Electric Avenue

Ah Canada, land of unspoilt forests, beautiful fresh water lakes, moose and beavers, and terrifying monopolies on necessary commodities.

Like hydro, which is what electricity is known as in Canada. To me this sounds quite nice, like all our electricity is coming from natural resources like Niagara Falls, and we don't need to feel too badly about it cause fresh water is going to keep on flowing and Ontario citizens can have guilt free hydro power for millenia to come.  However, I just came across a graph of Ontario's electricity sources versus Canada (thank you ecospark.ca). Across Canada, hydro power accounts for 57.6% of total electricity usage, while in Ontario it's a measly 22%. Disappointing and also makes the whole 'hydro' moniker quite misleading.


This is Ontario's power usage: red is nuclear, grey is oil and gas, blue is hydro, black is coal and yellow is wind. I'm not sure where solar is but I'm really hoping solar starts cutting a big strip out of the black and grey.




Anyway, for years and years you could only get your electricity from Ontario hydro. Then in 98 because monopolies on necessary commodities really screws over the people (think Bolivia's hydraulic empire in the 90s where the gov't sold all the rights to water in Bolivia to one company, Aguas del Tunari), Ontario Hydro split up into municipalities to try to put some competition into the marketplace, and the Ontario Energy Board was put in to regulate that.

However, what seems to have happened is that there's essentially still one company in every municipality that people can get their electricity from, for example in Toronto it's Toronto Hydro and in Barrie it's Barrie Hydro, etc and every 6 months the Ontario Energy Board regulates how much each of these companies can raise their tarrifs by - of course always the same amount to keep the competition going. Wait a minute! So everyone raises their rates the same amount to keep the competition going. No that doesn't make sense at all. That, in fact, is still a giant monopoly but just operating under different names. It's almost worse than the old monopoly because now tax payers have to pay for the Ontario Energy Board as well.

I could be very wrong about this (to be honest, my research was pretty minimal and we need electricity for tomorrow, so just called up Toronto Hydro and got the thing started, after happilyyyyyy paying a $30 registration fee for them to switch my name with the landlords name. that sounds like $30 of work to me). So if you know any other companies that are out there keeping competition going (and i don't just mean prices here but types of electricity etc) then please let me know. Oh, I did find Bullfrog Power, but it actually just adds a premium to Toronto Hydro to put money into renewable energy, it's not a competitor in itself.

On this round, England wins. Lots of different energy providers to keep things competitive and keep development of renewables going for long term business growth and not just because it's nice. Win win.

missing furniture

This you may not know,

but Londoners come and go.

Flats are rented fully complete,

with bed, couch, table and seat.

Toronto dwellers stay a while,

craigslist and yard sales compile

the furnishings of apartments

to help keep low the rent.

Moving day comes too soon,

And back ache how I dread.

heaving heavies from cellar to moon,

helpful friends we'll pay with bread.

Italian bread called pizza of course,

for this we have quite the source.

How did my moving woe,

turn into baked dough? 

bad credit

There's this thing called credit, which apparently is the be all and end all of showing you're a good human who will pay things when you say you will. It's very important when convincing people to lend you things like lump sums of money or a floor of their house.

The system pulls together things like how often you pay your credit card bill, what other bills you're paying, etc, etc. Unfortunately, what it doesn't do is connect your stuff in England with your stuff in Canada. I lived in England for over 4 years, and was never able to get a credit card because I hadn't lived there long enough to prove my credit worth when I first applied (okay, my fault, i assumed 1 year was long enough). Each consecutive time I applied (only twice) they would see my first rejection and reject me again. The bank would also trick me by phoning to tell me I was preapproved, say yes when I questioned that preapproval, then send me a rejection letter a few weeks later in the mail. great customer care Barclays, well done on that one.

Suffice to say, my credit rating in England wouldn't have a credit card attached to it, but it would have the fact that I paid gas and electricity bills, a phone bill, my rent, and had a constant source of cash coming in (oh how I miss those days!). 

So I go to find out my Canadian credit rating and there's essentially nothing on there because I haven't lived in Canada for 5 years, so it looks like I'm not doing a thing worthy of credit, and instead am somehow wheeling and dealing in cash or bars of gold. 

Tomorrow at noon is the moment of truth when our offer on renting an apartment for the next year is accepted hooray to moving downtown where the people are! despite a less than outstanding credit score or denied my parents gym does have once a month free day passes.

All positive thoughts on the landlord accepting our offer welcome.

where to compromise?

First of all, I'm not sure my spatial awareness is actually as bad as my parking would leave people to believe; though I did pull off an amazing concrete-enclosed very tight back-in on Saturday. But I do have trouble seeing how much space a queen sized bed takes up.  What is this? My hand-eye coordination is good, my reflexes are good, I know where and how hard to hit a hockey or soccer ball to get to a moving person. Isn't that spatial awareness? Any thoughts?

Secondly, finding an apartment to rent in Toronto in October isn't skipping-down-the-block easy. It's not damningly difficult like how London can be, when living in a box is tolerable if it's a stone's throw from a decent local pub and walking distance to the tube. But finding ourselves a place in Toronto has had it's challenges, mostly because of our own reluctance to take our friend's advice in getting a realtor (I don't think I've ever used the word realtor before and it's reminding me of the hilarity of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - if you haven't seen this movie you should see it before doing anything else, but only if you appreciate morbid children's comedy a la Roald Dahl). 

Since we've managed to find great flats within our means in London through gumtree (London's craigslist, even though they also have craigslist), we thought that craigslist was the easiest solution to finding a place to satisfy these criteria:

• city central (between Dupont and King, Spadina and Dufferin)
• not an apartment building or condo but in an Old Toronto neighbourhood
• 1 bd or 1+den or 2bd (trying to be specific to help our search)
• outside space 
• a decently sized kitchen
• storage space for bicycles
• a parking spot  
• enough storage for equipment (sports and sound) and the additional outer layers needed in this city - down jackets, mittens, balaclavas, etc. 

We know what we're looking for, and we're not going to waste time looking at places that we're not truly interested in. However, we did manage to see a few dives early on that gave me lucid dreams of  growing old in our parents' basements, and waking up at 7 every morning either to a dog barking or the pitter patter of tiny feet depending on who's basement we were in. To be fair, we saw a few reasonable places as well but nothing that felt entirely livable. 

Luckily a friend of mine boldly gave my number to a realtor who showed us a few apartments of the more desirable variety today. Hooray! Some progress is being made. Now the decision is mostly bigger, better place that's a bit further North near Dupont, or smaller place that's smack dab in the centre of where we want to be College and Clinton. Hmmmmmm.

Realtor's advice - sleep on it. Also, who knew that people in real estate can be entirely normal and not scummy or fake. Lemony Snicket you really misled me. 

Sleep on it we shall, but hopefully we'll have an apartment by tomorrow for November 1st. A week into looking is feeling pretty good. Let the job search commence!

Sushicity

I love me some sushi. The feeling of a good salmon sashimi drenched in wasabied soy sauce melting in my mouth just gets me every time.

All you can eat sushi is a staple of the Torontonian's diet. Hells yes to that I say. Sushi in London is generally pretty poor or wildly overpriced. Finding a place that's Japanese and under 30quid a head is tough in the N5. Finding an all you can eat with unlimited sashimi  (unlimited sashimi is a necessary yet impossible feature in The Big Smoke) at $21.95 where the sushi is delicious and quickly served is easy in Toronto. There are lots of options.
We chose Sushi D on College last night and as it was my first sushi experience since moving home, I was excited. Sushi D didn't disappoint, and I even found some new favourites, including the 'D Roll' which is something like crab with tempura flakes, avocado and masago. We were also ordering beer by the pitcher, hooray! Though we were absolutely stuffed to the bone (top button on the jeans undone), we then ventured into a Belgian beer house to knock back some quality brews. The waitress serving us understood my taste in beer and decided to take an extra ten minutes to talk to me about tripels and what you can get at which LCBO in the city. It was remarkable customer service (something else that just doesn't happen in the UK).
In all, Toronto's plentiful and delicious sushi joints make me very happy.  So does spending an evening eating and drinking with new friends.
But now it's back to the reality of being jobless and apartmentless, living with the folks and guzzling gas driving into and out of the city everyday looking for a place to live. It's day 3 and I'm worn down. I try to remember that sweet melty salmon sashimi to keep me sane.

soccer vs football

After spending the first few days of being home at my boyfriend's parents cottage (ask a Brit what cottaging means :)) on Georgian Bay, basking in all the glory that the Canadian wilderness has to offer -  crystal clear, swimmable fresh water, caught that day trout, autumn coloured mixed forests as far as the eye can see, wildlife buzzing, hopping and slithering (yes we saw snakes aplenty), we decided to check out a soccer match.

On Tuesday, the Canadian men's team took on El Salvador in a prelim stage of the World Cup qualification. Canada was already sitting on top of their group, and we came to the game expecting the far superior Canadian side to trounce El Salvador. The crowd was a decent size, probably filling 80% of BMO stadium. Not exactly a roaring Wembley Stadium crowd, but considering where Canada is in the world ranking, pretty decent I thought.

Differences between watching a soccer game in Toronto and a football match in London:

1. Prematch - I have lived beside Arsenal stadium for 4 years and before every match huge throngs of people will be chanting songs all specific to Arsenal. The crowd prior to the match was good natured, but pretty well silent. However, almost everyone was wearing team Canada memorabilia, so fairly decent from that point of view.

2. Beer  - $10 (yowzah) at BMO stadium, but it was sold. You can't get beer to take to your seat during Arsenal matches anymore. people get way too aggressive apparently.

3. Cheering - at football matches in England crowds are constantly cheering and chanting. Chants are given and responded to, and depend on what's happening in the game. The feeble attempts at chants during the Canadian game were a bit embarrassing. 'Ca-na-da' on repeat doesn't really tell a story. 

4. Dickheads - at any football match in England you can expect there to be a few die hard terrifying fans that scream obscenities and potentially turn on their teams when the team isn't doing well. This was one element of the game I was excited about escaping. Unfortunately, after we switched our seats to the north side of the field for the 2nd half (advantage BMO stadium for not checking tickets), we sat behind some miserable gits who not only shouted racist, sexist and homophobic slurs at our own team, but also had no clue about soccer full-stop. Yelling 'run number 9' every time anyone got the ball was almost more painful to hear than their close minded prejudice (almost). In England, everyone understands the game, and of course opinions differ, but the chat on football is educated and entertaining. Also, everyone knows who the players are, so 'number 9' would never, ever be heard.

5. The players - the English generally don't like that a lot of their players are from different backgrounds, you hear grumblings at pubs etc, whereas the Canadians seem to embrace these differences, with players from Scotland, Jamaica, Guyana, the Philippines, Greece and probably more  rounding out the Canadians. 

6. The game itself - The sheer volume of players and money that go into football in England make this comparison entirely unfair. Canada dominated and held possession very well, but just couldn't come up with enough scoring opportunities. I blame lack of taking people on 1v1, and a nature that's too unselfish. We were also unlucky with Iain Hume tearing a muscle part way through the first half. 

In all, if one of the few attempts Canada had on net went it, and we had duct tape to shut up the idiots behind us, it would have been a pretty enjoyable experience, but some decent cheers would go a long way in terms of atmosphere. 

beginnings

After living away from the GTA for 10 years, I'm moving back to Toronto. This blog is about getting to know the city. I grew up in Scarborough and Mississauga, and left the GTA when I was 18, so I feel like I don't really know Toronto at all.

Having lived in Vancouver, Barcelona, Hamburg and more recently London, England I'm excited to be back home (though I also have an underlying fear of 'settling' which I'm ignoring for the time being). Moving home brings a completely different kind of expectation than moving abroad. I am older now, I am in the middle of a career, and a long term relationship; I don't want a basement apartment or a job that will pay the rent. I'm not moving to get a university career, play in a top sports league, or just to see what it's like there. I'm moving home to..... see if I like living at home. 

This blog will attempt to help me figure it out.