Playing Tourist

The past two weekends I've finally made some major forays into exploring Nova Scotia. It's about time! I've been here just over four months now, but have spent almost all my free time in my little cave of an apartment. Was getting really blue and homesick there for a while, too. But a recent trip home to Ottawa and time with family and friends really brightened me up.

I also discovered that if I open the curtains now and then, I don't get blue as much. I don't think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) -- my office at work and my walks back and forth ought to provide me with enough natural light to avoid that. But I guess something about letting the light in at home really helps my disposition.

I never opened them before because I'm right across the street from another house, and the street itself is right outside too. Was worried people might see in. Also didn't like the idea of my landlady being able to look in at my usually less-than-tidy living space. So I kept them closed. But last weekend, Victoria Day Weekend, my friend Jose was here from Ottawa so I kept the curtains open during the day while she was here. Lo and behold - it's so much nicer in here when the daylight comes in. I don't feel like I'm living in the land of the midnight sun.

The week before Jose arrived, I was only actually in the office for two days - the Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday I was on a business trip to visit our offices in Amherst, NS and Charlottetown, PEI. Man, if you've gotta go on a business trip, at least it's nice to go someplace nice!

I was right in the middle of working out getting my new car, but it wasn't ready yet, and I didn't want to drive my old car that far, so I rented one. They talked me into renting a luxury vehicle - a Chrysler 300, one of those boxy-looking things you see around a lot these days. Kinda has the look of an old rolls or something. It was a nice car to drive around in the city, but it handled like hell on the highway with even just a little bit of wind. I was constantly correcting the steering. I'd never buy one - even if I could afford it. As far as being a luxury car goes - big deal. As far as I could tell, it didn't have much that my other cars have had. More positions on the seat is about all. Big deal.

But it was a good day for driving - overcast, but not rainy - so I made good time, setting the cruise control just a little over the limit to maximize time and minimize risk. The highways in Nova Scotia, even the major routes in town, are never very busy, so I didn't have to contend much with traffic. It's about a 2.5 hour drive to Amherst from where I live, much of it along a hightway I'm becoming quite familiar with - the 102 to Truro. The hang a left and follow the Trans Canada Hwy to Amherst.

Amherst is an exceedingly pretty little town. I don't know what Tonia was on about when she dismissed it as not having much there. I arrived early, so I took the opportunity to drive around for a while, and I was really impressed. Really pretty place. There are some beautiful big old homes along the south side of one of the major roads through town, Victoria Street, I think it was, with huge old trees. The leaves are just starting to come out, and the place was showing a hint of its real beauty.

One of the things I noticed most about Amherst was the huge, flat area just to the north of town, all along the north side of Victoria Street. It was like a giant valley, I thought, and was covered for as far as I could see with farmland and grazing land. I asked about it when I got to the office. I forget what they called it, but it's a marsh. Obviously hasn't *really* been a marsh for a very long time, but that's what they call it.

I really liked Amherst. It was the kind of place I could see myself living in (don't worry Mum - I'm not considering it - that's just how I rate how much I like places I visit).

The visit to the office was quite satisfactory. The work I'm doing has a lot of people very nervous. I'm coming into their offices and going to change how they do things. Really, what I'm doing is only going to hurt for a brief time till they get used to the new system. It's the content changes that are going to create long-term chronic discomfort for them as they try to adjust. But still, people find it so much easier to look at the design aspect of things and make comments, criticize, complain, etc. So I have a difficult and delicate job ahead of me.

The folks in Amherst seemed quite open. I showed them a few things and they seemed to like what they saw. They seemed willing to go with the flow. I keep saying "seemed" because every time I visit different offices, people seem that way - and then I hear later that someone was complaining about something - usually because they misunderstand the intent. I suppose I need to make that more clear when I'm interacting with people. They're nervous and making assumptions that are incorrect.

So, I spent about two hours in Amherst. Could have spent much more - but I'll be back there for a good long time in the fall. The office is in a strip mall. A long, skinny single room with a series of "executive" offices along one side. Cubicle-land. Gray, non-descript. Kinda depressing. I wouldn't want to work there. The people were really nice though. Maybe the nicest I've met so far in our offices. Took off for Charlottetown late in the afternoon. Another lovely drive, which took me just inside New Brunswich on my way to the new Confederation Bridge which spans the Northumberland Strait over to Prince Edward Island.

I hadn't known what to expect of this Bridge. I brought up the subject in the chatroom one time before I went over there and people were saying some things that turned out to be just not true. The worst was one person who said that, when you're in the middle of the bridge, you can't see land on either end. Bullshit. You can quite clearly and easily see land at both ends of the bridge no matter where you are on it. On a clear day, at least. Going over was fine. Coming back, it was foggy on both coastlines and in fact I *couldn't* see either end when I was in the middle. They had't mentioned the fog. It was quite pretty though, as fog on the coast often is. The bridge seemed to just go off into nothingness. It was very cinematic. Made me think of Camelot for some reason.

Fog on the east coast is something new to me. We get fog in Ontario. We occasionally got it on the West Coast too, but out west it was the same kind of fog we got in Ontario. It's just there, and fades in and out like a special effect. You never see it arriving or departing.

East Coast fog has a life of its own, it has presence and bulk, and it shows up when a landlubber like me assumes there's no chance of fog. Look, it's such a bright sunny day, how can there possibly be... oh...it's foggy!!

The fog banks hulk off the coast looking exactly like the movie version of desert sandstorms looming in the distance over a vulnerable adobe village. Huge, towering walls of gray, waiting out over the ocean as if toying with us, considering the best moment to make its move. And then, just when you think it's going to stay out there, you notice tendrils of mist creeping across the road, moving inland like an airborne tide, running in currents as if there are rivulets in the air. The sun can be shining, and you can still see it blinking off the chrome of your car, yet you're shrouded in this white, chilly cloud. You can't see a thing out over the water, except maybe the first fifty feet or so, disappearing into nothingness.

This can go on and on for kilometres, or it can be in isolated pockets. You travel in and out of it as you drive along. And the fog is there even when the surf is high and you think surely the wind would drive it away. Still it clings. It has a mysterious beauty that dampens your hair, and chills the air but not your mood. Somehow, Nova Scotia looks as it should when the fog clings to its shoulders like the spider-web hair of an old grandmother.

Charlottetown did not impress me as much as Amherst - but mostly because the route I needed to travel took me through the typcial ring of industrial parks and fast-food restaurants that surround all cities these days, but not into the heart of Charlottetown where the tourists prefer. The office was in an old granite building that might have once been a main post office. We own the whole building, and compared to most of our other offices I've seen, it seems like something big and important.

But really its just an office, with computers and ficus plants and lunchrooms. The people in our Charlottetown office treated me with cautious suspicion. They don't want me to do anything that's going to upset their carefully constructed system. Their attitude reminds me of something a guy in Halifax told me when I asked what I should keep in mind when designing a certain section of the paper. He said "Just don't change anything that works."

And that's where the suspicion comes from. They're all so comfortable doing what they're doing now that they're afraid I'm going to come in, this stranger from away, who isn't even part of their world, has no experience of their life, and fuck things up on them. Make their lives miserable. Make unrealistic, ill-considered, stupid changes that will just frustrate them, confuse them and, worst of all, slow them down. And for the most part it will be done against their will because they all think their products look just fine, thankyewverramuch.

Well...I have to stop now and get ready for work. I didn't even get to my long weekend story yet! Hopefully I'll be in the mood for that when I get home this evening.