Business as usual

At first, my new job seemed very like my old job. Research work in Toronto mapped nicely onto my previous working experience in Brighton. The same interesting mix of meetings and seminars, communion with the computer screen, excursions to the library. Enjoyable work, problems to solve, deadlines to meet. The office set-up, too, is quite familiar.

But now a critical difference has made itself apparent. It's a biggie, too. It's the attitude to tea.

Or coffee. Hot drinks in general. In Britain, no one would hold a meeting of more than 10 minutes without offering or at least inquiring about A Hot Drink. The response might be 'Oh yes, please,' or 'No thanks, I've just had one,' or perhaps, 'I thought you'd never ask!' if there had been a pause for drawing breath between 'please sit here' and 'can I get you...?', but there would always be some sort of offer made. Failure to do so would be a breaking of the social contract, and indicate something wrong. Danger, Will Robinson.

Here, as there, my desk is in a shared office. When I get up from the computer, stretch, and head for the small staff kitchen, I always offer to make a tea or coffee for my office-mates. In the UK I'd get a yes, or a no (and a yes or a no-- there were a lot of us in there sometimes). Here in Toronto when I make such an offer, I generally feel that I've caused more consternation than satisfaction, breaking into the peace of the office, presenting a dilemma where none existed before. I've broken a different sort of social contract.

There are other conventions that I took for granted in the UK and now realize how peculiar they are to that nation. The office Christmas party, for instance. In England they've been planned, reservations made, invitations sent, RSVPs received, menu choices decided, Secret Santas assigned. Here? Nada.

And another: in England, anyone who left town, on holiday or business, always brought back some food item to share, by placing it in the office kitchen. Anything will do: Hershey's bars from the US, shortbread from Scotland, maple candy from Canada. The airport shops were invented for the British.

The office parties, the foreign sweets, these I don't miss terribly. They were nice, of course, but I can survive without them.

However. The tea issue. That is a problem. I will have to work on that. After I put the kettle on, though.

@lectoronto

I'm now on Twitter. Thanks to Anne, my friend, guru and part-time personal shopper (Costco division), I've been initiated into what Sensei Anne calls the 'real-time' communication modality of tweeting. I mentioned my achievement to another friend, Jim, and asked him if he felt Twitter really was an improvement over email. Jim looked at me pityingly. 'Email is just so... 1990s,' he said, gently enough, but the point hit home hard. Ouch. That's me. So 1990s. If you too have moved on from last millennium, do look for me out there in Twitterland. Though perhaps I should change my name to @So_1990s.

I can laugh at myself over this, but overall I am feeling rather somber. The cue to my joining Twitter is sad. A local mom, Jenna Morrison, was killed last week in a cycling accident. Aged 38 years, she was 5 months pregnant, cycling to her son's kindergarten to collect him at lunchtime. She overbalanced near a truck and was crushed horribly under its rear wheels. I didn't know her, but her son attended a playgroup with children of friends of mine, a parents' cooperative playgroup, hence a fairly tightknit community. The whole city, especially the cycling population, has been shaken, and the parents in the playgroup just devastated. I joined Twitter so I could keep abreast of cycling groups and their reactions to Jenna's death. Should the truck have had underbody side-rails? Apparently they do in England (though I can't say I noticed, nor did I feel any safer around trucks there).

Catherine Porter, a columnist for the Toronto Star, herself a 38-year-old mom who cycles, wrote movingly of the memorial bike ride instigated by a cyclists' group (http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1086949--i-saw-nothing-but-bike-helmets-for-blocks?bn=1). Porter joined the thousand or more riders who accompanied a 'ghost bike', painted white, which was placed at the site of the accident. She described feeling committed to continuing to cycle, because of its benefits to health, the environment, and the sense of community. At the same time, she wants to live, and to survive to raise her children. I completely, completely empathize with this. I too want to keep on riding. I ride to work, I ride to the kids' school, I ride to the grocery store (I love the basket on the back). One of the great things about downtown Toronto is its cycleability. And I want my kids to have that joy too. But I'm also petrified for myself, for my husband (another cyclist), and for them. Why can't we each have a piece of the road, and peace on the road?

On a mildly humorous note, the way that Porter phrased her own heartfelt dilemma over this issue really highlighted for me, again, that sense of 'We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto' She wrote of her children, "I want to be there for everything:the first sleepover, the first canoe trip, the first love". Beg pardon? It's a canoe trip that comes between 'first sleepover' and 'first love' in Canada? H'm. Ah well. At least she didn't write 'first time wrestling a polar bear.'

RIP Jenna Morrison.

Be careful out there, people.

You'll Always Know Your Neighbor

We recently flew to the west coast of the US. For one reason and another (let's call them cost and outrageous, because that's what they were), we decided to begin our journey in Buffalo, New York, rather than fly from Toronto's Lester Pearson Airport. Who wants to fly from an airport called Lester, anyway, eh?

Middle child and I drove across the border in the dead of night, like fugitives. When we got to the edge of Canada there were no other cars queuing to leave. I sailed right up to the agent's booth. 'Is America open?' I asked him, suspicious that we'd happened upon a national or international emergency. 'America is always open, ma'am,' he replied brusquely.

On we traveled, reaching in under two hours an uncharming but sufficient airport hotel that promised to give us a place to lay our weary heads for the night, look after our car, drive us to departures, and collect us upon our return, all for the sum of about a hundred bucks. Why don't we just live there, I wonder?

We flew west to San Francisco, my birthplace, and stayed in Berkeley, my true spiritual home, with beloved family. Two days later we headed north to Seattle, passing volcano after volcano, till we landed between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker. The rest of the family joined us there for niece's bat mitzvah. All was swell; ceremony, celebration, and niece equally superb.

Three days later, we flew back to Buffalo. Blessed Buffalo! It begins to seem the center of all earthly delights. Home of the Albright-Knox Art Museum (the what?) and Frank Lloyd Wright houses (really?). We collected the car and made our way to Wegmans. Wegmans! Ah, supermarket of my heart's desire. Next door was Kohl's, where husband selected a sweater. Then, after acquiring a tank of All-American, inexpensive (well, it's relative) gas we drove home, arriving two hours later. Two hours. I live two hours from Buffalo, and I'm grateful for it! It was a city that once upon a time felt as remote as the moon and an equally unlikely place for me to visit. (Did Neil Armstrong ever hit a golf ball in Buffalo?) Before I moved to Toronto, all I associated with Buffalo was its spicy chicken wings dipped (oddly) in salad dressing, the Bills, cold, and the Erie Canal. It's true that I've always loved the song about the mule named Sal, who plied fifteen miles on the Erie Canal, where you always know your neighbor, you always know your pal, as well as every inch of the way from Albany to Buffalo. Still, I never expected to see the canal any more than I planned to meet the mule. How did it come to pass that it's now a source of true pleasure to know that in only two hours, with good luck and a following wind, I can be in Buffalo?

Low bridge, everybody down.

Of course there are those wings. Pass the dressing.