a canadian in california

it's true... i am a canadian through and through. things i miss are little, but meaningful...

i miss being able to buy tropicana juice in the charming faux milk carton that it comes in at home. here, it comes in a big ole jug. no charm what-so-ever.

i miss good cheddar. the brand-name stuff here is practically worse than the no-name stuff you can buy at price chopper.

i miss celsius temperatures. i never know what the bleeding temperature is here. 75F. what the fuck is 75F? argh. i am left with no other option than asking my parents to convert the temperature into something that makes sense to me. fyi, 75F is about 24C. not too freakin' bad... :)

i miss cp24. when i visit alberta during the holidays, it is somehow comforting to be able to turn on the 24-hour toronto news network and know that you can be up to date on all the shootings and random moronic goings-on that make toronto my quirky little home. i feel oddly out of touch with toronto right now.

i miss seeing bottles with mL measurements instead of a bizarre mixture of fluid oz and pints. (1 pint & 0.9 fluid oz = 0.5 litre). why the american's don't just join the rest of the world and go metric... i do not know. i actually have some theories, but i don't want to be kicked out of california before i come home on thursday...

i miss canadian accents! i can only guess it's a canadian accent because absolutely no one down here doesn't sound like they have a rampant american drawl. no one.

i miss the haughty cold manner of the folk at home. i miss being able to just scowl your way through the day without anyone acknowledging you. here everyone is just so damned friendly. don't they know that there's good scowling to be had?

there are good things here too....

you can buy starbucks beans in the grocery store.

they have salt and pepper flavoured chips (i thought you could only get those in the UK).

they have gorgeous palm trees, mountains, blue skies and wonderful swimming pools.

i am the youngest person in just about every place i go.

the l.a. times is a really great newspaper. the paper actually has journalisic articles and opinions - it really puts the toronto papers to shame.

the neighbours are so nice... when i mentioned i liked making fresh lemonade out of the lemons on the lemon trees, they began leaving bags of lemons on the patio table for me.

with that sort of treatment, who needs to scowl all of the time?

[music | david usher, "going home"]