ReNe: the gst and pst

I wonder if the locals get irritated by the way goods and services are taxed here? I'm referring to the fact that the price you see on the tag is usually pre-tax, and taxes like 5% GST (Goods and Services Tax) and 8% PST (Provincial Sales Tax) are then calculated at the cashier. I think the tax should be worked into the price of an item, otherwise the price can be pretty misleading. In that sense, what Singapore did (making it mandatory for taxes to be shown with the price on the tag) made sense. (Another thing to rant about is this fondness for prices to be ending with 9 cents.)

But surely, it's not too difficult to simply add a 13% tax onto whatever your buy, ignoring the psychological aspect of thinking that an item at $3.99 seems a lot cheaper than it's actual price of $4.15? Not really; to make matters more complex, not all items are subject to GST and/or PST. If we buy something from a supermarket chain like Dominion, it's usually quite simple -- add an that additional 13% onto the total. But we usually shop at Chinatown, Koreatown and organic food shops, and it becomes more complicated.

Take Chinatown and Koreatown grocers. Not all shops charge tax. It doesn't seem to be a matter of size because some small grocers charge tax and some big grocers don't. Also, not all items are taxed, or taxed equally; for example, we just came back from shopping at PAT. The only thing on the entire list that was taxed was the Pocky (imported from Japan), but the Bulgogi marinade (Korea), rice vermicelli (Vietnam), dried udon (Japan), vegetables and meat (from all over) were all not taxed. At one Chinatown shop that sells household goods, on the receipt, the store seems to be divided into two major departments, non-taxed and GST+PST taxed (sure makes their inventory accounting easy). At the organic food shops, bulk produce doesn't seem to be taxed. And depending on the store I buy my half-and-half cream from, the tax seems to be optional.

I am not sure why.

ReNe: the fuss about summer camp

When summer came round, I started to notice this thing called 'summer camp'. At first I paid no attention to it; I figured it was probably much like the school camps back in Singapore, where you send a class of kids away to some chalet in Pasir Ris for a few days. But then I started to think, maybe it's a lot bigger than that.

There were the advertisements everywhere; there were even the charity calls for donations so that less privileged kids can be sent to summer camp. I was mystified. Why were there huge posters in the bus-stops about summer camp? And why was it a huge deal that money be donated so that a kid can go to summer camp? I mean, I seriously doubt the kids would die if they don't go to summer camp...

I saw a young teenage boy busking a few times; his sign read, "Send me to summer camp."

And then, there was the news story a few weeks back about a girl in Quebec who was grounded by her father because she was caught on an online dating site (she was underaged, 14 I believe). Fair enough right? Part of the grounding includes not being able to go for a 3-day school trip. She was so pissed (particularly about the school trip) she took her father to court... and won. I'm just flabbergasted. Apparently the lynch-pin in the argument was that of the school trip; that it was some really important event in a young teenage girl's life.

There were also the numerous NY times articles. For example, camps that cost $10,000 for tuition (sounds like a university education), policing checks on conselors' web pages, summer theatre camps, and so on.

Am I missing something out here? Is summer camp like some terribly crucial teenage rite of passage, like the prom night? (Again, prom night here is a cultural phenomenon. I guess we can't really grasp its significance merely from movies and other media. Singaporean JC kids try to emulate the hype but sometimes it falls really flat. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas when you're not even Christian.)

So I asked some colleagues. They were like, nah, it's no big deal. It's just something for working parents to send their kids to get them out of their hair over summer holidays. They seemed a little embarrassed and changed the topic quickly.

Ok... so I guess (and these are all my personal conjectures) it's more the media hype than anything else. I guess summer camp is a big deal but not that big a deal. And I'm also guessing that, like many teenage experiences, it was probably a huge thing back then, but when you're twenty-plus and looking back, you wonder why and what you worked yourself all up for.

ReNe: the dumbness of 2-pin sockets

One of the things that irks me is the use of two-pin electrical socket. It was irritating when I first got here, and downright irritating now after many months. I think that the fact that most plugs here (with the exception of big appliances like the microwave) are two-pin means that the earthing pin is missing, and that's a little worrying. But what's irritating is that sockets here do not have a switch; this means that for appliances without a built-in on/off switch, the only way to turn the appliance off is to pull the plug. Or pay money for a power strip, and it's only the more expensive power strips that have that on/off switch.

I think it's quite dumb. Never mind that, one would think that given that limitation at the wall socket, people would then design appliances with on/off switches, right? Not really. We actually have a lamp that requires the wire to be pulled from the socket to turn it off. Even appliances like the kettle and coffee grinder have a blue LED light going when not in use, continually sucking up a small but continual drain of electricity. No wonder the power consumption in North America is so high. So when environmentally friendly messages go, "save energy! turn off your appliances!", that means you probably have to bend down or crawl behind the fridge to, literally, pull the plug. No wonder many people don't bother. The 3-pin plug and wall socket with a switch seems like a much brighter idea to me.

ReNe: summer solstice

Today is the longest day of the year -- the summer solstice. In Toronto, today, the sun rose at 5:36am and will set tonight at 9:03 am, resulting in 15 hours and 26 mins (and 46seconds) of daylight.

(I'm not sure what counts exactly as 'sunset' because I've noticed that even as late as 9:30pm, there's still quite a fair bit of light in the sky. This far up north, as compared to the tropics, it takes the sun a long time to set.)

Toronto is very lively in the summer. Last week we went to the Luminato festival, and upcoming festivals we hope to catch include Pride Week and a Toronto Jazz Festival.

The nice thing with the long hours is that we get plenty of time to do stuff and enjoy all these festivals. Last Saturday, we lazed around until we finally hauled our ass out of the door at 2pm. We cycled down to Mill Street to catch a food fair, one of the many events held as part of the Luminato festival. The food was a bit pricey and disappointing, but the Distillery district had gorgeous architecture and some funky shops. We then cycled down to St Lawrence Market to pick up a sandwich before catching the ferry to the Toronto Islands, where the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC) was taking place. It was fun to gawk at the cyclists zooming past with odd-sized FedEx boxes stuffed in their messenger bags, and the race-hub/meeting point felt more like a rock concert than a race administration area. Cyclists and friends lounged on the grass, lean and tanned, often tattooed and pierced, as a live band played on. The atmosphere was competitive but in a rough and fun way -- we cycled past a checkpoint for the racers, where a big sign hung, "Park here, stupid!" By then, it was past five and the sun and our mood was still high, so we hopped over to the Waterfront, where many of the Luminato events were held as well (the events were spread out over the Waterfront and Distillery districts). We caught a free film (Whale Rider) and it was great. When we emerged from the theater at 8:10pm, the sky was still bright. We wandered around, listened to yet more live music (everywhere we went, it seems there was a stage set up and some band playing) and though about hanging around to catch some fire performance, but we were rather tired by then so we headed back. Later that night, I found out that the World Naked Bike Ride also took place that day; we were quite disappointed to have missed it.

Rene: summer fools you into doing more

In winter, people moan about the 'winter blahs' that result from short daylight hours.

I'd like to add the concept of 'summer fatigue', due to the long daylight hours.

It's very deceiving, the longer daylight hours that is. For over 3 decades, we've been used to the sun setting at 7:20pm, give or take a few minutes, and we've structured our day to the level of light outside and not the clock. Now, we look out and think, it's about five-ish, plenty of time to run errands and plus, it's not yet time for dinner. In reality, it's already seven.

So we'd end up doing too much during the daytime, having a late dinner, and then because we're used to lounging around for a few hours before bed, we'd go to bed late. I think people here in Canada tend to do more during the day because daylight (and warmth) is a precious commodity, but we're used to taking it easy during the day in Singapore (because it's effing hot) and doing most things at night. Those hours between dinner and bed are quite important and necessary to us.

No wonder we're tired. Summer fools you into doing more.

ReNe: our place is a greenhouse

One of the things that we're astounded and confounded by is the weather (as compared to what we were used to in Singapore). More precisely, the temperatures and the rate at which it changes, as well as the delta's. A week ago, temperatures were in the low twenties, then a heat wave spike temperatures over the weekend to over 30C. As average winter tempeartures can drop to -20C and summers 25C, that's a annual delta of 45 degrees; if we consider the record low of -30C last Feb and 31C last weekend, that makes it a delta of 61C!

30C? That's standard fare in Singapore. When people tell us summers here in Toronto will be "unbearably hot and humid", we scoffed. It surely can't beat the weather in the tropics, we thought.

But we forgot a couple of important points. One, after many months, we've been too well-acclimatized to the cold that Canada is famous for. Two, the houses here are designed to maximize warmth -- they are well-insulated and have large windows with tiny openings. Our current place, for example, has a fairly big window and skylight, but the actual area that can be opened to ventilate constitutes about 30% of the large window, which is about 1m by 40cm or so.

In short, it's a effing greenhouse.

We ended up taking cold showers about three times a day. There's no air-conditioning here; poor rentals are too cheap-skate to include air-conditioning as part of the rent. I'm actually fine with that, as the outside temperature isn't too unbearable and it saves on electricity, but why don't they build in better windows and ventilation then?! Will it kill the building's insulation capacity to have windows that actually open wider?

Happily, it stormed last night, cooling the air significantly. But, like I said, ventilation in this place is poor and sleeping in the bed-loft in warm weather is murder, as warm air rises. We brought the fan up but all it does is blow hot air at us. After tossing for an hour last night, a headache and stuffy feeling steadily building, I gave up and insisted we sleep on the futon 'downstairs', which is beside the only opened window.

The new laminate floor is nice and cool... if summer continues like this, we would probably end up sleeping on the floor instead.

ReNe: stud-finder

We went to a house-warming today. At some point in the evening, Mike found a small instruction booklet for a stud-finder, and asked, "What's this?"

The Canadians were amazed. "You mean you've never seen one of these before?"

And so, the host dug out his stud-finder for Mike to play with.

For the Singaporeans, a stud finder is a handheld device used to determine the location of framing studs used in light-frame (wood) construction after the walls have been installed. The houses in Canada tend to be made of wood, and so, if you want to hang something heavy, you would need to drill right into those studs for adequate support. Most of the interior walls are gypsum boards and a hole drilled into those boards can't hold too much weight.

I found it particularly funny because at that point, everyone was standing around in the basement, talking about their own stud-finder and differences in house architecture between various countries.

In Singapore, most people stay in flats (apartments) and those are made from concrete. Even houses are built with concrete. Mostly. Adequate support for hanging up stuff is not the problem -- an adequate drill is, especially with the newer, taller flats that have many reinforced concrete pillars. Mike knows from personal experience that most consumer-level drills are not enough for reinforced concrete; you'd need a professional grade pneumatic hammer drill for that. However, concrete is too cold for Canada's weather, and wood is a better choice for building material. The host, who was from Australia, commented that most houses there are made from bricks and a wooden house is generally considered of poorer quality.

Googling online, wood is five times more insulating than brick, and 12.5 times more than concrete. R-value is a measure of heat conductivity, and wood has an R value of 1. Brick has an R-value of 0.2, and concrete 0.08.

Thus, we learned something new tonight.

ReNe: rented or owned, it's still your home

Adding to Mike's comments about doing up our new place...

As rentals go, this is quite different from the rentals we've stayed in so far. Usually, tenants are discouraged from doing any sort of permanent work to the room, but looking at this place, it's obvious that more than one tenant had felt free to make changes. In addition to the previous colored walls and artwork painted directly onto the walls, there are a couple of CD holders drilled into the wall under the bed loft, and a folding table by the main door, which incidentally was installed badly. Right now, we're scratching our heads over what to do with it -- re-install or not? If not, what do we do about the holes? Patch up and paint over, or find some wall scroll to cover, and then shove a table or bookshelf against it?

I'm amazed at the artwork on the walls. I think the tall 'painting' on the stairs was done by a fairly recent tenant (I found leftover skirting board in the closet, which was obviously used to create the frame), and looking around the apartment, it just seems to exudes bohemian vibes. I don't think the last tenant was the one who painted the wall artworks because he's apparently in the computer industry, but the reason he left was to go on a long, long tour around the world. A good omen, I'd say.

And, there are the hooks. There are hooks everywhere, of all sorts. There are three generously sized hooks over the main door (we've no idea what for), singular little screws here and there (I suspect for hanging artwork, because they're at eye-level), and at least five hooks in the ceiling, and a couple more under the loft.

On one hand, we're really glad to be able to customize our living space. Having owned apartments in Singapore, we've gotten used to the luxury of being able to do anything we want without having to 'seek permission'. The past two rentals I've stayed in the past year felt extremely temporary, like hostel rooms and not like a home, so I'm really looking forward to moving to this new place.

On the other hand, we're also wary of spending too much, as this is just a rental after all. There are still many things we wish to change (leaky faucets, a fridge so old it's not frost-free), but these fall under the responsibility of the building owner.

However, there are renters who would spend a lot of their own money on permanent improvements to the rental -- I'm talking hundreds, even thousands, spent on built-in cabinetry, appliances, landscaping in the garden, and so on. Their reasoning is that if they're planning to spend years in that apartment, they wouldn't mind paying to improve their living space. Also, for some, whether it's a restriction due to limited finances or a conscious choice, they would be living in rentals all their lives. Does this mean they will never live in a beautiful home? Somebody said it aptly: rented or owned, it's still your home.

That's a really interesting way of looking at it. At the other end of the spectrum, there are renters who have literally spent years living out of suitcases and boxes, always moving, never settling.

Personally, I think that if the rent is cheap enough, you could justify channeling the 'savings' towards doing up your pad. I would spend a bit, but certainly not thousands. Plus, there are ways to make-do or decorate without spending a lot of money.

More later. We've been remiss in updating because we're fricking tired. And I still had to go to work after spending the weekend painting...

ReNe: a new pan

A mundane post today because I'm quite tired at the moment. We bought a new saucepan today.

As always, easier said than done. We've been toying with the idea of getting a new one for a while as the current pan is slightly too shallow, but recently, the number of scratches has increased almost exponentially and the base is permanently stained now. Suddenly, there was a sense of urgency. And since we're buying a new pan, we don't want another teflon-coated pan, so probably a stainless steel pan. Mike wanted a cast-iron pan but I flatly refused because those things weigh a ton.

We had a look at some of the pans at Sears but while there were a couple of nice pans on offer, they were still really expensive, around $75-80. In the end, we went down to Ikea today after work, where we got a reasonable stainless steel pan for $30.

We both commented on something odd while waiting for the shuttle bus at Ikea, something we noticed the last times we were at Ikea as well -- it really feels like we're in a different country. Of course we are in a place foreign to us, but why should the strangeness strike us so starkly at that point in time, at Ikea? We were hard-pressed to explain. Perhaps it's Ikea itself -- the layout is almost the same as that of the Ikea store in Singapore, down to the location of the restaurant and kids area, but unlike the one in Singapore, this is more spacious and much, much less crowded. Even the food, and cutlery and tray and all, served at the restaurant are mostly the same, and yet there is no fighting for tables, no maître d' with a headset directing customers; in fact, the restaurant was less than a third full and it was around dinner time. Perhaps this strange juxtaposition of the familiar and strange created a sense that something was 'off', and that something is that we're in a foreign land.

So we eventually got ourselves a nifty new saucepan, and we're pretty pleased. This means no more unintended consumption of plastic (teflon).

ReNe: spring flowers

Though I like plants, I'm not a botanist. I like to look and enjoy but not to name. Still, I've just noticed something really interesting about spring.

With the warming temperatures, the green is coming back. No surprise there. What is a surprise is that, for some species of trees and bushes, it is the flowers that come up first, before the leaves. Maybe this is very common knowledge for people who've grown up in at the temperate latitudes, but since I came from a tropical country, I've always seen plants with leaves on them -- a leafless plant is a dead plant -- and I've always thought that the leaves come first (the plant has to make food after all) and the flowers are seasonal. In the tropics, after a hot stretch, a heavy downpour would then render the air heavy and lush with a floral perfume; I think it's either the raintree or angsana. That was my experience of the flower blooming season.

Therefore, flowers blooming in spring was, to me, has no physical sense. (Spring, to me, was also an intellectual concept till now.) That's the first point. The second point was, I certainly was not expecting the flowers before the leaves. The past week, I've noticed bushes and trees that were literally covered in flowers, which bloom in a matter of days. A few days later, the leaves started to appear. But not all species do this, only some.

The photo really should have been taken a couple of days earlier, but even here, it's obvious that the flowers are in full bloom while the leaves are only starting to unfurl.

A couple of other things I noticed about spring include the wildly fluctuating temperatures and the sunshine. Last week I wrote about how we seem to have skipped past the single digit temperatures and hurtled right into summer-like temperatures; looks like I spoke too soon. This week, the temperatures dropped back into the single digits. Coupled with the winds -- have I mentioned how windy Toronto is? -- it's freezing. And talking about the sunshine; the transition from winter to spring seem to involve a sunlight switch. Suddenly, it was as if the sunlight was switched on. Very strange.

ReNe: transport strike

We didn't notice it at first because there were cleaning works going on in the garage downstairs (right under our window on a Saturday morning!), but the streetcars were not running.

It turned out that the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) went on strike last night, Saturday 12am. A bit of background here: The union has been in a legal strike position since April 1 but had promised 48 hours' notice of a service withdrawal. Last Monday, the TTC were supposed to go on strike but a last minute deal was reached between the union and the provincial government, and services ran as normal on Monday. Therefore, this was a rather dramatic surprise. There was no advance notice; the talks broke down around 10pm last night when the last vote was cast and the only warning was a public service announcement at 11:30pm before the strike started at midnight. Commuters were literally left high and dry, as normal services usually ran till 2am. News of the strike were all over the local newspapers, of course.

We were not too affected as we don't usually take public transport. We thought it'd be quiet because of the lack of clanking and rattling, but the very noisy cleaning works downstairs continued for the better part of the day.

To be frank, we were a little excited and bemused because strikes don't happen in Singapore. A lot of things don't happen in Singapore -- natural disasters, seasons, strikes -- so one tends to build up an overly high expectation. The actual event is generally a lot less dramatic. Of course the fact that we were not affected helps keeps this experience exciting and not irritating. Will a deal be reached by Monday morning? Do we want to see the strike extended into next week? To be really, really honest?

*sniggers*

Well, tongue-in-cheek of course. There are a lot of people badly affected by the strike and those are the people who can least afford it.

Nothing like a little bit of drama to go with your morning news.

ReNe: the clothesline ban

Ontario will soon overrule the current regulation that outlaw clotheslines because they're considered unsightly.

Personally, I've always thought the ban ridiculous. When I first moved to St Louis, I didn't know that most places in North America, apparently, have such regulations. My apartment had a balcony and St Louis was hot and dry. Wet laundry hung out, especially at the height of summer, dried in less than two hours. Even the heavy cottons. Stepping out onto the balcony was like stepping out into a furnace; summer temperatures in St Louis were sometimes over 40C (100F)!

'Perfect for laundry', I thought. 'Strange. I wonder why nobody else is drying their clothes out and saving money?'

Much, much later, I found out that you're not supposed to do it. And it's not like, oh, you shouldn't pick your nose in public because it's unsightly but nobody will catch and fine you if you do. There's actually a law in place forbidding clotheslines for purely aesthetic reasons. I guess I was lucky nobody reported me? And I meant that sarcastically.

I wonder if the clothesline ban applies to drying racks as well?

Dryers account for 5 to 6 per cent of Ontario's household electricity demand. An average machine consumes about 900 kilowatt-hours of energy each year and results in the discharge of up to 840 kilograms of air pollution and greenhouse gases. Each dryer adds about $90 a year to a household's electricity bill. [from the same article]

Mike and I approximate 2 laundry loads a week, that's $3 saved by not using the coin dryer. This works out to $144 a year. And that's just the monetary cost. Clothes also last longer when air-dried. Most importantly, it's more environmentally friendly, and you can't put a price tag to that. (Well, I know people do try, but quantifying unquantifiables seems silly to me.)

I wonder what North Americans think of the laundry bamboo poles that are ubiquitous over many parts of Asia? While searching for such an image, I came across the following in an article, and it's about Singapore. Nice!


Yes, that photo above (on the left) looks just like our first flat. It's not too ugly, is it? Charming, in a ugly-but-full-of -character way. I used to hang out bamboo poles like that; really worked out my deltoids. I'm proud to say I can carry a pole with a wet quilt cover on it, from only one end, and stick it out of the window into the little bamboo pole holder. Sometimes it's pretty windy but I've never dropped a pole, which is good, because dropping a pole of wet laundry from the 14th floor is Not Done.

But there were problems too. Inconsiderate people hanging out dripping clothing... dripping mops, even buckets... killer litter... often, flats were so tiny people 'extended' their storage space outside and hung everything from cleaning equipment to plants. I even had curry on my clothes before. A neighbor opposite my place set up an awning (like those shop awnings) to protect their laundry, an obviously home-made structure hanging out of their window on the fourteenth floor. People below yelling obscenities at the people living above. Still, like most events past, selective amnesia sets in and you tend to look back at such memories with considerably more fondness than they warranted. Ah, nostalgia.

Note: April 19 is apparently National Hanging Out Day in North America. Because hanging clothes out to dry is so amazing.

ReNe: dried up sugar

So even though I'm in a different country, it's still Earth. I expect to get startled by culture differences, but once in a while, I get startled by something else entirely.

In Singapore, one keeps biscuits and other crunchies in air-tight containers quickly (that is, within 20 mins) after opening, otherwise they get soggy. Here? Let me put it this way -- one keeps stuff in containers to keep them moist or damp. The other day, I finished our container of demerara sugar (the brown, sticky-damp sugar used mainly in coffee) and at the bottom was a layer of dried, rock-hard sugar. The formerly damp sugar *dried* out. Soft cookies, breads and muffins, I've noticed, will dry out as well.

The thing that tends to startle me more than culture shocks are environmental shocks, when 'natural' laws *change*. When the sugar dries out, when temperatures fluctuates by more than 20 degrees from day to day, when the time of sunset changes every single day... Simply shocking.

ReNe: rojak and pineapple tarts

Back in Singapore, I thought it was pretty easy to buy Asian food and groceries, even those that are not Chinese, Malay or Indian. We shopped at Japanese supermarkets and thought they had good selections. The wet market was 5 mins from our flat. That was in Singapore. 'Crossroads of Asia' or something like that.

Here in Toronto, it's even easier. Living so close to Chinatown and Koreatown, we often go to Asian-focused stores to buy groceries. Compared to Singapore, the range of Japanese and Korean foodstuffs here is much wider, especially Korean, and often cheaper. We're also impressed by the selection of Chinese foodstuffs. The grocers in C-town even smell authentic, that is to say they stink familiarly. (That's not really a compliment...)

I might have commented before that groceries here in North America is usually cheaper than Singapore (stuff is really cheap in St Louis, and even in Toronto, not as pricey as I feared), and that is probably because a lot of the produce are grown locally (within the same country, if not the same state). To that observation, I can add Asian groceries, which is odd because a lot are imported. Interestingly, Asian foodstuffs that are made on this side of the world have an interesting tendency to be either made in the local C-town or K-town, or California...

That said, there are things we miss. South-east Asian stuff is hard to come by. Spring rolls (fried or fresh) are so common but not popiah. Or rojak. Or pineapple tarts. Mike would probably say or-jian.

ReNe: rainbow triangles

A quick comment. Because I am not as wont to rant and ramble as MiKE. Because this is one subject I can rant on if I don't restrain myself.

I've been noticing something recently. It's probably not a big deal in Canada anymore (?) but it is for me for its noticeable absence in Singapore.

Acceptance. And I refer specifically to acceptance of sexualities other than heterosexuality, though Canada is generally more liberal than Singapore in so many ways.

Here, I often see the little (sometimes not so little) upside down rainbow triangles that are the flag for University of Toronto's positive space movement what the pink ribbon is for breast cancer. LGBT, or GLBT, stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered/Transsexual. The rainbow flag is a pretty well-known international symbol of gay and lesbian Pride, while the inverted triangle was used to mark homosexuals in the concentration camps of Hitler's Third Reich; pink for gays and black for lesbians (and female dissidents and prostitutes). It is fairly ironical that both the pink and black triangles have now been adopted by many in the gay community as symbols for their cause.

I see more openly homosexual couples, I see positive articles in the news and I see ads in the subways for *both* hetero- and homosexual singles. And I find it all extremely heartening in contrast to Singapore, when this openness would be frowned upon or swept under the carpet. Let me not even go on about the Staid Times. Singapore claims to be progressive and cosmopolitan.... Ha.

I also see a lot more sex shops and I love that too. What's wrong with an open attitude towards sex? We all wouldn't be here if not for sex. Just yesterday, Mike and I walked past an adult shop with live models in lingerie in the front windows. Awesome.

[Aside, I find it hard to compare St Louis. I have not been in St Louis long enough to form a concrete opinion; at times it seems more conservative than Singapore, at times less, so I would assume it is about the same? However, though the time I have spent in Canada is even shorter, the contrast (to Singapore) is far more obvious.]

ReNe: who left the fridge door open?

It's hard to believe that it was over 100F (40C) just 2 weeks back.

It had rained on and off over last weekend, lowering the temperature to about 80F. By Monday, the rain stopped and the skies cleared to a cloudless blue, but the temperatures continue to fall. Yesterday, it was in the sixties, and today, when I woke up, it was freezing. By now, I had already pulled out my new microfleece comforter but I still sleep with the balcony door open. Pulling the door close as soon as I got up this morning, I checked the temperature. Since I don't have a thermometer (yet), I checked the weather forecast on my MBP (MacBook Pro).

49F (9C)! That's actually 10 degrees lower than Toronto right now! According to the forecast, the temperature today will range from 43 to 77F.

This is rather disconcerting. I keep thinking my internal body thermometer must be broken or something because it's brilliantly sunny outside.

I need a thermometer.

ReNe: cannot study, stationery suck

So I hunkered down tonight to start organizing my class notes.

Cracked open a $3.99 notebook I bought from home depot (after much, much looking for a suitable size, type, etc... so much so when I saw a suitable looking one, I bought it on the spot), and realized that the notebook sucks. The ring, one long copper spiral and not individual rings, was tucked into itself at the end. This means that the ring-bound notebook cannot be opened 360 degrees, which was the REASON why I spent so much time looking for a ring-bound in the first place. Then I looked closely at the paper and it's thin, rough and of generally poor quality.

Why did I pay $3.99 for it again?

Last weekend, I was at Walmart and I saw notebooks going for 10 cents. Same quality paper, practically.

So I was complaining to Mike about the general poor quality of the stationery here, because the pens I've been getting suck too, and he had the same experience.

Now, I don't think we present a good sampling of the stationery quality in North America, and I have to add the big caveat that I haven't been in all that many bookstores here yet, but it does seem that stationery isn't that huge a deal here. Walk into the co-op in NUS or Popular bookstore or any neighborhood store back in Singapore, and the stationery rack is prominent and well-stocked. Here, at least at the bookstores on campus, it's a bit more well-hidden, a bit less stocked.

That's not to say the bookstores here are small. No, they're huge. They have Starbucks (med campus), multiple floors (main campus), textbooks, fiction and non-fiction that has absolutely nothing to do with coursework, couches and tables by the side to read these (exactly like in Borders), magazines and calenders, clothing of all sorts (both campuses but especially the main campus, and all branded with the Wash U name and logo; on the med campus, the 'medical campus' is prominent), art supplies (main campus), medical supplies (med campus, includes scrubs, white coats, even stethoscope). There are banners, cups, gold-plated pen stand, all sorts of little trinklets, all 'branded'.

I just want a good notebook and a good pen.

Well, it's not that bleak a picture for the pens. But the notebooks really do suck. I miss the (relatively cheap) Azone notebooks and the made-in-Japan pens. (I can't tell where the pens here are made in, but looking at a highlighter I nicked from the lab, it's made in Mexico.)

Here's an idea for a care package from Singapore... Anyone willing to send over a box of Azone notebooks and Japanese pens?

ReNe: seasons are turning

Coming from a place where the weather never really changes, experiencing the turn of seasons is quite novel for me.

A month ago, the sun starts to set around 8pm, and it gets fully dark at 8:30pm. Now, the sun starts to set at 7:30pm and it's fully dark by 8pm.

Oddly enough, it didn't seem, to me at least, a gradual transition, though it probably is. I just noticed it one day when I was at Schnucks, a supermarket near where I live. Normally I try to make it home before dark (for safety reasons), and I suddenly realized that the sun is setting earlier when I stepped out of the store and it was almost dark. Glancing at my watch, it just hit me -- days are getting shorter.

What is not a gradual transition though, and this is not simply my own observation, are the temperature changes. People say spring (or summer or fall or winter) can suddenly arrive; one day the temperature just changes dramatically. I noticed it today. Woke up with my feet *really* cold. It remained noticeably cooler throughout the day, even though it was as sunny as yesterday.

Perhaps this is a trivial observation for some and hardly noteworthy, but I found it interesting. Maybe I won't find it quite so interesting next year.

MiKE: Settling in, feeling poor.

After about a week here, I'm beginning to feel somewhat more optimistic, though at times there are moments of panic and depression, usually linked to the quickly diminishing wad of Canadian dollar bills, and the lack of sufficiently intimate human contact in this sea of people. No of course I am not talking about exchange of genetic information, or amylase containing solutions...

Like, for example, today, i was out shopping at Walmart. And I needed someone to give me the second opinion on what I should/ should not get. Nobody was there. Dinner? Alone. I always thought I was more of an introverted kind of person, and at least those MBTI kind of personality tests that I have taken have shown as much. But even so, I am now realizing just how much human contact I actually need. Which is not trivial, i'd say.

After the last blog entry, which was only about the first day, I managed to catch some sleep, 'reset the brain' a bit, to clear the mind, then went for a slightly less ambitious schedule, but still, managed to go bank rate shopping along Dundas St West, hopping, early in the morning from Bank of Montréal (at Bloor Street, first), which said that they would take 30 days to clear my cashier's cheque from Citibank Singapore (which therefore disqualified them from taking up my business), then to The Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto Dominion Canada Trust, then eventually at Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation.

For those who know Toronto, Dundas Street West is a major East-West street, which I started walking from University Avenue, all the way to Spadina. Chinatown, happens to be more or less centered around the Dundas - Spadina junction, and it is there that HSBC has its Chinese/Cantonese speaking branch at Chinatown Centre. After going through the rest of the banks, it was a pretty no-brainer to open an HSBC account - they were offering a 5% promotion interest rate on their SAVINGS account.

But before I managed to get to a banker, since the receptionist (a senior looking Chinese person who spoke to me in Cantonese first) had asked me to either wait until past 3 as the bankers were all held up, I went for lunch, and visited the Vietnamese restaurant next door. This was quite welcome, as I only had a wrap from Starbucks in the morning with my latte, which cost all of $10, and nothing else to eat till about 3pm. So, as expected, I over-ordered, got myself the XL sized (Canadian XL, not Vietnamese XL) special beef noodles with soup, and 2 shrimp spring rolls:


And I could not finish the noodles, and had to pack one of the rolls, which I eventually ate about 11 pm on my way back from OISE to Canadiana. I was there late cos they have 24 hour free access to the computer services, which meant chatting and mail checking and whatever else one needs to do on a computer connected to the Internet.

Also on the same day, I managed to get myself a phone (a neat little Nokia 6300) and a phone plan with Fido, the competitor to Rogers (some tell me that Rogers owns Fido...) which did not stock many models of Nokias; also, I managed to meet Vincent, a Singaporean student studying sociology at the University of Toronto, and had dinner with him.

After being filled with Asian food, accomplishing some of the more pressing tasks that I needed to do, and meeting someone I could talk with natively, I began to feel somewhat better.

ReNe: traffic direction

At a BBQ last night, someone asked, "So what's the biggest culture shock so far?"

Both Mike and I were quick to think of the same thing -- the traffic direction. Vehicles in the US drive on the right-hand side of the road, while vehicles in Singapore follow the British system, which is the opposite. It was particularly notable for us since we used to ride back in Singapore and so it's rather disconcerting for us. For the first few days especially, whenever we sat in a vehicle and that vehicle made a turn, we kept having this nagging feeling that it was *wrong*, that the we should be turning into the *other* lane....

Oddly enough, right-hand driving aside, there wasn't a huge culture shock. Or maybe not yet. Or maybe I'm just numb myself because there are too many things new and happening, and the shockable part of my brain has already short-circuited.

Perhaps it's because the language is familiar. While the food here isn't our idea of comfort fare, it isn't terribly exotic either. In contrast, while we were in Japan, or Thailand, though the food and many customs were similar to what we are used to, continually hearing a foreign language constantly reinforces the fact that we're in a foreign country.

Or perhaps American culture has invaded the rest of the world to that extent.

So we're getting used to the vehicle direction and I'm still bracing for culture shock.