You Know You’ve Settled Down In Your New Home

When all you have to report on your blog is nothing but work. Finished up more GameAxis articles, saw the dentist for the second and final cleaning of the teeth, and went down to a shop on Queen Street called The Magic Pony to see whether anything interesting was happening for the launch of a new series of figures by a noted designer. Unfortunately, the launch was more for the collectors than any artists, so we didn’t stick around very long. We did, however, find out that a nearby sex shop was in the market for original erotic artwork. Since the Wife just happens to be going through a phase where this is exactly the kind of subject matter she likes doing, this just might end up having promise. And of course, it tickles me to no end to think of the Wife having artwork for sale which would be illegal in Singapore. That sort of thing makes it all worthwhile, man…

Boring, But Productive

Today wasn’t particularly exciting which, I am sorry to say, is EXACTLY how I like it. You know you’re getting old when you look forward to a Drama-Free day and I’m definitely a big fan of those. Aside from the usual trip down to Bloor for a grocery run, the only things of note that happened today were that I was a good little chipmunk and cranked out more of the articles for GameAxis that are required for this month. Also, I got this in the mail:

And not the poster either, the movie. This was one of those random eBay moments where I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen the movie in years and actually remembered it quite fondly as one of the few genuinely good fantasy films of the 80′s. Whether or not the lens of nostalgia has anything to do with that now remains to be seen. I’ll pop it into the PS2 (this is our sole DVD player now) in a few days and see whether the carnage is as spectacular as I remember it, or whether Peter Jackson has now made it impossible for me to enjoy any fantasy film effort made without the help of WETA Digital Effects.

Oh, and it is official. After getting an e-mail with some very scary looking legal documents that I need to fill out, I will be doing my first gig for IGN. This may not mean much to most, but to me, having spent years relying on these guys for my gaming news, it feels like I’ve finally punched a hole into video game journalism legitimacy, assuming such a thing can be said to exist in such a wonky field. Still, to the game geeks that care, and to the gaming publications that are in North America, being able to wave a reference as monolithic (reviled or not) as IGN definitely means that I ain’t some amateur fanboy writer who thinks he can put a few words together and then tie it into a l33t bow with a juicy phrase like “pwned” or “OMGWTFBBQ” and actually have a certain standard of professionalism.

Or it could simply mean I’ve sold out. Whichever, I’m happy with both.

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…

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…

Canadian Sunday

Went shopping down on Bloor Street where all the happenin’ college kids hang out. Had bacon sandwich with bacon straight outta’ the new microwave. Played games. Still do not have stuff. Actually resorted to playing an old Playstation Magazine DVD demo with Guitar Hero 2 preview on it, but since there was no guitar to play it with, the machine auto-played the songs perfectly and I had to content myself with that.

Must… Get… Guitar Hero… Back…

Good Luck & Noisy Technology

Today the Wife observed that regardless of our station or success in life, we’re probably going to forever be packrats and scavengers.

The morning began with a courier delivering more cabling, the last of the Wife’s orders from one particular tech company that had chosen to deliver everything seperately. This consisted of a 75 foot and 25 foot pair of ethernet cables. We decided “To hell with it, we’re going back on the wire.” After a week of reliably losing wireless connection at critical moments like sending e-mail, writing blog posts (which would promptly get eaten during the ensuing connection drop) or internet transactions it became pretty clear that either as a result of other wireless connections or too much cell phone activity, a wireless connection in this part of town Just Doesn’t Work. So the morning was spent running cable up doorframes, through holes in the wall that previous tenants had knocked through into other rooms and behold, our computers are now once again reliably connected and should only drop their connection when the service provider does.

We were also going to go shopping for a microwave. More to the point, the Old Friend was going to buy us a microwave oven as a belated wedding present, but it got kind of late by the time she was available so it’s been pushed back to tomorrow. Failing at that, we decided to do a little grocery shopping down on Bloor and figured we’d walk it. However, while walking down the street towards Bloor, we chanced upon some perfectly good tables lying out on the street, waiting to be picked up by the garbage fleet later in the evening. Since we had also just gotten a fairly hefty, 60 pound laser printer that we suddenly realized we’d need to put on something, the table seemed perfect. We poked, prodded, noticed the owners of the house staring at us from the window, and I went over to ask about us making off with the table since it was obvious they didn’t want it. The lady of the house had already opened the door before I could ring the bell and told us it was perfectly okay to scavenge the table, so I dragged it back home.

Things like this seem to happen with alarming regularity when ever we move to a new apartment. At the first apartment in Singapore that we ever moved to, one of the neighbors in our building had thrown away a large, solid, perfectly good shelf, and I made off with it, using it to store my DVDs and PS2 games.

After that we had dinner at a pizza joint that had recently opened up just 3-4 doors down from us and was promptly amazed to find that the pizza in question was the best pizza I’d had in 11 years, and that the last time I enjoyed a pizza this good was in… Canada. In the 90′s. I couldn’t believe it when I realized that in the 10 years I’d been in Singapore, supposed food capital of the world, with World Class dishes, I had never, ever, even in the most expensive pizza places in Holland Village (the hip, bohemian part of Singapore that’s driven out all the bohemians who can no longer afford to live there) enjoyed a pizza that tasted this damn good.

The day ended with the wife accidently cutting her leg with a paper cutter (don’t ask) and the laser printer being lifted to its new home and being tested out. Two things were abundantly clear upon trying that sucker out. It is a NOISY son of a bitch, creaking and whirring and probably making everyone else in the house wonder what the hell kind of train we were driving in our living room, and it’s power hungry. Printing pictures and documents out on this thing results in super clear, super vibrant images that look magazine quality. But when this happens, the lights in the living room actually flicker and dim as the printer chugs away at its duties. I’m curious, and yet at the same time afraid, of finding out exactly what the power consumption demands of this thing are…

Hopefully tomorrow we will finally have a microwave. And possibly even a vacuum cleaner. And we STILL DON’T HAVE OUR STUFF FROM SINGAPORE. Man, this is starting to get annoying…

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.