August 6, 2024
I be in Montreal, Quebec, Canada at the moment. I’m here for about four more days. The weather has finally improved.
We had a brutal heat wave for about a week. It was extremely humid. Now it’s much cooler. It’s the perfect weather. It’s much easier to sleep at night.
Today I finished reading The Plague. It’s one of those books that I don’t necessarily enjoy reading, but really leaves me thinking about it throughout the day. David Foster Wallace was like that for me as well.
I think it's those train of thought books. Mami was telling me that James Joyce was famous for that.
I find them pretty boring. Afterwards it’s as if their thoughts have become mine. Their memories are mine. I can feel the way it buries itself into my subconscious.
It was the kind of book I think I’ll need to read a few more times in my life. There’s lots of books like that, just like movies. Even albums.
The more you engage with them the more you see. I want to read A Clockwork Orange again, as well as Fight Club.
Mami and I rode the REM today. It’s Montreal’s new light-rail service. It’s only about 6 stations at the moment.
We could only travel to one of the stations without having to pay extra. The Metro card only covers Montreal. You have to pay extra once you pass into other towns.
We travelled to Nun’s Island. The train was driverless. It felt really modern. It was all above ground. It sorta reminds me of the train in Melbourne.
We walked around Nun’s Island for a bit. It’s an island with apartments and condos. It didn’t feel very pedestrian friendly.
I wanted to walk to the end of the island to check out the park. It was supposed to be 35 minutes from the REM. Mami got tired of walking. We headed back to the train.
We rode back into the city. We stood at the very front of the train and looked out the window. It was a nice ride.
Then we transferred onto the subway and went to Valu-Village. Afterwards we went for dinner at a restaurant. It was delicious.
Mami paid for all the clothes and all of the food. It was so nice of her. She got a thirty percent discount at Valu-Village because she’s a senior. She was so excited about that.
Mom was here for a few days. It was really fun hanging out with her. I much preferred our time together here, compared to Australia. It was much more comfortable here.
She only stayed for about three nights. She was also quite tired because she was readjusting to the new time zone.
We watched some movies and walked around the neighbourhood. We checked out the green alleys and walked to the park.
She helped me with some York stuff, which was nice. She’s starting her Masters degree at U of T the same week that I start at York. She’ll be in Toronto for the first week of September.
We talked to Liam for the first time since the fire. He sounded good, but I could tell that he was going through a lot. He just sounded slightly dazed and tired.
I can’t comprehend what it must be like. I was so upset when he said that he lost all his photos and videos.
He had just transferred them from his SD Cards onto his hard drive. The hard drive was lost in the fire. He didn’t have anything stored in the cloud.
That would’ve been catastrophic for me. I still don’t know if I’ve lost 80% of my photos and videos.
I’m not sure where all of the Salt Spring and and early-Toronto photos are. I know that I was accessing them in 2022, when I was working on my website. I wonder if they’re on dad’s OneDrive.
I have a hard drive under the stairs in Toronto. I need to transfer everything from there onto my new hard drive as well as the cloud.
The blue hard drive stopped working in around 2022. There was a lot of stuff on there. All of my film photos. Luckily I have all of those photos in physical form as well. It just means scanning everything.
I’m hoping that my transition back into Toronto will go smoothly. I reached out to Kristal the other day. She said that they’re pretty heavily staffed, but that she’d love to have me back. That’s good news.
I also hope that I can move into El Pueblo with pretty cheap rent. From there I’d love to move to another part of the city. I just hope that I can get oriented in the Beaches.