Lost in Nova Scotia

Today I went for a run in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Unlike my runs in Quebec, I'd remembered to remember what street I needed to get back to, and I didn't have to worry about nobody speaking my language. (I did have to worry that Canadians wouldn't be able to understand my accent, but that's a whole other story.)

It was a lovely sunny day, and I got lost almost immediately, running up a hill and then finding I had to run back down the same hill again, and somehow finding myself out by an enormous shopping mall when I should have been by a lake. Damn my sense of direction.

Still, despite not knowing where I was meant to be going, I still managed to run 4 miles at a pace that would be almost unimaginable in Singapore. The wonderful thing about your cardiovascular system not having to work really hard at keeping you cool is that you can run a lot faster without making a perceptibly larger effort, and it turns out that makes more of an impact than being lost.

I got back to the house, and after a shower we went back to the mall I'd run past, to buy bras. Not for me, mind, but for my wife: because she's not a nine-year-old girl, it's practically impossible to buy underwear in Singapore, so we have to make yearly journeys to Canada or the UK to find anything she can wear. If only you could use the internet to buy things and have them mailed to you.

Still, buying things on the internet doesn't help if you want to buy maple-glazed doughnuts from Tim Horton's. Bless Tim Horton and his massive selection of horrifically unhealthy fried dough products, dipped in a variety of sugar based toppings. With that in me, I was capable of spending the afternoon shopping for beige slacks, in between naps.

I have become a septugenerian without going through the previous three decades. How did that happen?