Toronto is by a lake that often has boats on it. There are some skyscrapers and shops and villagey bits here and there. A lot of people live in "condos" and wear blazers, ironic ties and fashionable jeans with shoes with long square toes. You can always get a cab and there is more than branch of Terroni, which makes very bloody nice pizza. A lot of people talk about their "cottage". A "cottage" can be a fucking massive island with 5 houses on it and its own 100ft dock that's been in the family since 1854, or it can be a tiny shed next to a lake full of wee. Either way, a lot of people have them.
Toronto is much bigger than Montreal which is good, because Montreal can feel a bit small sometimes, but much smaller than London (England) which is good, because London (England) can feel too big sometimes (even though it has to be that big to contain all the very interesting and exciting things it contains that most cities do not).
Everyone here, without exception, says "awesome" at least 64 times a day. They also say:
"Fam", when they mean "family"
"Loop back in"
"Totally awesome"
"Who knew?"
and
"I'm so with you on that".
Some of these may be general North American things, but for some reason when said by a Canadian, they are less irritating. Oddly, white middle class Canadian men can also say "dude" without me wanting slap them, which has something to do with the fact that a lot of Canadians are right up there with irony - almost top of the irony charts, in fact.* A lot of Canadians I know can be as dry as bones, and far more entertaining.
Anyway, I can't talk about why I'm in Toronto for various reasons (none of them particularly interesting), but I was supposed to be here for a night, then two, and how I am here all week in a hotel on the 41st floor getting up at 6am to phone people in London, and falling into bed at 11 to watch "Real Housewives of Orange County" (which I think might be the best programme ever made).
It is a strange hotel; it is one of the ones with a little kitchen in your room and no breadknife. I have some pineapple, some $14 ham and some really very poor $7 'handmade' strawberry jam in the fridge, and in the morning I hack at a $7 loaf of bread with a normal knife and drink my 12th cup of Tetley tea, made from a box of teabags found in a strange shop round the corner that sells Mars bars and car telephone adaptors. It is not bad because the hotel is fancy, although it makes me cross that I have to pay $12 every day to use the fucking internet (not even wireless, mind - a stupid blue cable) in a hotel that costs $264 a night.
Still, these are my views, and they are good. (You can see the CN Tower peeking round on the right in the first one. It is awful all those lights left on at night, so stupid, but it is pretty in its way.)
The G20 is going on soon, which means there are lots of policemen about and the odd siren (not that I can hear much on the 41st floor). There was an earthquake today which I felt vaguely (I thought a very fat man was hurling himself against the railings that I was leaning on), and the cab driver taking me away from someone I like very much and towards a 3 hour conference call told me that the earthquake was "God warning the G20".
Anyway, I hope the G20 are OK and I hope I can get home on Friday. I miss my husband and kitchen and with any luck, there's Series 3 of Damages for me to watch with my eyes whilst dipping my tiny monkey paw in and out of a bag of Ready Salted Hula-Hoops.
Pip pip!
NWM
*As many of you will be aware, Alanis Morrissette - once curiously described in Wikipedia as "the Canadian Debbie Gibson" - once wrote a song called "Ironic" which contained, as we all know, no examples of irony at all. ("A Bit Annoying and/or Unfortunate" doesn't smell like a smash-hit, granted.)
I will not make the obvious joke that everyone makes, despite it being vaguely amusing.
10 comments:
Ooh. Pretty. I've never been but it looks nice. Urg, I hate expensive hotels that don't have free wifi. What is the mystery? Book deal? Movie deal? Hope you don't stop blogging. (:
The earthquake shook my house today. I wondered if some very heavy airplane debris -- or a plane itself -- had landed on my roof.
Alanis, when she was a teen, really was a prefab dance-pop princess. There must be Youtube evidence of this.
Sorry about the "fam" and "awesome" bits... in my experience, not many people younger than 30 say that, but you may run in some different circles. My much-younger cousins talk like this.
Off to the cottage this weekend myself. In other parts of the country, people will say "cabin" or even "camp" to mean a family home on a lake. ("Camp", as said in northwestern Ontario for the most part, I think, tickled me to no end when I first heard it.)
Me again.
You probably don't care enough to actually check it out, but here's an Alanis link for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar7afdfBHj4
Linda just put a terrible ear-worm in my head (Let's Go to the Mall!) which is utterly unfair as that is the only bit of How I Met Your Mother I have ever seen (despite thinking Neil Patrick Harris is rather fantastic). There could be collateral mayhem at my workplace as a result. I hope, NWM, you have learned your lesson about blogging about warning earthquakes.
Are you tempted to sneer at those who say "fam"? Or are you simply relieved that they don't use "folks"?
Met a professional Canadian ice-hockey player chap last night.
He had never eaten prawns or mussels and thought eggs could only be eaten for breakfast.
His mum only cooks meat on a bbq.
What kind of culinary hell is this you are living in NWM?! :-D
Ali xxx
Y S Lee - is odd, I don't sneer, I just find it slightly grating, like "vacay" instead of "vacation". But I do work with a lot of advertising and marketing people who are DEFINITELY not representative of normal human beings.
Alison - I think he might have been winding you up - you can't cook meat on a BBQ (did he say "grill"? Can mean something different) in -20 in a snowstorm and as far as I'm aware Canadians still eat meat in winter. (Canadians, please confirm.) I know my husband does.
Restaurants in Toronto and Montreal = fucking amazing. Can't speak for the rest of Canada but limited experience tells me we do not live in culinary hell by any means although it can be hard to find locally-grown watermelon in November.
Megan -I am sorry for your trouble!!!
Linda - am shrieking - this is the old stuff they meant with Debbie Gibson, isn't it? I only discovered this side of Alanis last week and was truly horrified.
Special K - if I told you it wouldn't be a mystery. It's very dull. Can explain in due course. Sadly not a book deal. Need to write book for one of those as I think the days of being commissioned via a blog might be over, unless you are bloody Jonny B.
Yes, that's the Debbie Gibson-era Alanis. Happy to oblige, even though it equally horrified me to do so.
I think you're talking about a sub-type and not necessarily a Torontonian. Those I know who say "fam" and "awesome" also say "vacay." Have an awesome vacay with the fam!
Hope you get home today. Downtown Toronto looks like a police state.
NWM - I cannot remember whether he said 'cook' or 'grill' because I was still laughing v loudly from when he asked me where the bones were in the prawns.
Enjoy those hula hoops :-)
Ali x
Alison - So he was definitely winding you up, yes? Or else he had had a blow to the head. More likely, frankly. Actually hang on: where did you meet a Canadian professional hockey player?!
Linda - do you live in Toronto? If so I will buy you a drink one day next time I am here, like for e.g. all of the rest of my life by the looks of things, for I am delighted by the idea of 'awesome vacay with the fam!'. Also NB my notion of 'Canada' is confined to Toronto, Ottawa, a wildlife park outside Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, and a great deal of Quebec but not the bit that is more than 6 hours' drive north of Montreal. I.e., it is narrow and probably ill-informed. Awesome.
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