On August 1, I officially became a “resident” of Ontario. This simply means that my good old Carte d’assurances maladie from Québec was no longer a valid thing, and I received a very ugly OHIP card in the mail. (Man. I look like crap on my Ontario ID. I had such a good photo on my old driver’s license and health card, but that’s a whole other story.) Continue reading
And that means in October, I’m going to take a leak in the continental divide.
The Silfra Crevasse
(Note: not my photo. I did not take this photo. I do not know who did.)
So I guess this means I’ll have stuff to write about for the next little while, right?
I realized this week, with absolute horror, that I no longer notice the distinctive sewage and garbage smell that I have long associated with Toronto. I realized it this week when I got a whiff of that enticing aroma.
I’m not sure when I stopped noticing that smell. I’m certain that Toronto did not magically plug in some Febreeze noticeables and become a charming place to live. This can only mean one thing: I’m getting used to living here.
It is a positively shocking revelation.
Apparently… most people who come across this blog get here because they have searched for the following terms:
-Traveling (or travelling) monkeys
-Filthy toilets
Now my toilet at home is far from filthy, and my traveling monkey lives at my old job, so I’m not sure how I feel about this.
Now you know!
I apologize for the low quality resolution on this photo, but this constitutes a pretty good end to the day at work:
Also for your viewing pleasure, a Banksy original:
Cell phones take the lousiest photos.
I thought that relocating to a new city would have me posting a lot more. It’s sort of like travelling, only it’s not a foreign country, I speak the language, I’ve been here before, and I don’t have rose-coloured glasses. OK, so it’s not really like travelling, except that I was getting lost on my way to work for the first few days, and there are a lot of restaurants for me to slowly discover. Continue reading
There are a few things in life that get me swearing like a truck driver from Rimouski, pondering the finer things in life. And ever since I relocated to Toronto, I miss certain comfort foods from my past more then I thought I would. Bagels. Poutine. Blanche de Chambly. Very carbohydrate intensive indulgences – and my waistline certainly reflects these indulgences.
It’s not my fault. I lived in Montreal for most of my life, and certain deliciously cheap indulgences were abundant. Street meat in Toronto scares me when I’m sober, and reminds me not to eat meat from a sink-free source. Continue reading
It’s pretty hard to write a travel blog, like I’ve said, when you’re not currently travelling and have no tangible plans to hit the road.
But… I did hit the road recently. It was a pretty quick process – in about a 4 week period, I quit my job of almost 7 years, packed up everything I own (aside from the random crap we abandoned on the floor of the old apartment, but that’s not relevant here), found a new job in a new city in a new industry, and left Montreal behind for the slick streets of Toronto. And I never thought I would up and leave – everyone had me pegged as a Montreal-lifer. Indeed, I was coming pretty close to it: I priced condos, looked into mortgage options. Continue reading
Sometimes, the best laid plans just don’t pan out. And you know what? That’s OK. It will inevitably happen to you, and it’s agonizing when it happens. Your stomach bunches up, and all you want to do is curl up on your hostel bed and cry. Assuming, that is, that the hostel is still open for business.
I arrived in Rome on an early morning flight from Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari. I had already adjusted to the time change, but it was still very early. Painfully early. Probably even more painful for my two friends who had made the trans-Atlantic journey that day. We wandered through Rome’s circular streets, a faded googlemap our only help. We followed the Babblefish translated directions. A severely water damaged door with an unreadable, rain-damaged sign greeted us. We rang the doorbell.
We waited.
We roasted under the mid-day Roman sun. We sweat. We cursed.
We rang the doorbell.
We called the hostel on an expensive roaming phone call.
We waited.
We cried.
The hostel, for all we could tell, had vanished into the sky, taking our deposit with it.
A man from the hostel across the street poked his head out the window, inviting us in. With few options left, we hoisted our packs on our backs and trudged up the stairs.
“Your hostel… How do you say? They have big flood. Si? Si! Big flood. We honour your deposit.”
—–
Today was one of those travel days.
Somewhere about halfway between Montreal and Toronto, on the über cheap MegaBus, I noticed I had mistakenly purchased two one-way, non-refundable tickets for the same day for Montreal-Toronto. It wasn’t catastrophic, I was merely out $28. Or so it seemed.
Then the wifi stopped working on the MegaBus. I couldn’t book a return ticket.
I finally arrived in Toronto and checked into my hostel at 1 a.m. It was cold. Actually, it was bloody cold and Yonge St. was a wind tunnel.
I spent a good 45 minutes in my door battling the unreliable wifi, only to find there were no convenient MegaBus times to get me home. I frowned. I lost my internet connection. I tried to find a plane. I frowned at the idea of dropping $200 to get myself only to the outskirts of Montreal.
I found a 50% off sale on a business class train ticket, and splurged. Even at 50% off, it was still the cost of two round-trip bus tickets, but it included a meal and lots of beverages of the fermented variety (I think I’m on my fourth. Possibly my 6th?), and ample leg room. With my alumni discount, it became justifiable.
I shut my laptop to try to get a solid 6 hours of sleep before my back-to-back job interviews. I reached over my bed to hang up my hoodie, happy that although I had “splurged” on a 4-bed female dorm, I had ended up in a 3-bed room as the only occupant. Sweet. Private room for $28.
The bed collapsed.
I sat bewildered on the floor. The bed had collapsed and I was exhausted.
Upon closer inspection, I realized this was the same Ikea bed found in hostels across the planet, with plywood slats supporting the mattress. I carefully touched the planks. They weren’t broken, they didn’t try to eat me. I gingerly reassembled my bed, and delicately lay down, vowing to swim a few hundred extra laps this week at the Y.
—-
And that couldn’t possible be enough, right? In French, we have a saying: “Jamais deux sans trois,” which means never twice without a third occurrence.
I had a wardrobe malfunction upon exiting a job interview. I will not discuss how the job interview went, since I don’t want to jinx anything.
The lovely, professional-looking skirt I borrowed from a coworker? I felt it inching its way down my hips as I walked out the door in front of the interviewer, with nothing to stop it. It was loose, but I didn’t realize it was *that* loose. So I may or may not have flashed the person I just spent an hour or so trying to convince to hire me.
That should be about enough for one day, I think. However, if the ground should decide to swallow me whole right about now, I wouldn’t really object.
Instead, I’ll wander off to the happy place in my head. It looks something like this:
Ton Le Sap lake in Cambodia
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