Mostly lemon based

Category: Canada

  • And they let you out without someone to watch you why?

    I spent money again today.

    I have been looking at it the wrong way, incidentally. When I worked with film I normally had a couple of rolls of 36 (often worked out at 38) exposure film with me. It would be ASA200 or 400, and that was my lot. If I was desparate I would buy another roll; but really? generally, that was my lot.

    If it was too bright for my AE-1’s 1/1000th Sec exposure then that was the end of it. If I couldn’t close down the apature and shorten the exposure enough for the film that was in then it wasn’t happening. So here I am, I’ve got a Dimage 5; not exactly new, but certainly adequate. It’s got a range of 35-210mm equivalent (I think, off the top of my head) – which is a wider range than I ever had with my AE-1 + Lenses – ‘cept when I had John’s 17 and 14mm’s on loan. And I can get 100 photos out of the 2800mAh batteries.

    So I should think: (a) I’m lots better off than I was with the AE-1. With this I can flick to Black and White, I can take at least as many pics as I normally would’ve with the AE-1. (b) I don’t have to piss about changing lenses, and (c) Remember: A better camera does not a better photographer make.

    So, no more drooling over the Digital Rebel XTi. Or the XT, or quite frankly the plain old Digital Rebel.

    They’ll get cheaper.

    Aaanyway, so, today I kicked round Union station doing buildingy photos, and then headed to St Lawrence, taking lots of terribly unsuccessful people photos. I also found James his Xmas Prezzie. So I hope he likes it. If he doesn’t, I’ll have it. I spent a lot of time talking to the guy I got James’s present off; turns out he’s a photographer, a biker, and we had a lot in common with our political beliefs; so that was fun and entertaining. It’s kinda weird; people do just seem much more friendly and open here. I’m not sure if that’s just the people I’ve met, or whether it’s truly a Canadian Trait, but hey. I love it here, and so I’ll stick with Canadians being friendlier.

    Anyway, so after that I headed… hrm, where did I go. Yeah, I went over to Kensington, fancing another ‘people’ shoot – unfortunately my camera batteries died on the way there. More unforunate because dead batteries = no more photos = kate starts to look for other ways to entertain self. Anyway, I met Melissa Ryan who is an artist, who was in the process of laying her work out on the pavement. She was very chatty too… and I really, really like her work. By ‘really really’ I’m referring to the level of really really where I buy three paintings. Three. Bad Kate. Very bad Kate. Well, not *very* bad. But certainly difficult to justify. I can only hope they don’t search my case at the airport; given that the pictures feature ‘Bombgurl’ and ‘Grenadeboy’. I’d’ve liked to get some of her Dead Girl stuff too, but that was beyond ‘splurging’ and also beyond any vague justifications about art for my new house (if, indeed, I’ve got a house); and well into ‘I can’t justify this at all’. Still, I fed the poor starving artist for a few days :-)

    So, after a bit of a chat, and an exhange of funds and pictures; and some signing; I headed to the Rainbow Cinema to watch Little Miss Sunshine which was truly excellent, although the cinema was bloody freezing. Possibly due to there only being about 8 of us in there…

    And then I headed over and bought Alison Bechdel’s autobiographical graphic novel – Fun Home. Mostly because it’s an autographed, hard back, for a not unreasonable price. Otherwise I’d’ve left it…. for some time. As a side issue, this book buying (and err, a DVD) has meant that I’ve actually updated the ‘things I want’ page. Probably for the first time since I split up with Trey, either that or since last Xmas. So, for a while. Raaa. I thought I better, because last year some people actually used it to get me prezzies. I don’t need prezzies. Friends is what I want and need – and I’ve got them. The list, however, is for me, so I can look at it when I want to treat myself… only I never do :-)

    Nikki, however, treated me to a Flickr Pro account. She said she was fed up of having to scan through each day’s photographs to get to the current days, because I didn’t have enough sets… So now I’ve got the sets, m’kay? So here, without further ado (but with much thanks to Nikki) is Day 10 (aah, computing types, who start at 0).

  • Dancing on Highway 401

    I’m not sure what Canadians call motorways, I’m plumping with ‘highway’, I’m sure someone will tell me if I’m wrong. Anyway, the plan for today was dead simple – head up highway 401, then 400, then 11 and hop off at Huntsville. As I hopped into the car, I repeated my mantra of the moment; ‘Drive on the RIGHT’, and pulled out into traffic. (more…)

  • Bad kate…

    *Saw this and wanted it*

  • Big, wet and pretty…

    Niagara falls, obviously. The falls are big, quite definately; and wet, yes, definately some kind of wet theme going on there. And pretty, very very pretty.

    My mum loves waterfalls, and so do I – although I’m less prone to leaping in them (probably for the best in this case, especially given the not entirely warm 4 degrees C it was in Niagara). So I got there, and I oohed, and aahed and mostly just stood watching the water tumble and fall, each droplet eating away at the falls, taking them further back up the river. Like millions and millions of tiny grains each rubbing away at the surface of the falls.

    They are stunning.

    One of the benefits of going very-off season is that it’s pretty much a given that not many people will be there. In total, there were probably in the low hundreds of visitors; so I got to wander around and stare at things, and generally be thoughtful and engaged in the beauty of the falling water. Rather than being shoved and nudged and trying to avoid large numbers of children.

    Sadly though, it wasn’t exactly sunny. Not bitterly cold, nor peeing with rain, but not greatly sunny. Still, there are the obligatory photos in my flickr thingie; and *I* had a good time.

    I visited Wales off season, and it was shut. Much the same was true of Niagara, most of the tours, most of the gift-emporiums, most of the eateries were shut. Eventually I found a Subway that was open and taking cards (handy, as their cashpoints didn’t want to give me money)… I also spent a while enjoying the solitude of the unlocked but very closed Maid of the Mist ‘market’.

    The only, very slight disappointment is that I was unable to get a wax lion, smooshed face or otherwise, from the falls. Most distressing.

  • Spending more cash an’ introspection

    So, today I had a bit of a chilled out day – I’ve been doing an awful lot of walking – not being very sure of Subway and Streetcar routes, and the small nature of the centre of Toronto, and an absence of me needing to be anywhere, mean that quite often I’ve just walked it…

    …Today I used the Subway more; I mooched around cafes, book shops, china town, and uh, yeah, spent some money I shouldn’t have. See, I’ve wanted a copy of infiltration magazine’s Access All Areas. And I noticed that they said it’s for sale at ‘This Ain’t The Rosedale Library’. Of course, if I’d’ve noticed that it was for sale *before* I found it the first time, that’d’ve helped.

    So, I headed over there today – and while I was there took the time to check out Church street. I’m impressively bad at the whole gay thing – I found a mostly-inhabited-by-gay-men cafe; a mostly-inhabited-by-gay-men coffee shop, and a shop selling clothes… for… you guessed it, gay men. I need someone to lead me round and go *there*, ‘cos I don’t look at things before I walk in, at least, not that carefully. I need to actually look *before* I walk in the door and go… oops. That’s not to say I didn’t find some cool places, but yeah, felt a bit of a pilchard wandering into definately bloke-filled places.

    Anyway, I’ve started to reliably be able to find places. Only big places, I know, but places. I can kinda find myself a street and turn around and get from where I am to where I want to be; which is quite nice. It is – to be fair – rather simpler than navigating London with it’s mishmash of random streets…

    But it’s still quite nice to go ‘oh, I need to go to X’ and be able to get there without fishing out a map. Which is odd, because what I bought today was a map – but that’s ‘cos I’m heading to Niagara tomorrow. In a rented Ford Focus (or similar). In a country where they use a different unit of measurement for speed and distance and DRIVE ON THE OTHER FRACKING SIDE OF THE ROAD. Heh.

    It’ll be fine.

    I’m not nervous.

    Okay, I am nervous, but it’ll still be fine. Yeah.

    Somehow, today I’ve been a lot more thoughtful about the whole moving here thing – partly I guess ‘cos I took a wander through the Hospital District (although unlike Chinatown, Church and Wellesley, and the Entertainment District, it’s street signs don’t get a dinky ‘Sick District’ or ‘Lurgee District’ or even plain old ‘Hospital District’… I wonder why? ) – and started to wonder about working here. Living here. The bigger bits and the smaller bits.

    Long streams of disjointed thoughts – leaving the UK – moving to a place where I barely understand how to buy stamps, let alone how to pay taxes. How do you get a licence plate for your car? How do you register with a doctor? How does recycling work for people at home? How do you find a decent auto shop? What are your rights as a consumer. Do I go with plan A and get a permi resident’s visa, or come over on a working visa and then apply? Can I really deal with throwing away or selling ‘most everything I own that isn’t a book, dvd or CD? Will I be able to leave my mum behind?

    The why, the why, because now I know I love the country, and I can feel comfortable here, and I remain unhappy about what’s happening in the UK socially and politically. The Why now needs more flesh on it’s bones, needs to grow into a fully functioning reason. Because the bigness of it all hasn’t escaped me, and looking around today the bigness of it all settled around me and pooled like tar; sticking to every surface and grounding me. The bigness and darkness of it all filled the spaces around me and demanded of me the whys, the hows, the questions that I’ve answered lightheartedly to everyone else, but which have occupied my thoughts at a deeper level internally. Well, now I want those answers to be fully formed, a shield of shining clarity; I want to know not only why, but how – how am I going to achieve what I want to achieve?

  • Snuggling up by the fireplace…

    So, today I did Kensington Market and the CN Tower – and am feeling more at home. Why? Well, getting to know the place, starting to be marginally less lost when I’m wandering around – and actually landing up where I expect to be when I’m wandering without having to consult a map….

    That helps loads; looking the right way before I cross the road, that’s also good – and starting to understand when to cross the road (and that people actually seem to have to stop here). Actually, that’s an interesting thing; like Alaska – the road layouts are vastly simpler here. Which I guess is handy, because their road signs, again like AK are much more verbose. The UK signs are much more symbol based – like the whole of Europe. Here, signs tell you stuff in words; it’s quite odd.

    But I’m starting to get used to it all. Yellow traffic lights? That’s fine too. Tell you what is odd. I keep hearing Elastica. I’d not heard *any* elastica for years before I came here; then I burned a CD to bring with me. And then I get here, and Jason puts it on, it’s played on the Radio one day and I walk into a bookshop (yes, I should *not* have gone in there) and *they* are playing elastica. It’s freaky.

    It’s quite nice though; makes it feel more like home. Although I did wander down the road singing ‘Car Song’. I also tried out Tim Horton’s today; that was fun. The experience was made slightly more challenging by the fact that the woman taking my order was ?swiss (certainly northern european) and struggling to understand even the Canadians, who she was presumably fairly used to. The woman helping her, she was of indian descent – and had a fairly strong indian accent… and yeah, I had no idea what there would be options wise on my order. We got through it though :-)

    And yeah, ’twas nice. Anyway, I headed on to the CN Tower.
    So, the CN Tower. Expensive, great view… no-where to sit. I wanted to just sit there and soak in the view, eventually I found a perch up in the Sky Pod, but I really wanted somewhere I could just sit and read my book – with that view being absorbed by osmosis. Of course, I could have sat in the Cafe, but I kinda felt they’d had enough of my cash…

    Afterward I sat in a Second Cup (see, watch me learn to be more Canadian); and read one of the books I picked up at “This Ain’t the Rosedale Library” – Code White (which I’d link to, but it’s a short run book and I can’t find a link to it without trying harder than I’d like). It’s a book written from the perspective of a queer femme manic-depressive in a locked mental health ward. It’s really very compelling to read; especially if, like me, you find mental health – or more loss or damage to your mental health incredibly interesting. I could never work on a mental health ward, but I do find it so interesting. Anyway, then I headed back to the expensive bookstore to buy books and things… Yes, between that and some of the other stores I visited today I think I’ve spent far too much, but I’ve also got most of my friends presents.

    Of course, there’s more pics added to the photoset, another 20 today.

  • Toronto’s Islands

    Today I spent nearly all of the day on the Toronto Islands. My god it’s so pretty there. Do I keep saying it’s pretty? Well it is pretty. So, let’s start with the morning… I ran a bit late this morning and so made a fairly quick trip to get to the train… which just to demonstrate that my opinion of toronto’s public transport was somewhat biased toward the positive side was late… It’s still CLEAN though :-)

    Anyway, having got into Toronto I headed down to the waterfront with my Second Cup pumpkin spice latte (how could I miss that on the menu?!). Before heading down and missing the Ferry out to the islands. It was such a gorgeous day though, I couldn’t miss the chance to go out onto the islands today; so I wandered off, bought some post cards and then headed back catching the next ferry a mere hour later… And headed out to the islands. To be honest I had little idea what to expect – and was stunned by what was there.

    It is just *gorgeous*. Completely separate from Toronto and completely different. It is beautiful… So I walked…and walked…and walked. I did the whole of the island from Ward’s Island ferry to Hanlan’s Point Ferry, and then back on the other side of the island. Along the way I took… photos. Yes, of course. Sorry. There’s quite a few…

    The other weirder thing that happened, as I was taking a photo of the spit of land from the boardwalk I met a guy from Toronto Island’s Fire Dept – who invited me into the fire dept on my way *back* from my loop of the island. So I headed off, down the island. It was about the point I passed the oh-so-closed refreshment place which I think is at Avenue of the Islands that I started to regret not eating lunch or bringing anything to drink. The water-fountains are off this time of year too… But pretty quickly I was back to looking at the scenery and had forgotten my hunger. Eventually I made it back to the fire-station, but sadly blokie bloke was busy with work – so I chatted to one of the other firemen (‘he said there was some strange English girl who was going to drop in’) for a bit before deciding I should probably head toward the ferry… not least because my feet were *killing* me.

    So I made it back to the ferry and headed back across the water to Toronto, arriving at the station to find something which can probably be described as moderate chaos; there was a signal failure at Mimico (sound familiar?!) but fortunately, although the train before mine hadn’t left even when mine did; mine still left on time. Raaar. And now I’m knackered, and my knees hurt.

  • Night brings out the weird Go drivers

    Yesterday (which didn’t get a post due to the fact I fell asleep at Jason and Yuka’s and then fell asleep again on the train – I blame this on my body’s continued desire to wake me at stupid-o-clock and on the (relatively) vast quantity of Alcohol and good food consumed) I headed into Toronto again (are we all seeing the pattern?) with Rochelle, meeting up with Jason in the city for the Markets and West End tour.

    And some excellent sandwiches.

    And a shiny shiny kitchen shop. (more…)

  • Eeek! Malls!

    So, yesterday we did a tour of Mississagua & Streetsville; I’m not sure what to say about that – see I’m lousy writing about having a good time. Good at prolonged whining, or telling you about what I’ve repaired on my car, sucky at describing places. I’d make one heck of a lousy travel writer.

    Yeah, so we headed on the bus-tour of Mississauga and Streetsville; it’s interesting both how similar and how different to the UK the suburbia is. And indeed, how terrifyingly similar some of it is, and how shockingly different other bits are. The use of brick in the GTA seems to accentuate the similarities; but also means that there’s these subtle differences; like someone being in a parallel universe; so you get housing that looks very similar to that in the UK, but just *slightly* different. It’s just not quite the way you’d expect. It’s interesting; at least to me. But then I’m weird like that.

    We also landed up at the Square One mall; malls, oddly are not the same the world over; but this one looked a lot like Cribbs in Bristol, which *was* odd.

    Anyway, it was a fairly relaxed day, but shockingly tiring. That and my body still refuses to acknowledge that I’m not going to work in the morning and so persists in waking me up at 6 and going “ohmygodyou’regoingtobelate” followed by “oh, no, sorry, holiday. Um, we’re awake now, have you considered how you’ll decorate the bathroom enough”. Silly brain / body. Anyway, yeah, se we kicked back in the evening with Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Mitchell (wacka-wacka-wacka-wacka)). Which was… well… it was Mystery Science Theatre; need I say more? Yeah, so we had that and Chinese. Well, everyone else had chinese, I had a A Mountain Of Food. Note to self: portions bigger, even than the portions I’d got used to in the UK. Order less. So that was my chilled out and relaxed holiday-day.

    I’ve spent this morning in battle with vodaphone – my phone is *meant* to work over here. And it does, I can receive incoming calls, send and receive texts… only one Teensy Tinsy hitch. I can’t make outgoing calls, and I can’t top up my phone. I’ve run out of credit (messaging is a trifle more expensive when you’re roaming) and all my phone will do is say in a nice polite voice ‘Your service provider has not authorised us to provide service’. It says ‘ROGERS’ on it, in place of Vodaphone. But that’s all I can do. Which is, as they say, less than useful.

    So I tried to register online to do top-ups, and it seems to be stuffed there too; ‘cos it tells me my phone is already registered for online services, but if I try to use them it says it’s not. Bah. So, yeah, hopefully they’ll get back to me…

    Today, iirc, is Kensington Market / West End of Toronto day. So if you live here, wave to the cheerful canadiophile brit who’s wandering around going ‘ooooh. Shiny. Clean. Mmmm.’

  • Hey look, it’s full of Canadians…

    And so clean. Seriously. Everyone said Canada’s gorgeous; and quite a few people mentioned the cleanliness of it, but being here, it’s freaky-clean. It’s so nice. I just don’t see the little clumps of rubbish, the bags collected under the trees. It’s just so much cleaner than the UK.

    And the trains – they’re clean too, and have two decks…. And it’s pretty. Lots of The Pretty.

    So yesterday Rochelle gave me a tour of the East End of Toronto (I’m terrible at this sort of post, incidentally) – so rather than do a ‘this is where we went’ you can go look at my pictures which, obviously, wouldn’t be complete without some abandoned toronto shots. Eventually we headed over to meet up with some of Rochelle’s friends who proceeded to cook a really gorgeous dinner; in an apartment with views out over Toronto’s skyline; where I had a shockingly civilised meal and was astounded to discover another fan of Elastica. Of all places, it was a bit weird listening to music from my past – especially since I’ve only just got back into Elastica having randomly burned a CD of it to bring with me. And, yeah. Mmm. Canada keeps doing that to me, being oddly familiar.

    And exceedingly pretty.

    And yeah, it’s all good so far :-)