The Art of the Last-Minute Trip

In a very strange turn of events this week (proving once again that life is full of 'big question marks'), our blog will return to being a travel blog for one random week — because, today, Dayle has found herself in Mexico.

Yup, you're reading correctly. I'm in Mexico!!!

In a nutshell, my parents had a week booked in Cancun starting today; however, earlier this week my grandfather ran into some serious health issues, landing him in the hospital and keeping my mother in Canada to look after him. So I'm subbing in... sort of a pinch hitter for vacations.

So yes — for this week, I'll be updating in between eating huevos rancheros and beach bumming. It'll be interesting: the first time I was in Cancun was my first time ever in Mexico, and even then it felt a bit like an extension of the U.S., and not so much like a foreign place. Hopefully it still carries a bit of the exotic, not too much Spring-Break vibe, but definitely some nice weather. It's also a bit weird travelling with such mixed emotions: sad my Mom couldn't come and that I've left behind my ill grandfather, feeling a bit irresponsible for leaving work at the drop of a hat, a giddiness that comes in waves that I'm going on an unexpected vacation, and a wee bit of doubt at how the more-cynical me will fare in such an easygoing, party-hard tourist town like Cancun after fighting my way through places like Burma and Jakarta.

So after a terribly crazy day and a half (I learned I was going on Thursday), I ended up in Waterloo with way too many clothes for the trip and spent all night repacking my old trusty NBought some hair dye just before the drugstore closed at midnight and packed that along with my nail polish and everything else to primp with when I arrived in Mexico — while some people get manicures and such before a trip, I didn't even have time to return my library books! After a super early morning and a smooth four-hour Air Canada flight (along with my Dad's adorably giddy assistant, who took the same flight as us to Cancun), we hopped off the plane today to clear skies and about 26 degrees... muy bien! A few hitches with our room not being ready on time, so we sleepily hit the poolside restaurant for some much-needed lunch and cervezas. Even if everything else is not the cheapest in touristy Cancun, beer is still a steal: two happy hour beers for 65 pesos ($5USD), even at the poshy hotel bar.

Eventually we got to our "villa", a really nice apartment-sized place in the monstrous and new Westin Lagunamar with views of the turquoise ocean and the gigantic hotel pool (biggest in Cancun, says my Dad). No luck on swimming today though; sun sets at 5:30pm and there's a cool breeze. But there will be plenty of time for that... Adios for now! I'll be back for more updates soon.

How Late is Too Late?

Dead Christmas trees littered the curbside weeks ago. The candy canes disappeared from store shelves even before that. Suddenly it's the end of January and there's that niggling feeling that we should consult our calendar more often, and oh, just maybe, perhaps, TAKE DOWN OUR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ALREADY!

The traditionalists reading this are probably wondering why we still have Christmas lights up on January 31st. Truthfully, they didn't take all that much effort to put up: there were no 20-foot ladders, feral animals in the eaves, or snow squalls to contend with, or anything like that. It was more like, untangle one strand of lights, get out the clear packing tape, and tape them up around the front window. On the inside. (One point for apartment living!) It's not like it'll be a massive effort to take them down.

But, we wonder, is there really a magic date to take down the Xmas lights?

After taking a very informal poll of opinions of those around us, we've heard some say that the beginning of March should be the very last deadline for Xmas lights still being socially acceptable (as it's pretty gloomy up to then, but spring is definitely on its way after that); others say February's when enough is enough; and there's the school of thought that Boxing Day is when it's all over for the lights. Not surprisingly, there's many opinions online about it too — including a Facebook group titled "Take Your Damn Christmas Lights Down". (The group has 97 fans.)

As people who haven't owned Christmas lights in a long time (OK, we did try to put some up inside our van back in Australia, but they tended to drain the car battery), getting back into these little nuances of northern hemisphere culture is still something we stumble over now and then. And we're a bit torn on the whole issue. Even if the Christmas cookies are eaten and the presents have been opened, it is still nice to come home after work to electric holiday cheer — though maybe it's more about denying that bitter, awful winter that has yet to come. Maybe the same sort of that seasonal denial that kept some of us (not naming any names here!) wearing flip-flops well into October. But after taking a visual poll of our street, we've found that at least four other houses are still proudly lighting their houses for Old St. Nick. So bah humbug that!
----
OK, seriously though. How about you take our handy reader's poll and tell us what you really think, so we don't have to go consulting Yahoo! Answers or anything like that. Or Google, for that matter!

A Terrible Discovery

It's kind of fun to live in the dark. This darkness I speak of, is being without television. Over the past few months we've been reading lots of books, getting our news from the internet, watching movies on our computers. Sure, we do have a TV set in the living room — it's huge and old and is hooked up to a DVD player: it's good for watching our small collection of movies, borrowed TV seasons, and DVDs borrowed from the library (Toronto Public Library has all kinds of films, from Hollywood bloodbaths like the new Rambo movie to seasons of Flight of the Conchords.... we love our library!). When the World Series was on in October, we flipped around our few fuzzy channels and found we couldn't get anything more than a very staticky Omni 1 and CBC, and some French channel with crystal clear reception. We didn't waste any more time on it — truthfully, we were sick of TV wasting all of our time over the years.

We always get this look of shock when the fact that we don't have cable television comes up in conversation. There's usually a look of pity, a pause, and a comment like "Well, that's probably a good thing..." or even better, "So what do you do with your time then?" Well, we spent 6 months in Southeast Asia without televisions (OK, occasionally we'd score a room with a TV showing Korean soaps, or surprisingly in Burma, we once had a room with a satellite news station from Australia), and managed to entertain ourselves just fine. Is there really nothing interesting enough happening in Canada worth turning off the telly for?

Or maybe it's just that sedate lifestyle of living in one place, working the same job for a long time, and hanging out with the same people that does it to us. We admit, even in Melbourne, when we got settled with an apartment, steady-ish jobs, and a city we knew well, we turned on the tube and zoned out in front of anything that was on. At that time in Australia, there was no such thing as cable TV, only satellite (expensive FoxTel) or antenna reception — even in the city you'd only pick up about five or six channels on air. We got hooked on some pretty crappy cop dramas, a Australian newscaster we liked to call "Space Granny" (see photo, left), and even watched some Aussie Rules Football. And we realized how in Toronto, we take for granted the many channels available, thanks to having that American entertainment juggernaut not far across the lake and well within reach of an antenna if your apartment's on a high enough floor. But television didn't seem to dominate Australian workplace conversations, either, which was kind of refreshing. Here we've been feeling left out.

Anyway, so on Monday night we realized that even after months of living without TV, we weren't ready to miss another season of 24 (we'd forgotten about the first episode on Sunday). Just for the hell of it, we thought we'd try to plug in a cable splitter and cord into the wall, and see if perhaps Rogers screwed up and had given us cable with our internet connection. Well, we didn't even get that far. Adrian attached a cable to the back of the TV set, a splitter onto that, and suddenly we had our channels clear as anything. We flipped around and found out we somehow get all the major networks, without even plugging into the wall. And happily watched Jack Bauer kick down some doors and yell at bad guys.

And there went our evenings. Suddenly, we know when the Law & Order reruns are on, we can rhyme off the weather forecasts, and we've learned Survivor's coming back soon with the villains and good guys. We even watched the Canadian Dragon's Den, which by the way, has anyone noticed the noise that animated dragon (that shows up before and after commercials) makes sounds less like a dragon and more like a strangled puppy? Last night I even watched Survivorman, a show I despise. Anyway, this whole TV thing is a bittersweet, possibly terrible discovery for us — yup, we're back in the loop, but has it really improved our (or anyone's) quality of life? I guess now we've truly settled back in.

-----
** Well, you learn something new every day! Apparently our beloved "Space Granny", Lee Lin Chin, has more than a few fans online. Here's A BLOG devoted to her oddball fashion sense; a few of her newscasting get-ups on Flickr (HERE and HERE), and according to Wikipedia, she once starred in an Aussie miniseries with Nicole Kidman. We miss you, Space Granny! Is there a Canadian equivalent??

The Office

New year, new office. What better way to kickstart 2010 but with a little re-thinking of the apartment/home office?

With a couple of freelance gigs on the go for both of us, we've realized the need to make a better, more functional workspace at home to get our work done. The two of us plugging away on our laptops in the same room has been fun, but there's a lot of "Hey! Check out this cool Lego version of The Matrix!" and "Oh my god! I totally want this USB flash drive that looks like a slice of strawberry cake!" Not that these aren't totally awesome finds, but well... maybe it turns out we're really good at finding random cool things online and not getting our work done.

So it's an IKEA sort of lesson: making the most of your small living space. Though our apartment consists of only four rooms (kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom), we've managed to squeeze two more "rooms" out of it. By arranging furniture in little clusters, our apartment actually feels a lot bigger. Our living room has an area to relax in, with couch, TV, and coffee table. On another wall is a desk, with a computer and printer- our 'living room office'. We were lucky enough to inherit a desk already built into a bedroom wall, so with a little rearranging, it's no longer a a storage area for our art supply boxes and now a snazzy plant-filled workspace next to our big front window (great light too). It's even got a baseball autographed by former Blue Jays star third baseman, Kelly Gruber (thanks Neil!) for inspiration.

By the way, did anyone read about the recent shark attack in South Africa? "Longer than a minibus"? Yikes! We're glad we did our surfing lessons in Australia. OK, now back to work...

A Few Resolutions...

Happy New Year! We finished off 2009 with a New Year's Eve full of great fun and reuniting with friends we haven't seen in a while! We hope everyone had a happy end to 2009 too. It's snowy as ever here in Toronto and it's still kind of a novelty. We've even volunteered to shovel snow once or twice...

But alas, to be really cliche and do that thing we're supposed to do every January 1st, it's time for a few resolutions!

1. Write more blogs! (No kidding!)
2. Get back in touch with old friends.
3. Spend more time enjoying the outdoors.
4. Get creative-- time to get out the paintbrushes, crochet hooks, sewing machines, all of that good stuff while we're holed up inside avoiding the cold.
5. Get cultured. Go to more museums, art galleries, and cultural events (we had a great time hanging out at the Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festival held at Harbourfront Centre this past November. Not exactly like being back in Mexico, but pretty swell anyway). Toronto's got plenty to offer and we're going to get into it!
6. Eat more rice. Not that we're sad to have returned to the land of cheese (yay!), but we sure felt healthier while in Asia, living off rice for at least two of our daily meals.
7. Exercise more-- yup, gotta throw that one on there.
8. Try new things. Bollywood dance, anyone?
9. Fill 2010 with adventure-- wherever and whatever that may be.

And speaking of being creative, here's a little fun we stumbled upon online tonight: Cubeecraft.com is a nifty little site where you can download 'cubist' versions of your favourite characters-- from Domo-kun to Barack Obama, seriously-- to print and fold out of paper. Random fun!

Merry Christmas!

There's something about the routine of family holidays that make us feel like we weren't off on the other side of the world for two Christmases. Big dinners, plenty of drinks, chitchat with family members, lots of cookies... somehow Xmas this year was the same as always.

Breaking with routine wasn't terrible: celebrating Xmas while hiding from the Australian heat in an air-conditioned cabin-style hotel room (and in the pool) last year was quite the experience. Sharing big dinners with an international crowd (while avoiding the heat again in the a/c) in Melbourne the year before that was another memorable way to spend the holiday. It's was always a bit weird to spend Christmas in summertime, but it was nice to not have to wear sweaters and slippers! It was fun to call home on Christmas while on the road... but now the funerary jokes about us "being in a better place" and "it's too bad they can't be with us this Christmas" will have to stop. :)

There were some new additions to our families since we left-- a few tiny nieces (Adrian's family), a wiener dog 'nephew' (who dressed up festively as a reindeer for Dayle's family) who made things a little more interesting. The snow has mostly kept away (great, in our opinions!). Sadly, Dayle's favourite holiday ice cream-- PC Candy Cane Fudge Crackle, yum!-- seems to be missing from all of the Zehrs & No Frills stores she's been hunting for it at. Yarrr! And after years of daydreaming about it too...

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas... it was great catching up with everyone, and thanks for all the great loot! All the best to you guys in the new year. xoxo, d&a

Parklife

This week we looked at the calendar and realized we've been back in Canada for three months-- it seems time flies as quickly in the old familiar north as it does on Thai beaches.

Lately we've been exploring our neighbourhood a little more, and spending our free time soaking up the last of the balmy fall days in the fabulously huge and peaceful Trinity Bellwoods Park, just down the street from our apartment. Along with the thrill of seeing the trees change to orange and yellow (something we haven't witnessed in three years), we've discovered a love of Frisbee. We've also become acquainted with a certain cute and furry local: a cheeky white squirrel who also enjoys hanging out in the park.

We've seen him frolicking about a few times now, making a spectacle of himself and posing for photographs. One afternoon, we watched quite the exchange between the squirrel and a woman who we gather lives next to the park, and decided his name is Joey. We stifled giggles from our park bench as she called to "Joey" as if he was a trained dog, and then obediently fetched him a snack as soon as he hopped down the tree. "Joey! It's lunchtime! Hey Joey! Come here!" etc., etc. In between feeding Joey his peanut 'lunch', she then went on to have an irritated conversation with a cat that followed her to the park, perhaps for peanuts as well: "Puss Puss, I thought I told you to stay inside! Go back home!" Insert cat staring blankly at her and definitely not going back to its home. Squirrel Whisperer Lady stomps over to Puss Puss, shoos him in the direction of his home, and goes back to her conversation with Joey as the jealous cat glares on. It all reminded us a bit of this lady we encountered on the Australian west coast who fed, petted, and chit-chatted with these big stingrays that circled her feet by the shore. Only difference is she hadn't named them (not to our knowledge, at least).

But anyway, "Joey" is pretty photogenic and we're pretty sure he's excited for the first snowfall, when he'll be camouflaged and all of those snickering black and brown squirrels in Bellwoods can stop razzing him for his eccentric fashion sense. Can't say we share his excitement for that dreaded white stuff ourselves though!

Halloween in Canada- finally.

This weekend marked our first Halloween back in Canada, and it was definitely a good one. After passing two very anticlimactic October 31sts in Australia-- 2007 spent camping near Brisbane, sans costumes, and 2008 spent eating candy and dressed in togas at our very own tiny, only moderately successful Halloween costume party in Melbourne-- we have to say we're happy to be back in North America, truly the land of Halloween!

Though there were parties galore we wished we could have attended, we opted for nostalgia, and joined the masses dressed up and roaming the gated-off blocks of Church Street in the Village. This year didn't disappoint; there were many fabulous costumes in the crowd. Some of our favourites included: a gang of cereal box mascots which included Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Captain Crunch, and that pesky leprechaun from Lucky Charms (what is his name, anyway?); Bill and Hillary; Queen Elizabeth and a bearskin hatted guard; Jon and Kate plus 8 [sewn-on doll babies]; Sonic the Hedgehog; and a giant jellyfish. We recycled some old favourites and went as a Top Gun pilot and a geisha, finding about five other geishas along Church Street (making for some good photo ops at least) and a fellow Top Gunner at a great party later on. Talk to me, Goose!




















































And a few more...

20 Australian-isms we miss (and a few we don't)

The other day, I was flipping through my thesaurus-- not that I flip through my thesaurus as a pastime or anything, that would be nerdy!-- for another word for "grow" and, well, I stumbled upon "grouse". "Growwwwwse!" A little voice in my head chimes, with an Aussie accent. Unfortunately, my thesaurus didn't list the Aussie slang meaning of "grouse", which we only ever heard in Melbourne and was a favourite word of ours while living over there. While "grouse" here in Canada refers to a funny-looking bird, or can mean 'to complain'; in Melbourne, it meant "excellent". Here are some other Aussie-isms we're sad to have left behind (but still secretly use at home):

Heaps: Meaning 'lots', or 'very'. As in, "There were heaps of people at the game." Or "Yeah, it's heaps good."

Bogan: Another one we heard lots (heaps) of times in Melbourne, describing an 'unsophisticated person', sort of the Aussie equivalent to 'trailer trash'. "That style is really bogan."

Top shelf: The best. Like, "Megan is top shelf."

Fair dinkum: This was once defined to us by a teenage girl working at the IGA, home of 'Fair Dinkum Prices' as, "It's like saying, 'bloody oath'." [insert blank looks from grocery-shopping Canadians.] "Or like, 'True', or 'For real'. Uhhh, only old people say this." Maybe that's why it's so much fun to say.

Stickybeak: Nosy person. "My, that Bessie is a stickybeak!"

Good on ya!: A great way to say "Well done!" We still use this one a lot.

Champers: Champagne (though not the true-blue French kind, more like sparkling wine). As in, "I can't wait to have champers at the Melbourne Cup!"

On the piss: Drunk. As in, "I got on the piss last night."

Belly full of piss: Hung over. While we first worked in Port Douglas as housekeepers, we were appalled to learn this was a perfectly good excuse not to come into work on a Saturday. "Where's Amy?" the boss asked. "Oh, she's got a belly full of piss," said Amy's partner-in-crime, Anneliese. "Ahhhh," said the boss. "So hopefully she'll be in tomorrow then?"

Taking the piss: Making fun of someone (or 'ripping on someone'). i.e . 'Andy fell down the stairs on the way into the pub last night, and everyone spent the entire night taking the piss out of him.'

Bottle shop: The place where you buy booze. Also sometimes just called 'the Bottle-O', though this is the name of one of the many bottle shop chains around. It's so confusing to get back to the highly specific--and separate-- Beer Store and LCBO. Not that we ever really grasped the drive-thru bottle shop concept (what's so wrong with just shutting off the car and walking into a shop?).

Furphy: A rumour. As in, "That bloke's telling a furphy!" Here's a funny little bit of history on the furphy.

The Bush: The countryside, or anywhere outside the city. As in, "He had a house in the bush."

Dunny: Outhouse, outdoor toilet. We were privileged to have one of our own for a few weeks-- complete with gargantuan spiders inside-- while living "in the bush".

Bunyip: 'Mythical bush spirit' is how our Lonely Planet defines it. We were always hoping to meet one.

Flat out: Very busy or fast. To quote one of our managers at the bank: "I was flat out like a lizard drinking!" Hint: It has absolutely nothing to do with lizards being kind of low to the ground.

Hoon: A hooligan, a punk; or more specifically, someone who makes a sport out of street racing. I was tickled pink whenever one of my news stories received a headline like "Local hoons out in full force Saturday night" when writing for the Port Douglas newspaper. Also can be used as a verb to describe cruising in a vehicle: "I'm bored. Let's go for a hoon." Street racing is actually getting to be a huge problem in Oz, and governments are implementing 'Anti-hoon legislation' as we speak. Too bad the word is so much fun!

Ute: A vehicle that's half pick-up truck, half car. Short for 'utility vehicle', the ute is everywhere in rural Australia (including in the hands of hoons), unfortunately minus the kitsch factor its American cousin, the El Camino, has.

Knackered: Tired. As in, "What a long list. I sure am knackered from writing this blog."

****

And then there's a few words we don't miss:

Bundy: Short for Bundaberg rum, a specialty of Bundaberg, Queensland. Its polar bear logo (come on, polar bears? In Australia?) was everywhere in Oz, including on numerous men who felt the need to wear Bundy gear from head to toe, and on bumper stickers. As in, "Get me a Bundy and Coke!"

Vego: Short for vegetarian. Even more annoying is "vegie" for vegetable (where did the other "g" go?)

Tomato sauce: What the Aussies call ketchup. Talk about a confusing first grocery store experience!

Rubbish bin, or 'bin': We call it a garbage can. It made for plenty of hilariously confusing "Who's on first?" kind of moments in the offices we worked in when we would ask if we should just file this or that document into one of plastic bins on someone's desk. "Trays, these are trays!" we would get. ¡Ay ay ay!

Thongs: The Kiwis (New Zealanders) call them 'jandals'; us North Americans call them flip-flops. No matter how long we had stayed in Oz, we could never, ever get used to calling our poor shoes by this name!

If you're craving a bit more Aussie, be sure to watch Australia (the movie with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman). We just watched it again for nostalgia's sake-- the first time we watched it was in an open-air cinema in tropical Broome, WA, right near where the movie took place-- and it was just as awesome as our first viewing, though without any planes flying overhead or geckoes on the screen this time around. -D.

Introducing... our fridge

Today we thought it would be fun to feature the most-decorated part of our new apartment: the refrigerator!

The fridge itself isn't anything special-- in fact, it's missing a shelf and it's only now beginning to collect some vegetables and a few necessary condiments. But in this case, it's what's on the outside that counts.

Somewhere along the way in Australia, we began collecting a fridge magnet or two from our temporary hometowns and some of the more memorable stops along the way. We accumulated a few more during our jaunt over to Hong Kong and Taiwan. And once we hit the road with Daisy (our van), our magnet collection just grew and grew. Luckily the inside of Daisy had a lot of metal panels above the doors-- plenty of room to display our budding collection.

Turned out there was no shortage of souvenir magnets in Oz-- even the tiniest towns, like Hawker, at the base of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, with a population of 300 people was selling fridge magnets. So was William Creek, SA-- population 6. Any town with the slightest claim to fame sold magnets-- like Wycliffe Well, NT, home to many UFO sightings, or Goulburn, NSW, which had a giant merino sheep to lure in tourists. We bought a boomerang magnet from Broome, WA, a large plastic banana from The Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, NSW, and more still. Kitsch is alive and well on the highways of Australia and we're not at all embarrassed to have bought into it. We even continued collecting during our journey through Southeast Asia, though we had to be a bit more choosy when lugging our souvenirs around in our backpacks. Still, we found ourselves a tin boat from Vietnam, ceremonial dance masks from Bali, a tuk-tuk from Thailand. It was only Burma that didn't have a souvenir magnet industry... yet.

And while we may or may not have spent a small fortune shipping all of our magnetic goodies home, it was worth it. We consider it a form of visual diary to our adventures-- one that we get to review every time we go for the milk.