Oh yay. Poutine.

Nope. Those are not swear words. I just couldn't think of an appropriate title for a blog coming off a night shift and still feeling a little bit coldy. I went to work even though I had this cough that started off as hay fever ish/type/thing few days before the weekend that became a full blown flu by Monday. I would like to think that I'm forging to improve my work ethic by running my burnout limits to the max. But really, no. I only did just the one night. I was sent home from work a few days ago for concerns that I may actually infect the whole workforce. Oh, yeah. Blimey. Pathetic... I'm really inclined to add a bijillion exclamation marks here. But somebody actually told me that excessive use of exclamation marks is pretty retarded. What every self-respecting blogger should aim to do is leave the impact of what one has written to speak for itself. (Take Note, Tala. Ha.ha.ha.)WTF.

I'm off to Canada this week. My flight's on Friday.

! ! !

By Friday evening, a few hours after touching down Lester B Pearson International Airport I would have chugged down every drop of Canadian beer off cheap cold bottles whilst partaking a massive bite of pommes frites drowning in artery-clogging gravy and cheese they call Poutine. I have yet to find out whether Poutine - a Quebecoise dish of fries is the French equivalent of the Italian Putanessca. Them Europeans associate comfort food with depraved debauchery. And Canadians are pretty touchy when pushing the superiority of their beverage that side of the Atlantic. They would actually describe American beer as like: having sex in a canoe which innocently, may sound pretty flattering. But having perhaps, inherited the British humour more than the 'other' colonial cousin, this actually means that American beer tastes so f#%!ing close to water.

No offence meant to all my American friends as I would in all honesty prefer New York City over Toronto anytime of the day, but Canadians are just so damn funny.

#1. Who can resist the Royal Canadian Mounties? Remember Benton Fraser's dry humour in that early nineties TV favourite called Due South? Don’t forget his sidekick lip-reading deaf wolf Diefenbaker. And imagine jumping along BBC's ‘Monty Python's Flying Circus’ as they sing the chorus to that silly Lumberjack Song.

very old pic of young howling's first trip to canada
still with his old pinoy passport. prancing along moose dressed as mountie.

#2. Celine Freaking Dion. Okey, in fairness, they also have ‘Feist’.

#3. They are bilingual. Therefore, it’s quite easy to pretend that you don’t understand English. The French street signs don’t leave you with an excuse for bad driving, though.

#4. They still allow themselves to be ruled by the Queen of England. Where were they when The Sex Pistols played "L'Anarchie pour l'UK" in two concerts at the Peter Street venue during the summer of 1976?

#5. Despite #4, they ditched the English and gone for the Metric System. I know, it's the bloody French.

camping with big sibs.

#6. The angel Michael protested when God created Canada. ‘Don’t you think you may be giving these smug Canucks a little too much? Upon which God manifestly said: ‘Wait until you see the neighbours I’m giving them!’ And He didn’t mean the Russians. No kidding. Lookie here.

#7. They call their dollar a 'Loonie'. Reminds me of the people from a lunar colony that lead a revolt against Earth in that silly book 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' by Heinlein. Funny dinkums.

#8. Their Prime Minister Stephen Harper is already a wax figure that even Madame Tussaud doesn't need him in her cheesy museum. Apparently, Egyptian mummies at the Royal Ontario Museum are more life-like compared to him. See for yourself here.

And see ya all guys after two weeks!

I can blog.

I can’t believe I already spent a year and a couple months off blogging by looking at my last post here. I have to say, I haven't done it for a whole lot of rather morally admirable reasons:

#1. I learned to eat fruit and vegetables - and consequently lost a massive chunk off my lardy body weight. My cholesterol level was down to 6 from 8 and I’m now sitting comfortably between 60 – 65 kilograms range. For the record, I’m not scared to pile on a few kilos here and there for now. So I don’t really mind summer barbecue invites. On proviso that it’s never gonna be a pirate-themed affair involving the use of painful eyewear.

I know, I did it last year.

#2. I had been waking up really early every Thursday mornings to avoid the traffic off the motorway on my commute from home to school.

I took a post graduate course at The University of Greenwich in London and been wearing ‘the perennial grin’ on my face for the past few weeks after receiving my grades. I got 72 %. And yup, that is not a failed grade. In England where the passing mark is 40 %, that (70 – 100%) is actually an excellent grade. It means excellent understanding of actual theoretical perspectives and that your essays showed evidence of substantial independent reading as well as they are accurately referenced using the Harvard approach. It also means that some people I know who tried really hard with their coursework and barely passed can be really excessively complimentary in that rather annoying sarcastic way. I tell them that I just got lucky then stick my tongue out.

#3. I have stuck my tongue out every day for the last three weeks that my tongue muscles are now extremely toned to rival the phallus of any pre-pubescent tosser.

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#4. I have also mastered the art of finger gestures.