sight-seeing (2)

We finally realize what downtown Ottawa reminds us of: New York. From the street performers to the parking meters placed everywhere possible, to the general mood of the town: people are sensitive to one another, but in a sort of 'distant' way. Back home, it's 'walang pakialaman' - you generally mind your own business, but if somebody trips, or needs directions, or drops her purse and sends coins scattering all over the sidewalk, you (along with everyone else) stop to help. And then, when the situation is taken care of, you go back to your own life, no more questions asked.

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Highlights of Day 2:

- At the corner of Byward Market: a street performer with a fiddle, with a poster saying that all donations to his cause would go to paying for tuition.
- A view of one of the uOttawa buildings, and one of dozens of outdoor cafes, from the Rideau canal:

- Ottawa is a pedestrian's city, especially in the summer. Almost everything downtown is within walking distance, if you are just willing to try.

- We paid a visit to the Museum of Science and Technology in the afternoon as well.

- On the way back, we made a wrong turn somewhere and, just like that, ended up in Quebec. We had the GPS send us back into Ottawa, but for a moment there - seeing all the French-only signs, the horizontal traffic lights, and unfamiliar sights - we panicked. It turns out, Quebec literally is 'just a bridge away.'
- Beavertail is delicious!

sight-seeing (1)

True to testimonies from family and friends, downtown Ottawa has a kind of pleasant small-town charm that instantly makes you fall in love with the place. Modern high-rises share the streets with quaint novelty shops and aged rooming houses sometimes over a hundred years old. French and English chattering fill the air wherever you go.

The registration process involved less actual walking and more typing: everything was done online, and twice I showed up at University offices unnecessarily. Back when I was doing my undergraduate studies at the Ateneo, registration involved an "Amazing Race" of sorts: making your way from station to station, building to building, hauling paperwork and frantically searching for the next step.

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Highlights of day 1:

- We met with my 'foster family,' whom I will be living with while I am staying here in Ottawa. They are in Nepean, a good twenty to thirty minutes from school, depending on the traffic. But it's a nice neighborhood, and much cheaper than living downtown.
- Driving here, I foretell, is going to take a lot of getting used to. Especially downtown, the streets are narrower, and complete lanes are blocked off for buses and bicycles. Disobeying this rule slaps on a $150 fine. A lot of the streets are one-way, every other street going the other way. Construction going on at King Edward and Laurier presented even more of a headache for getting around town. Walking everywhere is starting to seem like a very attractive option.

- Farmers, and other vendors of flowers, jewelry, and knick-knacks, offer their wares at Byward Market.

- A colorful bus ferries fellow tourists around. Summer seems to bring a lot of people over from all over Ontario, and even beyond.
- We found a stall selling beavertails just steps away from our hotel, but weren't able to try any. Yet.

ottawa

In several hours I will be going to Ottawa to register as a full-time Master's student at the University of Ottawa. The drive is roughly five hours long, and knowing this only makes clearer just how far away I will be from Mississauga, where I have been living for well over a year.

I know a little bit about Ottawa, tidbits of information I've picked up from either conversations with friends or mindlessly surfing the net on slow days at the office. Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and houses Parliament Hill, the seat of federal government roughly equivalent to Malacanang Palace back home. It is, supposedly, the second-coldest capital city in the world (the dubious top honor goes, understandably, to Moscow.) People who have grown up in Ottawa are generally bi-lingual: they start off with French, but if you speak to them in English they can easily switch over, and that this is sometimes even a requirement for certain jobs (waiter, bus driver, front desk, etc.) I suppose it is because Ottawa is a gateway of sorts; south and east is the rest of a largely Anglophone Ontario, whereas cross a bridge to the north or west and you are in Quebec, where the domination of the Francophones begins.

People who have been there all agree it is a lovely city. Most of it, they say, has a bit of a 'small-town' feel; it is supposedly nowhere near as congested as, say, Toronto. I wouldn't know from the criss-crossing downtown streets on MapQuest, so I suppose I will have to see it for myself. I am excited.

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I've come to realize that whenever I start a new chapter of my life, no matter how thrilling the prospect, there is always a sense of sadness for whatever I leave behind. Like I said, I am beyond excited for graduate school, but still couldn't control that feeling of wistfulness as I shut down my computer at GSK for the last time; I quit my job last Friday.

All throughout the day co-workers dropped by my office at the corner of the warehouse, offering congratulations, well-wishes, anecdotes of Ottawa life and tips on how to get around the city. Try to get a class schedule that didn't start until 9am in the winter, they said; that way, the major roads would surely have been plowed by the time I leave the house. There is more: until you learn a competent level of French beyond that three-unit summer course in university, "parlez-vous anglais?" is your best friend. Try to learn how to ice-skate, because in winter the Rideau Canal turns into the world's largest skating rink, and you don't want to miss out on that. Try beavertail; if you're going to be in Ottawa, even for a week, you can't not try beavertail.

I will miss those people who gave me all that sage advice, as I will miss the ever-present smell of toothpaste, the splinters of wood always littering the floor, the drivers who would greet me with a box and a smile, the automatic door that never seemed to notice I was there, the blue cart with the squeaky wheel. As I look back now, I am grateful for that experience, for having held that job at GSK for over a year. It was not always easy, and not always pleasant, but I think I can safely say now that everything worked out for the best in the end.

road-worthy

I never learned how to drive before coming to Canada, but I'd been a passenger on an almost daily basis for nearly 12 years back home. And although it made for extremely high stress levels sometimes, the system was mostly simple: if you can do it without getting hit or hitting anyone (and even here there is some degree of tolerance!) go for it. This was especially true in Davao before, where there weren't really many traffic lights till just recently, and an abundance of motorcycles made for a lot of trigger-happy shifting and cutting off. Many a near-miss in Quezon City also proved this point quite well.

When I first started attending driving school just this past March, it was all theory at first. They have this novel concept - at least it was novel to me at that time - of right-of-way. If I recall correctly, it goes something like this:

• If you're going straight with no stop signs / red lights against you, generally the road is all yours. People backing out of driveways or turning into your lane may only do so if you deem them worthy of your courtesy. Both are great, but too much or ill-timed courtesy may incur the wrath of the driver behind you; extend your graces sparingly.
• If you're turning right, basically anybody turning left into your lane has to wait, you have right-of-way. You also have the added advantage of being able to turn at a red light, provided you don't collide into anyone already going straight (and if you do, and it goes to court, you lose, always.) Optional courtesy: be kind to those trying to turn left into your lane if they are faced with a yellow-about-to-turn-red light; they may well soon be stuck in the middle of the intersection, and you shouldn't wish that on anyone.
• If you're turning left, red lights will stop you, anyone else coming straight against you will stop you...there's not much right-of-way to speak of, you are at the mercy of everybody else except...
• If you're facing a yield sign. You have no rights. Seriously, you can only go if everyone else has cleared out. And from what I've noticed nobody really seems interested in ever deliberately giving you a break if you're in this situation, which is doubly sad.

Then there's the four-way-stop, that all-too-familiar octagonal red STOP sign with the little disclaimer printed underneath: "all-way" or "4-way." As a rule, whenever vehicles get to an intersection one after another, it's first-come-first-go. If more than one car gets there at a time, whoever is "to-the-right" (whatever on Earth that is supposed to mean) gets to go first. These stop signs are especially funny - or irritating - if you're all alone in a residential area - you look around and ask, 'what am I stopping for?' If there's a long line of you going one way and no one else coming from all three directions for miles, it still doesn't matter: stop-and-go. Stop-and-go. Stop-and-go.

It took me quite a while to get the hang of all the other, little rules. Some of them they don't teach you in school, and others they do teach but you don't really understand the point or care about them until you actually find yourself in those situations on the road.

• You don't get to cut-off crossing pedestrians. Actually, you don't even get to turn into their path until they're 3/4 of the way to the other side. And they're never, ever, ever in a hurry either.
• You always yield to the bus. And in anything, if it ever comes down to You vs. Bus, the bus always wins.
• The far-left and (sometimes) far-right lanes have left- and right-arrows painted on them. These aren't suggestions; they're requirements. So if you're going straight on that lane, and a turn comes up, if you weren't planning on turning then...well, you are now.
• This nearly killed me the first time I drove home after picking up my car: on bigger streets, be especially wary of the far-right lane - it might exit into the freeway, and if you're not qualified (or, are qualified but scared to death of the freeway) you're screwed. It doesn't help that when the sign "RIGHT LANE EXITS" comes up, you usually have five seconds or less to get out of that lane before the telltale Curve-of-Doom / Point-of-No-Return comes into sight.

All in all, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of driving here. And although sometimes I find them amusing, I really do appreciate all these rules (written and unwritten) that make it safer. It's a lot easier to drive if you have peace of mind. Just don't stick me on the freeway - I'm still working on that.

kids

This afternoon was my younger sister's graduation from Grade 5, which is the last level in elementary school here. What comes next is middle school (Grades 6-8), then the usual four-year high school (Grades 9-12).

As each kid was handed a brightly-colored diploma printe in whimsical fonts, the speaker would narrate a short description of the student, written by his/her teacher: so-and-so is "a great leader," "enthusiastic," "never fails to make us laugh/smile," "friendly," "helpful," "is eager to learn." It's nothing short of amazing how many permutations of the above phrases are actually possible, once you include synonyms and such. To give credit, though, every so often you would hear phrases that were unique: "our classroom's expert in Greek mythology," "a human encyclopedia," "the go-to person for all things Hannah Montana and High School Musical." The idea, I believe, was to have every kid graduate on a positive note, so that even if your kid didn't get an award, he/she is still a winner.

In a way, it's kind of reflective on how Canada treats children in general. They have all the rights in the world, and then some. For instance, Filipino parents and nannies sometimes have trouble adjusting their systems of enforcing discipline; while in our country - and some others East of the Atlantic - it is commonplace and perfectly acceptable to punish a child with, say, spanking, or grounding in the bathroom, here it is off-limits: kids can, and sometimes do, call the cops on their parents and claim 'child abuse.' Here, it is also illegal to leave a child home alone until he/she is 13 years of age. This is the reason my father could not accept anything but a night job, and until my sister turns 13 (in 2011), he will have to keep working night shifts. This is a far cry from the situation in the Philippines where, especially in the rural areas, kids as young as 7 and 8 look after their younger siblings, clean house, and cook food while the parents are out working.

I have mixed feelings about how kids are pampered here when compared to other countries. While children's safety is obviously a non-negotiable, I can't help but wonder if the 'kids are sacred cows' and 'everyone's special!' approaches are doing them any favors. With the former, the consequences are obvious: some kids become spoiled, hard-headed, and difficult to control when the parents realize their previous methods of discipline are no longer legal. At this point it's entirely up to the parents to either figure out an alternative way to get through to their kids, or watch hopelessly as their kids grow up to be foul-mouthed, rebellious, obnoxious teenagers.

As for the latter, consider this: a grand total of four valedictorians gave speeches this afternoon, and there was a whole host of multiple awards from music to drama to athletics to something about being good in the library. One could argue that this way, kids avoid feeling insecure and inadequate, but what about in the future? When would it be okay to foster healthy competition? Is it okay in middle school? Grade 12, everyone's finished puberty, settled into a niche and is beginning plans for college - is it okay now? Yes, we can go on and on and repeat 'everyone's a winner' like a mantra, but I really doubt kids will be inspired to excel as long as they are assured of an award for 'being a good sport' or 'reading to kindergarteners.'

Everybody wants kids to remain kids as long as humanly possible, but they have to grow up sometime. One day, they will have to learn that the world isn't all sugar and rainbows. One day, they will have to realize that some people are cruel, life isn't fair, politics makes no sense, and that Bambi's mother died because someone shot her.

98

Over the past few weeks I have been constantly hearing this phrase: "98 days of summer." Canada's Wonderland, a gigantic amusement park thirty minutes by bus from where I live, is handing out season passes valid for all "98 days of summer." Ads for grills, barbecue sauce, inflatable pools and swimwear gratuitously use it as a tagline. Erin Davis, one of the morning DJ's on CHFI, never fails to use it at least once every morning; once, she even clarified that she had, in fact, checked her calendar: summer would last for 98 days.

I'm not entirely sure which 98 days everyone's talking about since 30 (June) + 31 (July) + 31 (August) = only 92. The difference probably means summer either started early, or it will be extending into mid-September. Or I have it all wrong and there really is a separate seasonal calendar, but I don't want to look it up. In any event, while some days are certainly starting to feel like summer, others - like this morning's windy, overcast offering with a temperature of 10C - definitely don't.

Back home, there were only two 'season's really: dry/hot and wet/not-as-hot. The climate was especially great in Davao - you would get sunshine at 5.30 in the morning, and it would stay like that all day. It usually rained at night, too, so by then you were probably home already anyway. Best of all, unlike Manila and the other provinces around and North of it, Davao never gets regularly trashed by hurricanes and flash-floods. And while hurricanes and storms often meant joy when classes were cancelled, they were not that much appreciated on the days I found myself stranded in Project 4 with little more than a wallet and a feeble umbrella to my name.

But I digress. For all of eight years we lived in Davao City, my family never checked the weather on TV. Never, not once. It would pop up for around five minutes everyday near the end of the 6:00 news, but by that time we were clearing up the table, or arguing loudly over who got the last scoop of Queso Real ice cream. It was just that much of a non-issue. But not so here: every morning the kitchen TV is set to channel 23 - the 24-hour Weather Channel. We tune in to the forecast at night so my dad knows if he needs to bring an extra jacket. My mom even looks it up online beforehand to plan weekend barbecues - our entire lives here are dictated by the whims of the weather.

And here the weather is very fickle. It can be freezing when you leave the house and suddenly bright and cheery after work. Sometimes it will rain in the middle of the day...for all of ten minutes, before it stops and clears up again. Hail hurts - a LOT - and to add insult to injury, stops the moment you're safely in your car.

So in retrospect, maybe it's not so much about making a big deal out of summer, to the point of counting down the days. We welcome it, of course (since Canada is cold by default), but I think maybe it's part of something bigger: a general, perpetual concern for the weather. While back home, people talk about the weather when they have run out of all other topics in the universe, here it is the first thing on everybody's mind. And it better be; when it changes from day to day, even hour to hour, we'd best be paying attention.

"So how's the weather there today?"

storytelling

One of the first things I noticed during my first few days in Canada was just how friendly everybody is here.

I would be walking to the convenience store near the main road, or waiting for my bus under a tree...and all of a sudden, a stranger would smile at me and say, "how're you?"

For the first two months we lived with the family of a woman my mother had known from work back in the Philippines. I asked her about this, and she said it was fairly common; people here did it out of habit. "It's like 'hi' and 'hello' here. They ask you 'how are you?' and you reply with 'good, and you?'" She gave me some advice: even if I wasn't particularly feeling all that 'good' - even if I had a terrible headache, or had just gotten fired, or was soon to be deported - I had to say "I'm good, and you?" I saw it as a silent, mutual sense of courtesy: if you go out of your way to ask me how I'm doing, it's only fair that I don't bore you with the messy details of the latest catastrophe in my life.

This was all new to me from the get-go because, back home, you never talk to strangers. Never ever. The most you can do is inquire about the time, or ask for a light - and even that is sometimes pushing it! But here, everyone is asking you how you are, even if you're going opposite ways on the pedestrian lane - there is no time to look back, but there is just barely enough time for an exchange: "How are you?" / "Good; yourself?" / "Good, thanks for asking."

And then there are those who don't just stop at polite one-liners. They engage you in conversation while waiting in line, or in the grocery aisles. They don't even ask for your name, and they rarely offer theirs - they start with a smile and the weather. From there, anything goes. And while this has happened to me countless times, it is extremely rare in the Philippines; it's not every day you have an old lady walk up to you on a snowy Thursday morning and ask you if this is your first winter, after which she then describes how she had felt when her family first migrated from Poland (it was December, sometime in the 1950s.)

I wasn't used to it at all, so at first I merely listened. But soon I grew to welcome these little one-time conversations. They still pop up every so often nowadays, and when they do I now try to drop everything else and really pay attention. These people never ask for my name, nor do they offer theirs; they are usually gone by the time the light changes, or my bus stop comes up, or when somebody's takeout is finally ready. And then I never see them again.

But in the back of my mind I know that the woman who would wait for the 19 North bus still has three young children in Jamaica. That the pizza delivery boy is struggling to make it as a musician; he plays the drums and is getting better, he swears. That the old Chinese man who transports live fish and other small pets in his truck - he can play a mean game of chess. And on and on...every time a stranger talks to me out of the blue, I feel as though the city itself is telling me a story.