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Hope you’re all enjoying your hangover-nursing time in between holiday celebrations.

Things are still cold around here, thanks for asking. Nut-freezingly so, I may add…

One of the interesting difference between regular snowball fights and snowball fights in a negative double-digit temperature environment, is that the later involves heavy blocks of icy snow, instead of that usual powdery sissy stuff they use elsewhere. Battles haven’t been any less fierce for that. Serious efforts were put into reducing the inheritance pool, but only succeeded so far in a slightly bruised nose and ego. Not mine in both cases, mind you.

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New Year 2005

All pictures were automatically harvested from the keitai sideblog archives, the huge majority taken with my cellphone during the year 2004.

If I have met you (long enough to take a picture) in the past 12 months or so, then chances are your mug is somewhere in there (full size here if you wanna print your own poster at home).

Hence, the kanji: 友, which means ‘friend’…
For, if a few here are a bit more than friends (and a rare few are, well, complete strangers to me right now), most of these faces are the friends who made that last revolution around the Sun somewhat bearable overall. Enjoyable, even, at times.

So, thanks everybody for being you: You rock.

And have a wonderful holiday season… may you find many a bottle of high quality, triple-filtered vodka in your Christmas stocking.

For those not easily bored: Gory technical details below
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Two top reasons I should not be here:

  1. I hate cold weather
  2. My definition of cold weather starts just below 20 degrees Celsius

I mean, I was already freezing on the plane, despite turtleneck sweater and airline blanket, while stewards were strolling gaily along the aisle in short sleeves. Obviously I don’t have the genes.

Perhaps if I drink enough vodka it’ll be a painless death by hypothermia…

On the upside, they have lotsa free sockets for your laptop and reasonably priced wifi in Vancouver airport, whence I’m writing this piece on my ongoing 3 week rant about temperatures…

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Scene Reconstitution, English dubbing added for our international audience:

Eriko: So what’s the weather like over there at the moment?

Dave: Mmn, that’s a good question. Let’s find out…

Eriko: -10°… that’s a bit nippy, innnit.

Dave (fainting): …

Eriko: …?

Dave (slowly regaining consciousness): That’s minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

Eriko: What does it give in Celsius then?

Dave: Below -20°, not counting windchills.

Eriko (fainting): …

Now where did I put my baby seal fur-lined thermodactyl underwear.

Eriko:　それでね、 あそこに　天気はどう?

Dave:　そうですね。探そうね。

Eriko: −１０°だね、ちょっと寒いじゃん。

Dave (眩んで): …

Eriko: …?

Dave (ゆっくり起きて): セ氏じゃない、華氏ですよ！

Eriko: じゃあセ氏でいくつ位なの？

Dave: −２０°下。冬風もあるんですよ。

Eriko (眩んで): …

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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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