04/14/08: A new home

As scheduled, I flew to Houston on Wednesday evening, March 26th. It was a great shock to go from snowdrifts in Toronto to azaleas and shorts in Houston! However, I adapted, and enjoyed the mild weather. I stayed with friends Karl and David, and as usual enjoyed their company as well as their hospitality. The conference was stimulating, but three days is a lot, and I was not sorry to climb onto another airplane Saturday night and move on to New York. New York was neither winter nor spring -- dry, but cloudy and nothing green yet. I was only there briefly, returning to Toronto early on Tuesday morning. By the time I got back to Canada all my minor cultural indicators were completely confused: centigrade or fahrenheit, licence or license? There are now several definitions of "home"...

In the next couple of days, we got ready to move, packing up things, but with a poor sense of how much there was. It's true we came here with just a few suitcases (what was allowed on two persons' air tickets), but since then I have ferried several loads from New York, and we have also bought a few things from Craigslist (a computer printer, a standing lamp, two sets of wire shelves, etc.). Friday, April 4th, was a rainy day, but Fumiko had taken off school for the move, so eventually we bit the bullet and called a "van taxi," which has more luggage room than the standard size. It turned out we needed two van trips, but by evening we had managed to get everything transferred the 3 kilometers, and then wrestled up two flights of stairs.

This new apartment will certainly build muscle: there are no elevators, at all! The street entrance is on the first floor, the mail and newspaper delivery is on the second floor, and we are on the third floor; laundry room and recycling bins are in the basement. On top of that, our apartment itself consists of two floors, with the bedroom, bath, and study on the second level! So, we do a lot of stair-climbing. On the move-in day, Fumiko kindly did the lion's share of hauling stuff upstairs, and I was duly grateful. She kept saying it was "good exercise," but she was sore for a couple of days afterwards.

We spent most of the weekend getting settled, packing up some of the owners' things to make room for ours and deciding how we wanted to arrange the space. After discovering that they do not own a few things that we consider essential, we went to Craigslist and eventually bought an electric coffee maker ($7), a very old toaster oven ($10), an even older microwave oven ($15), and a rice cooker ($6). The total lack of TV closed captions forced me to realize how addicted to them I have become, in order to overcome passing traffic noise, occasional actor mumbling, and heavy foreign accents. I eventually traced the problem to the extreme age of the little television, so I bought a less elderly but still small TV for $20 (Craigslist again) and now I'm content. We are trying to limit our acquisitions, since we'll have to move it all again in five months, but it's tempting to make a nest that's really comfortable and has what we need.

We've now been here about 10 days, and we like it pretty well. Though we miss the streetcars, it's true that being a few steps from a major subway stop is very convenient, not to mention the library, supermarket, and wine/beer store. The high ceilings and big front windows give us a feeling of light and air, even on rainy days, and we're getting used to skipping up and down the stairs all the time. We're astonished that, despite being on a main thoroughfare and right next to the subway, there is less noise here than in our last place. There are extra beds here, too, a fold-out couch (double) and a rollaway bed(single), so we can welcome guests who can do without a private room.

Spring has definitely begun to arrive. Crocuses are sprouting everywhere, and every other day is warm (55 or 60 F.), and often without strong winds. On a recent walk through the little zoo in High Park, we saw the mountain goats racing each other around the enclosure in what looked like a mating ritual. The ponds and snowpiles in High Park have all thawed, and I'm discovering many "new" trails and paths that have been invisible for the past four months.

Culture Shock Dept.: The post office here has discovered a luxe approach to public service. First, most local post offices are located inside stores -- a counter in the corner of a drugstore or a stationery store, so Canada Post doesn't have the real estate problems that the U.S.P.O. does. Then, postage is higher here and, when I went to file a forwarding order, I discovered they charge $37 for six months' mail forwarding service! Can you imagine? We get so little mail that of course I said "forget it," and just spent the afternoon changing all the addresses by Internet and telephone. Worst case, we can swing by the old place occasionally and pick up any mail that comes.

The class (on history of Toronto development) that I have been looking forward to was canceled at the last minute due to lack of enrollment. Darn! I have been scheduling around it for a couple of months, so now I have to rethink everything. I'm going to volunteer at HotDocs, an international film festival starting this weekend. As a senior, I can get in free during the day (if tix available), and then I'll get some free anytime tix for volunteering. So I can go crazy ("film-festival frenzy") and OD on documentaries.

I have been thinking of trying to be an extra or bit player in the burgeoning film and theatre industry here in Toronto, and I've been watching a couple of Internet sites for this purpose. Through them, I found a photographer who is creating a "breast montage" for a documentary about breast cancer and wants subjects. In return, she'll do free head shots (I contacted two photographers about this, and they quoted me $145 and $350, respectively!), so I went last Friday and had it done. She took a long time on "my" shots, and one of her assistants was a nice young Japanese woman who was enchanted that I could speak Japanese, and they served healthy munchies. So, a nice experience, and in a few weeks she'll email me a free professional head-shot so I can play with the big guys!

Fumiko is still sending off resumes to possible employers, but no nibbles so far. We keep hearing that it's hard to get a job without Canadian experience and references, so she has begun volunteering two days a week for one of these employers. Actually, even the newspaper comments from time to time on the problems of immigrants finding work here. There are doctors driving cabs, etc. But Fumiko says she'll give it until her birthday (in November she'll be 60) and then she'll start looking for other kinds of work. (We seem to have enough money to live on for the time being.)