I am heading off to Canada in a few hours.

A last minute decision to attend the once-in-a-decade get-together organized by the Famiglia.

Why Canada?

I hear picking a remote location with a climate quite openly hostile to the very idea of human survival is part of the whole bonding experience thing. The choices for the 2015 meeting have been narrowed down to the Gobi desert or an island off the Bermuda archipelago. This year, it is a burg south of Montreal in the beautiful, nuts-freezingly cold, province of Quebec.

I have never been to Quebec. Actually, I have only been to Canada twice, I think. The last time was a gig in Vancouver which I masterfully managed to spend entirely in such a state that I barely even remember going there altogether. My memory of that episode stops somewhere around Saturday morning, when I took a cab to the airport straight from the club where I’d been playing the night before and only resumes when I awoke from a 15 hours sleep on the following monday.

Hence, my knowledge of Canadian culture only covers the basic: they like hockey, eat fried beaver tails covered in maple syrup and hate freedom… But I’m sure there is more to it and I intend on finding it.

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What I learned today:

1. Xmas lights are fun.
   OK: I knew that one already, but I mean, they are really fun… Actually, when they are done remodeling my loft in Manhattan, I’ll make sure I have them install a dozen of these sets I got for 1,000 yens at Don Qixote yesterday (don’, don’, don’, donkyyy　♪　don’ kyyy ♪ ho-hotayyyh ♪♪… ahem, sorry, can’t help it: months of conditioning will do that to you…)
2. Blinking xmas lights are very fun
3. Blinking xmas lights are very fun: for a while
4. Decrypting the half baked japanese directions somewhat printed on the back of the cheap carton box to find out how to turn off the blinking is way less fun
5. However tempting, the tacks that hold the lights to the wall are not to be affixed to the wall with the assistance of a hammer or any other bulky object. And we all know it is very tempting to handle a bulky wooden japanese mallet a few inches away from delicate, highly breakable, tiny capsules of glass.
6. If you fail to follow previous advice and end up turning one of the aforementioned tiny capsules into a pinch of cheerfully colored powder, resist the urge to do the same on the rest of the garland, for the sole purpose of figuring how long it’d take you to get them all.
7. If you accidentally get high (these things happen), never, ever, under any circumstances, start looking in the directions of the resulting lighting structure: people have died of starvation that way.

Since we all know how tiresome the meteorological insights of a stranger leaving thousands of miles away can be, I’ll try to be brief and promise you it’s the last time I mention the topic for the season (ok, maybe once or twice more, but really, I’ll make an effort). Allow me to state publicly:

I hate winters.

I hate cold winters.

I hate rainy cold winters.

I hate Japanese ill-designed house insulation… or complete absence thereof.

Something has to be done.

Taking my cues on the Animal kingdom, I am currently considering my two main alternatives: migration or hibernation.

Unfortunately, hoping on a plane to Thailand is gonna be tough, seing as I’m little more than a shriveled coughing ball of sweat and phlegm at the moment. I’d probably be considered a health hazard even for the most avian flu-hardened of Thai poultry.

Remains the other option: digging a hole in my garden deep enough to fit me along with a few months supply of oyu-wari shochu and rum, and only come out with the first days of Spring. But there again, my health condition, along with stupid matters of good neighbouring behaviours have so far put a hold to this plan.

I shall therefore do with the next best treatment modern science can offer: hourly cough medicine washed down with a grog, only leaving the kotatsu to refill the rum flask… Might keep with that plan for the rest of Winter, actually.
風邪を引いた。冷たい〜ょ 😥