A false economy

Well, we've now managed to track down our boxes. They are languishing in red tape purgatory in Kuujjuaq, with my school board claiming that they are 'personal effects' and consequently our responsibility in terms of cargo fees. My contract allows me a certain amount of food cargo in a year though - an allowance which I have not come close to using up - and Melanie and I have spent the afternoon continuing the game of phone tag that we began yesterday in an attempt to convince the Board the boxes did in fact contain food as opposed to some form of contraband personal items. I think everything has now been sorted out and we should be receiving our boxes tomorrow...we shall see.

In the meantime, we ventured down to the Co-op yesterday where there is currently a 'promotion week', meaning that many items have been discounted to prices comparable to or, in some cases even cheaper than, the south. We didn't go mad, but we were able to buy a few essentials, such as enough toilet roll to last me until I leave in May, as well as some nice cookies (which could probably be counted as essentials if I think about it) for a knockdown price, and when I got home from school today we opened one of the packets of cookies - Voortman's Almond Krunch.

Melanie took one bite and immediately spat it straight back out, but I carried on with mine, branding her a fussy eater and muttering something along the lines of 'at least they were cheap.' The more I ate the more I realised that they did in fact taste a bit funny though, and it was at this stage that Melanie checked the sell by date...

March 30 2007.

I'm glad we bought the toilet roll.

Thanks for what?

It's not without irony - proper irony too, none of your Morissettian misunderstanding here - that on Thanksgiving Day (for Americans, anyway) I'm feeling somewhat down and decidedly unthankful. I've been ill for the last couple of days which hasn't helped (although I've still managed to make it into school), and in that time a number of problems and challenges have presented themselves which have led me to question whether where I am at the moment is actually where I want to be.

I won't burden you with the details of my travails - after all, a problem shared is a problem doubled - save to say that none of them are life-threatening and, compared to all the troubles that exist in the rest of the world, none of them are probably worth fretting and fussing over at all. However, one doesn't live in 'the rest of the world,' and in the part of it that forms my own personal little bubble there are a great many frustrations to be dealt with at the moment. Any one in isolation could be manageable but problems, like buses, never seem to arrive on their own and their effect on each other tends to be exponential rather than summative.

The fact that I've started to use words like exponential and summative is probably a sign that I should sign off now. The working man's tonic, otherwise known as the weekend, is almost upon us, and a couple of day's R&R is probably just what I need right now. Thanks for reading, and I promise to make the next post a little more light-hearted!

Christmas in September

It felt like Christmas today.

Firstly, the container ship that was carrying our cargo of school supplies finally arrived, and now we have paper and binders for our classes. Earlier today my students actually used up the last piece of writing paper that we had in the classroom, so the ship's appearance couldn't have come at a better time; quite what we would have used to write on next week I hadn't figured out yet.

Then, having returned home at the end of the school day, I received a knock on the door from our centre director, Mark Tertiluk, who was kindly delivering four boxes of food that had just arrived at the airport for me! Melanie flew back to the UK yesterday for a very brief visit - she flies back to Canada on Monday - and on her way to Montreal she dropped off said boxes at Air Inuit HQ. Apparently they were originally going to take a couple of weeks to come up, but Melanie smiled at the right people and, lo and behold, here they are. Talk about service!

I now have just about the fullest larder that I've ever had in my time in the North - Melanie had even managed to slip in a box of Timbits for me, a rare pleasure in these parts - and after a week of illness, I suddenly feel much better!

A sight for saw eyes

Whilst nowhere near 100% I'm still here, so you can call off the search parties. I stayed at home yesterday, but a few hours of daytime TV convinced me of the need to return to work today. In actual fact, the cable service went down for a few hours during the day, maybe due to the high winds that gave us a weather warning for a brief period; winds like that in the winter are going to give us some spectacular blizzard days!

As I said, I still don't feel too well, but being a typical guy I haven't yet paid a visit to the nursing station. Whether I have H1N1 I'm not sure - it could be R2D2 or C3P0 for all I know - but I guess I ought to get checked out if I don't feel better soon. We have a ped day on Friday and this, coupled with the Labour Day holiday on Monday, at least gives me a long weekend in which to recover; a story I heard today also made me realise that perhaps I should show a little more resolution.

The council are laying new water pipes in the street where our friends, the Beatties, live, and as they were leaving the house yesterday morning one of the workmen was attempting to cut a pipe with a circular saw. I say 'attempting,' because the saw proceeded to bounce off the pipe and cut into the poor man's face and neck, narrowly missing his jugular but leaving a huge gash from the nose down. A bag of frozen peas quickly appeared to act as a cold compress - I think this was actually the reason for their invention - and once the ambulance arrived the Beatties made their various ways to work. When the first of the Beatties got home at the end of the day there were still workmen attending to the pipes, and guess what? One of them was sporting an impressive display of stitches from his nose down to his neck.

They breed them tough in Canada.

Chillin' and illin'

I've made my feelings about swine flu quite clear in previous posts, and although I still firmly believe that the panic and paranoia surrounding the outbreak is mostly due to a mixture of hype and ignorance, I can't deny the fact that I've been quite ill for the past three days and feeling quite sorry for myself. Whether I have swine flu, regular flu or just a very heavy cold is a matter for debate, but I spent most of the weekend curled up on the sofa flicking through the TV channels in a vain hope of finding something to watch other than infomercials.

Weekend television was never a highlight on the schedules in the UK (other than the sport) and it's just the same in Canada. Many stations don't even bother broadcasting actual shows for large parts of the day, opting instead to expose us to the virtues of the Magic Bullet, Slap Chop and Sham Wow (notice how all these products have two word titles?).

At least I have the option of TV I guess, now that my boxes have arrived, and if I continue to feel as bad then I might be sampling the delights of weekday daytime TV tomorrow. I struggled through today at school, but I don't know if I'll be able to manage tomorrow. It might have to be Regis & Kelly and Martha Stewart instead, with a trip to the nursing station sandwiched somewhere in between. Assuming I survive, I'll let you know what happens; if there aren't any new posts by Friday, send out the search parties...

The demise of Angus

After bemoaning the fact that we needed a change to liven things up, I've been struck down by the Arctic equivalent of Delhi Belly - 'Tundra Tummy' maybe? - and am currently enjoying, or should that be enduring, an unscheduled day at home. To compound matters, I also received some sad news from the UK.

You may remember, a couple of posts ago, that I wrote about the terrible winter that the home country is enduring, and I posted a picture of Angus the snowman in my mum's back garden. Well, it would seem that winter has now released its icy grip, and it is my sad duty to inform you that Angus is no more:

May he rest in peace.

Snow, sickness and slush

Sometimes you get days or weeks when everything seems to be upside down (unless you live in Australia, where this is permanently the case), and this week has been one such occasion. For me, it began with my stomach being turned upside down - there's been 'a lot of it about' up here recently - the result of which was Monday and Tuesday passing in a hazy mixture of daytime TV and frequent visits to the bathroom; many would say that there is a provable link between daytime TV and frequent visits to the bathroom without the need of a virulent stomach virus, but in my case I can assure you that Regis and Kelly and The Young and the Restless were not culpable.

Aside from my stomach, the weather has also been somewhat upside down this past week. The UK has ground to a halt as a result of the worst winter storms in many a year, whilst up here we have had a slushy machine installed in the Northern store, and now have the incongruous sight of the local kids sipping on said beverages in temperatures that have been hovering around the -25° mark. Takes all sorts, I suppose. 

As the week comes to an end my stomach, whilst not fully back on an even keel, is getting a little better - rather than being upside down it's now merely at a jaunty angle - so I should be able to enjoy my weekend, and I might even treat myself to a slushy...or perhaps not!