I spy Istanbul. Shopping and Eating.

Stomach-friendly sweet

During my sojourn in Europe, I was quite set on seeing as much of the world (well that which was easily accessible from where I was...ahem cheaply) before it goes down the drain.  This thinking is a bit pessimistic yes but its all but practical.  If I am going to shit all over my child's future, I might as well do them the favour of having seen all of it presently and gloating about the past glory days in between their food security issues, land degradation, and climate changes.  Yes, I'd be a pretty damn good mother.

On this note and facing imminent visa default, I left Germany to travel to Istanbul, Turkey before my retreat back to Canadian soil.  It was a very learning experience - for myself, my wallet, my stomach, and my olfactory senses.  I started off the adventure flying via Basel Mulhouse Freiburg airport (which has shared borders in Switzerland, France, and Germany) direct to Istanbul.  As the name suggests, you should leave from the correct side of the exit or face stepping into the wrong country (sadly I made this mistake twice). Visas for Canadian citizens cost 40 USD. I am informed that BOTH British and American citizens pay much less.  Apparently Canada has managed to offend someone more.

You haven't lived until you've bought a fish kebab from a boat

My arrival to Istanbul was marked by a most unfortunate and gruesome sighting - a pack of dogs and ravens picking away the flesh of some other animal left out in the public park.  This would have seriously turned my conviction against vegetarianism if I weren't one already.  Yet, I think that this small carnivorous event is analogous to the Istanbul that I saw. Embattled by lack of resources (economic?), one necessarily becomes more opportunistic of the resources available to him.  I chose this explanation to describe what I have seen in the following days.

Young boy (8-12?) carrying garbage: better than the alternative

Never one to shy away from suspicious street food

I think the most boisterous markets and sales people must be in the city centre of Istanbul. OK it's also tourist mecca but I've never been cajoled so much by street vendors even in Morocco, Hong Kong, or Shanghai. I have unsavoury moments of vendors obstructing my path and insisting that they 'had something to tell me' or 'I just want to say something' or 'where are you from' before they would try to pull me into their store.  Shoving and undisguised annoyance was quickly adopted and remained so for the rest of the journey.

Bargaining at the Grand Bazaar

Strong Turkish coffee. Emphasis on strong.

The markets there are the most boisterous ones yet. Especially the Grand Bazaar where I must have spent a far bit of my time and money in :) The rule is bargain...hard...and then bargain again for half of that bargained price.  Oh sneaky buggers try to take pictures of you with their merchandise - to prove to other tourists that tourists like buying their stuff. If you happen to see a photo with a frowning tourist pushing away a lamp - that would be me.  I'm also convinced that shopkeepers communicate via fb updates if they are satisfied/unsatisfied about a shop patron. Its a feeling but I have no proof unfortunately.  The Grand Bazaar itself is one huge cavernous maze of shops in alleys specialising in specific goods (like tea, scarves, jewellery, turkish delight, etc.). And undoubtedly I got lost for as many hours as I spent shopping this was also compounded by the fact that I mistook the Turkish word for 'exit', çıkış, to be a unique naming of the exit gate.

I love trying new foods so you can bet I tried as many foods that I couldn't pronounce as possible.  It's an assignment that requires a strong stomach.  Luck for me is this carried me the entire length of the trip. Unluckily for me, I took the hit on the plane ride back home. Most miserable trip ever.  Unfortunately, taking the bill is another thing not to be taken for granted.  I can't tell you how many times I was charged a 'bread fee' where I had never taken any.  Most common response is ''oh but didn't you order bread?''

Efes and Raki are respectively the local beer and spirit. I enjoyed neither and yet somehow managed to take up my friend's share too. Kunefe is made with phyllo pastry and cheese and one of the best dessert dishes I had there. Ayran my favourite yoghurt drink and milk pudding my next favourite dessert.  Next up was Turkish coffee. When I saw it was strong I'm not exaggerating. It was like espresso but more bitter and more granular inside. Still today I cannot figure out if the coffee WAS supposed to be half liquid half coffee grains.  Interestingly, Turkish coffee can be ordered one of three ways - sweet, sweeter, and plain. Those in the know ask for sweet or sweeter.  And even with that coffee is still bitter. Its a taste I'll leave for someone else to acquire.

...

4 Things I hate about Toronto

Enjoying outdoor cinema: Byrant Park NYC

1) Decreasing affordability (also with proportionate decreasing of enjoyment of things I like - see previous post Jan 29). Its no joke. Toronto IS becoming more expensive. This is good news for the rich who can still ride on this wave but bad for the middle class and worse for the poor.  $20 used to carry me a long way were I going out - but now, if I wanted to travel around more than just to and from home I'd spend atleast half of that on the TTC and then probably the rest for a low-budget meal.

Enjoying a public concert: Padua IT

2) Diversity. What? I love diversity actually. Multiculturalism is what makes Toronto Toronto. What I do not like are the xenophobic reactions that follow any conspicuous in-migration of visible minorities to the neighbourhood. It gets worse further from the city centre when, thanks to chain migration, whole communities can isolate themselves into homogeneous ethnic cliques (or ethnic enclaves).  Unfamiliarity can easily breed ignorance and so on. Toronto sure seems to resemble more like tile patchwork than a mosaic.

Marketplace: Padua, Italy

3) Public space. Again something that I love. Except what Toronto considers public space is quite contrary to what I have in mind. New York City has Central Park - a huge green oasis that residents and tourists alike can enjoy year round. In Toronto - well there is the Toronto Music Garden (easily 1/10th of Central Parks size), the Toronto Islands (enjoyment is seasonal at best), Dundas Square, Mel Lastman Square (concrete oasis)... BUT none of the aforementioned are more useful then for a spot to eat before you dash to your next location. I'm better off relaxing in the city's many cemeteries. Atleast I get my peace and quiet there.

4)  The TTC. Delays. Poor service. Increasing fares. People not doing their work.  Weak connection of metro stops to bus stops. The TTC is just digging their own grave.

Standing still in Sweden

That feeling of being in the middle of nowhere: Sweden

Having spent most of my two years abroad here, I feel it safe to declare that Sweden was one of only a few countries I really feel comfortable in.  By this I mean that rare sense of security and self-assurance that comes from not fearing that danger lurks around the corner (except maybe if you were a cyclist in Toronto - then your just screwed) and not being leered at or bothered (well ok wearing a big mushroom cap hat and childish mittens assured I'd be kept off the radar).

Stockholm. Yep still cold.

Sweden is really much more than IKEA (I like the IKEA man), Swedish meatballs, blonde people, and knackebroed  -but Swedes don't really let you in on the secret until they get to know you a bit better (read: 3< years). No not even after downing a few bottles of local ol (beer) although it does go a long way. No Swedes are just...special...but also the most genuine and independent people I've met.  The country itself makes an example of values that we thought we had pegged like equality, appreciation for nature (thats right I had to google the Canadian national anthem to compare - there's no shame in that), walking in heels and tights in the dead of winter, and hell they even speak our own language pretty decently.

What I DON'T miss about Sweden:
1) The 7 months of darkness during the long winter season. And I still resent having to winter pant suit up just to go hiking in the woods.  But if anything, atleast the snow stays white and clean for much longer than it does on a typical Toronto street.

Uppsala (close to the Economikum)

Welcome here. Welcome home. Uppsala

2) I don't enjoy not fitting into any pants I buy there (bizarre freak mutation in Swedes - what's the advantage? getting further away from the warmth of the floor?).

Uppsala

Lining up for fika brunch

3) Pancake and pea soup Thursdays (serious? they've take a novelty cafeteria idea and unilaterally decided that institutionalising it was a good thing. I beg to differ. Cream on pancakes is not an afternoon meal).
4) I don't like how the supermarkets never have much more than root vegetables and pasta.
5) I don't like how the currency just doesn't make sense (why can't they be the same size?? and eliminate the 50 ore? really? makes it easier to count change).
6) I call it super equality. The Swedes call it Jantelagen. Does it hinder the learning process? Yes, I believe it does.
7) The word 'Lagom'. It has no meaning! Do you want more or less or not at all?
8) I don't like the vanity (cough cough Stockholmers cough cough. Men are not exempted).
9) Living in the middle of nowhere (serious did YOU know where Sweden was before I mentioned it? no not Switzerland)
10) Paying to use the toilets. Even in the malls.


What I DO miss about Sweden:
1) How I can wear a slouchy sweater, leggings and boots and call that an outfit without even trying.
2) Dinsko.
3) Daim chocolate (hurrah I've found that IKEA stores here sell it).
4) The coffee. 
5) Systembolaget is evil but such a necessary evil.
6) The lipbalm (the nice green bottle where you can just slide the balm up). 
7) The nice Swedish summer (when its usual that the entire day be sunny).
8) Nature.
9) The Swedish language. Listen to IKEA man. How can you not love it (this is just funny)? 
10) The individual washrooms. And the little indicators to say its occupied. Yah no more having to surreptitiously check for feet poking out.
11) Fika. No not the Italian meaning. I would not encourage you to use that word whilst in Italy. The Swedes have taken the coffee break to a higher level.
12) That no one begrudges the grocery bag fee. Why are we such stuck-up prisses and why not fork over the 5 cents?

That sinking feeling: Venice

Somethings missing: Bra bar

Last fall I had the remarkable opportunity to shindig with other like-minded professionals at a week long workshop on international environmental law in Venice, Italy.  The program was fantastically put together in a collaboration between the University of Padua and the International Centre for Climate Governance-Venice scheduling lectures by prominent practitioners in the field.  I still can't stop drooling over all the amazing people and topics covered - well despite the fact that International Environmental Law, atleast for now, is  less than helpful (thank you very much economic lust and political bigotry). But still its an amazing field and, with the fluidity of climate change and air borne pollutants, it seems to be a field with vast potential for change (mm this sounded more like a wish than a concrete statement).

Venice: Tight quarters

Watching 'The Tourist' is what set me off again into this little reverie of Venice. I mean just watching Angie pout in almost every scene while strutting along the streets of Venice makes me want to go back again - sit in a lovely cafe in St Marks square..and pay and arm and a leg for some real Italian coffee. I had the pleasure along the way to learn that saying things like ''why don't you have a Pizza Hut'' and ''super size that'' are blasphemous.  That wearing the right clothes with your hair properly done could probably pass as permissible for a tourist in  the city - except if your an Americano...there's no real cover for that. But maybe after a few glasses of Prosecco you'd do fine. And there are a whole lot of tourists in Venice - everywhere! Everyday and for every season - Venice literally is sinking with tourists. Quite literally. You people who are guilty. You know who you are.

After wave

Before wave

The island of Venice is just like the little pink logo suggests - fish shaped (I studied on an island just off the bottom tip of the fish tail).  I had taken the train from Bologna to Venice at a surprisingly cheaper ticket price than I had imagined (considering how much it costs to take the train from Toronto to Montreal with VIA).  It was just about the end of September and still it was such nice weather. Lucky me. Since I had misjudged and decided that a walk from the train station to St Marks Square was absolutely doable. This was indeed not the case - especially with my heavy backpack (mind you blazoned with little flags of all the countries Id been too - yah I'm that awesome) and a satchel which was by then also digging into my shoulders.  I had also made the unsavoury choice of entering into some boutiques along the way (but it turned out to be a good idea anyway-they don't have this stuff here).

Venice sunset

Venice by day

Venice is how I remember it the last time I visited (about 3 years ago?) - except for the obvious fact that there  were much more raised platforms then before. That and there were more dog owners ignoring the obvious fact that their dog just did number two in the middle of the sidewalk.  Ok. Besides being quite handy as an impromptu fashion runway in the middle of the night while your hollaring at the top of your lungs - its demonstrable of the fact that the tides are really turning against the city.  Well, to be factual, the tides never were working for Venice. Venice is built up in a lagoon-your living predicament can't be more precarious than that (making Venetians also quite vulnerable to a phenomenon called Aqua alta which is another way to say high tide). So imagine being knee deep in water (from the Adriatic Sea) and having your building's facade being washed out at it too. Enter the GATES OF SALVATION (just say it in that game show host voice too...getting the jitters too?). The project is called MOSE (thats just one 'S' short of a biblical reference...oh wait sorry it IS Moses in Italian). They are like mobile gates embedded into the sea just a short ways away from the island. But this video makes it look cooler than if I gave the point-by-point play.

Outside the train station: no trains are allowed on the Island

But ofcourse ''It is not just rising sea levels with which Venice has to contend. The city is sinking as a result of subsidence caused by decades of groundwater extraction for agriculture and industry on the mainland, and offshore drilling for methane gas. This combination means that Venice has effectively sunk 23cm in the last century.'' But what more is there to do but watch it all unfold marvellously as mother nature unravels the sea onto Venice like it has always done.  These and other effects of climate change are bound to catch up to us sooner or later. 

10 Things

Making lists are good - especially those ones that come in 5 or 10 - the exact amount of digits you have on one hand or two. No brainy for counting off your listed items. Unless of course you forget you have 5 digits and end off sounding three items rather than 5. But thats just embarrassing and besides its probably nothing Id be willing to share anyway. Lists are lovely. But not in an offish pretentious way - ahem my top 5 besties (no I'm not giving you a rank). Lists are lovely because, although quite reductionist, they are a mirror of who you are and what priorities you've set - that's what I think.

Cheaper than a drivers license (plus subsequent orders of beer)

My list:

Library Card - Sure beats having to buy books and its much cheaper! Although it would be nice to have a nice library of my own...except for those pesky overdue fines.

Elevate: heeled shoes

Internet - When there is nothing on TV - there's sure to be something on here. Plus life starts and ends here nowadays. Theres no escape. I blame facebook.

Tweezer - Keep those bushes I call my eyebrows in order.

Water - Its just good for you.

Credit Card - Try to travel around the world without it. Good back up incase of...well an emergency (read: bargain deal on designer wear). I do believe I wouldn't have the pretty nice shoes I have now if it weren't for Mr. Credit Card. Bless

Phone - Insurance for when you've got no money. Its your 'call a friend' option :) Also to inform friends of said bargain deal on designer wear. But only when you've got there first.

Tights

Good shoes - Many shoes for many different occasions.  Its like when, in the realllll old days, you used to have a morning dress, day dress, evening dress, etc. Plus its not practical to hike up a hill in heels. Believe me on that.

Camera - Not being able to read a bit of Chinese, this is the how I found my way back to my bus (real handy to leave a digital trail). Also it helps catching TTC drivers doing stuff they shouldn't.

Epilator - For those days when you do bother. This gets it done faster.

(opaque) Tights - There are days when you just can't bother. Tights are there for those days :) And because they come in so many colors :) (just waiting until I can find a replacement for my red jeans RIP)

We interrupt your regular scheduled program with this special news -

TTC: Take The Car

Really? What? A portion of of the subway (and mind you the important part - the one that brings you to the city centre where all the fun is) is scheduled to close and remain close from 6 am Sat Jan 29 until 6 am Mon Jan 31 to undergo track installation.  If you can count you will realise that this is TWO full days.  Although ''frequent bus service'' (read: no service or freeze your ass in the cold for 45 minutes waiting for the next delayed bus to arrive) will be available all along the routes shut down by the maintenance.  Comes at a perfect time too - come this evening, temperatures are forecast to fall between -15 to -17 for the next two days.

Texting 'n driving: work benefits?

For its complex size, Toronto amazingly still retains a quite decrepit subway system.  And while some metro systems are complex and large enough to accommodate for track re-routing because they have other lines passing similar stations (check: New York, Paris, London), Toronto has a sad total of 4 routes. The main exchange stations are few and far between: Sheppard-Yonge, Bloor-Yonge, St-George and Spadina.  For us lucky Torontonians, this means delays can be a real bitch.  We simply cannot hop out to take another route but maybe fall back on the reliability of bus service.  Which, if its anything like the no. 97 (runs up and down THE main street of Toronto) is like no bus at all.

Good night

Yet another complaint surfaced recently in an article in the Toronto Star.  The article responds to pictures of a TTC driver apparently texting while driving.  If your like me - Id be on my toes if I had to take those substitute buses over the weekend.  And the TTC just continues receiving bad flack. Whomever covers the PR sure has it cut out for them.  TTC spokesman Brad Ross even asks that ''people do not take pictures...I’m not saying we wouldn’t use photographs sent to us (for an internal investigation), just that we don’t require it.'' But I do think you need it Mr. Ross. I'm sure the matter would be investigated nevertheless but pictures do speak thousands.  And pictures SHOULD keep coming in until these things stop happening. A report can be typed up and filed and never seen again. But a picture - well that, in the right hands, can become your worst PR nightmare :)

Toronto. Password: Creativity

Painful to watch: The Bilbao Effect

You could whisper it, shout it, breath it out, or, more appropriately, do it in a lovely drawl all the while with the smallest hint of a sneer that only a true blue-blooded Torontonians could do.  Creativity.  It may be the shiniest button out there - but it doesn't mean its the only thing that holds up the jacket.  And cue in Bilbao Effect or, in layman terms, the utter fallacy of 'build it (something shiny and glamorous) and they will come'.  I refer, ofcourse, to the majestic Guggenheim Museum in the city of Bilbao - its beautiful, its new (ish), and it says something (probably).  Bilbao was just another decaying Spanish industrial city before - but, for the Museum, it was just the luck of being there at the right time - the City started to turn around just at the time the Museum took up residence in the city. Economy and infrastructure improvements were already on its way but the Museum inevitably remained the superstar and took home the credit.  Reproductions of this archi-porn has sprung up around the world (ahem ROM and AGO) - but have not received the level of success achieved before by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao - but small wonder as the context was completely different!

Gentrification: Thanks white people

So, then I beg to ask why have we allowed ourselves to be sold hold, line, and sinker, that creativity is such a good thing?  I love art and I love culture. But these two are not synonymous with making a city identifiable with its citizens.  Art and culture are innately programmed to engage people without and within their environment.  ''What good does it do to do to build cultural temples if the pilgrims have shuttle back home to edge cities, intent on what they think the real business of life is--to make money, to stay afloat, to get quickly onto the lucky side of the gulf between the rich and the poor.''  We've been sucked into creativity as a way of live.  Its completely reorganised the way we see things as they are and the way we think that they should look like.  Maybe Toronto should stop trying so hard and just try to be, you know, a city - not for the idea but the people.

The wonderful marvels of Morocco

Friendly yet mildly aggressive stall-owners, blue walls, history, rich food, colourful houses, and brilliant mosaics. That is the Morocco that is sold to you. And largely, these images could be true. But, perhaps from an unfortunate series of events, I got to appreciate a wholly different side of Morocco but one, in my experience, gives a fuller appreciation of the city and to what 'luxuries' I have been gifted with in Canada.

Work

Morocco for sale

A few months ago, and a few weeks before completing my traineeship in Germany, I decided to travel to Morocco - to see everything that I was convinced I'd see coming off the awfully nice travel websites.  Already full swing into my European travels, I ended taking a plane on Ryanair from Bergamo, Italy to Fes, Morocco.  And because I did very little research into how I was getting from the airport to the Medina, I ended up waiting for atleast one hour in the burning sun - along with other backpackers - for the bus on the side of the dusty road. Since I really hadn't had any real summer (apart from those sweltering few weeks in May when I everyday became a fight not to suffocate underneath the blanket of heat that had settled itself onto Freiburg), I was amazingly still gung ho about the heat. Imagine seeing palm trees in October! AMMMMAAAZING :)

Market

Like any airport with Ryanair - this one was located quite far from the city. Finally, I took up residence within the walls of the old city - but closer to the border than the centre.  There is no comparison with any other cities than I have seen.  Shanghai, China perhaps comes close but that would be a different story. The city literally seems to implode on itself. The streets are a mish-mash of alleys and alleys mixed with false streets mixed with side paths leading to a market. Sometimes, if you look towards the sky you could see just enough of a sliver to tell you what time of the day it was. In those parts, the roads narrow and are not paved well or even at all.  Every step is in precarious danger of stepping over someone's (quite frequently), being run over by the half-dozen human powered carts barrelling down the maze of alleys, stepping into something unsavoury, or twisting your ankle on some jutting rock.  Some paths are literally strewn with refuse. There is some logic, I suppose, to the maze of paths - I've been told that you could easily walk to the centre within 15 minutes IF you knew which paths to take.

All dried up

From my window: Good-bye Fes

Fes must have been a lovely place - before the water started running out.  There are many public fountains (looking just like in the picture to the left) scattered all over the city from where locals draw their water - often their only source of water.  There is only one to serve every so blocks - so when one dries out then you'd need to walk to the next for water.  During my stay, I saw alot of dried up wells and, I suspect, this sight would be quite common in the city.  At least the people have jobs. And this obvious fact is true - shops seem to teem with activity of man and children busying themselves with tools and the tricks of their trades. But the work that they do is misleading. There is often no other choice - pursuing higher education stands no chance against poverty. So they work.

The entire trip to Morocco has given me more food for thought than I'd imagined it would. Maybe it was tourist syndrome or that, for once, I held onto my camera (actually for safety reasons - stuff gets stolen if your not careful) and actually saw my surroundings instead of snapping away everywhere I went.  In summary, my trip has left me with the feeling that I, like looking in from behind a window, have barely glimpsed at what the real Morocco is and what conditions are really like for the people who live there everyday.

I now am supremely appreciative of running hot water.

Death of a City; Goodbye Toronto

Dear Toronto,

Architectural rendition: Frank Gehry's design for AGO

I love you but I think we should go our separate ways. We had a good run while it lasted. But it's you and not me. I feel you have changed so much in the last few years - and maybe not in such a good way - we've just grown apart and want different things. You don't look at me the same way no more - your eyes are more set on things like that shiny trove Queens West and their never-ending stream of cool hipster quips, the opulent chicness of Yorkville, bright-eyed optimism and media whoredom of Dundas Square, and the newness and swagger of King Street to name a few.

Up in flames: The Royal Ontario Museum

You've tried to give me nicely wrapped packages (only with the same thing inside but with new outside), proclaimed that a famous designer made it to make it sound cooler, and put a higher selling point on it to distract me from the real quality of the gift. But I don't need this shiny new-old toys. I ask you to fix my transportation so that I can see you more often. But it's still in the same repair as before - dirty, slow, and unfriendly.

I know you've made other newer hipper, cultured, and wealthy friends - but have you forgotten your roots? We were so happy before you started building and buying things that you thought we needed but you have ignored the things that we already have but require repair.  Its New York isn't it? They changed so you decided it was time for you to do the same!  I have to tell you its not the same. But we can still be friends and I will still visit you. Goodbye Toronto.

My dinner, made in...

Dinner is served: what is the concoction that makes up yours?

Made in Taiwan: my computer. Made in Bangladesh: my oh-so-soft pullover. Made in China: desk table and so on and so forth.  And still, I find myself bewildered by the huge inventory of places my stuff has travelled to and from before arriving into my life.  And though I would claim myself to be a vegetarian (no not a vegan), I have never really questioned the origin of my food. It was never for the ethical treatment of animals - although it is one of the reasons to turn your back on flesh. I just decided against it.  But now - even after reading just 1/3 of Pollan's ''Omnivore's Dilemma'', I'm pretty confident I've made a good decision.  The book sources American research which then reflects the relationship between agribusiness and subsidisation - but it still discusses issues that are parallel to our feeding habits north of the border.

Bon apetit

Corn and its constituent by-products help provide Americans with affordable calorie-rich food (ahem fast food nation anyone?). You'd be amazed at how many things are made with corn. Its like MSG in a ''chinese restaurant'' - its in EVERYTHING. Its even in soda (they use corn syrup - whilst we Canadians still get the 'real' stuff - but these are all manufactured in such a way that their tastes are rather similar = economics of substitution). In America, as in Canada, this corn is grown in huge monoculture farms. They are huge and usually grow only one or two crops (or animals) usually because of one thing = profit (although there are probably farms out there that are not huge monoculture agribusinesses but these I suspect are few and far between). What is then used to help these crops grow are dumped onto them as fertilisers. These plant crops which have had these wonderful chemicals bestowed upon them are then feed to the animals who themselves are hardened with more things to help them grow (up against the horrible living conditions we have provided them mind you) and then all this is cut, sliced, and packaged for our convenient consumption.

If I were eating meat, I'd consider how the animal is slaughtered (sanitary conditions in American slaughterhouses - those especially near the Mexican border - are not really regulated) - imagine discovering that the faeces in the mud that the cattle had trampled on made its dandy way somehow to the butcher table, what they put in the cow (you know cows are ruminants - meaning they eat grass - but now they are fed more than just that), how much energy it takes to process the animal through the food system (water to crops, feed the cow, wash the meat - actually now its looking that vegetarians have the upper hand in this :P), and where does the waste go?  It is a bit disheartening to consider how much of our food is probably not food - but its what we are sold hook, line and sinker.  Although its not going to make me stop eating altogether - Im probably going to be more likely to stop and think about where my food comes from and how much it really costs to put it on my dinner table.  

No cellphone

I have no cell phone. Yes I can just imagine your face right now. It will probably be about similar to the ones I have gotten fact-to-face when I tell them that I have no phone. It's just like declaring yourself a vegetarian.  The expression is something between shock and being dumbfounded. As if this mortal willingly decided to abstain from one of the great pleasures in life - whether either eating meat (Fleisch as the Germans and Dutch like to call it - which you know sounds more appropriate but gruesome) or having a cellphone.

But the cellphone is much more now as it used to be in the golden olden ages (ahem 5 years ago? not so long). Now, its as if we had always been born and raised with a cellphone to our ear. And then again, who wouldn't want it not to be - with the new models that are out you can do everything EVERYTHING on the cellphone: tell time, internet, calculation, fb, twitter, maps etc. etc.  I once asked a guy if he had the time. He had a watch but ofcourse he went instinctively for his cellphone!

Which then leads me to ponder can live really exist before cellphones? Well if our parents lived most their lives without this handy dandy instrument then why not? When I came back from abroad, my phone wasn't at the same frequency as in North America - and since then have never found a good reason to get a new cell phone.  And why not? Surely, this women would now attest to my predicament.  A godsend but also major distraction in the form of a pocket sized trouble making device. Like a fb on demand. I've gone roughly a month without a cell and counting. No harm yet. Time will tell. But atleast I won't be crashing into any water fountains.

Mourning a fallen soldier

It was early morning on Wednesday January 12 and the daily 9 to 5 routine was just beginning anew. It was also the day that a ''shoeless'' (why newsbits caught this name I don't know - but it could have justified such a dangerous man as homeless or ''unstable'' therefore also making the story that much more glamorous) man stole a snow plow and then continued to drive it erratically from Dundas and Parliament. The large vehicle, along with the ''shoeless'' man, eventually crashed into a garbage truck and ended its plow through the streets at Humberside Avenue and Keele Street.

Det. Constable William Hancox

Sgt. Ryan Russell succumbed to injuries the day after in the same hospital that the suspect was taken to (after police shot him down).  A ceremony was offered on Tuesday January 18 for the officer. The march was a sight to see. A procession of Toronto police officers, and as news reports ''officers from America'', walking down the main roads and ending up downtown at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre.

And all this public show was necessary? What I fail to see is the necessity of having such a public ceremony. How many other officers have fallen in Toronto - yet never honoured with the same? Constable Todd was killed in gunfire during a walk-through for illegal drugs.  In 1998, Detective Constable Bill Hancox was stabbed while grabbing something to eat. Yet, I have no recollection of any ceremony for their honourable deaths as big as this one. Hancox served 9 years while Russell had served 11. Was there a significance to this funeral procession that I fail to grasp or is Toronto turning another ''bread and circuses'' on us?

Sgt. Ryan Russells and wife.

It serves to highlight how we can celebrate or mourn some things and really just ignore the rest.  Of how many officers that died on duty have we mourned; of how many men and women who had fought our wars been appreciated (not saying war of any kind is alright); of how many firefighters, doctors, etc have done the same...but have never had a public ceremony? We should wake up and realise that Russels is not the first and will not be the last. It is a pity that we only cry for those who have a show put up for them.

Bright lights; a city makes

Dundas Square: After

Something went wrong in Dundas Square. Its like someone decided that a light-induced sensory haemorrhage was the right thing to do. That this gawdy attempt at Times Square would automatically legitimise Toronto as the Canadian ''Global City''. I could spit out my great distaste for this square if I didnt think that a) it would just end up stuck on the pavement until the rain washes it off or it dries off. Where did the green go? Its a square dominated completely by grey. The only colours come from the retina searing neon lights emitted by the billboards.  b) its nasty even to spit on public property even when its garish public property surrounded by equally garish private buildings. Though its not illegal. Spitting and littering is illegal in Hong Kong as well as in other Asian countries. We are just too good to care about the city.

Armchair environmentalists

If you could get by with just watching documentaries on the plight of having too many things and then calling yourself an environmentalist - you'd be watching this:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/category/environment/page/3/
Shame I wouldn't have the time - too busy saving the whales and sorts.  BUT Design:e2 is a nice series of 6 short documentaries. Narrated by Brad Pitt. And if you want more - Sustainable Cities follows the interesting theme of architecture and environment. No narration by Brad Pitt.