day eighteen: work work work

I have been a terrible, terrible blogger, but life got pretty slow here for awhile I didn’t feel I had a lot to write about. However, things should be picking up soon. I started work last night at the Arctic Ventures, which is one of the ‘department stores’ up here. I work in the video rental place there three to four evenings a week. The pay is pretty solid. In fact, I get paid twice what I did working last summer, when I did a whole lot more work. Places in Iqaluit often offer really good incentives for people to come work for them. The North Mart here, which is essentially the territorial version of Wal-Mart, offers a great salary, $1000 a month grocery allowance, and free housing to its full-time employees. Not bad, eh? Lots of places here offer housing, the airlines, government jobs, etc. If you don’t mind the winters or the isolation, it’s really not a bad place to work.

My day job is coming along slowly. There’s a lot of long drawn out hiring processes that drive everyone crazy and that have kept me in hiring limbo for the last two weeks. Oh well. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that I start soon.

Dave is here now, keeping me company. We’ve been watching movies and grocery shopping. Dave has informed me that salsa is not all that more expensive here in Iqaluit than it is down south. Good to know!

Since I have yet another day off (it does get boring here after awhile with nothing to do) I’m going to read. I’m currently working on my fifth book of the summer. I just finished The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji and it was excellent. I’m now working on The Children of Men by PD James. It’s good, but so far not meeting the standards set by Vassanji’s book or Disgrace, that I finished earlier.

day six: yay wildlife!

On Tuesday morning I was woken up at about 6:40am by a bizarre squawking noise. It was a raven, and I've discovered that they rarely sound the same way twice. They stick around Iqaluit a good portion of the year and are pretty common. They don't seem to be that much of a nuisance but I haven't been here that long. The other bird I've seen is the snow bunting. Dad and I saw the first one of the season last night on our way to the Frobisher, and Dad says it's a sure sign of spring.

The one thing I really want to see here are the narwhals. You can really only see them further north, like at Pond Inlet in late August. It's really expensive to go see them, so maybe in a few years. My dad says they are amazing to see. They swim with their tusks above the water. My dad actually has a giant narwhal tusk. It's taller than I am.

While you generally don't see many animals in the city besides dogs that are usually a mix between a husky and something else, you can see what people have been hunting in the area because they put the skins on racks outside their houses to dry. There's a house with a seal skin across the street from me and when Dad and I went for a drive we saw two polar bear skins.

In bizarre "small-world" news, a girl I went to high school with works at the Frobisher Inn bar. I ran into her last night. We weren’t friends or anything, but it was kind of crazy. She also works for the airline. And I thought I had gotten here first.

day four: getting settled

Bad news. My affinity for Inuit art may cause me to lose more money than I will earn up here. My father has told me that he'll buy me my first carving to start me off but I'm on my own from there. There's a Cape Dorset print I'm eyeing that's on display at the Museum right now. I'll get a picture of it next time I'm there. It's of a bunch of children playing outside except one kid is randomly upside down. Secret Inuit magic? I think so.

It took me a couple of days to get settled here. I was still very out-of-it and very tired on Saturday. Yesterday my dad took me for a drive around Iqaluit, although, if we're being honest, there isn't a lot to see.

I can't decide if I like it here yet. The people seem really nice, but it's really dirty. There's no grass or anything so it's all muddy and dusty. There's a lot of garbage around, but I think it has to do with the fact that there don't appear to be any public trashcans. It does have a certain charm though. I just need to give it some time, perhaps.

One thing I'm not enjoying is the cost of food. I had to go buy cereal, because all my dad had was Harvest Crunch, which was about as terrible as I thought it would be. So, we went to the North Mart, which is the Iqaluit equivalent of Wal-Mart, and got some Corn Flakes. They cost me $10.99. All I can say is that at least they weren't Frosted Flakes. A box of Tony's best will have you handing over $17.99.

pre-day one: ottawa airport

As I was sitting in the bus station last night I had a freak-out moment. It was one of those moments where I couldn't believe what I was doing and questioned all of my life choices up until that second. Then I got over it and finished Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee. It's the third book I've read since school's been out and it's fantastic.

After my six hour overnight bus ride, in which I fell asleep on the shoulder of my seat partner (Ahmed, an Egyptian engineering graduate student from Western) and woke up at one point with no clue where I was and who I was sitting by, I found my way to the Ottawa airport and am not looking forward to another four hours of travel. However, since I am the coolest person, I will be playing a computer game for at least half of it. It is currently -3 degrees Celsius in Iqaluit.

I have a job up there now. I am an office assistant in the land claims office for Indian and Northern Affairs. Yay for cushy government job! I should learn to love it now.

My dad (whom I am living with these next four months) is actually taking off for two weeks on Wednesday. I'll be alone for awhile but I think it will be nice. Dave comes up on the twentieth.

I board my plane in fifty minutes. Wish me luck.