Haizzz.. missed the bus again. Have to wait half an hour to catch the next bus, but at least now I have some time to blog.

I have been in Canada for several days already. I’m staying in a hostel in Toronto while I settle registration matters, and find off-campus accommodation in Hamilton for the rest of my stay here. I acted as such cos I cannot find a cheap place to stay in Hamilton online. That’s a big mistake, since each trip to my uni would take 1-2 hours, and cost $10+. Boh huat, since I already booked the hostel for 5 days

The first thing I noticed about Canada is that it seems very spacious. In the city, the narrowest street is two lanes wide. Even a taxi (taxis here are long, heavy vehicles, not like the lightweight proton sagas in M’sia) can make a U-turn in the middle of the road. In the sparsely populated areas, like areas between towns, the place is flat (not many tall trees and buildings), so you can almost see the horizon while on the highway. Cars aside, it reminds me of the Wild West.

Speaking of cars, there is a LOT of them. Much more than in KL. Sometimes, even the four-lane highway gets congested. There are also plenty of mega-sized vehicles, like, 30-wheel trailers (just a guess la). The car parks at train/bus stations seem to be the size of a football field.

I still can’t get used to the ‘right slow, left fast’ system here. It’s really weird to see cars overtaking on your right. I can’t remember which way to look when crossing the road, and its even worse when crossing junctions. It just seems ‘wrong’. Even on escalators, people stand on the right side, and walk on the left.

The food here is still OK, though food selection is rather limited, since I eat on campus to save money. There’s no rice in any meal, except for Japanese food. Also, they don’t serve any vegetables, except for raw lettuce. For breakfast, I eat at my hostel. On the first day, I saw ‘homemade pancakes’ on the menu. Wah, so nice, got ban chien kuih here, I thought. Too bad lah, what was served were three big, round, tasteless dough. The only justification for them to be called pancakes is that they are obviously cooked in a pan (flat and round), and they have a cake-like texture. Sigh. The food is also served in enormous amounts. Eg, the 12 inch special is like a burger, with the bread 12 inches long, and a cross section so large that even LCK won’t be able to make a clean bite. That meal is enough for both lunch and dinner.

The coins here are rather confusing also. They use $2, $1, $0.25, $0.10 and $0.05 (haven’t seen $0.20 before). The $1 and $2 coins are large and have unique markings which make them to identify. The others not so. $0.05 is larger than the $0.10, and is about the same size as $0.25. The bad thing is that the numbers on the coin are very small and not distinct, so I have to scrutinize the coin for a few moments before I can identify it. In the end, I accumulated a lot of small change, since it’s much easier for me to pay with larger notes.

The people here are generally very friendly and helpful. The food-stall operators and bus drivers usually say ‘Hi’ to me when I approach them. They have already saved my butt many times. In one case, the bus driver informed me when I took the wrong bus. He could have ignored it, since my ticket covers more than the amount necessary. In another case, I forgot to zip up my pouch bag and the contents spilled on the road while I crossed it. Fortunately a driver noticed and turned back to inform me. Most grateful thanks to her.

I can communicate quite well with the people here. Although some people speak a little too fast, the accent here is still easy to ‘catch’. I think they have more trouble understanding me than I understanding them. The ‘err’ and ‘ahh’ while I struggle for words sometimes should not be a problem. The problem is that I cannot stop adding ‘lah’ at the end of my sentences, and they’ll go ‘What??’

Unfortunately, I can’t upload pics now, since I stashed the camera cable away somewhere