Artcrime!

Artcrime!
Originally uploaded by bigquestionmarks.

We're not really sure when we first noticed the Sunday-afternoon gatherings happening outside our apartment building. But what we do know, is our door to the fire escape gives us a perfect view of the mysterious little weekly event.

At first, we thought perhaps it was a garage sale — strange though, since it only looked like paintings and chairs were for sale, with a few interested buyers milling about. Another week, we decided the garage sale — which was only oddball semi-abstract paintings, and no shoppers — must just have been an artist who was drying his freshly painted canvases. And then, another Sunday happened upon us, and we snapped this sneaky photo from our kitchen, and we figured it had to be some sort of group called Artcrime, conducting weekly meetings at the end of the driveway (hence the sign!). The only constants were the paintings, the location, and what looked like an old bleached-blond punk guy, a Billy Idol type. We were puzzled.

Adrian once went by to say hello — but didn't learn much other than our Billy Idol was pretty friendly and had some sort of European accent. In fact, it probably would have been easier to just head down the fire escape stairs and inquire what all the hubbub was about. But when it comes to apartment neighbours, it's always more fun to hypothesize about what's going on than to find out the truth.

In fact, it was total coincidence we were discussing our mysterious neighbour just this morning — and only a few hours later, Adrian was flipping through Saturday's Toronto Star Entertainment section (found on our front porch), and who's on page E14? Well, what do you know? It was our neighbour, pictured in all of his Steampunk-ish glory, in front of those very-familiar paintings and the Artcrime sign!

You'll have to read the story — tres bizarre — but in a nutshell, it turns out he's a pretty established "arts performer-provocateur" named Istvan Kantor (and many other names). He was born in Hungary and has been in Toronto for a few decades, where he has been banned from museums like the AGO (for his over-the-top, controversial, and bloody performance art) but has still managed to receive prestigious awards like the 2004 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Our neighbourhood becomes ever more intriguing...

The Star's story: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/823782--goddard-a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-provocateur

The artist's own page: http://www.ccca.ca/performance_artists/k/kantor/kantor_perf18/index.html

CTV's story on Kantor winning the Governor General's award: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1078941406505_9?s_name=&no_ads=

Being Tourists...at home

Last weekend we got to revisit something we're pretty good at but haven't done in ages: be tourists. And in our own town, no less. We'd been looking forward to a visit from our friends Megan & Justin for ages — and suddenly there they were, collapsed on our front porch with their backpacks, after 20 or so hours of airport-hopping and flying from Melbourne. We were their first stop on a four-week whirl of cities around North America.

In the weeks leading up to their visit, we'd been trying to brainstorm what was cool about Toronto (Ontario, even), but I guess when you've lived in a place for ages, the tourist attractions all seem cheesy, and your own city can definitely seem a bit dull ("Yeah, one day I should go up the CN Tower..." is a familiar refrain). But maybe we all just need some out-of-town friends to visit once in a while, to shed our snobbery and our "I'll do it someday" attitudes for a bit and to see things in a new way.

And that's what we did. On M & J's first night in, we finally got around to having dinner at Fresh, a great little veggie establishment on our street (where we hadn't yet eaten in the 8 months we've been on Crawford Street), and it was delicious. The next day we embarked on a little road trip... all the way to Niagara Falls! We tried to warn our friends how cheesy the town was, since that was what truly stuck out in our memories — I don't think any of us were actually prepared for how terrible it actually was — and rediscovered that the falls themselves are pretty impressive, despite the countless waterfalls we'd visited across Australia and Asia over the past few years. I guess all the fuss about Niagara is sort of justified — though I don't know about it being the "honeymoon capital"! After ooh-ing and aah-ing at the falls for a while, we did the usual obligatory walk up Clifton Hill, and promptly forgot about the stunning waterfall behind us. Giant rooftop burger-eating Frankenstein, roaming Reese Peanut Butter Cup and Spongebob mascots, and haunted houses galore will do that to you. It wasn't long before we decided to flee the circus on the hill for another few years. That night we headed to Toronto staple Sneaky Dee's to watch some bands and drink beer (definitely a main attraction, in our opinions!). But by then, we realized our friends still hadn't seen anything of Toronto.

Sunday morning — er, afternoon, thanks jetlag! — we moseyed down to Kensington Market for the lively Pedestrian Sundays fest which happens every week in the summer. Browsing vintage shops and watching street performers: that's more the Toronto we love. It was a scorcher of a day — bit of a shock to Megan and Justin, who in Melbourne were getting into winter about now — but easily fixed with a giant, tooth-dissolving frozen Slurpee from 7-11. (One thing you don't notice when you've lived in North America most of your life is the massive food portions everywhere. It was kind of fun watching our friends' eyes bug out at the serving sizes! Though we did keep telling them: just you wait 'til you get to the States!)

We spent the rest of Sunday meandering the streets of Toronto, and came to the realization that, in downtown Toronto, everything is just "a little bit further". We're in Chinatown — hey, let's check out Queen Street! Just a bit further south. And hey — there's the Skydome! Well, it's only a few blocks that way. I guess we could have kept walking for days in this manner...

On Monday, Justin & Megan's last day in Toronto, we decided to meander a little bit less and instead, hit some prime destinations. Mission #1: Find those two crazy kids a pancake-and-maple-syrup breakfast! Not the easiest thing to find for vegans, but we totally lucked out. Having read about a place called Sadie's Diner, we eventually found it at Adelaide and Portland Streets, and all had the most amazing and animal-friendly breakfast feast (I think we're all still dreaming about it). Even Adrian begrudgingly loved his fake bacon and sausage! Lesson #1 for us: Toronto is a pretty awesome place for vegans and vegetarians to hang out (though now maybe not as much, since M&J bought the city's entire stock of soy ice cream).

Mission #2: Do the most touristy thing possible in Toronto — ascend the CN Tower. I was surprised to learn Adrian had never been up the tower in his entire life; I myself had avoided the place since the first time I went up at 5 years old and a very confusing space 'game' at the base of the tower printed off a ticket for me with my "alien name" and a fictitious space-age health condition- "Martian Dropsy". I've grown spots in fear every time I near the tower since then. But this time, no dropsy for anyone (phew) and it was fun! Though I still don't think Toronto is anything that special to look at from above. Lesson #2: The glass floor in the CN Tower gives even the bravest of us vertigo after enough jumping around on it.

Mission #3: Take in the all-American sport of baseball... in Canada. Yes, we hit a Jays game — M&J spoiled us with some great tickets and it was great beer- and heckler-filled fun for nine innings vs. Tampa Bay! (And poor old Carl Crawford — still getting heckled at the Dome) Lesson #3: Some of us were born to heckle, some born to be heckled. Sorry, Crawford.

Anyway, the moral of our long-winded tale is that being a tourist is always fun — but sometimes you just need the right people around to put on those knee-high socks and sandals with. Stay tuned for part 2 of our tourist adventures- our weekend in NYC with Megan & Justin...

The Great Postcard Hunt

Over the past few months, we've been doing our best to catch up on mail correspondence to our friends scattered abroad. While we were traveling, we mailed a lot of postcards from exotic places to people back home, and even to people we met along the way. It was fun to find some pretty postcards, spend an afternoon in a cafe on on the beach writing a few lines about our adventures, affix a cool postage stamp (after the usual intense hunt for stamps!), and finally send them away. Sometimes, when we were living in the same place for long enough, people would send us letters, postcards, and photos. It was awesome. So naturally, we want to keep that up.

I won't go into my usual rant about how sad I am that personal messages to one other keep getting shorter and shorter — though over the course of a few years we have watched correspondence shrink from letters handwritten on paper to emails, to Facebook posts, to text messages, and now to 140-character posts on Twitter and Blackberry one-liners — but Adrian and I both do feel strongly about keeping alive the traditions of physically writing a letter and dropping it in the post. Why? Maybe we're a bit old-school. But think of the last time you received a hand-written letter in the mail. Wasn't it a great feeling? And if you think about it, isn't is worth the 57 cents, or even the $1.70 in postage to totally make someone's day?

So naturally, I was thrilled when I stumbled upon a project this week that not only shared my views, but had facilitated a worldwide network of postcard swapping! It's called Postcrossing, and was organized in 2004 back by a Portuguese student who, just like so many of us, loved to receive real mail. Since then, more than 4 million postcards have been swapped worldwide with the help of the website. The idea is, you send a postcard to an address randomly given to you by Postcrossing; the receiver registers it online once it arrives; after that, your address goes into the bank for someone to write you one. Hence turning your mailbox "into a box of surprises", as the web site puts it. So with my first assignment to write a quick postcard to Belarus, we'll see what happens.

However, we've learned finding a cool/pretty/interesting Toronto postcard is no easy task. Since our return, we've been keeping our eyes open for interesting ones to send abroad... without a whole lot of luck. Surely there must be something more interesting around here than the CN Tower, Chinatown, and Niagara Falls! (In fact, we found one eerie postcard combining a badly Photoshopped Lake Ontario scene and Niagara Falls, where it looks like the lake is draining INTO the falls! Very apocalyptic.) I'm half ready to start making my own. I recall only ever having this problem in a tiny town in Burma (Pyin U Lwin), a place filled with ornate horse carriages and not a single postcard depicting any of the town's quaint charm! (I actually suggested to a keen market merchant to start making his own.)
Funny we'd have the same problem in Toronto... how about postcards of the albino squirrels, the hippies of Kensington market, the old houses, the flashing lights of Honest Ed's, that flatiron building on Front Street, or even Toronto Island? Perhaps the old graveyard in Cabbagetown, High Park, the subway stations, the Italian churches in our neighbourhood? If anyone has any suggestions of (a) where to find awesome postcards in Toronto; or (b) what we should use as subject matter once we're fed up enough to start making our own, let us know! For now, we'll leave you with a page of gorgeous Toronto postcards from years ago... at least we had urban charm, once upon a time. (Nowadays it just appears we have a lot of fireworks.)



... not the most exciting finds so far! (-d.)

Ack! Giant bugs!

This morning, I came out of the bathroom and there was something unfamiliar (and big) high on the bedroom wall. I must back up and note here that after spending two years in Australia, I've adopted an odd habit of glancing up at ceiling corners when I enter a room; it's something I haven't managed to shake since our return to Canada, and it probably weirds some people out when we're in mid-conversation and my gaze suddenly shoots to the top corners of the room-- it's just a reflex from our many encounters with the scary giant Huntsman spiders we encountered now and then. I now can't help myself from examining every crack and dent carefully-- but it's made me an excellent gecko spotter, I'll add.

So naturally this morning, my eyes are instantly drawn to a large dark shadow on the otherwise plain white wall. I get closer and my fears are confirmed: a GIANT BUG. A silverfish, I think, but one of epic size. (Just check out this photo of Adrian and the bug to get an idea of its size!) Not sure what it was doing in our apartment, but I hope it was the only one! Shriek.... in comes Adrian the super bug killer... even he is a little in awe of the size of this Canadian apartment bug and its billions of legs. Luckily, unlike the Huntsman, it doesn't go running at my shrieks (little discovery: silverfish have crappy hearing). A swat of a rolled-up newspaper solves the problem... phew! Its legs go on twitching for quite a while before we flush it. Gross. And now, thanks to this horrible beginning to my Friday, I'll be checking every spot on the wall even more diligently! (And I advise you to do the same.) Ew! -D.

Forever Learning

Hooray for spring! Perhaps there's something about the energy in the air and the new growth on the trees that has inspired us to add a few new activities to our weekly routines. Yoga's one of them: we recently enrolled in a weekly class, held just down the block at the community centre. We didn't know what to expect really — I'd taken a group class once before at Ryerson, and Adrian was familiar with yoga only through Rodney Yee, a long-haired television guru who used to lead us through a dawn routine, clad in a Speedo on a Hawaiian beach — that is, when we had enough space in our living room to flail around in front of the DVD player. But so far, so good. Our class consists of about 9 or 10 participants, mostly grey-haired, so there is lots of joint-cracking and not much self-consciousness about it (my noisy knees blend right in!). Our teacher likes to talk about the "bandhas", which we still don't totally understand — something to do with regulating energy in the body. We kind of thought she was making them up, but it turns out there's lot online about these mysterious bandhas. The yoga I learned before was more about "cat pose" and "mountain pose", which seemed a little more fun and cute. This new teacher's all business though, getting us to stretch all kinds of weird body parts to a soundtrack of CDs of new-agey music. And I must admit, last class when she mentioned something about the sphincter I nearly lost it. It's definitely an experience!

Another new thing I've taken up is literacy tutoring: basically, teaching English grammar, reading, writing, that sort of thing to an adult whose English skills aren't up to par with the rest of us. I was surprised to learn that there are actually many Canadian-born adults who are functioning in society but without the basic skills to read, spell, or craft a complete sentence. I thought since someday I may want to teach English somewhere overseas, it might not be a bad thing to try — first off, to see if I enjoy teaching, and secondly, to get some good teaching experience for the resume. It was a New Year's resolution of mine to start doing a bit of volunteer work, and after some hunting, I found this opportunity through a posting on the excellent Volunteer Toronto website. It's not a huge time commitment (two hours a week) and our sessions are organized through and held at the library/community centre a few blocks from our place, so it suits me well. At first, I was hoping to tutor an ESL (English as a Second Language) student, but the opportunity came along to be paired up with "a more advanced learner", so I thought I'd give it a go. My 'learner' (let's call her Natasha) is a Toronto native who is actually a year or two older than me, and is looking to go to university after a few rocky stints with college, and from what I gather, some health problems relating to a head injury have caused her to have trouble remembering and focusing. So sometimes Natasha is motivated to learn, and other times she's discouraged and kind of distracted. It's definitely a challenge to figure out how to convey the information in a way that's interesting and makes sense — while often re-learning the technical stuff myself behind things I realize I take for granted, like how to craft a complete sentence (** it needs a subject and a verb... definitely something I couldn't have explained to someone else before this!)! And as someone who likes a good to-do list and a plan, in the beginning, I found it a bit tough to adjust to and just accept our forever-changing focus at our sessions.

For the first few weeks, we went through some basic grammar rules; another week we jumped to brainstorming an entrance letter to York's kinesiology program; and for the last two weeks we've been going through the basics of how to write an essay. The amazing thing I've found with tutoring is that I'm learning just as much as Natasha is. It's also cool to realize how much information is stuffed at the back corners of the brain: though I haven't written an essay in years, as we talked about essay writing, suddenly so much stored knowledge about formatting, etc., just came rushing back. I'm happy to say that this week, I feel we had a real breakthrough — believe it or not, because we wrote a mini essay on Madonna (inspired by a concert that was playing on TV the night previous)! After an utterly discouraging session the week before, where Natasha confessed to me at the end how hard she found it to understand what I was teaching, this week she said "You know, I think I really get how to write the essay outline now — thanks for that." A great feeling after stumbling my way through the beginnings of this whole tutoring thing. And so I guess lesson one is that pop culture truly is a great bridge between people!

Sadly, I've come to the conclusion once again (my copy editing teacher at Ryerson brought this to light) that the Ontario school system was severely lacking in teaching us the basics of grammar, at least when I went through the system. I wish they would have spent some time teaching us what a conjunction, noun, preposition, and all of those nuts and bolts, were, rather than it being an afterthought after learning Shakespeare for months on end (Natasha feels the same). I know our parents' generation had all this stuff ingrained in their heads, and it's too bad we weren't as lucky (though I'm sure we would have growled about it at the time). I guess we're doomed to be a generation of people with poor sentence structure... though I'll bet at least we can spell better than the MSN/text-message generations following us!

Anyway, if anyone's feeling extra nerdy about learning some grammar, I can suggest a few good books for you: Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss is a funny one from a self-professed "stickler". There's the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, which gets referenced a lot by writers/journalists but I'm a little embarrassed to say I still have yet to fully read it (we had so much to do in J-school!). I have another one on my shelf called Woe Is I, by Patricia T. O'Conner, which is a lighthearted grammar guide with a timely and appropriate chapter on email grammar, among other topics. And then there's Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, a great historical (and humourous) book about the English language, which I read while I was traveling and made me constantly realize my English had become quite "pidgin" while in Southeast Asia. And wow, just found an adorable grammar game! Enjoy. - D.

The St. Patrick's Day Massacre

There was no green beer to be had on St. Patrick's Day as we strolled into the emergency room at Toronto Western Hospital. The area itself is prone to 'interesting cases' to begin with, but we knew that going in - and I suppose we were early enough to avoid the Paddy's Day revelers.

I had put a nice half inch gash into my middle finger or "digitus medius" just under the collateral ligament of the 2nd phalanx. After the head, it's the fingers (or phanagis) that bleed the most, this is because there is an web of interconnecting veins that run through your hand called the dorsal metacarpal arteries.

Luckily for us my health care had kicked back in sometime in February, the odd thing is that after all those years travelling and paying for health insurance, it's now that I need to cash in on it (but for free). All that wasted cash - but better safe than sorry.

Checking in with the nurse, we'd glanced at the clock; check-in time 9pm.
In the waiting room there were a few odds and ends. An old lady who wore her sunglasses (at night), a roving alcoholic who was trying to check himself into rehab, and a little moaning Chinese girl with her parents.

It's great for comic situations or when you want to 'show' your boss your new injury, but soon turns equally embarrassing when you have to explain that while washing dishes the coffee cup that was in your hand suddenly transformed from a nice mug into a thousand shards of razor sharp blades. I'll never wash dishes again, I have a great excuse.

But after a few hours of waiting around, a quick look from the doctor, and an x-ray, everything came back okay, and I was superglued nicely. No stitches. Unless the cut is deep enough they just glue you up and send you on your way.

Other notable stories from the ER include: a man that had cut himself badly with some garden shears 12 hours earlier in the day - (they couldn't do anything because he'd left it so late), a kid with meningitis whose father wouldn't let the doctors test for it - (he was unsure about the side-effects of such a procedure, but seemed to miss the part where they mentioned his son might die from meningitis), and 2 suicide cases.

After I was discharged at 1:45am there was hardly time to seek out a green beer. I'd had my fill of tetanus boosters and Tim Horton's coffee.
On the up-side of everything - it's great to live 15 minutes walking distance from the hospital - and I'll be sure to leave the dishes until after the next big holiday.

Just Checking the Royal Emails...

It's not every day one gets an email from royalty. What started as a simple, quiet Saturday evening just became about 1000 times more interesting, and took us back down memory lane....

Our story takes us way back to our days on the road with Daisy, a little over a year ago now. We had been camping for a few days in stunning Cape Range National Park, a little piece of outback paradise set next to the beautiful blue-green waters of the Ningaloo Reef. It had been an eventful couple of days: drift-snorkeling the coral reef right off the shore of Turquoise Bay under the searing outback sun; veering around a lone brumby (wild horse) on the highway; shooing a six-foot snake that was trying to sneak into our van; eating dinner under a spooky pink globe of a sun (we learned later it was pink from the smoke of a massive bushfire burning up a cattle station a short way down the coast); finding our campsite taken over by giant scary crabs that would skitter around our van when the evening darkness set in. After seeing nearly the whole country and experiencing all the surrealness of Cape Range, we figured there couldn't be that many thrills left for us on the road.

So when we learned from some fellow travelers of a tiny sovereign nation housed within the borders of Australia, just a few hundred kilometres south of us, we had to know more! We questioned locals, who would laugh a bit, shake their heads, and confirm that yes, the Principality of Hutt River (formerly Hutt River Province), does indeed exist. Strangely enough, Hutt River (about the size of Hong Kong Island) was marked on some of our maps, but not on others. But the more we learned about the Prinicipality's history, the more intrigued we were: in a nutshell, in the late 1960s, the Australian government imposed wheat production quotas seen as ridiculous by a farmer named Leonard. He fought back, and found a pretty awesome loophole in the Constitution which allowed him to declare independence from Australia in 1970 with his piece of land. Eventually he took on the title of Prince Leonard (not King, as "kings speak to God" was his reasoning), and with his wife, Princess Shirley and the rest of the royal family, has been quietly irritating the Aussie government for decades. So of course we had to pay a visit!

After spending a few nights in the cute beach town of Kalbarri, we packed up Daisy and headed inland off the main highway. A few back roads later, we reached a sign: WELCOME TO THE PRINCIPALITY OF HUTT RIVER. We pulled into the driveway and there was no palace or moat: it looked like a your ordinary farm. Should we have called ahead? We had a bit of a wander around the dusty grounds (to our relief, at least there were signs welcoming in visitors) and eventually we were greeted by an elderly but lively man: His Royal Highness Prince Leonard himself! The Prince gave us the grand tour — though we figured by now he'd be sick of doing so — and he explained the whole secession story in detail, down to the law which allowed it, his special non-tax-paying arrangements with the Australian Tax Office (thanks to friends in high places), and his free trade agreement with Australia. We were awed at the fact that anyone — let alone a wheat farmer with a lot of land to tend to — would read legal documents and the national constitution for fun. But then, there probably isn't a lot to do out there. We were pretty impressed by the plucky HRH Prince Leonard's intelligence. We oohed and aahed at the royal gifts received from around the world, the photographs, and the spirit with which Prince Leonard carried himself. You could tell that, even after 39 years, he was still grinning at his big win!

The Prince later took us into the post office (yes, Hutt River has its own stamps and postal service — in fact, apparently in 1976, when Australia Post refused to handle the nation's mail, it was re-routed through Canada) and stamped our passports. We bought some postcards and even some Hutt River currency (awesome!). In the end, Adrian couldn't resist the notion of earning an official title in the kingdom — nor Prince Leonard's sales pitch — and became an Officer in the Illustrious Order of Merit (he keeps forgetting to add the O.I.O.M after his name on cheques!). We just couldn't resist contributing to the guy who's been sticking it to the Aussie government for the past 39 years!

Eventually, we shook hands with the prince again (the princess wasn't around that day) and he left us to explore the other royal buildings — including a chapel with some extremely frightening religious art to go with the royal portraits. We later mailed Adrian's O.I.O.M. pin home and have been waiting for the accompanying certificate to arrive from Hutt River since then. This week Adrian finally remembered to make contact about the missing certificate, and expecting a response from the kingdom's scribe or something, opens an email tonight from Prince Leonard himself — letting him know the Principality will reissue the missing papers. Long live the prince, we do say!

And with all that said, even though we couldn't have spent more than an hour or two within its border, the Principality of Hutt River remains close to our hearts. Whenever someone flips through our passports reading, "Thailand, Hong Kong, Taipei, Brisbane — Hutt River?? Where is that??" We can only laugh and tell our strange story. If anyone's planning to be near Perth next month, take note: Hutt River's 40th anniversary of independence is coming soon. Surely a good party! Mark April 21st on your calendars — we'll bring the fireworks.

A Caffeinated Free-for-all

Last night, we had a silly idea. Prompted by the hype about the free coffee war which started brewing this month — McDonald's vs. Timmy's vs. Country Style*, etc. — we thought, why not spend our Saturday hopping about town, drinking a smorgasbord of coffees for free? We certainly love our coffee, and we love free things even more! What better way to enjoy the Saturday sunshine, really?

First stop was Second Cup. A few weeks ago, a flyer appeared in our mailbox that read "Get a Second Cup on us, 11 times." After reading a bit further, it appeared we'd received a buy-one-get-one-free coffee card for Second Cup (with the first coffee being free!). Without knowing anything of McDonald's free coffee scheme or the beginning of Tim Horton's Roll Up the Rim contest at the time, we'd put the flyer aside for later.

So, a little after breakfast (and the usual cup or two of our Maxwell House brew at home), we strolled into the Second Cup at the corner of King & Strachan Streets, in the heart of condoville. Since we only had one free cup to take, Adrian went for it and Dayle went for a chai latte (yum! which month do those go free?). Points to Second Cup for its comfy chairs, peaceful dining-room-style decor (earth tones and money trees), and good atmosphere for thinking and chatting. Drawbacks: Adrian found it a little hard to speak quietly enough as to not disrupt the peace, and Dayle burnt her tongue on the scorching-hot drinks. The jazz soundtrack wasn't really our thing either, but the general experience gets our thumbs up. Lastly, the paradiso blend coffee was good, but a wee bit strong. The only worry is that we set the bar too high for the coffee sampling to come...
Cost: $4.10 (for the chai latte)

Next on the list was McDonald's, who are offering free coffee all day, every day, from March 1-14. Now that's a lot of free coffee! We wandered the longest way possible up to Dundas and Bathurst, to try and process some of the caffeine and soak up some more sunshine.

As soon as we entered the restaurant, we found that the free coffee offer was no secret. The lineup to the counter nearly reached the door, and the coffee was flowing. After some scrambling to find a seat, we realized how spoiled we had been in the cushy Second Cup chairs-- here, it was all of that hard institutional seating that makes a trip to McD's a short one, helped along by the lite-rock soundtrack of Corey Hart and company (but luckily it was loud enough in there that Adrian had no qualms about singing along loudly). Tastewise, the McDonald's arabica coffee was decent, though perhaps we weren't at the top of our tasting game having burnt off our tastebuds in Second Cup--we had a giggle at the "Caution: HOT!" warnings on the cups of warm coffee. It's still uncertain if we'd go purposely to McDonald's for coffee if it wasn't free-- though we'll award points for the stellar people-watching at Dundas & Spadina (plus the added theatrical value of having three crazy people inside the restaurant). Unfortunately though, our visit didn't come totally free-- we couldn't help but be tempted by the fries. Ronald wins again!
Cost: $5.69 (free coffee, but no free fries!)

Next stop: good old Canuck staple Timmy's. Dayle had won a free coffee after getting a Roll Up The Rim winner this past week-- what luck! Although there was a Tim Horton's across the street from McDonald's, we thought we'd shed some coffee jitters with a lightning-speed walk through Chinatown to the next closest Timmy's (slow down, Adrian!).

However, even after a good long wander through Dragon City shopping mall, a lengthy grocery shop, and more meandering, we arrived at Tim Horton's and stopped in front. Lesson of the day: there is indeed a such thing as too much free coffee, our stomachs had taken their limit (and Adrian had begun to see through space and time). Our Roll Up The Rim winnings would just have to wait... but maybe we'll try our free coffee tour again next week!

Today's free coffee count: 3
Total $ spent ordering other things while getting sick of coffee: $9.79

*Country Style's giving coffee away on Wednesdays.

Getting Cultured...

Hola! It's been a while since the last update. How time flies in Cancun....

Today we escaped the hustle and bustle of the hotel strip to get a little Mayan culture: a tour of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza. My dad and I both being into ancient history, we really enjoyed it. Chichen Itza is located in Yucatan state, about 2 1/2 hours inland from Cancun (including a rest stop at a tourist trap). The Mayan civilization flourished there from around 600 or 700 AD after choosing the site because of its excellent location for studying astronomy and such, and they came up with an amazingly accurate calendar, among other things-- it also held great religious significance. Over the centuries, the site was nearly abandoned and later repopulated by the Toltecs, who were thought to have influenced the architecture a fair bit (ie. the main pyramid standing today, the Pyramid of Kukulkan, is much wider than other Mayan pyramids like Tikal in Guatemala-- which was amazingly positioned at the magnetic north and captures the shadows exactly during the equinoxes and solstices). There's the tales of gory human sacrifices (though it was only every 52 years apparently), and then the eventual conquering of the site by the Spanish in the 1500s, where they dismantled many of Chichen Itza's structures and used the limestone to build churches. But the site was rediscovered in the 1800s by archaelogists and has been under looting and/or excavation since-- and luckily much more protected now.

That's one cool thing about revisiting places in the world-- how much even an ancient site can change over the years. When I first toured Chichen Itza in 1998, for one thing, climbing the Pyramid of Kukulkan was a must. 91 steep, hot steps to the top under the blazing sun... and a dizzying view down to the ground. For a few years now, that climb has been closed off-- too many idiots graffitiing the walls at the top, we're told. But with the number of tourists climbing that structure daily, surely it wouldn't be lasting for too long anyway.

There have been new discoveries and a bunch of new buildings excavated out of the ground since then too; the site has expanded quite a bit in 12 years. I can only imagine how much will have changed by the next time I'm back. There is one very bad development though-- the arrival of the high-profile music concert among the ruins. Sarah Brightman just did a show; before that, Pavarotti was there, and some other singers I think too; on April 3, Elton John will perform; and word is Paul McCartney's next. All great in concept, but even our guide Eduardo (who did his archaelogy Ph.D) was against the concerts-- because he shares the view that the intense noise of concert speakers is damaging the ancient structures more with every event (not to mention, has anyone SEEN what the ground looks like after an outdoor music festival?). So sad news there. Maybe someone will eventually shut that down....

So yes-- a good day of culture and history, with a few dashes of tourist-trap thrown in (think costumed Mayan dancers at our buffet lunch, dancing with a Corona bottle balanced so delicately on their heads). This time the tour had an additional stop at a cenote (a water-filled limestone sinkhole which the area is known for all throughout the jungle) for a swim-- sounded like a beautiful natural pool to take a dip in, but being surrounded by souvenir shops and landscaped with concrete steps and viewing platforms, not so natural wonder. Ah well! It's as natural as we can expect, I suppose. Gorgeous vines hanging all around though. And I'm sure if it wasn't a cool and cloudy day we would've been in that 150-ft deep pool in a flash!

(Fingers crossed the weather gets a bit better for our last two days-- boo hoo, you're probably thinking!-- as it's been getting cloudier and cooler with each passing day. At this rate we'll be coming back paler than we left. Anyhoo-- more updates soon!)

Cancun: it begins

On our first morning in Cancun, a big blue sky and hot sun greeted us for our first voyage into town-- most of Cancun's hotels are located along a skinny strip of land that's separated from the mainland by a lagoon; the small downtown is just inland from that. It was time to try out the local buses, a few of which go straight to "Super Wal-Mart", where visiting gringoes and locals alike load up on groceries. At 7.5 pesos a trip (that's about 60 cents), it's a bargain and a fun ride. After an excellent Mexican breakfast of huevos rancheros at a local cafe, we wandered the extremely quiet town — realizing everything's closed because it's Sunday, duh! — and found our way to the Wal-Mart, which was a bit unlike Wal-Marts at home in that it had a big bakery of local pastries, a giant section of cheese, and tequila and beer on the shelves. Our suite's kitchen was soon well-stocked. Awesome!

The afternoon was lovely and the biggest debate was whether to spend our time by the pool or the beach. We opted for beach (as many people did) and relaxed by the stunning turquoise ocean to the tune of vendors honking on giant conch shells and small planes putting by, dragging Superbowl Party banners. Eventually it game time drew close, and since it appeared our TV channels were mostly in Spanish, we figured Planet Hollywood would be showing the game. We weren't wrong — and amazingly enough, the restaurant seemed well-divided between New Orleans and Indianapolis fans. Divided... yet very united in the crowd's universal love of football (even I learned a teeny bit about what was happening).

On Day 2 (Monday), we thought we'd break up what would likely be a whole week of loafing by the pool/beach with a Spanish lesson put on by the hotel. It was fun and we learned a few handy phrases (like "Es picante?"), but our small group of five adults soon found our Spanish skills shown up by the one nine-year-old kid in the group! Little did we know, the sun would mostly disappear after the Spanish lesson and only come out for short stints for each day afterward... ah well... at least we could practice our Spanish numbers in the many malls around! (And maybe make a few friends along the way...)





making friends ....