New York - day one

Arrived in New York on Thursday evening, navigated my way from La Guardia Airport to Manhattan on the local buses with the help of some very friendly locals. Three of them were diligently on the look-out for my stop, giving me regular reminders of where I needed to get off and how many blocks to walk etc. I made it to Mork's cute little apartment on First Avenue. Was pretty shattered, we went for Pizza, bought some coffee home, flicked through the guide book and consulted the maps...

Rose relatively early on Friday, and after Mork's meeting with her supervisor (yes she's doing some work, really) we hit the streets, Dunkin' Donut and coffee in hand. Being located Midtown meant that since I'd arrived I'd had the chance to steal lots of up-close glances at the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings... very nice. We wondered through Saks Fifth Avenue (wow, dresses, wow) and Tiffany's (wow, diamonds, wow), peeped in on Grand Central Station and stopped for lunch at the the nice Rue 57, lots of brass and mahogany and a scrumptious yellowfin tuna salad.

We headed for Central Park, which was full and lively with it being such a beautiful day. We found a spot in the two and half mile expanse of greenery and lake, and relaxed and read for a while. Buskers, ball games, picnics and Frisbee were in full swing, and it really is lovely to be able to wonder into this huge green space in the middle of Manhattan, where you can hear the birds and have the tree trunks blind you from the streaks of yellow cab whizzing by on Fifth Avenue, while the skyscraper skyline hovers above the trees.

The Museum of Modern Art was next and the few hours we spent in there went very quickly indeed. I was speechless for much of the time as we wondered from Van Gough's Starry Night to Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy. I was rendered particularly dumbfounded by the Water Lilies triptych, over twelves metres wide, I haven't seen art at this scale before and I quickly found myself floating away amongst the clouds in Monet's water-lily pond. Its hard to see everything in a place that is regarded as the leading museum of modern art in the world, but we squeezed in some of photographic collections too, which was nice. I didn't dare to raise my camera lens to these magnificent works of art, and was a little annoyed by those who did. Many weaved their way through the galleries, eyes glued to their viewfinders. If you want to be mesmerised by Monet you have to see the brush strokes with your own eyes. I did eventually reach for my camera and at the end of the evening, happily snapped away at fellow MoMA visitors, as we soaked in the atmosphere and regained sensation in our legs.

We had dinner at a Korean place called Cho Dang Gol, which I later discovered has raving reviews and is pretty well known for its authenticity and value. It definitely was an adventure, the photo doesn't do justice to the food, and it only captures about half of the array of delicacies that were placed in front of us while we waited for our main course. Lots of heat and spice, ended off our day very nicely.

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)