Hello Calgary!

well well well.... so you must be wondering where I've gone and what's been happening. I'm in Calgary, Alberta in Canada. It's cold. It's got mountains and a whole load of oil and gas. Would I choose to live here? No way. Not a chance. It's incredibly beautiful and picturesque, but nope - no way. It's too cold for too many months and if I were to compare Moscow, it loses hands down. Moscow was cold, painfully so, but it was such a bustling, lively city with millions of people running around. Calgary is not an arts and culture hub. It's a functional city with functional buildings with functional people who probably moved here for work. It ain't Vancouver or Montreal. Oh well. It's still pretty, and the people have been nice thus far.

People here don't smoke, and if they do, it's in the privacy of their homes . It's a rare sight to see people huddled together having a smoke and sharing their thoughts. On slightly sunnier days, no one is out and about, Starbucks will be full inside without a soul sitting outside and basking. It's just soooo strange.

That aside, the food here is pretty alright. This weekend I'll be heading to the Waterton National Park (the one that borders Montana - can't cross the border, I don't have a visa!) Read about it here. Other than that, I haven't been doing much else other than sleeping like a hog (getting over the flu) and spending time with my nephew.

Have I been writing? No. Have I even been thinking about doing any bloody work? No. Am I missing Hamster Wong? Yessss. I won't be heading back to Malaysia till October, so I'm probably going to go mad from Hamster withdrawal. I would post up pictures and all the other touristy stuff, but where would be the fun in that? Wouldn't be better if I just bitched about Calgary?

p/s: loving Chinatown here. The dim sum is so-so though. Blah.  Diversity? Yeah, there are all sorts of people here and the tagline is: Celebrating Diversity but I don't know if it's more diverse than Australia. Can't compare a small city like Calgary to Melbourne I guess. Till the next time I write something with a little more substance, adieu!