Canada vs. England

Five reasons why Canada is better than England:

1. The scenery - and the weather - is far more dramatic. That's not say that England's rolling greenery isn't lovely, because it is, but you can't beat a huge mountain towering above you, let alone a series of the damn things. With snow. That you can actually ski on.
   
2. The service you get in shops and restaurants is far better than back home. People actually seem to want you to get what you want and be happy. I'm not used to that. I mean, if people just refrain from scowling at you when you are giving them your custom back home you think you've been blessed.
   
3. They have Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis. Okay, I haven't seen them yet, but I live in hope and I bet when I do they'll be bloody brilliant.
4. The supermarkets are huge, and as you may know, I love a huge supermarket. I can spend hours wandering round them looking at a load of old nonsense - thermal underwear, cheap electrical goods, gardening equipment - and not buying a thing.
5. Property is still cheap enough that a young couple can buy a 4 bedroomed, 2 bathroomed, huge basemented 'starter home'. As it should be. I have amazed many a Canadian with tales of how much my tiny 1 bed flat is worth.
   

Five reasons why England is better than Canada:

1. The supermarkets may be huge but most of the food in them is processed and over-packaged rubbish. I feel guilty and wasteful just looking at half of it. And you can't buy loads of stuff you get back home: proper sausages, for example. Or any kind of decent cheese, which is deeply ironic given that back home, I buy Canadian Cheddar because it kicks ass. You can't get oxo cubes. And you can't buy gravy granules unless you go to the British Import Store in the West Edmonton Mall and pay nearly $6 for them...*
2. You have to have a car here to get anywhere. Having spent the best part of a month without one, I know how true that is. When Darrell was here, we tried to take the bus from Leduc, where Megan & Craig live, into the nearest big city, Edmonton. It took us just over an hour to walk to the bus stop, $17 each for a ticket, a 45 min journey time and there was only 1 bus back so if you miss that, or it's at an inconvenient time, you're buggered. If you do try to walk, the place is just not geared up for pedestrians. Often you have to take massive detours just to cross a road, or there's no crossing at all. And of course if you cross where there's no crossing, you're technically committing the crime of jaywalking (but I love being naughty!) And the distances are so big. The Canadians think nothing of driving 2 hours for a quick visit somewhere. You look on a map and think, oh, that's just over there, but then you find out that it's a 12 hour drive! At least England is manageably small.
   
3. You think Starbucks are ubiquitous back home? You should see it here: they're everywhere - and most of them are drive-thrus. I actually thought Megan was joking when she first mentioned a drive-thru Starbucks, but nope. I've had to relax my stance on not buying from them simply because there's little other choice. The other big coffee company here is called Tim Horton's and even though the coffee is fairly mediocre, the queues at the drive-thru (natch) have to be seen to be believed. Megan tells me in all seriousness that they put something addictive in their coffee so people keep coming back; I'm inclined to believe her.
4. There are very few independent restaurants or shops over here, they're all big chains. This means that every time you go to a mall or retail park (because there aren't really 'high streets' to speak of so that's where you go to shop), you get the same few shops over and over. At least you know what you're getting, I suppose (though Vancouver did have some cool independently-owned places to be fair). It's the kooky little restaurants back home more than anything that I miss. Particularly curry houses, because it's not really a big thing over here and so I've not had any since I was home.
5. Telly. Oh how I miss English telly, as I knew I would. They may have a gazillion different channels out here, but they largely show rubbish all day and night. Rubbish, interspersed every 5 minutes by adverts. I tend to look through to try to find English stuff - How to Look Good Naked and Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare's have kept me almost sane - but it's nearly all American drama/action series, which is not really my cup of tea. Most of them are incomprehensible and/or packed full of clichés. Amusingly though, there's a big glut of English stars out here at the moment, and it never fails to make me smile wryly when I see Michelle Ryan (her off of Eastenders) playing The Bionic Woman with a - it has to be said - flawless American accent. Still, I can't shake off the image of her selling polyester blouses on a market stall, even when she's dropkicking a baddy. So I miss good English comedy and decent documentaries very much indeed. If you do see anything brilliant, please tell me, because there's lots of places online to watch them these days and I can try to track them down...

Oh and a quick mention goes to Greyhound, the bus service out here and the USA, who have screwed me over. I tried to buy my ticket to Banff online and it kept saying that it wouldn't process just now, could I try again later please? Eventually, after trying both my visa & debit cards, I gave up trying and Megan gave me a lift to the bus station to buy my ticket in person. However, the failed web purchases found their way onto my statements anyway, where, to date, they have taken an erroneous $200 from the 2 cards with a further $100 pending. On speaking to a customer service representative in Texas at length about this, after being passed from pillar to post around Canada first of course, I've been told that no, they've not taken any money from me at all. Oh, well, that's alright then. Other than the fact that you actually have. You bastards. Now I have to wait 15 days (for no particular reason) then send them copies of my statements to prove that they've stolen money from me and then they'll review it, and think about whether or not they'll return it, given that they don't believe that they have taken it in the first place because it's not on their system. Well it sure as heckfire is on mine, baby. Meh.

*A special prize goes to anyone who can name the three dishes I've cooked for Megan & Craig - a.k.a. Craigan - recently based on the clues provided. Jen, surely this should be easy for you?