We're in!

Hi everyone. Just a little one for now. We have just moved in to our new place and unpacked and settled a bit. About to head out to check out the area and get food etc. We are very happy and excited. HA! : ) (photos to follow)

Vicki's Canadian Mastermind!

What follows are a few questions that Vicki Tough, friend of Roo since 1995, asked me. As you can see they are vital and probing and will provide an as yet hitherto unseen personal insight into my travels thus far!

• Q. What is your favourite Canadian chocolate?
• A. Wunderbar I think. It's like a peanut Boost!
  
• Q. What is your favourite Canadian food?
• A. Homefries are a cross between roast and sauteed tatties and you get them with breakfast; they are delicious.
  
• Q. What is your favourite Canadian word?
• A. So far it would have to be the classic 'Eh' after literally every sentence. It's so funny.
  
• Q. What is your favourite Canadian animal?
• A. I really like raccoons but although I can claim to have seen two, they weren't much more than skidmarks on the highway : (
  
• Q. Where are you right now?
• A. I was in my office at work when I read it but right now I am in Bill and Kath's dining room typing away, with Ceri sat beside me doing sudoku and intermittently looking at the AMAZING LIGHTNING out the window.
  
• Q. Have you seen the new Clash of the Titans movie?
• A. No, as yet we haven't been to the pictures but they are everywhere and really expensive. I trust I shall find a bargain somewhere, though.
  
• Q. What is your new address ?
• A. I shall send this privately to anyone who wants it. You never know who's listening - Mum's the word!

If anyone else has any questions then please do let me know. It's fun. It's like a game. We can play it together. Nice.

(I really fancy some Robinson's no added sugar Orange Squash...)

Today was my last 'Commute of Evil'. The last couple of days certain buses refused to turn up which meant I got home around 8 pm. This is not good since I was waiting for these buses from around 5pm. Ceri and I are spending our last night in Ajax tonight, however, and moving into the city proper tomorrow afternoon so this should be much better. My commute should be shorter and will be cheaper, Ceri will be able to hit the streets for work (not in that way, tsk - although I have already suggested it) on a daily basis and we will have our own space. Not to mention the fact that we can start to get to know the city and feel like we're actually independent (and snazzy).

To supplement my income I have been accepted as the voice of an iPhone cooking app which needed a British male to lend his dulcet tones for 20 lines of dialogue (in turn for $20 and lunch). This should be happening next week so I shall let you know how that goes. I think I'll be a natural. This weekend I'm going to try and earn $150 taking photos of three supermarkets for a retail research company in Massachusetts (it's random but worth 2 hours of my time). I am dragging Ceri into so we can split the money. I am well kind.

(I'm craving bourbons. Please help.)

My next blob will likely be from my new desk in my new room in my new house in downtown Ronters. I shall take photos and I'll show you; I'll show the lot o' ya!

Look after yourselves, and each other.

Peace out.

"What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."

I have just finished one of the greatest novels I have ever read. I am, as always, somewhat at a loss now as to what to do now.

Does anyone else feel that finishing a fantastic book feels like losing something? I figure that instead of being melodramatic and silly, I'd rather recommend the book to everyone!

I'm sure some of you will have read it already but if not, I urge you to pick up Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I can't really describe it; praising it would be too lengthy. Here's an excerpt; please get a copy and enjoy it.

"A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty.People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families,
friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers' days by forcing 'em to witness a grotesqueness."

Toilet roll is included in the rent...

Ceri and I have a place to live in Ronters! If you followed the confusion of the last post then it's the one we saw yesterday and liked but had to make a snap decision. He's lowered the rent and we move in next Saturday. It's awfully nice.

And guess what? Washing up liquid, toilet and kitchen roll and sponges (?) are included in the rent (so is the tinters and all utilities). It is a good one.

Oh, this is it:

It is on Bristol Avenue near Dufferin & Dupont, near Little Italy and a short bus journey to the lake/beach. Everyone is invited to help move us in. We have a bag each. Please do pop by...

Ceri adds: It has a veggie patch for growing, well, veggies, and there is a lovely rustic old bureau on one of the rooms that was going to be replaced but we said NO, so we need to fight over that still...

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

Y'ello!

I have now been working for a week. It is a good one. Now that I know people better and they know me I am enjoying having a laugh with some of them. Some of them don't laugh. Or if they do it's more like nervous laughter. The company I work for is one which buys loads of movies (and books) from the US and ships them to Canada where they get repackaged and then sent back across to the US or around Canada to be sold in big supermarkets.

My main task at the moment is sorting out a customs debacle; I am going over hundreds of custom forms and making sure all are reconciled with purchase orders that went out. Sounds dull but is a bit of a detective game. The other two days a week I spend with the merchandising manager doing replenishment and marketing. This is much more up my alley and I hope that once the customs stuff is done they will keep me on in the merchandising role but I am not holding my breath (because I'd probably suffocate first).

The final work-related point is that I am involved in the office pot luck. Since I am new they have given me the salad to provide. I'm thinking about making a rice/spinach/pine nuts/peppers etc salad. See what they think of that!

last weekend Ceri and I went to Unionville, a lovely little town North of Ronters where Bill and Kath meet their friends now and again. We met three other old-aged couples and had lunch which was lovely. There was a lot of food and a lot of banter. Most of them were Scottish which was a bit strange for Ceri; I don't think she's ever been surrounded by so many at once.

Yesterday, Saturday, Ceri and I went into the city to view some places to move into. It was absolutely exhausting and we walked most of it to the detriment of our feet which were worn down to nubs.

The first place we saw was in China town and absolutely ghastly. I got scared just looking around, imagining anyone having to live there. It was dingy and dirty and smokey and creepy and really, really depressing/sad. Someone was already living there! If you imagine the sort of place that may qualify as a cheap whore's final resting place after a run in with her drug-addled pimp, then you'll be close. Ceri walked around uttering such asides as 'Oh the kitchen's bigger than I thought' (it was basically a burnt out husk of an oven) and 'Oh, the furniture is included, nice' (it was anything but nice) and finally 'oh if it gets hot in the summer we can ask for the windows to be opened? That's handy'. I think I'd take a running jump out of the window if I lived there, whether it opened or not. Needless to say we won't be shortlisting that property.

The second one we saw was lovely. A huge house with a lovely garden and kitchen and living room, really lovely, idiosyncratic rooms completely furnished and in a fabulous location near the subway and downtown. The rent was higher than we were happy with but it was lovely.

The next one we never got to because the idiot landlord gave us mind-boggling directions and we felt like we were in a weird, surreal nightmare, jumping from bus to bus and streetcar to streetcar but never getting there. Eventually I phoned him and told him to stuff it. Prawn.

The last place we saw was out of town a bit, but it wasn't too hard to get to. It was very 'nice' and 'adequate' and 'clean' and 'bright' and well priced but that's the best one can say. We liked it but didn't feel that the price or the whole nice-ness really justified its out of town location. The kitchen didn't even have an oven, save for a little red toaster oven.

We still have a place to see on Tuesday which promises to be nice where we'd be living in a big house with a nice Irish guy who recently bought it and did it up and wants to share it with like-minded people. We are due to meet him on Tuesday but the house we liked yesterday is available now and he wants an answer NOW. He literally just emailed me as I'm writing this and said that he will reduce the rent if we can move in TODAY, or at least pay for it today. It was meant to be taken on May 1st but he let us see it because there were two of us and he'd prefer that over one person, but now he needs a decision. HELP! It's hard because I haven't been paid from work yet (Friday...) so it would totally wipe me out etc. We are debating now and have asked him for a compromise so watch this space.

Other than all of that, nothing much has happened, really. Work takes up my whole day from Monday to Friday but I am enjoying it, and yesterday was entirely spent on our feet walking from house to apartment to whores' den etc and today I am just relaxing.

How is everyone else? Send me an email to let me know how you are all doing, I would love to hear from you. Otherwise I am going to have to write to you personally and that just sounds tedious ; )

I shall keep you all posted regarding the house situation, I know it'll be the talk of GB. Remember: you heard it here first!