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Nanaimo syndrome

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

At the bank again today (been there three days this week), when I once again ran into The Nanaimo Syndrome.

Nanaimo is a small city on Vancouver Island in Canada. It's a fairly quiet place, a mill town that became the centre of commerce for the northern half of the island. Within Canada, it's known for "Nanaimo bars", which are a cripplingly sweet dessert. Also, there's a summertime boat race where all of the boats are made of bathtubs. My family even has a connection to it as my mother had been living there for six years until just recently. I stayed there with here for a couple of weeks when I went into visa exile from Japan.

Nanaimo bar (courtesy Wikipedia)

And Japan has a connection to Nanaimo, too. I don't really understand it, but I find that there are a disproportionate number of Japanese people who have lived in that town. When I detect a Canadian accent in a Japanese person's English, I ask them where they learned the language. They'll almost always say, "Vancouver". But when you ask where in Vancouver, they'll admit that it was actually Victoria (the province's capital) or .. Nanaimo.

There's a college there that attracts young people from Japan for some reason. That explains a lot of it. But when I ran into a young man at the bank who spoke "Canadian" English and he turned out to have lived in Nanaimo during his high school years, it didn't surprise me.

Three good things that happened today:

1. Finally finished with the banking

2. Fantastic weather

3. Met a fellow former Nanaimo resident