"How's the crime rate in Vancouver?"

Wow, how do you answer that one and stay fashionable??

Well, I suppose it has its ups and downs and bad parts of town, but on a whole I always felt it a pretty good place.

Then I was met with a quizzical stare.

"............................ I hear it wasn't too hot this summer."

Oh............ climate. I see.....

This rather fun conversation happened recently at one of the dojo classes. Arakawa sensei has taken on two seniors who, I was told, wanted to learn karate as a means to protect themselves and their grandchildren. Sort of a self-defense class, if you will. He merged them with the on-going Wednesday morning adult class and one of the new students happens to speak very good English. He told me he used to be a banker or bank manager of sorts and I can only presume he needed English rather often.

Of course, it's never easy learning the pace and pronunciation of any new language and it goes just as well for me. In one of my private lessons, my student want to learn how to sound out words properly and I never realised how complex English was to speak.

Sometimes though, nothing needs to be said at all and everyone knows what each other is thinking. For instance, last week, whilst packed like sardines into gigantic moving sardine cans otherwise known as trains, it ground to a halt in an emergency stop.

Emergency stops on trains are rather sudden, despite the obvious name. It's worse when you don't really realise that the train is slowing because it happens so smoothly. It's only when the train stops fully that the momentum of the sardine car flings you forward. Or, it would, were it not for everyone else around you.

But worst of all is that because you are so crammed in, you can't move your arm to grab a handle or move your leg to stabilize yourself. So you end up keeling over backwards like Neo from the Matrix and you rely on (or pray that) the uniform keeling over of everyone in the train will hold you up.

Then comes the emergency stop explanation/announcement and there is no confusion there about the general mood of the cabin. I wish I could tell you why it stopped but...... well, you know =).

Rather more weirdly, that was only the first of two emergency stops that nice. The escalator I was riding on about 20 minutes later also stopped suddenly and for no reason I could see. Note to self- always hold the railing on the escalator lest I be flung face first into the lower back of whoever is ahead of me.

As for the crime rate here................. fall is coming but it's still hot occassionally during the day. But the evenings are relaxingly cool.