Oh Canada!

I cant believe that am creating a post for the first time in nearly two years. Either that I din't have anything to write about or I've gotten damn lazy. While the latter thing seems utterly impossible, I am guessing the former one makes more sense.

Ok. What happening new with my life. I am currently in Toronto, Canada. It is currently the hottest city here with the temperatures peaking at 15C!! I know, I know. B'lore was 35C when I left it and that place is suppose to be the AC city of India! Anyways, back to Toronto. Did you know that the Canadian dollar here is called a loon! The last time I checked, the Toronto Stock Exchange gave least returns compared the developed markets in the world. I mean, who would take u seriously if you called your money loon! Next what, you call the bathroom - biffy, A Canadian  - a canuck, an awkward situation - kerfuffle. U knw what.. They acually call them that. No no, Canada is a wonderful place. I love their money. It is pink, purple, green. All wonderful colors that people dream up when they're high!

Before I landed here, I had to transit in Hong Kong for a couple of hours. I knwthat ppl wudnt have heard this before, but I found HK to be one of the beautiful cities to look out an airport(This has nothing to do with me travelling outside India for the first time). You have the mountains on one side, the sea in between and the airport on the other side. The airport is pretty good too. But for people who say that Hong Kong is the english speaking part of China, ur dead wrong my friends. They know english, doesnt mean they can speak it. They know English like my mallu friend sharath knows Kannada! Cmin back to HK. The Chinese ppl are, I think, eternally sentenced to being polite i.e. to others. To each other, they are rude as hell. The chinese women, are equivalent to Bengali women. They yell at their poor husbands in public, drag them along like soft toys & are way better looking than their men - similar to the bongs here. All in all a good experience.

Now after a 15 hour not-at-all-tiring-flight, I landed in Toronto Canada. Let me tell you about how nice we Indians are to each other. Two days before I left to Canada,  my laptop had crashed, taking away all my travel mails. So I knew that my hotel was Residence Inn in Mississauga. Isnt that enuf? I thought so. I hailed a cab. Indian taxi guy. Put my luggage in. Sat down with relief and said, Residence Inn, Mississauga. He said, mate(yes.. Mate!!!), there are two Residence Inn's in Mississauga, which one are you looking for. I said, am not really sure, am new here. He said, you know what, get out of my cab!! OMG! My first day in Canada and Im lost. I was ok. I went into the airport. Try to connect to the wireless. It was not free!! Oh Canada! How could you charge for internet at the airport! I mean itz free in Goddamm India as well!! To cut a long story short, I found the address from the website(using skype), which ended up being the wrong place as well. If not a well-mannered Canadian recepionist, I would have been care of platform. It was finally around 2100 wen I got to my room,and I had to go to office the next day!

Maybe that stupid taxi-wallah, was the only rude guy that I've met till now, coz every person I met here till date has actually been very nice to me. As I mentioned earlier, they are a bunch of heavily satisfied folk. But the Indians here on the other hand.. Let me tell you, the Indians here earn wayy more than their Canadian counterparts, but they are never happy. Always complaining about something. But that helps with my home sickness, as all this complaining makes me feel at home.

Now there are obvious differences that I've noticed in the one week that I've been here. The infrastructure is wayy better here. The roads, the transportation. We should send someone from India here and show they how things are supposed to be. The problem with that is the guy would never come back! The thing that irritates me here the most is the television ads. OMG! Indian ads are goddamm creative when you compare them to these ads. I mean the ads can be divided into clear categories. There is this person talking ad, about how the product has enriched their lives, you know sometimes even toilet paper or weed remover! Then, there are these junk food ads(Wendy's, Taco's, McD's), where they talk about how good their product is by showing something outrageous and totally not associated with the product. Ok, they show a man skydiving, then running through a rain forest and all that crap and show some burger that he had from breakfast! The lat category is auto ads. Exhaustive techincal information about the car, which no one really understands, and then complicated finance structruring that makes you feel as though your're getting the car at a pretty good deal, while your actually not.

Sports. Being a freaking cold country, they are obsessed with their hockey(not the one that we are good at!, but the ice cold version). Toronto failed to get through the playoffs(Our equivalent of RCB not making the semis(ya dream on, like that's possible!!)). People here are so ticked off about it, there is this obvious disdain in the voices of the local news guys. They would be like, Ottawa won their match today, but if not for that stupid guy(some player), we(toronto) would have been in place of Ottawa. They mention this in every statement. They are also really insecure when it come sto US, I guess. They keep yelling out Canadian! Canadian! every time some Canadian player pops up on the screen, even though he is not a part of their team! The local Canadian programming sucks. Thank god for American cable. Else people would have to shoot themselves watching that crap.

Still exploring the place. Just got here. Will pen down some more thoughts as I go along.

Long live the queen!

Long live Canada!