One More Thing To Get Used To About Canada

I totally forgot about Daylight Savings Time. Singapore, being at the equator, has the same number of hours in the day and thus never experiences longer and shorter days/nights.

Dammit, I just lost an hour…

The Weekend Routine

Today ended up being quite productive in terms of activity, if not work.

There were a few things that needed doing, so we once again hit the streets, a much easier thing to do since it was actually +5 outside today, and went down to the infamous Queen Street West. The first stop was to finally show the Wife Silver Snail, and though in the end we didn’t end up buying any comics (Beguiling down on Bloor is still better for indie titles and all I wanted was the 2nd Volume of The Ultimates, which they were sold out of) we did manage to get EXTREMELY lucky with this find, which was on sale for the amazing price of five bucks:

This was double bonus, in that the Wife was extremely happy to find it because it was a cartoony dragon, and she’s already got a few like these. For me, however, it was a nostalgia trip-and-a-half since it represented a cherished piece of my childhood; the dragon Singe, from the laser-disc arcade game Dragon’s Lair. The game is incredibly crude by today’s standards, since all it consisted of animated sequences that were strung together in a simple tree-branching decision system where correct inputs were determined by joystick movements or button presses, and there was only one predetermined path to get Dirk The Daring through the various levels. It was one of my earliest tastes of mainstream respect since the game was ENORMOUSLY popular when it came out in 1983 (but then considering the state of graphics in 1983, the Don Bluth animation was several orders of magnitude above what was available) and it was common practice for the crowds to gather ’round the machine when it became obvious that a particular player actually knew what they were doing and could potentially finish the game, a very rare event. I was one of those kids, so it was a bit of a rush to go into the arcade with no one paying attention, only to end a completed session of Dragon’s Lair with an entire crowd standing around, cheering and patting me on the back for showing them How It’s Supposed To Be Done. So yeah, Dirk, Daphne and Singe will always hold a special place for me.

The other stop was for art supplies at Curry’s. What started out as a casual supply run turned into a geek fest when one of the regular cashiers–who’s served us several times already–nerded out and hooked up his Nintendo DS to the store PA, flooding the entire area with the sounds of Electroplankton, a whacky music style game that immediately got me to go up and join the geek crowd for inane babbling. That’s always a good time as far as I’m concerned.

We also ran into the Old Friend, which kind of freaked me out, since we were just sitting at some corner diner having a bagel and I didn’t even recognize her. She came up to the window and put her hands on it, staring in at us. I was still in the mode of consciousness where I thought of myself as the New Guy in town and it didn’t even occur to me that I would ever run into anyone I knew in Toronto, so my brain simply failed to ignite the proper Friend or Foe circuit. It actually took the Wife’s urging to finally make the Old Friend’s face click and so I have now had my first “I just randomly ran into someone I knew” moment in Toronto. This will probably be the last time this ever happens.

From there, it was further down Queen to a store called Magic Pony which sells what I can only describe as Designer Geek Objects. Most people go to the comic book store or something similar for action figures, statuettes and other decorative office cubicle items. This store offers similar fare, except that now those toys, posters salt & pepper shakers and other assorted gimmicks are extremely limited edition, and created by notable designers. While the mainstream geek won’t care, the rich upper crust looking for a dash of geek frisson would definitely shop here since this is much more expensive, limited edition geekery that’s just expensive enough to prove respectable to the elite. Of course the other group that would find this place appealing are designers themselves since they keep track of all these things. Regardless, we trotted down to check it out, because someone had suggested last week that the Wife’s work would be the kind of thing these folks would be interested in doing something with. Lo and behold, they may be right. They want to take a look at some of her stuff, so this could be potentially interesting. Especially if it leads to something cool like her own vinyl or resin figures. Quantities, it goes without saying, would be EXTREMELY limited which would make her stuff–if it happened–a collector’s dream.

After that, it was back to Bloor, which is quickly becoming Home Ground as far as I’m concerned. We got more cheese (two different kinds, the names of which I utterly forget), and went down to Suspect Video to return the movies and pick up a few more. In total, we got four films, two insane and two cheesy, all Japanese. My picks were Tetsuo The Iron Man and Rubber’s Lover, both of which are called works of Japanese Cyberpunk, which to me translates into “offensive, loud and confusing, but in a vastly entertaining way.” The other two were giant monsters movies, Godzilla: Final War and Rodan, ’cause, well… you just can’t have enough giant monsters in your life.

After that, it was down to the Korean grocery store for–surprise…–Korean products, and then it was time to go home.

Y’know what, I don’t care how boring we are, I’m actually enjoying this life…

Lame Friday

Because all I did was arrange stuff in our shelves and play with a demo for a program called Poser, which the Wife is considering picking up to help with references for artwork.

Meatballs & Mortality

A semblance of order is beginning to descend on our apartment as familiar things are put into their final places–hopefully for a few years at least. We had one of those “duh” moments were we looked at all the CDs we’d brought across the ocean and realized we had nothing to put them into, so it was Yet Another Trip To Ikea to get a few more of those final knick knacks, like CD racks and shoe racks (since, now that extra shoes and boots had arrived, we suddenly had a dearth of footwear storage space).

It was while we were having lunch at the Ikea cafeteria that we saw an old man in a wheel chair who, on surface inspection, seemed to have taken a nap in his chair. This would quickly prove to NOT be the case when the PA at Ikea suddenly announced, “To all Ikea managers; there is a code 40 in the cafeteria.”

This was further reinforced by the fact that the woman who was clearly the napping man’s wife, was in a panic.

I think you can probably guess the rest of the story. We sat there in quiet fascination as the paramedics showed up, the Ikea managers themselves simply stood around helplessly and moved around tables and chairs so they could get a gurney through. It was probably a stroke or cardiac arrest or something to that effect, but fortunately there was a hospital within sight of the Ikea itself, and so it was only a 2 minute drive to get the old man and his deeply troubled wife over there.

Of course this necessitated a talk about life, death and other stuff and then, probably just because I had seen one old man struggle with life and death, when I saw another one struggling with his heavy boxes, I helped carry them onto the bus, off the bus and into the subway station, into the train, into another train to transfer to another line and off the train when we parted ways.

Okay, so I’m a softie. Fine.

More Artists

Another quiet day in the Annex. The day was mostly spent just organizing all the stuff (and getting my ass kicked in Guitar Hero 2), clearing the room of all the packing paper, moving boxes and other assorted implements of a move to the other side of the planet, and hanging up all the paintings the Wife brought with her, which, of course, she painted herself. Now aside from the fact that everything has been stuffed into fully assembled shelves merely for the sake of stuffing (to be properly organized over the next few days) our home is finally HOME. It is ours and we just need to arrange it “just so” but feels for the most part like our own place.

The evening was spent meeting another one of the artists the Wife has had contact with, who happens to also live in the Annex district. He’s a pretty cool guy who has little recollection of a childhood spent as refugee from Vietnam, living in a camp in Malaysia before finally coming with his family to Canada. Once again, some exceptionally good pizza was consumed and then it was back home to drink coffee, discuss and reinforce to the Wife that she has a legitimate shot as an artist in Canada and doesn’t suck simply because she came from Singapore.

Speaking of sucking, there’s more Guitar Hero to be played…

It’s What Time?

RAWK Time.

Once again, Guitar Hero is my business and business is good.

Business is also plink plonking all over the place to the point where Freebird on Hard actually shut me out, but I’ll get it back. Oh you just wait, I’ll get it back…

Oh and all other stuff arrived too. Now if you’ll excuse me…

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!

The Do Nothing Day

It was one of those Mondays where it was too cold to go out, and so Rogue Galaxy was the order of the day. But more importantly, we finally got confirmation from the movers:

Our stuff arrives tomorrow morning.

Assuming that nothing unfortunate happened to certain long, black box that’s just about the right size to hold a travel guitar, then the Majesty Of Rock will be beheld once more, live, in the Annex, every night.

I’m comin’ for ya’ Dave Mustaine…

Shopping On Sunday

Once again, we ventured out into downtown, which is not too difficult to do since technically we live in downtown.

But this was our first extended foray into Queen Street West, which is, of course, where all the Cool Folks hang out. We sort of side-stepped that portion entirely, however, went Way Out West to the part of Queen Street dominated by galleries and art shops that tended to be frequented by actual professional artists. The Wife had already found a favorite store in the form of Terns, a quiet little spot, owned and operated by a nice lady who immediately remembered us from our last visit and was more than eager to help the Wife out with her quest for paper of a particular weight, that still had the firmness of a postcard, but would not jam up her new laser printer when she tried running it through.

This was followed by a walk past the various galleries to another, larger store called Woolfits where more paper was purchased in the interestes of continued experimentation. But before we actually got to Woolfits, we got sidetracked by a gallery that showed off some very interesting photos and we got to talking to the guy who ran it. The Wife initially just wanted to ask some questions about doing print runs using whatever equipment they obviously had on hand to their archival quality prints, but the talk ended up turning into artist talk, where the three of us stood around enjoying a meandering conversation and he eventually had to kick us out when he reminded us that it was Sunday and the stores we wanted to see would close soon. Still, it looks we’ve made a new interesting acquaintance, and he pointed the Wife towards some folks that might possibly be interested in exhibiting her stuff.

After that it was back to Home Ground, in the form of Bloor and this time, when we perused the evil, evil voluminous collections of Beguiling, I fell prey to the Siren Call I’d been trying to ignore and picked up this:

Yes, it was a book where the man himself discussed some the mechanics thinking about comics and divulged a little of his actual process. Of course, right in the introduction, he emphasized that this was not “Write comic books the Alan Moore way!” since he detested that kind of thing, and pointed out that while there was definitely room in the world for one Stan Lee or one John Buscema, there was definitely no call for trying to create an army of thousands that all did the Same Damn Thing.

What’s particularly interesting about this book however is the fact that Moore originally wrote it in 1985, when he was just on the cusp of forever changing the face of comics with The Watchmen. There’s an afterword that was written in 2003, and in it, amusingly, Moore basically negates most of what he wrote in 1985, insinuates that he was deluded and essentially says there’s really only one piece of advice when it comes to comic writing: Do what you haven’t done before. Find something you find uncomfortable to write about and write that. He dimisses all his earlier advice about plot, structure and transitional/character devices, insisting that anyone that’s serious about becoming a good writer is going to pick these skills up anyway, and eventually it’ll become unconscious instinct.

All I know is after reading all that, I came to one inescapable conclusion:

It’s time to finish that damn book.

Hopefully once the stuff arrives and I’ve gotten my Guitar Hero withdrawal out of my system, I’ll sit down and do just that. In typical Power Writing mode, which is probably not the right way to do a children’s book, but dammit, that’s the way it’s gonna’ be for me.

Paralyzed By Choice

In what is quickly turning into our weekly ritual, we once descended on Bloor Street to pay a visit to our favorite shops and interact with the people that run the stores. This is becoming immensely satisfying as we’re starting to get recognized as “that nice artsy couple” and are being treated like well-liked regulars. There’s just something innately charming about getting to the cheese shop and realizing forlornly that we’ve missed their operating hours, only to have the nice old Slavic guy that runs the place come out, waving at us and saying “For you… I cannot stay closed. Come, come!”

Today was the also the day that I finally did the deed and went on down to Suspect Video to get my membership, where I was immediately overwhelmed with how many things there were I really, really wanted to see. In the end, my indecision ran waaaaay over time and so I settled on these, a couple of first volume DVDs to get my feet wet:

Samurai Champloo is one of those series that most anime fans keep saying, “Dude, you HAVE to watch this!” and so, finally and at long last, I am. If only to tell these people to shut the hell up. If I like it, I’ll add it onto the list of “things I like which I shall collect when/if money permits.” The other thing, and far less “mainstream” is Gilgamesh, which is supposed to be dark, grim, obscure and frequently baffling. Most of the “pedestrian” anime fans that stick to the action titles will probably be completely alienated by the title. But since I was able to watch the Evangelion series and actually LIKE the ending (Not mention actually enjoying the Tangential-Fest that was Serial Experiments Lain) there’s a chance I may actually be able to appreciate this series, so we shall see.

There was another odd moment during the visit to Suspect Video. I was using my passport as one of my forms of ID, and the girl at the counter (henceforth known as the Weekend Girl, since that seems to be her shift) asked me if what I had was a Singapore passport.

I said, “Uh… noooo… It’s Canadian.” But, already suspecting where this was going, I asked her, “Are you Singaporean?”

And of course, she was. And like most Singaporeans I know who travel a lot, she had completely annihilated her Singapore accent in favor of whatever country she happened to be in. This, to me, is a completely amazing skill. Ten years in Singapore and my Canadian accent was as potent on the day I left as it was when I arrived. And I failed utterly to grasp the bizarre rhythm and cadence of the Singapore speech pattern. Singaporeans, on the other hand, can take an accent spoken over an entire lifetime, and bury it in a matter of weeks.

I introduced the Wife and said, “Well, she’s Singaporean…”

To which the Weekend Girl smiled and said, her local accent slipping up ever-so-slightly “Wow, what a coincidence!”

And then they smiled at each other and there seemed to be an eye-contact moment where they non-verbally agreed “We shall not speak of that hell hole from which we came.”

It turns out that Weekend Girl is a literature student. I suspect she gets a huge kick from working at a store where she’s surrounded by movies that her home country would find either politically, violently or erotically objectionable. Not mention all the tentacle-ridden hentai in the joint. However, being a student, that means that she has no legal way to stay in the country, though that is something she’d very much like to do.

“Your parents are going to freak when they find you don’t want to go home,” I said to her.

She sighed and nodded. “Tell me about it…”

I hope it goes well for her. And if I don’t see her in a few months, I’ll know exactly where she is; 90 miles away from the equator, sweating, surrounded by people who’s only joy in life is driving a Mercedes and trying to figure out how to get back to a Real Country where people may be colder, but also know there’s more to life than buying a new cellular phone or saying that you shopped in the newest mall.

More Geography

It was a quiet Friday with not much going on aside from the fact that the Wife sent off a package to the United Kingdom (AGAIN. But that is a long story) some Rogue Galaxy was played, and we found out that when packages cannot be delivered and are dropped off at the post office, the nearest post office to us is tucked away in a Shopper’s Drug Mart down on Bloor Street. This will be good to know if the Wife’s scanner ever shows up, which is another annoying story. She paid for a scanner and had it sent to her folks who now live in the USA, and they in turn mailed it to her. Or that’s the theory anyway, since something that freakin’ big somehow got lost in the mail. It amazes me that something like a bunch of knit sweaters (sent at the same time from the same post office) can safely make the journey and something as obvious and big and heavy as a scanner gets lost. Either that, or someone in the US postal service simply decided he liked the scanner too much to give it up and appropriated it for himself. Either way, that’s a fair chunk of change lost…

And, as expected, the Rest Of Our Stuff did not arrive today. Oh well, there’s always Monday.

Right. Back to gaming…