Monday, October 16, 2006

Recap New York Trip Part III

I know this is a month late but here goes nuthin'
After leaving Toronto for the first time I headed to Peterborough or as others have referred to it – with little exaggeration and including the self-deluded evil – as “Pleasantville”. My cousin’s wedding there went off without a hitch… even though it was all filmed by “Life Network” – she’s months pregnant and a show dubbed “Wedding SOS” got her set up with a new dress.What scares me though is a sense of racism I felt exuding from a relatively middle class educated Ontario population there. I had a long and excruciatingly heated conversation with my uncle who is a driving instructor (and should fucking well know better) phrenologically explained why Asians made for bad drivers due to peripheral vision (replete with finger assisted slanty eyes). Don’t get me wrong I called him on it, with an explanation of Phrenology and its connection to eugenics theories.

Back to T-Dot:
Toronto didn't enthuse me yet again... and I had such high hopes this time.
I did get a little thesis work done. I spent some time at City Hall and met up with a few Urban Designers there. Here's a shot of Dunas Square, the pride of T.O. ... a place that is very similarly situated in the city as Robson Square... its on Yonge. JP tells me its great when there's programming, but nothin was happening there when I got there. It seems to be another minimalist "square" But I got to see JP. He, me and my mum ate sushi and got drunk on sake well into the night. JP’s Living in the basement in a nice mixed residential neighbourhood in Toronto’s core. Just outside of Chinatown. And he’s got a Urban Social Economics office that make me jealous. Here he is kicking me out of it.

So then it was off by train from Union Station.Getting across the border was fun... There is someone out there that is using my name including middle initial as an alias. I was pulled off the train by three armed border patrol at Niagra falls and put into a room where they tried to convince me to slip up that my name was Josh. Held the train up for an hour and a half. No harm done or rubber glove treatment.
I learned that I don’t know my own height in centimeters, and that US border guards can’t convert metric either.