Randomness

I walked by an outdoor garbage can on the campus and watched a caretaker heave the bag out, while standing on the concrete container with her feet braced on either side.   “A bag full of water!” she exclaimed as I passed her.  The strike is over, but the rains are not.

Someone told me that there are two seasons in Toronto: Winter and Construction.  I’ve been thinking of that lately, as I can barely walk a block without detouring around a construction site. In some ways, I am looking forward to winter.  At least the streets are quieter.

We had dinner at “Ruth’s Chris Steak House” this past week.  This is what their website says: “Ruth’s Chris Steak House” is such a tongue-twister that one restaurant critic suggested it be used as a sobriety test: anyone who could say that name three times certainly couldn’t be intoxicated.” Anyway, Ruth’s Chris makes good steak! (who is Chris anyway?)

Did anyone notice when parking tickets started being printed on plastic strips?!  And can someone explain to me how that is environmentally friendly?

Is there a difference between “This finished product was not tested on animals” and “Not tested on animals”?  In which case are the lab rats happier? (It’s not a rhetorical question. I actually don’t know.)

Athos

The mystery of other people’s taste buds

Ever wondered how your buddy can enjoy that Durian shake?  Why some people like the Panago slice and profess to hate the PP slice?  And why your very best friend can’t understand your love for the maple pecan danish while you’ve tried to demonstrate so many times?!

It would seem that our taste buds are just as subjective as our taste for clothes, movies or books.  Perhaps all these senses are not so different after all, although your taste buds are unavoidably on your tongue.  I like to imagine that these other tastes have real, physical buds stealthily hidden elsewhere on our bodies.  (no, this is not my scientific belief)

Somewhere under your epidermis, a group of literature buds are hard at work:  “hmm, nope, nope, a bit too ironic; it could have used a little more metaphor.”

So the next time you’re about to raise an eyebrow as your buddy dives into a chili while you eat your spinach salad, just remember that some people like their N. Sparks and others like their J. Joyce.  (no direct correlation implied, except that A Walk to Remember would perhaps have a culinary translation to a large cheesecake laced with arsenic – pardon my bias.)

Athos

Bright feathers, and the rules of attraction

I was watching an episode of Planet Earth the other day, about birds and their courting rituals and it crossed my mind that although many things in the animal kingdom are reflected in human behaviour, some things are not.

I noticed how in our society the women are the ones who spend the most time “beautifying”, while the men, by comparison, spend very little, and the little they spend is focused on looking “cool” rather than “flashy”.

The women paint and dye and pluck and accessorize, while men try to achieve that “strong and silent” look with grays and blacks, that don’t draw attention – or draw attention in a more subtle way.  The birds, however, do the exact opposite: The females are rather plain, while the males are … strange and unusual would be the right description in some cases.

Even the lions have more flair than their lionesses.

So then, this reversal is rather puzzling.  Why do women go to all this trouble while men stick to the plain and simple?  What has changed in the attraction rules that makes us do what we do?

sweet, wonderful Literature

A friend asked me the other day “What’s the point of reading fiction? It doesn’t teach you anything concrete, like a self help, or history or biology book.” I launched myself into a full fledged defense of fiction, and as I heard myself talking, I realized just how much a teaching instrument I considered literature to be.

When I graduated from the bowels of the earth, aka Sandford Flemming and the Engineering conditioning, I felt myself awakening from a hazy dream. I had absorbed a ghastly amount of information: programming languages, circuits and their laws, data systems and their intricacies, and a whole truckload of acronyms that I can’t even begin to remember. The wasteful thing about all this was that it had failed to change me as a human being into anything better than I had been before. All it did was give me a headache.

That summer, like one escaped from incarceration, I breathed the fresh air, and picked up a book. It wasn’t on Network Systems, or C++. It was wonderful, liberating fiction! And for the first time in four years I felt myself really learning. Learning about the human soul and the world of ideas. In that one year after the liberation (ha!) I felt that I had learned so much more than in those four years that my fat student loan had just paid for.

So I tried to convince this friend that fiction IS indeed full of things to learn. The best part about it is that it is not spelled out to you and underlined as information in a self help book is. It’s there like a mystery, for you to decipher from the story and from between the lines of a story. It’s like a courtship, with stolen glances and sweet anticipation, rather than a drawn up prenup agreement. It changes your mind like no training manual ever will.

So read on, brave souls! Read on!

Subway Woes

Yes, again!

I am not predisposed against the TTC. Really, I’m not! But as long as the daily ride remains detrimental to body and soul, I must speak for fellow sardines everywhere, or else we will all lose our humanity. I am surprised that in a country like ours that values safety above all things, the monstrosity of the subway experience is tolerated. It’s not just crowded; it’s a health hazard! You hear about medical emergencies on trains all the time during rush hour. Well, no kidding! People are so packed, they can’t breathe!

               

So, it makes me wonder… While the city is expanding and the subway network remains the same, what is going through the authorities’ minds when they approve new residences and condominiums? Do they actually have a plan in mind to improve public transit or are they hoping people will just get so fed up with this mess that they will either: 1) die of heart attacks and asphyxiation while on the subways, or 2) move out of Toronto.