The phone rang the other day.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is that Mrs **** then?” Thick accent. Uh ohhhh.
“Yes it is, how may I help you?”
“Well, I’m eck-chally looooking for yee hoosbund – is he a power tool?”
I pause. “Um . . . pardon me?
“Your hoosbund – is he a power tool???”
Okie dokie then. Either this is a trick question, or the difficulty I have been having understanding accents of late is channelling Groundhog Day.
Time to pull out my new lifeline:
“I’m very sorry – I am just getting used to the accents in England – did you want to speak with my husband?” (You can ask HIM if he’s a power tool!)
“Yes please!” She was obviously exasperated with me.
I, on the other hand, was not about to reveal any marital secrets about the power tool.
I handed the phone to my husband. He understood everything and booked the appointment she was calling about.
When he got off the phone, I ran the conversation by him, duplicating as best I could the phraseology and accent.
“Ah,” he laughed “Sounds like she asked “Is he aboot at all?”
Bawahaha. Nice try.
“Nah. She definitely asked if you were a power tool.”
I could see from the silly grin on his face that he was quite taken with this new name.
So. Another one under the belt: Power tool = aboot a tool = about at all.
Got it.
Next time someone calls and asks if my husband is a power tool I shall respond with confidence:
“He most certainly is! One moment please – let me fetch the electrifying young man for you!”
So which is it? The Brits say Queue and Canadians say Line-up but which is better? If I was Harry Hill I would now scream ‘Fight!’ and in would come a couple of people dressed in a foam version of queues and line-ups and then we would go to an commercial. But, I digress.
The other thing is that I’d like to know is did we Line-up with the same commitment as the Brits do? I just don’t remember that being the case. It used to be something of a guideline but not essential. I mean we could sometimes stand to the side and know where we are in the order of first come first serve. But it seems that queuing is something serious and essential in daily life here. And it has some great uses. You get served in the pub in the order of when you arrived at the bar and if anyone queue jumps you are well within your rights to give him dirty looks and whisper behind your hand to the person next to you while pointing and rolling your eyes at their impoliteness.
I am not too bothered by this, but it is interesting to observe this dedication to polite ordering. I also suspect that I have become a queuing conformist and would not doubt find that lining-up not orderly enough these days. It is ot that different and I think I like saying ‘I am going to queue’ at the grocery store far more than ‘I am going to line-up’. It just seems a bit more grow up sounding, don’t you think?
An oldie, but a goodie…
07/04/2006
This has been a great old week for embarassing myself royally! I had to take my car in for it’s M.O.T. (safety test) on Wednesday. I called the mechanics from work to find out when I could collect it…and this is where it all went wrong:
Karen - When can I collect my car?
Mechancic – What was it in for?
Karen – It’s M.O.T.
Mechanic – Okay, what’s your name?
Karen – Karen ******
Mechanic – Oh yes, you have an ‘accent’.
Now once again, bearing in mind that I am foreigner over here…who very obviously speaks very differently than everyone else around here…
Karen – Pardon me?
Mechanic – You have an ‘accent’.
Karen – What?
Mechanic – You’re the one with the ‘accent’.
Karen – Yes, but what does that have to do with anything. I don’t see what difference that makes?? I am from Canada, that’s why I have an ‘accent’.
Mechanic – ‘LAUGHS’ ~ You’re the lady that drives the white Hyundai Accent, right?
Karen – ‘SPEECHLESS’ ~ How silly did I feel?? I just always think of my car as white. It never even tweaked that he was referring to the make of my car!
I guess that I have just gotten used to people commenting on my actual Canadian accent.
And I just had to be calling from my desk at work where everyone could pretty much hear what was going on.
Oh well I guess, as I long as they are laughing with me and not at me!
Other than winter, this is my favourite time of the year & part of the time when I miss Canada the most. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with Autumn here in the UK, I just think that the Fall in Canada is far better! 
I have so many happy memories of walking through the forest, leaves crunching under-foot, or canoeing on the lakes & rivers, watching the trees in all their fall colours silently slide past. Waking up in the morning, with the smell of fall in the air & the anticipation that all these unbelievable colours are only going to lead to one thing: WINTER! Winter with snow. How much better does it get than that?
I know over here they have their conkers, & some of the trees change, but it just doesn’t seem the same somehow. Maybe it’s the knowledge that all these amazing reds, yellows & oranges aren’t necessarily going to give way to fields blanketed in snow that makes it less special, or maybe it’s a lack of vibrancy in the colours over here, or maybe it’s all the rain that seems to accompany the change of colours (I don’t recall it raining that much at home, except during Tropical Storm season) , but I for one wish for Fall in Canada over Autumn in the UK.
I, like the vast majority of the UK have a mobile phone (mine is on contract, but I have had pay-as-you-go as well) & I honestly do not know what I would do without it. My OH’s recently was stolen & he has yet to replace it (that is for another rant blog, another day) & I hate that he is unreachable unless he is at home!
Over here we bitch & moan about the cost of mobile phone calls, contracts, etc, but recent events in Canada have gone a long way to making me realise we haven’t got it so bad over here!
Imagine if you will, the following scenario: You are a Canuck, living & working in Canada & you have a cell phone which has text ability (unbelievably, not all of them do!). You are PAYG as you can’t have/don’t want a contract. Now, some smart-arse marketing (or Financial) person in the Cell phone company realises that this text malarkey is a real money spinner & decided “Lets make our industry LOADS of money & make it so that there is absolutely nothing these poor customers can do. If they want to have a cell phone, they have to accept our rules, because obviously our government won’t step in & do anything to stop us!” Ooh, I know, lets also collude with all the other cell phone network providers so that they all do the same thing, then those poor schmuck customers won’t be able to do a thing about it & we can charge what ever we want!
You may be wondering what in the hell am I talking about, right? Well, in Canada if you have a phone that receives texts you now have to pay for any outgoing & INCOMING text messages! So, that means that the providers are getting money for each text message sent – twice. From the person who sent it & from the person who receives it. My question is this: HOW IS THIS LEGAL?????? You can not set up your phone to screen incoming text messages, like you can do with incoming phone calls. (Your phone rings, you choose whether to answer it or not, knowing that you, as well as the person making the call are both paying for the call.) You can’t do that with text messages, so what is stopping some unscrupulous marketing company from sending out random text messages to random numbers & eating up people’s credit (or even their monthly contract allowances?)? What’s stopping your drunken friends texting you 100 times on a random night (as they do) to tell you how drunk they are & how much you are missing by not being out with them – and eating up all your credit?
Now, my understanding is that Rogers (according to my brother as he is with Rogers) has decided to be “kind” to it’s PAYG customers & do a “Bolt-on” whereby their customers can pay an extra $10.00 a month & they will then have an “Unlimited Incoming Text Allowance” ! What a farce! So, lets do some basic math, shall we? Lets just say that in Ontario alone Rogers has 30,000 PAYG customers (I am just making these numbers up as I go here) & out of those 30,000 half of them decide to take up the generous offer of Unlimited incoming texts for $10.00. That means that every month Rogers will have generated $150,000.00 in extra income in Ontario alone! (not including the money they will receive from people having to constantly top-up their phone if they didn’t pay the $10.00 & so they are paying for their incoming texts) And for what are they receiving all this extra money? How much are they actually paying for texts?
From where I’m sitting it seems like the Canadian cell phone companies are sitting on a very sweet deal! Kind of reminicent of the old Mafia protection rackets – “You pay us $10.00 protection money each month & we’ll ensure you don’t have to pay for your incoming texts! You don’t & we’ll bankrupt you!”
Glad we don’t have that here! Now, don’t even get me started on the whole paying for incoming calls thing!
Well I haven’t written anything in a LONG time, so I am sorry. Life has got in the way of leisurely pursuits (not to mntion the infrequent internet access that I have at present). But things are good and more on that another time (I think thoughts from the seaside are bubbling away under the surface). I just wanted to say hello and let everyone know that I have not forgotten my blog responsibilities!!!
Happy Canada Day!
Well, I suppose that there are a lot of people out there who didn’t know that today was Canada Day (it’s not midnight in Canada yet, lol!). You are forgiven! Just mark it in your Calendar for next year. July 1st.
Growing up in Canada, for us, it was a family day. We would all get together – aunts & uncles & their partners & all my cousins (there are about 30 of us cousins – my Mom is from a very large family) & we would have a bbq, play games, go swimming, have cake & beer (for the adults) & they would gather on the lawn & play horseshoes & gossip, or watch hockey in the basement. In short – it was a great day!
Since moving over here Canada Day has, out of necessity, had to become very different. The only family I have over here is my OH & we don’t have a back yard, so the bbq is out! In the past (before there was an OH) I would make sure I had the day off work & would head into London, to Covent Garden – Maiden Lane, to be exact. There, every year, they would cordon off the street & thousands of Canucks would gather on the street, in the bars & pubs & have a big party. We’d stand on the street singing Canadian songs, drinking Canadian beer, wearing our Canadian hearts on our sleeves (and tattoo’d all over our bodies with temporary tattoos that had been bought at the Canada Shop, or sent over from home).
After a few hours those brave enough to risk not getting back onto Maiden Lane would amble down the Strand to Canada House for a rousing rendition of O Canada at noon, followed by Canadian entertainers performing for us, more Canadian beer (free this time), Canadian Wine & a couple slices of Canada Day birthday cake. Slowly we would make our way back to Maiden Lane & shimmy into spot (hopefully a prime spot!), where we would remain for the rest of the evening.
Those were great nights – I remember one year reading in the national press the next day an article about the party, commenting that there were 5000+ people crammed into one tiny street & the worst thing that happened was that someone was arrested for climbing a street light. I made many great “friends” those nights – none of whom I have ever seen again, but they were my best friends at the time. I guess you could say it was kinda like my Glastonbury, only the people doing the singing were 100% amature.
Sadly the last football world cup brought an end to the Canada Day celebrations on Maiden Lane. The Government/police got involved & wouldn’t allow us to have the party because England were playing that day & they were afraid that if England lost the celebrations could turn ugly if they were infiltrated by football fans looking for a fight. There were no Canada Day celebrations that year.
Luckily, the celebrations are back, but now there are very different. It’s now become a bit of a business, & a lot less like a family party. It all takes place in Trafalger Square where you can have bison burgers, drink Canadian Beer & Tim Hortons coffee & eat timbits. You can listen to Canadian entertainers & sign up for the street hockey tournament, chat up a couple Mounties in full dress uniform or visit the Tourism pavillion to plan your next trip to Canada………………………I miss the old Canada Day!
Oh well, I guess something is better than nothing – gotta make sure I am able to get back there next year!
Happy Canada Day everyone!
Oh how I miss the Canada Day parties my folks used to throw. Or how about Concert on the Hill? Sunning all day at the lake, water skiing, sunburn…sigh…
I hope everyone has had a good day and Happy Canada Day!
I was searching through my unread posts on The Book Club Forum a while ago & came across a post from ii saying that she was addicted to this site: free rice – but it didn’t say anything else. I was intrigued, so I went to check it out. In the “About” section of the website, this is what it says:
About FreeRice
FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program. Our partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. FreeRice has two goals: Provide education to everyone for free. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. This is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on this site. Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself. Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
So, I’ve been playing & have so far have donated over 2000 grains of rice – while having fun learning the meaning of new words & testing my world geography. While taking a break from trying to tell the location of Uzbekistan from Tajikistan Afghanistan and Turkmenistan I decided to have a wander around the website & found Poverty.com, which lead to this post.
I read the front page & then went on to the “A solution” section, which lead to the embarrassment at being Canadian. Annually donating 0.7% of our National Income shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do – otherwise why would we have agreed to the initiative? Thing is though, how many Canadians are actually aware that our government has agreed to this? I wasn’t aware. Were you? 0.7% per person isn’t a great amount (for me it would be about £168 – which I would gladly give the UN if it meant we eliminated world hunger!
So far only 5 countries have met the pledge they made – Sweden, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway & Denmark. The rest of the 22 countries are severely lagging behind! 6 countries haven’t even identified when they expect to have reached the 0.7% goal – Canada amongst them.
From Poverty.com:
”Why the 0.7% Agreement?
The countries made this agreement because they realized that it was hard for each country on its own to give a consistent, minimum level of aid each year. Despite good intentions, a country would find that the aid it wanted to give was eaten away by competing political interests, concern about budget deficits, “problems at home,” “problems abroad,” and so on. So they agreed to a minimal, flat rate that each country could afford each year regardless of its current political or economic state. The 0.7% figure may sound complicated, but it is actually quite simple. You take the total income earned by all the people in the country and then the government gives 0.7% (seven tenths of one percent) of that as aid. Or to look at it another way: for every $100 earned in the country, the country gives 70 cents in aid. How are the countries doing?
… five countries have already met the goal to give 0.7% of their income in international aid: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. In 2002 and 2003, five other countries set up a schedule to give 0.7%: Belgium, Ireland, Finland, France, and Spain. In July 2004, the United Kingdom set up a schedule to give 0.7%. In April 2005, Germany set up a schedule to give 0.7%. In May 2005, Austria, Greece, Italy, and Portugal set up a schedule to give 0.7%. It was not easy for many of the countries to set up a schedule to reach the 0.7% goal. In some cases, such as Britain and Germany, it took the combined effort of many thousands of citizens writing and petitioning their government to get it done.
The remaining six countries Only six countries have not yet set up a schedule to give 0.7%. These are Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States. To raise the $195 billion a year, these six will need to reach the goal. These six countries are all democracies. All that is necessary for them to reach the 0.7% goal is for enough of their citizens to show their support.”
So – about the support – give yours, please. Print off the letter that is provided & send it off to Ottawa (or Washington, Downing Street, Canberra, Tokyo, or Wellington depending upon your nationality) & encourage your friends/family to do the same. It’s literally the least we could do – lets force our collective governments to honour the pledges they have made! Lets make our actions & voices speak louder than our government’s empty promises!
Today I am in the process of recovering from yesterday!
I made the journey to end all journeys, in my quest to move back to Wales. My Other Half is Welsh & we have wanted to move back there for a fair while now (I lived there briefly a few years back when we had first started dating), but have been struggling. Chalk it up to the current economic climate, or whatever, but we have struggled even getting interviews. Never in a million years did I dare dream that I would get an interview that would potentially see us moving to the North of Wales, into the mountains – until a few weeks back when one of the agencies I am registered with called & told me about the job I interviewed for yesterday in Llanberis!
So, train booked (remember, I don’t drive), I got up at 4:30am yesterday to prepare for my 12:30pm interview! My 1st train of the day was from Doncaster to Stockport at 6:40am, which allowed me to get off to a nice leisurely start (not!). Once I arrived in Stockport it was a quick change of tracks & trains & I was off to Crew. From Crew it was another change of trains & onward to Chester (are you sensing yet why I say this was an epic feat of travel?). In Chester I changed to my final train which 50 minutes later landed me in Bangor – phew! By now it was 10:30am & I had only a few minutes to find where I needed to go to get my bus to get to Llanberis which was at 10:45am. 45 stunning scenery-filled minutes later I arrived in Llanberis & was blown away by the beauty.
The bus wends it’s way through the village of Llanberis & oh what a pretty village it is! I am not ashamed to admit that I was overcome with emotion, because Llanberis is exactly like the kind of place I dream of living. Quiet, out of the way & small – in other words, perfect! Once off the bus it was a very short walk to the hotel where my interview was scheduled but I was an hour early so I went for a little wander & had a sandwich in the Snowdonia Mountain Rail’s cafe, then it was off up the hill for my interview.
(In this pic: The hotel where I had my interview – on the top of the hill)
An hour & 1/2 later my interview was over & while I am quietly hopeful, I don’t dare get my heart set on moving because I don’t want to get let down! The GM at the hotel was really nice & warned me about how isolated Llanberis was, saying that it would be a life change to move there. Tell me about it! Exactly the life change that OH & I are looking for! I wish I had remembered to tell him exactly how my journey to Llanberis went, maybe that would have shown him just how badly we want to make this move. Damn!
So, with an hour & 1/2 to spare before I had to begin the return portion of my epic journey I went on another wander. I would have loved to have taken the Mountain train or the lakeside train, but I promised OH that I wouldn’t do them until we had the chance to go together. Nevertheless, it was lovely to wander around taking in those spectacular views!
All too quickly it was back on the bus to Bangor, then the train to Chester, another train to Stockport & a final train to Doncaster before arriving back home (or current-for-the-moment home), 11 hours of train & bus journey & 1 interview later. I was (& still am) exhausted – (how is it that sitting on a train is so tiring?) but I am glad that I went & I am really really really hoping that they let me er, I mean us, move to Llanberis!
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