The Language barrier

It would seem that I have arrived into a foreign speaking country....and I’m not referring to the French, I’m referring to the English.

Initially I found it odd that the Canadians would just stare at me when I was speaking. What could have been mistaken for awe was sadly just misunderstanding. I know this now because I have realised I only understand about 50% of all conversation, a statistic which can be further affected with television programmes, farm workers and telephone conversations.

Aside from the fact that Canadians speak faster than the scatman, they also blend words together into long, gentle, flowing sounds that makes little or no sense to fellow (non-Canadian) man. This long constant ‘slur’ is then made more complicated with stress on the letter ‘r’, lots of dropped ‘h’ and a complete disregard for the letter ‘t’ – particularly mid-word e.g. Peter becomes ‘Pee-durr’ and water becomes ‘wa-durr’.

The flip side of this is of course that when I use such words there is complete hilarity or considerable mimicking. Something that is then made worse thanks to the use of certain words or phrases which I have discovered mean different things here than they do in the UK.

Having signed up for some temping work to top up the hours at the winery through the winter months, last week I was given the brain-damagingingly boring duty of simply answering the phone in a place where the phone pretty much never rings. A simple task and one that I have been doing successfully since the age of 8 and something I was not in the slightest bit concerned about being able to undertake. I was wrong.

The first caller I had to ask three times to repeat his name and had to ask him to spell the name of his company – which embarrassingly turned out to be ‘Ponds’. My attempt to repeat the name ‘Ohhh P-O-N-D-s’ in my best cut glass English seemed to do little to alleviate the man’s annoyance.

The second caller again I asked the person to repeat their name twice and was too embarrassed to ask a third time so put them through to the boss anyway saying ‘there is someone on line one and their name sounds something like meeeoharisaaawan’ He did not seem impressed.

By caller three I had started to break into a sweat and having asked for her name once, I had no clue what he was saying so decided to tell her the guy she was looking for was not in the office and offered to transfer her through to the guys voicemail. I do not know if she said yes or no. I put her through to the voicemail anyway.

With caller four, I was so excited that that I had understood her name first time that I panicked and accidentally hung up on her.

By caller five, I had realised that answering phones may not have been as easy as I had first thought. I managed to understand the guys name and that he was looking for the boss, although failed to understand the Company name. So pleased with my progress and called through the to the boss and confidently said ‘I have Paul on line one’, to which he (understandably) said,

BOSS: ‘Paul who’

RUTH: ‘oh, erm..I don’t know’

BOSS: ‘Where is he calling from?’

RUTH: ‘erm, I’m not sure. It sounded something like peeerrrken.....’

BOSS: [frustrated interruption] ‘Can you perhaps ask him?’

It took three attempts but I finally got Paul’s company name, but by this time my stress levels had reached an all time high and panic was starting to set in when I called back through to the boss. In all the stress and panic at getting the name of the company, I had then forgotten the caller’s name, so when the boss picked up his line, all I could manage was ‘Erm, Hi, its Ruth again. The guy....er....from before....he’s from Park and Harper’.

It was clearly not going well.

Shaken by my apparent inability to undertake such a simple task in my first language, I tried talking to the lady sitting nearby. I introduced myself and she replied with her name. I did not understand what she said. At that moment my line rang, I politely smiled, nodded and pointed towards the phone in an attempt to get myself out of another awkward situation – it was the boss asking me if Doreen was around. Not knowing who Doreen was, I replied ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure who Doreen is?’ At which my newly introduced colleague looked at me with an expression that seemed to say – are you actually retarded? – she preceded to point slowly towards herself in the same way I might do with a dog or other non-speaking and considerably less intelligent creature. I casually, cheerily then said ‘oh never mind, here she is. One moment, I’ll put you through’

Temping in summary: I do not speak Canadian and I should not answer phones.

Longest. Journey. Ever

So, I have no excuses not to maintain this blog now, given I have indeed started my ‘Big Canadian Adventure’.

It all got off to a frustratingly slow start thanks to a dusting of snow at Manchester airport. The irony of being delayed in the UK by snow when you’re heading for Calgary which is undoubtedly colder and has considerably more snow only made me laugh – initially.

Due to what seemed to be ineptitude of the de-icers at Manchester airport we sat on the tarmac for 4 hours before being thrown off and told to wait in the airport for a further 2 hours. Eventually, after the guy with the de-icer got his act together we were informed that the crew no longer had enough flying hours to get them to Calgary – which had been our original destination – instead we were going to fly to Quebec where we would have a crew change. So 7 hours later we landed in Quebec where the crew were ready and waiting. However, given it was 2am in the morning the re-fuelling guys were clearly having a cheeky nap somewhere meaning we sat on the tarmac for another 2 hours. Finally, after takeoff we headed for Calgary which was just an easy 4 hours. Although this meant I arrived into Calgary at 4am to a rather disgruntled immigration officer who had been waiting for me to process my visa. She was understandably annoyed. But all the same, she was nice to me and the visa was sorted in record time. Clearly I had missed my connection to Kelowna so I went to the desk to see if I could get onto the next plane for Kelowna. I couldn’t. It was full. Instead, they put me on a plane to Vancouver, then another plane back to Kelowna. Another 4 hours wait and off I went for Vancouver. I was cheered by only having 2 hours in Vancouver and sat at the gate patiently waiting for the last plane of my VERY long day. However, when it came to boarding the announcement you couldn’t even make up came over the speakers  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, due to fog in Kelowna we are going to unable to fly and therefore we regret to announce that this flight has been cancelled.’ I was sent to retrieve my bags and return to the check in desks where they would try and get us onto later flights that day. I stood nervously looking at the departures board at the flight times and feared the worst. By the time I got to the desks I presumed that they had put me onto the last flight of the day, but happily I had a seat on the 2pm. So 7 hours of further waiting in Vancouver and staring into the distance, I finally boarded my last flight of the day, arriving into the foggy Kelowna, 19 hours late and with a total travel time of 36 hours.

Upon arrival I was introduced to superbowl Sunday, which given I had been awake for 2 days, I struggled to follow. Someone won, someone lost – I don’t know who.

So here I am. Let the fun begin....

Tasting Change

Last week my preparation for my new life and job took a big step forwards and I spent the majority of last week with my nose in study guides, listening to a very knowledgeable wine expert and tasting a LOT of wine.

For those unfamiliar with the qualifications open to people who work in the wine industry, the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) is an internationally recognised body who offer certification to everyone from waitressing staff, through to those who will effectively have a diploma in wine. Then from there very few people go on to become Masters of Wine, currently only around 300 people across the globe. (Something to aim for perhaps)

I love wine and I drink a lot of it. I am also fortunate enough to have a Pop who loves wine too and has in depth knowledge of wines which he has imparted to me over recent years. However, all this knowledge from what has effectively been 12 years of drinking it was not enough to make the exam easy and I sat pondering the merits of a Chablis compared to the same grape from Margaret River for quite some time. Not to mention the tannin and acidity of a Southern Rhone red compared with a young Californian Shiraz.

I have to wait another week to find out how it went so watch this space.

Over the course, I learnt a lot of things about wine, grape varieties, World regions and tasting notes. However, what interested more was the detail about actually growing vines and, more importantly, turning it into wine. Wine production fascinates me and how two winemakers in the same area can differ to such a degree – with exceptional through to frankly paint stripper. Yes, there will always be a huge environmental influence with terrain clearly playing a huge part. But somewhere in that exceptional wine making there must be an individual (or individuals) who are making sure that all the benefits they have taken from the land and environment are utilised to their fullest to make exceptional wines.

Starting in February, this is what I hope to find out and hopefully by the following February I might just be one of those individuals who helps to make the perfect grapes into exceptional wine. 

If I could see the readers at this point I may be seeing some furrowed brows amongst you. I expected as much. There are questions like ‘how on earth do you intend to do that Ruth?’ and ‘where exactly do you intend to learn this information?’ and ‘how do you know you’ll actually enjoy it?’

Well, I intend to do it thanks to the wonderful wineries of the Okanagan Valley and the work I will be doing within them. The question in regard to whether I’ll actually enjoy it remains to be seen and this blog will either become increasingly negative and despondent OR it will in fact (as I am predicting) share the details of my journey from Manchester’s regeneration to North American wine industry and my transition to bringing some of that exceptional wine back to the UK.

Planning, Packing and Preparation

Someone said that making the decision to go would be the hardest part of this whole process and to some degree I would agree. I did feel considerably better once I uttered the words.... ’umm....well.....I....think I might move to Canada’. However, then the process of sorting out my life and transporting a considerable part of it 4,414miles westwards began and I realised that perhaps the hard part might only just be beginning?!

Tip to anyone else thinking of heading abroad and having the joys of a student loan to contend with, the Student Loans Repayment are characteristically unhelpful when it comes to going abroad. After a long and frustrating conversation with a chap in the repayments department about me having to fill in a Overseas Income Assessment form and me trying to help him understand that I actually couldn’t, we then moved on to a rather frustrating conversation about me needing enough money in my account to sustain me for a year. Simple enough point, to which I responded ‘What is the minimum you consider an acceptable amount? The answer was ‘We don’t have a minimum requirement’. So, logical next question was ‘So what happens if you decide I don’t have enough money?’ The answer.....’Then you’ll need to pay £250 a month.’

You can imagine my response.

I decided to leave that conversation there, calm down and phone back another time. The case continues.

The Student Loan is just one of the big things to do.... on the 'To Do List' is Health Insurance, Canadian tax code, Canadian Bank, Canadian mobile phone, cancelling British Phone, closing British Bank, Canadian driving licence, shipping of excess baggage, voluntary National Insurance contributions....

Oh, then there is the completion of my Intermediate Wine accreditation in November.

Action Stations....Lots to do.