What the phoque?

Dominick and Dave, Quebecois both, came into my classroom at break this morning, and upon staring out of the window they both started swearing profusely. At least to my ears they did. Naturally concerned as to the source of such profanity, I too looked out of said window and was directed to a group of black dots on the horizon.

"F**k!" said Dave.

"F**k!" said Dominick.

"I'm sorry...?" said I.

It was only then that it was explained to me that the French word for seal is phoque which, comically, sounds almost identical to the English word f**k. I now feel very disgruntled that, by not teaching us about seals, all my French teachers at school denied my classmates and I the obvious amusement that we could have derived from this situation.

It also explains why Seal can't walk down any street in Quebec without people tittering behind his back.

My secret life

I was idly Googling myself today (narcissistic I know, but sometimes there's little else to do here), and to my immense surprise I found that I have been leading a secret life.

In the Netherlands.

It seems that Gideon Eames is a character in the virtual world of Second Life, and is resident somewhere in the Netherlands. I was even able to find a couple of pictures:

Handsome devil, aren't I? Now, quite what I get up to in this virtual world is anyone's guess. I wonder what I do? Rather a nice rocking chair there, looks like a roaring open fire, large window, sea view, nifty shades; seems I'm doing alright. Rock star? Footballer? Neurosurgeon? CSI special agent? Talk show host? Gigolo? OK....maybe not a gigolo.

Or what if my existence up here in the North is the virtual life? There would be some poor Dutch guy, albeit very well dressed, who'd just found on Google that he'd been leading a double life as a down at heel teacher in the sub-Arctic who had nothing better to do but look for himself on Google...

Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.

...and the paint's peeling off of my walls

Further to last Thursday's post, it was really, really cold today: this morning it was -28°C, which with windchill was a numbing -38°C! As I said before, it will get even colder than that in the months ahead, but for November this was exceptionally chilly, and even some of the locals found it a bit too cold for comfort. Numbers like these simply had no meaning until I moved to Canada, and although it can get so cold here that your nostrils literally freeze up on the walk to school, it's amazing what you can endure with the right clothing and a positive attitude. That said, I wouldn't have fancied having to live out in the open as the Inuit would have done not much more than fifty years ago, and I'm grateful for the haven of my (relatively) sumptuous apartment on days like this.

Nonetheless, despite the cold it was another beautiful day, although when I tried to take some photos of sunset over the (now frozen) Bay, my poor little camera simply refused to cooperate. It made a few whirring noises, the lens kind of half opened, then closed, then opened again and finally a message on the screen proclaimed 'lens error' before total and final shutdown. I think the message should have read 'it's too cold to be taking pictures you idiot; put me back in the case NOW!', but I got the picture (well, actually I didn't, but you know what I mean). Fortunately Stella, one of Dominick's Desktop Publishing students, got a good shot of the Bay with her obviously superior, Northern-proof camera - the photographic equivalent of Eddie Izzard's Stalinist oranges - and it is with great pleasure that I present it for you now (click to enlarge):

On a different note, it was the Grey Cup yesterday, which for those of you not in the know is the Canadian equivalent of the Superbowl. Canadian Football is similar to American Football, the main differences being that there are twelve players on a team not eleven, each side has three downs to gain ten yards rather than four, and the players apologise when they knock each other over. For the record, the Calgary Stampeders beat the Montreal Alouettes (all together now: ♪♫♪ je te plumerai la tête, je te plumerai la tête, et la tête, et la tête, alouette, alouette, ohhhhhhhhh......♪♫♪) 22-14, which will make Melanie happy as the Stampeders are her adopted Canadian Football team. She chose them because they have a horse on their helmet. Not a real horse, as that would make movement around the field very difficult, but just a picture.

Go Stamps!

Ask a silly question...

I had to post this - it made me laugh.

I'm currently listening to commentary on the Australia v New Zealand Test match (that's cricket to the uninitiated) on internet radio, which in itself is mildly amusing, given my geographical position and national allegiance.

Anyway, New Zealand is not doing very well, and one of the commentators remarked that their batsmen would need to develop superpowers if they were going to win.

He then posed his co-commentator the question: "If someone offered you a superpower, what would it be?"

A few seconds thought, then the answer:

"Russia."

It's cold outside...

Although the town has been covered by a blanket of snow for some time now, today was just about the first time that it felt really cold, the type of cold that literally does get into your bones and starts to freeze the end of your nose. As I write, it's a decidedly frosty -17°C outside, -25°C with windchill, which is quite cold enough thank you, but I've been here long enough now to know that it's going to get a lot colder than that in the months ahead.

However, it was also beautifully sunny today, and the view out onto the Bay really was rather stunning. Now, I vowed to myself when I started this blog that it wouldn't turn into yet another amateur travelogue, full of endless photos of the landscape which, after a while, all merge into one however beautiful they are. But today I feel the need to indulge myself and share with you a few photos that I took either at, or on the way to, school (click to enlarge):

The view from my classroom

Hudson Bay, as seen from the school

Smoke on the water...(go on, you know you want to!)

The last photo - not the best quality as it was literally taken through my classroom window - shows the phenomenon of sea smoke, or steam devils, caused when warmer air covers colder waters and winds are calm. The locals view this as a sign that the freeze has really begun, and if there's one thing I've learned to trust in my time here, it's local knowledge when it comes to the weather.

Finally, since I started writing, the temperature has dropped to -20°C (-28°C with windchill), so not only does this illustrate what I was just saying about local knowledge regarding the weather, it also means that it's time to break open the hot chocolate and marshmallows (the little, hot chocolate mug variety). Night, night.

A sad day

I heard some very sad news earlier this week. Last Sunday, a boy I used to teach in the UK, named Sam, collapsed and died during a soccer match in which he was playing. He was only 16. I received an email from a parent at the school to tell me the news, and I had to read it three or four times to take it in. Sam's father was watching his son play, as he always did, and another former pupil of mine was playing on the opposite team.

The term 'tragedy' is over-used in life, especially in sport, but I can't think of a better word to describe what happened here. Sam's family were the most friendly, caring and supportive people you could wish to meet, and his father was, and still is, someone for whom I have huge respect. He always came to support our school teams, whether his sons were playing or not, and he was always positive, never negative; "did you have fun?" was always his first question after each match.

I'm sure his boy was having fun last Sunday. He was such a committed, competitive and talented young man, and it is extraordinarily difficult to comprehend that he has gone. I would love to be back in England at this time so that I could pay my respects in person, and it's at times like this that I wonder what I'm actually doing in Canada, let alone the sub-Arctic. I've called this country 'home' for the last three and a bit years and I enjoy living and working here, but such tragedies bring into focus the very notion of 'home'. Where is it, precisely? Is it where the heart is? Or wherever you lay your hat? Or even on the range? I've done more travelling in the last five years than in the rest of my life put together, and I think my vision of home has become increasingly blurred during that time...

That's quite enough navel-gazing for now though. I have nothing but fond memories of Sam, and it is intolerably unfair that he has been taken from his family so suddenly and so unexpectedly. On tonight's CSI: NY, Detective Mac Taylor commented that we should make the most of the time that we spend with the ones we care about, and that rings especially true today. Godspeed to you, Sam.

Off The Buses

This is most probably a post that should be marked 'for Brits only.'

I read today that the actor Reg Varney has died at the ripe old age of 92. Many of you may now be exclaiming 'Reg who?', but as one of the stars of On The Buses, he was one of the most familiar faces on British TV in the seventies, playing the character of bus driver Stan Butler. On The Buses was a classic British working class sitcom, and it actually still gets shown over here in Canada from time to time, rather incongruously on Vision TV, a station that mainly broadcasts religious programming. Ironically though, in the novel The Garden Of Unearthly Delights by Robert Rankin, On The Buses has become the basis of a religious cult in the distant future, so maybe this is a case of life imitating art, or something like that?

And here is a most interesting piece of trivia (well, I find it interesting):

Did you know that Reg Varney was the first ever person to withdraw cash from an ATM? Quite why Mr Varney was afforded such a privilege I simply don't know, but when Barclays installed the first ever ATM at its branch in the London borough of Enfield in 1967, it was he who made the first withdrawal.

Thanks for the laughs, Reg.

There but for the grace of God...

I woke up late this morning. 8:32 a.m. to be precise. A power cut some time during the night had reset my clock and the alarm hadn't gone off. My class starts at nine, so it was a mad rush to get out of the house. No shower, no breakfast, just get dressed and go. Bugger.

However, my cursing at this misfortune stopped as soon as I got outside. One of the houses opposite me, a house that I see and walk past every day, was no longer there. It had burned down. There was nothing left save for a large pile of charred wood. Suddenly my problems were put into stark perspective.

I had never witnessed a house fire before, and now here was one almost on my doorstep. When I got to school I learned that no one had been hurt, which was the most important thing, but here was a poor family who had suddenly lost everything, literally overnight. I can't possibly imagine how I'd cope with that. Since I've been in the North I've learned to become less attached to 'things', but I still can't comprehend what it would be like to be stripped of everything you own, without any warning.

Earlier this year, the smoke alarm in my house kept going off despite there being no visible signs of smoke, so I called maintenance. When they came to the house they went to the boiler room and found that the furnace could have exploded at any time due to a blockage somewhere. It was quite a sobering moment; there but for the grace of God went I.

We all walk a thin line in this life, and 90% of the time we forget that fact. When there's an accident on the motorway, everyone drives slowly for the next mile or so, but the image soon fades and then it's back to the normal grand prix circus. I guess if we didn't think like this then we'd be too scared to do anything, but for one brief moment we are forced to confront our own mortality and we are made to realise just how ephemeral our existence is on this planet.

Time for tea.

Lest we forget

It was Remembrance Day today; here in the North, remembrance focuses on the anniversary of the JBNQA, but I wanted to mention the events at the Cenotaph in London. Just four British veterans remain from all those who fought in WW1. Just four. Think about it. Four out of all those millions. Very soon, the Great War will officially no longer be in 'living memory.'

So no funny observations or trivial comment today.

Henry Allingham, Harry Patch, Bill Stone and Claude Choules, we salute you.

Bucking the trend

I read today that Starbucks has seen its profits virtually wiped out as a result of the current economic climate. In the article was one of the finest examples of corporate double-speak that I've seen in a long time, from Starbucks chief executive, Howard Schultz:

"With a re-architected cost structure...we began the new fiscal year with a healthier store portfolio that will allow for operating margin expansion."

Kind of sums up the pretentiousness that goes hand in hand with Starbucks; in other words, they're closing the stores that don't make money in order to cut their losses. Now, if Starbucks goes under, we will be faced with a very perplexing problem: where do all the pseudo-intellectual would-be writers go with their laptops (most probably Macs) so that everyone can see them write?

Answers on a postcard, please. An Iced Single Vente, 7 pump Peppermint, Caramel Sauce Top and Bottom, Light Ice, No whip, Mocha postcard.

A week is a long time...

In the words of Gary Glitter - probably not the best role model for a teacher, I know - 'Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again!' I've been very neglectful of the blog this past week, and I promise to do better in future!

Well, what's been happening in the past week? We had Halloween and the prerequisite party last weekend, I invited friends over and actually cooked for them this weekend - I'll just give you a few moments to take that in - and in between times there was an historic, era-defining election that you may have heard about, the result of which installed a vibrant, 47 year old into power with the largest victory at the polls in nigh on a decade..

So, with that election in mind, I'd like to congratulate Mr John Key on becoming the new prime minister of New Zealand, and I wish him every success in guiding his country through the tough times ahead.

We are currently in the grips of a 'severe wind warning' here (fnarr, fnarr!), but with no snow at the moment there's no prospect of a blizzard, which is just as well considering we have the next two days off. Monday is a pedagogical day, or 'Ped Day' for short - our equivalent of a training day - so whilst it's not really a holiday we have no students in, and Tuesday is the holiday to mark the anniversary of the James Bay Agreement, an auspicious date in the history of Northern Canada.

Consequently, I should have plenty of time for new postings this week, assuming that there are no lawsuits filed following the digestion of the pizzas I made for my guests on Saturday, so tune in again soon to catch up on the wacky shenanigans that go on up here in Arctic Fun Land!

That's gotta hurt...

I just had to post this; I swear I'm not making it up, and this was exactly how it happened.

I was watching the CW11 channel last night (which I think broadcasts out of New York), and during the commercials in Family Guy - it was the episode where Peter goes blind after attempting to break the world record for eating nickels - there was a preview for the evening news. It trailed three stories, in this order:

"Coming up on tonight's CW at 10, we look at how the financial crisis is affecting you, we reveal the shocking surprise that a local man found in his hot dog bun, and we uncover evidence that proves that there might be truth in the story of a Brooklyn cop who claims he was sodomised with a fellow officer's walkie-talkie."

Unfortunately, I had to help out at my school's Halloween dance and I never got to see the news.

Damn shame; I really wanted to see what was in those hot dog buns.