The Stanley Cup

It’s the end of April, and time for baseball.  At least for me it is.  But here in Canada, people are paying far more attention to hockey, as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway.  It takes some getting used to.

When I was a little girl, I listened to the NY Rangers on the radio late at night. I'd never seen a hockey game, but I loved the rhythm of the game, and the French names of the players. My favorite team was the Toronto Make Believes, and I hoped to stand one day in Make Believe Garden. It was a pretty big disappointment when I saw my first (televised) game, and finally understood the name of the team.

When I lived in the Bay Area, the San Jose Sharks came into being, and I paid attention to hockey once again.  The standing joke then was that there were really only 17,442 Sharks fans. That was the capacity of the San Jose Arena configured for hockey, and the most likely explanation for a team with one of the worst records in the NHL selling out every home game.

Now, the Vancouver Canucks are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but even more thrilling, the Stanley Cup was in Kelowna last night.  I'll never stand in Make Believe Garden, but I got to touch the Stanley Cup.



No Falcons baseball until June.  So it’s root, root, root for the Canucks.

The Christmas Tree Cam is (probably) live!

I think we finally wrestled all the technical issues to the ground.  Here’s our 14th Christmas Tree Cam.

Watch live streaming video from christmastreecam at livestream.com

You’ll mostly see the tree, sometimes Sandy Dog, and every so often Cate or Eric.  Merry Christmas!

It's the economy, stupid.

The local community internet site had this report today:

This is the thing about Canada.  You just don't have people running around with handguns like at home, so now that times are really getting tough, we have people holding up Subways with a screwdriver.  It takes some getting used to.

And no, we don't have an underground train here in Kelowna.  They mean the Subway sandwich shop.

The local reaction to this is to compose Letters to the Editor, complaining about people who are not just exactly like the letter-writers, and complaining that the RCMP is too busy using radar on the side of the road to stop robberies in shops.

Tell you what.  If I was working alone in a Subway, a gas station, a convenience store, or anyplace that had cash on hand, the next guy that came in with a screw driver better rob me before I can get to the cordless drill I would keep stashed under the counter.

A screwdriver, for crying out loud.

Finally, a decent burrito in Canada

In Canada, people go out for "Chinese Smorg." It takes some getting used to.

Finally, in Vancouver, I found Adobo Burrito, two blocks from the hotel.

They have a big sandwich board outside that says "Mex Burrito." Everything is fresh, and you can see them cooking the chicken and "meat" on spits. I'll even forgive the kid who works there for asking me what kind of "wrap" I would like, that's how good this burrito is.

Eat there or take away. Cheap, filling, fresh, hot. This is the the only decent burrito I've had since the last time I was back home and went to La Cumbre.

Blogging from Vancouver, BC

We are in Vancouver, BC live blogging the 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship. The event goes for eight days, and we got here a day early just to make sure everything (high speed internet, press credentials, hotel room) was ready.

"It's good to be back in a real city," I told myself the first day as I walked to the nearest Starbucks.

It's a city, for sure, with noise and traffic and places to eat that stay open after 9:00PM. But "real" might be overstating it. I have lived in real cities, and I have traveled to real cities, and my experience has been that in real cities, people live to get things done. In contrast, here in laid back Vancouver, people live expecting that things simply can't be done, so when they are not done, well then uh oh. The motto of Vancouver should be "It's not my fault. So."

It takes some getting used to.

Here in Vancouver, population 580,000, they are preparing to host the Olympic and the Paralympic Games in 2010. The streets are torn up, there is construction everywhere, and there are several new buildings for the games. You can't pick up a newspaper or watch a tv newscast or look at an online portal anywhere in BC without being bombarded with stories about the facilities being finished on time.

Unless, apparently, you are a Vancouver Taxi driver.

We have taken a cab every day to the new Olympic/Paralympic Centre. Every day, we have had to direct the cab driver, except on the second day, when the same driver as the first day showed up at the hotel.

Ok, fine. That's not the problem. The problem is that when we try to get a cab back to the hotel, it's a giant negotiation with the Vancouver Taxi dispatcher, because they can't find this address on their maps. And they just don't seem to give a damn about fixing that.

There's a world championship event going on. The place is full of Handi-DARTs and wheelchair users. We need a wheelchair accessible taxi, and we will need one every night at about the same time. "Could you let your dispatcher know where this is? We'll need a cab every night about this time."

We either get a grunt in return, or a card with the cab company's phone number, or both. Talking to the dispatcher is like talking to the wall.

I've never been in a city of any size where this was normal.

In Chicago ("The City That Gets Things Done"), the drivers were not only required to know where everything was, they took great pride in it. In San Francisco ("The City That Knows How"), if you needed to know where ANYTHING was, you just needed to ask a cabbie. (And by anything, I mean a good Italian restaurant that's not touristy, where you could get breakfast in the middle of the night, and what the baseball scores were. Anything.)

Even in Atlanta ("The City Too Busy To Hate"), even in the runup to the 1996 Olympics, cabbies knew where the new facilities were, how much they cost, and what used to be there.

But not here in Vancouver. Here in Vancouver, the VANOC representative is amazed that the American wheelchair curlers brought their own shower benches, and that they are so self-sufficient. "Of course they brought their own stuff, they're not expecting to wait around until someone provides them with something," I did not say out loud.

Vancouver's motto is "By sea land and air we prosper"

Just not by taxi.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Here's our 2008 Christmas Tree.

I went out in a snow storm yesterday, December 13 to get it. Apparently it was 51 in San Francisco. Here in Kelowna it was -5 degrees Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) when I went to get the tree. It takes some getting used to.

You can see our tree live by clicking here.

Please use the comments here as a guest book. Happy Christmas and best wishes for the new year to you and yours.

Gonna Need A Bigger Basement

Hello fellow AtomicSuburbia.com listeners. Like you, I'm enjoying Daryl's search for Canadian Identity. Unlike you, perhaps, I am not Canadian. Even though I live here now, it takes some getting used to. And like Daryl, I am searching for what it means to be Canadian.

If you've stumbled in here without coming from the AtomicSurbia.com podcast, and you're in search of the essence of Canadian Identity, quick go right now and check out the podcast. (And hurry back here.)

If you've ended up here because your search engine suggested that this is a good place to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, check the sidebar for the Scheherazade numbers, or check here for more.

Thank You For Waiting

Americans think health care in Canada is free. Some fear that. Some embrace that. But either way, that's what they think.

The truth is health care is not free. You pay a premium and you get health care. If you don't make enough money to pay the premium, you still get health care. But it's not free.

Your taxes pay for health care. You pay federal taxes, the Federal Government transfers some money to the Province, the Province allocates money to health care administrative agencies, and it goes on from there.

Whether you are rich or poor, when you need health care, you get in line for it. It takes some getting used to.

It's against the law to operate private clinics for most things. The lines are getting longer. The government has become more adept at measuring "wait times" so that it might look like the lines are getting shorter. But they're not.

Last week I went to the eye doctor for a routine exam. (This is NOT covered by the BC health care plan, nor do I have supplemental insurance that covers it. So it's paid for by me. But as I told the person in charge of collecting the money, "I'm an American. I'm used to this.")

The exam went fine. It was a very thorough exam. There are no problems with my eyes except that I need glasses. I've needed glasses since I was three, so no surprises there.

However, I have a small skin tag under my left eye. This is not life-threatening, and I don't even think it's especially gross, but it's annoying in the cold weather, and I curl in the winter so I'm very cold for several hours at a time.

"Can we have someone look at this and see if it makes sense to remove it?" I asked my doctor. "I realize it's really minor, but if there's a list, I would like to get on it."

"No worries," she said. "I just have to write a letter referring you to the cosmetic guy since this involves your eyelid. You should get a phone call from his office in about two years, and then they'll make an appointment for a few months after that. If he thinks it makes sense to go ahead and you want to do that, his office will get you on the waiting list for surgery."

You can check the Ministry of Health website to see what the wait time will be. The health care administrative agency and the Provincial government only measure "wait time" for surgeries from when the specialist puts you on the surgery list. The proceeding two and a half years doesn't count against wait time.

So. I'm waiting for a phone call in two years for an appointment in five or six months after that. Then if it makes sense I'll go on a waiting list for surgery.

I feel like a real Canadian now.