The Canadian Manual for Immigrants

Moving is never easy and moving to another country is as difficult as juggling nitroglycerin in a mine field on a unicycle in the snow. Forget the unloading of the truck that broke your mother's antique Russian picture painted on glass. Forget the scratches on your furniture and the missing items that the illegal immigrant Mexicans you hired off the street to help load the truck, stole from you. Forget the schlepping of all your worldly possessions up three flights of stairs because you live in a multi-level condo that is cool in concept but rough on legs. No. The hard part of moving to another country (say Canada), is knowing how to throw out your garbage properly so that the garbologists who pick it up will not be offended by the genus of trash you should be recycling next week, instead of today. You see, in Ottawa, garbage is picked up only once a week and they alternate the week regarding which variety of garbage is considered the trash du jour. One week it might be cardboard; the following week it might be plastic. I say "might be" because then again, it might not--they never tell you. So I think a manual for immigrants is an excellent way for us "ferners" to learn all the intricate systems that exists beyond our knowledge.

1. The green pail is for household garbage, but not if you put it in the can in plastic bags because they don't take plastic from the kitchen garbage cans . . . but you must line these cans with plastic liners or you'll be out of garbage compliance, which means you get to keep it for another week.

2. Gift wrap your cardboard. Use a somewhat weak twine that, when put to the tensile test, it fails miserably and you must re wrap it again. For some reason the second wrapping generally works better, without suffering twine breakage. Twine scientists must have designed it this way to encourage excessive usage of this crap in order for twine merchants to send their kids to college.

3. Under no circumstances must you try to discard Styrofoam. Live with it. First of all, if you try to break it up into smaller pieces to fit the plastic bag, it will form into peanut size plastic snow-like pellets that will stick to your skin due to static electric conductance and will cause you to shake, rattle, and roll to get it off. But it will only come off when it's ready. Secondly, they don't take it on their garbage trucks, perhaps for the first reason mentioned.

4. If you are still sporting the same garbage after living in Canada for several weeks, put said waste in your personal vehicle and drive ten miles to the management company who a) did not inform you of the mailbox key procedures when you moved in; b) still did not inform you of the mailbox procedures after you called and left a message on their answering machine; and c) when you went there to inquire about the mailbox key in person (having driven ten miles again), were told that the key was with them until yesterday but now at the Quickies over on McCarthy Street; and dump said garbage in their personal dumpster on a Saturday when they are off from work and buying freaking hockey sticks and pads for their toddlers, eh.

Next session will deal with money and shopping.