Radio Canada

OK, I'm just going to come right out and say it: The radio in Canada sucks.

Oh my God, does it suck.

Like Australia, radio here comes in layers. In more populous and interesting places the radio landscape will be rich and varied, in the middle of nowhere you find just one or even no stations. In between, you will find the same kinds of combinations of stations depending on the towns and cities nearby. To complicate matters, the mountainous country in BC means that radio stations are only available in small geographic areas, which means you don't need to drive too far out of town before whatever you were listening too breaks up. You could get lucky and find the same station again coming from a different town on a different frequency, but you're more likely to have to settle for something else.

The basic layer is CBC (the public broadcaster), the equivalent of our ABC programming that is available across Australia. No matter where you go, you can always rely on getting CBC. Which is about as cheering as the knowledge that, no matter how far you are from civilisation, you could always stick your thumb into your own eyeball. I have actually listened to a fair bit of ABC country radio back in Aus, and although it's not exactly riveting broadcasting, they play some decent music and they have amazing weather forecasts from real meteorologists. You'd think that a weather forecast couldn't be very interesting, but that's because you're mistaken and you've never listened to ABC country radio.

But the CBC is like a spoken word dirge. My understanding is that they round up locals who mistakenly think they're getting called in for jury duty and force them to recount stories from their childhoods. I recall one riveting program where a gentleman explained amazed he was that some women at his university found his indigenous facial features and skin tone attractive. Sure, he sounded like a nice guy, but DON'T CARE.

Then there was the guy talking about how his local fishing pond was being used by a mining company for tailings and blah blah DON'T CARE.

There was even a guy from Calgary talking about how everyone hated Calgary but people in Calgary quite liked other people in Calgary DON'T CARE.

And the music. Oh, God, the music. I have a degree in philosophy, but never before have I felt such a keen urge to weep tears of lost hope for the fate of human artistic endeavor. In Aus they either play music that they expect people will like, or music that they expect people to find interesting. It's not necessarily great, but it's OK. On CBC they play music that they feel compelled to bear witness to. The kind of music that makes you want to call the artist to explain that maybe they should look for other work, but at the same time know that to do so would shatter something deep and important within them. Plus the weather forecasts are hopeless.

So, ever reliable CBC is a plague upon my ears. The next layer up in availability is country music, and not that peppy, fun, Shania Twain style country music that you probably like but will never admit to it. No, the play the terrible kind of country music that's about owning a truck and drinking beer and tall grass and how much more country you are than other people who are less country than you by virtue of your truck and beer and proclivities for tall grass. Country music is almost as common as CBC, but even less pleasant to listen to. You can be pretty far from anywhere that is worth being in and still hear country music.

Fitting snugly within the country music layer is the crazy Jesus people layer. When you're scanning through the channels, the crazy Jesus people sound quite reasonable for about the same amount of time as it takes to work out what the radio people are talking about. After that the crazy Jesus people do not make for good company. They tend to like talking about things like how Jesus wants you to be a stay-at-home mum, and how the United Nations is trying to force you to abandon your kids and get a job, or how abortions are the number one thing keeping God awake at night. They don't talk very much about that bit in the Bible where Jesus hangs out with the poor, the downtrodden, the outcasts and the uncool and tries to get everyone to be nice to each other. In any case, since I'm neither a stay at home mum, nor likely to require an abortion at any stage, I find the crazy Jesus people a bit irrelevant. Plus they scare me. So religious radio is also out.

The next smallest layer is commercial pop music. This is clustered pretty tightly around towns of a few thousand people in BC. It is also quite terrible. I was a Justin Bieber virgin until I arrived in Penticton. For years I've been wondering what 14-year-old girls and people who are on witness protection programs that require their twitter accounts to be indistinguishable from 14-year-old girls even though they don't appear fit that category in any way have been talking about. Well, I still don't, but I have heard some of the Biebenator's work. Who said international travel doesn't broaden your horizons? If it's any indication of the quality of the commercial radio here the current Justin Bieber song that's doing the rounds on the radio is the third best thing I've heard on Sun FM. The two things ahead of it on the list are Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know and Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back, which came on late last night and made my day. There's a pretty big step between two and three on the rankings, but I'm going to go out there and say that I would prefer Justin Bieber to almost everything that gets played on the radio here.

But it doesn't really matter what songs they play, because the advertisements are overwhelming. I admit that I don't listen to commercial radio back home, but I'm sure that the little that I have heard involves fewer ads than the local channels here. And the advertisements are all for things that are irrelevant to my life. "What's more attractive than luscious, kissable lips?" asks one ad for laser treatments, "This is the sound [kids laughing] of a McDonald's Happy Meal" says another, "Spring is the time to get your garden looking great" claims the local garden store. Where are the ads for people like me? The radio never says "Would you like a free shower?" or "Finally, a free place to plug in your laptop which isn't really awkward to hang around in like a public bathroom" or even "Does your van occasionally spit coolant all over the road?".

Back in the Kootenays (the region containing Rossland) and north up to Revelstoke and Golden there's another layer of radio stations playing commercial rock music. Listening to these stations means you will hear some Nickelback, but you'll also hear other music that isn't that bad. There also seem to be fewer ads, and the ads are vaguely related to people like me - in fact my old work used to advertise on the local commercial rock station. That's almost the same as saying that dirtbags are a viable advertising market in that part of BC, which will blow your mind if you think about it too much.

I'm sure that in highbrow, sophisticated places like Vancouver there are a multitude of radio stations. Not least because they pick some stations up from Seattle over the border. To be honest, I don't really know. Last time I drove through Vancouver it was hammering with rain and my windscreen wipers had decided to stop working, which is every bit as horrible as it sounds. When one is close to death in this way, one does not invite further difficulty by listening to the radio. By the way, that was on the way to see Maud's Hot Sister, so I hope you guys realise how much I suffer to bring you the LOLs.

Of course, my van is a roving palace of luxurious delights, so of course it has a tape deck. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.

IT IS FINISHED

It is with great relief that I report that the painting is finally complete, and I am finally leaving Rossland.

After many iterations and changes, the final painting looks like this:

It is currently stretched over a bent piece of plywood, which is why the image looks a bit fish-eye-lensey at the top. You will all happily note that I am ambiguously clad, and that a hand (holding a ski pole) is covering my naughty bits. I believe this painting falls partly into the creepy and off-putting nude category, and partly into the vain and self-obsessed commissioned work category, which at this stage I'm happy to take. In fact, right now I'm happy to take anything that means I can get out of Rossland and get back to climbing.

I'm being a little harsh on Rossland. The biggest problem is that I'm a bit crippled and I've been trying to avoid any real activity so as to give things time to heal. My finger is heaps better and I'm confident that I can ease it back into climbing. I've also hurt something in my ankle which is not getting better as desired and is quite displeasing, but hopefully a change of scenery (and leaving the hostel, where doing anything requires at least one flight of stairs) will sort it out. It doesn't help that there's construction work on the main street right outside the hostel, and the sounds of clanking and jackhammering accompany my every waking moment here.

Now I am left with the tricky problem of storing the painting. I'm not sure whether to hang it in my old house, leave it with Brad, take it with me, or try to get it put up at Powderhound. I feel like the painting is ready to go out into the world and do its work, so I'm hesitant to hide it away in storage. Ideally, I'd like to hand it at Powderhound, my old work. This would ensure that legions of customers could be creeped out by it and would ensure that my legacy of indifferent customer service could continue long after I have left the store. However, my boss (who has the misfortune of looking quite a bit like me) will probably object to my idea on the grounds that it runs contrary to his goal of running a profitable and reputable business. I can't seem to find him right now, but when I track him down I'll see if he's keen.

I could also hang it in my old house. Since the house is currently unoccupied, and the door is unlocked, this would be logistically simple. Plus, the next inhabitants of the house (which could quite possibly include me next season) would get to enjoy the painting without any explanation or context which might mitigate its effect. To do its best work, the painting should appear to be an unowned object, but one which still appears important and deliberate. I cannot guarantee, however, that the next inhabitants (or indeed the owner) of the house will not throw the painting away.

Perhaps the most sensible thing to do would be to mail it to German Anna. That would ensure that the painting is extra awkward and inexplicable for people who see it. I could also take the painting with me, but it will just stay hidden away while I mooch around until I stay somewhere with enough wall space to hang it, and I don't know when or where that will be, or who will be there to judge me unfavourably when they see it.

There Are Only So Many Types of White People

In those identi-kit tools that police use, there are only so many combinations of features that can be put together to produce a face. Given that these tools are actually a pretty useful and practical way of putting together composite images to identify suspects, that suggests that there are probably only so many types of faces out there. Once you restrict that to white faces, the number drops a bit, and then there would be another broad categorisation between women and men, etc.

The point of all this is that growing up in Canberra, then skiing in New Zealand, and now spending my days in the interior of BC (three of the whitest places going around), I have had a complete boatload of experience when it comes to looking at white people. Not only does the identi-kit theory of faces agree completely with my experience, but I think I've basically run out of white people face types and they're getting regularly recycled in the people I see around me.

These things seem to come in waves. First was the Sarah Jones phase, where I kept seeing people who looked like Sarah Jones. They were uncanny both in their number and in their resemblance to Sarah Jones, who - as I kept reminding myself - was not in Canada. Since then I have been through several more phases until recently, as I walked down the street, thinking I was alone and singing the Righteous Brothers' 1964 hit single "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", I was startled to pass someone who was not only giving me a strange look, but was also the spitting image of Vickie Saye. I was both stunned and embarrassed.

By rhe way, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" Was ranked by Rolling Stone as #34 in the 500 greatest rock songs of all time. Crazy.

Progress Report

Those of you who are looking at the twitter feed will know that after many delays work started the infamous painting yesterday morning. Originally, the plan was to start with a preliminary line drawing on one piece of canvas, then complete the final painting on another canvas frame. Brad already had a big photocopy of my driver's license photo to use to build my face around, but he ended up just drawing it onto the canvas instead of using whatever devious printmaking technique he was originally considering.

Work commenced in the parking lot behind the hostel, and moved into the laundry when it started to rain in the afternoon. Since then, Brad has been painting and napping around the clock, and is currently asleep.

The first iteration of the line drawing. My face is on the top right of the canvas.

During the afternoon, Brad started adding black and white paint to the mix (the original line stuff is in permanent marker), and overnight he started adding blue. Things currently look like this:

For a sense of scale, the canvas is about as tall as I am.

To be honest, the photos don't really do much justice. The details in permanent marker actually give the whole thing a sense of depth and perspective, and it's super interesting to see how it changes every time I get to look at it.

However, a cool painting of me on a chairlift/rollercoaster/ice mountain actually causes more problems than it solves. The embarrassment that I feel over coming to Rossland and commissioning an artist to paint a picture of me using someone else's money is offset by the fact that I'm supposed to be producing a hilarious tasteful nude that will make other people feel awkward every time they see it. While it is undoubted cool to see an interesting painting get made, and I suspect the finished work will be quite awesome, coming to Rossland to commission an awkward painting of yourself with someone else's money is somewhat more vain and conceited than originally planned. And I'm not merely a disinterested or self-interested patron of the arts. I'm also an agent for a financial backer (German Anna) who has a unhealthy interest in making Brad spend time in a room with me while I am also naked and maybe photos are taken.

Brad, on the other hand, refuses to see me in so much as a gauzy, partially-transparent top (not that I have one of those, but it's a mental image the rest of you can enjoy) and flies into a rage every time I mention nudity or nakedness. It appears that I will get a painting, and it will be awesome, but it may not match my original specifications. For a start, there's no tiger in this image. With luck, I will become more naked as the painting progresses, which is something that not many people have had the opportunity to say.

The Sodom of Dairy

I spent some time thinking of different ways to start this post: Segues between waiting for the painting to start and life in Rossland, comparisons between life in Rossland during the winter and life here outside the ski season, I even considered some kind of Ouroboros reference to how I've ended up sitting around at the Mountain Shadow Hostel just like I was when I first arrived here. But I've decided to give up on those poxy attempts to sound clever and just come out with what this post is going to be about:

The milk here goes off really fast.

I have drunk more off milk here in Rossland than I have in the rest of my life put together. In fact, I don't think I've even drunk off milk outside of Rossland, but here its a pretty regular occurrence. During the winter I probably ended up drinking off milk every fortnight or so, and I've been back for five days now and my milk is already sour. I can't decide whether to be baffled, disgusted or outraged. A friend back in Canberra used to describe leaving milk out of the fridge as a "milk sin". If so, Rossland is the Sodom of dairy.

It's not clear what causes the milk to go off so fast. It's the same brand of milk as is available elsewhere in Canada, and I haven't had any problems with that milk outside of Rossland, nor heard of any problems from other people. One factor is that the local supermarket has a loyalty program and a pricing structure than incentivises buying milk in four litre bottles. Since I consume a fairly unholy amount of milk, I can normally get through four litres before the best before date comes up, especially if my housemates or fellow hostel bums use a bit as well. But the best before date on my current bottle of milk is the 26th of May. That's six days away, but lo and behold, this morning the milk tumbled from the jug like runny, lumpy porridge.

Perhaps the refrigerators that I have used, both in my house and in the hostel, don't work properly? I know that the problem became worse in my old house after the energy efficiency people from the power company gave us a thermometer that told us whether our fridge was too warm or too cold. I must admit that the reading on the thermometer didn't seem to make as much difference as the mere presence of the thermometer in the fridge. Perhaps milk is allergic to magnets?

To my surprise, the milk today actually smelt and tasted OK. It was certainly lumpy, and perhaps the tiniest bit sour, but certainly not enough to prevent me from eating my cereal. After all, I could blame that sourness on the cranberries in my granola. Yes people, I have cranberry granola. It absolutely is as good as you think. Yes, you should be jealous. In fact, I've actually mixed cranberry granola with raspberry granola (and before you ask, the cranberries and raspberries are the real deal, not like the "berry clusters" in fruity-bix), so basically I have the greatest breakfast cereal that you could possibly have that doesn't have a toucan or a monkey or any other jungle animal on the packet.

To be honest, having such fantastic granola is a mixed blessing. Being so delicious means it's certainly too good to waste, which means that if I do happen to pour sour milk all over it, that milk has to be extremely sour before it becomes OK to throw the contaminated granola away. Plus, I usually have a banana in my cereal as well, and damned if I'm going to waste a banana.

You know how people always say that travel opens your mind and teaches you about yourself? Well one of the things I've learnt from travel is how long I'm willing to leave food out of refrigeration and still eat it, and how bad milk can smell and taste before I refuse to put it on my cereal. The lessons I have learnt are not the kind that make other people think highly of your standards of hygiene. I've drunk milk that doesn't go down the sink properly when you decide it was probably not worth keeping the rest until tomorrow and pour it out. I just pretend it's sour, unpleasant yogurt.

Anyway, today is supposed to be the big day for the painting. Brad has done his procrastacleaning, readied his tools and is supposed to be starting the preliminary drawing today. With luck, this will actually happen. Soon. Or something.

A Patron of the Arts

All the way back in December, when I first moved into my old house in Rossland, I wrote this post about my desire to create a tasteful (but awkward) nude portrait to hang on the walls of my new home. As I explain in the post, I couldn't think of a good way of explaining to my housemates what I was trying to acheive, and in the end I didn't have the courage to suggest this idea to them. The balance between creating a hilarious joke and appearing to be conceited and homoerotic is a difficult one to acheive, and I was not sure that I could explain my idea to my housemates without appearing weird. When I eventually left Rossland in April I assumed that my dream of decorating my house and creating a lasting monument to making other people feel uncomfortable was over.

I did, however, mention my dream of a tasteful nude portrait to one of the other seasonal occupants of Rossland, a diminuitive, unhappy German lass named Anna. At the time, Anna was working five days a week doing unpleasant housekeeping at the accommodation near the ski hill, and in her time off worked as a part-time nanny for a family in exchange for very cheap rent. I pointed out to her that she was not only working a whole lot during a winter holiday in which her main focus should probably have been snowboarding, but that she didn't even need to work that hard because she was paying minimal rent and saving money on other living expenses. I reasoned that she must be saving significant quantities of cash, and suggested that she might be interested in paying to commission the nude portrait I wanted to put in the house, painted by our mutual friend Brad who I worked with during my time at the Rossland hostel.

Of course, when one suggests to a friend that they should spend their hard earned money on a joke that they will be only peripherally able to enjoy, one typically assumes that the friend will not be interested and that the issue will pass away. It was, then, a considerable surprise when I received the following text messages while lounging around in the back of my van a few days ago:

Anna (1/2): "I do not know if you still have this number Sir but I just calculated my budget which I wish I had done earlier because now 400 $"
Anna (2/2): "seems to be totally reasonable for a hilarious nude painting of you :-)"

I should point out that the nude wasn't necessarily supposed to be of me, but if it was going to be a painting I guess I'd need a model and I'm the only one who's realistically going to step up to take that role. So although it was slightly alarming to think that someone wanted to make a nude portrait of me, rather than just in general, I was willing to do what it took to complete the mission. A long and torturous text message conversation followed, in which I ascertained that Anna was serious, and that she didn't actually want to copy of the painting, leaving my free to display it in Rossland. We considered sending it to Maud's Hot Sister, which would have brought two terrible jokes together into a kind of terrible joke supertornado, but the idea was abandoned because then neither of us would see the painting again.

At this moment, I'd like to point out both how unlikely it was that this would ever occur, and how highly this endeavour speaks of Anna's character. This is someone who is willing to commit hundreds of dollars to a joke that she might never even get to see. There is no greater committment to the LOLz than to invest in something you might never benefit from purely because "it'd be a never ending hilarious joke". My efforts to woo Maud's Hot Sister pale in comparison. Thanks Anna, you're quite strange, but you're a star.

With a financial backer, suddenly my opportunity to contribute to the art world was alive again. I tried to contact Brad, but he helpfully doesn't have a phone, and he also didn't feel like answering the phone at the hostel where he's still working. In the end, I took matters into my own hands and drove to Rossland to talk with him in person.

He is not completely thrilled by the idea of painting a nude portrait of me. In fact, he is insistent that I am not allowed to appear in front of him in any state of undress. I can't even "accidentally" waltz past him with a towel wrapped around my waist on the way to the shower. But he does seem willing to paint the picture. Negotiations are under way, and we have a few days to secure an agreement before Anna manages to transfer the necessary funds across to make this a reality. If all else fails, I am willing to approach another local artist who was also not my year six teacher, Jenny Baillie. We share a unique bond because we almost knew each other fifteen years ago, and maybe she'll be willing to help me out if the mercurial Brad changes his mind, or makes it up, or whatever.

So now I am back in Rossland, waiting for money to magically appear from my financial benefactor, and hanging out at the Mountain Shadow Hostel. This gives me a convenient opportunity to get my climbing shoes repaired and give a finger injury some time to heal. Plus I can shop at the most excellent supermarket here.

Those who wish to stay abreast of the developments in this story might want to check out twitter.com/dirt_bags_horan for updates as they happen. Wish me luck.

The Good Kind of Parasite

As much as I may dislike the ticks here, I share a kind of kinship with them that I cannot deny. For I, too, am a parasite of sorts. Like a tick, I hang around at the bottom of the Skaha Bluffs, waiting for a group of climbers to pass by. When conditions are right, I latch onto them and follow them around all day, draining their rope time and climbing gear. And when they are spent, and it is time for them to move on, I drop off and find a new host.

Being a singleton at a crag is a bit awkward, because ideally you need someone to belay you when you climb. Being a singleton at a crag with no rope or quickdraws is extra awkward, because when you do meet up with other people you need to use their equipment, otherwise you have no safety system and any fall will mean an ungraceful tumble to the ground and probable death or dismemberment. To further complicate matters, any other solo dirtbags that end up in the area are also unlikely to have a rope or quickdraws, so not only is it impossible to team up with them to climb, but they're also out there competing for potential climbing partners.

I have, therefore, developed a number of strategies for trying to find host climbing groups to latch on to. The most difficult constraint that I face in finding climbing partners is that I'm absurdly spectacularly Anglo, and I can not bring myself to simply ask people if I can climb with them. This isn't even as rude as it sounds, because often people are in odd-numbered groups, and an extra person will make even numbers, and that means maximum climbing efficiency (because this type of climbing happens in pairs - one person to climb and another to belay). So there are groups who would actually benefit from me joining them.

But I am much too Anglo to ask to climb with strangers. Given that this direct and simple path to climbing is taken, I adopt a more circuitous route.

If I'm looking for a new host to climb with, my work starts as soon as I arrive in the car park. As soon as I park the car I strive to look competent enough that no one will think I'll slow them down, but not so bad-ass that people will be intimidated. Admittedly, avoiding the latter concern is easy. My main strategy for the former condition is wearing my shoes without socks. Shoes-without-socks says "I'm completely comfortable in this environment." in a way that is neatly complemented by "toque/beanie-without-jumper" which has also proven to be a winner. Then, I check the noticeboard where people who are looking for partners will write their contact details, and on my way out of the car park I make eye contact with and chat to anyone who'll look at me.

Of course, I never actually find partners in the car park. But that's not the point. The point is to let people know that I'm around, and that I'm the kind of guy who will walk around their crag in shoes without socks. I also like to open all the doors of my van to make it absolutely clear that I'm living in it, which gives me all kinds of dirtbag chic.

With my round of the car park complete, it's time to walk down the main access track into the climbing area, which goes past a number of popular cliffs. Again, I am sure to make eye contact with and at least greet everyone I see. This is another chance to let people know that I'm mooching around. If I see a group of more than two climbers, I usually hang around and casually watch them climb in a way that I sincerely hope doesn't look creepy. If they make anything more than the most fleeting form of eye contact, I drop some cool questions like "What climb is that?" or "Are you comfortable wearing socks like that?" or something equally aloof but also approachable. I'm trying to give the impression that I'm cool enough to have friends, but not so keen on those friends that I'd turn down a chance to go climbing that to actually see them. This is made more difficult by the somewhat intrenchable fact that I don't have any friends, but I try not to make that obvious.

Hopefully, at this point someone in the group will think "Wow, I want to see if that guy without socks still wears his toque/beanie while climbing." (Which, if it's cold, I do. It's like a poor man's helmet.) Then they'll offer me a chance to climb. This is where I pull out my best moves.

It's important not to seem too eager, or they'll get the impression that I'm a desperate loner. I must cover that fact up at all costs, because everyone hates desperate loners. I usually say something like "Sure, but I don't want to take up your rope time if you're in a rush." which doesn't make any sense at all, but it seems to put folks at ease. So far, everyone has responded to this approach favorably, and I've ended up climbing quite a lot. Once I latch onto a group, I can climb with them for several days. So far no one has tried to ditch me or hide from me, so I guess I'm doing something right.

Of course, not all of my climbing hookups have come about in this way. I've met some people in the campsite, and one of my most successful parasitic episodes came when someone mistook me for a friend of theirs and I ended up climbing with a group of Calgarians for several days. Unfortunately, hanging around looking like other people's friends is not a viable long-term strategy.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm so Anglo that many times I don't even have the courage to speak to people about what they're climbing. Sometimes I just peruse the climbing guidebook (to make it obvious that I'm a climber, rather than out walking my dog) and wait for people to talk to me. I still play it cool though, so I guess that's OK.

I'd better head back to the campsite, because tonight (or maybe tomorrow morning) I'm going to get a shower. Also, last night I slept near a lookout next to the highway and a strange, well dressed lady with a nice car spent ages rummaging around in a bin, then rummaging in the back of her car, and then woke me up by walking around my van at midnight shining a light inside to see what was there. It was one of the most baffling episodes of my life, which has contained probably more than its fair share of baffling moments. I would have asked her what she was doing, but when I woke up because a torch was being shone in my eyes I blurted "Hello? What?" and the lady made an incomprehensible excuse and very quickly got in her car and drove away. So perhaps $7.50 to spend the night in a campsite is not such an unreasonable price.

The Bad Kind of Parasite

Think about ticks. Not the things you would put next to a correct exam answer (because over here those are called "checks"), the things that burrow into your skin and drink your blood while releasing a toxin that causes paralysis. The bad kind of tick.

You can usually tell if you've got one because the site where they bite you tends to itch and tingle. Plus you'll have a tick hanging off you somewhere, which can be a bit of a giveaway. But mostly they bite you in awkward, hard to see places like your armpits, scalp or groin.

Feeling itchy? Because here in Penticton, I'm slowly being driven mad by imaginary ticks. Real ticks are not a big deal. Even if they do paralyse you, you usually lose control of your legs first, so you have plenty of time to work out that somethings wrong and find and remove the little bugger. Besides,the whole paralysis thing takes ages, so it very rarely even happens, and even if it does the effect disappears once the tick is gone. The ticks here don't even give you Lymes Disease, so you can stop worrying about that too.

But imaginary ticks are a different story. Firstly, you can't remove an imaginary tick. You can't even find it. Second, you get bitten by them all the time. Every time I talk about - or even think about - ticks, some part of me gets the tell-tale tingle that suggests I'm sharing my bloodstream with a new organism. Every time. Writing this post is exquisite imaginary tick torture. The CIA should just give up on waterboarding and put their captives in long dry grass with a detailed description of how a tick will burrow its head into your flesh. I wake in the middle of the night and my head is itchy. I am the king of dandruff, and yet I still think every bump on my misshapen head is a parasite. Don't even get me started on having an itchy butt.

The fact that the last tick I got didn't actually itch at all doesn't seem to help. In fact, it only makes the imaginary ticks more insidious. If only the imaginary ticks didn't itch so much, then I wouldn't even notice them.

On a positive note, I did hear a neat way of getting a tick to let go of you before you try to pull it out. I had heard that heat usually causes them to back out of their little burrow, and I spent several awkward and dangerous moments trying to hold a lighter in between my shoulderblades for the one and only tick I've had out here. Try it folks, it's like yoga for the dirty and dishevelled. Anyway, the trick is to use the lighter to heat something up (like a sewing needle) and then use that to poke the tick in its bum. Like most living things, the tick will respond poorly to a hot poke in the bum, and extract itself from your flesh with all due haste. I have considered rolling around in a fire to remove imaginary ticks, but as yet I have not resorted to such desperate measures.

The Denouement

Every now and then I feel somewhat self conscious about posting on this blog because I know my parents will read whatever I write. A friend once expressed surprise that I was willing to write about supposedly scary things like climbing around on a stationary chairlift, given that it might freak out my parents. After many years of that kind of behavior from all three of their children, of which I am the youngest, I am confident that they are accustomed to such exploits. Besides, driving my van around is vastly more dangerous and terrifying than anything else I have done in Canada. Instead, I am concerned that my parents will look upon my exploits in other fields of life - like work, friendships and specifically humor - with consternation and disapproval. This is one of those times.

On Wednesday night, Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister concluded with a daring foray into enemy territory. Given the extensive groundwork I had conducted at our date on Tuesday night, and my sense of missed opportunity at having not "made a move" (whatever the hell that is) during our romantic drive around Whistler post-dinner, I planned a decisive final step in my wooing.

As described by live tweet, while Marie was distracted by one housemate (Robi), Maud and I stole the white roses I had given her when I arrived and laid a path of petals up the stairs and into Marie's boudoir. I also found some candles and light these in strategic locations on the stairway and in the bedroom. Then, Robi and Fleur triggered an exodus from the living room, claiming to be ready for bed, and put some Barry White on the stereo (which, thankfully, could handle his resonant baritone voice). I'm not quite sure how it all worked, but somehow this was enough to get Marie out of the living room and near enough to the stairway that she realised something was afoot. With increasing embarrassment, she climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom to find me lying on her bed, tastefully clad in a bathrobe (probably also hers) and socks (definitely mine) and surrounded by flower petals. Her response was to laugh uproariously and throw her small fluffy dog onto the bed, which killed to mood somewhat. She did later promise to remember the experience forever, which I am choosing to take as a compliment.

Having "made a move" sufficient to cover for my cowardice in the car the previous night, I resumed my pants and left the room. Mission accomplished.

There are photos, but they're quite alarming, and in the interests of my parents I have wisely placed them on twitter where anyone who wants to see them will no doubt find a way to track them down. I am trusting the confusingness of the internet to insulate my parents from what might be a fairly traumatic experience.

With my work in Whistler completed, I left town yesterday to return to Penticton in the sunny (LOL) Okanagan region. It is, of course, dreary and miserably here today. The van refused to start in the morning, which would have made for an awkward additional night at Maud's Hot Sister's house, but thankfully it roared to life in the afternoon and still seems to be running OK despite the damp conditions.

As an aside, the whole Maud's Hot Sister thing has had a remarkable effect on readership of this blog. The Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister post has finally replaced the post about Dave Pitchford as the most read entry, which was sad on several levels. And on Thursday (my time) there were more page views than the whole blog got in any of the months from August (when it started) to December 2011. Thanks everyone for your interest and moral support, it kept me going in those tough moments where my sense of dignity or financial prudence seemed likely to triumph.

Finally, if anyone else has a hot sister that needs to be romanced by a socially awkward and romantically disinclined man, let me know. And don't say Tom's hot sister, because I know her and that would be creepy. Hilarious, but creepy.

Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister

The revelations outlined in the previous post gave me a modicum of comfort going into the big date. If Maud's Hot Sister wasn't the kind of person who sent lewd text messages to potential suitors via her sister as I originally thought, she was probably also not the kind of person who would do something unseemly in a Whistler restaurant. Maud mentioned that her sister liked sushi, and Nagomi Sushi was on the Whistler restaurant guide that was in the "Low $" category, so I made a booking for 7:30.

After a few hours at the gym and swimming at the Whistler recreation centre to get my body in top condition for the rigours of the night ahead, I went home to get ready. I shaved with an actual razor and removed ALL THE HAIR FROM THE BOTTOM HALF OF MY FACE for the second time in probably 4 years, showered, put on my suit and was ready to leave at a punctual 7:20.

Somehow, Maud's Hot Sister's preparations for the date became a team effort, and I waited until 7:50 for her to emerge from the upstairs bedroom to the considerable excitement of my housemates Maud and Fleur. Although this was stressful and I was worried about my booking, it did give me valuable time to make twitter updates to share the experience with y'all.

Marie and I, ready to depart.

In the end, I needn't have worried, because although the sushi place gave every indication of being super busy when I called to book, they were less than half-full. I should mention that I lost some style points on the way over, because Marie ended up driving me in her car after we decided we couldn't necessarily rely on the van to get us there and back.

Because I'm a gentleman who thrives under pressure, I ordered for both of us. For appetisers we had goma-ae (spinach in a sesame oil dressing) and takoyaki balls (deep-fried  octopus in batter).

Mains were local wild albacore tuna sashimi; red snapper, wild sockeye salmon and grilled eel nigiri sushi; and tuna and scallop sushi rolls.

Maud's Hot Sister tucks into a delicious scallop roll.

Since suffering is dish best served cold and over an extended period of time, we shared a green tea creme brulee for dessert.

Awkward dinner topics included: Whether the chopsticks were Chinese or Japanese, the philosophy of hairdressing, Canadian waiting staff, whether some of the other people at the farewell party that I crashed the night before by arriving unannounced to ask Marie on a date were actually planning to hit on Marie later that evening, and whether it was weird to wear a cream jacket to a pretty low-key sushi restaurant in Whistler. I will confess that I didn't really understand much of what Marie was talking about, but my years of retail experience mean I can nod and smile like a volunteer at an old-folks-home.

I had heard on the radio a few days earlier that one of the most influential factors in a first date was the generosity of the tip, so I left a substantial one. I also felt guilty about coming into a restaurant late, making a number of small and confusing orders, and openly discussing how much we didn't like North American service culture, so I tried to make up for that. I'm not sure how the whole "generous tip gets the ladies" approach is supposed to work. Upon seeing the bill, I just wanted to slide under the table and splash acid on my face. There didn't seem to be a way to discretely pay the bill and draw attention to the tip I was paying without a) discussing the size of the bill, and thus shed the thin vestige of denial that was holding back my tears and b) appearing pretty crass in front of my date. So I suspect that the tip didn't work as hard in my favour as it was supposed to.

Marie isn't that blurry in real life.

After our date, we went for a drive around the sights of Whistler. We visited the car park at the ski resort to see the view of the town (it was obscured by trees), the sliding centre (the luge and bobsled track, at which Marie competes and officiates), and two of the many lakes around the town. I suspect that if this had been a normal date, this would have been the part where I was supposed to make my move. Making a move would have probably made me the greatest human being to have ever lived, but I didn't for two reasons. First, I really really didn't want to, and second, I can't even conceive of how such a move would be made. Surely no one reasonably expects me to just dive over to the other side of the car and start smooching. The little storage compartment between the seats would be in the way, for a start.

OK, I'd better go get ready for the grand finale. Over and out.

An Important Clarification

OK, before I post the details of my big date last night, I should mention a major piece of the puzzle that I found out the night before last. Avid followers of this sorry tale will recall that Maud's Hot Sister and I had been involved in something approximating a heterosexual version of remote gay chicken, with communication being conducted via text messages sent to and from Maud. The whole question of using your sister to remotely hit on your housemate, as Marie appeared to be doing, was one of the most perplexing aspects of this whole scenario. The question of just what kind of person asks their sister to ask their housemate about the size of the housemate's naughty bits is one that I have mused over in many of the quiet hours in the last few weeks.

It turns out that Marie had no idea that Maud was relaying her questions to me (and then, in most cases, simply fabricating answers) and was apparently mortified to discover that her sister had taken a supposedly private joke between the two of them and shared it with her housemates. So it may be true that blood runs thicker than water, but the compulsion to meddle in the love-lives of one's housemates runs thicker than blood, perhaps like a very thick and nutritious smoothie.

This meant that one of the most terrifying (and unlikely and confusing) possibilities for my unenthusiastic attempt at wooing was off the table. Maud's Hot Sister had not managed to defy reality and come to the conclusion that I was in fact a hot, well endowed Latino man named Juan. Since sleeping with Maud's Hot Sister was not something I actually wanted to do (but would have seriously considered in light of its enormous LOL value), this significantly reduced the risks associated with actually heading to Whister and commencing Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister. Of course, I didn't know that until I was already well committed to the operation, so I still deserve respect and maybe some kind of ongoing payment from the government.

Another implication of this change is that it's still possible for me to reclaim ownership of this joke. Of course, attempting to regain control of the joke was the slippery slope that got me into this quagmire, but circumstances have changed, and I really believe that I can make everyone else uncomfortable instead of me if I play my cards right. If Marie never intended to make me uncomfortable with her remarkably forward text messages, then she's basically been on the receiving end of awkward hilarity the whole time. In fact, at this stage, it's Maud who comes out looking the most devious and cunning of us all.

That means that tonight presents an opportunity for one final assault in Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister. If I can push everyone else out of their comfort zone, I will maximize the LOLs and emerge victorious from what has been a fairly bruising encounter. Tonight, after all, is Wednesday night. And as the prophets say, "Wednesday night is the night we make love."

Cross Lingual Haircuts: A tale of sorrow and loss

Yesterday I spent the day trawling the thrift stores (known in Australia as op-shops) of Vancouver in search of a white suit. Sadly, there wasn't anything suitable to be found (pun completely intended. Oh my God. I think I need to lie down), and I settled for a cream jacket and a nice pair of pants. The lady at the checkout of the thrift store was pretty impressed by my selection and suggested that I must be headed somewhere nice in the outfit, at which I laughed nervously and did a poor job of concealing my terror.

Anyway, after the suit buying I went to get a real haircut from a haircutting professional. I have had several haircuts in Canada, but they've been from me, my housemate Robi, and at one stage I even got a trim from Maud's Hot Sister (who is, incidentally, a hairdresser). This combination of haircutting styles and levels of competence had resulted in a hairstyle which oscillated between completely amazing and pretty damn awful depending on how much time and hairgel I wanted to expend each day.

On a good day, it looked like this:

And the goal was to turn it into this:

Getting a haircut is a baffling and unpleasant process. I have to surrender control of my head to someone else, who will ask me questions in incomprehensible hairdresser lingo that I don't even remotely understand, and then charge me for the experience. Every answer I give to their questions is fraught with danger. Will this cost more? Is that a code for giving me a perm? One once asked me if I wanted layers. Layers of what? I said no, and that seemed to indicate to them that the haircut was over. That experience cost me $25.

Given that I don't expect to understand anything a hairdresser says, I don't feel compelled to go to hairdresser who speaks English. Pretty much the best haircut I've ever had was in Japan. Admittedly, he just cut my hair to a uniform 2.5cm in length, which was exactly what I wanted, but he also trimmed the bits around my ears, which was an added bonus.

And so it was that I went to a Chinese hairdresser in Vancouver. They spoke no English and I spoke no Chinese. Upon my arrival in their salon, it didn't seem to occur to them at all that I was actually a customer. After some confusion they swung into full-scale team haircut action. I tried to communicate that I wanted my hair trimmed on the sides, cut short at the back and then left long at the front. Things started out well, the sides were trimmed, and the back was cut short. Then, with little fanfare and a stern expression, my hairdresser cut a short strip into the front. Gone were my dreams of a Morrissey-like pouf at the front of my head. This was a serious hair salon, for serious people and serious haircuts.

I must admit that this had a strong deflationary effect on me. This whole romancing Maud's Hot Sister enterprise has been something of a grim duty that I must see through to the bitter end. Coming out with a cool haircut was the one part of this process that I was looking forward to. Well, such youthful fancies must be set aside, because now I look like this:

Which would be great if I was trying to get work as a defense contractor, but I'm trying to romance a lady. Oh, and so you don't get worked up, that's not my new suit. I'm saving the suit for my date tonight.