Live sports

So I spent this afternoon at a live sporting event - I can't remember the last time I watched live sport, in fact.

It was very impressive - two teams of people waving wooden objects, running around in the freezing cold after an oddly shaped ball. It was rather violent, and the rules were somewhat incomprehensible, but I think I figured out what was going on by the end.

That's right; I spent the afternoon spectating at the Canadian Quidditch Cup.

I'm impressed that someone's come up with rules for a fictional sport that involves flying, and actually managed to design something that works quite well. There were a few crunching tackles - as I left, one player was busy having a couple of fingers splinted, and I think the first aid people had had a fairly busy day - but it was very good natured, and the teams had clearly spent a goodly amount of time practising.

They did keep the broomsticks; the players get to run around the pitch clutching the broomstick between their legs, which adds an extra layer of difficulty. It does mean that substitutions are easy, as the player coming off just passes the broomstick to the one coming on.

There are four soccer-size balls in the field, one of which is the quaffle used to score, and the rest are bludgers, which are hurled with great force at players on the opposing team; if you're hit by a bludger, you need to head back to your goal and start again.

But the genius is the snitch. This is a human, dressed in yellow, with a tennis ball inside a sock tucked into his or her waistband. The game ends when the snitch is caught, so the snitch spent the first fifteen minutes of each game hiding off the field (one apparently spent the time driving round, just to be sure of not being caught.)

So it was a thoroughly entertaining day. Just a shame that Carleton lost in the final to McGill, 80 to 140, if memory serves.

Daylight Saving Time

For those of you keeping track... Canada - well, Ontario, as that's the relevant province - changed the dates on daylight saving time to match the US. I guess that that makes sense, what with it being so close and all.

That means that the clocks change on the first Sunday of November and again on the second Sunday in March. So for a week in autumn and two weeks in spring, I think the time difference is 4 hours rather than 5. So bear that in mind if you're phoning.

*sigh*

I had an appointment with the chap who's in charge of the people who push the loyalty cards, at 8pm. I was getting ready to head out at 7pm, and discovered that there was a message on there - I've not been dealing with him directly, but through one of his current employees, and it was her who'd messaged me.

It seems when I'd asked her on the phone yesterday about how I'd recognise Jean-Louis (for such is his name) when I got to the supermarket at 8pm, and she'd said to call him; what she actually meant was that I should call him during the day to arrange things. I figured she meant to call him when I got there.... I'm sure you're well familiar with my attitude to mobile phones, so it'll come as no surprise that it's been sat ignored on the kitchen table for most of the last day; and when I came to pick it up there was a message asking me to confirm things.

So naturally he wasn't there when I arrived, though I did manage to speak to him (and apologise for not getting the message until less than an hour earlier). I've re-arranged to meet up with him on Tuesday instead.

Keep your fingers crossed. I expect I'll end up phoning again on Tuesday, just to make utterly sure this time.

Weather update

It's almost the end of October; we've not had any snow yet - I know, how disappointing, right? - but it's starting to get cold outside. The temperatures for the last few nights have dipped below freezing, and it's warmed up a little during the day, but only relatively.

I've got a proper winter coat, that I bought during the cold snap at the start of the month, but it's not been quite cold enough to need it yet (I'm managing with a light coat and a jumper at the moment). I'm sure it'll only be a matter of a couple of weeks before it's needed.

You might also want to keep an eye out for upcoming blog posts:
Yay! It's snowing!
More snow!!
How can there be this much snow!!!

A job offer!

I'm a little conflicted by it, too.

It's for one of the local supermarkets, working in store to try and sign people up for a loyalty card. My main objection is that it's commission based, which means the more people I sign up, the more money I earn. I've never been the greatest fan of commission based work, though. On the other hand, thanks to the minimum wage legislation, even if I don't convince anyone to sign up, I'm still going to get paid something.

It's somewhat different from what I want to do (now there's an understatement); but I suspect I might accept it. If nothing else, I won't be stuck doing it forever, and I can arrange my shifts so I can carry on job hunting for a web developer role; and it'll be some money coming in, too.

And I'm also quite curious to see whether an English accent will help sell loyalty cards to North Americans.

My residency card

Has finally arrived, some two and a half months since I officially immigrated. It's valid until October 2016, and has the least flattering photo of me since my first passport.

On the other hand, I think that this is the first official photographic ID I've gotten from the government of Canada, and it does mean I don't need to keep carrying round my UK passport as a proof of ID - the card is credit card sized, so it'll fit into my wallet.

Wandering around town

As I might have said, Ottawa is the capital of Canada. One of the things I didn't quite realise is that this means that this is where all the embassies are. The UK and the US Embassies are pretty large, for reasons that I suspect are obvious - they're both located right in the middle of downtown, a couple of blocks from Parliament.

But of course practically every country in the world has a presence here, too. It's very strange to be wandering round what seems a regular suburb when you suddenly realise that one of the houses you're walking past is in fact the embassy for Afghanistan.

I've seen a good couple of dozens on my travels. I should download a list of all the embassies here, and see if I can check them all off - it'll be just like a game of Pokemon. And I'm sure there will be no issues at all with an obvious foreigner standing outside random embassy buildings taking photographs and notes.

Fall has arrived

It seems that without me even noticing, we've slipped into autumn. Or as they insist on calling it over here, fall.

Quite a lot of the leaves have turned to lovely shades of red, orange, and yellow (and quite a few have already fallen off, too). One of the things I've noticed when I got here is just how much greenery there is here - just about every house has a garden, with trees, and that extends even to downtown, where you'll see plenty of small parks, trees, and just plain space dotted around, even around the downtown area.

Also, I've had a waitress by the name of Autumn. Would it be wrong to spend the entire meal referring to her by the name of Fall, instead?

We've also got a few more weeks before the snow starts, too. It's normally towards Halloween, apparently.

Happy Thanksgiving

Apparently, the second Monday in October (as opposed to the American one, which is in November). Which means that everything is currently closed, and the buses are running on a Sunday schedule. I think I'm also supposed to be eating turkey - the Canadians claim that they have their Thanksgiving so early so that they're ready for turkey again when Christmas rolls around.

I've had a moderately busy couple of days. I popped over to Montreal for the evening on Friday, where I met up with a friend and had a very nice dinner (and about six hours of gossiping); it's around two hours on the train, and I got to see some of the lovely scenery on offer this time of year. The leaves are starting to turn, and the landscape is increasingly spectacular. I think another week or so before it hits its peak.

Then when I got back on Saturday, my neighbour invited me out for a quick drink. It was around 3am by the time I got back on Sunday, so it was less quick than I was expecting. It was a very pleasant evening - and thanks to the very impressive weather we're having at the moment, I'm still wandering around in a tshirt.

Though when it starts to get cold in a couple of weeks, I suspect it's going to be just a tad colder than it gets in the UK....

Ikea, revisited

Quite literally, in this case.

I popped out there yesterday to pick up the rest of the furniture - all the bits I'd either not realised I was going to need, or had just plain forgotten the first time around. I'm making excellent use of my new bus pass, I should say - by my reckoning, I've already a recouped around a fifth of the cost, and I've not even been out today.

The delivery has just been; once again, it's missing something, though at least we figured it out before I signed anything this time (it's missing a wastebin, which I can live without). I'm also not quite sure what happened with the missing chest of drawers from last time - I called on Friday, and they said they were chasing it up with the delivery company, and if they'd not heard anything by Monday, they'd send me a new one. I assume I should hear something soon, but their communication skills are terrible.

So now I get another day or so of putting more furniture together. And another half-ton of packaging to dispose of....

Walmart

The main reason for my exploring on the buses was that I wanted to get to Walmart, and while it's walkable, it's a little further than I'd have liked.

I've never been to a Walmart before, so obviously I was quite excited. It's a lot bigger than the other supermarkets I've been to, but that's to be expected, as it's further out from the city center and so there's more space.

It definitely felt more like the supermarkets I'm used to, I suspect mainly because of the size. There's a much wider variety of departments there, though none of them seemed especially large - the food ranges for example didn't seem much larger than the ones in the closer supermarkets, and the prices were a lot higher than I'd been expecting from Walmart. I suspect I'm not going to become a regular.

On the buses, revisited

It's the start of the month, so I've been out and about using my shiny new bus pass. For those who are curious - you can indeed buy a monthly bus pass after the start of the month, but the price doesn't come down, at all. Which seems odd to me, but what do I know?

What I've discovered is that Ottawa is riddled with bus Transitways - they're streets set aside specifically for buses. Sometimes, it's a couple of lanes of a regular highway, using concrete dividers to make the point; but more commonly, it's an entire separate road system, set aside just for buses. If you want to get from one side of the city to the other, find the nearest Transitway station, and pop on a bus - you don't get traffic, and the stations are a couple of miles apart, so it's a lot faster; faster even than driving, I suspect.

I don't know if the Transitway system is new since I was here in 1991-2, or if I just didn't notice it then - knowing me, either eventuality is equally likely - but boy, I'm impressed. It's just the sort of thing that would make getting the bus around Manchester considerably easier; and the sort of thing that couldn't be done, because there's either no space, or not enough money to build the whole thing underground.