cold front

there are few things that i thought canadians could lay true and rightful claim to. poutine, for example. no one in the world does poutine quite the way we do. no one else has the cbc or josee chouinard. and i thought we were head and shoulders above the rest of the planet when it comes to complaining about the weather.

apparently, i thought wrong.

australians are by and large a lovely people. they are sporting and jovial and laid back, for the most part. they have given the world the best olympics in recent memory and produced cate blanchett. they are, i repeat, a lovely people. but they need to get a grip. because 22 degrees celsius is not cold.

there is no such thing as autumn in sydney. as soon as the everyday temperature starts to creep below 25, it is immediately winter in everyone's mind. no slow transition, no gradual layering of clothing as hemlines inch back down to the ankles and sleeves reach toward the wrists. if you can't sleep in boxer shorts and with every window in your house open, it is unequivocally winter and marks the beginning of perpetual griping. stores down george and pitt streets are all full of mannequins hunched into their down vests and striped scarves. people are wearing mittens. and it is 22 and sunny!

when i arrived in february, everyone warned me that it would get cold by june before i left for asia. when i asked what cold is, they told me that sometimes in the dead of night it will get all the way down to 9 degrees. i had to stifle my laughter- when it hits 9 degrees in toronto, everyone pours out onto patios and my uncle ian is already in shorts. here you would think that it was the apocalypse.
everywhere you go you catch someone mumbling about "this damn cold" or "this frightful winter weather." just to give you a bit of perspective on said frightful weather, today i walked to the store in shorts and a polo and right now i'm sitting on my balcony typing this. it is anything but cold.

i guess the aussies deserve some slack. in a country where most provinces enjoy more than 300 days of sunshine a year and where you can go surfing year round, i can concede that 15 degrees might be considered relatively chilly. and just because you never have a real reason to wear a pea coat doesn't mean that you should be denied the right. but if you want to complain about the cold, i think you have to earn the right. you need to wait in an outdoor bus bay in your work shoes as the slush seeps into your socks and freezing wind whips your face. you need to venture about the treeline where -10 is considered balmy. you need to have at least read about the ice storm in quebec and northern ontario, if not weathered it. and it needs to be below zero. those are my conditions.

somehow i don't think that the sydneysiders will go for it. they're too busy bemoaning their lost summer to listen to this crackpot canuck still wearing his flip flops. and i don't know if they will hear me through their earmuffs.

i'm telling you, if you want a laugh come to sydney and watch these strange animals pretending to be cold. it's like watching fourteen-year-olds profess their undying love for each other- people trying desperately to emulate something that they've seen on tv but have no real understanding of.

i just have to say it one more time- 22 is not cold.