Second impressions

This will probably be a little repetitive, since it covers most of the same material as my lovely wife, but with my more judgmental take. First, a particular thank you to Dave for his incredibly good advice regarding blogs, which we have promptly ignored, and Emmett and Aimee for showing how a travel blog can be done.

Our first impressions of Calgary are magical: we arrive to clear skies and warm temperatures, go to bed, and wake up to snow. The people are friendly and helpful at all times, nothing is a rush, and everything seems well. Even government officials are efficient, courteous and helpful. The landscape is amazing, and the city is spread out giving it a spacious feel.

After a couple of days however, culture shock, both good and bad arrived. First it is the little things that confuse you like making sure you look the right way before crossing the road. Even walking can be a bit tiring because you naturally drift to the left and have to move out of the way. Sales tax is always additional to the advertised price, making everything six percent more difficult to calculate and twenty percent more frustrating.

The most alien thing so far are Canadian cell phones. Canada is locked in the stone age of cell phones, where man rode dinosaurs while talking on analogue phones. Charging for calls received is standard, most pre pay plans still charge you each day, and plans usually come with additional network access fees (and tax, always tax) over the standard plan cost (and the plan fee gives you basically nothing other than the ability to be charged for receiving calls). In addition, a cell phone number here is a local number, which sounds good, until you realize that leaving the environ of Calgary will make all your calls long distance calls (yes, including the ones you receive).

There are upsides though, such as most things are a little bit cheaper (even factoring in sales tax and conversion rate) or the local mall being the size of a major mall back home. The student union center has a full food court (including fast food and normal restaurants), and just about every service you might need (including a comic store, and a second hand book store, two things very high on my list of needed things at a uni). The Canadians also have somewhat whimsical streak at times, with the dollar being affectionately referred to as the Loonie.

So the preliminary verdict is Canada is a pretty good place to be. This week however brings starting job proper, so we’ll see how things go.