The number 23

I was lounging around a lot earlier in the week, enjoying my time doing nothing much at all, so the amount of things I've been doing since last Wednesday has been a bit of a shock to the system.

Toronto

I finally headed into the city on Wednesday, and I actually saw quite a bit of downtown Toronto. The CN Tower proved to be a good way to navigate oneself. The city felt a lot like Melbourne. Lots of streetcars; a fairly relaxed vibe; lots of artsy stuff. After walking around for most of the day, my feet were killing me, so I stopped at Chinatown for some early lunch. I ordered a large of one meal, which turned out to be rather massive indeed. It filled me up enough for a late lunch and early dinner.

I had a rest when I got back home before going out late at night to catch the last screening of (so as to avoid the crowds) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for opening day. It was a pretty good movie, and kind of makes me want to read book six and the soon-to-be-released final book of the series.

"You don't have to be a sailor to be part of the crew"

That Illawarra Yacht Club slogan was stuck in my head after we went sailing in Lake Ontario on Thursday. Terry, Shelley's friend who I met a few times in Panorama, was a member of the sailing club, so we didn't have to pay to go. We went on a boat that was about big enough to fit six people comfortably. I hadn't gone sailing before, and it's actually on my list of things to do, so it was a pretty cool experience. It was made even more exciting when some storm clouds in the far distance came roaring in, causing a short storm, but one long enough to get us soaked as we pulled into the harbour.

Friday the 13th

It was the day of my birthday party, so naturally it was the day people decided to pull out. In the end, only Shelley, Shane (Shelley's friend) and I went out to celebrate. Despite the low amount of people, we still had a high amount of fun. We first stopped off for dinner at a place called the Rhino, whereupon I had some tasty and relatively affordable steak (as it is the birthday tradition to have some steak). Afterwards, we went to the Gladstone to do some karaoke. We spent the rest of the night there, drinking and singing along to a lot of songs. Shane was nice enough to let us crash at his place for the night.

Dark side of the moon

The reason I didn't have my birthday celebration on the day of my actual birthday was that I had previously bought tickets to see Roger Waters in Toronto on the final show of his Dark Side of the Moon 2007 tour. The show was, as most shows usually are, at night, so I had all day to spend in the city. Before the 1 o'clock check-in at the nearest hostel to the Rogers Centre (where the concert was to be), I wasted a bit of time watching Transformers at the movies.

Being a Transformers fan of old, I did like the movie despite its shortcomings. I admit that I was wrong when I thought the robots looked stupid, although I still stand by my original statement in the case of Starscream, who looked stupid in robot form. My main gripe with the movie was that it focused way too much on the humans and not enough on the Transformers. In fact, the character development for the Autobots was minimal, and the Decepticons was almost non-existent, making them very one-dimensional. And I still don't understand why all of Michael Bay's action movies have to have a romance sub-plot. It was totally unnecessary. On a positive note, Bumblebee not being a Volkswagen Beetle didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have.

I walked back (in the rain, as the skies had opened up during the movie) to the hostel and took some time to have a rest. When I woke up, I went to a ticket office close to the CN Tower to get some tickets to We Will Rock You (the Queen musical that I first saw back in London) for today. However, upon arriving there, I found out that they were close, so I had to walk to the actual theatre at which the show was playing to get some tickets. I was in a bit of a rush since I thought that the Roger Waters concert started at 7.

It turned out that it started at 8, so I got there pretty early. Still, you could tell that the concert was on that night due to the almost excessive amount of people walking around wearing Pink Floyd shirts. I noticed it even as I was walking to get the We Will Rock You tickets. When I got there, the stadium still had a lot of empty seats, but that all changed when Roger Waters and his band took the stage.

They started off playing In The Flesh to thunderous applause, and went on to play Pink Floyd and Roger Waters singles before taking a short break then playing the Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. The light show throughout the entire concert was spectacular, but particularly so during the Dark Side of the Moon set. The light show and the accompanying video was a lot like what I had seen in the P.U.L.S.E. DVD, but modernized quite a bit. The best bit was at the end, when a prism appeared atop the stage. There was one bright white light shining from one end, and coming out of the opposite end were several lights in the colours of the light spectrum, so that the prism resembled a 3D version of the cover of the Dark Side of the Moon.

The prism rotated, shining the lights around the stadium, and kept doing so during the five-minute encore break, in which the applause did not let up one iota. The lights went down, and the band took the stage for the last time in the world tour to play Another Brick in the Wall, Vera, and Comfortably Numb. The crowd once again held their applause after the final song, but the lights went on, signaling the end of the show. However, I don't think anybody left the stadium unsatisfied, as it was a great concert indeed.

Dead cities

I left the hostel before check-out time and headed over to the cinema to see another movie and waste some time before seeing We Will Rock You, but the cinema wasn't open yet, which was surprising because it was 10:30. I knew it was Sunday, but it was still a bit annoying to have very little open. The city was pretty much a ghost town, with few people walking around and fewer cars on the road. I'm used to big cities in Australia, where Sunday would regularly be a busy shopping day with plenty of people out by 10. Instead, I read a bit of Coraline, Neil Gaiman's short novel, which I had bought after seeing Transformers yesterday.

When the stores finally opened, I played a bit of Lost Planet at EB and did a bit of reading at the bookstore before meeting up with Shelley for the show. We Will Rock You was as good as I remembered it, with the script being localized to appeal to the Toronto audience, and updated to include a few subtle changes in dialogue, such as reference to Britney Spears' shaven head. I must say that I liked the English version better, but only because I got more of the pop culture references in that one.

I'm not back at the house, and looking forward to having a breather after such a full second half of the week. The Internet situation sucks at the moment, so unfortunately there are no new photos online.