Bright lights... big coolerboxes

Okay, so most people who do travel blogs, will tell you about their destinations, and about what they saw, how much it cost, how beautiful it was, where to eat, where to stay, how to get around, etc. Which I think it pretty damn dull, unless you're heading there yourself, and need that kind of information.

 

We recently travelled to the Niagara region in Ontario so, here's the disclaimer: if you're heading to Niagara and want to know all that stuff, this is not the blog post for you.

 

There are hundreds of really good travel blogs that will tell you interesting stuff about the falls, how much the Maid of the Mist cost, the cool jet ski boat you can take through the rapids, where the best wine estates are, etc, etc.

 

Our travel blog offers you something much more interesting.... and useful... which is this.... how to sneak booze into hotels in Canada and the US.

 

South Africans are particularly skilled in this. When we go to Sun City or "larney" hotels in Cape Town, we all know that the bar fridge is going to be off limits. You'll have to take out a second bond if, God forbid, you want that tiny little packet of nuts, or dinky bottle of wine tucked away in the little fridge in your hotel room. You'll generally stay strong and not even touch anything in it, unless you make the rookie mistake of allowing yourself to wake up hungover. And then you don't give a flying rat's ass that a small tin of coke will cost you the equivalent of your first car. You'll wrestle your tongue down from your dry palate and crawl to the fridge, thanking your lucky stars that help is at hand.

 

Keeping this in mind, most South Africans, when travelling locally or abroad, will either fill their suitcase with booze from home, or will find the bottle store nearest to their hotel. Then they'll come clinking and clanking through the reception area, avoiding the concierge's beady eyes,  desperate to hide the fact that they're cheap bastards who won't pay hotel prices.

 

Not so in Canada and the US. Guys, when you travel here, you don't have to wrap your booze in clothes in your suitcase. You don't have to leopard-crawl through the back door with your hidden stash.

 

Here is the secret...

 

You take a cooler box from home. You fill it to the max with wine, beers, shooters, spirits and ice. And then you...(wait for it)... carry it proudly inside the hotel with you. You put it on display. You look to see if your cooler box is bigger than everyone else's, and if not, you vow to do better next time. You make the bell hop drag it to the lifts and down the corridor and you yell, "Easy does it, young fella. That's all my liquor in this here cooler."

 

Ah yes. Canada and the US. Bright lights... big cooler boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

The four letter "C" word - lost in translation

Words are powerful. There's no doubt about it.

And since I chose to study English and communications, and then chose a career dedicated to teaching communicating, I didn't think this was something I needed to be reminded of. But today, for the first time in quite a while, I was reminded of our national identity, and how so much of it is tied up in the words we choose to use. And the words we don't use. Unless you're in a Virgin Active gym apparently.

I'm talking of course of those words that South Africans know are taboo. Words that are not to be used, and that can cause great hurt, anger and offense if they are used. Especially in Virgin Active gyms!

There are certain words that can make a South African twitch if they are uttered aloud, or written by supermodels on their idiotic Facebook status updates. And the four lettered racist "C" word is one of those words. (Err, this word is not to be confused with the other four letter "C" word which is also bad). I battle to even write it here within the context of this post without twitching, but I have to use the word as it was used today, so that you can relate to my angst.

Right, so as many of you know, we've come to Canada so that we can travel a lot more than we did from SA, which sometimes requires leaving our zoo of two dogs and two cats at home. We schlepped them to Toronto, but it won't always be practical or fair to schlep them around on our travels with us now that we're here. In SA, when we went overseas, my wonderful parents always moved into our home, and looked after our fur babies. Often for weeks at a time, and so well, that our animals never looked that excited to have us back.

Alas, things are different here. We don't really know anyone, and aren't prepared to leave our babies with just anyone, so an intensive interviewing process has taken place to find the right person to move into our home and look after our zoo when we travel.

The candidate we most liked was a 66 year old woman who loves animals, and supplements her pension and combats boredom by house sitting people's pets. She came highly recommended, and the interview was going really well until:

Her: So, how does Muggle feel about coons?
Me (spitting out my water at the mention of the no-no "C" word) : I beg your pardon?
Her: Coons! Coons! Does she hate them? A lot of dogs hate those damn coons, and if they see them, they chase them. You can't blame them, can you? I don't like those damn coons either. There are a lot of them moving into the suburbs which is a big problem. They're always in your garbage and running around at night. They have sneaky eyes - you can't trust a coon! Can I let Muggle off her lead to chase a coon if she wants to? They hardly ever catch them to bite them, which is a pity".

Picture me twitching every time the lady said "coon". I was horrified. Toronto is the most multi-cultural city in the world, which is one of the things I most love about it. It threw the world's biggest Pride parade in July, and has a huge Canadian bank that proudly sponsors it. There are people here from every nationality living, mostly, in harmony. It makes eavesdropping that much harder, because so many languages are spoken here. How was it possible that I was hearing such blatant racism?

I started to splutter and stammer about Muggle being a non-racist dog, and her fully accepting people of all races, and that we would never allow her to attack anyone, and how in South Africa, some of Muggle's best friends were black (often Labradors but still!), and that I couldn't hire someone whose values and ethics were so clearly questionable.

She stared at me blankly and innocently, and then asked what any of that had to do with raccoons. Which they call coons over here.

Oooooh raccoons.

Amazing the power that a word, that's totally innocent in one culture, can have in another one. Damn raccoons really are going to be a problem after all.



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Blood banks

Thanks to Globalisation, you can travel across the world, and still sometimes feel like you never left home. You expect to feel like you're a world away, but a lot of things are, disappointingly, the same. The same shops, cars, foods, programs, etc. We even have a Nando's less than 1km away from our apartment, for God's sake.

But every so often, if you're lucky, you'll experience something that will remind you that you're not in Kansas anymore.

I had one of those moments this morning at our bank. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but in Joburg, if you're about to walk into a bank, and the door is flung open from the inside by bank employees running outside, you're quite likely to beat a hasty retreat. I was in Northgate once when bank robbers were fleeing FNB and shooting up the place, and when the bank staff started to run, no one hung around to question why. They ran too.

So, when two of the RBC staff members charged the door, I smugly thought what all patriotic South Africans think when they're overseas and shit happens: "Aha! Banks don't only get robbed in SA, they get robbed everywhere! So much for South Africa being dangerous!" and then I rushed inside hoping to experience my first Canadian bank robbery.

I was most disappointed to not find any guys wearing balaclavas and waving guns while yelling, "Get the cash oot or the moose gets it- and don't bother with none of them loonies and toonies!"

Instead, I found a really old lady, sitting on a chair... bleeding from her big toe. It looked like she'd stubbed it on the bank door - silly old goose.

"What a bunch of sissies the tellers are here," I thought. All running at the sight of blood. A second later, I saw that they'd actually rushed next door to the dentist to get an emergency first aid kit. They returned and then started to bandage the old lady's toe up.

Now here was the first mind fuck. They held her bleeding toe, cleaned it, got bled on more and never once mentioned wearing gloves or not touching blood. Now guys, as many of you know, we looked after a few HIV positive kids in our time in South Africa. And the ignorance of the toss fucks who made an issue of this was enough to push me over the edge. I'd hear things like, "Now Shnookums, don't let that little black girl drink from your juice box or you can get AIDS."

Or, "I just wiped your little girl's nose. Can I get the HIV virus from that? Should I go get tested?"

And don't get me started about the hysteria that the sight of a drop of blood could cause.The fact that the virus dies when it comes into contact with air was a concept more difficult to comprehend than quantum physics to most of these people, and I've been offered latex gloves more times than I count. Once even when I went to pick up a crying HIV positive baby. WTF people?

And yet here were these Canadians, touching blood with their bare hands, and not looking at the bleeding person like their blood was about to murder them.

Just when I thought my levels of astonishment could not reach any higher, up pulled an ambulance and out rushed two paramedics. To tend to a clumsy old lady and her injured toe. And they'd arrived within minutes of the bank manager calling them.

Well, slap me silly and call me gobsmacked. That's pretty damn impressive.

Mind you, what's also impressive is that a South African Tannie in Krugersdorp in the same boat would just have pulled out some Klippies from her bag, chugged it back for the pain, and damn well gotten on with it without all the damn fuss.


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