MiKE: Spending Money

So, Serene moved here. She's got a job offer and will have the details worked out soon. Which meant that she and all her stuff needed to be accommodated here. Which meant we needed more horizontal surfaces upon which to put stuff on. Which meant that we needed to get to a cheap-ish furniture shop to get stuff. Which meant Ikea, especially since I had in mind the Ivar shelving unit, being pretty wide, tall, sturdy, deep enough to be useful, but not so deep that it gets in the way. But more of that later.

Her flight was actually cancelled the day it was supposed to fly due to the heavy snowstorm here. She arrived the next day, on a Monday, when snow was still piled really high at the traffic junctions, so there was an interesting obstacle course of sorts to clear. Other pedestrians before us had somewhat cleared a small footpath by stomping down the snow, but that was not wide enough for the suitcase, so we had to carry the bags up and above the snow. Fortunately, it was only across one or two crossings that we had to do this. Even after only a day, the snow was getting quite filthy at some areas, especially those that were highly trafficked. Which made me wonder - where does all this dirt go to normally?

You can see the high contrast between the snow that was just ploughed off the street overnight, and the stuff that the vehicles drive over. Not pretty:

A shot of Serene, 'for scale'... :

Seems like this guy is not about to get his bike out from the snow anytime soon...

I found the little mounds of snow on the steps of the sculpture pretty interesting:

This were the kinds of pavements we had to walk on to get around. This day, we were on our way to the Whole Foods Market, to get coffee (they roast their coffees there daily!) and some other stuff.

Serene came with one large suitcase, one large duffel bag, one laptop bag, and one small duffel bag. At St. Louis, she had a friend help her bring the stuff to the airport; she could not have coped without the help; and then, all that stuff was to be incorporated into the bachelor apartment that I was renting. Amazingly, among the stuff she managed to bring across were a 'memory foam' pillow, and a body pillow; the body pillow as large as two ordinary pillows end-to-end. These were compressed with the aid of gigantic ziploc bags and a vacuum cleaner. Most impressive and voluminous was the comforter that she somehow also managed to squeeze into the suitcase. We spent much of the first day and a half unpacking and arranging stuff in the apartment, straining the limits of whatever storage space that was available in the apartment, watching and hoping that the weak looking shelf in the wardrobe could hold the suitcases that we filled loosely with stuff like the backpacks and some other summer clothing that we would not be using for a while. After managing to squeeze all that stuff into the place, the image that became stuck in my head was that of a anaconda, swallowing a baby hippo whole, and then slowly digesting the hippo till it was no more. We both felt somewhat nostalgic/romantic; the situation reminded us of hostel living again, everything in one room, prompting us to nickname the place hostel room on steroids.

So, on the third day after she came, after a failed second attempt to open a bank account for her (first, we wanted a joint account, and initially wanted to modify mine, but the avenue road branch said we could only do it at the spadina avenue branch where I opened my account; second time, I forgot to bring two acceptable forms of ID), we decided to go to Ikea, which involved taking a long ride to the outskirts of downtown Toronto (Kipling station from Spadina, which is like Jurong West from City Hall), and then taking a free shuttle service to Ikea. When we got there, it was dark (the sun had set at 5), so we were looking around, trying to find the location of the free shuttle pickup location. Kipling station is designed as a bus/train interchange, with the subway tracks at the basement level, and the buses on the ground level. We were thinking at first that the Ikea bus could be at the same bus bays as the other buses, and then realized that it was unlikely, as the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) would probably not share facilities like this, and we could not find any bus bay labelled for the Ikea bus. We tried our luck with the staff at the variety store (which sold sweets, drinks, snacks, magazines, and was stereotypically, run by an Indian family), and got a curt response to 'go down two floors', thought they were joking, as we could not imagine a level below the subway level for buses, but went there anyway, found an exit to a carpark, no sign of a waiting area, went back to the station master, and got a more courteous response to wait at the carpark for the bus.

And we did. In 0ºC weather. With occasional breezes that really got us freezing, and making up our minds to buy more competent gear. There was still no signpost of any sort to indicate that we were at the right place, just 5 or 6 other people waiting at the same place. In my mind I pictured a bright cheery yellow and contrasting blue bus, but when it came, it was a nondescript shuttle that did not even bother to put up a sign to say "Ikea" or something. We boarded, asked the driver if he was indeed driving us to Ikea, got an affirmative, then sat down to defrost.

Ikea Etobicoke, the closest Ikea to downtown Toronto, was surprisingly similar to the one at Alexandra Road, Singapore. Huge blue building, with attached warehouse, two floors, and parking in the basement, the restaurant on the left of the entrance which is, as in Singapore, on the second floor, right next to the kids room department, and the staircase downstairs to the kitchen department. I don't know how much of it is coincidence, but it sure seemed like this was the default template for Ikeas around the world. And on the menu? Meatballs, Salmon, Gravad Lax, and some local food (which in Toronto means stuff like quiche). The food trays were even similar, if not identical, and also the food ordering and payment queue layout. Perhaps the only major difference was that of space. Looking out of Ikea Alexandra's restaurant, one sees Anchorpoint a short distance away. At Etobicoke, one sees the huge parking lot, and beyond it, a very major highway. At the ground floor, where in sg you'd have a small warehouse section where you pick your own boxed furniture, here the warehouse sprawled out at least 3-5 times in floorspace, and had a ceiling about 4 stories tall, and shelving racks meant for forklifts.

We got our stuff, paid up, then lugged the Ivar shelf frame and 5 shelves up the shuttle bus, and through the TTC subway all the way back to our apartment. Setting it up, I had it all almost complete when I realizd that the cross brace was the wrong size; we had to go back and get it changed. The next day, we went there again, and this time, we remembered to bring a camera. Pictures:

A shot of Ikea from within the bus. The front façade looks remarkably clean of snow.

... because it had been shoveled and piled onto a huge mound at the back of the building:

Us having lunch, at the restaurant which cannot help but invoke deja vu:

The landscape outside the station is quite ugly, with electricity pylons and overhead cables everywhere. Still, the colors of the setting sun do manage to rescue the scenery somewhat:

Phew. Long post. This is a result of procrastinating, I guess.