Boring Christmas

Having to sum up this Christmas with one word, I would choose boredom. Christmas has never meant much to me: no big dinners with relatives, no gifts or stuff like that, no annoying carols.

This time, more than others, absolutely nothing remarkable happened. The annoying sense of sleepiness  that has accompanied me through the day and the rainy weather killed the curiosity towards my first Christmas in Vancouver and led me soon in the afternoon to give up the idea of a movie at the cinema in downtown, preferring to split unequally my time between bed and computer.

Pretty sad, I admit it, especially considered at least somebody had more fun than me: a housemate of mine is singing now something incomprehensible in his room, being drunk as usual.

The consideration it was my first Christmas far from my family after 6 years just added a bit of melancholy to this tasteless “Christmas Cake”.

Tomorrow it will be just another ordinary day, swearing at the fact I have to go to work on 26^th, as I did on 24^th.

That being said, I can’t really say I have fully experienced a Canadian Christmas, other than the most classic dinner ever for that time (turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes) together with housemates and landlady.

Walking in rush on Vancouver street (or more correctly running to catch the public means) I haven’t really seen many signs of Christmas, like decorative lights hung over the streets as it would happen in any Italian city; Christmas seems to be more “on the air”, with radio stations overcrowded with Christmas songs, quizzes and news about the national sport that plays its finals on 25^th December: shopping.

What a hell of a month

I feel like I’m just back home from my weekly shopping and I’ve just dropped my heavy backpack filled in with the stuff I bought, just in time to avoid the collapse of my painful shoulders.

The feeling in this case is psychological though, as I’m coming from extra busy week, and this has been my first spare Sunday since a while. I’ve been so busy lately I don’t even know where to start from this post.

Well… let’s start saying I finally relocated. Cost of the rent was one reason, but my choice is due to the impossibility to get along with my former landlord, the most selfish person I’ve ever dealt with, and definitely somebody fully classifiable as an asshole.

When he was around it was impossible to me to talk with my parents on Skype at 9:30pm because he had to sleep in the room beside my shithole, but then he didn’t scruple to talk loud on his bloody mobile phone while I was sleeping. To live there had become a nightmare, like being in prison, and I honestly could not stand anymore an idiot complaining because I was washing the dishes “too well” after dinner. Yeah, go to a restaurant and complain with the waiter the dish you have is too clean, sucker!

So I decided to move, but Mr. Weather was not by my side when I relocated on 31^st October: careless of Halloween celebrations that day it was raining cats and dogs and Yaletown streets had been turned into rivers. No wonder after a while I felt like there were fishes swimming under my trousers.

While I was swearing against the weather on my way to the Skytrain station I came to think how simple was the life when I was a teen-ager, recalling a Halloween night of 15 years ago when I went to a disco dressed like a stupid ghost just to get a discounted entrance ticket, failing miserably and putting in danger my reputation (the costume was really bad!).

As the world does not really care about your difficulties, I had also to deal with an extra amount of work. Beside my part-time job in the morning I’ve been overcharged with stuff to do in the afternoon and even at night.

The company I’m doing my internship in is about to launch their products worldwide. Guess what? I’m the only Italian there, so everything related to the Italian market has to pass through myself: marketing research, analysis, testing their products online, translations of so many documents I lost count, and of course translation of their web pages. Everything, of course, rigorously unpaid. So my days so far have been like that: running to catch bus and Skytrain in the morning, working, running again (while eating my lunch) to catch bus and Skytrain in the afternoon (and let me tell you Usain Bolt would be proud of me), working, get a Red Bull or some kind of caffeine not to faint on the desk, yes running once again (see above), going home, cooking, working ‘till 11:00pm, midnight, 01:00am, it depends, Saturday nights included. And since simple things are not for me, one of my new housemates is as funny as crazy and noisy, and he never stops talking, especially to himself, even at night; so once again it’s been pretty hard to me to sleep properly and find some residual energy to wake up in the morning to start again with this wicked and restless cycle.  

ITALIAN ON Tutto questo alla faccia di quel povero stronzo fallito (e spero che tu legga) che ha avuto il coraggio di dire che in Canada io ho trovato la strada spianata. Di spianato c’è solo il tuo intelletto, coglione! ITALIAN OFF.

It’s hard, it is indeed, but that’s how things are. Sometimes I feel sick and tired and I’d like just to say fuck off to the world, leave everything and getting back home (last time I hugged my family it was in January). But then I come to think at home it would be not just harder but hopeless to struggle for my future, and I conclude that my battle for now is here: there’s no retreat, only victory or defeat!

Ugliness

Definition of ugliness according to WordReference (yes, again, it’s turning into my best friend): “unpleasant or repulsive in appearance”.

If you agree with that then everybody should take as an example that horror on four legs I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago about.

I was walking around Yaletown with a friend of mine on a Friday night, when my attention was caught by that “thing” I saw beyond the glass door of a condo hall. The intent was probably to create a sort of lamp out of the ordinary, but the result was a real obscenity: introducing the lamp-horse (or maybe the horse-lamp, readers, please assist me).

It was such a horrid thing that I couldn’t resist to take a picture of that and to write this post now. Even another chap stopped by at the entrance of the condo to take a photo, obviously attracted by the bad taste of that object, as confirmed by his words.

I am not an aesthete, but coming from the land of Michelangelo and Leonardo my deep nature as human being got really shaken and upset, also considering that “un-art” was placed in full view of the pedestrians, illuminated by the hall lights. If I were a parent I would just cover the eyes of my children.

I don’t want to start an erudite disquisition over beauty vs. ugliness, but I believe the former may indeed be also something simple, whereas the latter must always be complex at some extent, involving a wicked intelligence that on purpose makes something resulting in a punch on the eyes. Ugliness is not about combining two things opposite each other, as to the contrary it can give an original contrast highlighting a specific characteristic or detail, but rather the combination of two or more things totally disconnected each other, like a lamp and a horse. Really, what does have to do a lamp with a horse?

City of contrasts Vancouver, where  the beautiful scenario of parks and skyscrapers just clashes with the syringes of east downtown, and where the simple beauty of rock balancing is compensated by the complex ugliness of the luminous horse.

Time

Vancouver is really expensive, but to find a job won’t be of any help to you. To the contrary, it will make the things even worse.

In fact I found out this city is expensive not only in terms of money, but also in terms of time.

Lately I am really running out of this precious resource, and my lifestyle is getting harder and harder.

I get up at 6:45 to start working in my part-time position in Richmond. Taking things sometimes too easy when at home, that just means running down the streets to take the Skytrain.

I finish at 12:30 just to run again: Skytrain to downtown and walk to go to my internship (unpaid of course!).

When I get back home I just have some spare time for my dinner and then again I do some research on the net for my internship. It’s been going on like that for less than a month and I already feel exhausted and craving for a holiday,

Week-ends are not so much better: clean my room, wash my stuff, go for cheap shopping alternatives (that is to say T&T in Chinatown, that is also to say at least 1 hour and half to go and come back).

The Old Dirty Dublin, when to go for shopping it was a 5-minute walk matter is just a pale memory now.

I now understand why everybody in Vancouver seems to be always busy.

I don’t even know how I will find some time to dedicate to my blog.

I reckon I won’t be so sad to enjoy a long week-end next week, as probably it will be one of the last sunny period. The time has been busy too passing by, and if you don’t believe the calendar you gotta believe the cool air in the morning, the roasted chestnuts sellers (they are so autumnal in Italy!) and the rows of pumpkins in the supermarkets (already??? Is not Halloween in a month time???).

Coincidences do not exist

Definition of coincidence according to WordReference: “a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection”.

I never believed in coincidences, as I try to give a rational explanation to everything, but apparently such a definition would fit perfectly what happened to me in the afternoon.

I was on my way home, after an interview for an internship in West Georgia Street, when I noticed a girl walking the opposite way looking vaguely familiar. She may have thought the same, as she gave me a look and a smile.

We turned around simultaneously and… surprise: it came out we knew each other.

She’s a French girl who was my colleague in Ireland, working in my same department.

I had no idea she was in Canada since we lost any contact maybe 4 years ago. To meet again in Vancouver it was as probable as to win the lottery.

She’s settled down here now, with permanent residence and a baby almost ready to be born.

She told me she came to Canada with her partner because it was her dream. Totally understandable, given that many people have a romantic vision of Canada as the land of the big open spaces, wild nature, bears and beavers, and so on. And this is a valid reason to attract people.

But then I started thinking on the number of Italians I met here so far, with less romantic, probably more practical and surely more important reasons to travel so far from home: the hope for a better future.

As economically Europe is literally going down, more and more people come to Vancouver with the not so secret hope to remain here with a stable job. An Italian I’m going to take the place of at work said it right: “We are refugees”. Yes, in some way we are refugees, victims not of an ethnic conflict like the ones you hear about on the news coming from distant lands, but rather victims of an economic war we didn’t want, we cannot fight, and we can only flee from.

As this war is going to have more and more losers, it might actually happen again to find some old new face on the streets of Vancouver. Maybe I am right: coincidences do not exist.

A matter of balance (another rock on the pile)

Having the privilege to live now very close to English Bay I took advantage of the August sunny weather to enjoy walks, fresh air and a magnificent view.

It’s been during my walks I first noticed something I had never heard of: bounces of stones in a sort of precarious balance.

At a closer sight the mystery was unveiled: nature has an artistic side, but in this case the patience of man was behind that little work of art.

You can actually spot people who, mindless of the warmth and the sun, with infinite patience put stones upon stones, one on top of one other, building a sort of tower, a pile at a time resistant and fragile, simple and beautiful.

They do it with no hurry, with care, having as “ingredients” only hands, patience, creativity and of course rocks. No glue at all is used. They just live a sign beside the sidewalk asking for a contribution.

Willing to know more I found out this art is called rock balancing and is practiced in several countries, therefore not being an exclusive of Vancouver.

It’s impressive how people can use even simple things to make something creative, but what I mostly like is to see people walking by just standing and admiring the performance, or maybe taking pictures.

A silent sign of approval, when I’m sure in Italy the idiot on call would try to make fall the pile down.

Someone could say they’re just bounces of stones, but I’d say you can find art in Vancouver as well, not in the shape of a medieval castle but in a tiny thing like a stone pile, a rocky hymn to perseverance.

Something where the balance is everything: balance for the stability of the structure, but also balance between the challenge to something as natural as the gravity and the respect for the beauty of the landscape doing something non-intrusive.

I feel a little bit like those stones: I know I can be strong, fighting for what I want to achieve, but the balance is always shivering and could get broken at any time, as anything here is still so temporary to me.

A part-time job I am about to start after a short period of unemployment is only another rock on the pile; I would really need some glue to make it if not artistic, at least stable.