"Savage pile-up out there, holy hell!"
As I sit here, in shorts, with the window open and the temperature outside apparently 17 degrees celsius, I am led to believe that I survived the Canadian winter. Ok, so maybe it was a mild one (and you got more snow at home, nerr), but I never had to buy that huge big winter coat or winter boots and somehow pulled through minus twenty-ridiculous temperatures with layers of clothing. Just. That kind of weather is not fun, especially when you're downtown and the horrible icy wind from the tall buildings and the lake is blowing in your face, you just think: "I'D TAKE A RAINY AFTERNOON IN GUISELEY OVER THIS!". Then you look at the CN Tower and come to your senses. But yeah, apologies about not doing a proper blog for about two and a half months (this is me pretending you really care), but look, you're reading this one, so shut up. So what's happened in 2010?
I'm now into the second half of my working visa programme, and the "working" part is still happening. Yeah, I'm still getting paid minimum wage for serving people who seem to lose their common sense as soon as they walk into a movie theatre. And this has become all the more apparent since I was trained on Box Office, which now means I can sell tickets, or alternatively, take abuse and phone calls at Guest Services. I don't mind this role sometimes, it's pretty easy and a bit more dignified than some of the other jobs and you're actually helping people make the biggest decisions they'll make.. in a cinema.. that day. Although at times, it's skull-crushingly dull, especially since our theatre's box office is separated from the level with all the screens and stuff on, so your only company are guests compared to a wealth of lovely co-workers when you work on floor, cleaning theatres and the like (which I actually miss).
Still, work is very regular at the moment and I'm managing to hit 40 hours a week pretty much every week now, which means I can live alright and save (more on that later) - a big difference from the "pay day poverty crawls " of last year...although if I have extra money, it goes on practically nothing because I'm an idiot. The ridiculous late night shifts seem to have disappeared since I was trained on Box as well, as I now work very respectable day shifts - good for some, but this is the first time since probably Year 11 that I've had to get up early everyday for five or six days in a row. And I fucking hate early mornings. What kind of lowlife goes to watch a film at 10.30am? Sub-human scum, that's who.
Aside from work, there's been a few rad happenings, some of which I missed because of work. Shitbags. The ones I did attend included my birthday last week, which was a right mess, running into Mr James Moore of UK Thrash metallers Seregon fame downtown for some chicken n' booze in February and a couple of leaving parties, one for Min at work and another for my housemate Arnaud. My house is still a revolving door of nationalities, two French guys left and an 18-year old Californian model moved in (steady, she's with her brother..not like that.. I don't.. think), but I've really grown to appreciate the place, especially when you come downstairs and there's food on the table, and Carey is like:"Have some food and wine!" and you're like: "No, I'm good man, I've got my own" and he's like "I WON'T REST UNTIL YOU'VE EATEN IT", so you have to eat it, and it's good. There's been heavy doses of cinema watching, drinking non-warm beer and hanging out, maxin', relaxin' etc on my days off in the past couple of months, including a very strange day on a chillier Toronto island recently, which involved a nutter attacking trees and proclaiming he was Satan. That's Toronto for ya. I've also watched quite a lot of (real) football this month, unlike hockey... which brings me onto my next point.
That's right, the Olympic Games happened. Ok, it was at the other side of the country, but everyone went nuts for it over here, especially the hockey. I didn't really pay much interest in it, I watched a few of the events on TV and some of them were pretty interesting, but I was generally very apathetic to it. The Canadians of course, went into patriotic overdrive, which was obvious from the TV coverage which proclaimed that they were going to win everything and everyone else in the world was shit. Turns out they weren't far wrong and I witnessed first-hand patriotism after the gold medal hockey final - me and a mate went to a pub after work on that day whilst the hockey was playing, purposefully going somewhere that didn't have a TV so it'd be a bit quieter -turns out they did have a TV, and upon leaving the place, Toronto seemed to turn into a drunken flag-waving zoo, which was nice to see, I guess. But ultimately, it just made me think: "The World Cup is going to shit all over this". And now, with a little bit of milder weather, I'm looking forward to it even more, roll on June (and please Leeds, don't fuck promotion up..)! Canada is a great country, but hockey is rubbish. Sorry.
The worst thing that has happened in 2010 so far is the fact that I lost my February Metropass in the middle of February, meaning I wasted about sixty bucks of my hard-earned money and lost the freedom to go wherever I wanted for a couple of weeks. Truely heartbreaking. However, I also discovered the wonders of Skype recently, so now I can call home for pennies whenever I want. Add me (lazydog03) if you want to hear how much my accent hasn't changed since I've been away.
My good friend Lev finally booked his flights over for May 3rd the other day, and along with my fellow English Torontonian Cam, we shall finally be escaping T.O for a week! A trip has been planned and estimated for Toronto > New York > Boston > Montreal and then back to reality, so I'm well looking forward to that and getting out of this (lovely) city for a bit. I'll have more about that trip next time, or maybe just pictures from it if I don't pull my finger out and only write a blog when I come back. It seems very odd that I'm using money I've saved up whilst over here to pay for this trip considering I was scraping by to even survive back in November. I'm so glad I got more regular hours at work or I don't think I'd be going anywhere until I went home, which would have been a bit of a waste of an opportunity.
As for my plans after this, currently, all I know is I have a flight booked home for August 12th. I'll be back at the cinema straight after I come back from this trip in May and probably work like a prisoner of war horse until July, when I'll do the second round of travelling. At the moment, I'm contemplating getting a Greyhound North American pass thing, which is usually 200 dollars for seven days, but apparently, if you're a HI-hostel member which I am, you can upgrade it to 15 days for free , which seems so liberating to me - you could literally go anywhere in Canada or the US for dirt cheap. This is still a foetus of an idea and I still fancy exploring Eastern Canada more, so there could even be three trips in the works - stay tuned for useless information you don't care about! Hooray!
That's it for now. Thanks for reading and a special thank you for anyone who's complimented my blog in real life or on Facebook, you're my heroes. Toronto is still being good to me. Now excuse me, I must drink some of this Canada Dry and beat up a raccoon. Good evening.
