I plucked up the courage to ride the Toronto Transit today...
What appears on the map to be a less intricate spiders web than the London Underground, turns out to be a complicated network of buses, trams and streetcars - that these modes of transportation are in fact separate entities was news to me, I'd always naively assumed they were the same thing. So there are underground services and overground ones, and tickets and tokens and transfer tickets and lots of different maps online, but no maps in sight at the stations. Very confusing, maybe its a ploy to keep the tourists off the trains? A desirable goal no doubt.

Anyway I managed to navigate my way from Downtown Toronto to North York, a slightly quieter neighbourhood, which happened to be closest place where I could catch the film 'Provoked'. I know there are more cheerful ways to spend your Friday afternoon off, but I had been waiting to see this distressing 'based on a true story' flick for a while. It was just as frustrating as I thought it would be. Afterwards, resisting the urge to rant at strangers about harmful stereotyping in films and the evils of domestic violence, I mused alone on how horribly common it was and worst of all how violence is culturally endorsed by some.

With some idea of the general direction I needed to take I decided to walk back. The one and half hour stroll took me through some very up-market areas full of little delis and designer shops; some average areas with Shoppers Drug Marts and convenience stores and some very pretty parks. Some things are the same in all big cities - subway stations are all reliably flanked by Starbucks - and some things are not....

They call fringes 'bangs'
They drink milk out of polythene packets placed in pitchers
They cross the road with moving traffic
They have Tim Hortons and Timothy's coffee... I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to miss them, even though my attempts to order simple beverages are often marked by a breakdown in communication. Which brings me on to....

They don't really speak English.

I really like Toronto though, its big, diverse, busy and... big. My to-do list is long, its almost a shame that my work at the hospital is so interesting and fun and all the doctors so friendly. That's the final thing.....

They have real postgraduate training for Doctors here.

*exits muttering unpleasantries about MTAS, MMC and Patricia Who-it.....*

Better Late than...?

I know I should have started writing on this sooner, but having those annoying perfectionist tendencies that I do, I just couldn't bring mysef to start. Because, I never had enough time to write as much as I wanted to, and because, I didn't have the energy to make it interesting or inspiring, and because, I couldn't find the words to do justice to all the amazing things that I was seeing and doing and having the opportunity to be part of and experience.....

And because of all of that I now find that five (or six) weeks have passed and I haven't shared as much as I wanted to, and I haven't kept in touch as much as I wanted to, and I haven't heard from all of you as much I wanted to.... and so I finally decided to 'the hell with everything' and just write - whatever.

So hopefully, you'll get to read a bit more of what I'm doing more often and in return I expect to hear from you, its easy on a blog, you just clnk comment and Comment. No need to open a compose new message window and ponder over what to write in the subject line or which bit of news to include or anything else.... just hit 'x people said...' and say hi - Often.
Thank You

(will add some retrospective posts below)