Vacation!

Off on vacation to New England, visiting Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Boston. See you in a while…

Bad Todd is Bad

This past weekend I went back to my hometown in Vermont where I met up with some close friends and then went to a 20th reunion of the class I would’ve graduated with had I not skipped a year. It was a fantastic time and hopefully I’ll get around to telling it soon. In the meantime, I will share with you a very funny conversation me, my best friend from high school, Michaeline, and our friend Jennie had over dinner the first night we got there. In it we learn that I was not always the good kid I remember myself as being back in my late teens, starting with a little incident back at Prohibition, an 18+ club in Burlington, VT back when we lived there…

Listen here

My life as described by The Bobs

I think I make this switch twice a day.

Book Meme

Thanks to Paxye over at A Hippie with a Minivan for tagging me with this one. Here’s the idea:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

They had been especially excited when they found out Professor Chin still held a passport from Taiwan, which arouses less attention than an American passport in China. Despite the icy diplomatic relations between China and Taiwan, Taiwanese nationals have played a critical role in moving Fujianese across the world. The lure of profit trumps the pride of patriotism.

I am tagging Kim, Andrea, Ron, Katherine, and Tracy.

When is Toronto Ciclovia?

So now not only does Bogota have Ciclovia, where they shut the major city streets down to automobile traffic, now Portland and New York City are going to give it a try as well.

My question is: When is Toronto’s? Are we so different from these other cities that we can’t take a day every now and again and keep automobile traffic out of a few major streets? We already do it with Pedestrian Sundays – perhaps the time is right to expand it further.

Toronto Night Market

Last night Paul and I braved the possibility of rain, and hopped a bus to just outside of the Toronto city limits to go to Markham, a city to the north-east of Toronto with a very large Chinese population. The reason? The Toronto Night Market. What’s a Night Market? Well according to Wikipedia:

Night markets or night bazaars are street markets operating at night mainly in urban or suburban areas that are generally dedicated to more leisurely strolling, shopping, and eating than more businesslike day markets.

The most well-known night markets are those in Taiwan or other areas inhabited by ethnic Chinese such as Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Thailand, and Chinatowns worldwide. The night market, however, originated in Taiwan, which hosts numerous night markets in each of its major cities. The larger and more formal of these markets might take place in purpose-built marketplaces while smaller or more informal ones tend to occupy streets or roads that are normal thoroughfares by day. Although some of these markets are specialized (e.g., in certain types of food), most have a mixture of individual stalls hawking clothing, consumer goods, xiaochi (snacks or fast food), and specialty drinks. The atmosphere is usually crowded and noisy with hawkers shouting and fast-paced music playing over loudspeakers. Some individual vendors may take advantage of the informality of the market to offer counterfeit, pirated or grey market consumer goods. The night markets usually open around 6pm, and are busy until past midnight.

Toronto’s night market was absolutely all of that. And while there was no shortage of $2 DVDs, and game stalls, Paul and I were there to have a few culinary adventures. And we weren’t disappointed.

Over the past few months, Paul and have watched a number of Bizarre Foods episodes on youtube. It’s become an addiction, though I think we’ve seen all that are online now. We enjoyed watching someone else try strange foods, some of which looked very unappetizing (stinky tofu), while others such as crispy snake skin made us grab our own snacks.

As soon as we got there, we became aware of just how much stinky tofu is a part of the night market scene. We were, we later found out, hundreds of feet from where the tofu was actually being cooked, but the strong smell of fermentation and a smell reminiscent of halitosis carried all the way over to where we had our first adventure. This one, not so adventurous. Fish Ballls:

These were tasty but not as flavourful as I expected. The red sauce is a chili oil that was just spicy enough to give Paul a bit of a burn in the back of his throat. Both of us thought they were OK but wouldn’t go seek them out again.

We moved on, closer to the smell of stinky tofu when I came across a stall selling various stinky tofu soups. I settled upon what looked to be the least adventurous. Ironically, it might’ve been the most adventurous thing I’d ever eaten: Taiwan style spicy stinky tofu soup with pig blood and pork intestine.

The flavour of the broth was actually quite good, scented with what I think was 5 spice powder. There was also a huge quantity of chili in the broth making this possibly one of the spiciest things I’ve ever eaten. There was only one piece of intestine in the soup, with the consistency of a rubber band and little flavour. The blood was similarly low on flavour, tasting like what I have heard others call it: “black tofu”. The tofu itself was not as bad as it smelled. It had a bit of a cheese-like flavour to it. I was only able to eat about half of the bowl, though, for a couple reasons. The first is that as spicy as it was, it was going to take a while. The other part is that back in the yurt years I was made very sick by some “accidental” stinky tofu. I thought I wrote an entry about that story but apparently I didn’t.

In brief, we didn’t have a fridge so we kept our food in a cooler buried in the ground, occasionally putting plastic bottles of ice (frozen at our friends’ house) in to keep the food cool. However, we had forgotten to change the ice for a while and so I took out a couple pounds of tofu to make dinner with and found it warm. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I thought, “It’s not even animal product so it should be relatively safe.” There was no bad smell, and I sliced some of it for Paul to eat as he preferred it – raw with dipping sauce while I took the rest and prepared jerk tofu and rice. A few minutes after I started to prepare our dinner I turned around to catch the then 2 year old Paul, standing before his bowl of tofu on the floor, peeing in the bowl. After a bit of a WTF moment, we concluded that Paul wasn’t really hungry then and I finished making dinner. Sage, not a fan of Jamaican food, skipped the jerk tofu leaving it all for me. It was quite delicious.

Hours later, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling as sick as I’ve ever felt. I tried to stand up but found myself so dizzy I couldn’t stand up and crawled out the door to find a place to rid myself of dinner. I spent the next few days in absolute agony – dizzy, weak, and sick. And we became well aware of what peeing in the bowl of tofu meant – “WARNING! DO NOT EAT!!”

And that’s why I was a little leery of stinky tofu. Still, I did enjoy it so maybe my own stinky tofu preparation method was a bit flawed.

Next to the Stinky Tofu Soup stall was another one that smelled absolutely delicious. This one sold Murtabak, a Malaysian stuffed bread dish. Behind a counter stood several men, rolling and tossing small balls of dough in a manner not unlike someone making a pizza crust. On offer were two different stuffings – beef or chicken. We chose the chicken and they prepared it for us.

At the end we were presented with a pastry, crisp on the outside, soft/chewy on the inside. The chicken inside had a bit of a coconut flavour, and we garnished ours with a bit of peanut sauce and chili paste.

Without a doubt, this was the tastiest food we chose in the whole evening. Unlike the fish balls, I would, and likely will, go looking for this again.

Moving on from there we joined what was now an absolute sea of humanity with families holding on to each others clothes so as to not lose each other as they filtered through the crush. Personal space no longer existed.

The crush led us past skewers of cooking meat, fish, and even squid to the source of the strong smell that pervaded the entire market. Fried stinky tofu. Somehow, by putting the stinky tofu into hot oil, all of the aromatic chemicals are aerosolized, thus ensuring that anyone within 100 metres of the market knows where it is. It looks deceivingly good, though:

I tried for much of the night to get up the courage to try it but I never succeeded, apparently I had found my limit. Meanwhile, Paul decided to have a bit of an adventure of his own. This time with duck necks.

Each neck costs $5 and comes with a free drink. When you order it, the stall owner takes one of the necks, chops it about 10 pieces and hands it to you in a bag.

Eating duck neck is a lot of work for a small bit of food. The food itself wasn’t bad – a little spicy and with a hint of five-spice or anise. We sat at the edge of the crowd and ate and planned the rest of our evening. When we finished, we headed back into the crowd to see what else we could find – this time being offered a sample of beef wrapped around mushrooms. Neither of us liked them that much and in fact were so anxious to get rid of the taste that we ended up at a nearby tea stall where we bought a apple-rose oolong iced tea. Paul really enjoyed it and offered me some and I relented, finding out too late that it was bubble tea. For the uninitiated, bubble tea is made by taking a perfectly good iced tea and tossing in large tapioca “pearls” and sometimes other little bits of jelly in it. The effect, to me, is like vomiting in reverse. Any drink you have to chew is just not right. But still, the tea itself tasted really good and so I lived with it.

The next thing I knew, I looked down at my blackberry and saw that it was 10:30 – we’d been there for hours. We decided to make one last dash through the crowd, get a couple more things, pick up an ice cream, and then head home. And so the last things we tried were Taiwanese sausage on a stick (tasty, but there’s that five spice again!), and dim sum which were relatively bland, leading me to believe that I should’ve picked up a bit of dipping sauce.

It wasn’t until we got on the bus that I noticed that having spent almost four hours at the night market, the two of us had begun to smell of stinky tofu with the scent pervading our skin and clothes. On the positive side, we had lots of space, and our own seats on the way home…

Another reason to commute by bike

People in Hungary know – cycling improves your physical condition and, you can use that improved physical condition on and off the bike.

(ht: carectomy.com)

Kids and Parades

Since we moved to Toronto, we have gone to the Pride parade, only missing last year’s because it was at the same time as Podcasters Across Borders. And though I am in a fairly conservative industry, I am lucky enough to work with some very open minded folks. Still, the person I work for thinks I am extremely strange because while we take Paul to the Pride parade every year, we have never taken him to the Santa Claus parade.

The reasons why I don’t go to the Santa Claus parade are probably obvious to anyone who knows me or has read more than a couple entries here. We aren’t Christian so we don’t really believe in celebrating the birth of Jesus, a man who, in our opinion, may or may not have been born and most likely was not the son of god. None of us believes in Santa Claus either and we certainly don’t believe in the consumerist stupidity of the holiday season. Which is not to say we don’t celebrate the holiday. We just end up at the Kensington Market Solstice Parade. After all, while we believe in Jesus and Santa about the same amount, it is easy to believe that the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and what better way to celebrate that than with a festival of lights and a bonfire?

But perhaps the reasons why we go to Pride are not as clear so I am going to try to do my best to explain. I think those who haven’t been before have perhaps a strange idea of what it’s all about. I know my boss thinks of it as a festival of scantily clad, or completely unclad men dancing. And there’s definitely some of that there. All you have to do is have a look at photos like this, or this, or this one to see where the ideas come from. And I suppose if you’re under the impression that this is what the Pride Parade is all about, it is baffling why a parent would ever consider bringing their kids there. And if that were all it was about, I wouldn’t be there either. However, there’s another side to the parade, a side that makes me have to stifle tears every time I go because I find it so beautiful and such an example of what is really right about Toronto. It is the complete acceptance of gays and lesbians not only by their peers, friends, and family, but by a cross section of just about every part of the city.

Many businesses have a presence there, and that alone doesn’t make me happy and optimistic. However, the fact that a conservative company like CIBC (how much more conservative than a bank can you get) will have a presence tells me that there are so few people that are going to object to it that it makes more sense to participate than sit it out.

While it isn’t surprising to see the NDP making an appearance to remind the world that the NDP is “Putting the Sexy back in Socialist”, police, firemen, and MPs of all parties all show up to be seen. Again, I’m cynical in that I think that politicians on their own might not go to the pride parade unless they feel that there will be more people objecting to their not going.

This year a few things really got me and took a heroic effort to just keep from wandering off sobbing. The first year I went there I was shocked at the number of churches showing up. This year was no exception and several churches came with floats advertising the inclusiveness of their congregations.

I’ve been to enough of these to know that I will see teachers marching in the parade. Still, it really gets me to see such tremendous official and public support. Meanwhile, in my

I think the prize for what touched me the most, though goes to Peel Region Childrens’ Aid (like Child Protective Services in the states) who had the following sign:

Yup, here in the GTA, gay and lesbian couples are encouraged to adopt or foster children.

Equally surprising was to see the Canadian Forces (Army) not only marching in the parade but having a recruiting booth on Church Street to let potential gay and lesbian recruits know that they are welcome.

So while I may owe Paul an answer to the question “What is a bear?” in the gay culture context, and he may someday wonder why scantily clad men are dancing on a float (to be fair they were always accompanied by bikini-clad women as well) it is worth it to me. And really, is that any worse than seeing a series of floats whose whole purpose is to hype up the biggest consumerist holiday of the year?