The great northern resurfacing

Hello again my many Weblog-readers. It's been a bit of a haze, but I'm now settled-ish in Toronto. There were just a few small practical matters to sort out immediately - dozens of international-move-related bureaucratic details (a work still in progress, thus my near-unusable US phone), plus the thing that happens when you move from a furnished apartment to an unfurnished one (a halfhearted look at nearby furniture stores that sell slabs of wood for thousands of dollars, followed by the inevitable trip to IKEA). Still awaiting the furniture itself (the couch, bed, etc. may be in stackable boxes, but this was beyond what a streetcar could handle) as well as all our other belongings, but there was a silver-lining moment when I realized that a suitcase we'd brought that I thought contained only paperwork and my wedding dress actually had, in addition to this, a second pair of jeans. The height of luxe! Also very luxurious: the Canadian Tire air mattress (thank you, commenter Alison for the suggestion!), and the IKEA pillow and throw that have made it almost comfortable. And wireless - a new addition that, along with the folding chairs from yesterday, has made this all slightly less like camping.

Like Borat at an American supermarket, I have no idea how to buy groceries. Milk is incredibly expensive, or it comes in a giant plastic bag. There's apparently a YouTube video explaining how that works. Which I did not know when at the store. Garlic scapes, however, are ridiculously cheap, so I now have a ton of them. The options seem to be a) the expensive yuppie supermarket close by, b) the dream-come-true Chinatown supermarket close-ish by that may or may not stock Western-style groceries, and c) the farmers' market and giant indoor affiliated market, both of which are wonderful but out of the way. I have a lot of romantic notions about European-style browse-shopping (with a fabric shopping cart, which currently tops my wanty list), but can already foresee not having time for that, and having to accept that the supermarket with $17 (Canadian but still) moderate-sized pieces of cheese can't be avoided entirely.

The restaurant situation, however, is so excellent as to make me think maybe cooking isn't worth the bother. For the price of a thimble-full of Canadian milk or a shred of Canadian parmesan cheese (I exaggerate; it's not Princeton prices but would still add up eventually), you can have a two-meal-sized portion of any East Asian cuisine you choose. (I exaggerate once more. I'm sure there are parts of the region not represented. Maybe.) So far there has been Korean food, Vietnamese food, and a regional Chinese cuisine (Yunnan) that I don't believe I'd ever had before. Restaurants and grocery stores of the sort I used to drive for hours (or it felt like hours) to get to are now more or less right downstairs. Japanese food... is around, but seems not as common here, for obvious immigrant-population reasons, but there is a Japanese grocery store, which is more than I can say for the many miles around where I used to live. That will probably come in handy once there's more than a saucepan and a stack of disposable plates to work with. And coffee shops! So many, so far all excellent. And there are Portuguese (?) custard tarts that taste just like French flan, which segues into another observation: there's no easy place to go running. So be it! Oh, and the meal I've taken to calling "street sausages," but that's probably called something more appetizing. The veggie dog with hot peppers, BBQ sauce, onions, and mustard is just so fantastic, and so cheap, and basically everywhere.

As for more profound cultural observations, or just things that don't relate to the practicalities of getting through the first few days of a move... I want to say that Canadians are less preppy than Americans, but I'm comparing the center of Toronto with Princeton, NJ, so who knows. There are definitely some Canada-specific fashion subcultures that remind me of the goth and raver looks popular at my high school, but kind of different and worn by adults. Wearing all black, in the not-quite-goth sense, is a thing here in a way that it isn't in New York, where it's supposedly what one does. Men's fashions are more noticeably Canadian than women's - there isn't that same thing (again, at least in the parts of Toronto I've seen) of dressing as macho/unfashionable as possible. The typical men's business suit is sort of fitted, I guess, and there isn't that same gender divide of women caring and men ostentatiously not caring. As you can see, my profound cultural observations are all about clothes. I am very, very sleepy. Apart from a man almost running me over at an intersection, but putting down his car window to offer up a "sorry," it seems... different yet almost exactly the same as the parts of North America I'm used to. And absolutely nothing like Montreal, which had been my reference point for Canada.

I gather that a lot has happened in the world in the past few days, and will now catch up on that, for personal-interest and professional reasons alike. Please, reader(s), bear with me as I try to resync with the news cycle.