A North-American tourist's perspective of Australia

It seems that Australia receives a very large number of tourists from North America, as evidenced by the fact that the streets in downtown Sydney have warnings painted on them to remind them that traffic runs in the opposite direction there. That's not the only striking difference I noticed while down there. The trains in Sydney have harsh penalties ($100) for things like putting your feet on the seat. On the Caltrain all they do is tell you to take your feet off the seat and on the TTC nobody even does that.
One of the things that I love to explore about other cultures is the cuisine. And so, in addition to kangaroo, I tried some other classic Aussie food like Vegemite (tasted oddly like chicken stock), macadamia nuts (pleasant but not a very strong flavour) and Lamington's fingers (hard to describe but delicious in the same fashion as chocolate Tim-bits). Interestingly, it is not customary to tip at restaurants and the bill is usually paid at the counter rather than having it brought to the table. Also, most grocery stores (in Canberra, at least) have an optional checkout counter with no candies on display so that parents shopping with kids can avoid the otherwise inevitable requests for candy.
The most fascinating parallel between Canada and Australia that I observed was that both countries have treated their indigenous people in a similar fashion, starting with dismissing them as subhuman and progressing through hostile population replacement and cultural decimation via brainwashing before eventually coming around and respecting their traditions. I was amused to discover that both Canberra and Toronto mean the same thing (in the language of their respective indigenous people): meeting place. Canberra definitely has the edge when it comes to bus shelters though; theirs are like little round huts. It's a really beautiful city on the whole, reminding me of both Ottawa's green belt and the lush greenery that abounds in Silicon Valley.
Another peculiarity I happened to notice is that the derivative of the Church of England in Australia is called the Uniting Church (as opposed to United like in Canada). I was much less surprised to find that most water closets in Australia have 2 modes, one of which uses half as much water as the other. I'd heard about this being used in Israel years ago because of their perpetual drought so I guess it makes sense to apply that technology in what is known as "the dry continent" too.
Finally, Australians have a penchant for abbreviating words, usually by appending "ies" to the first syllable. It sounds strange at first but is very easy to pick up.

What I did during my trip to Australia

I'd been planning to visit my uncle Ron (henceforth UR) and auntie Rennie (AR) in Australia for a long time but this Christmas I finally made the trip. After a brief stop in Toronto I flew to Sydney via Hong Kong (on Cathay Pacific). I'd always expected Hong Kong to be an island packed full of towering buildings so I was quite shocked to discover that more of its surface area is covered by hills than buildings. Other than that my flight there was about what I expected: a seemingly endless tedium punctuation by 5 movies. I also read The Da Vinci Code.

On my 1st day in Sydney we visited the Taronga zoo (pictures are in the previous few posts). They have the world's largest colony of chimpanzees and I enjoyed watching their antics. Despite being slightly smaller than an average human, the average chimp is about 5 times stronger because their densely packed muscle fibres, which also make them much heavier than us. Strength aside, it is remarkable how similar they are to us: they exhibit guilt - one of the chimps once bit off the fingertip of a volunteer and now she can't bring herself to face that volunteer again - and succumb to the same diseases we do, including dementia in their old age.

The bird show was unbelievable because I had no idea it was possible to train wild birds to the degree they have accomplished. My suspicion is that they just pretend to talk to the birds while secretly using whistles beyond the range of human hearing to command the birds. But that doesn't make the show any less impressive. We also attended a talk about reptiles where I met a Python called Ruby. That's only of interest if you're a computer geek though.

Because I was eager to see some of the flagship Aussie animals we sought the koalas next. Despite their cute teddy-bear-like appearance, these creatures are not only boring but dangerous. Both qualities stem from their diet of nothing but eucalyptus leaves, which don't provide them with enough calories to support an active lifestyle but make their urine highly corrosive (an effective defence mechanism when used in conjunction with their sharp claws). However, they probably don't care because they spend their lives perpetually high from the mind-altering drug that occurs naturally in eucalyptus leaves.

Taronga keeps their giraffes and zebras in the same enclosure. They also have a blind giraffe who relies on her sense of smell to eat. Apparently those deceptively slender legs are powerful enough to kick the head right off a lion! After watching the giraffes being fed we visited the Kodiak bears. While male Kodiaks are larger than the grizzlies, Taronga now has only female specimens and those are significantly smaller than the males. There were no elephants, although some are expected to arrive shortly, but there are a couple of fake elephant statues instead.

We found the zoo hard to navigate because the maps were not quite accurate and the signage was scarce. I found it easier to find my way around Sydney's extensive train system, which I like better than that of either Vancouver or San Francisco.

After leaving the zoo we watched a busker juggle knives, a chain-saw and flaming torches atop a pole while eating an apple. I think I've seen the same guy at BuskerFest in Toronto over 2 years ago. Back then he used to do this while cycling on a tight-rope. He must be getting old.

I tried to play a didgeridoo and managed to figure it out while standing in the store so I bought one. The technique is similar to playing a trombone but there's no hand movement required. The trick is to vocalize weird sounds while blowing through vibrating lips into the didgeridoo. Because making weird sounds comes naturally to me I hope this might be an instrument I can actually master.

Hanging out with UR was neat because we share some of the same strange habits like waking up ridiculously early in the morning without an alarm clock, constantly eating and spewing sarcastic wisecracks at every turn. He also had some fascinating stories about my dad's entrepreneurial adventures from their youth. Apparently dad sold an old Sinclair computer to a chicken farmer by writing some software to calculate the amount of each ingredient to use for chicken feed and bundling it with the machine as a complete solution.

On my 2nd day it was supposed to be extremely hot (38 degrees) so we decided to go kayaking and visit the beach. The first thing our kayaking instructor had us learn was how to escape from a kayak if it tips over. I freak out when water shoots up nose so I wasn't particularly eager to experience this and managed to escape from the kayak before my face had even hit the water, which was a sharp contrast to AR who had trouble getting her skirt off while suspended upside-down in the water from the overturned kayak. But I found it much easier after the instructor told me to hold my nose with one hand before I tipped over.

We learnt the basics of kayaking but stopped short of learning how to roll. I picked up everything but the culling draw stroke pretty easily. Then we used inflatable kayaks (called funyaks) to go down class 3 white-water rapids. At one point we spun around and were going down backwards, which was rather disturbing, but aside from that it was a thrilling experience.

Sadly, while we were on the ferry to Manly beach, it turned cold. We went into the surf anyway but I couldn't handle staying in very long. It was the first time I've swallowed sea-water in a decade and I felt slightly nauseous but recovered while UR and AR changed their clothes.

The 3rd day was Christmas so we went to St. Mary's cathedral in Sydney. It's the longest church I've ever seen, being about one and a half times as long as St. Mike's in TO. The acoustics were terrible though so I only caught the tail end of every sentence the bishop said, which didn't help my attention blip any.

We had lunch with some friends of UR and AR who also happen to know my mom's entire family from a long time hence. They actually had a niece visiting from TO whose brother goes to UW. A merry time was had by all until we eventually left. Both UR and I were ravenous by then so we stopped at an Indian hole-in-the-wall joint that made up in authenticity what it lacked in hygiene; my kind of place.

On boxing day I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The view was magnificent and our guide was entertaining. In addition to the standard landmarks, he pointed out the residences of John Travolta and Russell Crowe as well as buildings used in The Matrix and Mission Impossible. He also told us a story about this guy who dove off the bridge and injured himself horribly upon impact with the water surface below. Apparently you can accelerate quite a bit in 5.2 seconds.

That night we drove back to Canberra. In the morning UR and I visited the sculpture garden outside the National Gallery of Australia where I saw some fascinating industrial sculpture and a few Rodin pieces. After that we went to the old parliament building, which was superseded in 1988. Interestingly, the speaker's chair was a gift from the Canadian government.

Apparently it had no pub when it 1st opened because an American masquerading as a Canadian had convinced the local government to prohibit the sale of alcohol. However, this didn't last long because the very 1st thing that the MPs did upon arriving in the building was to strike down that law and have a pub built. It had a party room where MPs could gather for informal discussion within a party. At one point the prime ministry changed hands in there when the reigning PM resigned and was replaced with another member of his party.

The next day we visited the new parliament building but on the way there we saw something most interesting: the Aborigine tent embassy. It's a collection of tents surrounding a fire that were erected in protest against the despicable treatment of Aborigines by the Aussie government and have remained there ever since.

At the new parliament building I saw one of the only 4 existing copies of the Magna Carta. The writing on it is barely legible. An unusual architectural decision was to nestle the building into a hill so that people could actually walk over it as a sign that the government exists to serve the people and is bound to their will.

In the afternoon I went horseback riding for only the 2nd time in my life. There were flies everywhere and my horse found them even more annoying than I did. But I did experience cantering for the first time. It was very bouncy. Neither of the instructors told me that I could have countered the bounciness by standing in the stirrups.

Very early the following morning I went up in a hot-air balloon and had a look at Canberra from the sky. The balloon was much noisier than I'd expected due to the regular need for reheating it via a burst of flame. I noticed that the architects who designed the city had a penchant for symmetry.

After I got back UR and I tried changing the tubes on his bike - something neither of us had ever attempted before - but we misaligned the wheels on our 1st try, although he later fixed them. I tried biking for a while at some point but the extremely hot weather made it rather unrewarding.

In the afternoon we visited the National Museum of Australia, which is one of the country's best tourist attractions; astonishingly good for an entirely free experience. The museum is divided into 3 themes (Land, Nation and People) and has 5 main sections. I spent so much time exploring each exhibit that I didn't manage to finish looking at one of them before the place closed for the day.

The day after that I thoroughly explored the National Gallery of Australia. One of the 1st exhibits was a short video of a girl who sews a doll for herself and then falls asleep with the doll beside her. While the girl sleeps the doll comes to life and sews up the girl. It was cute until the end when it gave me the creeps. Another interesting exhibit was a video projection of an animated face onto a white sphere so that the picture appeared to have a contour.

There were some ancient Hindu statues on display. I noted with a touch of irony that, amidst the plethora of big-busted female figures was one of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance, with a noticeably flat chest. I also discovered an entire section of paintings devoted to the story of Ned Kelly, an Australian folk villain. He seems to be the Aussie analogue of Dick Turpin.

On my last day in Canberra UR and I visited the Canberra Dinosaur Museum, which is Australia's largest stationary collection of dinosaur fossils. I'd never been to a dinosaur museum before and spent a very long time in there. Despite having an avid interest in dinosaurs all my life, I managed to learn many new items of interest.

We went out for dinner 3 times in Canberra, sampling Spanish, Portuguese and Australian food (kangaroo). Kangaroo was good and I was surprised at how infrequently it is eaten down there, considering that they're in no danger of extinction. Perhaps they're hard to domesticate like bison in North America.

On my way back I flew to SYD from Canberra on the tiniest plane I've ever been inside. It seated only 4 people per row (2 on either side of the single aisle) and rattled while we took off. It was 43 degrees in Sydney that day and I was expecting a 60-degree drop in temperature when I walked out of YYZ but it turned out to significantly warmer (at 0 degrees) than I'd expected. This time I watched 6 movies and began to feel like I'd been living on an aeroplane all my life by the time we approached Pearson.

When catching the flight from YYZ to SFO I got held up for 20 minutes waiting for a jammed conveyor belt at US customs so I could dispatch my didgeridoo and consequently missed the boarding deadline by 10 minutes. But that turned out not to matter because the flight was delayed by 45 minutes. It then took us longer in the air than expected and they neglected to send my baggage on the plane with me so I got held up even longer waiting for it at SFO and missed the last regularly scheduled Caltrain to Palo Alto.

I thought I could take a bus instead until I discovered that I'd managed to miss the bus while looking up the schedule. In desperation, I conned a cabbie into driving me home at half the usual rate. On the bright side, my baggage was delivered to me fairly soon so I have it now.

Canoe camping in Algonquin park

I spent the weekend canoe camping up in Algonquin provincial park with some friends (Drew, Ange, McKennedy and Magic). After driving up there on Friday night, we camped in the park (near a nice beach) for a night before renting some gear and putting in. On the first day, while we paddled to the campsite, I was in a canoe with McKennedy while Drew shared a canoe with Ange and Magic kayaked. The was only a single 240m portage along the way.

It was hard to decide upon a campsite because there were two that both looked very compelling. The first one, which McKennedy and I found, seemed to have been furnished by people with a chainsaw; it had a grille and a bench with a backrest cut out of a log, as well as a good supply of dry wood for burning. But we ended up choosing the other one because it promised to have fewer bugs come dusk.

After unpacking our gear, the others decided to go swimming. I considered it but decided not to after I saw how cold Magic was.

After dinner the others took naps in the sun while I explored the area surrounding our campsite. In doing so I discovered a few neat rock formations and a lot of visually interesting foliage. I turned back when I noticed the sun beginning to set amidst the trees.

Once I returned, we played cards for a while until the sun had set before starting a fire.

I slept well, although I woke up very early. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, when it began raining a couple of hours later and I was able to rescue my backpack before it got soaked. I shared a canoe with Drew on the return trip so it was very relaxed.

Well... until we got caught in a thunderstorm that drenched and delayed us. But the sun came out in full force immediately afterward so we dried pretty fast.

Ottawa road trip: days 2 &3

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with friends whom I hadn't seen in a long time. First I had lunch with Lisa, whom I met while working for OTI in summer 2002. It was an unusually busy weekend for her so she was only able to squeeze me in between an Arabic class and a concert rehearsal. Nevertheless, it was good to see her again after over 2 years. She told me all about this exciting project she's been running with high-school volunteeers since early summer. They are creating Flash presentations that exploit memory strengthening techniques to let people remember facts about a given topic with very little effort. She also mentioned that her sister recently got a spot on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which is incredibly kewl news for a musician.

After Lisa left for her rehearsal I met up with Andy (Bernat), with whom I worked at KL Group way back in summer 2000, and his girlfriend. We spent a couple of hours chatting over hot beverages before they had to leave. Then I went out for dinner with Drew, Shannon, Ange, Lex and Sarah. We got to our favourite Vietnamese restaurant (Cam Kong) an hour before it was going to close for the night so we had to eat quickly. Somehow I managed to pull this off. Upon returning to Drew and Shannon's place we watched Mystic River before going to bed.

The next morning Ange and I hopped into her car, rescued Lex (from his girlfriend) and Sarah O'Leary (from her family), before heading back for Waterloo. During the return trip I read large swathes of Sarah's Psych 101 textbook.

Ottawa road trip: day 1

Ange, Lex, Sarah (O'Leary) and I left Spuc shortly before 2pm hoping to beat the TO rush hour traffic. We did :-) I also had the pleasure of a sneak preview into Sarah's novel for NaNoWriMo.

After an uneventful ride through the entire GTA, we made a pit stop at Harvey's near The Big Apple. Having been convinced by both Sarah and Lex that I would be famished before we reached Ottawa, I decided to purchase a small chicken salad to eat in the car later. Interestingly, they never asked me to sign the reciept when I used Visa to pay for my food.

After we'd hit the road again, Lex remarked that he didn't recall having actually paid for his meal. At first I attempted to chalk that up to his swiss-cheese memory but he was quite adamant about not having taken his wallet out. It was only after we dropped Sarah off at her home and I decided to eat my salad that we figured out what had happened. I discovered that my salad had no chicken in it and was increduluous at having paid over $5 for a salad with no meat. Suddenly everything clicked as we realized that they had charged me for both salads!

Drew gave me the tour of their new place since I'd never sen it before. They have organized everything quite well as usual, although the kitchen is slightly more cramped and the water pressure not as amazing as when I lived with them in the summer of 2002. Apparently Shannon is looking to hand off her guinea pig to a new owner so, if anybody is interested in acquiring one, let me know and i will get you in touch with her.

Once Sarah (Pell) showed up, we had sushi for dinner. We were being quite loud so it was good that they had relegated us to the lone booth at the restaurant. After we escaped from there, we bought bubble-tea and headed back to Drew and Shannon's apartment for the night. Ange eventually dropped Lex and Sarah off at Sarah's place and we all retired to bed.

A stag'n'doe party in the honeymoon capital of North America

My friends Rich and Deb are getting married next weekend. Since Deb has only three female friends, one of whom is in Europe right now, Carol (her sister/maid of honour) decided to throw them a combined bachelor party. The plan was to meet up at Deb's parent's place in Flamborough and then drive to Niagara Falls for a night of revelry. She asked me to take the GO to Burlington, where she would pick me up. It seemed easy enough, except that I'm not familiar with the GO at all and have certainly never taken it to Burlington before.

While I was on the train to Oakville, I was staring at my ticket and realized that they need to be cancelled (whatever that meant) before boarding the train. I hadn't cancelled the tickets I'd used for my prior two train trips on the GO so it was probably lucky that nobody had performed a ticket check either time. However, I did get this ticket cancelled upon boarding the bus to Hamilton at Oakville. Now, the Burlington stop is the first one on that route. However, thanks to an inexplicable chain of illogic, I somehow began to think that I was supposed to meet Carol at Hamilton and so took it all the way there.

Naturally, nobody was waiting for me at the station. After waiting around for a while, I called Deb's place. They had sent out a pair of search parties to look for me at various GO stations between Burlington and Toronto! It hadn't occurred to them that I might have slipped under their very noses at Burlington. The worst part is that Carol almost got onto the bus at Burlington to see if I was on it when I never stepped off it. If only they had, we would have avoided a two hour delay. Oh well.

The first thing we did in Niagara-on-the-lake was to eat dinner at one of the many restaurants there. Most of them had people standing outside beckoning passers-by to eat there. One place even handed us a menu with the encouraging words, the prices are in Canadian dollars. I should bloody hope so, given that they're conducting business on Canadian soil! I ordered a medium-rare 7 oz bison steak since I'd never had bison before. It tasted similar to beef, although I could distinguish between the two by taste. During conversation, it came to light that Rich'n'Deb do have a gift registry—they simply hadn't thought to tell most people about it! Rich lived up to his reputation be polishing off a 20 oz porterhouse steak and then eating half of Deb's meal too.

After dinner we split up and some of us went to look at the falls. The last time I saw the falls was seven years ago. They haven't changed much. I did, however, discover that what I previously thought was a permanent rainbow is actually faked using powerful strobe lights that project a rainbow onto the great mass of swirling mist that hangs above the falls. That mist is very thick; thick enough to fog up my glasses as we walked through it. We saw some people attempting to shield themselves from the mist with a brolly. Apparently it hadn't occurred to them that this would be ineffective against water that was hanging in the air as they walked through it rather than falling down from above.

Once we were tired of gazing into the never-ending torrent of water and our clothes had begun to turn uncomfortably damp, we headed into the casino. None of us had ever been into a casino before so we were expecting something out of the heist movies. Reality was somewhat disappointing. There were people smoking everywhere when we entered, which was rather disgusting until we found out that there was non-smoking floor lurking beneath the main one. Deb and I wandered around watching people gamble as we kept an eye out for the others. The tables were actually rather boring. People were winning and losing hundreds of dollars without looking remotely excited. Neither Deb nor I spent a dime, being painfully aware of the statistical futility involved with gambling. However, upon regrouping with the remainder of our company, we discovered that carol had won $150 before losing most of it again to end up with $60; not bad for a $5 outlay.

The hockey game was just going into overtime when we left the casino so we stood in front of a TV at a nearby patio and watched as nobody scored anything for the first OT. There was some pretty intense karaoke going on beside us, fuelled by a string of reliable 80's hits. Some of the singers were surprisingly good. A few of them were rewarded by people dancing to their songs. Deb's friend Brian was wearing a Tampa Bay jersey, which drew a more than trivial number of jeers. I was rather disappointed to see the Flames lose in the first minute of the second OT.

The last thing we did in Niagara was to visit one of the many haunted houses there. It had a Dracula motif and offered three levels of fright: normal, brave and insane. Of course, we all had to pick insane. It wasn't as scary as they made it out to be. They did have people inside the maze to jump out an effort to scare us but one of them got inadvertently poked in the eye by Rich's best man. Taking it upon myself to give the rest of our party their money's worth, I forged ahead and crouched down in wait. When they came around the bend, I sprung up with a scream that almost knocked a few people over. [I would make such a great tiger.]

Montreal revisited

Since Ange was going to Montreal this weekend, I figured it would be a great opportunity to visit my friends in Montreal (and possibly Ottawa). Ange & a co-worker picked me up at Yorkdale on Friday afternoon & we drove to the West island nonstop, eating a picnic lunch in the car. Then Ange & I took the Metro to Shade's place, where we were treated to a delicious home-cooked meal while he & his mom entertained us with verbal banter.

After supper, Shade, Finn, Shade's friend Stu and I watched Shrek 2, which was loaded with the expected Disney jokes. We then proceeded to Brutopia, where we ran into Ange! Stellar company & good drinks made for a thoroughly enjoyable night until the bar closed & we returned to Stu's place where we crashed.

On Saturday Shade taught me how to play Magic & then I played a couple of games with him & Stu. After that I took a break from Magic & let Shade & Stu play each other once before I rejoined the fray. That game ended up being a marathon that went on for hours, thanks to me drawing & playing three cards that slowed down the pace by an order of magnitude (meekstones, for anybody who plays). We were supposed to have dinner with Fabienne & Frank that evening so I eventually conceded the game since Shade showed no signs of leaving before it was over.

After a brief stopover at Shade's place (where I had an opportunity to meet Finn's new Powerbook, Gwen), we went over to Fabienne & Frank's place in downtown Montreal, where two of Fab's friends from France were visiting. It turned out that I was the only one who didn't speak French, although one of her friends spoke English very haltingly. Nevertheless, with three virtually bilingual people around, translations were not hard to come by. One interesting observation I made was that Fab now runs Linux (localized in French) on her laptop.

We quickly reached a unanimous decision about the dinner venue for the night: this vegetarian French restaurant with a twist; there's no menu; instead they tell you what you will be eating and you decide how much you want; if you can't finish your meal, there's a $2 fine that goes to charity & you are denied dessert; if you don't finish dessert after opting to have some, you are banned from the restaurant. Their strange methodology seems to be working, considering that all six of us had heard of the place, although none of us knew anybody who had eaten there! The food was fantastic and there's a student discount on the main course so it only costs $10. The dessert is overkill, although we all tried it anyway just to have the complete experience.

Having finished the fifth Harry Potter book, I am now reading The Life of Pi. I happened to mention this to Shade at one point on Sunday morning, only to learn that his mother actually knows the author! Apparently she volunteered with him at hospital for a while. When the book was published, she invited him to speak at her book club. He agreed and then went on to win the Booker award mere weeks later. The members of her book club must have been thrilled.

I spent the afternoon at Fab & Frank's place. While there, I played the famous I am Canadian rant for Fab, who had never heard of it before. I also played for her the I am not Canadian spoof, which parodies the Quebecois. Apparently neither of them are quite as funny to people who aren't from Ontario...

Steph had come to Montreal too so I met up with her & Shade before returning to his place for dinner. As expected, the conversation was all over the place, although it never ceased to be interesting or entertaining. At one point we were talking about the advantages of LEDs over traditional light sources and Shade's mom gifted me with a nifty wand powered by a blue LED. It has four settings for the speed at which it can flash: off, slow pulses, epilepsy & steady glow.

Today was a very rainy day so we didn't really feel like going outside too much after a brief excursion to get bagels. The bagels were scrumptious though. Fresh Montreal bagels are one of life's simple pleasures.

While pottering around the house, I discovered this fascinating wooden musical instrument called a tamboa, which is a wooden box whose top consists of six cantilevered fingers (three on each side) of different lengths such that the tips of each opposing pair are the same miniscule distance from each other. It can produce the most wonderful sounds & I sat around for a while playing with it.

The last thing we did before Ange picked Steph & me up was to play a board game called Abalone, which is vaguely similar to Draughts or Go (in that is has two differently coloured sets of identically shaped pieces) but played on a hexagonal board like Chinese Checkers. It's a neat game & I'd be interested in playing it again.

Wonderland

Well, I'm back in the centre of the universe for an indeterminate amount of time now. I spent most of yesterday at Wonderland with Don, Magic, Keith & Ed. Cat, Sue & 3 of Cat's friends were there too but they split up from us at lunch so we only went on a couple of rides with them. Keith was late so Don, Magic & I pelted him with pine cones. Since it was opening day, several of the rides broke down while we were in line, although they were fixed within minutes, except for Top Gun, on which Keith & I got stuck for about 15 minutes! At the end of the day, we tried on various random hats & ate overpriced (but delicious) funnel cakes.

Good times in Montreal

On Friday morning I took the Metro to Alex's house. When I attempted to board the bus on the South shore, however, my transfer was met with a vitriolic stream of French. After a few unsuccessful attempts at explaining that I did not understand French, one of the other passengers translated for me. Appparently I needed to buy another fare in order to travel on the South shore; fair enough, although I think this episode caused the driver to take an instant dislike to me. I asked him to let me off at St. Charles, which is where Alex lives. Instead he let me off a block before St. Charles and told me it was a couple of blocks behind us. If I hadn't beeen lost in that area only a couple of days ago, I would have wasted a good deal of time wandering around aimlessly.

I had an enjoyable time talking to Izzy & Alex for a few hours before we left for a soiree at Alex's friend Jacob's studio apartment on the island. Jacob's apt. is a very colourful place, with all manners of interesting artifacts on the walls. I met a bunch of fascinating Montrealers there and played with this kewl sword I found :-) It was during that time that I decided Montreal was definately more fun than TO.

The night before I left, Alex, Izzy & I went out for dinner at this neat little Sushi buffet on the South shore. The proprietor explained to me the significance of that ceramic cat that seems to grace so many Asian restaurants. Apparently it is a symbol of good fortune, with each of its paws representing health & wealth, respectively.