Functional Language, Part One

Inuktitut is a language spoken by the Inuit people of Canada's north. It consists of several different dialects, so my Inuktitut Crash Course/Style Guide at work sometimes includes several different versions of a single word.

I am taking it slow. Today I learned a few passable pronounciations (though this is debatable).

Basic greetings when answering the phone:

Good morning - Ullakkut

Good afternoon - Unnuksakkut

Thank you - Qujangnamiik or nakurmiik

I've also taken to listening to the news in Inuktitut in the mornings. I can't understand a word, but at least I'm becoming a bit more familiar with the cadences. Also, there is one announcer who sounds just like Anna Maria Tremonti, only she speaks Inuktitut.

My name in Inuktitut script

This will be on my new business cards.

Fusion

A local kid breakdancing to the sounds of a Greenlandic rap band is accompanied by traditional Inuit drumming at the Francophone Centre yesterday.

I live on the moon

Balcony view, Saturday night.

Iqaluit is rock and mud. I hear the dust is bad here in the summer, but worse in Rankin Inlet.

As far as I can tell, there is one paved road in the town. There are no roads leading anywhere else.

I thought I needed a map to get around today, but everyone just walks as the crow flies to wherever they need to go. For instance, to get to the office, I set my sights on a grouping of flags a short distance between it and me, and then just walk straight through the icy puddles.

Pedestrians unofficially rule. Old ladies walk down the middle of the street, and the trucks drive around them carefully.

Airplane food

The menu aboard yesterday's Canadian North flight was written in Inuktitut and English.

Please note the inclusion of caribou.

Yellowknife

YELLOWKNIFE - Within three hours of landing I was full of Screech and singing karaoke at the local Legion.

Wait, I’ll back up.

My seatmate on the First Air flight from Edmonton was an Iraqi man, whose own first sight of the territory was in deepest January about 12 years ago. He left his country when the turmoil was unbearable, stopped in Montreal briefly before making his way here, and hasn’t left.

I love flying over the ceiling of cloud like an upside-down cathedral, with no hint of the landscape below. When we left the mackerel floor behind, the sun stained the flat scribbled waterways a brassy Klimt-gold, and Great Slave Lake was covered in a sheet of dull cracked ice.

The town is young – young families, young transient workers. My first night I met a group of a dozen scientists, government clerks, and reporters, all here shy of a year. The majority of my coworkers are also new.

I’m staying with a Newfoundlander who’s dating a Brit whose last roommate was a Cape Bretoner. She’s hilarious and intelligent and kind, as well as being a great writer and photographer. We passed a lot of time on the weekend dissecting our respective East Coast-Catholic guilt complexes over gallons of tea.

Aside from karaoke at the Legion, I also partook in scotch night at the Elk Lodge this week. (Confidential to Seb and Joel – about 20 different scotches at $3 a piece. You would lose your minds. Meanwhile, cheese costs gazillions of dollars. )

As for work, well, I am covering City Hall like a good little civic affairs junkie. And, um, City Council operates differently here than down south. Truthfully, I am struggling. The deadlines and workload are totally relentless, as the company puts out six papers a week.

My editors are crusty and blunt, and I can be crusty and blunt back as long as I’m making a good point and have completed my work.

Tomorrow I fly to Iqaluit. I’ll touch down in Rankin Inlet in the afternoon, and will meet an editor (also a Bluenoser) there briefly before continuing on.

At least one of my coworkers at the bureau is from Nova Scotia, and the other called today and asked if I had White Stripes ticket yet. (Answer: yes.)

On the town everyone lives with a hostel mentality. That is, they make insta-friends like backpackers do, and say whatever, whenever, because none have anything in common except this as their current stomping ground. I have been advised that much more caution is required in Iqaluit.

Time moves quickly. My roommate has scarcely been here a month, and she’s got a local, a boyfriend, and a clan – all before her belongings make it via Greyhound. It seems the norm for everyone I’ve met.

I called my hot boyfriend yesterday, and heard city sounds in the background. It seems so alien already, and it’s only been days. I can only imagine what Iqaluit will be like. Very few of the people I work with have made it to that bureau, and the folks I meet when out all shudder when they hear my next destination.
-30-

The expanding universe

Greetings and farewell, citizens of Planet Duff. Kate Nova's shuttle launches at noon today, headed for the nether regions of her expanding universe.

She filled a bathtub with ocular drool and a storage closet full of books, and limped to the airport with her backpack and guitar.

Goodbye Centre of the Universe! Hello Canadian North!

A lovely luau, thanks!

My girlfriends made me a goodbye party. There was some sniffling. I wore a ballgown, Val wore a butterfly, and my mom drank coolers. Daizy's family came (yay!), and Emily Rose gave me the tools to be dainty while wearing flannel.

Pilgrimage of the unemployed

'T'is the season of catcalls and car stereos, patio tapas and parkside PDAs. More importantly, 't'is the season of unemployment, as Kate Nova is officially "in between projects."

To celebrate the excess leisure time I have left over after yelling at Rogers Wireless and packing everything I own into tiny boxes, hot boyfriend and I made a pilgrimage to the ultimate mecca of vegetarian cuisine - the Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, NY.

Anyone who has ever eaten a meal at my table has likely been fed at least one item from the Moosewood cookbooks. Also, the idealistic, 16-year-old version of myself once wrote to the cooperative restaurant requesting an apprenticeship, albeit unsuccessfully.

In celebration of this cathartic trek south, we did what any self-respecting Canadians would do - debated the merits of Green versus NDP, loudly, over Baked Lemon Herb Tofu and Finger Lakes wine.

For the record - I win.

Rock 'n' roll

Jian Ghomeshi said it, not me – all the cool people are going to Nunavut.

Well, I might be paraphrasing slightly, but that was the jist of his recent response to the White Stripes' wildly entertaining announcement that it will add Iqaluit, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife to its Canuck tour.

I bought myself a ticket as an early birthday present, and hope to see the White Stripes at the 600-seat Arctic Games Arena on June 26.

The band will also celebrate its 10th anniversary with a show in frackin' Glace Bay.

Wow. Random.