"And You Call Yourself CANADIAN?!"

There is a Viking (or is it an Inuit?) slam that goes something like this:

"Your house is so cold you can't even make love to your wife!"

New Zealand, like Ireland and the Netherlands, is one of those places where indoor heating, insulation, windows that work, and ventilation are considered "optional" in homes. From June until September, it is also a place where a person, accustomed to -10 degrees Celsius winters and warm homes, can nearly die of heat prostration outside and hypothermic exposure inside ... all in one day.

Boiling the pasta reduced indoor visibility to 1 metre in any direction.

One of my sick fantasies is to run a Kiwi-inspired "Winter Hospitality Themepark" -- for Kiwis only -- in Northern Ontario between, oh, about mid-October until April. They get to live in a 2cm thick clapboard shed with a corrugated iron roof. I'd chuck them a wool blanket, a flint, and a bundle of dry kindling and say, "see you in the Spring!". I'm certain that by sundown of the first day, the sniveling would be enough to wake the bears.

"Le maison de Jean". $5 per use. Because later I'll have to muck it out.

Hot water will incur a charge of $25.
Mixed with cold, $35. Because I'll have to use two buckets.

My good friends J and C in Whangamata had a few hearty laughs at my expense recently.

I emerged from the guest room one morning decked out in double wool socks, trackpants, a sweatshirt, scarf, and a toque. Well, so what? Except that I had slept in this getup underneath a sheet, a comforter, and a wool blanket. I still had the urge to drop and do, like, fifty.

At the sight of me, J and C broke out into hysterics. Guffaw guffaw guffaw. "Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!" doubled they over their Weet-bix.

In Canada, they'd sic Social Services on you.

"You wussy Canadian!", C chortled.
"Oh yeah, ha ha yourselves! It's friggin' F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G in here! Agggghh!"
"This from the lady who surfs in June!"
C, ready to prove me a total sideshow embarrassment to my countrymen marched me over to the (obviously leading to nowhere and connected to nothing) thermostat.

It read 9 degrees Celsius.

Indoors.

"Oh fine", she conceded, "we'll put on the heater ... you WUSSY CANADIAN!"
I felt like I was back in the Claddagh, Galway. December. The North Atlantic. Hibernia. My flatmates refused to turn on the heater. There was no hot water. I froze. My roommate wore silk nighties. I wore a snowsuit, spent every night at the overheated pub, and ate my weight in Galaxy bars just to stay alive. I swore, never again. And here I am.

With a few simple Canadian tricks, I managed to heat that death-trap up!

I can't wait for Sunday. I'll be journeying down to the bottom of the North Island, to stay with my relations for a week. They proudly -- and I mean proudly -- set their home at a balmy 17 degrees Celsius.

I'll be giving out free Themepark passes. And packing a few extra sheep.