Falling in Love: The Golden Years

Autumn has come and long since faded into distant memories, but what a time it was. All the leaves turned yellow then fell on the ground before a street sweeper collected them and took them to the dump. It was beautiful.

Concordia University had a photo competition and I decided that I would give it a shot. I had a look through my pictures to see if I had anything that might fit the bill of an image that represents campus life at Concordia. Thankfully no one was around when I accidentally found an old folder full of private photos before the computer froze, leaving them stuck on the screen. I decided not to use any of those pictures though, because I didn't quite think cross-dressing represented the entire school.

I settled on one from the Laurentian Mountains, which are only a couple of hours away, and got to work on the caption (not knowing there would be someone from catering on the judging panel). This is what I came up with:

This photo represents the eternal struggle of a university student reaching for an unattainable goal, like getting a good lunch from the school cafe.
(there was a bit more, but I forgot it).

 I'm not delusional so I wasn't hoping to win or anything, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think I had a great chance at the $1000 prize. So it came as a bit of a shock when I received a page long email informing me that my entry had been rejected. Always a trooper, I decided to try again. Fighting back the tears, I searched through my albums once more in search of a suitable photo, and within hours I was uploading a second entry along with a new caption about the football team (called the stingers).

I tried to go to a Stingers game on the weekend. It turned out I had the wrong location.

I wasn't too upset when they turned the second one down, in fact I was kind of proud of them for disallowing such a lame joke.

I'm still not entirely comfortable with the tipping here, and have often found myself forgetting altogether, or sometimes way too much. So on Thursday after eating a slice at Pizza Bella, I left my whole wallet on the table. About 4 hours later, after a study session in the library, I met up with Lunji who told me that might have been too much. I panicked and ran around the city looking for my wallet full of all sorts of cards and a few bucks, thankfully they still had it and gave it back. I wasn't sure whether I should have tipped them for helping me out.

I took a trip down beyond the border into the home of the brave and the land of the free to see a Steven Wright show in Atlantic City on the night of the 3^rd of November. I left at 10.30 PM on Thursday night and arrived in Atlantic City at around 10 AM after changing buses in New York. I was tired, exhausted, and even a little bit sleepy after problems getting some rest on the bus, but I was excited to go exploring. I knew Atlantic City's main drawcard was the casinos, but they also have a boardwalk, so I was spoilt for choice. I walked through town to the boardwalk, passing by the huge casinos, then after several hours of trying my hardest to enjoy the place, I went to my accommodation and slept.

 

A few hours passed before I woke up, and caught the bus to the Borgata Casino. Once I arrived I bought a sandwich, and sat around for an hour after finding where the gates were. The doors opened at 7, and I was in by 7.00:15PM . I had a few seconds less than an hour before the show would start, so I just sat there daydreaming for a while, before I looked up at the stage again and saw Steven checking the placement of the chairs and microphones. He looked out at the hall and saw me sitting there, then gave me the thumbs up!

The show was awesome, and was well worth the 24 hours of traveling I had committed to. I would have been happy to go home again straight after the show, but the Big Apple beckoned. The next morning, still laughing to myself at the jokes from last night, I walked to the bus station and arrived an hour and a half early, meaning I got to catch an earlier bus which had some great entertainers on board.

I found a seat and we were soon off to New York City. I started to hear a dripping sound and after trying to work out where it was coming from, I looked up the bus and saw an old man a few seats ahead of me. He was fast asleep, but holding a bottle of opened water down by his side, which he had nearly emptied into the aisle.

A small river started flowing back down the bus and as I grabbed my bags off the ground, giggling like a schoolgirl, I watched the man wake up and lift the bottle to take a drink. He was shocked to see it was empty and started looking around the bus as if someone has siphoned the water from his bottle and drank it themselves. He fell back to sleep within moments and dropped the bottle of the floor to end his comedy show.

Within a couple of hours, I was in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Whoa man, if you ever want to feel smaller than an earthworm in a chicken farm, this is your city. I had only one day to check it all out, so I quickly set to work. First stop was a long elevator ride to the 'Top of the Rock' (the viewing platform at the top of the Rockefeller Center) which had a great view. I could see everything from up there. I saw the silver ball down at Times Square, the softball fields in the park, and Celine Dion shopping on Madison Avenue.

After taking in the views for a while, I decided to pound the pavement. I soon found myself wandering around in the park before I headed to my hostel to drop off some of my gear, passing by a few little landmarks on the way.

On my to do list Tom's Restaurant was sitting way up in the number one position, so I caught a crosstown bus and was on my merry way to the Seinfeld hangout. I accidentally got off about 12 stops to early, but I was going to Tom's Restaurant so I didn't care. All I had to do was cross Morningside Park, walk past Columbia University and I was there, it seemed easy enough. The only problem was the path I had to walk up had two thugs sitting up ahead on some steps. Always thinking of my safety, I decided to confront them. When I was within three or four metres of them, one of the guys pulled a knife. My brain was in a curious mood I guess, and decided it would like to know what being stabbed felt like, so I kept walking toward them. They stood up and blocked the path, before the guy without the knife said (in a taunting, unfriendly way) “how's it doing?” (or something like that). My heart was pounding so fast that my shirt had started vibrating, but I played it cool and said “it's alright”. “No it's not alright” he replied, as the guy with a knife put his hand on my shoulder and said something that I don't remember. I said “sorry” brushing them aside, “get your hand off my shoulder you dopey thug”. I walked away feeling quite proud of how I handled the situation, but a little worried about the knife stuck in my stomach.

Tom's Restaurant, or Monk's Dinner in the show, was a highlight of my life that surpassed the comedy show the night before, learning to ride a bike as a kid, and even being born. But I couldn't spend the rest of my time in NYC sitting in a booth, so I continued my tour to Times Square. Times Square is a great place. You could go there in the middle of winter and get a tan from the billboards. As tempted as I was to spend the rest of the evening watching Coca Cola ads on a 2mile wide screen, I knew Relatively Speaking was playing as an off-Broadway show. The ticket booth told me they had just one front row seat left, but I decided to pay a little extra and splurge on standing room. I had about 2 hours to kill before that started and planned to go for a preemptive podiatry appointment, but I couldn't get a booking. Down by the water seemed to be a decent fall back and I got to see the sun setting behind a funny statue of a lady with the Olympic torch or something. I walked up to Wall Street and saw the occupiers then went back to the theatre, watched the show, laughed a lot, went home, slept, woke up, went to the station and caught a train back to Montreal.

 

I returned to a tonne of homework (thankfully not mine) and a quickly got back in the groove of Concordia classes. Puppet animation took the place of eating, socialising and sleeping for the next couple of weeks. Leighenne and I had our first snow taste of snow at 3AM on the 23^rd, the last assignment was handed in on the 8^th and after sleeping in until the 21^st, I visited Quebec City on a bus tour.

The driver and guide on the Quebec trip managed to talk non-stop the entire time and laughed at their own jokes (which were very frequent and extremely bad), before repeating them in French and laughing again. The city was really nice and has an interesting history (I don't know what it is, I couldn't stand listening to the driver).

In a few days I will leave Montreal by bus on my journey westward (read about it in next episode: "Eastbound and Energetic – A Plane Ride to Paradise"). It doesn't feel like I have spent nearly long enough in Montreal, but it's time to move on. I didn't make as many friends as I could have, or as many good ones as I should have. I didn't master French, I didn't join any clubs and I didn't even play a single game of ice hockey, but I learnt a lot, met some wonderful people, and even shoveled the footpath like a true Canadian. It wasn't always easy, it wasn't always fun and sometimes it was downright difficult, but it was a fantastic time and I'm glad I did it. Exchange was a wild ride, but there's still a whole amusement park to explore. I love you Montreal, but now I've got to get out there and meet some new cities okay?

In the next edition of Mounties and Mooses Kyan visits some old friends in Toronto, finds a job as a stable hand, and accidentally orders fish. Read all about it in: “Chapter XI – The Lost Necklace”.