A bit of background: Lethbridge has a good 80,000 people and is located relatively close to the US border in Alberta, Canada. It is in the middle of prairie land, and I tell you if I have seen one gopher floating around, I have seen a gross.
They would be a groundsman's worst nightmare, constantly on the prowl for new craters to excavate. Are they filling them with nuts when the gopher equivalent of the GFC hits (are we still calling it the GFC, or did we finally decide that it was the word dare not speak it's name - which rhymes with 'concession'?)
No deer yet - apparently there are deer to be found in spades up and down the campus. To take the self-referential gambit to a whole new level of fun, there is a piece on deer here
http://timinoxford.blogspot.com/2008/04/climbing-over-rocky-mountains-iv.html
I have recently purchased a car, or a swollen London taxi, if you will
sadly the radioactive glow was extra and on my (reinvogorated?) tightened budget, it missed the final cut. I bought it in cash, and, not having a bank account established in Canada, it involved a few trips to the ATM. Now, the ATM only deals in twenties, and, although this was a second hand car, it was still a car, which meant a firm wad of twenties - the sort of scores Damien Martyn used to get all the time. I had a paper bag from when I bought a bottle of Alberta Springs Whisky - more on that another time - so it was classic Sopranos times.
There is not much in the way of trans-pacific assistance when it comes to the driving license. There are 'some countries' which have a reciprocal agreement with Alberta - that is, if one is from one of the following countries
one pops along and swaps one's licence for an Albertan one. Easy. Note that, even though they drive on the wrong side of the road over here, there are still your UK and Japan contenders on this A-team list. There is a C-team list, wherein you need to start from scratch, that is, you need to apply for your license from the get-go and take a full year as a 'learner'. The B-team, at the top of which is Australia, who are surely itching for promotion out of this Oceania-esque Confederation, contains
- Australia
- India
- Iran
- Iraq
- Kenya
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Morocco
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Republic of Congo
- Trinidad & Tobago
- Rwanda
- Sudan
- Syria
- United Arab Emirates
The locals asked me one day whether I enjoyed the 'coulees', pronounced 'cool-ees'. I let out a slow exhale and began to look from side to side. I've taken to wearing ties here (hence the street-cred from the locals... the busdriver thought that my wearing a tie meant I was a great soccer player. He's playing his own game from behind the wheel, clearly.) and I loosened my Windsor knot ever so gently as a thin trickle of sweat developed on my brown. I remember Sir Alec G on the Bridge of the River Kwai use the term 'coolies' and it was directed towards his captors in a less than flattering way. "Are we even allowed to use that word these days?" I thought. But no, 'coulees' are wedge-shaped hills and valleys around town. Very nice indeed, and something which my camera - not in the single-malt category that Dad's is - will capture before long. Here's one that the internet prepared earlier.
The river that runs through town is quite a sight. I asked some of the locals what its name was, to which they responded 'Old Man River'. Say what? Surely he don't plant 'taters, he don't plant cotton... but no way is that called Old Man River, surely this is right up there with the 5 o'clock wave trick that people from Wagga Wagga enjoy. It turns out it is called the 'Oldman River', which loses some of its mystique, unfortunately.
I now have a kettle for my office.
Oh yes, I've been boning up on the rules of the road, since I need to sit these tests. The book they give out is 155 pages long, and it is not until we (I say we, because if I have to waste my time on it then the least you can do is read about it and offer some empathy) get to page 28 when we are shown a picture of a One Way sign with a caption explaining "Proceed in direction of arrow only". It's going to be a long night.
