To Canada and beyond

Many, many years later I'm finally willing to put some time into this blog again. I saw the last post was about a car I bought 3 or 4 cars ago. So it's been a minute.  Today life is different from then. My "firsts" are mostly experiences with the kids, not purchases. Canada as an experience has become tamed and normal for me. Mind you with small kids I have not explored Canada as a whole as much. As with COVID-19 I'm bound to my office at home - similar to many other office workers. So the kids have become a great source of distraction.  I will admit that I'm not missing the commute from the suburbs of the GTA in my daily routing. I like to think that this gives me roughly 90 to 120 minutes back in my day. However considering that I'm crowded every time I want to grab a quick coffee upstairs it probably is be much less.  And yes, I'm in the basement. The coolest and quietest of all the places in the house. Unfortunately, it's also the ugliest and d...

W e got our selves a car... finally. It came to the dealer last week and we could have picked it up anytime between now and May 20th. Believe it or not it literally mean we had to pick it up NOW. We've got so many things happening the next two weeks that we could have only squeezed it in otherwise. Anyway, last week we busied ourselves by getting an insurance and parking. Finding a spot to park our car was fairly easy. However, getting insurance was a bit of a pain. I'm not going into details here, but it comes down to dealing with call centers and being transferred from one phone to another phone a lot. I think pretty much everyone has been there. So getting back to the new car. We went all the way to Oakville to pick it up. On the train there it took us about 40min to get there; just to get an idea of the distance. There is a Volvo location closer by, but we found the staff in Oakville the most competent. So we got there a little early and after the initial meet and gre...

I have not been very consistent adding posts to the blog. Maybe I can change that now that I finally got around to get a new phone with a better camera; but then again... No promises. As an easy enough start I'm sharing some photos I took in High Park today. The cherry trees are in bloom and both smell and sight are an experience not to be missed. Only drawback are the herds of photo hungry weekend visitors that swarm these few trees like locusts. Nevertheless, I managed to steal a few moments to get my own photo shoot done. I reckon that the quality of the pictures is good enough to share them on the blog. So my thinking is that I can write entries and attach photos on the go. Then, when I get home I'll just do the touch up. That should make it way more convenient for me to add posts. Maybe that's all it takes for me to keep this blog going... I guess we'll find out when I actually get around to make my next entry ;)

On a personal note, I'm participating in Movember this year. Men grow out their moustaches to raise awareness for prostate cancer and funds for cancer research. My 'stache is fair so I decided to grow out my beard and shave everything but the moustache before the end of November. Have a look at my Movember page and if you feel so inclined donate a little; it's for a good cause after all. Winter is coming :) and so the current weather doesn't make for good pictures; or at least not with my camera and no polarizing filter. So I'll use the pictures I took before I first started this MDC (my daily commute) series. At this point I had walked around the AirCanada Centre (see last post) and captured the back side of Union Station ( click here for the wiki link ). As you can see this is currently under construction and as this station is the main station of Toronto the daily commute for the approximately 200,000 riders is not exactly a highlight of the day. On the ot...

So a little later, but as promised here is the view of the underpass. This is westbound Lakeshore Boulevard underneath the Gardiner Expressway . As I mentioned it's neither impressive nor pretty. Fortunately, this is only a short part of my commute. I didn't notice it at the time, but I caught one of those big SUV that are so popular in North America on this shot as well. They are actually fun to drive; not for racing obviously, but similar to driving a truck. However, if you get stuck behind them on the road you can see pretty much nothing of what's lies in front of it. Again just like a truck ;) Anyway, once this traffic light lies behind me I have the view of my second picture.  On the let you can see the Air Canada Center or ACC that hosts ice hockey, basketball and other events. There is actually a fun little video on YouTube about the conversion between an ice hockey and a basketball field ( click here to check it out ).  This building actually used to be...

I think this is my first entry this year, so I'm officially not doing so well with the updates. I did some soul-searching and decided to write a series of articles for topics. It's pretty tough to always come up with the next new thing when you're settled into a place. So I'll be writing about my commute for a bit. And we'll see where this takes the blog. I've decided to abbreviate "My Daily Commute" to MDC in the title, which will leave a bit more space for the subtitle. Anyway, so this morning I went off to my 15 to 20 minute walk to work armed with a camera. Weather as you can see was quite kind, which caused some of the shots to be overexposed. I'm still taking these with my digital compact. So now I'm wondering if it's finally time to get a DSLR . But with a Las Vegas bachelor party (a good friend is getting married soon) coming up this weekend and the Christmas travel being expensive, I think I might hold off for yet another bit.....

I've tried so far to keep tech out of my blog. Despite all of my previous effort, I decided to break with tradition for this entry. Recently, I bought a MacBook Air which is slick, stylish, lightweight, surprisingly fast and definitely on the pricey side. Actually since it matters for this entry, I have to be a little more precise. I bought the laptop mid November. My old one is almost utterly useless since it gets hot as hell when you 'sleep' deprive it for more than 10 min. As I tend to do, I payed up at once and forgot about the expense almost just as quick. Now, for the next part I have to explain something that not everyone may be aware of. Thanksgiving is a much bigger holiday here in North America than it was in Europe. There is turkey dinner and pumpkin carving and costumes and other traditions that Europeans just don't do, even though at least Germany has the holiday ("Erntedankfest") as well. The date when this happens is a different one for the...

South view from my balcony Since I moved a couple of months back, I have increasingly enjoyed the new location. The move brought me into the center of the harbor front downtown. Now every weekend either hockey or baseball games or artists (such as Foo Fighters and Kings of Leon) bring masses of fans and other spectators to the neighborhood. So there is always something happening. This can be annoying at times but it also bring great access to public transport and the PATH. The PATH is a system of underground connections between shops and food courts. Since the shops are overpriced and many of the halls are pretty overfilled with people in the winter I prefer to walk on the pedestrian walkways along the streets. However, if the weather is bad (if it rains it pours) it's a great way to stay dry.

Yes, you are still on the correct page. I just felt like a new design and I didn't discard any of the old entries. However, the previous photos have gone for the moment, but I'll probably find a way to display those again... In the meantime this link will get you to some new photos I took rather recently. Today was probably the last nice day of this summer if one's allowed to call it that middle of October. The weather forecast for the next couple of days is rather gloomy and to some extend reminds me of the rainy days in Ireland. Despite the outlook, I'm rather thrilled at the moment. I recently picked up golf as an new hobby and committed with buying a very affordable set of clubs. I also hit the course a few times already so that I feel I made good use out of the weather. It's so much fun, especially now with leaves turning yellow and red. I should probably mention that golf is not seen an elite sport, or at least not worse than many other sports, over here ...

I made it to Munich for the second wedding in Germany and back. I was only there for less than 5 days again, so the jetlag is really impeding my focus right now. However, I felt like I should keep the blog going nevertheless. So here we are, I'm back in Toronto. The weather is a lot nicer than it was in Germany. Everything is coming together quite nicely. A new bookshelf for the office should be arriving end of next week and the couch hopefully arrives mid August. It'll be nice to get organized and have a place to chill properly. The couch delivery was a long time in the making; 2.5 months to be precise. Which even in hindsight sounds like a crazy long time. But even after extensive search for alternative furniture the decision was easy since there was no equal when it came to quality or style. Okay, I'll keep this entry short since despite all the coffeine I consumed throughout the day I'm about to fall asleep resting my head on the laptop.

Summertime in Toronto is great. Even though it's pretty hot (sometimes even nearly too hot) there is so much to do. From BBQ s at friends last weekend, a kayak course on Monday, some patio visits through out the week to a Thai food festival today. The city of Toronto organizes a lot of festivals during summer, so that todays Thailand festival happened at the same time as one of the Indian festivals (I think there was even a parade). It was pretty good. However, today's highlight was the unexpected discovery of a very nice café . They had excellent homemade lemonade. Tasty! You probably noticed that there are a few more links on this post. I have decided to use the associations to shorten my explainations (I'm lazy afterall) and for personal reference. Alright I'll keep this entry short. Hopefully I'll be back with more shortly after next weeks visit to Germany (the second wedding).

Okay, I think this is so far the longest break between posts on my blog. Over the last half a year a lot has happened. To describe everything that happened in detail in the scope of this blog would be a rather hopeless endeavor. So I will stick to (or is it stick with?) the essentials. Since Christmas in Germany the snow has come and gone a few times over in Toronto. Yesterday's Canada Day celebrations brought patio weather and so loads of people were out on the streets again. Many friends took the long weekend as a chance to travel. However, being still a little exhausted from the previous weekend that entailed a wedding in Germany I rather cherished to stay local. So, after some research on Canada Day events it turned out that almost everything was family oriented, which is not that much fun if you don't have kids. However, due to the recent move to a just as nice apartment as before (or a so called condo in North America) in better location there are now so many possibi...

I've made it to Germany for Christmas despite the snow chaos (more than 15cm is actually a lot for Germany). There was a little delay in Munich airport. But all in all it went pretty smooth. So after good night's sleep we decided to collect my granny from Lippstadt via train for Christmas eve. Driving a car for 1.5h through icy road just seemed too risky. Getting to Lippstasdt was no real issue. We had an hour delay, but apart from that it went well. The return however was a bit of an Odyssee. We got about half the way before the train could not go any further. To make a really long story short, we were stuck at this stage for hours with my over 90 year old granny. In the end we managed to finally get a taxi driver on the phone that was willing to give us a ride home. Luckily we got on that taxi - super expensive though; but we didn't care at this stage. And with that we were on our way home. Bottomline: after leaving at 9am, we arrived at 8pm on Christmas eve. So a ride ...

Not entirely true though. It snowed before, but this time it actually stuck for more than a day. I went North for the weekend and was glad that my rental car had winter tires. It snowed a bit and many of the road were a mix of ice and slush. In Europe this amount of snow would have been a little bit of a concern. Over here however everyone is just so accustomed to snow that it didn't even seem to bother anyone at all. For me it was a bit of a wake up call. I will need some winter boots, because the best is yet to come. Apparently, the winter really breaks through in January/February. Anyway, due to the change in scenery my camera saw some use. I took the photo attached without a polarizing filter, so I had to equalize the colors a little on the computer. It came out quite nice. And I think it conveys the mood perfectly.

Busy times. Last week's Friday, I went on my first pub crawl here in Toronto. It was probably not the best timing, considering that I had to get up very early next day to help a friend move. But I made it nevertheless. The move then was alright. Even though we had to over come a couple of obstacles. Besides me being tired beyond belief and the rented truck not being there on collection, the superintendent was on holidays so that we could not reserve the service lift. Did I mention that my friends lived on the 12th floor? When we finished up at around 9pm, it was time for us to costume suit up. All of us were invited on a Halloween party, which started at 7pm. But arriving at 10:30pm made us feel all the more special. And in all fairness it was great despite us being quite late. Last week my bicycle finally arrived. I yet have to shoot a picture to share. Anyway, I'm already very happy with the buy. The bike has given me a lot of freedom. I'm cycling to work now, which me...

Summer is throwing it's last fight for this year before Winter finally takes over. The days are nice and warm and even the evenings are warm enough. What's more, the trees are super colorful. After this weekend's trip north, Toronto has finally caught up with all the red and yellow and orange and brown that I associated with the North American autumn. Anyway, so this weekend's (Canadian) Thanks Giving coincided with my godfather's 70s birthday (Congrats again!). And in between the preparations and celebrations (oh, tasty tasty turkey and cranberries and gravy and stuffing and ...) I managed to sneak in a few hours of picture taking. I think I shot some good pictures, but it's definitely a different thing when you drive through alleys of colorful trees in person. I can highly recommend this season for drive through Canada.

More color in trees It's official: Summer's over. Temperatures dropped from 20 degrees (Celsius) to around 10'ish from last Wednesday to Friday. Trees have started to change their color and I got a first impression what power the notorious 'wind chill factor' has when walking across the street from one heated building to the next. It's not yet winter (obviously), but it's surely not summer anymore either. Daft as I am, I underestimated just how much the temperatures might drop over here at night. So, when I visited friends on Saturday, I boldly dressed in jeans, t-shirt and a jumper - ergo, neither coat nor jacket. Considering that people were walking around in shorts and t-shirts just last week, I thought I had my basics covered. Well ... let's just say, I was very lucky getting the bus back right away. Another 5 minutes waiting and I might have turned blue. Raining heavy Anyway, I arrived in town around midnight in a subway full of people. As I...

Proof? (click to enlarge) This weekend was a quiet one. Saturday was rainy and with just under 20 degrees (Celsius) comparably cool. I hope this weather does not entirely seclude the summer yet. However, even if it does, I heard the so called Indian Summer (usually 2 weeks) in October is very nice as well. I'll be sure to post some pictures if that's the case. Something to look forward to. In the mean time, I have started to work once more. After a summer of job search, I'm very happy to have found something that I feel is a very good match. Last week Tuesday was my first workday. Also, I already joined a gym that is located maybe 10 - 20 sec (!) walk from the office. They have classes like spinning and boxing in their program. Since one of my colleagues is conducting the spinning class on Friday, I went along. Well, not only did I go along, what's more I bravely participated. It's a good sport to show you how unfit you truly are. And even though I walked back...

Blue Mountain village (click to enlarge) Last weekend I rented a car once more and drove up north to visit my godfather and his wife. I had a wonderful time there. I went onto a little road trip with my godfather, which brought us to the Blue Mountains on Sunday. It was unbelievable hot. Blue Mountains is a skiing resort. During the summer loads of mountain bikers enjoy the steep trails. The entire area was only recently developed. Therefore, the slopes, the lifts, the shops, hotels and houses are all brand new. I still find it odd to see how these entire towns just seem to pop out of the ground in a few years over here. Eugenia Falls (click to enlarge) We continued our road trip west and discovered a very nice and remote place featuring a water fall.  The place is called Eugenia. That's where I took the picture below. If you click on the picture you will be able to spot some impressively grown roots. Well, in any case it was well worth the trip. This weekend I had actu...

The troublemaker (click to enlarge) The weekend trip to Hamilton, Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo didn't quite go as planned. For one, I never got as far as Waterloo. The reason for that is the "chewing gum incident". Let me elaborate. As I was cruising through some residential estates in Kitchener, which is about 2h drive from Toronto, I delightfully chewed on one of those new brand gums. Now, in my experience there are no bones or stones or other hard things in chewing gum. I brought the car to an abrupt stop when I noticed something in my mouth that had a lot of resemblance to a little rock. After a closer look I found that the unknown item must be part of a tooth. It only took a moment to realise which of my teeth was actually missing a fair chunk (a tooth in the back of my right, upper denture). Hamilton downtown (click to enlarge) There was no pain, which was good. Nevertheless, it took me a moment to snap out of a little shock. Once back on track, I q...