This has nothing to do with being an expat but happened to be something that happened soon after moving here and is such a memorable event in my early time in this little country. When I first moved here I started work in an up-market restaurant/golf club. It had amazing food and not so amazing customers. I lasted about a year before I had to get out of there and away from the immense snobbery.
Anyway, I am not here to write about the ‘class’ system as I found it in those days (people pretended it didn’t exist and then expected you to conform to it which I never would). I am writing to tell you about the best dessert I ever ate. I was working and it was my break. There was a big function going on but I was minding the main bar and was sent to have a breather. It was a hot summer night and I was sitting outside having a cigarette (oh the days of foolish youth, eh?) when one of the chefs came out and asked if I had eaten. We were fed – when we were lucky – as part of our employment. He brought me a plate of something nice, but obviously forgettable.
Well, he – we’ll call him Frank because I think that was his name – was telling me how he had just taken some ramekins of ‘crème’ from the oven for the lunch dessert special, crème brûlée, the next day. So I had never had a dessert more adventurous than bumbleberry pie and I didn’t even know what it was to his astonishment. Frank insisted I try it. IMMEDIATELY. He went in and spent a few minutes burning the sugar on the still warm custard. He brought it out to me on a saucer as it was still pretty hot from the oven with this burnt crust of sugar on the top. I broke the crisp topping and ate a spoonful.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Bliss! It was the most delicious, creamy, rich, bitter, taste sensation I had ever eaten. And nothing has compared with that since. I will always remember that dessert and that chef.
Many years later, OH and I took we took my dad to Devon and fed him a cream tea (I will so have to tell that story one day) for the first time, I really understood how he felt eating the unctuous clotted cream. He too thought there could not be anything to compare ever again. That was just how I felt with my first crème brûlée. It is still in the top three of favourite desserts even though I have since exposed my palette to many sophisticated and complex concoctions.
Food conjures the best memories doesn’t it?
So, a few moments ago I was trolling through the internet looking to see if I could see any info about my sister’s friend who was just the other day one of the luckiest people on the planet – she was an Olympic torch bearer in our home province of New Brunswick. I didn’t find anything (yet) about Christine, but I did find something that made me proud & at the same time very angry (on 2 fronts)
I found this article written by what in my estimation is some pompous jerk from Toronto, where he refered to New Brunswick as a “Have Not” province. I take real offence to that, Mr. Roy McGregor of the Globe & Mail - I bet you have never been to New Brunswick. While its residents may not be as rich as those from Toronto, have you ever given thought to why that part of the country is poorer? Historically, Upper Canada raped Atlantic Canada of its wealth to take care of itself & Atlantic Canada has paid the price ever since.
Ok, so that was part of what made me angry – the other part is that they would even think about harnessing the tides in Fundy. As the article points out, the area is incredibly diverse in marine life & anything that would upset that balance can, in my eyes at least, be seen only as a catastrophe. LEAVE FUNDY ALONE!!!
Now, what made me proud? This: “…….That reality could even get stickier if some of the people gathered here this day – Rick Flanagan included – are able to get their beloved Bay of Fundy named one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature.
“New7Wonders of Nature” is an international website campaign that began in 2007 and has whittled down 440 nominations to a list of 28, with final voting and decision due in 2011. (Canadians can vote by going to www.votemyfundy.com.)
The Bay of Fundy is the only Canadian entry to survive the cuts, but is up against such formidable competition as the Grand Canyon, Ayers Rock, the Amazon, the Galapagos, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Great Barrier Reef.”
How cool is that? The Bay of Fundy – the source of so many happy memories of growing up in New Brunswick, is the sole Canadian representative in the finals of the “New 7 Wonders of Nature” Sad that I sit here knowing that it probably won’t be voted one of the 7 wonders, but what an achievement to make it to the final!
So, to you my fellow Canadians, I say “GO VOTE!!” Bay of Fundy, please! 
So, the other night I was playing a game online, on a popular gaming site that is used by people world-wide. In the room I was in there was me & a couple other people, all bowling to earn our weekly badge. Now, you can chat with people while you play & I noticed that one of the other people in the room was, like me, Canadian. So, as you do, I said to her “I see you’re a Canuck! So am I!”
Now, to my astonishment, she told me that I had offended her! She said that she found the word Canuck offensive & that I shouldn’t refer to Canadians as Canucks…………..now wait a minute, I’m Canadian & I don’t find that word offensive. I quite like it, truth be told! So, this got me to wondering, are there other Canadians out there who find the word “Canuck” offensive? If so, please explain it to me cause I just don’t get it!
What exactly about that word is offensive? What does that word represent to you that you find offensive? As I have already said, I don’t get it, I think it’s a great word & I am proud to be a Canuck. How abooot you?
This is a list of some of the things you see in Britain that I just cannot see the point of and can’t see why others do.
- Flapjacks – British ones made with oats
- The ‘pools’
- Banana milkshakes
- Mince tarts
- Insistence that cars with an automatic transmission is not a real car (they are soooo much easier to drive!)
- Beetroot sandwiches
- French mustard
- The Lottery Show
- Noel Edmonds
- Rabbits as pets
- Jordan
- Washing your car once a week when you know it is going to rain again later on the same day and get splashed and mucky
- Little under counter fridges
- Going on holiday in August to really hot countries
There are more I am sure but that is what I can think of tonight. Comment if you think I have missed anything! The next list will be the list of things I ‘get’. Stay tuned 
I recently discovered that my Canadian passport is due to expire…….10 days after I return to the UK from a trip home to Canada. Yikes! So, I did a lot of searching online, as I have heard that the airlines can be fined massive amounts of money for allowing people to fly with passports with less than 6 months validity. It turns out that a lot of countries have made it immigration law that people MUST have 6 months left on their passport when travelling into their countries.
Did this mean that Air Canada were going to stop me from flying home to Canada? There was no way that I could allow that to happen – I’ve already bought my ticket! So, naturally I searched the internet to get a passport application, only to discover that it currently takes 15 working days to process a passport application for Canadians living in the UK. Only, I don’t have 15 working days! I am due to fly in 14 working days. Crap, now what was I going to do? Sooo, I contacted the Canadian High Commission here in England to enquire after an emergency appointment. 2 days later I received an email from them informing me that they don’t do emergency appointments for passports for Canadians living abroad! Something to do with the passports aren’t done here any more……..
WTF!!! They used to! I know this because I had to have one 5 years ago when I got my last passport (long story of passport application going back & forth between me & them so many times that I ran out of time & had to have an emergency appointment). Only, now it turns out that they don’t do that any more. So what is a person supposed to do? Better kiss my £400 (estimated) for airfare goodbye! Like I can afford that! Now it’s time to panic! I quickly fired back an email asking what in heaven’s name was I supposed to do? I have to be on that plane!!
So, I also decided to call my OH & ask him to get me the number(s) for Air Canada – maybe if I call them & beg & promise that my passport will be renewed while I am in Canada, maybe they’ll let me fly?! Or not!? What am I going to do? I can’t not be on that airplane! So in a right state I called Air Canada, in Canada & spoke to the most lovely woman who assured me that as I am Canadian & am flying into Canada, that they can’t stop me from flying………phew! It took a few more times of her assuring me that they would allow me to fly to believe that I would maybe be allowed to fly.
But what ha
ppens if I get to the airport & the staff at Heathrow decide that there is no way that they are going to allow me to fly? Oh god! Panic stations again! After 2 days of sheer torture I received a reply to my panicked email, from the Canadian High Commission. It was the best email I have EVER received! They’ve assured me that I will be allowed to fly, that Canada doesn’t have that law & that even the British Immigration won’t stop me coming back if I don’t get my passport renewed while I am home. They said that as long as my passport is valid for the duration of my journey then I will be allowed to fly & I will be allowed back into the UK. Panic over!! Looks like I’m going home!!
So, I guess that the moral of the story is make sure your passport is valid & that if it needs renewing make sure you’re flying home to Canada where you don’t have to have a 6-months valid passport, or that you have at least 15 working days to get it done!
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!
canucksintheuk
Ceinwenn
rceeee
Kazzer75
ambereyes63
