And the beat goes on....

On an otherwise cheerful and sunny Monday afternoon I board the streetcar and head to the job which has put humble pie with a side of anxiety back on my personal menu. Cruising through the business district women in ill-fitting business casual outfits and men deeply engrossed in their Blackberries hustle and bustle about the streets. They look busy, slightly tired and, some of them, like they have a dildo of self-importance shoved up their poop shoot. But to my eyes they look...peaceful. Worker bees buzzing merrily away for the good of the hive.

That's it, I'm determined to quit. I must. Mentally I attempt to fuse this moment of resolve to my backbone. And as I walk in the back door, past the line jockeys, already sweating while they hover over pots belching garlic/ginger/onion vapour, I almost have myself convinced that I'm going to make a clean break.

Bootylicious, the incompetent and ill-mannered general manager, is off on Mondays so I ask my gay French-Canadian assistant manager if he has time to talk. It only takes one look into those quivering liquid eyes for my resolve to evaporate like virtue on a drunk Saturday night. My pride settles for insisting on a 3 day work week once school starts and my cowardly hope is that I will be fired on the spot.

"No, that should be fine."

'Shit!' I trudge downstairs and put on my blacks.

But it's an eternal truth that when fighting the hydra of life the moment you cut off one head another ugly mug emerges from the deep. Enter stage left the psychotic (and possibly drug addled) neighbour.

After a slightly melancholy after work pint and shot of Jack, endured rather than enjoyed by my lonesome, I'm looking forward to nothing more than a good night's sleep.

Ha!

It's 2 am, the air mattress squeaks gently against the wall as I climb onto its cheap pillowy goodness. I can feel my brain matter spreading into an inactive puddle within my skull, the distant hum of the street cleaner, the gentle whir of the fan...so peaceful....

GGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! RAOW! RAOW! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! RAOW! RAOW!

'What the fuck?!' I'm instantly irritated and very much awake.

"Looooooooooooouuuuuuuuu. LOU! Lou stop it!" The nasal wail of my downstairs neighbour tickles my already sufficiently tickled ears.



The smell of her chain-smoked cigarettes slowly invades my apartment as she attempt to discipline her dog Louis in a deplorably half-assed manner. Her voice sounds sloppy like that over the hill cocktail waitress you feel sorry for who still thinks 'she's making you thirsty' as she leans over the bar at you in her faded low cut top.

The dog continues to growl and yap intermittently and she continues drunkenly yell at it to stop for the next 3 HOURS! Just before 5 am order is restored and I fall into a fitful slumber. At 10 am the barking, shouting and smoking resumes. By now I'm tired to the point of being rather emotional about it and with a shuddering sigh I rise from bed and accept that there will be no rest.

Though I deep 6 myself with a double dose of valium the next night and get my full 8 hours I return to work feeling drained. Conveniently, that night is one of the worst yet.

The former manager of the restaurant who has been 'consulting' i.e. stalking around the dining room with slitted eyes and upbraiding staff in the middle of the dining room during service, decides a pep talk is in order.

During our usual pre-service meeting Napoleon (as I will call him from now on) tries to raise the flagging spirits of the staff members with the following stirring words;
"Look, I don't have the time to be here. I really don't. And after I'm gone it's all up to you. And based on what I see now this restaurant will FAIL within two months after I'm gone. It's going to get worse."

"I'm not even going to comment on the new people." I breathe an inward sigh of relief. "Because if you are not going to lead by example and train them properly then what is the point of bringing in new staff." Wait a minute, that's not good. "When I was manager here this place ran like a well oiled machine. The restaurant that was here before was considered the best in Canada, one of the top 50 in the world, and NOTHING is going to touch that. But we have gotten lazy! And this place, now, is hanging by a thread."

And with those inspirational words under our belt the restaurant launches into a chaotic, horrible and embarrassing dinner service. The kind of night where you thank God that most of the guests are too drunk or too ignorant to see the sloppy horror show going on around them. Early on (around 7) Napoleon calls the ENTIRE floor staff into the kitchen (something which is unheard of in any normal restaurant) because there's something 'he wants to show us.' We all stand around nervously wondering what gross ineptitude Napoleon has uncovered now.

"Okay everyone look a the washroom checklist." Everyone looks at the laminated sheet where bathroom checks are signed off on every half hour. "What date do you see there?" Mumbles, the date is yesterdays. "EXACTLY! And what day is it today? See this is why this restaurant is falling apart, details." And with that we're allowed to resume our frantic duties.



My personal low came at the height of the insanity. Another server had asked me to take wine glasses to a table for her. Done, I deposit the glasses. Now almost every server on the planet likes to do their own wine service, it's a moment to build rapport with your table, it's also an opportunity to coax the guest into buying another (overpriced) bottle.

So a little while later I'm waiting in the kitchen for some plates to receive their final delicate touches when the aforementioned server bursts into the kitchen.

She starts shouting the moment she's inside the door and comes so close to my face that I could have counted the longish blond hairs on her clenched upper lip.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!!! You run the fucking glasses and don't even open the fucking wine!? What the fuck?! There goes the fucking tip!!!"

We're busy, nay, SLAMMED at this point in the evening. Not a great time to pick a fight.

"I apologize."

She storms away. Only 10 people were present in the kitchen for my humiliating dressing down by the beaver-toothed, hairy-lipped baboon-woman. Only ten.

After service is mercifully over Napoleon calls everyone to the bar for ANOTHER staff meeting despite the fact that it is now 1:30 am. We're upbraided for the embarrassing service, someone cries and an ill feeling settles in my stomach. The walk home is long and lead-footed.

The next night we do better but I doubt anyone took much comfort in that fact.

This is a picture of a mysterious and evil looking insect which hides in my house and only emerges to scare the crap out of me from time to time (usually late at night when I'm feeling womanly and vulnerable). Does anyone know what this is? Apologies for the poor picture quality, little fucker is fast!

"Tonight we dine in hell!"

My job is a humiliating torment which causes me to wake every morning with a cold knot of dread curdling in my stomach. When I get home at night it’s straight to the kitchen, double vodka with something in a coffee mug then to the computer to watch something hideously inane all in an effort to turn my brain to non-functioning mush and hopefully…forget.

What, you must be asking yourself, exactly makes my job so terrible? Of course it starts at the top.

Chef _____ is a relatively famous chef, you mention his name in Toronto and EVERYONE knows who you’re talking about and (however undeserved this might be) they look at you with a new respect. “Oh, you work for him.”

That being said you must be imagining that there is a crackerjack team of managers who sail around the dining room with the calm and dignity of aristocrats, fluffing a napkin there, pouring out some Moet over here and schmoozing the guests with the ease which comes from years of experience. This could not be further from the truth.

My general manager is only 23, she’s never worked in restaurants before in her life and it takes ten seconds for anyone to see that see is absolutely scared shitless and for good reason. She deals with her fear in one way, not exactly the healthiest in my opinion; she is a raging inferno of bitchiness. This is my favorite quote;

“Rebecca, your steps are TOO SMALL! You….” Pause while she seethes with frustration at my step to ground coverage ratio. “You need to take bigger steps.”



And due to the trickle down effect everyone who works in the restaurant uses every opportunity to vent their frustration at being bitched at by bitching at those beneath them.

There is one occasion which typifies a normal series of interactions with my co-workers. It’s a busy night and a table of eight have just left the restaurant, the table needs to be turned into a six top for the evening’s second seating. The two extra chairs need to be taken downstairs and put away. I have already been instructed to take the chair from the end of the row closest to the staircase (“You’re more efficient that way.”). I do so and return for the second chair and immediately I am attacked by the hostess.

“Have you been told how to move chairs?” She barks at me.

“…Yes.”

“Okay look, before you bring the chair down you have to tidy the row. You can’t leave the table looking like a mess. It looks bad for the restaurant.”

“But I was going to come right ba-“

“It DOESN’T MATTER you MUST tidy the row before you go anywhere.”

So I tidy the miscreant row of chairs and proceed to the other side of the table. I move the extra chair slightly to the side and square the remaining chairs with their counterparts. A server who is much too young for the mantle of entitlement she wears sees me do this and stops mid-stride.

“What are you DOING!?”

“I’m moving this chair downstairs but I’m tidying the row first.”

She points to the extra chair which I’m about to whisk away. “You CAN’T leave this chair here. It’s in the lane of traffic where guests need to walk. Is that a PROBLEM!?”

“But how else am I supposed to-“



But with a jerk of her upturned nose she’s gone, not ready to dignify my humanity by listening to my response. And ALL this is over a measly couple of chairs.

The former general manager (who does actually know what he's doing) hangs around a couple of days a week and acts as mortar to this condemned shack of a restaurant. The other day he dropped this gem of encouragement in my lap: "I don't even bother to talk to new staff. Not until you've been here for at least a month or so. Because if you can't even get through the other servers...well...." Such wisdom gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling.

When I reflect back on my two weeks at the restaurant it’s hard to pick out specific events because everything is pain. I feel like Conan (in the first movie) pushing that giant wheel, over and over, round and round, going nowhere, suffering constantly. Of course there was the screaming match that ended Friday night’s service. The many instances where I’ve been asked; “What the fuck are you doing?!” The war stories of people brought to tears by tirades of abuse from management. And of course there’s the fact that because of how the pay periods fell I haven’t seen a red cent for all my labour. But there is no lynch pin to my world of pain.

It just is….

Working for the Man

There are a couple of things which make up the central part of Toronto's identity; the humidity, having Canada's worst hockey team, rampant megalomania and of course WORK! Everyone comes to Toronto to work. Tranna's rock radio station, the Edge, claims to be broadcasting from "the centre of the universe" and if you're looking for a job in Canada there may be a (tiny) kernel of truth to that.

So it was with a fresh face and resolve that I hit the streets in my search to once again become gainfully employed. There were lots of ads on Craig's List so I started firing off resumes and, lo and behold, people actually called me back! This type of eagerness on the side of prospective employers never occurs in Vancouver where restaurant managers are too busy doing cleanses/detox/bootcamp/hot room yoga or fucking their underage waitstaff to call you.

Of course Toronto itself presents it's own challenges. Trying to look suave and collected while wearing all black at the height of summer when the humidex is off the charts is near impossible and I resorted to sheltering in the nearest Starbucks between interviews sucking back iced americanos laced with nearly fatal levels of Splenda.



Job hunting is actually a pretty good way to get to know a city. You end up walking for miles every day, discovering new neighbourhoods, and getting a glimpse of the city's multitude of characters.

I had one interview at an upscale steakhouse in the financial district, the kind of place where all the surfaces are black and shiny and the servers look like they were on their knees fellating a baseball team twenty minutes ago. It went something like this.

Assistant manager dude is attempting to look rebellious but professional with the jaunty knot of his tie, rolled up shirtsleeves and not-quite-combed longish brown hair falling in his face.

DUDE: So yeah hi, um I'm really no bullshit. Let's be honest here. what do you want to make at this job. Let's be honest, it's all about the money.

DUDE: Are you okay with serving in two inch heels because that's how we do things here.

DUDE: So what I'm trying to do here, because I really don't do most of the hiring, but what I'm trying to here is to get adults in here. Adults. This is a suit bar you know, suits. They wanna come in here after work but some of them...they're douchebags. I want someone who can handle themselves.



DUDE: So yeah. I like you, you've got a good look, you're cool. Which is what I care about because I'm the one who has to deal with you on the floor. But I mean, let's be honest, the suits, they don't want to see me, they want to see you.

They called me back for a second interview and I certainly would have gone if it wasn't for an interesting development.

Cruising Craig's List one day I see an ad which intrigues me. It's for a high end restaurant which is the flagship of a semi-famous TV chef. 'A place like that wouldn't advertise on friggin' Craig's List!' I think and almost dismiss it outright. 'What the hell!' I head down and am granted an instant interview with a hungover looking bootylicious manager-chick.

"I like you," she mumbles through her unbrushed teeth. "I'll call you tomorrow."

A half hour later I'm in Canadian Tire, sweaty and carrying an armload of housewares when I feel my phone vibrating.

A panicked hostess is on the other end. "Can you make it back here right away?! Or, like, soon!? Chef _____ is coming! Chef is coming in like, half an hour. Can you come back?"

I run home, dump my decorative baskets on the floor, try and straighten the wrinkles out of my shirt and hop in a cab. Half an hour later I'm sitting across from Chef ______ who I've watched on the Food Network for years. During our interview he answers the phone, half listens to my stuttering responses, orders someone to hose down the patio and pays no attention to me whatsoever.

'Oh crap,' I think. 'I've totally blown it.'

"When can you start training?"

Stammer, stammer. "Uh, not tonight." My mother is flying in from Europe and I'm supposed to meet her at the airport in a matter of hours.

"Okay, start Monday, 4:15."

And with that I'm working for one of the most famous chefs in Canada.

I show up for my first day wracked with anxiety, desperate to make a good impression and a good ten minutes early. I knock on the locked glass door and despite the fact that I can see staff sitting at the bar and milling around it's quite some time before my arm waving and overeager smiles entice someone to come.



A server dude in his civvies unlocks the door and sticks his head out.

"Hi I'm here for my first day of training!"

"Staff always enter through the back."

The door is closed and relocked in my face.

'So that's how it's going to be!' I thought. Little did I know that this was merely the beginning of my torture and humiliation at the hands of my new job. But that's for the next post.

I've received a request for pictures of my "evil" downstairs neighbour and I do intend to get one as soon as I devise a crafty method to entrap her in a seemingly innocuous photo shoot. But until then here is a picture of the disgusting filth pit which her annoying yap-dog uses as a latrine and she so delusionally calls a 'yard.'

Movies, Mayhem and Other News

This long weekend I saw two movies currently in theatres. First, Restrepo, a hard-hitting documentary about a squad of American soldiers in a remote corner of Afghanistan and second, Predators an action kill-a-thon about an elite unit of fighters battling aliens. Now what could these movies possibly have in common you say. The answer is more than you might think. I give you….Restrepo vs. Predators!

Location

Predators: A harsh and unforgiving planet deep in enemy territory.

Restrepo: A harsh and unforgiving valley deep in enemy territory.

Mission Status

Predators: Impossible.

Restrepo: Impossible.

The Protagonists

Predators: A squad of (mostly American) killers in a fight to the death.

Restrepo: A squad of American soldiers in a fight for “hearts and minds.”

The Antagonists

Predators: Well-armed aliens who know the lay of the land and can blend in seamlessly with the landscape.

Restrepo: Well-armed Afghans who know the lay of the land and can blend in seamlessly with the landscape.

The Hero

Predators: A good-looking guy in a uniform who yells a lot.

Restrepo: An average-looking guy in a uniform who yells a lot.

Scene Where Guy Shows Other Guy Pictures of His Kids Back Home

Predators: Affirmative.

Restrepo: Affirmative.

Sequel?

Predators: Yes, any movie that ends with the statement; “Well now we’ve got to _______!” is clearly a set up.

Restrepo: Yes, thousands of them.

In other news...

The morning after I move into my new apartment I'm taking down some recycling to the bins in front of the building where I have my first meeting with one of my new neighbours. She's got ratty blond hair, looks every one of her forty something odd years and is scribbling furiously on

the whiteboard in the front hall.

"Someone threw raccoon shit into my backyard! It wasn't there this morning and now there's raccoon shit everywhere. And it certainly came from above! I am SO tired, this is my day off this week. I've been working SO hard. This is really not the best way to meet me."

Her voice is shrill with a plaintive edge to it which immediately grates on my nerves.

"I swept my fire escape this morning. So that was probably me. I didn't realize...."

The backyard this woman/creature is referring to is a square of barren ground which is home to rusty rakes and broken pieces of plastic lawn furniture. Did I know I was sweeping s

hit off my fire escape? Yes. Did it look like anyone was going to to give a flying f*ck if I did? No! This woman also owns an unattractive and yappy small-dog, the kind that looks like an overgrown rat and whose tail lies erect along its back so that its asshole is giving a perpetual salute to the world.

"I can clean it up for you if you want."

"No, no, I already did. I've just had some really really strange neighbours here. This whole neighbourhood is terrible. Its a ghetto. A GHETTO! My dad wants to pay my rent so I can get out of here."

By this point in the conversation I have moved towards the front door and Creature Woman is standing by the gate to the small front yard. An overweight redheaded girl walks past us and checks her mail box.

"SEE!!! I don't even know who that is!" She shakes her head in disbelief.

Redhead is practically standing next to me so I do the polite thing and ask her how long she's lived in the building.

"Three months." Is her surly reply, though her surliness is in this case justified.

Now she begins to scribble furiously on the whiteboard, so

mething about their being no need for assumptions, and then stomps off upstairs.

"I don't think the neighbourhood is that bad really. I used to work in mental health so maybe I'm used to it or something."

"Well aren't you an OPTIMIST!!!" She spits it like an accusation, like 'how dare you not be a shriveled old prune like me, just you wait my pretty'.

Every morning and usually in the middle of the night as well Creature Woman's yappy lapdog brays up at my windows and her charming screech is not far behind, ironically

, yelling for silence.

But to end on a note of levity here's a Bollywood film set I stumbled upon. Check out the hair of the guy in the pink checkered hoodie, yes your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a twisting bleached multi-mohawk. Only a real "man" can rock a hairdo like that.

And a couple of shots of this fantastic antique/curio market which is held every weekend down the street. I spotted a delicious leather bag in good condition. "Twenty bucks." Being the horrible bargainer I grit my teeth and offer $10. "Double or nothing, let's flip for it. I win, you pay $30, you win, you pay $10." I toss,

he calls and I walk away with one hell of a bargain. Nice!

The Adventure Begins

Sweating profusely in my Canucks jersey which I brought along deliberately so I could wear it off the plane I was grateful to see that my backpack was (for once) among the first pieces of luggage to gently make its turn around the baggage carousel. But lo! Some bearded computer programmer snatches my backpack and it starts to disappear into the crowd. There can only be ONE Mountain Equipment Co-op backpack with a Lululemon yoga mat strapped to it and it certainly belongs to me, the chick wearing the ‘Nucks jersey.

I firmly alerted this bearded man that he was mistaken and the bag was mine. Something in my tone must have frightened him because he returned my property immediately and with a dose of enthusiasm.

Thank God again that I have fabulous relatives who whisked me off to cottage country early the next morning. A wonderful place where it’s always “beer-o’clock” and there are plenty of power tools to play with. Every night we sat out next to the water and watched the fire at first gently lick then furiously consume the planks of scrap wood we had cut. The warm lake water doesn’t buoy me up the same way the salty Pacific does so my morning swims left me panting on the shore and ever so grateful to slip into the hot tub and watch the baby ducks be schooled around by their mother.

Alas, it was not to last. It was back to the humid brick-built city simmering in the ripeness of summer. The streetcar rails trip up my feet and the subway tokens are so small I’m always afraid that I’m going to lose them. Sitting on the balcony at the family house up on Bathurst Street as a thunder storm gathers I watch the Orthodox Jews stream in and out of Tolvi Deli. The women wear long shapeless skirts and thick black stockings despite the sticky weather and the men are never seen without their skullcap in place and the strings of their prayer shawl floating behind them.

I try jogging. It feels unnatural. Cars zip past in an endless procession, smokers behold me with bemusement and the dusty garbage-laden breeze brings me no air. I give up and head for home. Merely an hour later the heavens open and Noah’s flood returns to be sucked up by the parched earth.

I get lucky and after only two days of pavement pumping and cold calling real estate agents I snag a beautiful apartment which is steps away from the school and the epicenter of downtown Toronto insanity – the Eaton’s Centre. Downstairs and next door is a deluxe ‘Poutinery’ shop which I already know will be the scene of many late night “drunchie” (drunk munchies) attacks where I try to consume the maximum number of calories in the minimum number of bites. Kitty corner to this Mecca for all things deep fried and lardy is the historic Filmore Hotel, the oldest strip club in Toronto.

According to a source back in the day the girls would give you a personal dance for only $5. And since at this time the ‘back room’ concept hadn’t been developed the girls carried around their own little dance platform and place it in front of you when you decided to be a customer. Of course the public nature of this practice meant that if any of the five guys to your right or left engaged a dancer you got to enjoy it too! My source tells me though that the standards have gone steeply down hill in the last decade and that the current ‘talent’ have more rolls than a Thanksgiving dinner. Posted underneath the hours for 'Afternoon Delight' (4-7) and the drink specials (starting at just $4) is a clever enough witticism for a strip club sign: "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder." It make me chuckle.

“This area I got to tell you, it’s grimy, it’s rough,” warns my Greyhound delivery man. I nod sagely and thank him for the advice. Perhaps living in Vancouver has jaded me to the presence of the meth/crack-head element because I never thought the area was that bad, I’m only blocks away from Yonge Street for fudge’s sake. But as I walk into Metro to do my first grocery shop I’m given reason to pause. Next to the automatic doors leading out, only a pane of glass away from me and my produce and young man is lying on a stretcher being worked on by three EMTs. I watch as they put an IV into his limp forearm. Blood gushes from around the injection site and the blue gloved hands quickly mop it up, tossing soaked gauze onto the man’s chest as they go. A friend of the patient is sitting on a nearby bench being watched over by a heavily muscled undercover. The friend looks scrawny and has a moderate case of meth-face, the cheeks are pinched, a maple leaf tattoo graces the side of his neck and malnourishment makes his nose seem to protrude from his face giving him a weasel-like appearance. By the time I take my laden basket to the checkout they’re gone.

Toronto clearly has surprises in store for me but as I sip champagne on my fire escape and the evening light dapples the leafy canopy above me I don’t feel like worrying about it.

Welcome to my new office.

Vancouver: A Glutton's Paradise

As the days 'til my flight ticked down I found my mind returning again and again to one of my most enduring obsessions - FOOD! Anyone's who's tried to track down a recent roll or well sauteed noodle anywhere else in North America knows that as far as Asian food goes Vancouver is where it's at. This is my tribute to all that is awesome about pan-Asian nosh.

I have always wanted to try Kintaro Ramen down on Denman but the immense lines which snake out of it's front door always dissuaded me. Clearly the time for excuses was at an end. My friend A. and I made a lunch date for Monday and eagerly rushed down to the unassuming storefront only to find that it is closed only one day a week and that day happens to be Monday. We ogled the cook prepping the different kinds of miso paste and sighed with regret. But thank god Kintaro has a sister restaurant just a couple of shops down where I was treated to this bowl of steaming goodness. My usual complaint with Asian soups is that they tend to be extremely salty but this broth was light without loosing any complexity. The noodles were firm and chewy bearing absolutely no resemblance to that package crap we all ate in university.

Thanks to the generosity of the parental exchequer I was also able to squeeze in one last meal at Italian Kitchen one of many establishments riding the wave of nuevo-Italiano cuisine. The place was packed and unfortunately a table of rowdy drunk Americans, the men all sporting golf shirts and khakis, the women untouched up roots and litres of perfume, made it a bit hard to hold a conversation. Our server, a fatter version of a young Matthew Broderick bordered on what I would call "over enthusiastic." But nothing could take away from such a gorgeous plate as this. Organic heirloom tomatoes, with basil oil and the best buffalo mozzarella I've ever eaten. Unlike most fresh mozza this stuff hadn't been firmed up and shaped into a ball but was pillowy like a cumulous cloud and practically dissolved in my mouth. Certainly a moment when I was grateful for Vancouver's granola crunching organic crusaders.

With 48 hours on the Toronto countdown clock I was frantic to find and try another Vancouver original which has escaped my jaws for way too long - JAPADOG!!! I was running around downtown hitting the bank, Staples, you know, FUN STUFF and swung by Japadog's storefront location to finally satisfy my urge to find them closed. No matter I told myself, I'll just go by the cart at 5oo Burrard but lo and behold the cart was NOT THERE! I cursed my fate and did my best to reconcile a destiny without fake tube meat and Japanese mayonnaise. But as luck would have it on another frantic errand run earlier today I had a vision, there it was at Burrard and Pender, the ever-so-holy Japadog cart. It was like eating a sushi hot dog and it was everything I hoped it would be. I saw the light and it was beautiful.

As a true glutton I have my certain special things that I simply cannot do without. These take the form of shameful addictions to one particular place and one particular dish that drives my senses into an MSG-fueled frenzy. It's time for me to confess that I would cross mountain ranges, brave raging torrents of white water and the most infernal of Toronto winters to have once again the fresh Shanghai style noodles from Legendary Noodle on Denman. It's the kind of place you could walk by a thousand times and never look twice, never know that inside greatness is resident. If you eat in you get the free floor show of watching the non-English speaking cooks stretch and slap the dough into submission. I usually get take out because I love to drown my noodles in sriracha hot sauce (yet another shameful addiction). The noodles are shaved off a large ball of prepared dough straight into the boiling pot of water and the result is a noodle like nothing else. Ugly and misshapen, varying accordance with the hands that shaped them they are the proverbial ugly duckling of noodles but once they're in your mouth you realize that's a swan baby, without a doubt.

There you have it, a tiny glimpse into the culinary wonderland that is Vancouver. I've eaten sushi in Tokyo that didn't hold a candle to what we have here (though I admit Narita Airport probably wasn't the best place to try 'real' Japanese sushi). The point is we are friggin' lucky, we eat well, we eat healthy, we eat fresh, we eat local, we eat organic. Though it's hard to imagine when you live here I can tell you the rest of the world (especially North America) does not eat this way. We've got it good.

Saying Goodbye

As my move to Toronto draws closer my apartment descends deeper and deeper into chaos. I sleep on the floor surrounded by books, unpaid bills and the crumbs of last night's drunken snacking and feel like I'm already gone. My giant bag of packing peanuts is now the largest piece of furniture I own (it sort of looks like a bean bag chair) and if it wouldn't make such a horrible mess I'd be rolling in those little nuggets of styrofoam joy and laughing like a maniac.

I realize that I'm not leaving the country or anything drastic like that but when I think of the distance involved, a whopping 3354.71 km, whether it's the same country or not, I'm moving to a whole other planet. No more cheap and tasty sushi, no more pristine unpolluted air, no more mountains. No more Stanley Park (or whatever it's called) and its abundance of wildlife like these two baby otters I spotted on Sunday. No more intravenous drug users selling their skinny bodies by the drive through Starbucks on Powell. No Ed Hardy wearing yahoos fighting over who is more "street" while Granville's weekend circus caterwauls around them. No more 'Symphony of Fire', no more Grouse Grind, no more (short lived) Canucks playoff fever where for a week or two we hope against hope that this year we have a goalie who won't choke when it's 'go' time.

No more dried prawns and funky herbal medicines wrecking havoc on my hangover tummy as I stumble through Chinatown, no more marveling at the library's high atrium, no more pot rallies at the art gallery, no more laughter on sea side patios, no more frolicking at Wreck Beach applauding the sun set, no more sun dipping into the sea as she makes her glorious exit, no more Lyons standing regal in the sky.

The distance between London, England and Moscow, Russia is only 2498.32 km. I am going far away and things are going to be different there. If I said I was cool with all this I'd be lying.

In my heart I know everything is going to be fine and very soon the excitement which comes with the promise of a fresh adventure will make the separation easier. But right now before all the hurry and the newness overwhelms me I'm going to let myself be a little bit sad for what I'm leaving behind.

So it's goodbye to my trusty and heavily stained loveseat and goodbye to Vancouver, my love.