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Since yesterday, I am in Canada. I arrived some time during the afternoon, and for once, the sun was shining over here. Last time I was in this magnificent country, it was FFC, which stands in my “Gino’s language” for “Fucking Freezing Cold”. I guess being here in the month of January had got a lot to do with it.

I crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the very first time back in July of 1988. Yesterday, it was my 21st Atlantic crossing. 21 years ago, I travelled all over the place, from New York to Florida, to Texas, Nevada, California, Utah, Louisiana, Michigan, and from Detroit I drove a car all the way to Montreal, in order to fly back to Brussels. Although I had been doing business for six years or so (and I already knew my way around), I had learned a lot of things about the “American way of living” during that very first trip. I discovered a lot of “24/7 restaurants” over here (which means that these restaurants are open 24 hours each and every day). I discovered the drive-through restaurants and coffee shops. I learned how to drive with a speed limit of 55 miles per hour, and I learned a lot more things.

But above all, I discovered the use of telephone. Although during that time, back in 1988, I had already a car phone which was a thing with a weight of more than 2 1/2 kilograms. It was fixed in the boot of my car, and cost me a fortune to use. Being in America for the first time back in 1988, I discovered that almost everything was done over the telephone, from booking hotels, rental cars, Las Vegas shows, making reservations in restaurants, to getting all kinds of information… one just picked up the phone and made the call. At that time, my English was good enough to understand everything.

That has changed over the past 21 years. Before leaving Portugal, I had made a reservation in one of the many hotels in the neighbourhood of Toronto International Airport. As a matter of fact, I did that online, in the Lisbon airport while I was waiting for my flight to Munich which connected me to my Toronto flight. This morning, I tried to make another reservation for another hotel in the Toronto area. So I picked up the telephone and called a couple of hotels. I guess my English has become very, very poor, as I couldn’t understand anybody who was working in these hotels. Now, don’t get me wrong, I always stay in Holiday Inns, so these are not poor quality hotels. Apparently, the staff of most of the Toronto hotels has become immigrants who speak very heavily accented English. Fortunately, over the past 21 years, mankind invented the internet, so I went online in my room (free Wifi!), and booked another hotel online.

Robin Williams calls it a linguistic adventure to go out drinking with a Scotsman, because you just can’t fucking understand them. He’s right, I went out drinking with a lot of Scotsmen when I was doing business in the United Kingdom a couple of years ago, and I couldn’t fucking understand them either.

But trying to book a hotel in the Toronto area by phone is yet another linguistic adventure. I just experienced this earlier today.

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Golf. Although I had sworn never to play it, I took it up somewhere in 2001 or 2002, during the last two years when I was living in Belgium. In 2003 I moved to the Algarve, one of the best and most famous regions in the world to play the game. Obviously, my golf clubs came with me, as I had really started to like the game. I played a couple of games, mostly together with my Irish neighbour, who is really addicted to golf. Well, he’s a Brit, so that’s pretty easy to understand. But, starting up a business in Portugal was not easy, and I stopped playing the game for some time. Until a couple of weeks ago.

A Belgian friend was visiting, and he wanted to try to hit some balls. I had to find my bag with golf clubs and off we went, to a local golf club’s drivers range. Although I hadn’t touched the clubs in more than five years, I was surprised to still be able to hit some balls perfect (ok, I am honest, some balls, not all of them). We spent a nice Saturday afternoon on that drivers range, and had a lot of fun. And obviously, we found the 19th hole on a little roof terrace in Cacela Velha, so that went just perfect as well.

Since then, I have left my golf clubs next to the front door, so everytime I walk in or out, I see them. I might take them today, and go and shoot some balls again. As I have been invited to go and play a game on one of the new golf courses we have in our neighbourhood. But I told the people who have invited me that I needed a bit more practise before meeting them on the golfcourse.

I have always wondered how the Brits have been able to invent a game like this. Yesterday, I found the answer to that question. The answer was given by Robin Williams…

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