I don't know if it was just me, but there seemed to have been more than the usual amount of whinging about minor details on the main Canada forum lately. Like the thread about bottled water -- bottled water forchrisakes!!! And this at a time when your compatriots are grappling with real water problems. Yet, ironically, the forum members who are battling the floods back in the UK are being stoical about it.

This caused me to ponder British attitudes. I thought about the Charge of the Light Brigade, Gordon at Khartoum, Scott in Antarctica, Londoners during the Blitz, and on and on.

I came to the conclusion that, when Britons faced daunting challenges, they rose to them more admirably than most. But, when they faced minor privations, their capacity for whinging was right up there with the best.

I think this paradox is true of most human beings, including me. But, from what I've witnessed, it's more noticeable amongst the British.

It is dawning on me, therefore, that there is no point in defending Canada when I see criticism that strikes me as unwarranted on the main forum. It seems to me that, if Britons don't get their quota of whinging, many of them go into withdrawal. They need their fix, and providing it is one of the services that an expat forum can render.

But one thing I can predict about those of you who are fit to be tied while you wait for your PPRs is that, once you get over here, many of you will be whinging that Canadians are sartorially challenged, that the cheese is tasteless, that Canadian TV is crap, etc., etc., etc.

You might want to think about that. If you want something to whinge about, you might consider staying where you are, whinging about local imperfections, and saving yourself many thousands of pounds.

I thought Canada was the place where you can bring you national character and not have to assimilate??

Why cant we winge? if you dont like it dont listen

Right on sister.

I love wherever I am, be it London, Paris, Brisbane, Edinburgh, Prague, Florida, Toronto...and soon to be Ottawa. And I live and do the stuff everyone else does and put up with anything that they put up with, and I never whinge.
My wife does though.

Unusual for you to make generalizations Judy

Indeed, it is.

Oh you can whinge all right.

Since I'm not British myself, I sometimes go into anthropologist mode and observe you as if you were Trobriand Islanders or something like that.

I guess one of the things I'm saying is that my understanding of Britons is slowly evolving. After spending more than a couple of years on this forum, the way I read a post is different now from the way I would have read it a year ago, and that in turn was different from the way I would have read it two years ago.

Actually, the way I read it today is different from the day I would have read it yesterday, because I had this Aha moment this morning. Now I might see a forum member whinging about something, and I'd think, "Oh, So-And-So is having a good day."

But on a slightly more serious note, I do think that many people are unprepared, before they move, for the discomfort they may experience when culture shock hits them. But then there's the flip side of the coin, which is that if they don't give it a try, they'll never know whether or not they would have liked Canada -- on balance.

I decided to add a bit to my first terse comment. I have moved, like you have done to a foreign country. I find it hard and however much i appreciate the good things about my new place I also want to let off steam about the things that annoy me, that make me pine for the familiar. I dont do that to Canadians, I dont say to them that the cheese is mainly rubbish, the ham is slimey, but I can on here, - a forum for British Expats. Its my way of coping with the strangeness, with trying not to cry when you dont know what to buy in the shops, to know which shops to go to in the first place. They may seem trivial too you but to me its a symptom of the differences.

If you coped better then well done you.

I commented on the bottled water thread. Its a conversation, not mentioning bottled water wont help the people in the floods, so why not mention it??

Australian saying, you can tell when a BA flight has arrived, three hours later you can still hear the whining.

Icelandic saying, "Gorgoey Kanjorno" - "The fish are not biting today, must be the Taliban frightening them off".
Have you read the book "How to make friends and influence people"? Thought not.

Look. I find much wrong with Canada but, for the thousandth time, this is paradise for the cheese eater. Local cheeses. Imported cheeses. Traditional cheeses. Radical fashion cheeses. This is a wonderful place for people who love cheese. (And, in the past five years it's also been possible to get good bread to go with it). I can't abide this canard about the cheese.

Horrible cheese doesn't bother me, I can't eat it

Cheese, now you got me started! When over there we went into this smallish market thingy and about half the shop was selling cheese! Loads of it, a million different varieties, I said to me wife, I said LOOK WIFE! Look at all this cheese! "I concur", she said (master of the understatement) really! they had more cheeses than Harrods, seriously!

Or was it because we were so close to Quebec?

I used to take it personally when I saw on here the number of complaints about Canadian drivers being crap. Then I looked around me one day and realised the comments were absolutely correct we do have a ton of useless drivers who can't seem to think any further ahead than their windshield.

However in the last three days I've seen two absolutely crap drivers from the UK at least I assume they were as one had a GB sticker on the back of his car the other a Union Jack.

One driving on an 80 kph road at 60kph wandering all over his lane from one side to the other while blathering on a cell phone. The other couldn't maintain a steady speed if his life depended on it, 10-15 either side of the speed limit and again wandering all over the road, no cell phone I could see so perhaps drunk although it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

So it would appear we Canadians don't have a monopoly on sh*t drivers.

Are you Bill Maynard?

You're 2 points behind me by the way squire.

No and eh???

Foreigners, aren't they great!


http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=469007

shhh dont tell my daughter that there is loads of cheese, she wont come home from next trip (shes a bad eater by the way and only likes cheese and cola)

No bad driving is not just in canada, her across road cant even turn her car around and the bumps on her car......hope she doesnt want full value on trade in

I just ignore the whinging, but i have three kids and have a large box of ear plugs, do you want some sending over judy