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To get to London, it’s half an hour on the TTC, 2-3 hours on the VIA train, and another half an hour on London Transit. It’s the least Silverlotus and I could do. After all, we dragged Woofer to our wedding in Mexico. Mind you, in Mexico, it wasn’t cold and rainy. 🙂

We met many of Woofer’s friends and acquaintances as we converged to his new house in north London. Learned how to play mah-jongg. We helped cook a pizza, which just came out of the oven as we were heading out the door to catch the train homeward bound. The crust was unfortunately blackened and burnt – which wasn’t surprising though, considering we set off the smoke detector three times…If you were at the London train station at about 7pm last night, you would have seen two people feverishing eating the toppings off of a pizza.

As a gift, Silverlotus and I got Woofer the Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, the codex of all matters of the apron and hamper.

The trip was also one down memory lane. It’s been almost two years since I’ve bid London farewell. It’s ironic that the moment I move back to TO, a friend of mine takes my place in the Forest City.

Downtown still has many vacancies, although many shops and restaurants still have stood their ground. There doesn’t seem to be any new ones, though: it’s as if the existing merchants have just moved around and traded spots. Some things haven’t changed at all, to my delight: my ExpressVu satellite dish is still on the wall of our old apartment!

_The following is from my journal from our wedding trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for Sunday, Sept. 25th_:

The food services here are very efficient. One day we’ll have fries. The next day, pureed potatoes (which Silverlotus couldn’t stop eating). The day after that? Cream of potato soup!

I spent the morning riding the waves with Silverlotus. I spent the afternoon waiting for my sister Shell to arrive and get squared away. Later that night, she discovered the liquid bliss known as the Mojito. We played texas hold’em in the sweltering night heat at the bar. I actually won!

Silverlotus has always been a sleep connoisseur, and the pillows here have fallen short of her lofty expectations. “There should be a minimum size you can legally call a pillow,” she grumbled.

_The following is from my journal from our wedding trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for Saturday, Sept. 24th_:

Why are underwater cameras wrapped so tightly in swaddling plastic? The resort if just packed with people, mostly locals. I believe their is a convention going on. An Alcoholics Anonymous convention. Seriously. As one waitress remarked, “One thousand people drink. One thousand don’t!”

The only English channel on the telly is CNN. So I watched Hurricane Rita all morning.

Later in the day, Woofer and I try our hands at an open-faced kayak. The water is as warm as blood. We do pretty well, but we get complacent, and wipe out. Don’t get complacent in a kayak.

_The following is from my journal from our wedding trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for Friday, Sept. 23rd_:

Saw five vintage VW Beetles on the road today. And a jalopy truck with the words “$18,000 FOR SALE” scrawled in its back canopy window. 18,000 pesos, that is.

It’s hot and humid. Really hot. Unfortunately most of the resort, the Rui Jalisco, was open to the elements. We waited in the sweltering nighttime heat to obtain bottles of water (don’t drink the tap water!) and get upgraded to a junior suite. They’re also out of hotel safe keys.

Stood on the tidal line with Woofer and V until 1am, braving the warm night rain, listening to meringue music on the beach, and staring into the black void known as the Pacific.

_FEAR Single Player Demo_. Very seldomly does a game create an exquisitely macabre atmosphere. _Doom 3_ failed in this regard IMHO, because it overrelied on haunted house gimmicks. But FEAR employs creepily intelligent enemies, stark shadows, and scripted events carefully constructed to make you want to cry for your mommy. Unfortunately, it made my poor 9800 Pro cry too: I had to run it at 800×600.

_Mexican Motor Mafia_ Demo. A small shareware game that is basically a sped-up version of the “crossing the T” type of combat that makes _Pirates!_ so gratifying but with tequila, muscle cars and sawed-off shotguns instead of rum, frigates and grapeshot. Check out the description of your player character on the website: “You smoke and wear shirts with cobras on them. You are bad ass.” What could be better than that?

_Zombie Horde_. It’s a Counter-strike: Source server plugin that pits CTs and Ts to fight off an onslaught of knife-wielding zombies. Oh, and did I mention that the zombies have 500 hitpoints, will spontaneously combust, and can only be harmed by precise gunshots to the head? Just join a CS:S server with the ZH plugin activated for some ghoulish fun. Side effect: Makes for great aiming practice!

I find that a lot of people do not understand what it truly means to be rich. From googley, on Ask Metafilter:

1) Ability to pay others to perform menial tasks. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving, managing money, lawyering, etc. etc. Almost anything that you think of a necessary inconvenience can be done by someone else.

2) Enough money to live off the interest alone. For most people, the biggest inconvenience in life is having to work full time (or more) and having their livelihood riding on said job(s). The very rich have enough capital accumulated that they can, if they are prudent, simply live off the interest, dividend, and capital gains income that accrues. They can choose to work or not, and in many cases have the opportunity to select a job that they enjoy and could leave at will, rather than something that they have to do.

3) A social network of wealthy and powerful professionsals. In some legal trouble? You have to defend yourself, find a cut-rate (and thus less competent) lawyer, or go into debt to hire a good one. The very rich have access to the best lawyers, or to politically or professionally powerful people who can make problems go away…

4) Cultural capital. When dealing with various institutions that tend to be suspicious of your credentials (banks, government agencies, maitre des), you have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove that you are legitimate and trustworthy. This means lots of time spent assembling records, waiting in line, and so forth. In most case, the rich already have the benefit of the doubt – either because of #3 above, or because said institutions want their money and do not wish to offend. Being rich means that people are afraid of offending you and thus you are seldom kept waiting. And anything that does take time – see #1 above.

5) Education. Perhaps the most important thing, the rich have the benefit of extremely good education. This doesn’t necessarily make them more intelligent, but it does provide the credentials to open doors and make a lot of things in life easier.

However, I also find that a lot of people do not understand what it means to be poor. From John Scalzi, Whatever: Being Poor:

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being rich doesn’t mean owning a bling-ed out sportscar. Being poor doesn’t mean being a criminal or a leech. Silverlotus’s parents, while not well off, are some of the most sensible and warm folk I have ever met. And most people with those sports cars are probably eyeballs in debt paying those sportscars off.

Last Friday, while I was scooping up tokens from the TTC token machine at Dundas, a young girl approached me and begged me for a token.

Apparently, she came by Greyhound from Peterborough to meet a friend downtown, who blew her off and told her to just keep bumming money until she could take the TTC to Royal York station. She couldn’t been more than 14. She told me she’d been trying to panhandle for two hours.

Absolutely no cash? She only had a quarter, she claimed. Did she have a debit card? No money in the bank. How about credit card? All maxed out.

I was completely exasperated by this. First of all, I can’t swallow every cock and bull story every panhandler in downtown TO throws at me. Second of all, it galled me that someone could be so callous to travel 135 kilometres with nothing but two bits on them.

But what if her story was true? I did the only thing I could think of: I traded one of my tokens for her quarter, and gave her an insipid lecture. I then had to guide her to the right trains to get to Royal York, and explain why she should get a transfer.

“What was she waiting for?” I asked rhetorically.
“She was waiting for you,” Silverlotus said simply.

Maybe I feel like I need to save the dreamers. Maybe because I used to dream.

Two weeks, Silverlotus and I went down to the Toronto Eaton Centre to check out the Dove RealBeauty Photography Exhibit. There were photos of women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and pedigrees; a photo of a London homeless lady was adjacent to that of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Written on the comments board was this poignant quote, among others:
“Every picture is a story…waiting to be told by the spirit within”

I am reminded with the similar “Designed for real life” campaign that Canadian clothier Reitman’s has, where normally shaped women wearing ordinary clothes strike supermodel poses in mundane environments.

So, ernest campaign or corporate shilling? After all, Dove’s daddy company, Unilever, also owns Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Ultra Slim-Fast; they pretty much have us coming _and_ going.

Wind the clock back two weeks:

After a long hot day shopping for a tux, Juice and I had an impromptu BBQ at his new house. He and his family are doing well – there’s a G35, BMW, and LS300 in the driveway.

P.S. Diana Maple Sauce makes everything taste better.