Canucks fans must be unhappy human beings,Igloo Living, and the North American Way.of LIfe

It's cold in Vancouver.  Sure, if you're living in Dawson Creek or somewhere like that you will now put on that smile that says "Boy, you don't have a clue what COLD really is".  But for someone who only two weeks ago was cycling around Europe in shorts and without socks, 11 degrees Celsius is COLD.  I notice it every time I step into the shower. The water seems boiling hot at first and it takes me a minute to realize that it's not the water that is hot but my skin that is cold with pores sealed shut to keep out that arctic feeling.  No, I AM wearing socks, proper shoes, long pants, and my room has excellent electric heating, but it's still COLD.  Is it any wonder that I try to hang out in Indochina whenever I can?

NO, it's NOT quite as bad as this anonymous FROSTBITE, but it's uncomfortable !

It probably is a sign of the times of life in the Western World that when I googled for a picture of freezing skin, the results included this:

It's actually called, hold onto your seat CoolSculpting 

What is wrong with this Western Lifestyle?   People sit all day in an office and a car so that they have to go to a gym in the evening.  Walk or ride a bicycle and there is not need for a gym!  People confuse their craving for LIFE or whatever with the craving for food and then have to resort to liposuction or fat-freezing instead of just eating less.  People confuse LIVING with purchasing expensive crap to 'reward' themselves because they don't have the time anymore to actually LIVE life.  People are deeply unhappy but don't know where that comes from so they lash out at anyone that is visibly DIFFERENT from them instead of at the system that made them unhappy. 

Wow was that a good lead-over to the next story?
I had to take a SkyTrain a week ago.  From Waterfront Station to Joyce Station.  The train was already surprisingly full at Waterfront Station, but at Stadium Station things got out of hand (This was 7 pm on a Sunday).  My bike and I were wedged in by other passengers and a hijab-wearing woman with a 3-year old boy in a baby-carriage.  It was impossible to move the bike without anyone else moving first. In anticipation of more passengers at Stadium Station I had already asked the mother to pull back her baby carriage so my bike wouldn't block the door completely.  The platform at Stadium was PACKED with CROWDS of unhappy Vancouver Canucks fans, because 'their' team just wasted an early lead to loose against San Jose (I googled this after the train ride, expecting to find an explanation for the fans' behaviour). The crowd of young to middle aged fans pushed into the train.

Not my Canucks fans; but there are pictures of dumb retards on Google !

And they didn't stop pushing. The front row of sweat-pants wearing overweight retards told me to move my bike. DuH!  Do you like DONUTS?  People kept pushing from behind until I shouted out loud  "If you don't stop pushing your're going to squish a baby carriage".  That actually helped, because the rest of the people on the platform resigned themselves to taking the next train.  

My normal modus operandi in such situations is putting on a managing hat and trying to find the best possible solution.  But then I'm also no Hockey fan.  Just out of a 2 hour or so overpriced match against The Others, these fans just kept going in hating on the other guy, but this time the easiest target that was different from THEM, was the guy with the bicycle. In some way it might have been fortunate that I was around because otherwise the OTHER target might have been the hijab wearing mother.  Along the route from Stadium Station to Main Street station I was subjected to shoves, whining, abusive language, and direct threats against the bicycle, reminding me of the drunk guys on the German train not long ago.  

So that's it, Canada has really finally sunk to those same despicable levels of fundamental unhappiness.  

Time to become an ex-pat once again.

But be VERY careful.  Experiencing life outside your bubble has its risks.  You can never go back (Think about the action of getting out of a bubble and what happens to the bubble in the process ;-)  But on the other hand, once you experience life OUTSIDE, you probably never want to go back inside anyway.

Another excellent lead-over, LOL, to yet another story of how there are other ways of doing things:

I have driven a car about 3 times (on 3 days) since April of this year (That converts to driving a car for a day every two months). Yesterday I rented a car, because Grandma wished to go shopping and refused to ride shotgun on the bicycle.  The shopping trip was uneventful, but I really noticed two things today, when returning the car.  The first thing was going to a gas station to buy gasoline.  How Odd! If you haven't done that for a while, it seems like the stupidest thing to do ;-)  It costs money too !  For everyone else, this constant leak in the wallet seems to be perfectly acceptable and even normal.

The other thing that really rang my bell and merits almost unprecedented advertising in this blog was the price I paid for a 24 hour car rental.   CAD$ 45 including taxes.  Low-Cost Rent-a-car in North Vancouver. 

But it's not really the price why I keep going back, but it's the genuine nicety of the people at the place that makes renting a car almost fun.