North America has certainly proven to be interesting. I was considering the concept yesterday of being an anthropological tourist. I like to take an interest in the world beyond the macro that is to say I like to see the sites, take the photos and thrill to the fact you are somewhere you have only heard of.
I love tangents and at this point I intend to make one. There is a danger when you go on hoildays that the enjoyment of the moment can be over taken by the desire to record it for posterity. When we went to The Falls we got down the wall and I instantly reached for the video camera. “Hold on,” I thought. I stopped and forced myself to actually appreciate the scene and enjoy it with all of my senses. We let our cameras do the work for us and become lazy tourists. We are like bees flitting from flower to flower instead of enjoying the moment. I am determined as much as possible to enjoy the moment.
It is all about how people live their lives and how they achieve in this place the same things that people do everywhere. We went to a bar last night for tea. What was weird was that instead of ordering at the bar we sat and the waitress brought us drinks which we paid for at the end of the night with a card. Other things are public transport systems, heating, the size of drinks. Why was the beer I had last night in a 341ml bottle? Is that half a pint? And why ate things different? What is the history? Why do Canadians say “about”? Is there a Scottish connection?
Canadians are proud not to be American but they are so close in most aspects as to be indistinguishable. Within 1km of our hotel are (and I don’t exaggerate) 8 Starbucks. There wasn’t the same density in New York. Are Australians as close to New Zealanders? Scary thought…
Cheese. A good deal of it here is glow in the dark. What is the story with that? It is bright yellow and they wan’t to put it on everything.
Black people. The call them African Americans. Why? Would a white South African immigrant be an African American? How would they describe an Aborigine? And why is that although descrimination is supposedly gone black people seem to fill the lowest roles in society? Except those too horrible for them which are filled by Eastern European and Indian subcontinental immigrants.
Canada is a lit more socially aware that the US and they seem to genuinely care for each other in ways that people in the States don’t. And yet there are more homeless people here.
Finally the rail system. It actually isn’t too bad. Despite the random seat allocation (first come first serve) and the airport style stations. The thing that we could learn from is it is that it goes places you actually want to go and is affordable.
