Shedding extra tonnes

Funny the things that get you. Mr. O sold our car last night, our cute little fuel-efficient black Renault Clio, and even though we had it for only a year and it was by no means one of my most cherished possessions, and even though nobody was born or died in there, and really cars are sort of the devil anyway, I still felt that naked, floating sensation of loss, like I had instantly shed a few pounds. [Sell that car and ride your bike instead and you will lose a few pounds - Ed.] I know this is just the beginning of the process, but the point is that it has begun. With a car.

I hate driving in strange cities where I don't know where I'm going. I will never drive in Calgary again, for instance. So driving in Helsinki was a bit of a trip for me; I was 'from' here and I knew where I was going and even got myself unlost once or twice. I was driving home from the airport the other day listening to Bassoradio and between cheap, derivative West Coast rap songs I realized that I could understand everything the mic-abusing DJs were saying. At the same time I have to admit that this connection between driving and belonging most definitely marks me as a Ca-merican rather than a Finn-opean.

While on driving, I have to take this opportunity to vent about the Gilliamesque system of licence renewal in Ontario. I had a brush with this monster before leaving, when my bag was snatched at Industry (this was a long, long time ago) and I had to replace my Alberta DL with an Ontario one. Now that has expired, and despite the fact that we will be sans auto for the foreseeable future, we will both have to take driver's tests in order to get cards. This comes as a surprise considering that Canada and Finland are both part of the same international agreement by which one country's licence can be exchanged for the other; at least that's how it worked when I moved here, no test, no nothing. I'd almost be better off keeping my Finnish licence (to get my Canadian card back I'll have to exchange it at the police station here) or getting an international licence.