Visiting canada.com

I woke up with a start, my eyes barely opening. I cursed the hour when I had set the alarm to ring at 5:30 in the morning. I slammed the button on top and set it to snooze for another 5 mins and closed my eyes hoping to catch up with some more sleep. Sleep is the sweetest thing in this world. Very faithfully my alarm went off again in 5 mins and I had no choice but to wake up. I looked around me, darkness everywhere. A thin ray of light had entered the room through the overhead window. My room mates were sleeping peacefully while I had to rush and get ready and then take a conf call from home. I would have rather slept for half hour more. Life has become such a routine. Wake up in the morning, sleep for some more time, hit the snooze button several times before finally waking up. Then sit and think whether to take a bath or not. Take a bath if the inner voice says so or else just brush your teeth, answer natures call and get ready. Keep the eggs for boiling while preparing a hot cup of coffee. When the eggs are done, remove the shell, cut the eggs into two pieces, put some salt, some black pepper (drool) and eat it silently while watching the weather channel.

It has been one month since I have been following this routine. Life here moves according to the weather channel. This is what I was told when I reached here and I try to follow that advice seriously. The day starts with switching on the TV (I do have a TV in my house) and putting on the weather channel. A smart dude along with a beautiful (seriously) girl, gives the local weather report. If they say its going to snow, it does snow. If they say its going to be a clear day, it is indeed a clear day. So depending on what they say, I decide how many layers of clothes to wear that day. Ofcourse sometimes things go wrong and I come home freezing. Unfortunately there is no fireplace in my house and we have to rely on the heater to make things feel nice. I sometimes feel like a piece of meat lying in the freezer. But atleast I have layers and layers of clothes to protect me from the cold and I can still breathe. Coming from a country where even a temperature of 15 degrees is considered to be cold, I was greeted by -15 degrees the day I landed here. There was snow all around and I was hardly prepared for it. The locals people seemed happy because it was getting warmer for them. -15 degrees was by no means warm for me and to top it the wind chill made it feel like -25 degrees. There was a day when the temperature dropped to -40 degrees. Its too cold to even think about it now.

It does not matter what shirt im wearing. It does not matter if the shirt is clean or dirty. It does not matter if the shirt if ironed or not. And it definitely does not matter if I have taken a bath or not. Its just too cold for these things to matter. Whichever shirt I wear gets hidden beneath my full sleeves sweater. Only the collar is visible. So the collar is really the only thing I need to wash and iron. And since I have just one sweater here, it may seem like I wear the same clothes to office everyday. I wonder what the people there must think of me. Anyway waiting for it to get warmer so I can shed some clothes, the sweater and thermals I mean. I've heard spring is really beautiful here, trees grow leaves while people shed clothes :)

So what does one do in a forsaken place as this. Definitely can't sit at home on the weekends. Places like these have a lot of things to do, even in winters. Few of us went ice skating at the canal here. It happens to be the longest skating rink in the world. Our group was the center of attraction there, not because we were skating well, but because we could barely stand on our feet and were landing our bottoms on the ice quite frequently. Last week we had a snow fight outside our house which attracted our neighbor's attention because of the din we created. Apart from that we have been roaming around downtown, watching movies, visiting museums, window shopping (Too poor to buy anything), Eating pizza's, burgers and drinking Tim Hortons coffee. All in all things are not so bad here, this is Canada and I'm enjoying myself here. Spring is just around the corner and I have 5 months more to go. I'm hoping this trip will bring more excitement in the coming months. And ofcourse when I'm not sightseeing, I go to office and work for a while :)