Canadian differences
So what differences have I found over here?
* As expected, there is very little jaywalking but, prior to this, it was never clear why not. Vancouver is on a grid system with lights at every intersection. All the crossings in downtown Vancouver will automatically go to a pedestrian crossing phase without requiring a button to be pushed. However, strangely, if you do decide to jaywalk the cars will politely stop for you. This gives you a complete guilt trip as one presumes the drivers expect that your mission is important.
* Street collectors: The Salvation Army has collectors stationed at likely looking spots who stand there all day. So far, so fine. However, they all have a little set of hand bells which they jingle *all* *day* *long*. Maybe it's just my culture but it seems rather rude to me and I'm completely over the sound of tuneless bells. Occasionaly they send carolers out, especially in the evenings, but they often aren't very good.
* Toilets: The seats have little cutouts at the front - maybe Canadian men are lazy? The water level is also disconcertingly high. Forgive me, but I really don't want to be that familiar with my output.
* Coins: They still have pennies - and they still require pennies. It gets really annoying. Everytime you see a price you have to mentally add tax. Unfortunately you don't necessarily know if they've added both sales taxes or not (federal and provincial). Then, if you go to a restaurant, you have to mentally allow for a tip. The result of the sales taxes is that what you pay has some odd number of cents. As it's easier to give whole dollars you tend to get lots and lots of coins back. After a while, you start deliberately trying to pay the correct number of cents - or close to it.
* Sales: This might be a US and recession thing but there are a lot of sales here even before Christmas - and the discounts are steep. I was at Banana Republic today (medium-high end clothing store - think Barkers) which was running a 40% off everything sale for just one day. Sears, a similar department store (think Farmers), ran a surprise sale on Monday with buy 2 clearance items and get the 3rd for a dollar.
* As expected, there is very little jaywalking but, prior to this, it was never clear why not. Vancouver is on a grid system with lights at every intersection. All the crossings in downtown Vancouver will automatically go to a pedestrian crossing phase without requiring a button to be pushed. However, strangely, if you do decide to jaywalk the cars will politely stop for you. This gives you a complete guilt trip as one presumes the drivers expect that your mission is important.
* Street collectors: The Salvation Army has collectors stationed at likely looking spots who stand there all day. So far, so fine. However, they all have a little set of hand bells which they jingle *all* *day* *long*. Maybe it's just my culture but it seems rather rude to me and I'm completely over the sound of tuneless bells. Occasionaly they send carolers out, especially in the evenings, but they often aren't very good.
* Toilets: The seats have little cutouts at the front - maybe Canadian men are lazy? The water level is also disconcertingly high. Forgive me, but I really don't want to be that familiar with my output.
* Coins: They still have pennies - and they still require pennies. It gets really annoying. Everytime you see a price you have to mentally add tax. Unfortunately you don't necessarily know if they've added both sales taxes or not (federal and provincial). Then, if you go to a restaurant, you have to mentally allow for a tip. The result of the sales taxes is that what you pay has some odd number of cents. As it's easier to give whole dollars you tend to get lots and lots of coins back. After a while, you start deliberately trying to pay the correct number of cents - or close to it.
* Sales: This might be a US and recession thing but there are a lot of sales here even before Christmas - and the discounts are steep. I was at Banana Republic today (medium-high end clothing store - think Barkers) which was running a 40% off everything sale for just one day. Sears, a similar department store (think Farmers), ran a surprise sale on Monday with buy 2 clearance items and get the 3rd for a dollar.
posted by Edward Sargisson at 5:13 pm
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