That small town feeling

When we  moved to Napanee in 1981, I had never before lived in a small town.  I laughed - affectionately (and probably condescendingly) - at some of the small-town idiosyncrasies: stopping the car in the middle of the street, rolling down the window, and passing the time of day with another driver, similarly stopped; taking two plus hours to grocery shop at the A&P while visiting with everyone you knew in town.

By the time we left in 2006, we were part of that scene, and I loved it.  I never thought we would find this small-town-feeling in a big city.

But we have.

Yesterday I ran into Allison and the Baby Grands outside John's greengrocer and, later, our server, Bradley, from Tea at the Empress.  Today I ran into our upstairs neighbour outside Russell Books, and another neighbour outside Cobbs Bread.  And we run into Bryan everywhere!

But what really brought that feeling home was the local evening news. We watch the Vancouver Island CTV News at 5 with Joe Perkins.  Now, we've run into Joe twice: once on the ferry from Vancouver, and once outside our condo as he jogged past on a Sunday morning.  Both times we've stopped and had a conversation with him.  He remembers us.

The 5 pm newscast is very casual and friendly.  The various contributors - Joe, Adam and Louise -   engage in a fair amount of personal banter, like good friends.  The studio faces Pandora Street, and we can see pedestrians and cars passing by behind the anchors.  Tonight, Joe tells us that the cameraman saw, through the window, a man putting money in the wrong parking meter - the space behind his car - so the cameraman ditched his post to run outside to help (in the middle of the newscast!).  Turns out the guy knew it was the wrong meter, but someone had fed his, so he was paying it forward.

What a guy.  What a crew.  What a city.  What good neighbours!

New tricks

Tom is texting.

I never texted much myself before Bryan and Allison moved to Victoria,  but it seems as if that's the preferred method of communication for their generation.   After struggling to text on a flip top phone,  I bit the bullet and bought a smartphone.   Since Tom only used his phone for emergencies,  we switched out his even older flip top for mine.

Fast forward a year:  Tom is practicing calling me from his cell phone every day, so he is familiar with the phone if a real emergency occurs.   As he struggles with the unintuitive keyboard,  we muse on how much easier it is to use a smartphone.  Yes! we say, and get him a smartphone!

And so he discovered texting.

He loves texting.

Coffee, anyone?

I've been trying to figure how much cash to take with us on the cruise next month.   The decision has been complicated by the number of currencies in play: £ in the UK; € in Rotterdam;  NOK in Norway; ISK in Iceland; good old American dollars; and, yes, Canadian dollars, too.  It's not like we need much, just enough to cover those items that are too small in price to use a credit card - postcards or coffee.

So, I decided to use a basic common denominator - the cost of a cup of coffee.

A cup of coffee costs about $2 in Canada.   In London, it costs about £2; in Norway,  35 NOK; and in Iceland,  350 ISK.  For $100 CAD, I can buy 50 cups of coffee in Canada; 30 cups in the UK; 18 in Norway;  and 25 in Iceland.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this information,  and I still don't know how much cash to take, but I'll know if we're overcharged for coffee!

(Bonus!  I found  €50 left over from a previous trip in my travel chest!)