A Tale of a City -- Toronto
By Jim Qi
Toronto is a city melted my love and hatred, a city with which I always
have an ambivalent feeling. In other words, Toronto is a city I love and a
city I hate. However, my last trip to that city was a fabulous one which
seemed not to be on par with any of the previous times. This time I was
there purely to enjoy myself and have great time with my friends while any
of the ones before I seemed to be either on the neck-breaking speed or was
under a high living-making pressure. Soooo the tale:
1. Je reviens à la ville!
I took the car Friday morning, tenish, but I did not expect it was
raining. While the car was running through the rain, I could fortunately
sleep soundly as usual on the back seat regardless of the heavy rain and
the babbling from the driver and the frond seat passenger. When we arrived
in Toronto, it was already three o'clock in the afternoon.
Toronto was rocked! No trouble to find Sally's home at all. She and
Geraldine--Sally's Mum--- were actually waiting for me while they were
watching the television. Hugged them in, I felt quite hungry. So I asked
for something to eat. Sally gave me two moon cakes which she brought back
from China. "Black Forest" moon cakes! Cool and delicious, but I could
have only one.
Had a few beers with Sal, we then chatted, chatted and chatted. It had
been more than one year since we departed in Toronto last time. She then
went to Shanghai while I went to New York. The topic could have been to
the moon, I gather. Eightish, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Natalie, a
friend of Sally's, was already waiting for us there. Nat was a quiet and
elegant girl. She did not talk too much. The vocabularies she used in the
conversation were appropriate and vivid, from which I could see she was
well-educated, somewhat more or less like Sally, not so active as Sally,
though.
Sal and I had eaten out in numerous restaurants and bars, Chinese
restaurants, Italian restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants and kinds of
funky bars, but that was the first time we were in Mexican restaurant. I
ordered Mexican Flag, plus a deep fried ice cream for dessert. I ordered
this dessert more for the reason of curiosity, because I was wondering how
on earth the "deep fried" could be on ice! It finally turned out to be
strawberry jam spread on the ice cream. The food was just terrific! I had
two Dos Equis (a kind of Mexican beer) as well. Sal also had Dos Equis
while Nat had vine.
I could see that Sal looked very weary, so we ended up the dinner and went
back home. Hugged good night and I went to TD Bank and withdrew some money
from the ATM. When I got back to the apartment, Geraldine was still
watching television. In a matter of fact, it was only 10:20PM. So we blew
the breeze until both of us felt sleepy, around 11:30PM.
After taking a shower, I went to bed. It was a quiet night and I slept
just like a log.
2. Kara-To-Oke
The legend continued. Saturday morning, I got up at 7:30, but I did not
dress or wash up until near 8:00AM. I then thought Sal could get back home
early, but it proved that I was so wrong. Elevenish she called in to
invite me to have breakie with her and Nat. She gave the direction and I
rode her purple bicycle to Nat's apartment. It did not take me too much
time to find Nat's apartment.
We then went to "People's Food" for breakie (Sal and Nat called that
breakie) or brunch.(I think it should be a brunch) The owner of the
restaurant was a Greek and the food was great as well. I had a coffee, two
eggs, beef and toast. We discussed the word puzzle and our horoscope
signs.
Wound up the breakie, we stopped by at Nat's apartment. We were still
discussing the cross word. It was such a fun to do the cross word. No
wonder some people in USA call it the brain gymnastics.
Took a quick look at Nat's apartment. It was like a semi-basement, small,
nice and clean, though. We watched the pictures Nat took with her new
digital camera in the restaurant the day before. Pretty cool indeed!
I went back home with Sal. It did not seem that it took too much time on
foot. En route back home, we stopped by at a bookstore (yet not sure if
that is really a bookstore, because almost all the books there were second
handed and they were placed in a spacious hall), and I bought a couple of
useful second hand books.
That afternoon, we went to the China Town in Toronto and did shopping
there. We bought a lot of Chinese food and sauce. We had different kinds
of water dumplings, wanton, well, a cornucopia of ambrosias, I could say.
Back home, we started to cook. As a matter of fact, Sal cooked all the
Chinese food while I could only help her, or even could hardly help
anything, for she was so professional to do all this. See, she knew how to
cook the Chinese food, she knew how to make the soup and she knew how to
concoct the sauce. Everything had been done in a vocational way. Cool and
amazing!
We all used chopsticks. After I saw how professional she was to cook the
Chinese food, I would not feel amazed to see Sal use the chopsticks so
nimbly. We all gorged ourselves that night. After dinner, we chewed the
fat. One of the most intriguing topics is languages and cultures. When I
asked her how many countries she had been to. She said she had been to
nine countries in the past 12 months. To my surprise, she bent her index
and made a sign, which in most parts of China means nine. I then teased
her:" You are so Chinese-ized." We all guffawed.
Around 8:30PM, we arrived at Black Bulls, one of the restaurants which
Sally used to work in when she was in uni.Renee was waiting for us. Renee
seemed to gain some weight. She was another kind of girl, quite deferent
from Nat, noisy, frank, loquacious and foul-mouthed. We drank, talked and
played games. It was a cool computer game. We needed to team up to find
the five differences between the two pictures in a short period of time.
For me, it was quite new, but we did pretty well. Poor Renee could not
find her lipstick after that. Can you imagine where the hell it was found?
Sal found it in the lady's room!
At midnight we headed for another bar, called Topbass, which was quite
close to Sally's old apartment, in fact next door to Sal's former
apartment. I did not realize that until we finally left that bar when
Sally asked whether I could recognize that place. Then I looked up. Wow,
898 College Street, that was the place where Sal used to live!
Back to Topbass. That would be the most exciting moment. We drank, talked,
sang Karaoke, teased one another and made noise, as if the whole world did
not exist. Nat turned up around oneish in the morning. Also met a couple
of nice and funny guys from Nova Scotia. Quite funny, but cool! I produced
a documentary. Guys made faces to the camera. Renee was so active, she
acted as a journalist and was reporting the activities. Heather, a
waitress who worked in the restaurant, dropped a glass on the floor. She
then swept the floor. Sal told me she had been working since seven o'clock
in the morning without a break. She was indeed torn out.
Sal was always in the elation. She talked to people, joked with them with
the witty word in English sometimes mixed with a few sentences in funny
Chinese. She could comprehend a lot of Chinese! We talked, laughed, sang
and drank. When you are happy with your friend, you surely feel the time
is flying. That was it!
When we left the bar, it was almost 4:00 in the morning. The mellifluous
music seemed to be still haunting around me. We then headed to a
restaurant for breakie, but the restaurant was closed for some reason. So
we ended up in Fran's. Sal and Nat ordered big breakies while I had just
as normal two eggs, beef, potatoes and a toast. Got out from Fran's, we
teased one another, walking on the street. It was quiet and chilly. A
stature came into our eyes. Not sure what the stature was really for or
what it was, but looked like a policewoman----That was also what Sal said.
We took pictures around the stature. Sal somersaulted. Nat then did also.
Sal's somersault was straight. Nat did quite well also, not so
professionally as Sal did, though. By then I had not known Sal used to be
a gymnastic athlete and model. This answered me why her somersault was so
professional. I told Sal that I could not even do as Nat did. However Sal
turned away my denotation on purpose and said:" You can not kick Nat's ass
and she can kick yours." We then burst into laughter. That took me back to
my happiest time in my childhood. Quite cool, eh?
3. All happy beginning ends happily
Finally dawn found us.We hugged good night or good morning. Fiveish, the
sun already lit the morning sky, I came back home, Sneaked into the room
in order not to wake up Geraldine. Fell into a sound slumber, but at
7:15AM, I was waken up by Sal's alarm clock. Somnolently I turned the
alarm off and hit the sack again.
Tenish I woke up. Geraldine was not home. She came back around 11:00AM and
we then went to Tim Horton for morning coffee. There was a book show along
College Street. I took a browse while waiting for Geraldine. The same
afternoon, I went the book show again and bought some more books.
We then did shopping in Dominion. Prepared British dinner afterward. I
gorged myself again. We had pork, corn, carrots, potatoes and gravy. The
life-killing hot sauce I had was hot enough to kill an elephant, but I
really enjoyed it a lot!
After dinner, Sal felt lethargic and went to sleep. Geraldine and I
continued to blow the breeze. She told me her life in this country, her
life in other countries and her life with Sal's daddy. She was so proud of
Sal and Sal's bro, Ian. She showed me Sal's pictures, it was a large
collection of album filled with Sal's pictures, from the early age to her
adulthood. I told her my early life in Toronto, the cultural shock and
hardship at the early stage of emigration. When I was telling my story,
she listened attentively and showed great interest to my story. When I
told her my story, I almost could not hold back my tears ----whenever and
wherever I think of Toronto, I will have the same feeling, that is why in
my mind I recall this city a city melted my love and hatred.
I then went to bed quite early that night. The next morning I got up early
also and saw Geraldine off to work at 7:00AM. I turned on the television,
but paid little attention to what was showing on TV. Tenish I hugged Sal
goodbye.
I took the subway plus the bus to Yu's apartment and picked up my package.
Yu is an old friend of mine. The time I arrived at his apartment, he was
not in Just met his wife, Gai, and had lunch with her and her teenage son.
Took the car at 2:15PM which was supposed to pick me up at 1:00PM. The
trip back was boring, but I was happy that I could doze off most of the
time. Back home, it was already later at the night. This is a terrific
trip, isn't it?
Remark: The second sub-title comes from a mixture of words. I deliberately
insert "To" into Karaoke. Obviously "To" has two donations here:1) it is
short for Toronto; 2) it indicates the direction.
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发表于 2013-1-12 11:28:30
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发表于 2013-1-12 12:23:18
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发表于 2013-1-14 08:39:20
