The Toronto Trip

I guess it has been almost two weeks since I posted last. According to my blog page I have only posted twice in July. I knew that my posting frequency would probably decline as time went on but I didn't think I would reach the two week mark with no post. I've been suffering from a form of writers' block recently, one could say. Generally I post when I have inspiration of something exciting and/or extraordinarily relevant to convey to my adoring public (you guys). Recently I haven't really come up with anything. I guess I will just start writing and see what happens.

Last weekend I went to Toronto with some of the people from my lab. There were seven of us: six guys, and Meghan. The cast of characters included, in its entirety, me, Thorsten, Matthias, Andreas, Alberto (spanish post-doc), David (friend of spanish post-doc), and, of course, Meghan. Before you read further I suggest you go to youtube and search for "Italian on Malta." You then will understand what we were laughing about the entire seven-people-in-a-minivan drive to Toronto. All I can say is, "I want a fork on the table."

We stayed in this lovely youth hostel in downtown toronto. We had enough people in our group that we got an entire dorm room to ourselves which was nice because we didn't have to worry as much about people we didn't know coming in and stealing our stuff. Friday night I had a bit of a cold and didn't go out but everyone else minus Matthias went out to the bar. I'm sleeping at about 2:30 am when I hear this massive crash outside my room, the lights flick on and Thorsten, in all his glory, is stumbling around the room screaming about how drunk he is while Meghan starts telling us all about how they managed to get kicked out of the club because Thor and Andreas were dancing on the bar. Apparently people aren't so cool with that. Although it was after last call so it could be debatable about how much they got "kicked out." Although they were asked to leave, at any rate. This is the second bar that Andreas has been booted from since he got here. You would never know that he is the quietest of the group. You have to keep an eye on those half-german, half-polish guys.

Saturday we walked around Toronto. We saw the Hockey Hall of Fame, CN tower, Rogers Centre, lakefront, Yonge street, Queen St., Bay St., basically we saw a lot of streets, and the Royal Ontario Museum. I was really impressed with Toronto although the ROM is quite possibly the ugliest building I've ever seen. It looks like a spaceship crash landed into the front of a building that was supposed to be a museum. Apparenty it's some modern crytsal art by some shishy-feefy French guy. It looks like he came up with it while he was high. I was also disappointed with the Hockey Hall of Fame. On the commercials they show all this neat interactive stuff to do. You have to pay $15 to get in and all the really cool activities cost extra. Aside from that it is mostly just a museum of hockey history. The downtown area was nice and clean, most people seemed quite friendly and there weren't a whole lot of seedy areas like I'm used to in bigger cities. As Thorsten put it, "(Toronto) is like Detroit, only not as shitty." On the Big City Crap-o-Meter Detroit is off the scale. It's like in the Tour de France when the mountains get so big that they're "beyond classification." Detroit is beyond classification. Toronto barely even registers.

Sunday we drove back to Windsor via Niagara Falls. I was there last summer so the whole excursion didn't interest me much. But I got some good photos that were better than last summer so that was nice. I think by the time we got back home we all were ready for our own space. It just confirms my theory that traveling in large groups is inherently disfunctional. It would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get all of us to decide on pizza toppings. We watched a Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson movie in the van on the way back. I think I will be grown up when Ben Stiller ceases to be funny.

I have four and a half weeks left until I have to do my final research talk. It feels like you're actually doing research (read: real work) once you have to start writing about it. I think I will be spending more time the next few weeks researching and writing than spending time actually in the lab. I have to write a report for the Co-op program back home which I am going to do as a research paper. Lately I've been doing a lot of reading up on inorganic polymers and hydrophosphinations. I think I will try and write my introduction today. I've already got my agent talking to Science and Nature.

I booked my flight home for August 31. I think I get back to Victoria at like 11 pm or something like that. I go home in six weeks from yesterday. It's kind of odd to think that I've really been here this long, while at the same time realizing that four months really isn't long at all. It's going to feel odd going back to lab courses after doing research all summer, especially when I think that I have at least a year and a half left in my degree. I'm not looking forward to seeing all my friends here go our separate ways, either. I have this knack for making really good friends with people that I end up moving away from.

Or I could end up "going back to Italia" instead.

The ROM. Judge for yourself how ugly it is.


L to R: Alberto, Meghan, Thorsten, Andreas

Me. Dapper as always.