I’m sat in the local Starbucks in Edgemont village; though coming from England, Canada has a very loose interpretation of the meaning of village. There are no thatched roofs on cottages, no pottering old men with leaf blowers, or village ponds with quacking ducks. It took me an hour to hike here, because, naturally, I couldn’t figure out the bus routes, considering the buses make sense here, driving in straight lines as opposed to meandering through thirty council estates en-route to a five mile final destination. I ordered my coffee five minutes ago, and even in the short weeks since I arrived in Vancouver, I’ve come to learn that if things take longer than five minutes, you should enquire. The name Jessie has repeatedly been shouted by a bewildered barista shaking his head. It is not until I enquire that I learn Jessie is in fact the Canadian translation of Yorkshire for Jason. Good try pal. Upon arrival in Canada I had nothing; no job, a temporary home for one month which is literally in someone’s basement – yes I’m from Yorkshire, but our kind have spent enough time living underground, thank you – and of course, not knowing anybody at all. In fact, the only items I could say I owned with certainty were an oversized unsuitable suitcase filled with out of fashion garments unfit for purpose. Nevertheless, never before have I been to a place where so many of the locals are having an ‘awesome’ day; they say this even if their eyeballs are slowly melting at the prospect of sitting in three hours of traffic in the most densely traffic populated city in North America. Yet Vancouver is so green. I literally live in a rain forest on a mountain side, where deer encircle you as you leisurely hike – nobody walks in Vancouver, a prerequisite of leaving the house is that you hike, or you’re in a vehicle. To the north of the city, there are endless peaks cascading to the distance; oh, if only I had a room with a view. This is some bulls*** right here. It is just one of the many cultural discombobulations my mind has been forced to comprehend. We speak the same language, but the similarities end there. Here, the use of sarcasm is a form of insult as opposed to a greeting; the weather is merely a circumstantial climatological occurrence, as opposed to a newsworthy topic of discussion; the reply ‘Not bad’ when being asked how one is, has concerned onlookers asking if you need an ambulance; pubs are not communal living spaces with old men with spritely facial hair farting in the corner whilst reading The Sun, but instead places where young people go and actually have fun. What a strangely alluring place. People swoosh through their days with a look compromising between purpose and intermittent bursts of straight talking forthrightness, and those friendly smiles that Canadians are so famous for. But, besides smiling back with a turn of indifferent affection, what feelings pulse through my veins? Of course, excitement for arriving in a colossus country populated with a variety of large mammals that can kill you. But something is missing. Something that, in a vastly cultured and populated place, shouldn’t be. Friendship. Yes, the longer I stayed, the lonelier I felt. In a place abundant with bright young people, myself at least one of those things, surely I should be having an orgasmic plethora of interactions led by enthusiasm and lust for life. Friends are found not made, right? But alas, this is the life you choose when you move frequently. There are no fixed points. No lasting connections. Like all good travellers, I was not embedded into the euphoria of arrival, but swept along on the outskirts of transcendence, merely observing the catastrophically idealistic nature of my decisions and presupposed understanding of what I was indeed letting myself in for. The true nature of finding oneself unattached is disconcerting. But what else can one do when finding themselves in such a juncture in their life, but swim along with the current, hoping the tide brings with it gradual common sense and, eventually, a feeling of simply belonging.