Move On Up

I moved to Toronto, Canada on September 25th, 2021. Here are my insights from my life in Canada so far. Basically a pros and cons list about the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

Pros

• Food
  • Food in Canada has been mostly incredible in Toronto. There’s so much variety when you’re eating out.
  • Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE eating out. Indian food has been hit or miss but I’ve eaten some incredible Thai food, Syrian/Damascene food, incredible Caribbean food, flavorful dumplings.
  • I even managed to find a frankie in Toronto. Nothing compared to the Churchgate station Tibbs frankie (the Mumbai OG) but decent considering we’re on the other side of the world.
• The people
  • People have been mostly friendly and willing to talk. Very rare for large metroplexes I’ve lived in beyond Mumbai.
  • Again, anyone who knows me I love a good conversation. So far, people have been generally talkative. Scroll down to the Post Scriptum (PS) for my tips to talk to strangers.
• The outdoors
  • Toronto has a lot of outdoorsy things to do. As someone who dislikes going to the gym, exercise outdoors is my source of happiness.
  • There’s a huge selection of stuff that’s available, depending on the weather. It’s snowed to hell? Go sledding. It’s warm? Go biking around Toronto or swimming in Lake Ontario.
• Public transport
  • Public transport is well-designed till the last mile in Toronto (not Mississauga). Just be careful of buses over the weekend.
  • My comments come from a lifetime of traveling on public transport. My dependence and love for public transport is well known.
  • You can literally take public transport only till Niagara Falls, ON. Quite a distance from the GTA.

Cons

• Expensive
  • It is CRAZY how expensive Toronto is. Real estate is in huge demand but low supply for housing that makes sense at the price.
  • Maybe my skewed view comes from having lived in a state like Texas where real estate is generally affordable.
• Poor salaries
  • Pay in the GTA and Canada in general is pretty garbage. Inflation as high as it is right now will hit super hard here.
  • It is unrealistic how low the pay is with how high living costs are. Not just rent; groceries, eating out, everything is crazy expensive.
  • Having talked to an Irishman from Dublin and knowing the crazy real estate in Mumbai and NYC, is all real estate skyrocketing?
• Inept immigration
  • Like all governments, the Canadian government seems incredibly inept.
  • Maybe it’s just stuff related to immigration? My Permanent Resident card got lost in the mail. No way to track it. No way to check how the renewal process is going.
  • On the other hand, my tax refund was processed super quick, as was my Ontario Health Insurance card and my Ontario Photo Card.

I know I’ve dropped some tantalizing tidbits in this short blog post. What is Damascene food? General food questions? Would LOVE to recommend some food. Hit me up in the comments.

P.S: My friends are always shocked at how easily I can talk to any random person on the street. The trick is to find something common between you and the other person. Then let them talk. And always value what the person is saying, interjecting with something relevant when needed.

This is another shameless plug for anyone who needs help with navigating the immigration system to come to Canada. Please ping me; I try to help for free.

Another piece of advice: Jobs are aplenty in IT. Any other industry is a struggle. If you are coming to study, study IT. Literally everyone coming here is studying business or marketing.

Oh, What A Night!

This was my first review on Zomato, and I hope this isn’t my last.

So, my first words here are for a good time I had at a place called He Said, She Said. First, locating the place was quite easy with GPS, so that wasn’t a problem at all. The valet was prompt too. We had reserved a place at 9 pm on a Saturday night, and even though we reached a quarter of an hour early, the staff quickly seated us at a table comfortable for the 7 of us.

So, the division was that all four of the girls were keen to drink, and none of the 3 boys were. So, we started off with the Classic Chicken Chilly, the Murgh Malai Tikka, the Margherita Pizza, the Assorted Bruschetta Platter. The girls started off with a Breezer (they were kind enough to ask my friend if the bottle she’d ordered was acceptable), a Mojito and a Long Island Iced Tea. The quantity of all four dishes were good, and the Murgh Malai Tikka is highly recommended. It was stunning! Melted in our mouth and the chicken was succulent. The Margherita Pizza, according to my only vegetarian friend with me then, tasted like cheese naan, and it did. The other two dishes were okay. The Tikkas were so good, that we re-ordered them along with the Chilly Chicken. Oh, did I mention that the guys ordered Cokes and Lemon Iced Teas. Yes, we don’t have the balls. Oh, one of my friends was driving, so not a possibility.

The second round, apart from those two dishes, consisted of 3 French Fries with Cheese and I will tell you, by this time, we were stuffed. Atleast, I was, but my genius friend decided to order some more. The girls had another Long Island Iced Tea, a Breezer and a Margarita. And boy, were those drinks strong. Two of my friends were drunk, giggling, rolling around by the time they were a quarter of the way through the second Iced Tea.

The third order, we denied the two of them from ordering any shots, that HSSS is famous for, but the two other girls had A Nimbu Pani and The Flying Kiwi, which they mentioned were potent, too. So, for a 150 a pop, the shots were quite cheap. The Veg Burger, and a Potato something (I think it was a stir-fry) were wasted, because we were so full!

We didn’t explore too much of the restaurant, but it seemed quite spacious and the music wasn’t painful, like a lot of other places. One suggestion would be to try and accommodate some bigger washrooms, because the ones you have now are quite small. Also, the staff is helpful and the service is prompt. Might be that they’re swarmed when the crowd actually starts pouring in, around 11. Unfortunately, that was when we left. Oh, and the total bill for 24 items, including drinks, was Rs 5430. That is cheap!

The only terrible thing about HSSS is the overhead on the Breezers! The price for one bottle was atrocious, people. Do NOT buy Breezers here. HSSS has a markup of 140+ rupees on Breezers. It seems horrible to pay that much when you’d rather have them at home for much cheaper. But the management was kind enough to give us a bottle of mineral water instead of giving us glasses of water every time. They didn’t even charge us for it!

Overall, the whole experience was rather pleasant. Apologies for the rather long review. Hope it helps! All due credit to the management of He Said, She Said. An excellent place to visit for youngsters who like to have a good time 🙂 and not a great deal of money.

 

Rating: 4/5

Points taken off for the Breezer being too pricey.

Up Above The World So High, Like A Diamond(?) In The SKY!

It all began with a harmless, 9-am-in-the-morning-when-all-fucking-trains-are-full MD class.

And ended with?

Let me fill you in with all the gravy. Like white? You wouldn’t if you were in our place.

Rewind back to 2nd September.

Beep on my cell phone. Bow-bow’s message. “V’l hve lunch 2morow at vile after vaity wat say rply”. The least he could’ve done was spell correctly. Anyway, I wat-said-replied in the affirmative. I knew it was to be a messy day. No, I’m not talking about My hair day. 😛

Let me tell you, class on a holiday morning is like lighting up a terribly boring cracker under someone’s ass just to inform them that it’s Diwali. You’d yawn to death. So there we were, sitting quietly in Vaity’s class, making interracial porno songs for Mandala’s future porn career. (Miracle of the day no. 1 – Left home at 8.45, reached Irla at 9.05) Finally, after 3 hours of drawing highly un-understandably mechanical drawings, we trooped out of the class and into fresh air (or air smelling of urine, that being the toilet).

Ultra-macho guys wanted to do a round of hookah to prove how macho they were. Non-macho guys, me included, just wanted a good meal and some nice “Pani free”. Girls just wanted a place to crack girlie-jokes™ which no one else understood and never really laughed at. Try explaining this to them. No one exactly decided upon a particular place, and we just rushed to grab the best(?) places in the cars. Car No. 1 was hell-bent on going to Happy Singh’s to a nice Punjaban meal, but Car No. 2 was full of the hookah-people. Another piece of information. Hookah-people are those guys(or sometimes girls) who want to smoke some weirdly flavoured (and addictive) gas and boast that they smoked something. Nothing in it really. Just a way to show their testosterone. That is why the wanted to go to the Sky Lounge. On the recommendation of a certain someone who definitely does not wish to be named here, for fear of being publicly slagged.

The map below explains the foolishness of the direction-giver in getting to our final destination.

So, we assumed that as everyone was mentioning Fun Republic in correlation to Sky Lounge, Fun Republic was where we were supposed to go. All gung-ho about getting some good old food into our stomachs, we parked and looked around for Sky Lounge, but in vain. When we left the parking lot, it was onto a side-road. The road being parallel to the one on which SL was, we drove on and on to some God-forsaken place with mice running around in our intestines (translation: Pet mein chuhe daudna, if Mavi is reading this). No one seemed to know where Fun Republic was, let alone SL. Finally, when we found the damn board that announced the place, the 6 of us in the car shouted for joy.

3 floors, and we were begging them to serve  only to see that prices were actually SKY-high. Whoever heard of Rs 300 for a bowl of chicken? Anyway, we decided to order 3 dishes in order to satisfy the 9 of us. 2 of them were the same, and the 3rd one was supposed to be different.

After the order had been given and the stomachs quietened for a bit with some vinegar-ed onions, we waited for the food. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

And guess what we did after that? No, we didn’t stick our forks into the waiter or the manager who kept hovering around. We waited even more. All this while the vegetarian guys were happily enjoying their starters. We cursed and swore in equal measure. But yet the food wouldn’t arrive. And just when our stomachs had given up home and were packing their hibernation bags and going off to a month long sleep for lack of food, the food arrived. And guess what colour it was.

Just try and guess. That colour which is meant to indicate peace. No, not red as in piece. White.

Every Goddamn thing there was white. The Murgh Masallam and the other dish, the rotis, all white. White. Argh, fucking white. And the dishes were so similar that they were the same. Confusing statement huh?

They Were the same. They tasted the same, they looked the same. It was like the chef, sorry cook (it would be an insult calling him a chef) had made the same dish, added more salt in one of them, and decided the other one needed some pepper, and served both of them as different things. After all the wait. this? It was like eating boiled eggs mashed with cornflour with some salt and chicken pieces. It was really that terrible. No kidding.

After we’d swallowed the terrible fare, we tried to analyze which dish we found to be the best. And it “boiled” down to the rotis. Believe me, rotis! And we thought the meal couldn’t get worse.

After the bill had been paid by the party-givers (thanks to Saumil and Gaurav for being so sporting), we trooped out of the place, taking a blood-oath(kidding :P) to never come to the place again. And we warn you too. Bad food, worse service, terrible pricing. Want to risk it? Be my guest. Not literally.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Food, invariably, is a 25 pound weight for me. Not literally, mind you. The side the weight is on, is the side which is more valuable for me. It swings the balance in my favour. Good food, not just food, is the ultimate Eden for me. Well, Eve in all her glory might just be the complete package. Is that expecting too much? Oh, well.

So, as I was saying, parties with great food is what makes the party great for me. The music might be bullshit, the ambience might be terrible, the company might be worse than expected, but the food is what you take home in the end. And it also decides what your plans for the next day are. You get the drift of the joke? No? Ah, forget it. The way to a man’s heart is his stomach. But the way to his stomach is through the mouth, and the taste buds certainly need to be satisfied.

You might wonder what fried green tomatoes has to do with all this. Well, it’s the name of a famous movie as well as a famous dish in the USA. It’s just food, hence the name.

So, we get back to food. I love food, but I’m very particular about it. I tend to fuss a lot, and have my own likes and dislikes. Call me kinky if you want, but I stick to my guns. I totally dislike curd and buttermilk. This tends to surprise people and go all Ooh and Aah. That is because people love all that stuff and cannot imagine people not liking it. Well, for me, it’s disgusting food, and I tend to shudder even at the sight of the semi-solid “thing”.

I love chicken done in any way, and appreciate people who serve a good meal of fried chicken. Fried chicken earns people brownie points from me. I tend not to eat mutton and other animals, but I’m not squeamish about trying anything. I like fish occassionally, prawns and crabs even.

So, I will refrain from writing further, because my thought-processes have collapsed from the strain of over-exertion. Seem to have a case of acute Writer’s Block, and cannot keep hold of my ideas. Apologize for the lack of posts.

Till then, some good blogs for you:

http://a-product-of-procrastination.blogspot.com/

http://twodogsandablog.wordpress.com/

Crepe Capers

” The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

But some wise guy forgot to mention that a way to his stomach is through his oesophagus first. And his mouth before that. And that the best way to quench the cravings of the oesophagus is to go where your nose takes you – Inorbit.

A mere stone’s throw away from my *ahem* house, it is a haven for all people unemployed, temporarily or permanently. Well, that depends on how strong your throwing arm is, doesn’t it? Chuck Norris’ throw would probably take Inorbit out along with its foundations. And oh, Hypercity too, for good measure.

But as being Chuck Norris is left to the great man himself, we try to make our way more humbly towards the towering structure called Inorbit. Of course, the specifications for being able to go to Inorbit include having a pocket as deep as Lake Tanganyika. For all those who don’t know, Lake Tanganyika is a deep lake in Mongolia, where people are supposed to drown themselves if they don’t know where Inorbit is. So, as we approach Inorbit, the 1st part of our modus operandi is to check our wallets to see if we have enough dough about us.

Inorbit has very few places worth visiting, for people like us. There is absolutely nothing on the Ground Level, unless you count some hot chicks lying around on the seats. And oh yeah, in case you’re interested and you are one of the older generation, some grandmothers (single or otherwise) about. With their grandchildren. 😛

Then there is Planet World (for the physically healthy ones), Crossword (for the mentally healthy ones), Planet M (for the musically healthy ones), and some other shops (which I must add, are for the well-endowed ones 😛 ) on the First Level.

But there are some forces in Middle Earth, which are more powerful than most. (Sorry, I get lost in the LOTR world sometimes.) Some forces, which are far beyond the reckoning of the strongest man, the wisest elf, or the doughtiest dwarf. Which even Sauron the Great cannot overwhelm. And as we get to the Second Level, we realize that we need to fulfil our Inorbit Destiny. Our Final Quest.

Okay, histrionics apart, we realize that the Christians weren’t kidding about the Garden of Eden. At the pinnacle of the mall is a delightful place, full of Eves and poisonous apples, and snakes too. 😛 As a wondrous light wells up in our eyes, we bound forward on gleeful feet, trying to grab at any sort of delicious apples we could lay our teeth on. Of course, that would amount to shop-lifting (apple lifting anyone?). But it was just a figure of speech.

So, we head towards the cheapest, but by no means the worst, place on that level – Subway. A delightful sub-sandwich is in the works, and the thoughts. Being an expert on the topic of sub-sandwiches, I have extensive knowledge on the subject of these foot-long miracles of humanity. I order the best one there, a Chicken Teriyaki, to satiate my hunger pangs. Of course, best does not mean costliest either, but who cares?! The best part about the Second Level of Inorbit is that it is dedicated to That force on Middle Earth before which all are helpless. And I did not mean the poisonois gases out of a person’s backside.

There is Pizza Hut, Rajdhani, Barista, Birdy’s, Noodle Bar, Moti Mahal, China Joe, Santino’s, BreadTalk, Kailash Parbat and many more besides my all-time favourtite, Subway. Delicious huh? Always makes me want to rush to Inorbit. Or ask Chuck Norris to throw me there.

Maybe Inorbit should sign me up for their promotional campaigns. 😛 I do a good job, don’t I? Shoo now, let me enjoy the Teriyaki in peace.