Canadian Tipping, Yerba Mate, Raccoons Part 2

Day 28

The Canadian adventure continues and I go to work. As usual, I work in a pub ( the fancy name that intellectual drunks put on a bar). It's funny how you move to a different country to change your entire life and all that happens is that you end up doing the same shit in a different postal code (God is a man, for sure). Anyway, today was my first real shift and I learned a few things about Canadian Tipping (no, not a version of cow tipping, though it would be funny to find Canadians asleep and tip them over, we could drug 'em, it could work). Here is a list of how to tip in a Canadian pub (according to observed Canadian behavior):

1. If your server/bartender is nice to you do not tip.

2. If you are from a foreign country and in Canada, tip normally.

3. If you are charging to your credit card round up to the nearest dollar but make sure to NEVER do the math on the slip. Hey, if you're giving them a tip they should have to add it up on their own.

4. If your friends don't tip, continue their pattern.

5. If you do decide to tip make a big show of giving your dime to your server/bartender as though to say, "You owe me one."

6. If you get bad service tip generously as a result of your Canadian-niceness guilt.

Gee, it's fun to be an immigrant worker with a few shiny twoonies in her pocket after you got shot in the neck by a beer tapper gone nuts and had to kowtow to bratty 19 year olds for seven hours. Why the hell am I going to grad school at all when there are exciting work opportunities like this?

Moving onward, I have always been addicted to yerba mate (South American Tea). My everyday poision is a gallon of coffee but there is nothing like the potent stimulant of mate; it puts your mind on hyper alert without getting jittery. Tonight I was offered to join in on a tea drinking session and learned that the way people in South America drink mate is dangerous. Not only do they drink it at near boiling temperatures they only use one cup. Apparently, they all sit together and pass the funny little strawed cup around to every person gathered around. Gross, huh? I did it anyway. But, the fucked up thing is that the person holding the cup has to drink the whole cupful before passing it. It's bad enough having to share germs without getting some tongue action but really, do I have to wait my goddamn turn?

I know that I've ranted on raccoons before about how people here think that they are cute and harmless when really they are nasty scavengers who carry disease like trendy people carry macbooks (everywhere and all the time). And, they're huge I saw one lurching along the building today that looked like a goddamn German Shepard. Then, my tiniest friend turned to me before heading out the door and said, "I'm going raccoon hunting." Her friend with crutches followed, excited by the possibility of being near these creatures. Seriously, aren't either of them smart enough to know that in nature the small and the injured are the first to go. The eerie thing is that I haven't seen either of them since...

-Canadian Castaway