Illegitimate Sun

One of the differences that stand out while I visit Canada is the usage of British English.

Canadians use certain constructions that are unique to their British heritage. These are phrases that are not used in American English.

The one that stands out every time it cross my ears is the phrase “to hospital.” An example would be, “He was taken to hospital for treatment.”

In American English, we would throw in an article to create the phrase, “to the hospital.”

It’s a small, but constant reminder that I’m visiting another country.

Toronto has a huge Asian population. At least 20% of Toronto is of Asian descent. Because of this, there are some interesting places in Toronto that cater to this growing population.

One of these places is T&T Supermarket.

T&T is a supermarket that specializes in catering to the Asian population. Announcements are made in Chinese. All the labels are in both English and Chinese. Of course, the goods are mostly Asian foods shipped from the Far East.

Shopping here is interesting for me. Here are some of the things that really stand out.

First, the music piped throughout the stores is Asian covers of Western songs. My favorite was the Mandarin version of ‘O Susana’ complete with melodic flute solos.

Secondly, we keep finding amazingly good deals. My favorites tend to involve meat. The last couple of times we shopped there, we found 4 pounds of beef roast for $2 and 6.5 pounds of roasted pork for $3.70. So far, I’ve made a pot roast from the beef and still have 2 pounds left. We haven’t even touched the pork yet.

How do we get such great deals? We tend to visit the store late in the afternoon. T&T will mark down lots of their perishable items in the evenings to clear them out. That’s how we got the roast pork. They literally set a giant plastic bag of roast pork on a folding table in front of us as we browsed by the deli section. When I grabbed it, there were several elderly Asian women circling like sharks - waiting for me to drop my guard and the bag of pork

T&T - it’s a great market, but watch out for elbows. Those old ladies can be mean.

So, Toronto is on track to have the greatest amount of snowfall in a single winter since 1938. They’ve had about 7 feet of snow this winter, with very little of it melting off.

That’s just great.

As most of you know, my universe is governed by irony.

So it’s par for the course that when I come to stay at Toronto for awhile - the Artic winds blow and dump all the snow this town can handle on me. Everyone - everyone - tells me how this is the worst winter they’ve ever experienced. Local governments complain about rapidly dwindling supplies of salt, sand, and money for road cleaning. Mounds of snow tower over the sidewalks and spill into the streets. Parking is impossible. Biting winds blow ice bullets between the builidings. Everywhere you look, people are mummified in their own winter garb.

I’m done with winter.

I can’t come to Canada and not spend money at IKEA.

In order to fit all my stuff into Amy’s tiny, tiny apartment while I’m staying here - some adjustments had to be made.

Most of you know that I have shed most of my possessions in order to make this abrupt change in my life. There are a couple of things of which I refuse to abandon. My slowly re-growing professional wardrobe is part of this collection.

To fit this in, I bought a Malm dresser and rebuilt the closet to include a second bar.

I also put in an new GORM bookshelf and extensions for my previous double bookcase. I have a lot a books and mixing in the law school tomes creates a overwhelming amount.

So, most of my stuff is now out of the way and in a safe place until I figure out where I going to be in a couple of months.

For all those wondering, I managed to finish law school a semester early. This took a slavish devotion to the 17 hours of classes I took this semester and the 50-odd hours of reading that accompanied them.

On top of this I worked for 15-20 hours at the Missouri Attorney General’s office. I worked on prosecuting cases of discrimination for the department assigned to the Missouri Human Rights Commission.

Immediately following my six finals, I loaded up the car and drove across Missouri, visiting my Grandmother in Jefferson City and my Mother in Nevada. From there, I raced an ice storm to Kansas City where I attended the wedding of Josh and Susie.

As soon as the roads thawed, I raced back to St. Louis, cleaned the apartment and had a tearful farewell with JennyR and I began the long trek to Canada.

Crossing the border was uneventful. I received a 6-month visitors pass. Registering Pop’s heirloom was actually the most difficult part of the crossing. No one knew whether I needed to register it or not. Finally they decided to register it simply because I already filled out the paper work.

My arrival coincided with Xmas. Amy made a great dinner of gourmet ham and herb roasted potatoes.

To come, the madatory visit to IKEA.