My Canada

It seems like this past week has been heartbreaking both locally and nationally. It began with the suicide of a colleague’s friend, continued with the murder of Quebec soldier,  Patrice Vincent, the terrorist triple shooting in Ottawa and murder of another soldier, Nathan Cirillo from my hometown of Hamilton, and concluded by the death of two Burlington teenagers. My heart cried for these people and their family and friends who lost a loved one so suddenly.

As the news of more deaths came with each passing day, so close to home, my heart sank further and further. Speaking to the murders of the soldiers, definitive acts of hate and rage against our country, they sought to tear down our spirit. However, the outpouring of love and support, both from Canadians and others worldwide, came as a swell. It rose up loud, strong, telling the attackers that we as Canadians will not be afraid. We will honour the dead as heroes, and we will not let the perpetrators gain the infamy they so crave.

Tomorrow, Hamilton honours Nathan Cirillo, and Canada stands by his side. Our community coming together with love makes me proud to be Canadian. No, I was not born here, but Canada is my culture and my pride.

I’m the kind of person that, no matter how long I’ve been out of the country, gets a knot in my throat and a bit teary-eyed every time the border or airport security guard says “Welcome home.” Canada is my favourite country. I’ll travel anywhere and everywhere, but I’ll never settle anywhere but here.

I just wanted to put that out there, and share this chilling video of the Highway of Heroes tradition, honouring fallen soldiers along Canada’s largest autoroute. I cried for our heroes, for our country, and at the amazing show of love and patriotism.

O, Canada.

St. Jacob’s Market, St. Jacob, Ontario

It was a most beautiful day for my first trip to St. Jacob’s Market. It made for a nice break from our Belly Monster rampage, in which we hit up 9 different food destinations in 12 hours.

St. Jacob’s Market is Canada’s largest year round Farmer’s Market. In reality, it’s like a farmer’s market, food market, and flea market, all rolled into one beautiful package.

There was an outdoor farmer’s market AND an indoor one, where all of the butchers were.

We came to walk around, and many were telling us that we MUST try the apple fritters, and try we did. We purchased half a dozen fritters, as well as this fritter special — two apple fritters, vanilla ice cream, and caramel sauce. Soft, sweet, creamy, hot, and cold, all rolled into one most magnificent package.

St. Jacob’s, Ontario is probably the cutest quaint little town you’ve ever seen. Its countrysides are farmed by a population of Old Order Mennonites, and on the way out of the market, we even saw a horse running full-speed on the side of the road, pulling a carriage. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, straight out of a Lurlene McDaniel novel.

 

Rogers’ iPhone 4

Warning: This post may or may not be comprehensible due to my current state of fatigue, but I have to write this while it’s all fresh up in the noggin.

Today’s post was supposed to be a happy go lucky post slash review of the iPhone 4 for it’s release in Canada. Awesome. Except not really. Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

After doing some research and calling our local Rogers stores, we (that is, my brother and I, but mostly my brother) learned that the stores will receive a maximum of 15 units. For a regular sized store, an average of 10-15 units. So, excited for the release, we went to hang out (read: line up) in front of a nearby store at 2am last night. Cool. We like lining up for events like this, for fun. Plus, getting a phone out of it in the end would be pretty sweet too.

It was quite frigid last night for a summer’s evening, even though I was clad in jeans, socks, and a sweater, among other things, but I was pretty covered up to say the least. We’re the first ones there so we sit around, hopping in and out of the car for warmth. At quarter to five, another person arrives; a chatty young female professional who quite reminds me of iJustine, except less strange and in-your-face. We mingle, have a picnic breakfast, face down the stares from passers-by, waiting for other people to come.

At 7, more people begin trickling in, and by opening hours, 10am, there were 20-30 people in line with us. An employee pokes his head out to inform us that there are 11 iPhone 4s available, nine 16gb and two 32gb. We are given tickets with numbers and orders on it, and are finally let into the store. My brother and I were the first to be served and that’s when shit fucked up.

There seemed to be a problem with Rogers’ servers when it was dealing with early hardware upgraders (us). You see, Rogers lets you do a hardware update every two years, where you renew to a three year contract and are allowed to buy another phone at the new contract price (usually very much cheaper). With the new iPhone release, as they did the last one, they were allowing existing iPhone users who have only completed 1 year of their contract to also do a hardware upgrade.

What this means is that if you completed 1 year of your contract, you add one more year to your contract, bumping it up to a full 3 years, and you can buy a 16gb iPhone 4 at 399$ instead of 649$ which is retail price.

If you completed 2 years of your contract, you add two more years to your contract, bumping it up to a full 3 years, and you only pay 159$.

Cool, except the early hardware updates weren’t working. Fuck.

9 hours in line and whatnot and I couldn’t even get a phone. I guess I can’t be angry because it was my choice to go out there and there wasn’t anything that the sales associates could do. There was a bug in the system, that was that. Nothing can be done on my part. I guess I’m just a little sad that I wasn’t able to get it. A little embarrassed too since we spent all that time there and walked out with nothing.

So, adding that the previous night I had gotten 4 hours of sleep and now pulling an all nighter, I am pooped.

Having this happen in conjunction with not yet having any luck selling my 3gs is making me feel like maybe this just isn’t meant to be. Maybe I really should wait for the next upgrade. But I really want that led flash on the rear facing camera and am very interested in that retina display. I’ll probably just wait till the system is fixed and then try again in a couple of weeks because I am weak like that.

Good night.