A picture from Summer 2005!

Here I am at the great wall of China! I was (and still am) afraid of heights, so I didn't go all the way up.

The Heat Is On

Everyone has a certain temperature range that he or she would consider to be his or her comfort zone. For me, that's the 15-20 degrees celcius range.

It's been nowhere near that in Toronto this summer.

This past week, it's been between 25 and 35 degrees. Worse still... I have no air conditioning. Needless to say, I've been so uncomfortable that I haven't been sleeping properly.

It's not that I am air-conditioner-less. It's that my air conditioner is sitting here unusable. When my last air conditioner, a 5200 BTU window unit, broke down (after the warranty expired of course!), I rediscovered just how inconvenient and annoying it is to install and uninstall window air conditioners. The blasted things are fairly heavy and quite bulky. Plus while you're trying to put in or remove the unit, your window is wide open and bugs can come flying into your room at will.

Last year, I had an incident where my room was swarming with flies. I had no idea how they got there, but when I came home from work one day, I opened my door and there were about 50 flies zooming around! I opened the window and most of them escaped through there. One theory is that one (or possibly more) came in through an open window and laid a bunch of eggs in a vent or something. I'm now extremely careful to keep my window closed at all times because there's no way I want to relive that episode.

To make a long story shorter, I discovered the magic of portable air conditioners. Admittedly, portable air conditioners are larger and heavier than a window unit. However, rather than sitting on your window ledge, they sit inside your room and connect to the window with a tube. The tube connects to a rectangular piece of hard plastic that is shaped to fit into your window so that the window can close most of the way and there will be no gaps for insects to enter through. How amazing is that?! So when the winter comes, I simply remove the plastic piece and the tube from the window and close the window. In the summer, I just stick the plastic piece in the window and pull the window against the plastic. So cool.

Portable air conditioners are a lot more expensive than window units, butin my opinion are well worth it. Plus, most portable ACs come with a dehumidifier built in, which I needed anyway. So I bought one.

It was amazing for the first month or so. Then in the second month, it started to cause the power to go out on my floor. How it worked so consistently well for so long then suddenly not at all for a few days straight is beyond me considering that in all the time that I had it, the amount of electricity being used on my floor had never increased.

One solution would be to use an extension cord and use the power from a different circuit. This would be great, except that I need a special air conditioner extension cord (regular cords are fire hazards) and the cord is not supposed to exceed 25 feet (or it will be a fire hazard). The outlet is in the room directly below mine. If I could drill a hole in the floor, I would not need more than 15 feet. In order to go from my room to the stairs, then down the stairs, and back over to the room under mine, I would need about 40-50 feet of cord.

Another solution would be to fix the wiring in the basement so that one of my outlets has its own circuit.

Well right off the bat, I can't use the 40-50 foot cord idea.
My landlady does not want to drill a hole in the floor (which I can accept), so the extension cord is not an option.
She also does not want to fix the wiring in the basement (this I don't agree with, but I obviously can't force her to do this).

Basically, I'm out of luck.

Sleepless in Seattle? Try Sleepless in Scarborough.

Another reason I don't live downtown...

Everyone who knows me well knows by now that I absolutely despise a few certain aspects of living in Toronto (or most other big cities). For those of you who don't, these main reasons are as follows:

1) Cost of Living
Houses in Toronto cost a ridiculous amount of money to buy. Based on my salary, I can only borrow about 1/3 to 1/2 the necessary amount of money from a bank. I hate to say this, but I almost need to see interest rates jump up to 30% overnight just so that some property goes into foreclosure. If that doesn't happen, I will have a very difficult time affording a house. Of course, house prices are obviously governed by the laws of supply and demand, as well as real estate agents who just want to make an extra buck. I wish it were legal for me to just tell the agent that I'd give him some money under the table if he could get me a price I'd be satisfied with. Anyways, with all these buyers in the market and only a limited number of sellers, it's no wonder that I need to figure out how to afford a house... which brings me to the next issue.

2) Massive, massive, rampant overpopulation
There are way too many people living here. There is no way to control the massive influx of people trying to move into this city. Everywhere you look, it's overcrowded. I wish there was some way to deter people from coming here too quickly. At the rate the city grows, the strain on various public services becomes greater and greater. There are never enough doctors. The lineups at government offices such as the passport office seem to get longer all the time. The crooks are probably slowly outnumbering the police. The pollution gets worse faster than the city's ability to deal with it. The list goes on and on.

I tell most people outside of Toronto to stay the hell away from the city because otherwise, it's bad for them and it's bad for me. I usually say this in the exact same way I tell people to stay the hell away from the field of Computer Science. There are simply WAY too many people in this field. It's making my life very difficult, and I almost guarantee that it will make the life of anyone who graduates with that degree very difficult as well. Despite what university recruiters tell you, at this point in time, getting a degree in Computer Science could very well be the worst thing that you could possibly do other than start bombing places at random.

3) Traffic/Transportation
Overpopulation is the direct cause of the crappy traffic situations I deal with on a daily basis in Toronto. There are probably more cars in Toronto than there are jobs. And due to the aforementioned issue of no regulation of population influx, the streets cannot accommodate the traffic, nor can the highways. It takes me almost half an hour to get to work every day, and I'm considered extremely lucky. I really feel for people who are stuck in traffic for 2-4 hours a day. Travelling to and from work is often just as energy-depleting as actually working... sometimes more! So if you can imagine lengthening your workday by 25% to 50%, but not being financially compensated for it, you'll know why I am so angered by all those other cars. Few employers will pay you for the time it takes to get to work, though I don't actually know any.

Enter the public transit solution. For the vast majority of Toronto, this is summed up by surface transit (busses, streetcars, etc) and dedicated transit (subways, go trains, etc).

Surface transit is summed up by two words: Almost Useless. During rush hour, surface transit is subjected to the exact same problems that cars are. In fact, the two conflict with each other and really annoy the living daylights out of the drivers and passengers. Outside of rush hour, most people don't even use transit because they're working. In fact, the only people I can see the busses helping out are people who either don't work, or have no choice but to use the busses during rush hour.

On the other hand, subways are spectacular. They transport massive quantities of people very quickly. The best part is, they usually do this without affecting the flow of traffic on the surface. What a novel idea! The downside to subways? They're extremely expensive to build. I'm sure at one point, the subway system probably was useful to most of the city of Toronto. Unfortunately, the city expanded far faster than it can really handle, and the subway was unable to keep up (see the section on streets and highways doing the same thing). These days I figure the subway is only really useful to a quarter of the city or less on a daily basis. It's practically useless for me.


So why did I pick on downtown in the title of this blog entry? Take all the stuff I mentioned above that I hated about Toronto. Multiply it by some number greater than 1. In fact, you can probably multiply it by about 10 or more. Every problem I listed above is worse downtown than anywhere else. The only saving grace is that if you live downtown, the subway is your best friend. Otherwise, you'd have to pay me to live downtown. And you'd have to pay me a helluva lot.

So what's the other reason that I don't live downtown? Let me tell you a story about a Shopper's Drug Mart near my home. Personally, I find Shopper's to be a great store. They have all sorts of medications to keep me well, and they carry a bunch of other stuff that makes it so that I can justify going there. On top of that, the prices of many things are fair. The one thing I hate about that particular Shopper's is that every time I go there, there's a guy waiting in the parking lot to beg me for money. I hate telling him that I don't have money, but at the same time, I hate giving him money. Regardless of what action I take, he's always there the next time, waiting to beg me for more.

The sad part is that I'm used to this kind of stuff happening downtown. It happens all the time there. I'm sure the police would deal with it, but they're too busy trying to keep up with the increasing numbers of criminals that accompanies an unregulated influx of people. The problem is that there's now a guy who probably wandered away from downtown, got lost, and found himself near my neighbourhood's Shopper's Drug Mart. What's more likely is that the network of people who beg for money grew faster than downtown Toronto could accomodate and some of them must have gotten pushed into other areas.

What a sad state of affairs. So there you have it. Now you know a brand new reason why I don't want to live in downtown Toronto. The worst part is that it won't be long before I won't want to live in the areas surrounding downtown either...

Quarter for your cart?

Until I moved to Ontario, I had never seen shopping carts that required you to deposit 25 cents before you could use them. If the issue is theft, I guess in small towns, the danger of someone stealing the cart is minimal. If the issue is that people are not returning the carts to the corals, then I guess in small towns, the parking lots are significantly smaller so the employees don't have to walk all over the place to bring the cart back. It only took a little while to get used to the carts. The funny thing was when I went back home, the first two or three times, I started looking for the coin slot in the cart and felt weird when I didn't find it.

I often wish the stores would employ a different mechanism than a coin deposit. It's usually not an issue, but I have been caught quarterless at a store from time to time. Then I find it becomes quite the hassle to get a quarter. A couple other stores have come up with inventive ways to keep their carts under control.

One store I went to had a long metal pole attached vertically to one corner of the cart. This certainly prevents the cart from leaving the store, which in turn prevents both theft and excessive employee effort. It also prevents me from wheeling out anything heavy from the store to my car. Another store had a cart that had a mechanism inside that locked the wheels of the cart when it reached a certain distance from the store. Good idea, if you park close enough. Otherwise, you might as well have a pole sticking out of it instead.

It's kind of nice to be just finishing with your cart when someone who is heading towards the store offers you a quarter to take your cart. Usually, it doesn't end up that way. However, I have been in a couple amuzing situations. Once, as a returned my cart, a guy offered my a loonie for my cart because he did not have a quarter and could not be bothered to go get one. Another time, as I finished loading groceries into my car, I noticed that someone had left their cart close to my car, but not near the coral. I noticed another cart that didn't have a quarter in it (possibly a display cart or something) was left nearby as well. So I took my cart and the two carts I saw and got 50 cents out of the deal as opposed to just my original 25 cents. Hardly impressive, but you know what they say about small things. :)

"Artistic" Liberties

This is probably an understatement, but I watch a lot of sports. Just last year, I've been to 21 Toronto Blue Jays games. Then there's all the televised games of both baseball and non-baseball I've seen... the point is, for every full game I've watched, I've heard an anthem singer sing. That's a heck of a lot of anthems sung. In fact, if it wasn't for all the sports opening every game with anthems, I wonder how often I'd actually hear the anthems outside of Canada Day, Independence Day, etc.

I've only been around since 1980, but I am sure that at some point in history, anthems were sung the way they were intended to be sung the vast majority of the time. For that matter, there may or may not have even been a time where the anthems were sung as intended all of the time. Occasionally, a singer would choose to change a note, a bar, or some other bit of the anthem and it would be accepted as an artistic liberty.

These days, I find that over 90% of the games I watch, the anthem has been butchered by the singer because the singer chose not to sing the anthem as it was intended... and that 90% is probably even a conservative estimate! (Then again, there was that one game I went to where William Hung was the "singer" and he didn't intentionally put any artistic liberties in, but it sure as heck didn't sound like the anthem was supposed to sound like!) I think we've reached a point where it has become normal for the song to be sung incorrectly. I understand the concept of artistic liberties and why some people choose to use them, but I find it's rare that an artistic liberty actually helps the anthem singer in question.

Tonight was the 2005 NBA All Star game and the singer singing the Canadian anthem - surprise! - used artistic liberty and mangled parts of it. Obviously the camera was on the singer, but I bet if we panned over to Steve Nash, he'd probably have flinched just like any other good Canadian was probably doing on those notes. Thankfully, when the Admiral brought the choir in to sing the US anthem, they didn't take any liberties and the song sounded amazing. They really did an excellent job. Would it have sounded better if they had taken a liberty? Who knows? Sometimes it sounds nice and sometimes it doesn't, but although anthem singers have proven to us that they're generally willing to take that chance, I really appreciate that this group didn't.

Hopefully, some of these anthem singers will watch replays of the game that include the anthems they sang. Then they can hear just how badly the anthems were mangled. Maybe then, some of them will figure out that the anthems really do sound nice the way they were meant to be sung.

Million Dollar Depressant

I've been stuck at work a fair amount lately, but I decided to make plans tonight to go watch a movie on cheap night at the Rainbow Cinema in Fairview Mall. Based on what I make, I figure I can afford the $4.25 ticket (that's about 5 cents USD for those of you south of the border ;)). I find that although the Rainbow Cinema is not quite as good as the big name theatres that charge an arm and a leg, the enjoyment I got there is at least 75% of what I'd get at the big theatres... though truth be told, it was probably closer to 90%. The thing is, the price of seeing a movie other places ranges from $8.50-$13.50. So I got 90% enjoyment for somewhere between 30%-50% of the cost. How's that for price-performance!

Seriously, I am generally not a supporter of the movie and music industries. In fact, I usually go out of my way to not support them. However, if the cost of watching movies and listening to music were to drop drastically, I would probably watch and listen. I'm one of the few people who gain very little enjoyment from seeing a movie on a huge screen over a large screen. The atmosphere of the cinema just doesn't satisfy me much more than the movie already does. So in short, if I have to pay more than say 20% more to go to a theatre than to just rent the movie and watch it on my home computer or tv, I usually don't go to the theatre. Although, peer pressure makes me shell out the cash for about one theatre movie a year on average.

Similarly, I cannot justify buying CDs at all. I'd seriously consider it if the cost of a cd was $1 per song on the CD that I actually like. Usually a CD has about 12-18 songs on it. I end up liking around 20% or less of them. In my opinion, a poor cd for me would be one where I don't like any of the songs. Average would be about 1-2 songs, good would be 2-3 songs, great would be 4+. So far, I might have listened to a handful of great CDs in my whole lifetime. What a disappointment. It really makes me wonder how there are people who can pay $20 for a CD.

With costs so high, companies should be able to quickly put two and two together and figure out why piracy is as rampant as it is. I'm almost tempted to move to Sweden or some other European country without anti-piracy laws. Plus, the work policy in Europe is definitely a lot more to my liking. Not only that, but I hear great things about European and European-born actresses as well: Sophie Marceau, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Natalie Portman, Rosemund Pike... the list goes on.

Anyways, the movie I went to see was Million Dollar Baby. I heard great reviews, so I figured I had to see it. Afterwards, I would have to say I enjoyed everything up to the last 30 minutes of it. However, those last 30 minutes left me feeling very depressed. Not only that, but I felt that part of the movie just dragged on and on. I can't even say I liked the ending.

Spoilers ahead (read at your own risk!):
If someone very dear to you asked you to help them commit suicide because they couldn't, would you be able to do it? I think the closest I could get is that I could ask a doctor to do it, but I don't think I'd be able to do it with my own two hands. Alternatively, if you had to live the rest of your life bed-ridden, would you? Or would you ask someone to help you commit suicide? Again, this is a tough one. I guess it would depend on my level of immobility. If I could still play video games, watch tv, etc., I'd think I'd have no problem living. If I was completely disabled and just lying there day after day, I really don't know what I'd do. And that's the part of Million Dollar Baby that made me so depressed.

That was incredible... and guest.

I find it really difficult to blog about movies, books, and tv shows, because I always worry that I'm going to spoil stuff for people who read these blogs. Usually, this isn't much of a problem because I purposely try my very best to live well behind the times. In my opinion, it's a good strategy. Be it movies, games, technology, books, etc, I try to read/view/enjoy long after everyone else is done with them because it saves me money. But since I haven't seen them yet, it's new to me. I can enjoy every bit of everything my friends have already enjoyed at a fraction of the cost. Of course, there are some obvious downsides such as the time I went to a video rental store with a friend and we tried to pick out a movie. The big problem was that he had seen just about everything in the store already. I had seen less than 10% of that. I could basically walk up and grab anything I thoguht was interesting and just rent it. The problem was that each time I picked something up, he said he had already seen it.

The thing is, I occasionally do see something new for some reason or other. That's when I worry that I'll blab about something I shouldn't have. In this case though, the vast majority of people I know have seen The Incredibles already. I guess the only reason I worry is because I wouldn't normally see it for maybe another year or so.

So for the rest of this post, note that there will be spoilers, so read at your own risk.

I really felt Pixar and Disney did a great job once again. Although the animation was great and the plot was neat, I have to say I was really imperssed by all the characters and how true-to-life some of them were. Granted, Elastigirl did become a very sterotypical mom, and Mr. Incredible did become the sterotypical middle class father, I really liked the kids. I'm certain that I've been in a situation where if the given object of my affection turned to look at me, I'd quickly look away so as not to creep her out. Imagine if I could just turn invisible instead. Or when I knew that I was the best at something but it was because I had some sort of unfair advantage (note: this doesn't happen often), I hated to have to hold back and not try.

What I really have to commend them for is showing that the characters didn't just defeat evil because they had powers. They actually used their powers creatively! I mean the power boat that wasn't really a power boat was a great idea. Admittedly, it was something that most people would have thought of, but in many other shows, the main characters fail to make creative use of their powers. For example, take the Generation One Transformers. Skywarp could teleport. Unfreakingbelievable. Did he use this power to his advantage? Sort of. Not really. If I were Skywarp, I'd teleport into autobot headquarters, blast away, and teleport out. I'm sure there are more creative uses that I can't imagine at the moment, but they definitely did not make full use of their abilities.

My favorite character has definitely got to be Frozone. He was so hilarious. The opening interview with him was great, and the scene where he "just needs his drink of water" was awesome too. It's too bad they didn't have more of him, but I guess he must have spent most of the movie being told how lucky he was to be with his wife... by his wife. My favorite line (other than the one being referred to by the title of this post) was definitely "I'm your wife! I'm the greatest good you're ever gonna get!".

If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. If you're an evil bad guy and you haven't seen this movie, you probably should or you might run the risk of monologuing. After all, they're super heroes... what could happen?