Monday 4 December 2006

A New Month

December is upon us ... And with it came ...

...Winter
Vancouver and Western Canada have been snowed under last week - 20-30 cms of snow, power outages, water outages. Toronto and Southern Ontario have been having mild, pleasant weather. And people wondered why we chose Toronto instead of Vancouver... Okay, admittedly that was unusual weather especially for Toronto at this time of the year. What can I say... I whined enough so Someone Up There must have heard me ;) Last week was wonderfully mild in terms of weather, peaking 15C on Thursday, although it was overcast and raining.

However, now Winter Has Arrived, and we are seeing flurries almost every day, and light snow overnight. Temperatures are max -1C. Still not too bad, but with wind chill, it feels about -10C ... so says theweathernetwork.com. Me... I think anything below 5C is freezing cold, so now it's just extremes of coldest, even-more-than-coldest and freaking-cold! Gee, I can't wait till February :-D

It snowed on Friday night - nothing heavy, just enough to make everything white and pretty for when we woke up in the morning. It had all melted by noon though.

Looks like I'll be doing my driver's test in the snow at peak hour traffic next week. Not sure how they are going to test my highway on- and off-ramp skills in those conditions! So in terms of this, we have rented a car again, and as luck would have it, we managed to get a Nissan Versa (called the Tiida in SA) for the week! So now we are doing the ultimate test drive. After driving it for three days though, we have pretty much made up our minds that we do like it, and it is high on our list for our first Canadian vehicle purchase.

...My First Tip Slip!
It's different to SA in that we are paid bi-monthly (every two weeks) instead of monthly. So I got that first Canadian payslip last week Thursday... wow, tax deductions, the root of all payday evils. So I'll try not to spend what I do get all in one place ;) At least not until the big Winter sales begin!

... Christmas Shopping Hours
The stores are now pretty open "late". Considering that normal shopping hours are until 21h00 weeknights, this means that stores are now open until 22h00 or 23h00. Everywhere is bedecked with Christmas decorations and goodies... at least now it makes "sense" to see winterised Christmas decor ;-) I must say, the Canadians really take to Christmas decorating with much aplomb: houses have been draped with Christmas lights (hung up before the cold weather arrived), and lawns displaying reindeer, snowmen and Santa Claus in bright lights. This makes for festive viewing (and distraction) when driving along the suburban roads at night.

Not much else to update on, now that I am working the days are flying by ... back to the drone of daily life :)

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