Last day in Toronto.
Oct. 16th, 2002 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwyn(For now, anyway.)
I slept late this morning, 15 October (I don't CARE what the posting time is - it's not 'tomorrow' until I've slept and the sun's come up!). Got up and read some Inu-Yasha manga while Vicki made phone calls. Got on the bus to go downtown around 12:30 or so, and eventually made it to Yorkdale Shopping Center. Nice mall, but any mall that size ought to give some consideration to having a toy store. I wanted marbles for Raccoon, and couldn't get 'em. Got on the subway, though, and got off at Spadina. I figured I'd walk to Chinatown from there.
The Spadina subway station is interesting. If you get off the train in one direction you just get out on the street. In the other, the station goes on and on andonandon. They've got moving sidewalks to make this easier on people, although I think only one was working today. I don't normally see those outside of airports. I eventually surfaced and wandered in circles for a bit before finally finding a woman selling newspapers and bracelets to raise money for the homeless; I bought a newspaper from her and asked her which way was Chinatown. Turned out I'd been right the first time and had just gotten myself boggled.
The walk from the Spadina station is about 20 minutes and goes through the area of Toronto University. Looks like a nice school from the outside, but that's about all I can say about it; I didn't stop to look. I stopped at a used bookstore and found a book on pressure points in self defense, plus volume one of The Story of the Stone, the remaining Classic Chinese Novel I haven't read. I had previously resolved to avoid the book altogether as Barry Hughart's opinion of it is absolutely scathing*, but figured that hell - if I could slog through dreck like Madame Bovary, then I could slog through this. I confined it to volume 1 only; I'll read it on the train tomorrow and if I can stomach it, I'll get the rest from a used bookshop somewhere else.
The neighbourhood went downhill a bit after that, but shortly after I passed a mission that does work with the homeless, it seemed to get a little better. Not long afterwards the signs started getting frustrating... actually a welcome thing, because the frustration came from the fact that I can't read Chinese yet. I can recognize a fistful of characters, mostly related to food, some related to other things. It's like looking at a world full of English knowing only what you've managed to decipher from fooling with the menus on your cellular phone. I know the ones that show up in restaurant signage, though, and a number of surnames, and anyway all the signs had English on them too, so I did my best to engage Tourist Mode and wandered happily along.
(A quick note here: normally my goal upon visiting a given place is to blend in with the locals. I hate sticking out and looking clueless. I hate being noticed before I'm good and ready. Since it is physically impossible for me to blend in with the locals in Chinatown, the only way to seem unremarkable there is to seem like a tourist. No one expects much of them except to look and ooh and ah and buy. It's humiliating - I feel like a cultural raider or something - but at least I know people pretty much ignore tourists... feh. I doubt this is making any sense. Basically I don't like seeming like a goggle-eyed tourist even though that's what I am; chalk it up to a New York City upbringing and go on from there.)
I went through a couple of places I've mentally classified as 'trinket stores'. I mean, they were gift shops or clothing shops or housewares shops, but for the most part they were selling items that were small and shiny and decorative and mass produced, which makes them trinkets. The Buddha and Kuan-yin statues I expected, and the General Guan ones too, but I was a little surprised to run across the odd Chairman Mao piece. There were even a couple of clocks painted with vaguely patriotic looking people in Mao jackets and little Red Star caps. For some reason this seemed encouraging - something on the order of 'you do realise it isn't all flowey robey people around here, right?'. Didn't buy any of it, but it was neat to see.
I passed several of these stores and eventually found a street sign that read 'Kensington Market'. Allow me to submit to you that Kensington Market is Toronto's Greenwich Village analogue, just as Coventry was in Cleveland when I was at school there. I mean, despite it being attached to Chinatown as closely as a gallbladder is to a liver, it was distinctly different. The signs went back to English; the food markets featured halal things and organic things as well as Asian things; there were shops named 'Roach-A-Rama' and 'Global Cheese' and 'Mad Scientist Computers'... you name it. There was a bar with a guy who looked vaguely like Oded Fehr near the front window, who leaned out and held out a Tarot deck and asked me if I was ready for a reading - I told him no, thank you, and moved on. There was a shop called Chocolate Addiction. I wish I'd discovered this area earlier in my trip, but oh, well. Next time, perhaps. I didn't actually buy anything in Kensington, but it was a fun visit.
Back into Chinatown then, and through a bunch more stores. I kept wanting to buy some of the fancy ladies' silk shirts or dresses - or even better, some of the deep deep green or deep blue embroidered men's jackets - but every time I tried my hand froze, and the voice in my head said: 'when the hell are you going to wear this? You can't even wear this to work...' I mean, the shirts, maybe, but I had the sinking feeling they wouldn't fit me. Ah, well.
Eventually I did buy some stuff at a trinket shop - a little bracelet of jade-looking beads on red thread, a feng shui mirror, and a dragon turtle. The mirror is for my office, because I can't stand people coming up behind me without warning and every feng shui text I've read has indicated the back-to-the-door position is bad mojo anyway. The turtle I gave to Vicki; she's got enough crap to deal with right now that I figured a little nudge from a protective animal associated with prosperity can't hurt. I spent a while digging through the painting selections, too - I saw some lovely calligraphy, but I refuse to buy a painting of something I can't read. Even if I'm learning to read it, it's still humiliating to be in possession of something I can't read - and it's an open invitation to the Gods of Ridicule to hang a display item up without knowing what it says. ("Are you aware that this is the artist's driving directions to his uncle's farm in the mountains?") There were some nice paintings of horses, though, and the one I liked only had four or five characters, one of which was very clearly 'ma', so I bought that. The lady behind the counter seemed pleased with this and wrapped it all up for me.
I went on to a late lunch at Sen Ming Garden Restaurant on Dundas. I don't usually eat in restaurants alone, so I was a little edgy to begin with. The place's menu was in the window and looked reassuring, and I saw an Indian guy inside so I knew I wouldn't be the only non-Chinese customer. The proprietor was a nice, businesslike guy; all the tables were set with chopsticks, teacups, and soup bowls with the big ceramic spoons. When I ordered the fried dumpling appetizer he did give me a spoon and fork, but the spoon was pretty much for cutting the dumplings and I ignored the fork. Lunch itself was pan-fried sliced beef with XO chili sauce - that translates into sliced beef, snow peas, and what I think were bamboo shoots in a brown sauce with truly amazing quantities of visible garlic and chili pepper seeds. I didn't think to get rice, and I hadn't asked for water at the start, so my only real recourse was the tea. Thank God I've been eating at Empire Szechuan since 1985 and was able to deal with it. Good stuff; I'm saving the leftovers for lunch on the train tomorrow.
After that I popped over to the music store nearby that sold bubble tea and CDs and got a thing of watermelon bubble tea. Wound up explaining the concept to a non-Chinese woman who saw me drinking it at a streetcar stop, as she thought the tapioca pearls were berries and had never encountered black tapioca before. Eventually Vicki and I met up again, and I took her out to dinner; if I drop dead of heart disease any time soon it's because Toronto restaurants do hamburgers and fatty fish like salmon very, very well indeed. We then came home and Vicki made more phone calls while I packed my bag up a bit and read up through volume 12 of Inu-Yasha in manga paperback form. I also got some Ranma reading in, although I haven't gotten as far in that and probably won't for some time - I've no particular interest in reading any more Ranma.
Tomorrow I'm getting on a train at 8:05 AM to get to Union Station. My VIARail train leaves Toronto at 9:40. I should be home around 11 PM, maybe 11:45, American Eastern time. With any luck, all will be well and tomorrow I'll be back at work and out on the karate floor again.
Talk to you guys later.
*"...Both of us turned bright red. The problem with the so-called 'crown jewel of Chinese literature' is that it is over a thousand pages long and its hero is an effete ass who ought to be spanked or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable." Number Ten Ox, speaking for Barry Hughart, in The Story of the Stone.
I slept late this morning, 15 October (I don't CARE what the posting time is - it's not 'tomorrow' until I've slept and the sun's come up!). Got up and read some Inu-Yasha manga while Vicki made phone calls. Got on the bus to go downtown around 12:30 or so, and eventually made it to Yorkdale Shopping Center. Nice mall, but any mall that size ought to give some consideration to having a toy store. I wanted marbles for Raccoon, and couldn't get 'em. Got on the subway, though, and got off at Spadina. I figured I'd walk to Chinatown from there.
The Spadina subway station is interesting. If you get off the train in one direction you just get out on the street. In the other, the station goes on and on andonandon. They've got moving sidewalks to make this easier on people, although I think only one was working today. I don't normally see those outside of airports. I eventually surfaced and wandered in circles for a bit before finally finding a woman selling newspapers and bracelets to raise money for the homeless; I bought a newspaper from her and asked her which way was Chinatown. Turned out I'd been right the first time and had just gotten myself boggled.
The walk from the Spadina station is about 20 minutes and goes through the area of Toronto University. Looks like a nice school from the outside, but that's about all I can say about it; I didn't stop to look. I stopped at a used bookstore and found a book on pressure points in self defense, plus volume one of The Story of the Stone, the remaining Classic Chinese Novel I haven't read. I had previously resolved to avoid the book altogether as Barry Hughart's opinion of it is absolutely scathing*, but figured that hell - if I could slog through dreck like Madame Bovary, then I could slog through this. I confined it to volume 1 only; I'll read it on the train tomorrow and if I can stomach it, I'll get the rest from a used bookshop somewhere else.
The neighbourhood went downhill a bit after that, but shortly after I passed a mission that does work with the homeless, it seemed to get a little better. Not long afterwards the signs started getting frustrating... actually a welcome thing, because the frustration came from the fact that I can't read Chinese yet. I can recognize a fistful of characters, mostly related to food, some related to other things. It's like looking at a world full of English knowing only what you've managed to decipher from fooling with the menus on your cellular phone. I know the ones that show up in restaurant signage, though, and a number of surnames, and anyway all the signs had English on them too, so I did my best to engage Tourist Mode and wandered happily along.
(A quick note here: normally my goal upon visiting a given place is to blend in with the locals. I hate sticking out and looking clueless. I hate being noticed before I'm good and ready. Since it is physically impossible for me to blend in with the locals in Chinatown, the only way to seem unremarkable there is to seem like a tourist. No one expects much of them except to look and ooh and ah and buy. It's humiliating - I feel like a cultural raider or something - but at least I know people pretty much ignore tourists... feh. I doubt this is making any sense. Basically I don't like seeming like a goggle-eyed tourist even though that's what I am; chalk it up to a New York City upbringing and go on from there.)
I went through a couple of places I've mentally classified as 'trinket stores'. I mean, they were gift shops or clothing shops or housewares shops, but for the most part they were selling items that were small and shiny and decorative and mass produced, which makes them trinkets. The Buddha and Kuan-yin statues I expected, and the General Guan ones too, but I was a little surprised to run across the odd Chairman Mao piece. There were even a couple of clocks painted with vaguely patriotic looking people in Mao jackets and little Red Star caps. For some reason this seemed encouraging - something on the order of 'you do realise it isn't all flowey robey people around here, right?'. Didn't buy any of it, but it was neat to see.
I passed several of these stores and eventually found a street sign that read 'Kensington Market'. Allow me to submit to you that Kensington Market is Toronto's Greenwich Village analogue, just as Coventry was in Cleveland when I was at school there. I mean, despite it being attached to Chinatown as closely as a gallbladder is to a liver, it was distinctly different. The signs went back to English; the food markets featured halal things and organic things as well as Asian things; there were shops named 'Roach-A-Rama' and 'Global Cheese' and 'Mad Scientist Computers'... you name it. There was a bar with a guy who looked vaguely like Oded Fehr near the front window, who leaned out and held out a Tarot deck and asked me if I was ready for a reading - I told him no, thank you, and moved on. There was a shop called Chocolate Addiction. I wish I'd discovered this area earlier in my trip, but oh, well. Next time, perhaps. I didn't actually buy anything in Kensington, but it was a fun visit.
Back into Chinatown then, and through a bunch more stores. I kept wanting to buy some of the fancy ladies' silk shirts or dresses - or even better, some of the deep deep green or deep blue embroidered men's jackets - but every time I tried my hand froze, and the voice in my head said: 'when the hell are you going to wear this? You can't even wear this to work...' I mean, the shirts, maybe, but I had the sinking feeling they wouldn't fit me. Ah, well.
Eventually I did buy some stuff at a trinket shop - a little bracelet of jade-looking beads on red thread, a feng shui mirror, and a dragon turtle. The mirror is for my office, because I can't stand people coming up behind me without warning and every feng shui text I've read has indicated the back-to-the-door position is bad mojo anyway. The turtle I gave to Vicki; she's got enough crap to deal with right now that I figured a little nudge from a protective animal associated with prosperity can't hurt. I spent a while digging through the painting selections, too - I saw some lovely calligraphy, but I refuse to buy a painting of something I can't read. Even if I'm learning to read it, it's still humiliating to be in possession of something I can't read - and it's an open invitation to the Gods of Ridicule to hang a display item up without knowing what it says. ("Are you aware that this is the artist's driving directions to his uncle's farm in the mountains?") There were some nice paintings of horses, though, and the one I liked only had four or five characters, one of which was very clearly 'ma', so I bought that. The lady behind the counter seemed pleased with this and wrapped it all up for me.
I went on to a late lunch at Sen Ming Garden Restaurant on Dundas. I don't usually eat in restaurants alone, so I was a little edgy to begin with. The place's menu was in the window and looked reassuring, and I saw an Indian guy inside so I knew I wouldn't be the only non-Chinese customer. The proprietor was a nice, businesslike guy; all the tables were set with chopsticks, teacups, and soup bowls with the big ceramic spoons. When I ordered the fried dumpling appetizer he did give me a spoon and fork, but the spoon was pretty much for cutting the dumplings and I ignored the fork. Lunch itself was pan-fried sliced beef with XO chili sauce - that translates into sliced beef, snow peas, and what I think were bamboo shoots in a brown sauce with truly amazing quantities of visible garlic and chili pepper seeds. I didn't think to get rice, and I hadn't asked for water at the start, so my only real recourse was the tea. Thank God I've been eating at Empire Szechuan since 1985 and was able to deal with it. Good stuff; I'm saving the leftovers for lunch on the train tomorrow.
After that I popped over to the music store nearby that sold bubble tea and CDs and got a thing of watermelon bubble tea. Wound up explaining the concept to a non-Chinese woman who saw me drinking it at a streetcar stop, as she thought the tapioca pearls were berries and had never encountered black tapioca before. Eventually Vicki and I met up again, and I took her out to dinner; if I drop dead of heart disease any time soon it's because Toronto restaurants do hamburgers and fatty fish like salmon very, very well indeed. We then came home and Vicki made more phone calls while I packed my bag up a bit and read up through volume 12 of Inu-Yasha in manga paperback form. I also got some Ranma reading in, although I haven't gotten as far in that and probably won't for some time - I've no particular interest in reading any more Ranma.
Tomorrow I'm getting on a train at 8:05 AM to get to Union Station. My VIARail train leaves Toronto at 9:40. I should be home around 11 PM, maybe 11:45, American Eastern time. With any luck, all will be well and tomorrow I'll be back at work and out on the karate floor again.
Talk to you guys later.
*"...Both of us turned bright red. The problem with the so-called 'crown jewel of Chinese literature' is that it is over a thousand pages long and its hero is an effete ass who ought to be spanked or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable." Number Ten Ox, speaking for Barry Hughart, in The Story of the Stone.
