So close and yet somewhat foreign

I took some pictures north of the border for you... and maybe I'll even figure out how to transfer them here from my work-issued Blackberry, before I have to return it. Bluetooth doesn't seem to be helping (nor does attaching an actual cable), which is why it may come down to attaching each picture individually to an e-mail. This is just one of many reasons that I should have brought my camera, which I'd listed under the 'optional' part of my packing list, and so did not make the cut by the time I had to leave on Monday (as you might have gathered from my post). Oh, Dulles: I was parked at 11am and still didn't get to the gate until noon or just after, when my colleagues were already boarding and wondering whether I'd make it. You may recall that two weeks ago, I was at the gate at National less than twenty minutes after leaving the house; at Dulles, it took me three times that long just to get to the gate from a not-too-distant parking lot (indeed, the walk to the terminal accounted for merely ten minutes of that hour). The security line was so ridiculous that they actually stopped it for a good fifteen minutes to let it clear. But I'll quit boring you with logistics.

Scratch that, let me bore you with a different set of logistics: f*ing Blackberries. Back when I used Jay's, in Japan, it was my first-ever experience with a smartphone. I didn't understand how user-hostile it was because I had no point of comparison then. Well, I can now vouch for the user-hostility of that that thing. My colleagues and I could barely figure out how to turn it off for the flight (the off button wasn't doing it). Later, I was trying to do something by tapping on the screen, like a monkey. It had to be explained to me by my (older) colleagues that the screen couldn't hear (er, feel) me. That thing continued to fluster and frustrate throughout the trip, though I later felt bad about having dubbed it "that piece of $hit" because it saved my @ss on the way (back) to the airport, after I'd dropped off my more laden, bag-checking colleagues at the terminal to go return the car and fell victim to poor signage that brought me to the area's labyrinthine industrial parks, until I eventually managed to pull over and ask the Blackberry to set me straight. It was not stressful, as my colleagues had insisted that we allow double the time I'd suggested for getting to the airport. As such, I managed to return the car by 8:30am, which is the time at which, had it been up to me, we would have been just leaving the hotel.

I brought the Droid, too, to use by wifi at the hotels. At first, I had the same problem I'd had in Europe: the wifi kept turning itself off. I'd figured out that AT&T's "smart" wifi app was the problem (regardless of its setting); once I disabled it, everything was fine. The Droid was so much easier to use for (almost) everything, but the Blackberry did what it was supposed to do: grant us easy access to work e-mail and allow us to call each other (or make other phone calls as needed) at no expense to ourselves. Also, the GPS function was invaluable, and it (i.e., Google Maps) was almost as usable as it was on the Droid. Having had the Droid for a few months also made me better at figuring out the Blackberry. Alright, now that we've covered the technology, let's get on to to good stuff.

Oh, in case you were wondering, no celebrities crossed our paths. I hadn't thought about it, until one of the people we'd met with in Ottawa said he'd been at the Madonna concert the night before, and that night she was on TV, being interviewed about the TIFF (hopefully at this year's festival she'll sidestep any hydrangea controversies). She apparently has a mutually antagonistic relationship with Toronto, but they love her in Ottawa.

***
Everything about this trip was awesome: the weather, the food, the work (interesting as well as productive), the people, and the places. I'd heard that Ottawa was a pretty cool place but never made it over there until now to find out for myself. I'd go back, especially because we didn't have time to check out any of the museums. We did get a chance to walk around town a bit and see the market,





and the views around the Parliament and the river.

 
Sorry about the van--that picture was actually taken out of the car, so I had limited time to get the shot. I'll also have some cool gargoyle photos to share, but I took them with a colleague's Blackberry, so I haven't recovered them yet. Anyway, more parliament-related structures:






We also made the most of the sidewalk cafes (the second picture below is the view from the sidewalk cafe on the left).


Ottawa was elegant and quirky (though our meeting hosts said not to get excited; the Byward Market area, where we stayed, was indeed very exciting, but apparently not representative of the rest of the city).
 

Toronto reminded me of Shanghai (tall buildings, cranes, craziness) and the others of Chicago. Both were bustling.



In Ottawa, the sidewalk cafes were plentiful and on the sidewalk; in Toronto, such cafes were more often on the street, with a lane blocked off for them.

Here you can see a street-lane "sidewalk" cafe on the left, with Ryerson University buildings across the street (on the right). Just left of the university buildings, you can see part of Zanzibar's banner.

Look what Zanzibar is offering as a a back-to-school special.

 Now check out this cool building, and the cool, random clock tower:

Veggie dogs!

Vegan cupcakes!

There was lots of easily available vegan food, except for breakfast (I ended up tiding myself over with a hotel apple the first morning in Ottawa and getting a whole wheat tofu wrap from Peace Market the night before the second). For dinner, we had Vietnamese and then bar food (for me, that was tofu pad thai that tasted nothing like pad thai, but was good nonetheless).  In Toronto, I had an amazing sesame tempeh sandwich at Urban Herbivore, and sadly did not have room for dessert. Especially toward the end of the trip, I found myself eating more bread than is humanly necessary. We went to an Italian place our first night in Toronto that had amazing fresh bread and really good dipping oil and vinegar (you know I don't f* around with balsamic). The next day, it was sandwiches for lunch (kindly provided by our hosts), that tempeh sandwich for a snack, and a "garden" burger (really a boca burger) on ciabatta at the game. I was just so done with bread, not for any nutritional impulse but because, with the exception of the fresh bread at the Italian place and the (also fresh) whole wheat bread at Urban Herbivore, it was just blah.


I was hoping--spare me your protests of 'first world problems'--that the bread might fatten me up, but it did not. Why should you spare me the protests? Because my f*ing clothes are falling off, even the ones I bought a few months ago when I'd already lost a bunch of weight. And you know how hotel rooms have a lot of mirrors, so you end up seeing your reflection a lot more than you would at home? At one point, I reached up to get something--I was across from the mirrored closet doors in the room--and I could see my ribs. Which I never signed on for. And yet, at the same time, I get why mainstream models tend to be emaciated: you can be mostly thin and still have flabby spots, so to come off as uniformly thin, you'd have to be bony. (In case you were wondering, I have no interest in bony). Plus, in my case, between the fact that I like to eat (mostly carbs) and the fact that I like olives and other pickled, salty foods, I regularly sport second-trimester food babies.


But enough about me; check out the game and the CN Tower: