I rehearse small talk before the Uber arrives.
That sounds ridiculous, I know.
But I do.
I check the plate number first. Then the driver’s name. Then I prepare one or two topics in my head, just in case the ride becomes one of those rides where silence feels heavier than usual.
Weather is always safe.
Construction is safe too, because this is Edmonton and there is always a road being fixed somewhere.
The Oilers are usually safe, unless the loss is too fresh and everybody is still grieving in their own way.
If everything fails, I say, “How’s it going?”
That sentence lives in my mouth now.
Old me would probably laugh.
New me says it with almost no shame.
Almost.
This is one of the small things I noticed after moving to Canada. You begin to collect phrases. You collect habits. You collect tiny survival scripts for moments nobody warned you about.
Nobody tells you that immigrant life can include rehearsing casual conversation in the back of your mind.
Nobody tells you that your English, the one that sounds so clean inside your head, will sometimes betray you once it reaches your tongue.
In my brain, I am fluent.
Very fluent.
Maybe too fluent.
Then I speak, and suddenly my Filipino-ness walks out first.
Just an hour ago, I caught myself mid-sentence and heard my own accent. Nobody laughed. Nobody even reacted. Still, I felt it. That small internal slap. That quick reminder that confidence does not always survive sound.
I used to think I was an English wiz.
Canada corrected me.
Kindly, most days.
But still.
At home, I do not need to think about this as much.
My wife and I speak Hiligaynon most of the time. The words come out without needing to dress properly. No rehearsal. No self-monitoring. No sudden panic over vowels.
Just language.
Just us.
Maybe that is one thing I did not expect to learn here.
Home is not always a place.
Sometimes it is the language where your mouth can rest.
Most mornings, my day starts at 7:30.
My alarm used to be Radar. I changed it to Storytime because Radar felt like war. Storytime feels softer. I do not know if that says something about my current emotional state, but let us not diagnose everything.
The alarm rings.
I wake up.
Then I see my wife sleeping beside me, tired from her night shift.
I try not to move too much.
I try not to turn on the bright light.
Some people describe immigration through airports, documents, job applications, and snow. They are not wrong. Those things matter.
But on many mornings, immigration looks like this:
One person wakes up for work while the other finally gets to sleep.
No speech.
No dramatic moment.
Just two people trying to build a life in a place that still feels new on some days and strangely familiar on others.
I put on the Hoka shoes my wife bought for me before I left the Philippines.
They were the first shoes I wore when I stepped on Canadian soil.
Most days, they are just shoes.
I wear them because I need to go somewhere.
But sometimes I look down and remember that they carried me from one life into another. That sounds too poetic, maybe. But I mean it in the most practical way.
They were there.
Airport floor.
Canadian air.
First steps.
First confusion.
First cold.
My wallet and IDs go into my pocket.
That has become another small ritual.
Here, cards matter. Proof matters. Names on plastic matter. Sometimes I feel like I carry my new life in my pocket and hope I brought the right version of myself for the day.
Then I go to work.
Or I stay home and work from there.
Either way, the day begins.
Work That Feels Close to Medicine, But Not Quite
My work now is close to healthcare.
Close enough to feel familiar.
Not close enough to feel the same.
That is a strange place to stand.
There are days when I repair appliances. There are days when I print forms. There are days when I do laundry for my clients, cook food for them, order Uber, answer calls, attend meetings, or go to the hospital simply to accompany someone.
Simply.
That word does a lot of work there.
Because going to the hospital used to mean something else for me.
Back home, I entered hospitals as someone training to diagnose, treat, examine, present cases, write orders, and explain things to patients and families. Even when I was tired, even when I was unsure, even when I felt like I knew nothing, I still entered with a certain role.
Now, I enter beside someone.
I wait.
I listen.
I help explain if I can.
I carry information.
I advocate when needed.
I do not stand there as the physician.
Not here.
Not yet.
I try not to turn that into a tragedy because it is not always one. There is dignity in this work too. A lot of it, actually. Sometimes more than people realize.
There is dignity in making sure someone’s food is ready.
There is dignity in checking if the laundry is done.
There is dignity in knowing which form needs to be printed before someone even asks.
There is dignity in accompanying a person who might otherwise face the hospital alone.
Still, I would be lying if I said the shift never bothers me.
Some days, the old version of me taps my shoulder.
You used to do something else.
I know.
I remember.
My clinical eye did not disappear when I moved to Canada. It still shows up, sometimes without permission.
I still read about my clients’ conditions.
I still think about safety.
I still write progress notes with the seriousness of someone who believes documentation can protect people.
I still try to organize the team in a way that feels more healthcare-conscious, because I cannot help it. Maybe that is useful. Maybe that is pride. Maybe it is both, and I am just trying to make peace with that.
There are also days when I work from home.
People say that like it is always a gift.
It can be.
No commute. No rushing out into the cold. No slipping on ice while trying to pretend I am confident in winter.
But working from home also brings me back to the pandemic.
I remember clerkship through screens.
I remember studying while the world felt closed.
I remember the strange pressure of becoming a doctor during a time when even doctors looked tired in ways I had never seen before.
So when I sit in front of my laptop here in Edmonton, working from our apartment, I sometimes feel two timelines touching.
The present one, where I answer messages and help manage operations.
And the old one, where I was studying, worrying, trying to survive medical training through unstable days.
Maybe this is another mundane immigrant thing.
A room is not just a room.
A laptop is not just a laptop.
A workday is not just a workday.
Everything carries echoes.
And still, I do the work.
Because rent exists.
Because bills exist.
Because dreams do not excuse you from laundry.
Because becoming a doctor again in Canada is not a straight road, and while I am walking it, I still need to live.
That part is not poetic.
That part is just true.
Tim Hortons as a Soft Landing Place
Before work, if I have time, I go to Tim Hortons.
My order is usually a large Triple Triple.
I know. Very healthy. Very doctor-like.
Please do not report me to my future licensing body.
I do not know if the people at Tim’s recognize me already, but I hope they do. There is something comforting about becoming familiar in a place, even in a small, almost embarrassing way.
Maybe they do not know my name.
Maybe they just know the order.
That is fine.
Sometimes being known by your coffee is enough for the morning.
When I am going to work, I take it to go.
When I am with my wife, we stay.
That difference matters to me.
A coffee shop changes depending on who sits beside you.
Alone, it is a stop.
With her, it becomes a pause.
A small bench in the middle of a life that keeps asking us to move.
We sit there, sometimes tired, sometimes quiet, sometimes talking about groceries or work or what we will eat later. Nothing grand. No dramatic conversation. Just two people sharing coffee in a country where both of us are still learning how to pace ourselves.
I also notice the workers at Tim’s.
Many of them look like me.
Brown skin. Different accents. Names from places I can only guess. People who move fast behind the counter while half-awake customers wait for caffeine like it is a human right.
That quiet diversity does something to me.
Not in a cheesy way.
Nobody stands there saying, “Welcome to multicultural Canada.”
Nobody needs to.
You just see it.
A Filipino-looking worker handing coffee to a white construction worker.
A South Asian worker calling an order for a Black customer.
A newcomer trying to understand what someone meant by “double double” while everyone else pretends that term was born with them.
It is ordinary.
That is why it matters.
I think that is what I keep noticing here.
Belonging does not always arrive with ceremony.
Sometimes it is just someone handing you a paper cup and saying, “Have a good one.”
And you say, “You too,” even if the first few times you said it, you felt like you were acting in a Canadian training video.
Now it comes out more naturally.
That scares me a little.
It also comforts me.
West Edmonton Mall, or My Very Large Sari-Sari Store
Then there is West Edmonton Mall.
WEM.
The place is too big to be treated casually, which is exactly why I now treat it casually.
This is probably disrespectful to geography.
But in my head, WEM has somehow become our sari-sari store.
Not literally, of course.
No sari-sari store has an indoor amusement park, a waterpark, a skating rink, and a parking area that looks like it was designed by someone who did not believe in walking.
But emotionally?
Sometimes, yes.
My wife asks me to buy something, and my brain goes, “Okay, I’ll go to WEM.”
As if I am just stepping outside to buy vinegar, soy sauce, and a sachet of shampoo.
Then I arrive and remember that this “quick errand” may involve several entrances, long walks, two wrong turns, and the quiet possibility of forgetting where I parked, except I do not drive yet, so at least that problem has not found me.
There is comfort in WEM because it feels close to the malls back home.
Not the same.
But close enough.
Filipinos understand malls differently, I think. We do not only shop there. We cool down there. We walk there. We meet friends there. We waste time there with intention. We look at things we do not plan to buy and somehow call that leisure.
So when I walk around WEM, something in me relaxes.
The scale is Canadian.
The instinct is Filipino.
My usual route is simple.
Dollarama.
T&T.
Maybe Indigo.
Maybe London Drugs.
If there is time, Hallmark.
T&T is dangerous in a very specific way.
You enter thinking you will buy one or two things, then suddenly you see Chippy or Oishi and your inner child starts making financial decisions.
The first time I saw those snacks there, I paused.
Not because chips are rare.
But because recognition can ambush you.
You are in Edmonton.
You are wearing winter clothes.
You are thinking in dollars.
Then there it is.
Chippy.
A small bright object from home, sitting on a shelf like it did not cross an ocean to find you.
During my first months here, I kept comparing prices in my head.
This much for this?
Back home, this would be cheaper.
Then I would convert.
Then I would stop converting because the math hurt.
Now I do it less.
Not because things became cheap.
I just got tired.
That is another sign that you are settling, I think.
You stop converting every price into the life you left.
Not fully.
But enough to function.
After church, I enjoy doing groceries with my wife.
That has become one of our small married-life rituals here.
We walk.
We choose things.
We talk about what we need.
Sometimes we buy practical food.
Sometimes we buy food because being practical all the time is bad for the soul.
I like seeing her walk with me anywhere in the city.
That sounds simple, but it means a lot.
Back home, we had our own rhythms. Here, we are building new ones from scratch. A grocery trip becomes a date. A mall walk becomes exercise. A Tim’s coffee becomes a small celebration that we are both awake at the same time.
Immigration turns ordinary errands into proof.
Proof that you are adjusting.
Proof that you are tired but still moving.
Proof that you can buy Chippy in Canada and still miss the sari-sari store.
Both can be true.
That is the confusing part.
That is also the beautiful part.
