Toronto Journal Entry: Day 3
As I sit here watching the opening of the Blackhawks Playoffs game in a city where things like this really matter, I figured I would do something that I’d promised and type up a blog post on my experiences so far. If that previous run-on sentence didn’t put you off the trail yet, then you clearly enjoy run-ons, and you’re in for a treat.
So to start, Toronto is a city for city newbs. It never occurred to me that a place with a metropolitan population of 8 million could be more inviting and comfortable than my hometown of Richfield, Wisconsin, but here we are. My experiences have ranged from pleasant, to polite, and back around to affable pretty much every moment I’ve been out here. Even the taxi ride didn’t feel like a journey into some strange subculture where people chatter away endlessly in Swahili on cell phones about their brother-in-law’s gambling debts.
This is perfect for my needs. As much as I like to put on a façade of worldliness, I really have no idea what the Hell I’m doing at any time in any place. In something as “perilous” as a new city in a different country, I should be quite dead in some gutter somewhere. Like that time I was killed in Hong Kong by triad ninjas. I made that last part up. Ninjas are Japanese.
My first day in was a surreal blur. I’d spent the previous night expending nervous energy and cleaning my home in preparation for its newly sole tenant. After spending about 24 hours awake, Matt was kind enough to see me off and drive me out to the airport for my flight. After an unpleasant encounter with a broken reservation system, I was finally on my way.
I fell asleep on the plane and woke up with a sore shoulder that is still giving me no end of grief. As if that reminder of my advancing age was insufficient, I think I’ve located some grey hairs in my chin stubble. This should go over well on my first day on Monday, where I will likely be 5 years older than anyone I work with. I would shave to remove the evidence, but that smacks of a level of grooming and hygiene I simply cannot commit to.
I arrived at my temporary housing tired enough to have trouble remembering the word “reservation” which led to a few awkward minutes of me staring down a baffled security guard while I searched for the words to explain what I was doing there. After I got in it was time to sleep for about 14 hours, which went pretty much according to plan.
On my second day I traveled with a relocation agent that helped me acquire the various identification cards necessary for life in Canada. Without exception, every government office, bank, and official office asked if the young lady and I were “filing jointly,” which we both found tremendously amusing and by the end of the day we had quite a shtick going. It was a great introduction to the various neighborhoods as well, and I got to range around the downtown core with someone who was clearly proud of her city and its inhabitants. Later a visit to a local Irish pub full of an odd mix of bankers and construction workers capped the evening nicely.
Today I was left to my own devices, though I spent a large portion of it narrowing down apartment choices. They really come down to four options in my mind:
1. High rise “city place” apartment with scary 51st floor balcony and yuppie neighbors
2. Haunted loft in a haunted toy factory in an area haunted by hippies
3. Smack dab in the middle of downtown surrounded by banks, theaters, college kids, and about a billion bars
4. Apartment right on the water: a little removed but you can’t beat the view or the quiet
I’m leaning towards the high rise, since that seems to be a landing pad for most of the tech professionals of my age, and will likely be a happy hunting ground for drinking (by which I mean video game nerd) buddies. They also have the nicest amenities, including one building that has a BOWLING ALLEY, which currently is at the top of my list.
During the afternoon, I decided to stick to my plan of exploring the commutes during rush hour. It seems I’m going against traffic if I live downtown, so the news is largely good. However, I did discover that when it rains in Toronto, it does not screw around like in Seattle. This was that awful, billowing, sideways rain of my youth, and the $3 umbrella I purchased in desperation came apart in the wind like a frog in a blender. I suck at analogies. Anyways, the moral of the story is that my walk home was spent soaked to the bone with my ancient leather jacket absolutely reeking of the original animals it came from.
Tonight I went to a nice little bar called Green Pants or something in the Eaton Center. At the bar, I met four people who were in from Ottawa on some sort of convention for court justices. Mentioning my own trade, I was suddenly interesting to talk to, as nearly everyone has a friend, a child, or is themselves a gamer of some kind. I reflect on how much this reaction has changed from 9 years ago when mentioning that I was in the games industry would typically net me a controversial and unpleasant conversation about the impact of Doom on those idiots from Columbine. Thank you very little, CNN.
I was actually invited to dine with these folks and we had a fun conversation about living in the US, coming to Toronto from small towns, and most importantly, NFL football.
Well it seems the Hawks have gone up by 1 since I started typing, so it’s time to loose this E/N garbage on to the Internet and start paying attention to my new national pastime.