Peter Kent - you suck

(photo cbc.ca)

This is Peter Kent. You probably don't recognize him, because he's the worst. The Canadian Environment Minister doesn't care about the environment. It's sad and dangerous.

Two days ago when pressured about whether Canada would be pulling out of the Kyoto agreement, Kent mutter something undecipherable then went on to say that Kyoto is the past and 'Copenhagen and Cancun are the future'. This was in reference to the climate summits that happened last year and the previous year, when we needed the world leaders to come to an agreement on what would be done to save the planet and stop climate change before it's too late. They did not come to a binding agreement, so when this fool says that 'the future' is 2 summits that
a) happened in the past, and
b) amounted to very little in terms of what countries must do to save the planet

I really wonder what future he's talking about. It is not one that I as a Canadian am willing to wait to see unfold. It's a terrifying future.

Get the conservatives and their money grubbing, Albertan tar sands out of here. Bring on Elizabeth May and her green party (read her take on the distortions Kent is spewing on the Kyoto agreement here). Bring on renewable energy, environment related jobs, and forcing people, companies and gov'ts to actually DO something about climate change right now.

Yes, China, India and Brazil need to do it too, but Canada be a leader for once. 

lament o to do list

Not having a job is a strange predicament. While working, even at a job that I loved every minute of, I dreamt of months of vacation time to do everything that everyone wants to do: travel the world, write a book, sell a screenplay, become a really good photographer, learn to speak Spanish and French well, learn to salsa, samba and crump, learn to play the guitar, learn most of the world's history, volunteer my time wisely and with a lot to show for it.

(photo whoisbolaji.com)

So far, in my free time I have spent a lot of time applying for jobs, surfing the net and watching movies (I'm currently watching HP6 and Dumbledore has just met Draco on the top of the clock tower. uhoh). 

With my to do list, this is where I've gotten:

• travel the world - well I'm in Montreal at the moment, so that's pretty much done. can't be everywhere at once can you?
• write a book - I'm writing this blog, essentially the same
• sell a screenplay - i've decided the screenplay I wrote 6 years ago sucks massively and needs to go back to the drawing board. on hold.
• become a really good photographer - some dirty thief thieved my camera after being back 3 weeks, having already taken some really wicked photos of Toronto but not putting them on my computer. boo to thievery. 
• learn to speak Spanish and French well - I found my high school spanish text books and read the first 4 chapters of one. boligrapho, lapiz, cuaderno, escuela. doing well. as for French, i'm in Montreal, so pretty much solved.
• learn to salsa, samba and crump - my mom has a pilates, fitness combo video that's basically doing level 1 ballet. did it yesterday. i would write what we did, but i can't spell any of those french ballet words. all dancing starts with ballet, i'm sure of it.
• learn most of the world's history - this is pretty difficult, but i'm reading about recent american history in my book (well current affairs will soon be recent history), and i've got the history of Hogwarts downpat.
• volunteer my time - i haven't heard back from the charity i offered my volunteer services to. hmm. and have also been helping write the strategy for a social enterprise a friend is starting.

so ya, tick tick tick on those, and yet not having a job does make me feel quite contributionless. my main goal for this time off was to some how find half a million bucks to put an artificial turf down in Georgetown, Guyana. If anyone has any ideas on that, please please let me know. 

In the meantime, I know that once I start a job I'm not going to have much time to do all of these things, so I really need to get cracking. This video has inspired me to know that now me is the only me (ie stop procrastinating).

Alright, gotta bounce! Lots to do, time to figure out what's on tv now that Dumbledore is dead. :( still heartbreaking

dURBAN fashion

(photo polyvore.com)

I'm sorry world. I really should know better. But they were $30 (which is about 20 quid), fit perfectly and I can't be expected to never buy clothes right? Yes, I know what you're thinking: buy good clothing that will last so I don't need to buy them again. That's the way to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Fine. You win. That's exactly right, and I fell culprit to the cheap form fitting blackest black of jeans. Then I put them on and my hands turned black. Hmm. I guessed there was some excess die on these jeans. No wait, after washing them in the white bathtub (of a rented apartment) for half an hour and turning the bathtub blue, in turns out the jeans were entirely dye. I've never seen so much dye come out of anything. When they get out of the dryer (they continue to soak in the kitchen sink 12 hours later) I'm sure my blackest black jeans will be blue defeating the purpose of buying them and adding not only the energy used in creating them, but also the sick amount of water and energy used to get the dye off of them, the white bathtub and my hands. Well screw you Latitude, and screw you button that says 'LA premium wax jeans' (wax jeans? i really should read labels) and screw you inside label that says 'seductions FD' you have certainly seduced me into buying your rubbish, waste of energy, time and money jeans. I am making a vow here and now to read labels, and not be seduced by stretchy, goodness-my-ass-looks-great-in-these garments ever again.

What makes it even worse is I've done this on the eve of the Durban climate talks, where I want a binding, fair (not bullying the little countries into letting the big dogs off easy) agreement to reduce emissions drastically. If you don't know what's happening with the climate talks, here's a quick 5 things to know about Durban Climate Talks to get you in the know.


Also, if you're of the mind that the climate needs to be saved after the global economy is saved, you haven't -and MUST - read this by George Monbiot who is very clever yet easy to read. Actually, it doesn't matter who you are, read that article right this moment. And then, leave me a comment. 


Feel free to make fun of me constantly if you ever see me in black jeans to really make it sink in. I can handle it. 

to all yall suckers that don't know

check it out: in Montreal for the week. Who ever said that quick travel to another culture was for Europe only?
Ha!
I laugh in the face of those people. Hon hon hon!
Montreal may look like Toronto to outsiders (sans la Tour CN) but it has an entirely different feel. The language, the food, the people, the nightlife, the art, everything has a twist of European culture, and it seems to me generally the best of both worlds.
The last two days here has made me very happy that
Canada has such a rich mix of cultures within it's
gigantic borders. Sensacionelle! It also makes me sad that schooling in French was so poor in Ontario.
(photo terrafolia.ca)

If you don't understand the Occupy movement

or don't agree with it (or even if you do) read this book.
It was given to me by my amazing old boss, thank you Ben! I'm not even a quarter of the way through and I'm angry. It is really deepening my understanding of why everyone, a la Occupy around the world, is and should be so very angry; because a few people run EVERYTHING and those people do not want what is best for the rest of us (or not primarily at least), they want to fill their giant mansions with loot and jump into an Olympic sized swimming pool of money. Do not be mistaken, these people are not stupid, they're clever. But they're evil.

Read this book then comment.

Here's a quick excerpt.

'A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalist that justifies bottomless spending on security. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable a way to organize a society.'

Get the book. 

things I didn't know I didn't know 1

there's a rasta llama relative called a Vicuna, chilling in Peru
(photo delargy.com)

Drive

Wowee. Mr. Gosling, you've certainly come along way since Breaker High and I like it. A lot. Except when you're violently smashing someone's face in. In all Drive is an excellent movie, but not for the softies among us. It's fiercely violent, and not the kind of violence that's not shown or so exaggerated but the kind of violence that is exactly real and all the more terrifying for it.
Drive is beautifully shot, and both the soundtrack and sound recording are amazing. The whole film is extremely well acted by the main characters; both Gosling and Carey Mulligan are fantastic, especially considering how few lines are spoken. The only change I would wish for would be a bit more background to Gosling's character. There are lots of clues to Mulligan's, but I just couldn't get a feel of how this guy ends up being where he is - I get the whole nothing to live for makes you fearless in the driving bit, but still felt there was something missing.
Drive is definitely worth watching, but would warn the pure of heart to shut eyes and ears during the violent scenes. Oh, I also love his jacket. Somehow it really makes it for me.

top 5 begins.

My inner nerd came creeping out today when I started reading this blog, which is actually a blog I want to read (unlike my own blog, cripes, how did that happen?), and I read the tips on blogging the blogette (please let that not be sexist. i would like to be a blogette) was giving out.

So, with her tips in mind, I'm going to start a bimonthly top 5 things I like in Toronto or things I miss in London, depending on my mood. Starting positively, top 5 things I like in Toronto today are: 

5. The glorious blazing sun

4. Deli cinq juice (aka five alive)

3. halloween candy in late November

2. one block away someone has a giant white elephant covering their entire front lawn

1. i completed 5 errands today without spending a cent. booyah

wedDINGs

One of my closest friends got married yesterday. It was a beautiful, fun, glorious wedding and made me think about all the weddings I've been to in the UK and how Canadian weddings are different. Here goes:

1. hats - women typically cover their heads with something at more traditional English weddings. small hats, fascinators, whatever. I love me a good fascinator. Last night the mother of the bride wore a fascinator and everyone else's heads were hair exclusively.
2. timing - Generally Canadian weddings start in the late afternoon. typically British weddings start very early in the day, essentially right after lunch (have also been to a few 11am starts). considering the other thing we know to be true about Brits, this pretty much means everyone's pissed by early afternoon, ravenous during the meal and not really listening to the speeches.
3. mc - the last 2 weddings I went to in the UK had the groom as the MC. speeches seem to be of the same general material wherever you are. razing the groom, telling the bride she's awesome and thanking everyone. the grooms speech last night was especially heart warming.
4. booze - i have yet to be at a canadian wedding that runs dry, seems to happen fairly often in british weddings. for an explanation, refer back to point 2.

Everything else seems to be generally the same or unique to a particular wedding. I love weddings. I love the partying, wearing fancy clothes, meeting new people and witnessing love that's shared. all of the weddings i've been to this year have been for perfectly matched people, and it's a great feeling to see that kind of love. One of the speakers last night said 'love the other person more than you love yourself'. Quite different from my uncle's advice about marriage which was 'make sure the other person loves you more'. HA.

time travel gone wrong

You're right, it was a bizarre choice, but the tickets were free. Medieval Times. We're 28 not 8, but fun was had.

Medieval Times is quite an unusual evening. Mostly unusual because even though you know the outcome of the knights fighting is set (and you know it both intellectually and visually. some of the fakes are laughably terrible) you still have this strange sense of 'green or dieeeeee' when your knight bounds out. Green knight was the badass backstabber knight. Embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as my friend missing the rose thrown to her by the green knight because her hands were covered in delicious chicken juice. 

Verdict:

atmosphere - fun. you're expected to yell, which is liberating in itself. most people were our age. there were probably 20 kids in total. there's a lot of stuff (read crap) to buy. we also had the advantage of a really good heckler in the audience. good hecklers are hard to find.

performance - the story line and knights fighting is obviously for kids, but it is pretty strange. the horses dancing was incredible (although we did all feel sorry for the horse. mild animal abuse? i'm not sure), and i'm certain they were doing a complicated cha cha cha. 

venue - every seat is close. the performers are right in front of you and the set up works perfectly for what's happening

food - LOADS of it. chicken was delicious. tomato soup was also decent. the rest of it not great. drinks were overpriced but considering the rest of TO beer prices, fairly reasonable for an event like this.

overall - pretty hilarious but won't be going again. 

yesterday my knee was living

Yesterday was 12 degrees celsius. today is 1. i went for an 8k run this afternoon. my tendonitis riddled knee is normally not crippling. running in the cold makes it spread it's effects up to my hip and down to my calf. I should have turned back at the track at Earlscourt Park, but no, that's where I turned back last time. I had to beat my previous self of course. So I went into Prospect Cemetery. A very large and spread out cemetery indeed. My knee calf and hip are all in pretty bad shape.
I blame the abrupt weather changes in Toronto. Sunday is supposed to be 13 again. How can I get used to the pain of the winter if I keep feeling the spring?
I'm not all complaint today though. I spent a good part of the morning basking in the heat of the sun through my living room windows. It was glorious.
Now... time for free tickets to Medieval Times. ONWARD!

Some like it hot

Our neighbours are great. Probably perfect neighbours in fact: Very friendly, casual, not super loud (but not so quiet that we feel bad when we're loud), take out the recycling compost and trash regularly, leave plenty of parking space in the garage, it goes on, and we've only been here 2 weeks.
In London we spoke to exactly one of our neighbours and I'm pretty sure she was actually hitting on my bf most of the time. We've already chatted with lots of our neighbours here, and the friendliness of Canadians typology appears to be true (including the foreign born Canadians). There is a pronounced and lovely neighbourhood feel where we are.
The only tiny difference - that I don't think would ever happen in London - is that we don't have control of our own heating. Shock, horror. We live upstairs, our landlord owns the whole house and our neighbours downstairs control the heating of the whole house. Which means when they aren't home (for example are in Montreal for 4 days) we are left in the cold.
I'm sure once we speak to our neighbours about it (that lovely Cdn friendliness comes back to bite us in the ass. we don't want to be too demanding too early), we will figure out some kind of system that hopefully isn't too energy wasting but also doesn't leave us lighting fires in metal rubbish bins in our own living room in the winter.
Luckily, for now (other than that long weekend stint), they like it HAUTE. And we got an electric heater just in case.

Le Select Bistro

snapshot restaurant review

Name - Le Select Bistro
Cuisine - French
Location - King West (on Wellington)
Atmosphere - warm, bustling (even on Sunday eve), mid to upper scale.
Price - higher end
Clientele - everyone from families to dates to business parties
Service - efficient, courteous, well timed
Food - excellent: delicious, gorgeous and authentically French. the bavette steak and frites were perfect.

Overview - well worth it. great treat for a special occasion. will return in summer for a patio table

Noah and the Whale at the Pheonix

WBrit indie folk band Noah and the Whale played at the Pheonix Concert Theatre last night, showcasing their 2011 album Last Night on Earth.

The Pheonix is more or less in Cabbagetown and a surprising location for a venue as it seems to be in the bottom of an apartment building, surrounded by apartment buildings. Inside the Pheonix is good, not too big, not to small and with lots of bars. I haven't been to an all ages concert in Toronto, and the gate that split the drinking section in the back with the underagers in the front was a bit strange but we drank a few beers pre show (and during a funny country performance by two Southern girls with big melancholic voices. never did find out what they were called. anyone know?).

Noah and the Whale took a couple of songs to really engage with the audience, but once they did, the show was fantastic. I think in large part due to the amazing lighting. It seriously made the mood. The front man, Charlie Fink, was very engaging and I quite liked his sharp little arm movements, like his arm was trying to dance and his body wouldn't quite let it. Also, his attempt at sexiness was pretty hilarious, especially as a lot of these front men take themselves a little seriously.

They could have turned up the volume on the violin as it gives them quite a distinct feel that you couldn't really hear last night. Their set list was described as a 3 course meal with 'romance' as the main and 'good times' for pudding. I wasn't sure what the appetizer was, but the crowd seemed to quite like the analogy. All their musicians were excellent, though the bassist is obviously new to long hair and could do with a fringe.

All in all a good showing and I'll be listening to more Noah and the Whale because of it. Great lyrics and fun melodies. Also, would definitely go back to the Pheonix for a concert, venue and crowd were both a-ok. 

Fantastique Fiesta Farms

Like probably everyone, I wouldn't really classify myself as a person who gets excited by supermarkets. But our local grocery store is out-of-this-world fantastic. It is called Fiesta Farms and is like no other. It's an independent store and the people who run it clearly care about food. It's a foodie's dream. I have had several friends comment on how lucky I am to live a block away.
You walk into the store (well I go in through the little kids entrance) and it's like being in an indoor European market. The fresh stuff is locally sourced from Ontario farms, so it doesn't break the bank to buy produce and from the deli cause it's from a stone's throw away.

A few notable bonuses:

• There is a whole mushroom section! there are mushrooms I've not heard of before, and I love me some mushrooms
• they source loads of different sea salts. this doesn't actually mean much to me in terms of cooking, but is notable in that this is an apparent trend here that I hadn't seen emerging in London.  
• the cheeses are stupendous. to me a good cheese makes or breaks a meal. they bring in beautiful cheeses directly from italy, and you know those Italians don't mess around with their cheese making.
• there is a locked up cupboard full of varying types of truffles. I'm not a big truffle user, but I know food people will eat that right up.
• they have an extensive offering of lettuces (called cultivar groups of lettuce, who knew?) for when you want to make a specific dish and need to push aside the romaine and get to the pak choi or lollo rosso

but really Fiesta Farms is so successful and awesome because it's catering to consumers ongoing need for locally sourced and sustainable products. More on their philosophy can be found on their site, which also has a regular food blog. http://fiestafarms.ca/

Mostly this amazing grocery store makes me quite enjoy the grocery shopping experience and definitely  makes me think that Torontonians care about the world around them (even though Rob Ford does not). The one thing that I haven't quite figured out yet is why a cop stands out front all day on weekends. What are they doing there?? Surely thieving from FF is not on.

Go fiesta farming and get yourself some deliciousness! Christie and Essex St just North of Bloor.

warm socks

This morning, Dupont and Christie, Toronto: wake up, toss a white load of laundry into the washing machine. make and eat breakfast. check emails. realize the washing machine isn't making noise anymore. it's been 30 min since i put it in, so go to check if it's broken. No. the laundry is just finished! Toss it into the dryer. speak to my brother on skype. hear the dryer buzzer go. put on warm socks and laugh at my brother because his morning was like this:

brother's flat, Finsbury Park, North London: wake up, toss a load of laundry into the washing machine. make and eat breakfast. an hour later talk to me on skype, laundry is still washing.
his afternoon will then consist of putting out his laundry to dry on drying racks scattered across his living room.
2 days later, his clothes will be dry.

Ok, no one likes a gloater, but my laundry experience laughs in the face of his. Being back in a land where it gets very cold every year means that having a dryer with your laundry is essential. A dryer that actually dries clothes (as opposed to the 2in1 washer dryers in England that actually don't dry your clothes but do make your wet clothes slightly warmer).

Yes, a dryer does mean that you end up using more energy, which is bad. But (and keep in mind I don't actually know how translate efficiency of energy, so I'm using time) it takes twice as long to just wash clothes in Britain than it does to wash and dry clothes here. That's got to mean that British washers are very inefficient.

Although we will likely put up a line across the balcony to dry clothes once it's warm in Toronto, for now, I'm very happy to have clean dry clothes an hour from dirty ones.

10 points Toronto
1.7 points London

This article fails to mention the large number of people who use laundromats because they have no laundry facilities at home. This is a giant pain in the bottom (I did it for years in Vancouver), and for your pain, I award you 5.6 points. Spend them wisely.