“What did you do today?”

“I got my hair cut.”

“Oh, nice hair cut.”

“Thanks.”

“What else did you do?”

“Well, I waited to get my hair cut…”

“Yeah, I got that, anything else?”

…(excitedly, seeming to ignore the question, or stuck on the last question…hard to determine) “there was a foosball table, a pool table – can you believe it? – and an awesome giant screened TV in the middle of the room, which made the wait kind of ok!”

“Okaay…”

“… yeah, and there was a motorcycle parked in the corner to drool over throughout most of the hair cut until the barber turned the chair (damn!) to cut the other side … was cool!”

(pause, big breath, small voice questions) “And that’s all you did today?”

“Well, no, of course not! (pauses, scratches head of newly trimmed hair)… Oh that’s right! I ate breakfast…”

(surprised, incredulous look on face of friend, who is not from here (that’s an important detail))

“…but I missed lunch, because as you know, I was getting my hair cut. Really should have packed a snack. But they gave me water!” (thumbs up!)

(surprised, incredulous look on face of friend, with added jaw drop as story continues…)

“…then I had to walk about a kilometre back through the mall to find my car – I find it really helps to take a photo of the entrance you came in through so you can find your way out… getting turned around and lost in these monstrosities of consumerism is pretty much guaranteed without those picture crumbs to lead the way back… Oh and once I found the car, four levels down, I had to “unpark” – lucky for me this wasn’t a parking garage where I had to pre-pay to get out – those are such a pain in the ass when you get to the security gate and you forgot to pre-pay to unpark and they make you back down the dizzying, narrow cement spiral ramp you just climbed up… the people waiting in line on super steep incline behind often express their own frustration with your forced manoeuver by heavily laying on their horns… managed to avoid that embarrassment today.”

(really afraid to ask but needs to know…) “So how long did it take you to get your hair cut?”

“Oh, I’d say about 6 hours, all said and done. But really needed to get it cut! So relieved that’s done.”

Gone are the “I’m going to pop into First Choice Haircutters for a hair cut while I’m out picking up a few groceries and gassing up the car and picking up the drycleaning and the supplies needed for the school project” days. Truly, every decision to go out requires serious consideration of available time. We never “scoot out quick” to do anything here, because it’s physically impossible to accomplish anything quickly. So “going out” to complete even the most mundane of tasks, becomes an experience – and retailers have cashed in on this fact. The barber shop featured in the vignette with all the bells and whistles available for waiting customers is indeed a real place that Aaron took the boys to in search of much needed haircuts before picture day.  (See shaggy boys below enjoying Foosball while waiting for haircuts!)

He also went with a long-ish “honey-do” list and texted me 4 hours later, still there, to say that the haircuts would be all they could get done today (insert my own surprised, incredulous face..) Oh well, will have to wait for another day!

I tried to be ambitious with time once on my way to get the kids from school – thought I’d just “pop in” to Costco – it’s only about 5 kms away from our house – to grab a few things for dinner… ha!ha! 🙂  As I sat in traffic inching slowly, time ticking, towards Costco (truly just 5 kms away!!) I had to abandon my mission after 30 mins of maybe covering 2 kms!?  I set to work making my way across the traffic to a place where I could turn around and get to the school to avoid being late for the kids. On that note, we are becoming very understanding of late arrivals, and notice that most people don’t get too worried about it when we arrive late either, because what can you really do about the congestion and longer travel times inevitable when sharing the road with a few million other vehicles?

There was the day I left just half an hour later than usual to get the kids (I had the landlord’s handyman here fixing “stuff” and he said he’d be “just 30 minutes more” one hour before, so I eventually just had to insist that they leave and come again another day, or I would be very late for the kids) and it took me a full hour to get to the school!! Turns out, that half hour made an unbelievable difference in the amount of traffic I found myself in. If I leave at 2:00 I “sail” (remember, everything is relative!) to school in 30 minutes… On this particular day I discovered that leaving at 2:30 was signing up to be part of a congested mess of traffic. And now I’m in a panic because now I am so late to pick up. As I was sitting in traffic jam after traffic jam, I had some time to text and phone the school so they would know what was going on, and to ask if they could just keep the kids in the office until I arrive – I started to breathe and realized there is nothing I can do in this moment but continue to inch my way closer to the kids. It occurred to me that this could also be considered a bit of a test for the school – how would they handle this? Would they be understanding and continue to care for the kids until I arrived? Would they give me a hard time?  Of course they were very understanding of this reality of mega-city living and were very kind and it was not a problem at all to keep the kids. I realized that day that we are now a part of a new school community and our kids are safe and cared for there.  I am very motivated to avoid being that late for the kids, but it’s nice to know it is not the end of the world when it happens again.

We are adapting to a whole new concept of time here.