Getting the hang of it all

Well the good news is, I do feel like I'm settling in a bit now. Today, someone approached me and asked me where Seymour and Davie was. Now, once upon a time, in the not-too-dim and distant past, I'd have wondered who Seymour and Davie were and why I should know what they were up to. But now, quick as a flash, I replied "One or two blocks down and one block over". Oh yes. If I hadn't said it in my self-consciously plummy English voice, he'd have thought I was a native, of that I've no doubt.

One thing I do need to tackle though, is my fear of small change. Let me explain. Notes, I can do. They're colourful on the whole and have the numbers written clearly on them, so I have no problem handing them over as though I've been doing it all my life. The coins, however, imbibe me with a sense of apprehension. I go to buy a coke and look into my [overfull with change after all the note usage] purse, but without taking each coin out individually, peering at it this way and that in the available light to see the value hidden somewhere within the decoration and, let's face it, looking like a numpty in the process, I can't just throw the correct change the cashier's way. The other thing that drives me mad is that uniquely North American thing of not including the tax (VAT equivalent) in the advertised price, most of the time anyway. So you go to buy something for $2.99, with $3 clutched in your sweaty palm, and the woman behind the till says "That's $3.24" (or whatever the rate is - I haven't worked it out and with my limited grasp of maths, probably never will). But then the next time you go to buy something that costs, say, $1.35, you deliberately go up with something approaching $2 just in case, and then they say "That's $1.35 please". I just don't bloody get it.

This morning I went to the Granville Island market, which was very pleasant - the food market was fab. I bought some Golden Raspberries, which are just like normal raspberries but they aren't red. Strange. But delicious. I wandered round for ages, bought some sourdough bread (yum) and then hopped on a ferry over to the main part of Vancouver again, got lost (happens to me alot but it's okay, I get where I want to be eventually) then headed over to the Harbour Centre, which has some spectacular views, which you can see in my updated photo album here. In order to get up to the viewing gallery, you go up a glass-fronted lift on the outside of the building, which ascends at one story per second. After contemplating the wisdom of this for a few seconds, I turned to the two older American women I was sharing the lift with and said "This probably isn't the moment to mention Towering Inferno, is it?" Apparently, it wasn't.