Back To Writin’

For once I actually wrote something that was creative and not entirely for the purely mercenary purpose of making money.

I just can’t talk about it. Yet.

The Neighborly Saturday

It’s a bit weird that in 10 years of living in Singapore, I never really got to know my neighbors or felt particularly neighborly towards the people I live near. Maybe it’s just a stroke of good luck, but the second we move into the new apartment, BAM! We got neighbors, and cool ones.

The morning was actually spent wandering around the St. Lawrence market. We checked out the North Market which is only open ’till noon and is primarily for farmers to sell their produce. The South Market runs all the time and is a more “retail,” touristy experience, though it has interesting things going on, like a street musician who played the Oboe, and some amazingly fine smelling coffee. We came away with a few knick knacks like baking trays, some Atlantic cod (which tasted really good for lunch) and as Yet Another Housewarming Gift from the neighbors, something called Cat Grass. I dunno what the stuff is, but Uno sniffed it then immediately started grazing. I’ve never seen this cat eat anything plant-like, now all of a sudden she’s hoovering this stuff like it’s oxygen. Zero, strangely, completely ignored it.

The evening was also spent with the neighbors when they invited us down to meet some former tenants who lived in our apartment, and there was wine, cheese, crackers and even sitting in an outdoor tent in the backyard while a fire roared away and people talked. The Wife, amazingly was able to take this despite the -7 temperature. I’m going to chalk that up to the relatively calm wind and the fact that she seemed to enjoy playing fetch with the dogs.

The Canadianization process seems to be slowly but surely working…

Just One Of Those Pottering Days

In which all that really occurred was some errands were run around the Annex, and a fair amount of Devil Summoner was played.

100% Legal

The cats have been taken to the vet, gotten their rabies vaccinations, gotten the paper that legally declares them vaccinated, and that same paper has been faxed off to Canadian Customs & Inspections. A quick phone call to verify it confirmed that the cats are, indeed, completely legal immigrants to Canada and no one is going to ship them back due to paranoia about them frothing at the mouth.

Also, my GameAxis duties are complete for the month and I can get back to gami-… I mean, finding fulfilling, meaningful work to contribute to the economy and good stuff like that.

Unfortunately, I’ve also found out that due to fact that my license expired while I was over in Singapore, the province of Ontario is going to make me start all over again, which includes having to acquire and hold onto a student license (here called a G1) for ONE FREAKIN’ YEAR. I can cut that down to eight months, however, if I take a driver’s course. Man, so much for just taking a driver’s test and hitting the road…

Thank God we live near the subway…

And I also just found out today that prostitution in Toronto is ALSO 100% legal. I don’t know where this came from, but now that I realize all those community papers tend to have an ads section filled to bursting with every kind of Lady Of The Evening imaginable, I’ve got a good mind to start taking those pages and using them as wall paper for a Wall Collage O’ Lust. Mind you, prostitution is also legal in Singapore but they don’t seem quite as… proud of the fact… as Toronto is.

And For Valentine’s Day…

I did nothing but work on GameAxis articles and hang out with the Wife. Oh, and play a little bit of Devil Summoner. No kids, it’s not just married life, I’ve always been this boring. Just more bitter back in the single days.

The Work Day

Except for a trip for some groceries in the afternoon and wrestling with the internet (looks like this wireless stuff is a bust during the day, though it stabilizes at night) it was pretty much all about writing for GameAxis.

Mental note to self: Work on a comic or novel. SOON.

Errand Monday

Did some shopping, had a surprise dinner with the neighbors, and worked on GameAxis stuff.

The Wireless, The Relatives, The Neighbors & The Cats

Our problems with the router are mostly, but not completely solved.

On Saturday we went down to Eaton Centre once more to return the wireless router to Best Buy, and after that, we met up with the Wife’s aunt (actually, it’s the cousin of her mom, which technically makes them 2nd cousins or something, but heck, aunt is easier to digest) and had dinner in an area called The Danforth, otherwise known as Greektown (cause the Greeks took over the area, naturally) and we had dinner at an extremely crowded Greek restaurant with good food and an overabundance of Pita bread.

Getting home we tried out the router and we had exactly the same problem as before, so now it was obvious that it wasn’t physical. The Wife did some trouble shooting (since she’s the more technologically inclined of the two of us) and after a while, it was theorized that it was a problem with the router corrupting the firmware update. The suggested procedure was tried and, for the most part, the router seems to be working though there is still the occasional momentary drop out, and at one point, this laptop randomly switched security protocols and could no longer connect to the network. Oh, that whacky technology.

Today we paid a visit to the Neighbors downstairs to drop off a bottle of wine since they’d been really good to us when it came to easing us into Toronto in general and the Annex in particular. They promptly made us sit down and have a late lunch with them which was incredibly amusing since it was a birthday celebration and suddenly there were a lot of dogs and members of the family that we got to know in a crash course session.

And now it’s time to get a little rest for all the grief that is coming tomorrow. I’ve already washed out the cages the cats sat in during their two day trip from Singapore to Canada. Tomorrow we have to stick them in said cages one more time and drag them off to the vet to get their rabies vaccination and that will finally get them clear and legal to stay in Canada with no danger of deportation.

The things we do for our pets.

On a totally unrelated note, one of the things I’ve been noticing about Toronto is how Not Overwhelming the place is turning out to be. I place the blame for this largely on Singapore. I think if I’d come to Toronto straight from Edmonton, I would have found the city to be large, fast paced, and full of busy energy and intimidating people that were pure “bidness.” After years in the absudist, elitest, status driven, greed infested, “work till you die then work some more” farce that is Singapore, coming to Toronto was like a laid back breath of fresh air, and it’s hard to believe anyone could call this city fast paced and uptight. At least here you can gather in groups of four and talk politics without being arrested for staging an illegal public protest…

Return Of The Hardware

After a few days of believing that the disconnection from the wireless network was the result of interference from other networks in the area, we may have stumbled on the culprit; it’s the wireless router itself, not a problem with interference.

We lost the network connection for a few hours and that was motivation to get a little more active. We got a bit curious today and spent the evening running some tests. We plugged this ol’ laptop directly into the modem when we lost wireless connection Yet Again. Plugged directly into the modem, the laptop was fine and was happily surfing and streaming video away. Then we tried plugging the laptop by cable into the wireless router and at first, it seemed okay, reinforcing our initial belief that it was interference. However, when the network came back up, I went over to the Wife’s PC to monitor the situation, the signal dropped inevitably and at first the direct cable connection for the laptop was fine. Then it lost hook up to the internet as well.

At this point, the Wife actually looked at the router itself and noticed that it’s power light was just off, and/or fluctuating on and off wildly before stabilizing back to “On.” A little more observation revealed that the router itself is prone to just shutting itself off for a few a seconds at time or sometimes longer. Of course, it should not be doing this, so my guess is we’ve either got a wonky power cable with some bad wiring that occasionally disrupts the electricity, or else it’s a problem within the router itself.

Either way, it looks like we’re going to have to tromp on down to Best Buy and get a replacement for this thing. At least the mystery is solved. And if we get a replacement and the connection STILL keeps dropping out, we’re definitely calling it quits and just going back to a cable network.

And in other news I finally got approved for my first ever credit card today. I can now run myself into the ground with debt based on overzealous Amazon and Electronic Boutique online orders. GO BANKRUPTCY!

Steeped In SIN

I finally got my Social Insurance card reissued to me today, so I can start racking up those unemployment cheques! GO ME!

Also, I only just realized today that when I get on the internet in Canada, I can actually go to www.playboy.com and NOT receive a “FORBIDDEN ACCESS” message as those poor folks in Singapore face whenver they try the same thing. Go morally bankrupt print institutions!