Having been born to an Italian family, I’ve inherited a natural ability to observe the Sicilian notion of omerta – the code of silence that was once the best defense of Mob Families. Keeping this in mind, I’d like to mention a few things from my trip to Vancouver, over this past weekend.

I like to think that I always honor my word, so don’t waste time asking me questions about specifics, because you won’t get any. However, I did have a great time and wanted to share some observations… I mean I enjoyed the trip so much so that I know that I want to go back and probably sooner than not. I also didn’t get to see very much of Vancouver proper – we spent a bit of time by the hotel and that was in Burnaby, which I think is a Redmond-esque type suburb. I could be off, though, since this was the first look… anyway, I think I want to see a bit more of the city. It’s a very “west coast” city, in that it sprawls out over a wide area – east coast cities usually have very tall buildings that are densely packed into a small land area – so it can take a while to explore.

I did find the Crystal Mall which is a Japanese-stocked mall – nearly everything is from Japan. Things that I could only ever find online were on display with deep shelves of stock – they even had a few bubble tea stands and fresh bakery stuffs. Anime and manga products galore and it was attached to the hotel… was very neat. I also discovered that Tim Horton’s is a very, very close substitute to Dunkin’ Donuts, and since there’s no Dunkin’ in all of WA, it’s good to know that I can step over the border to get some of the coffee that I’ve been missing for a while now!

What else did I do, learn, listen to?
• Bacardi 151 can be lit on fire
• If you spill some Bacardi 151 onto your hand or your table, after it was set on fire, you can usually put it out without damaging either table or hand
• Some Canadian arcades won’t let you in unless you are 18 years old. Of course, the drinking and smoking age in Canada is 19 years old, so for one fun filled year, you can play Pac-Man without worry, but you can start working at bars at just 17, the whole thing seems confused. Orange!
• The metric system impacts how people age – I don’t think the years are counted the same way as they are here. In fact, I think that their physical age and alcohol tolerance are both tracked at 1.5 times US standards
• Working the booths at the border crossing as a gaurd has got to be another dream job, since you can ask people any damned thing you want and demand that it be answered
• T is for Train
• “Wait. When we got on the elevator in the US on the 10th floor – we get off on 2 and we’re in Tokyo?!”
• It will take days to realize that I can’t buy things for “less” than what they are actually priced at
• “Dude, I went to Starbucks and got a latte – I gave her a twenty and got back 24 dollars!” [US to CDN, obviously]
• “Hey. How would you like to be annex’d, just because you pissed us off?”
• “What the hell do they feed the women out here?” [that was me, I admit it, since all of the women 18-29 look 24]
• The “ghetto” of Vancouver (all three blocks of it) is very similar to that of a CT ghetto, but that there was a Pot Block (a full block devoted to nothing but marijuana) was something unique to Vancouver
• The Sky Tram, the Sky Train, the Air Tram, and the Air Train all use the same tracks
• “bitch” can actually be used for punctuation, if given enough beer before speaking
• One drink can include equal shots of Bacardi 151, Sambucca, Melon liquor, Blue Curacao, and Bailey’s.
• A bartender that wears a tight fitting dress to work (and it’s not a strip club) and opts to forget both bra and panties is a bartender worth knowing. Of course, that her hip feels as right as a can of beer in yer hand, well that’s just the perfect ending to a dinner out [and yes, this too was a personal observation after talking to a rather lovely woman at one of the restaurants]
• Walking around a town at night with two shoes is better than trying to walk with just one

While all of that might be entertaining, I have to say that the most random and memorable thing that I heard was something that came from a married couple on the Air TrainSky Train. The woman was talking to her husband about I’m not sure what, but what carried above the din was, “Yeah, that’s my masturbation finger and that hasn’t been good for a while…”

I assumed she meant the finger, and I went back to reading the train map.