’t what they were interested in. They wanted to know if I smoked marijuana or hashish.
Well, I did. But not very often, and ever after I was kicked out of art school I smoked maybe 2 joints (and that was in the strict sense of the word, with others) a year. And I didn’t inhale. Okay that’s a lie, but when I inhaled I started to cough loudly, and that never went away, not even when I blowed (that’s the term used in the Netherlands for smoking softdrugs) regularly at art school. It always made people laugh, but I hated it since it prevented me from keeping the smoke in and getting high. Maybe I should have built a water pipe but that was just too much of a hassle.
So no, I’m not a pothead exactly. And I don’t know many people in the Netherlands that are, even though you can buy the stuff at almost every corner “coffee shop”.
To give an example, this joint we recived from Alison’s brother (the other brother, not the one that has pot-induced schizophrenia) as a Christmas gift, has still not been smoked, a year-and-a-halve later.
I figured I’m still not yet assimilated to Canada, when I read the following:
So it’s about time we smoke that joint.
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