Going to Canada eh ?

This weekend marks the first anniversary of our landing at Calgary airport and acquiring the status of “landed immigrants”.  One might ask, what do they call those who haven’t landed or who get stuck trying to land ?

Over the past 12 months we have learnt a few things…….just a few !!!

Dont trust Vodafone, private landlords, and tenants that promise to pay something on account next week.

We now know why not many people sell spring bulbs for the garden…they dont come up!

But we dont know why people over here say take a boo when they mean take a look unless it is some derivation of peek-a- boo.

Last weekend we went to see the new Star Trek movie/film. This is a prequel so we get to see how the orginal team met up though this was lost on David and James, so Lin had to do some explaining during the film. One point that Pete picked on(anorak on standby) was that in the original series.  No one knew what the romulans looked like until the Enterprise strayed across the neutral zone in one episode and discovered they looked like Vulcans.  Yet the first time we see the bad guys everyone says oh they are Romulans.

That aside it is an exciting film, there is a town south of Calgary called Vulcan and they had asked if they could host the Canadian premier of the film. They were turned down, maybe because they did not have a theatre/cinema but after Leonard Nimoy intervened, the film company agreed to bus 300 of them to Calgary for the premier. This they attended complete with pointed ears etc.

I guess some day we need to visit there but probably only so we can get our picture taken standing next to a sign saying Vulcan xxxx inhabitants.  Incidentally, the town was named after the original star trek series, not the other way round.

We are now in our 51st week and have just had Victoria Day which was a public holiday. This made the May Long Weekend abbreviated to “Maylong” by the locals.

Lin and Dave helped out at a friendship dinner at their Church on Sunday morning before Mass, so they had an early start to help prepare over 100 dinners for the homeless and poor in Red Deer. Then as they went in for mass they were both co-opted for extra duties Lin into the choir and Dave as a candle bearer for the procession.

The previous owners of our place had dumped loads of shingle sized stones (rocks they call them here) over an area they had failed to cultivate which included the path to the front door. This made it difficult for Lin to keep her balance and so we shovelled up all the stones and were putting down grass seed. We finally finished this last Saturday and started watering it twice daily. However the heavens opened on Monday and it was all covered in 4″ of snow. Good job we hadn’t bought our tomato plants.

The other week we changed from Telus to Shaw for our phone service. Shaw already provide the cable and internet feeds up a coax cable into our place so they then added a VOIP modem to separate out a telephone signal which they then feed into the house’s exisiting telephone wiring. They also supplied a battery back-up unit for this mode so that in the event of a power cut we would still be able to use the telephone for emergency calls. Some of the features of the Shaw service are quite good.

We can block calls from people who hide their numbers and if we get a nuisance  sales call we can block any more calls from that number by using the block last call feature. At first we thought this would not be necessary as we had signed up to the national do not call list but this only applies to firms in Canada so we were still getting the odd call from US based companies.

Thinking we had met all the language differences Pete was surprised when he was asked at work to buy some fantastic. He phoned the originator and asked “what is fantastic ?” expecting the reply “I am ” or You are”. However it turned out to be a brand of cleaner for bathroom counters.

This 84 seater school bus has been nicknamed the Titanic by Lin and Dave. It is one of the buses Lin has driven recently while providing relief cover for one of the other drivers. It’s really huge with 9 escape hatches including 1 door halfway up the sides and is accessed by folding up the bench seat in front of it, and another 1 is the full width of the bus at the back, which is where the engine is. It also has very grabby air-brakes, Lin says it’s good for silencing over 80 screaming kids.

This week Lin attended a breakfast meeting for drivers from Red Deer and during a lull in the conversation was heard loudly to say “I have two very handsome bosses and one of them is here today” At this point the gentleman in question went bright red and tried to hide, difficult when you are 6 ft 7 tall.

The past couple of weeks has seen very changeable weather, we went to a garden centre the other week in bright sunshine and left it ten minutes later in a snow storm. By the time we got home it was raining and soon after it had stopped completely.  Sometime during the day, we had 5 different types of weather including rain, hale, wind, snow and sun.

Dave went to another cub camp last week this time at Fort Edmonton. Fortunately another parent offered to take him which saved us a lot of driving. When Dave came back he was exhausted and very hungry. Apparently he didnt like the food served so preferred to go hungry. Next time he goes Lin is planning to send food parcels. He also had to do a fair amount of walking and other physical  things wore him out. Revenue Canada gives a tax allowance for any physical activity that gives children exercise but for some reason that doesn’t include cubs. I think they are out of touch on this one.

Dave has also been on a couple of outings with the local youth club. The club which does not charge membership is able to provide transport to these events and has its own minibus. Cubs who do charge for membership, however, do not have a bus which seems a bit odd.

The council has been cleaning up all the debris from the gritting lorries that has accumulated over the winter. The sweeping machines spray water in front of them and then sweep up the stones as they pass over them. When full the top of sweeper raises up on hydraulic arms and tips all the stones into a waiting lorry. Presumably for re-use next year.

One worry has been the aftermath of disposing of Pete’s old car. He gave it to someone at work who said he wanted it for the kids to ride round the farm in. However he then gave it to someone else, who put it back on the road with another license plate on it. Neither of them had registered the car in their name, so it was Pete who got the phone call from the RCMP one Saturday night and subsequently received a letter from the local government office that dealt with abandoned cars. He sent a copy of the bill of sale to the office and is hoping that it will resolve the problem.

This is where the UK system is better because it allows the seller to register the transfer of the vehicle whereas here it is the buyer that does it. And an unscrupulous buyer can easily run-up trouble for the previous owner.

Also on the car front we had to renew the registration of the Plymouth this month. This happened not on the anniversary of when you first registered the number plate but spread throughout the year in alphabetical order of the drivers surname.  Of course Lin’s surname is before Pete’s in the alphabet. The fee is only $70 and instead of a tax disc in the window you place a small coloured sticker on the number plate. (Remember there is only one and it is at the back).