Saturday night, in Halifax

So it’s Saturday night, in Halifax.

If you’re Canadian or Australian, I’ve possibly got your attention now. Although for different reasons.

Canadians might be wondering if I’m talking about the east coast port city of Halifax, and if so why, given I now live in the middle of the Alberta prairies, a whole continent away.

While Australians (of a certain age) might be thinking of the Weddings Parties Anything song Knockbacks in Halifax, which starts off:

It’s Saturday night in Halifax / The kids are out there dancing / It’s the same old beat, it’s all over the world.

Both these things were on my mind the other week, when I found myself in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a Saturday night (on the other side of a big continent). The energetic ditty certainly was. It had found its way into my ear the moment I landed, and played on repeat the whole time. Making me think, I’d better just check that this was actually the right Halifax, coz if I’ve sat here humming it to myself over and over, over a local craft beer, and later find out it’s actually about some Halifax out of Devonport or something, I’m going to feel ripped off.

Luckily all things are at our finger tips these days, and I found this interview with the lead singer, Mick Thomas, about the song and why he wrote it:

“It was just the first time we’d come overseas. I got my itinerary, and I sort of knew it by reading about most of the places on it. But there was this place—Halifax, Nova Scotia—and all these exotic images entered my head about what it would be like. But you get there and it’s a city where people live and go to work and earn their money and come home and have a few beers and go to a nightclub on a Saturday night. So ‘Knockbacks in Halifax’ is just a song about goin’ 10,000 miles to do exactly what you do at home!”

Phew, right Halifax at least, I thought, and ordered another craft beer – checking it was from Nova Scotia. I make a point of trying out the local brews.

My favourite line in the song is the next one.

And in her eyes / I coulda swore I saw the northern lights / But it was a light flashing from the disco silver ball.

What a way to describe the disillusionment of moving somewhere else, only to find out that a lot is the same. You’re the same. You’ve moved 10,000 miles and … everything’s the same.

I moved from Perth to Edmonton seven months ago. I’ve certainly had that feeling.

I was ready for the move. There wasn’t anything wrong with life where I was – not at all. It was just … kind of the same. Doing the same thing with the same friends under the same relentless blue skies … it’s the best thing about being settled somewhere, at the same time as being the thing that, starts to niggle at you after a while, if you’re a certain type of person I guess anyway, and make you wonder … is there more?

So off I go, to the other side of the world, to find out if there is … more. Of … whatever I didn’t have more of before, I guess.

And you find, of course, after you’ve moved to the other side of the world, that a lot isn’t really very different. I go to work, I pay the bills, what I get from the first seems never quite enough for the second, and on it goes. Except now you don’t even have the people and things you liked to do before. And you wonder if you made the right decision …

So, if you’re going to survive, you pick yourself up and throw yourself into all the fun stuff there is to do wherever you’ve found yourself! Well I have, anyway. I’ve bought my first ever set of cross-country skis, which any day now I’ll be able to use in the park two blocks from my house. I take up invites to go see new local bands I’ve never heard of, just to see what Canadian music is like. I’m only reading Canadian authors – Edmonton authors when I can – trying to understand more about this place I’ve found myself.

It’s a bit of a cliche, but I’m saying yes to everything. No matter if it’s the sort of thing I’d normally do or not. Partly, that’s a practical choice – I know hardly anyone, I don’t get enough invites to be able to afford to be picky. But partly, it’s a decision I made, when I moved here. Part of my strategy to make the most of my limited time in this part of the world. To experience everything I can about it while I’m here, and to come away with as many memories as I can muster.

But I love the Bluenose girlies / And I love the Bluenose beer sings Thomas, using a local term that Nova Scotians use for themselves, and I feel like that’s how I feel. There’s some great stuff here, I’m getting out and enjoying it!

(On that note, Hey, server! Another one of your fine local craft beers, please!)

As a result of making those choices, I’ve met so many new people, done so many different things. I’ve got involved in the local football committee. I’ve started a new book club, reading only Canadian authors. I’ve got some new interests, from music, to authors, to beer. And most of all, I’ve got some new friends – or potential friends, anyway – to add to the ones I love and miss from home.

Of course, I could live life like that at home, too. They’d be water skis, I guess, but the rest stands. Yet, I don’t.

But then (disclaimer: I’m four Nova Scotian craft beers in at this point), I think, why not? If I’d approached life at home like I approach life here, maybe I wouldn’t get itchy feet so often?  So while I get where Mick was going with Knockbacks in Halifax, I guess I feel the opposite. That I could have had the experience I’m having here, without going the 10,000 miles, if I’d just approached being at home differently.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of expat life is not to get involved in everything you can while you’re away, but to hang on to that attitude when you get back?

With a belly full of bitter / It’s a walk home in the rain / There might be one more drunk in Halifax / Well, some things never change.

I pay the bill, draw my down coat around me, and stagger out the door of a wet dockside pub, on the other side of the world.