A very Canadian reboot

So, I just checked this blog after a long time and realized that I have been giving too much attention to my "Good Guys Always Finish Last" blog and this blog was feeling like a first-born child. Of course, if you're from an Indian family; the equivalent there is a daughter. Don't believe me? Ask my sister. She'll give you a course on "Why it sucks to be a girl in an Indian family". Anyway, I noticed that the number of posts on this blog have gone down drastically: 28 in 2007, 14 in 2008 and a miserable 3 in 2009. At this rate, this should be my final post for this blog. But, I promise you, oh non-existent fans of my wonderful, wonderful blog, that this beast shall rise again from its year-long slumber and basically..well..ummm..sit here and stare at you like those lions sitting at the steps of some temple I do not remember right now (and probably won't for a while now). So yea, once again..*heavily-used line time*.."here goes nothing":

Tomorrow is a holiday. Victoria Day in Canada. Officially, it is the last Monday before or on May 24th (Queen Victoria's birthday). Now, you must be wondering why we choose to celebrate it on the "first Monday before or on May 24" and not on May 24th itself, right? I bet that thought is followed by "Are Canadians as stupid as the Americans have us believe?". Yes, we know.

You see, Canada is a country where we spend 9 months of the year shoveling snow off our driveways and hibernating in our little igloos and playing ice polo on moose and polar bears. Yes, we know that ice polo isn't an international sport like curling, wife-carrying and, of course, government-bashing; and we like it that way. Now, stop crying! We know polar bear riding is awesome! That's why we invented ice polo in the first place!

Anyway, back to the point: Because we spend 9 months of every year covered in snow and super-chilly winds, we really like to enjoy the other seasons: 2 weeks of spring, 8 weeks of monsoon-summer and 2 weeks of fall. That is why we love our summer-monsoon weekends. After all, we'd like to see what the fuss is all about too. That is why during our 6 weeks of summer-monsoon, we try to cram in as many long weekends as we can. Unfortunately, since Canada Day (July 1st) cannot be turned into a long weekend, we decided to celebrate our late Queen's birthday on a flexible schedule (I bet she doesn't really mind right now).

The truth is that the late Queen's birthday is our first summer-monsoon long weekend. Though I distinctly remember it being quite cold this time last year. But hey, weather prediction does tend to get really boring when you have to keep saying "Tomorrow, we shall have snow....again!" all the time. All we really care about is the opportunity to stay home and try to be a bit like our tropical friends all over the world.

Talking about staying home, a lot of us Canucks like to refer to this weekend as the "May Two-Four" weekend and I assure you that is has nothing to do with anything but the fact that beer is available in 24-packs, which (going by our conservative Canadian spending habits) is much cheaper than a 6-pack and is much more beer than what we get at the same price at the local pub down the street. But yes, that is why we love the "May Two-Four" weekend even more.

Of course, we do toast our late Head of State and give her the moments of respect that she deserves, though I really cannot say for certain if we toast her more for being our late Head of State or for being born in the middle of summer. Officially, of course, it is the former and well, you know the real thing. We obviously do remember her the next day, when we get our hangovers.

Now, a lot of you may be wondering why we do not celebrate the birthdays of the other Kings or Queens. The explanation is: 1. Queen Victoria was our first "Head of State" when we gained independence on July 1st, 1867; and 2 The birthdays of all her successors were either too close to hers or in winter. Thus, as you see, it doesn't make sense to celebrate any of them as we simply would not enjoy the back-to-back hangovers and the extra days in winter. But, our current Head of State, Queen of Elizabeth II was born on April 21st, which is the beginning of spring and we really are looking forward to celebrating that one soon enough.

Unfortunately, since we cannot celebrate the birthday of a living Head of State (Who do we think we are? North Korea?), we can only keep singing the Sex Pistols' version of "God save the Queen" and wait for it to take effect sooner rather than later and we are allowed to bring out the beers (and bears) a month earlier. Till then, I guess we'll just get on with our seal rides in the ice-cold waters of the Arctic and tempting the Alaskans to secede from our wonderful neighbors down south and be right where they belong.

Happy Victoria Day! *hic hic*