March 2003

Hello friends,

This time I'll tell you about the climate I experience in Canada. Although Toronto is southern than Milano, it is a very cold city. I have to make the terminology clear: what is called "winter" in Israel is like what the Canadians would call "fall". What you call "fall" they call "summer". I would say that the Fahrenheit scale is more appropriate to represent the range of temperatures here. If you really want to make sure degrees are always positive (you know, it helps computers), use Kelvin's scale. Unlike the US, Canada sticks to the Celsius scale. Let me illustrate this semantic difference with an old joke. A person (here you fill his name) dies and arrives hell. An angle tells him he must choose between the Israeli hell (which is worse than Israel reality) to the German hell. The man asks what the difference is. The angle tells him that in the German hell, he can do whatever he likes, but every day between 10am to 12am he will be taken to a pool of water at 100 degrees, whereas in the Israeli hell, he has nothing to do during the days, and he will be taken to a pool of water at 100 degrees between 10am to 12am every day. The man chose the Israeli hell, because in Israel 10am is not exactly 10am and 100 degrees are not precisely 100 degrees. I tell you this because one of the first things I learned here was to be very careful with the water taps. In Canada, you can burn your hand when you open only the hot water. They don't have solar systems, and they use the hot water to heat the houses with radiators. In Canada, "hot water" is what "boiling water" means in Israel. The term "boiling" means here something else - water at 100 degrees (Celsius). The surprise comes when you use only the cold water. This could be really dangerous, especially in the shower or if you want to drink a glass of water, since the water are at 0.001 degrees. What you call "cold" they call "cool", what they call "cold" you call "freezing".

Now I can hear your bones shivering. Relax. Take something warm (not too hot) to drink, and read on. There are some positive aspects to negative temperatures. First, there is no rain at all. There is only snow, which falls about once a week. The snow gives the city a shiny white look instead of its concrete color. Despite the cold, there are many bright days in Toronto. Since the sun rises late, you can wake up at 8:00, look outside the window, and feel like you woke up at 6:00 in Israel, which is a really good feeling to start the day. The weather here is too cold for ants, flies and mosquitoes. They can't live here and stayed in the south. On the other hand, you can see in the city types of dogs that look like white bears. The cold weather teaches people to walk fast and this is a good exercise. In my case, I learned to walk even faster. However, if the snow stays for two days on the sidewalks, it becomes ice and is very slippery. There is a law here that everyone must shovel the snow on the sidewalk in front of his house or store. The municipality removes the snow from the roads for the cars traffic. Now I understand why people build garages for their cars. If you park on the street, and there is heavy snow, you will have to work 15 minutes to take it off the car, and injection would be difficult. I guess garages were brought to Israel by the English, and people don't know the original reason why they were invented. There is a nice social consequence to the cold weather. When the temperature is -15, everyone on the street wears boots, a coat, gloves and a scarf. You can't see skin, except the faces. As a result, you don't see white, black or yellow people. Everyone seems to belong to the same race, everyone looks pink.

I'll tell you more about winter activities next time. What about you? Do you have demonstrations against the war on Iraq in universities like we have here? If it is easier for you, you can reply in Hebrew.


Ady.