The start to my commute this morning

Courage, lads!

Canadianisms

One of the things that makes my life like The Twilight Zone is living in a place so similar to the U.S. that little differences can go unnoticed. Something's "off" once and I think, Huh, that's strange, and forget about it. But something's "off" twice or more and I start wondering, Hey, what's going on here?

Case in point: You walk into a coffee shop here in Canada and the first thing you're likely to hear is the barista calling out to you, "Hey dare!"

Huh?

The first time I heard this was at Tim Horton's on the UBC campus (affectionately called "Timmy Ho Ho's" by some). A middle-aged Asian lady was calling this out to each student at the front of the line to bring him or her to the register. What I heard was "Hey, dear!" and I thought, How cute, even How maternal, given how many students in line were the right age and race to have been her own. I thought maybe she knew these students personally -- had seen the same faces every day order a "double double" (Canadian for two sugars, two creams) -- but then I noticed she was using this greeting on everyone, including me. (I admit, I kind of liked it. It made me want to call my mom.) So, she couldn't have been saying this to only people she knew. Still, maybe she just wanted to pass out a little maternal love. This was Canada, after all: the Queen Mum, socialism, and all that.

Then I realized the other cashiers, mostly Asian as well, were using this greeting too. Maybe they all learned it from the first lady, the Madame Chiang Kai-shek of the UBC Timmy Ho Ho's? There was no way to know for sure (unless, I suppose, I asked).

And then I let the issue go. I discovered the math department lunch room houses a fantastic coffee maker, and I've been using that one now for weeks. So I forgot about Tim Horton's, stopped wondering what "Hey dare" meant, and got back to more pressing concerns, like work....

Until last Sunday when I was visiting a Starbucks near my apartment. I'd been riding my bike that evening and was on my way home when I decided to get something sweet. (Factoid: Starbucks gift cards work in the U.S. and Canada. Wondroid: Do they work in other countries too?) I was making a bee-line to the goody case, but then I heard the barista say very distinctly, "Hey there!" It was unmistakable.

And then it hit me: Was this what the Timmy Ho Ho ladies were saying all along? Was I mistaking "there" for "dear" all this time, mistaking their impersonal locator for a term of endearment? I started to feel like the pretty girl at school had waved to me then come to find she'd really waved to the jock behind me.

But maybe in the end, there's room for both explanations. After all, maybe to Asian ears new to the English language "Hey there" sounds a lot like "Hey, dear" and all those Asian baristas are saying the latter. I'm okay with that. As Robert Sapolsky, professor of neurology at Stanford University, pointed out in a 2003 article in Natural History, there's a "pleasure of 'maybe'," that is, of keeping the possibility intact. Whether "Hey there" or "Hey, dear," either way's not so bad.

Top 5 suggestive Ann Arbor restaurant names

5. Mysore Woodlands

4. Afternoon Delight

3. Sushi dot come

2. Rod's Diner

1. The One Eyed Moose (now Monkey Bar)

Neruda

I've recently discovered the poetry of Pablo Neruda. I can't say anything about his politics -- I can only hope it doesn't involve killing babies or kittens -- but I'm blown away by how he melds nature and human emotion. I was feeling down this Saturday afternoon, and a chance encounter in a downtown Vancouver bookstore left me feeling, if not better, at least empathized:

Inclinado en las tardes tiro mis tristes redes
a tus ojos oceanicos.

Have I shown you the late afternoon view out my office window? It faces west -- toward the ocean, though you can't see water -- and on those afternoons when the day's been cloudy and the sun comes out only long enough to say goodbye, when my spirit sags like basset hound ears, I think about casting my thoughts out on the water. I think of those I love, their distance from me, and hope they'll feel my mental mesh pass them by in the deep waters of the Pacific. Pulling up my nets I'm quarry-less.

I always thought the Retiarius -- the net-thrower -- had the worst chance of all the Roman gladiators....

Gray days

On Friday the skies over Vancouver darkened, as if we were all in a movie theater and the movie was about to start. But the movie never started -- the previews never even showed up -- the lights remained dimmed, and the skies were blanketed gray the whole weekend.

For a few minutes, sunlight broke through the pall and limned the edges of clouds above and fence slats and building faces below. But as soon as the sight could be appreciated, the sun retreated, as if she were a beauty who shied away from the very attention she drew, and Vancouver returned to its natural state. Skies the color of mud.

I'd planned on going on a long bike ride or two, to see the city or even the ocean, but those ambitions faded whenever rain plinked my window and I thought of rain down the legs of my pants and mist on my glasses. I spent most of the weekend skulking on my haunches.

I live in the quietest of neighborhoods in Vancouver. As guidebooks are quick to point out, everything south of Broadway is residential and too quiet for its own good. On maps cartographers are wont to lay insets -- enlargements of the downtown area -- over the neighborhood where I live. They know there's not much to miss here, unless you haven't seen one-story houses lined up in rows.

And so I wait. The winter solstice having passed, I know longer, more pleasant days are ahead, when we in the northern latitudes trade 20-hour nights for 20-hour days and get back the bottle deposit we paid when we bought this six-pack of winter ail. I'll count the minutes the days lengthen: one or two minutes here and there, an hour each month. I'll wait for sunnier days.

Making up stuff

What makes a good new word? I don't know for sure -- I'm no etymologist, no linguist either -- but how about this: immediate recognizability.

With that in mind, I give you -- no, I create for you -- this word: the snowhawk. No definition, just a picture: