Monday, 19 May 2003

Toronto - trip to Scarborough

How ironic that the WHO had lifted the health warning on Toronto the day before I left Montreal. It seems a bit odd that they would play such favourites for the tourist industry of Toronto, just for their "Canada Loves Toronto" long weekend. If anything, it just brought more people into the megacity to inflict its crap-laden expensive wares on us to help its dismal tourism rates.

Not to say that everything was expensive, mind you. I was talking about the convention. Chinatown was dirt cheap for awesome meals and things, but AN was not a place you could safely spend your student-derriere's budgets without resorting to eating couch lint as a nightly meal. *shiver*

Anyway, there seemed to be no end of people going to Scarborough to shop and eat. The mall close to my mum's godmother's place was closed, yet so many people were lined up at the chinese restaurant. My cousins and aunt brought me there to have dim sum, but so many others thought they would do the same. We resorted to eating sundaes at McDonald's first, and then walked back into the restaurant when they coincidentally called out our number.

After a hearty, greasy, fun-filled dim sum lunch, we then headed to Market Village to hopefully pick up some anime-themed wares. Unfortunately, after three hours of browsing, I found nothing of the sort. There was plenty of Pucca, Mashimaro, Hello Kitty, Snoopy, and other mainstream asian cartoon figures, but very little of any other sort. There was a few My Neighbour Totoro dolls, but the prices ranged from the 30s to 50s figures. I didn't think that such items were to be so painful for the wallet.

At the end, we left with pretty much empty hands except for a few chinese things, and my aunt got me a huge 1 kg bag of gummies. Big pu came by last Friday and ate all the mango ones, which is fine with me since mango isn't my most favourite flavour. I think of all the fruit flavours, that would have to come in last.

At last, we returned home to enjoy a last supper together.

---

Let me explain the family tree and how my "cousins" are actually related to me. Apparently, my mum had a brother who got married, and this woman I call "cou mo." My cou mo (or aunt-in-law) then had a few kids, which my "aunt" is one of, and this woman I call "bieu tse." My bieu tse (or cousin) then had my "cousins, E. and R., who therefore are my second cousins, but they call me "aunt" sometimes. Fun confusions. :) I have a similar confusion on my father's side of the family.

---

Well, this probably concludes my trip to Toronto. I left the next morning at about 7 am on the train again, and less eventful things happened on this ride. We also experienced a long delay, due to another phantom exploding freight train or something, and I sat next to a mexican guy who was taking a trip up and down the continent to see who knows what. I slept for most of the ride anyway.

Oh yeah. I tried to take a picture of my cousins' place, but the camera decided to not listen to me and I wanted to call them later to tell them so. Of course, no one was home again. Grr.

I did take one picture on the train of the "distillery art district," where they filmed many things, like the Jewish ghetto scene in X-Men, the first movie.