Things that bug me about Canada

1. People spend so much time griping, complaining and worrying about things that are (I searched long and hard for an adjective that captured the volume I was going for) monumentally trivial. Worrying about whether or not there will be food on the table? Okay. Worrying about whether or not you should purchase a second iPhone or a Blackberry? Not.

2. You can't buy food on the street here. I took it for granted there, and I admit that I sometimes grumbled about having to leave the house to eat things, but there's something about the experience of having to go OUTSIDE to eat that turns it into something of a ritual. There were many days when that was the only reason I would leave my apartment, to go outside and get food, but here I've spent many a day without going outside at all. The thing was, when I WOULD go out to get things, I would often start a conversation with the restaurateur or the food stall owner as they were making my food, or run into someone I knew on the street (because everyone else has to go out to get their food at mealtimes as well), and I'd end up coming home feeling far better than I did when I left. That doesn't happen here. I live in the burbs. You go outside and the streets are empty.

3. The way things have changed. This one's hard to pinpoint or capture in words, because it's hard to figure out how much of it is the fact that people HERE have changed while I was gone, and how much of it is the fact that I'VE changed while I was gone so I'm not viewing things from exactly the same angle. Either way, it's unsettling and kind of makes you wish you had something more solid to stand on sometimes.

4. The general lack of knowledge about southeast Asia in general. I'll mention Aung San Suu Kyi in a conversation, or the riots in Thailand over the past year and receive a chorus of blank stares in response. And then I have to explain. It's hypocritical that this bothers me at all, because before going on this trip, I was definitely just as Southeast Asia illiterate as everyone else. This is something I just need to be more tolerant of. It also means I get to educate people because after receiving a blank stare I will (usually) try to explain who the person was or what I'm talking about.

5. The pace of life here. In comparison, everything in Thailand seems to move so much slower. Meetings don't start on time, buses are ALWAYS late, if you show up somewhere less than 10 minutes late, you're early, things like that. Some would say people were wasting loads of time doing nothing in particular. It would be difficult to argue. Where I would lodge my argument is that somehow, for all this "wasted" time, people are no less productive in the long term. What they ARE is a whole lot less stressed out over everything. I think we could definitely take some pointers, myself included.