July 2, 2007
My Canada Day Pancake Nightmare
(In lieu of having celebrated this Canada Day in any particular fashion, I bring you a flashback to Canada Day 2004.)
Soon after I volunteered to work at the International Friendship Festival in Himeji Japan, I began receiving strange phone calls. The callers would inform me that they had passed my number onto someone else, and then that someone would call later with a similar message. Finally, a Mrs. Ito reached me and informed me that I would be cooking pancakes at the Festival’s Canadian food booth. The Canadianness would be featured in that pancake accessory, I assumed, the old stand-by, maple syrup.
I tried explaining to Mrs. Ito that having me cook was a bad idea. I once messed up a recipe with three steps by doing them in the wrong order. I have a dangerous faith in ingredient substitution. My cooking is perfectly abominable in every single way. I did have other skills that could probably put me to better use. But Mrs. Ito wasn’t having any of it. She arranged to meet me the next day back at the International Centre.
When we met, her smile was larger than her face, but she pretended to not understand English when I tried to protest the pancakes. There was no turning back, no matter how hard I attempted retreat. Mrs. Ito instructed me that I would face a “cooking rehearsal” on July 1st, the following week. That I was to come bearing ingredients. I left her that day, confused and annoyed.
I found half a packet of pancake mix left over in the cupboard from Shrove Tuesday, and I bought a cheap bottle of Japanese pancake syrup the morning of my rehearsal. I even remembered egg and oil, which I thought was impressive. I did wonder if I should have been making the pancakes from scratch, but I felt so concurrently coerced and put-out that I decided that if Mrs. Ito didn’t like it, frankly, she could stuff it.
But I just had this feeling. A fear of a cooking rehearsal far too strong to be sensible. What could possibly go wrong— just me and Mrs. Ito in a little kitchen? However my apprehension was particularly nagging, so I asked my then-boyfriend Stuart to come with me, and because he feared I was having a nervous breakdown, he reluctantly consented.
Immediately upon arrival at the International Centre as scheduled, I seriously contemplated turning around and sprinting home, but we had already been spotted. We entered the kitchen where we were greeted by sixteen women seated waiting at a table, and they expressed their happiness at attending this wonderful Canadian lunch today. And I desired to be swallowed by the air.
I reluctantly took my “ingredients” from my backpack. “Mix?” they said, evidently a similar word in English and Japanese. Thirty two eyes examined the mix curiously. Much conversation ensued. Presumably about how half a packet of pancake mix would feed sixteen expectant lunchers. After a hasty conference among themselves, it was decided that everyone would have a tiny pancake. So there remained the issue of my inability to cook, but that was ok, mostly because Stuart did most of it. Chatter between the women continued throughout the cooking, and in spite of their big smiles, I didn’t get the impression they were singing my praises.
And the worst was still to come. It was time for the maple syrup, freshly tapped from a Japanese factory. I quickly tore off the label, and when Mrs. Ito asked if it was Canadian maple syrup, I lied and said yes. Clearly the International Friendship Festival Committee were not convinced.
It was the wrong colour, they thought. “Is it honey?” the women kept asking me. That it truly was maple syrup was some form of rightousness. I retained my resolve and the women stopped questioning me. However their own conversation continued in Japanese, smattered with exclaimations of the word “maple” and several audible question marks.
When dinner was served and we all sat down to eat our coin sized pancake. The pancakes were good, and the women were very friendly and someone had found some cookies to make the meal go further. I told them that today was Canada’s birthday, and their all applauded. And then I remembered a bag of Canadian Flag pins in my purse, like a treasure in my hold. I passed them out, and the mood softened a bit at that. The pins lent a certain authenticity to my act. Not only was I an authentic idiot, but a Canadian one too.
Conversation was awkward, mostly consisting of people pointing and laughing at Stuart and I. They talked to me a bit about the Friendship Festival, which I, miraculously, was still supposed to be attending. They asked if I could get some Canadian flags and various paraphernalia for the Canada booth and I told them I could find out if the embassy could provide us with something. Somebody translated into Japanese that I had many friends at the embassy who would supply us with Canadian things, and at that point I began to see how these sorts of misunderstandings get started.
June 27, 2007
Endorsement
Pickle Me This all and sundry are obsessed with Jordan’s Cereals— now on sale at Dominion. But we can’t buy it anymore, because we eat a box a day between us and that can’t be very good.
June 21, 2007
Antimacasser turpitude
I really enjoyed Ian Brown’s consideration of vocabulary in the paper this weekend. It was a great article, with points of view from those who see the benefit of a large vocabulary, and others who see large words as just pretension. I also liked the new words the article taught me, including “Struthious”, which means relating to ostriches and has been removed from the COE. Which is terrible, because it’s the best word I’ve ever heard.
My love of struthious might make clear that I tend toward logophilia. Though I have accepted that in order to be alive, language must grow and change, I relish in new words, terms obsolete. I like words that allow me precision of expression. But I am a very poor logophile too, as my vocabulary is not extraordinary. In most ways it is decidedly average, and too peppered with utterances of “brilliant” and “fuck.” But I make the effort to make mine grow. During the year before I started graduate school, convinced I was too stupid to actually go, I noted every new word in everything I read. Which I do much less now, regretfully, because I do so value that massive document on my computer now full of wonderful words I’d collected, like “xanthic”, “lugubrious” and “soporific”.
Teaching English had me thinking about language in a new, subjective kind of way. I learned the word “avarice” listening to “Astral Weeks”. But I mostly credit Margaret Drabble with expanding my vocabulary during that year– those battered second-hand penguins whilst we lived in Japan. Aware that I would never learn Japanese, I set myself instead the task of English, and I will never ever be done.
June 11, 2007
Unbooks
Though I do love books, I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t actually books. I am unfond of gift books, decorative books, foam books, faking books, and faux books. I do believe that these inferior items unjustly ride on the coattails of a sacred object. And so it was quite remarkable when I fell in love with this treasure up in the Lakes, though the price tag put it out of my league. 
I suppose I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t books, unless the book happens to be a teapot.
May 31, 2007
The Printers
It strikes me that I’ve not yet given credit to UK indie band The Editors for their rather bookish name (nor for their melodramatic tendencies, lyrically speaking). And their name makes me wonder what other bands might be out their awaiting rock stardom: The Typesetters, The Copy-Editors, The Proof Readers, The Printers? The fun could, quite possibly, never ever stop.
May 28, 2007
Literary Hot Dogs
Shot by Ms. Puddle Press, intrepid spotter of collisions between the literary world and the hotdog community, “Mrs. Dalloway’s Hot Dog Stand”. Turns out it’s famous, and read all about it here.
May 24, 2007
Sense
Have you submitted your workplace haiku to Bookninja? I did today, inspired by the haiku they have posted (and by the workplace, of course). Read them here, including a few by my favourite poet Jennica Harper. And then submit your own!
Heather Mallick underlines why I perpetually sing her praises with her piece on challenging authority. Oh, when she writes, “I believe education is important for its own sake. It is the basis of civilization. I especially believe in the teaching of history./ I am an elitist. I want people to be well-read, to value books. Here’s my reasoning. Educated people are more likely to deny authority. People who don’t read don’t have an intellectual storehouse to help them think independently. They do what they’re told. They have an endless desire to please those in authority; they don’t know they don’t have to.” Has anybody in the whole world ever had more sense?
Maud Newton points me toward the following: the hierarchy of adjectives, which are rules you don’t even know you know; and a poem by Grace Paley. And it was my coworker (since we’re giving props here) who showed me this article on the evolution of phonebook catagories. No more shall you be able to look up a buttonhole maker, or carbon paper.
Today I met Erica G walking down Palmerston. I was on Harbord, reading and walking, and she pulled her own book out of her bag, which we discussed as we crossed the street, and then we said our farewells. I think it would be lovely if we all starting asking, “So what are you reading?” instead of “How are you?” when we met. The conversations might be better.
May 22, 2007
Worrying
I mentioned that I recently unearthed the “novel” I wrote when I was eleven, and a big problem I am having with the novel I am reading at the moment is that it utilizes many of the same plot devices. And I was not a particularly prodigious eleven year old, no matter how hard I tried. Hmm.
May 21, 2007
Today at College and Borden Streets
Normally I don’t condone graffiti, but I am a little bit sympathetic to the message being conveyed here.
May 15, 2007
'Ave a cuppa tea
It’s Right Said Fred Day over here at Pickle Me This. Yes indeed, we’re back in the world of 9-5 and therefore online minutiae is taking over. It all starts with a cheesy sixties compilation we were listening to at work, which was more than a bit British and contained the novelty song “Right Said Fred” by Bernard Cribbins. No one had ever heard this song before, but I quickly fell in love with it. And so we wikipedia’d our way over to the Right Said Fred (the bad early 90s duo) page to see if there was any relation, and lo and behold there was. And that page brought all the memories back; who remembers the follow up hits? We find the videos: Deeply Dippy and Don’t Talk Just Kiss. How about Brian Orser skating to Deeply Dippy?! And while we were over at ye olde Youtube, we plug in Bernard Cribbins’ “Right Said Fred” to see what we come up with, and we get results. This video contains a recording of the song that started it all, and is three small and very adorable children acting the whole thing out. It’s very cute. And then what do you know? It was home time.
