Filmfest diary 1.06: Fusion

It's always a treat to see movies that successfully blends two or more genres together to make a somewhat unique movie. Today, I saw an example of how to do this right, and an example of how it can, to some extent, go wrong. I also happened to finally score a ticket to The Tracey Fragments for tomorrow afternoon (the tickets have been "off sale" all week until I checked today), so I am now seeing two movies tomorrow instead of one.

Walk All Over Me
Director: Robert Cuffley
Country: Canada

Alberta (Leelee Sobieski) is an innocent klutz who is always getting into trouble. After running away from her boyfriend, she ends up in Vancouver, and turns up at the home of her friend Celene (Tricia Helfer), a dominatrix who is aspiring to be a successful actress. Alberta ruins one of Celene's expensive outfits and, in order to raise enough money to buy a replacement costume, she takes one of Celene's prospective clients behind her back. It just so happens that this client, Paul (Jacob Tierney), is being chased by some gangsters who want to interrogate him about some missing money.

This movie was an absolute blast to watch. I actually cannot comment a lot on the directing or cinematography too much due to viewing issues - I was sitting at the very front because the seating arrangement in that cinema was horrible for a short person - but I can say that the script was very sharp and witty, and was certainly enough to carry the movie, even from my awkward angle. One of the best things about this movie is that it's a nice and healthy mix of several genres, including (but not necessarily exclusive to) a coming of age story, film noir, comedy, and the buddy movie. Leelee Sobieski and Tricia Helfer both play great leading roles, but Sobieski steals the show with her very convincing performance as the clumsy Alberta. The supporting cast also did a very good job.

I may not win any major awards, but Walk All Over Me is just a really fun movie, and should be checked out by everybody who can get access to it (mainly Canadians, I would suspect). It's a nice movie to cheer you up when you're feeling a bit down.

Q&A: The director, Robert Cuffley, and actor Michael Eklund (who played Aaron in the film) introduced the film and so I was only expecting the two of them to come up after the movie to answer questions. Instead, we got the two of them plus Leelee Sobieski, creating a nice dynamic, with most questions (mostly about the process of making the movie) being answered in a concise and sometimes entertaining fashion. I especially liked it because, while I didn't like the position in which I had to sit, I was close enough to see how beautiful Leelee Sobieski is in person.

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
Director: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan

A mysterious lone horseman rides into town and soon discovers that it is under a power struggle between two gangs. It seems like your average premise for a western movie, but then you see that something is different - the clothes, the buildings, the samurai swords. This is east meets west, as Japanese actors speak phonetic English, characters eat Japanese food, and a conflict intensifies between the white gang and the red gang as they both aim to find the town's hidden treasure.

Think of this as a movie that Quentin Tarantino would have made if he were Japanese. In fact, Tarantino makes a cameo in this movie as a cowboy in his trademark overacted style (which he probably thinks is good acting). The scenarios are ridiculous, the dialogue is intentional, and the action is intense. I did like all these things about the movie, but what I didn't like is that it didn't captivate me. I laughed at the funny moments and I enjoyed the gun slinging and sword swinging, but, and I can't put my finger on why this is (perhaps it is due to the forced English), the movie as a whole just didn't seem as cohesive as it could have been.

That being said, I do believe that fans of westerns and samurai movies will love this, and fans of movies like ones made by Miike and Tarantino will appreciate the unique style. If you don't like either genres or either directors, you should probably leave this movie alone.

Tonight, I also had dinner with Anna and Kathleen, whom I both met back at the hostel in St. John's. It's always nice to have a chat to people with similar hobbies, like movies, books, and whatnot. You always get some good recommendations and get to share your thoughts about... stuff.

Filmfest diary 1.05: Extras

I was only meant to see one movie today, but I ended up seeing three. I saw the first, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, with Janna at around noon. It's actually a movie from 1974, starring Ellen Burstyn, who was on hand to introduce the film and to discuss how the impact of the movie on her career and on the industry. Afterwards, I saw Stuck in an effort to burn a bit of time in between the first movie and the next, which was Pisay (Philippine Science), the only film that I had originally planned to see.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Director: Martin Scorsese
Country: USA

I won't really say a lot about this one since it's an oldie. Basically, it was the first movie to feature a leading woman in a positive role. Ellen Burstyn plays the titular character, Alice (a performance that won her the Oscar for best actress), as she goes through the motions of losing her husband, pursuing her dream as a singer to support her son, and going through abusive relationships.

What I loved about this movie was how real the characters were for a film of that era, and how they interacted with each other. Particularly entertaining was the rapport between Alice and her son, Tommy (Alfred Lutter). I was actually surprised at how humorous much of the movie was despite the serious subject matter. It should also be noted that a pre-teen Jodie Foster has a small bit as Audrey, a girl that Tommy befriends, and does a damn good job of portraying her character.

You should watch this movie, if not only as a study of how the role of the leading lady in cinema was changed so dramatically way back in the mid-70s.

Q&A: This Q&A session was a bit different in that it began with somebody (I feel bad for not remembering her name - she was an accomplished Canadian filmmaker and author I think) asking Ellen Burstyn a few questions in the form of a one-on-one interview before it went to questions from the audience. The reason this was done is because the film was part of a retrospective series called Dialogues, in which people involved in classic films come to discuss said films. It was really interesting to hear from her perspective how she actively sought out a role that didn't have the female character as "the victim, the wife or the prostitute", how she played an active part in its production, and how the movie opened the floodgates for similar roles for women.

Stuck
Director: Stuart Gordon
Country: Canada/USA

The best way I can describe this without giving away too much is that a nurse, Brandi (Mena Suvari) is driving home under the influence late one night and runs into Tom (Stephen Rea), an unemployed man forced into the streets. As a result of this, Tom gets lodged (and thus stuck) in the windshield of Brandi's car. Complications arise.

This movie didn't strike me as anything exceptional. Being based on real events, it seems as though the writing team took a bizarre occurrence - the real case of a nurse hitting a homeless man and fleeing the scene with the body still sticking out of the car - and tried to make too much out of it than they could. The story itself is fairly solid for a 'psychological horror' (as I'd like to label this film), but the script seems to stretch out a bit, especially at the beginning. I also did not like the creative decision to be extremely graphic. It didn't really serve the story too well. I mean, sure, some of it was acceptable, even necessary, but at some points it felt like the story was there to serve the blood and gore rather than the other way around.

Despite my thoughts on the movie, I think this film will be big with fans of horror, and particular of the subgenre of horror that is more closely related to psychological thrillers. Anybody who cannot stand blood and gore should avoid this one. In fact, I found it amusing that I heard a lot of audible gasps from the audience during some of the gruesome scenes. The lady beside me even looked away a few times. Even I cringed one or two times. If you do see this, try not to eat a lot of food beforehand.

Pisay
(Philippine Science)
Director: Auraeus Solito
Country: Philippines

This movie is a coming of age high school story that chronicles the lives of a group of students at the Philippine Science High School (nicknamed Pisay in the Philippines) during the mid-80s, a politically turbulent time in the country. Each year, from freshman to senior, follows one or two characters as they go through hardships and successes both personally and academically in the backdrop of the political changes of the time.

This was my favourite film of the day and my second favourite of the festival so far. I went into this movie looking for a Filipino movie that wasn't just a mindless attempt to get a few laughs and some money, and I was certainly not disappointed. In fact, this film does two things very well. Firstly, it does what the director intended, to portray Filipinos as more than just fools or hospitality workers, but as intelligent people who are just like everybody else. What it also does is provide a perspective of life during the time of the people's revolution of the mid-80s and of the internal politics of the PSHS. Another thing I liked about it is that the script was funny without being pretentious. The story itself was very good due to the fact that it drew upon many facets of the Auraeus Solito's time at Pisay.

I highly recommend this movie, although I may be a bit biased as I am a Filipino, and was very proud to be one after seeing it, as were most of the audience (I barely saw anybody in the audience who weren't Filipino) when the credits rolled and the applause filled the room.

Q&A: The director, writer, and the actor who played Auraeus Solito's alter-ego went up on stage to answer a few questions after the movie. Most of the questions were congratulating them on making a great film and asking things about certain bits of the story and how similar it was to real life. The bit I liked best was when somebody was nitpicking about how it was the counselor and not the physics teacher that usually makes the speeches to the students. Solito replied that it was a cinematic device that they used so they didn't have to hire another actor. Solito: 1, that guy: 0.

After I left the theatre, there was a huge frenzy outside, with people stacking up like a concert mosh pit trying to get a glimpse of some presumably famous star. I can only guess that it was either one of the many stars from I'm Not There, the Bob Dylan biopic that was premiering tonight, or Ellen Page, the star of The Tracey Fragments, a movie that also had its first screening tonight. I didn't stick around to see who it was, as I don't really get into the whole stargazing thing.

Filmfest diary 1.04: ...of the Dead

I'll get right into it today.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Country: USA

This was the movie that I was looking forward to the most out of all the films in the festival, and it did not disappoint. I don't want to speak prematurely, but it is certainly a strong frontrunner as my favourite film of the festival, and even of all the films released in this calendar year.

The film, which effectively reboots the Dead saga's universe (or, as I like to think of it, creates an alternaverse), begins when the dead start becoming reanimated, hungry for human flesh, much like the events of Romero's original horror classic, Night of the Living Dead, except that it takes place in the modern day. The story follows a group of film school students as they are filming a horror movie. During a break, they hear reports of the dead coming back to life, and dismiss it as a hoax. As they soon realize that the events are reality, they continue their filming in an effort to document the truth of what is transpiring while they struggle to survive.

The film is littered with social commentary, as is common with Romero's films. In fact, it is perhaps his most socially relevant work since his masterpiece Night of the Living Dead. It would not surprise me if I find a handful of new meanings to the movie each time I see it again in the future. The filming style (that is, a mockumentary using multiple cameras of varying quality), makes the movie unique within its genre (with The Blair Witch Project being the only other film of particular note with a similar approach), while at the same time enhances Romero's commentary on pervasive technology and media. Romero's writing and directing does not falter one bit, which, with the help of some excellent acting from a largely unknown cast, drives the point home even better.

Diary is a sublime modern retelling of an old idea. From start to finish, I could find nothing wrong with this movie. I absolutely loved it, and highly recommended it, unless you are particularly offended by blood and gore. Alas, despite it being the second screening of the movie, George A. Romero wasn't available to answer any questions.

The "other" festival

There was almost seven hours in between the two film festival movies that I watched on Friday, so I took it upon myself to get a few things done during that period. Most notably, I finally finished off Neuromancer, William Gibson's revolutionary science fiction novel, watched 3:10 to Yuma (which was great), and checked in at a hostel.

The hostel room was for a place to crash for Karen, Janna, and myself, as we had planned to meet up and go drinking in the city. After much confusion on her part, I met up with Karen soon after The Man from London finished. We had a couple of beers in the room before meeting up with Janna then going out. We started off at a bar with a large outdoor patio, and then went on to look for more exciting places. Unfortunately, every place that looked even remotely interesting had a large line, or a cover charge, or some stupid dress code (although most places with dress codes do not appeal to me anyway). It turned out that we walked around in circles for a while before finally settling on going back to the first bar that we went to. We had breakfast at this little hole in the wall (often the best kind of place to go to for breakfast), then sold my ticket to Juno before Janna and I headed to the Virgin Festival with Janna's brother.

The festival was awesome. I admit that the main reason that I went was to see Björk perform live again, but I did enjoy myself for the entire day. The first act we saw was k-os, who was alright. At this point, we felt like getting some food and drinks, so we proceeded to get ripped off. Festival food is usually overpriced, but to add insult to injury, the way in which food and drinks were purchased was a silly ticket-based system. One place would sell tickets, while several other places exchange tickets for food. What was annoying about this was that you'd end up with people essentially lining up twice for the same thing. The thing that seems to ruin festivals these days are the stupid decisions and regulations made by other people who probably have no interest in the music being played.

We saw Kid Koala (who was called up at the last moment to do a filler set) spin some pretty good tunes for a few minutes, but he didn't spend a lot of time on stage due to some apparent technical difficulties. After another drink, we went to see the Arctic Monkeys, which I only went to for the benefit of staying in a group. I really don't like the band, and wasn't really too impressed with the set, though everybody else went nuts. We split up for the first time after the Arctic Monkeys set when I decided to watch Hayley Sales instead of Interpol.

I'm glad I saw Hayley Sales for the second time (the first being at Whistler), as it's always a pleasure to listen to her nice and relaxing acoustic surf rock. In fact, the whole set was really relaxed - the whole crowd was sitting on the grass in front of the stage and just chilling out. Sadly, not a lot of people seemed to sing along when Keep Drivin' came along as the last song. Almost immediately after Hayley Sales finished, Mute Math started playing on a neighbouring stage. I hadn't heard of them before, but from the one song I heard, they seemed like a decent hard rock band. I went back to catch the end of Interpol (who kind of sucked - they screwed up a few times) and meet back up with the others.

Björk was the headlining act of the night, and deservingly so, as she just blew everybody else - as well as the crowd - away. In fact, after she finished, a common sentiment I heard from the crowd was something along the lines of "I wasn't really expecting her to be that good, but she was really awesome!" Of course, I already knew she was going to be awesome, and just enjoyed the incredible set that she played. It varied slightly from her set from Coachella, which was more than enough to keep me satisfied. The laser light show was also cool, as was the weird visual electronics interface that the "DJ" was playing around with.

Because the Virgin Festival was being held at the Toronto Islands Park, and there were only one or two ferries running, it took a really long time to get everybody out of the grounds. About an hour and twenty minutes after the gig ended, the three of us finally landed back at the harbour.

Filmfest diary 1.03: Masters

I got very little sleep in between my first movie on the first night of the festival, and my second on the morning after. The day's schedule consisted of two films, both at the Scotiabank Theatre, which was a much larger complex than the Varsity Theatre where most of the opening night screenings were held. This meant that the only really large line outside was the line for last-minute rush tickets.

Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon
(Romance of Astrea and Celadon)
Director: Éric Rohmer
Country: France/Italy/Spain

Based on L'Astrée, a classic French novel from the 17th century by Honoré d'Urfé, this film tells the story of, as the title suggests, the romance of two young shepherds, Céladon (Andy Gillet) and Astrée (Stéphanie Crayencour). At the beginning of the movie, we soon find out that the two are deeply in love. However, Astrée sees Céladon kiss another girl (a deception intended to please Céladon's parents), and complications arise as Astrée forbids Céladon to ever set eyes on her again, to which Céladon reacts by throwing himself into a river to try to drown himself. Céladon survives, naturally, but this sets the scene for the rest of the story.

The movie plays out as a classic comedy of errors, with plenty of dramatic irony to please the audience. The acting was good, although I can't really say it's great, as I tend not to be able to judge foreign-language acting quite as well as acting in English. What really made me love this movie was the production. Éric Rohmer, most famous for his role as one of the pioneers of French New Wave cinema, obviously had a clear vision of what he wanted to do when he adapted the novel, and it shows. The film is preceded by a message regarding the filming of the movie, which did not take place at the original setting, but at a similar region that was less touched by human expansion. From this, you could tell that Rohmer really wanted to do the story justice. As a result, the movie felt as if it had stuck close to the original material (although I can only assume this, as I have not actually read the novel, nor can I read French). I found this approach really refreshing.

I highly recommend this movie to anybody who doesn't mind a bit of old-fashioned romance with a whole lot of comedy, and I especially recommend it to those who are sick of the overproduced romantic comedies that come out of Hollywood. Perhaps the only disappointment that I had with the movie was the fact that Éric Rohmer wasn't on hand to do a Q&A session with the audience.

A Londoni férfi
(The Man from London)
Director: Béla Tarr
Country: Hungary/France/Germany

The story, yet again based on a novel, follows Maloin, a regular joe who happens to one night witness a deal gone bad at the French port where he works. Maloin goes about his business, but with the knowledge of what had happened that night on the back of his mind, and also, it soon becomes apparent, with the British currency that he recovers from the harbour from that night. Soon, a man from London turns up investigating some missing money.

I really didn't like this movie but, oddly enough, I did like most aspects of it. What first caught my eye was the old-fashioned use of blacks and whites, in the style of the really old film noir of the early days of cinema. I immediately thought "awesome". There are not enough modern black-and-white films that have imitated the movies of old quite as well as The Man from London has. I also really like the point of view from which the story is told, and that is, from Maloin, who is not involved in the death at the beginning, but is hounded by this mystery as he tries to go on doing what he normally does.

Unfortunately, what will undoubtedly make this movie disliked is Béla Tarr's method of storytelling through his choices in cinematography. I haven't seen any Béla Tarr movies in the past, but it soon became apparent to me that he had a distinct style, in particular with his penchant for long takes. He wants the audience to really soak up each scene, and this is evident from the very first take, a 12-minute shot that sets the scene for the events to come. This makes the film very atmospheric, almost a snapshot of the environments familiar to Maloin, but also tests the audience's patience more than a few times. In fact, I noted that a lot of people left before the movie even ended, and as early as halfway through the 135 minute movie. Also, a lot of people would start whispering to one another whenever the next scene started to drag on. I respect Tarr's decision to do these long takes, but I admit even I thought that, most of the time, they went on for far too long.

I'm afraid that, apart from film buffs, who would no doubt find purpose in Tarr's long takes, I cannot recommend this film lightly. If you like Béla Tarr, I suppose you would probably like it, and if you like film noir, it's a good study on how to tell an otherwise noir story in a somewhat unconventional fashion while keeping true to the most of the conventions of the black-and-white crime genre. In fact, the story style, coupled with the long takes can almost make this movie classifiable as an anti-noir.

Q&A: I stayed for about half the Q&A session, but there didn't seem to be a lot of people interested in asking questions, so I left after a few minutes.

Adaptations, remakes, and sequels

A general observation that I've made with film trends as of late is the seemingly increasing amount of films that are based on other material, or are sequels to previous movies. The first three movies that I've seen during this festival, for instance, have all been based on novels. Even 3:10 to Yuma, which I watched in between the two movies reviewed on this post, was a remake of a 1957 western. Now, I do like any movie that is done well, but I would really like to see more and more people doing something original and making it work, instead of a constant stream of adaptations, remakes, and sequels.

9 out of 10

Soon after purchasing my tickets, I realized that I had made a potentially fatal mistake. Well, maybe not fatal, as it wouldn't kill me, but it would sure dishearten me. I turned out that I had scheduled two movies on the same day that only gave me 25 minutes in between in which to move between theatres. This was bad because people are not generally let in after a film has begun, and the two theatres were about 15 minutes apart at best. Not only that, but the first movie that I had a ticket for was Diary of the Dead, which is, out of every movie in the festival, the one that I really wanted to see.

The prospect of having to skip out on a possible Q&A with George A. Romero was really getting to me, so I went on Craigslist, and sold the ticket (to Juno) on there, leaving me with only nine movies, unless I decide to see another movie. It worked out pretty well, as I only lost 50c in the whole deal. In the end, I don't even know if George A. Romero will be on hand to answer questions for a daytime screening, but at least I won't have to worry about it.

Filmfest diary 1.02: Starting out

As a premise to the reviews that I will be providing in this post, and in the future, I would just like to state that I am certainly not qualified to be a film critic, nor do I consider myself a "film buff". I do not have enough education or training in the art of film that I am able to provide a detailed critical analysis of the movies I see, nor can I reasonably rate films on scale of 1 to 5 (or 10), as I have not put very much thought into the minute details of what makes a film achieve a certain score. In short, I don't have any type of complex pedagogy of film review, and I don't think that anybody should be scoring anything out of a certain number without first having thoroughly thought out a series of measures that contribute to such a score.

That being said, I do consider myself a fan of movies. I love watching them, I like discussing them, and I like telling people what I think of them. Therefore, the reviews you will see here will be exactly that - my personal opinion of the films that I have just seen. I will say what I liked about them, and even occasionally mention fancy movie terms such as 'directing', 'screenwriting', and 'cinematography' if I feel it is relevant to my opinion. However, I will not give any film a score. Instead, I will say whether or not I thought the film was worth seeing, and under what circumstances I would recommend it to other people (e.g. "if you liked movie x, then you will love movie y"). That, in my opinion, is the extent of my reviewing privileges. I did consider doing a "thumbs up/thumbs down" approach, like the system that is employed by film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper (and formerly Gene Siskel), but I decided against it, as this in itself is still a scale, albeit a limited one.

But, I digress. This post is about my initial thoughts on the Toronto International Film Festival (henceforth referred to as TIFF) and the first movie of the festival that I watched.

As I previously mentioned, I'm more of a fan of movies than a "buff". Consequently, I have been fairly ignorant of the film festival scene. My first festival experience was when I happened to be in Berlin at the same time as Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival. I saw a couple of films and enjoyed the overall experience, telling myself that I should attend more of these. I didn't really know much else about which festivals were "big" (all I knew was that the "big 3" in Europe are Cannes, Venice, and Berlin). Therefore, coming to Canada with a main objective of working at a ski resort, I didn't really research any of the festivals that were taking place - they were merely afterthoughts to my plans. So, it came as a bit of a shock to me when I found out that TIFF is actually one of the two most prestigious film festivals in the world (next to Cannes), and considered by some to be the most important. You could certainly tell by the mania that has swept the city of Toronto.

I got to the cinema about 45 minutes before screen time, and the line outside was already pretty lengthy. My first reaction was "wow, it's already that long?" but then I realized that it was partly because the cinema complex was not large enough to hold the amount of people lining up for the various movies showing on opening night, so they had to make an additional line outside the cinema that had ticket holders to all the night's movies. This made it quite confusing, as there were movies starting at different times, so there would often be workers who made announcements as to who could move forward at certain times. In the end, I finally got into the theatre, and took a seat at the very back. I was very pleased with the small theatre, which had a good raised seating plan (very important for us short folk).

Starting Out in the Evening
Director: Andrew Wagner
Country: USA

The movie, based on the novel of the same name, is about an ageing author, Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), who becomes the subject of a master's thesis by young graduate, Heather Woolfe (Lauren Ambrose). Heather has a passion for literature uncommon for her age and an unusual fixation on Leonard's work and on Leonard himself. Complications arise as Heather tries to resurrect Leonard's career. There is also a side-plot involving Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor) as she reaches 40, and tries to make some important decisions in her life.

A good part of the first half of the movie is spent establishing the principal characters of the movie. Unfortunately, this seemed a bit rushed and, at times, quite pretentious, and on the verge of straight out forced (in terms of dialogue). It almost felt like the movie was a victim of its own title - it only really started to feel like the movie it was meant to be towards the end. However, I guess it's a lot better to see a movie with a bad start that ends well than a movie that starts off brilliantly but is ruined by the last 10 minutes. This is how I felt with Starting Out in the Evening - it was a movie that was redeemed by the way the end was handled (although I guess that may have to do with how well the book was written).

Apart from the ending, which I loved because it didn't resort to any cliché of a May-December romance, what I liked the most about the movie was Frank Langella's performance. The acting overall was pretty solid, but Langella was superb as Schiller, the seemingly burnt out writer determined to finish one final novel before he dies.

This film is a hard one for me to decide how to recommend it. I did like it, but I didn't love it, and it kind of falls into an "in-between" category in that it's certainly not a cheap cheesy Hollywood chick flick, but it also has enough unlikable elements to deter the indie movie crowd. I would say that it's one of those rental movies for a slow week if you feel like a romance that has a bit of character.

Q&A: I didn't actually stay for the Q&A for this one. I wasn't in the mood for one after the movie ended - I was feeling quite tired, and wanted to get home to relax. As I exited the theatre, the crowd was still as huge as it was when I entered, and there was a small queue of people trying to get into the theatre for the Q&A session. Yup, this festival has certainly begun.

Filmfest diary 1.01: Sponsored by VISA

The reason that I had planned two stints in the Greater Toronto Area was because the Roger Waters, which was on my birthday, and the Toronto International Film Festival, which starts tomorrow, were not close enough to each other to warrant a single stay. This worked out well in terms of the extra travel I got to do in the eastern provinces, but had the unfortunate side-effect of not being able to get advanced ticket packages for the film festival. This was completely my mistake, and it stemmed from a significant lack of research.

You see, one of the major sponsors of TIFF is VISA, the credit card company. This meant that all credit card sales (and therefore all sales through the Internet and by phone) had to be done using a VISA card, and not any other type of credit card. Since I only have a MasterCard, I had to make all my purchases in person. I only arrived back in Toronto a few days ago, so I missed out on the ticket packages, and had to line up in the wee hours of this morning to get advanced tickets for each individual screening (as opposed to having the option to fill out an advanced order form). In fact, I will suffer a similar fate for the Vancouver International Film Festival, as I will be getting into Vancouver about a week or two after the ticket packages go on sale.

Anyway, after getting up at 5, walking in light rain, and eventually making it to the box office at 7 (right when tickets went on sales), and lining up for about two hours, I did manage to score a ticket to the following 10 films throughout the next 10 days (in screening order):

• Starting Out in the Evening Andrew Wagner
• Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon Eric Rohmer
  (Romance of Astrea and Celadon)
• A Londoni férfi Béla Tarr
  (The Man from London)
• George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead George A. Romero
• Juno Jason Reitman
• Pisay Auraeus Solito
  (Philippine Science)
• Walk All Over Me Robert Cuffley
• SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO Takashi Miike
• Caótica Ana Julio Medem
  (Chaotic Ana)
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Sidney Lumet

Cats and dogs

When I first arrived in Halifax, just over a month ago, I was welcomed by gloomy weather. This weather soon cleared, but the rain had returned when I came back from St. John's, this time with a vengeance. After a few more clear days, the commencement of the Salty Bear tour, in which I partook, was met with precipitation and fog. Again, the weather got better after a few days, and all was good. Finally, on my last night, threatening to mark my departure in the same fashion as it had welcomed me, the weather above Halifax became a raging beast, the sky opening up to give free reign to downpour. However, as bad as it looked the previous day, the clouds parted the next morning to give way to just a little bit of sunshine, and I left Halifax, on the train, happy to be quite dry. This pattern of weather is a simple yet fitting allegory on the events of the past month of my travels - a whirlwind of emotions and decisions that ultimately had a happy ending.

Looking back, I now know that my time in the Maritimes was one of the most important periods of my trip, perhaps influencing me as much as my 4-and-a-half months in Panorama. It started off, much like the weather on that first day, as a pretty standard disappointment. I won't lie, I had this really romanticized image of Nova Scotia in my mind (I'm not quite sure where I got this idea). I thought it was going to be this place where I could just walk in, get to know everybody instantly, and have a great month as a local. It wasn't so, at least not straight away. I did make some good (and possibly lifelong) friends at the beginning, but when I walked around the Halifax (when the sun finally came out), I didn't really find anything too remarkable - nothing that really made the city (and indeed, in my mind, the whole Maritime region) stand out. Ironically, it was precisely this reason that I ended up loving Halifax. It's not really a city to go sightseeing - most of the 'tourist attractions' can probably be seen in a day. It's more of a place where you can hang out and just enjoy life.

One of my previous posts talked about first impressions, and how mine always seem to suck. I didn't elaborate on that at the time, due to technical difficulties, but what I was trying to say was that I always seem to jump to conclusions a bit too early about things and places, and my first impression hardly ever seems to stick. I was at St. John's at the time I wrote that passage, and that was probably the turning point of the whole month. I had arrived there, thinking just about the same way as I did when I got to Halifax - "what a boring city." By the time I left, of course, I was (happily) proved wrong. The revelation I had in St. John's was finally remembering the real reason why I was traveling around in the first place - to see the world. Not just see the sights (although I do love taking photos), but truly experience places by sharing tales with locals and travelers alike, and by reveling in those little differences that make places unique.

Despite the soaking I received (and subsequent drying that I had to go through) from the heavy rain on my last night out, I left Halifax on a good note, and the slight hint of heat telling me that the sun was about to break the clouds told me that it's all going to be okay. A funny thing I noticed was that I didn't really take a lot of photos of Halifax. I took plenty of photos at a lot of the other places that I went to in the past month, certainly, but only a few of Halifax itself. Although, I suppose that, by now, the image of the city is so ingrained into my mind that, to misquote Dallas Green of Alexisonfire, "I hardly took any pictures cause I know I'll just be right back."

A slight aside: In another crazy rendition of the whole six degrees of separation thing, I randomly ran into a couple of people who worked at Panorama last winter, and who lived/worked with Shaun (of ski school and jam night fame). They were hanging out with Amy and her friends from work, whom I met up with for drinks to mark my last night in Halifax.

Anti-Pocky

To counter my deep and meaningful exposition seen above, I will end this post with a bit of a pointless complaint. Pocky. Yes, those lovely little bread sticks with the chocolate covered ends. They're absolutely delicious and, upon seeing them in an aisle at the supermarket, I was giggling like a little schoolgirl (well, not really, but I was pretty excited). I promptly picked up a packet to have as minor sustenance for my long train ride to Toronto, but was quite annoyed to find that the packaging of the Pocky sticks proved to be quite contrary to its purpose. You see, the beauty of Pocky, apart from its taste, was that you could theoretically eat all the sticks and you wouldn't get any dirty fingers. However, the packaging was such that all the sticks were packed really close together, with the chocolate making them stick (pardon the pun) together under certain temperatures, so that whenever you tried to remove any individual stick from the packet, it would break apart at the end that had no chocolate coating, leaving a huge set of chocolate-covered Pocky sticks, all stuck together, without any 'clean' ends. In short, you'd get chocolate on your fingers when you try to eat them. Hence, Anti-Pocky.

Salty Bear

All I did last week was hang around at the hostel, play some Ultimate Frisbee at the Halifax Commons, and went on an unsuccessful hunt for The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (the only place that had it was the library). On Friday, I set off on a 4-day tour with an adventure travel operator called Salty Bear.

(This is a long post, so you'd probably want to take some breaks and look at new photos.)

Day 1 (Walking round the room singing stormy weather)

I woke up very early on Friday morning, and it soon became apparent that I was the only person staying at the Halifax Backpackers (the "other" hostel in Halifax, apart from the HI) going on the Salty Bear tour. I was picked up by the tour guide, Keltie, who then drove over to the HI to pick up the rest of the travelers. I won't lie, the weather was pretty terrible when we set off. The forecast said that it might clear over the weekend, but that was for Halifax, and the weather patterns at Cape Breton Island was not necessarily the same. Despite that, all of the people on the trip were still pretty excited about the next few days ahead.

The first major stop for the trip was Antigonish, a small university town, where we stopped off to stock up on supplies for the next few days. It was at this point that the rain started to get really hard, and by the time we finished our shopping, we were getting soaked on our way back to the van. There was a lot of names that suggested Scottish influence in the town, a theme which is commong throughout Cape Breton Island (which Antigonish is close to) due to British settlers coming predominantly from Scotland (although some from Ireland too). The Gaelic names were particularly common throughout Cape Breton Island, and apparently a lot of kids from Scotland are sent to this region to learn Gaelic because it is a more old form of the language as it has suffered less contamination from other cultures.

After Antigonish, we stopped off at a little place at the side of the highway that did go-karting, mini-golf, bumper cars, and had a baseball machine. Unfortunately, the machine wasn't in operation due to the rain, and nobody really felt like go-karting, so we just had lunch and left for the beach. The beach stop wasn't too long. All we really did was socialize and skip some rocks. We were all eager to head over to the operator-owned hostel to drop off our stuff and then do some kayaking.

Unfortunately, once we got to the hostel, we were told that the kayaking was most likely not going to go ahead due to the adverse weather, and the only other option was to do a hike. Only two people felt like doing the hike, while the rest of us hung around the hostel and drank. It was BBQ when the people from the hike got back, but the propane tank was unexpectedly out of gas, so we ended up just frying burgers on a large pan. It was still good, though (I may be a bit biased because I prepared the patties).

Day 2 (Dipping into the Atlantic)

The entire second day of the trip involved doing the Cabot Trail, a highway that loops around the north side of Cape Breton Island, covering the outskirts of the Cape Breton Highlands national park. Before entering the park, we stopped off at Chéticamp for a Tim Horton's coffee break. At this point we had pretty much lost all hope of a sunny day, and this was evidenced by the ominous fog covering most of the view from an apparently good scenic viewpoint (presumably on a good day). We did see a young black bear on the side of the road though, which was really cool.

The first activity of the day was a hike on the Skyline, which proved to have the same sort of views - a whole lot of white. Again, I'm sure it would have been good on a good day. We then headed over to Pleasant Bay to do some whale-watching. This was probably the highlight of my sea-related tours so far. Before we even left the jetty, the captain of the ship point out a bald-headed eagle sitting on top of a tree. I hadn't seen any eagles before this trip, so this was a real treat (I actually saw one flying overhead on the way to Pleasant Bay). After 10 or 15 minutes of nothing, we finally spotted some whales. It was a pod of pilot whales, who came pretty close to the crab fishing boat that we were on. I thought this was pretty cool, but I was even more amazed when we ran into another pod of whales. This time they stuck around for quite a long time, and even started to play around after a while. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery just before they started doing really cool stuff.

I was really hungry by the time we docked back on Pleasant Bay, and while some of the others had taken the opportunity to order some cheap snow crabs for a meal for later at the beach, I hadn't gotten anything as of yet (I get a slight allergic reaction from shellfish). The plan was to stop at a diner in between Pleasant Bay and Black Brook Beach so that the people who didn't order crab would not miss out on a small meal. When we got there, we saw a sign hanging on the door saying "closed from noon on Saturday". Keltie pointed out that this was a regular occurrence on Cape Breton Island "people would shut their store down for the day because their daughter was getting married or something." We ended up just getting some snacks at the convenience store.

Black Brook Beach was a nice little beach on the eastern end of the national park. It wasn't that big, but it wasn't bad, and there was a small waterfall on one side of it. I decided that, despite the coldness of the water, I would take a dip in the beach for a few minutes just so I can say that I've swam in the Atlantic Ocean. This soon turned into a "who can stay in the cold water the longest" competition. I was going pretty well, but after about 5 or 10 minutes catching some waves, I caught one badly and got smashed head-first into the sand, the side of my head and my neck copping a fair beating. I still have whiplash from that. I figured that I should probably get out of the water after this happened. It was a strange sensation getting out of the cold water and actually feeling warmer.

I noticed that a bride and a groom had shown up on the beach to take some post-wedding photos. I ignored it at first, but Keltie got really excited and started talking to these people. It turns out that these were the people that worked at the diner that was closed, which was a really strange coincidence after what she had said about things closing.

Dinner was fajitas, and again we finished the night off with some drinking. Carman, the owner and sole operator of Salty Bear, showed up late at night, and was surprised to see everybody still up and having a good time. In fact, he was so excited that a group had stayed up all night on the second day (apparently this had not happened before) that he offered us some of the rum that he had brought along. He was a really cool guy doing something that he seemed really passionate about, which was great. I ended up sleeping really late, which would turn out to be my undoing for the next morning.

Day 3 (Crossing over)

I woke up feeling rather tired from the whole free alcohol thing from the previous night, so I decided to opt out of the kayaking, which was rescheduled from the first day. Instead, I hung out back at the hostel, and read the start of a book called Freakonomics, which I found really interesting, and I definitely plan to read the rest of it some time in the future. After the others finished kayaking, we hurried along over to Caribou, where we were to catch a 75-minute ferry to Prince Edward Island, famous for two things - Anne of Green Gables, a popular fictional character, and the Confederation Bridge. On the way to Caribou I had a chat to Rachael, who joined us on the second night, and it turns out that she was heading over to Invermere, the closest town to Panorama (where I worked for the winter), which was another really freaky example of the whole 'six degrees of separation thing'.

I was lucky enough to get a small amount of sleep on a bench in the ferry, and we landed on PEI, where there was red sand and green fields as far as the eye could see. The population of PEI is pretty small, but they get about 2 million tourists per year, so the service industry is huge. It is the smallest province in Canada, and was also the "Birthplace of Confederation" due to the first meeting involving the confederation of Canada (in Charlottetown), eventually leading to the Articles of Confederation being signed. On our way to Charlottetown, we started to play a game called "tractor", which had people yelling out "tractor!" every time they saw a tractor during the drive.

Charlottetown was quite possibly the first city that lived up to the "small city" image that I had coming into the eastern provinces. Halifax and St. John's, while both fairly small, were still both fairly large in that they had a substantially-sized downtown area, with many surrounding neighborhoods and a large overall metropolitan area. Charlottetown had a downtown area that could be explored in a very short period of time, and the outlying developments didn't give that sense of "largeness". It was really cool, though I couldn't imagine myself staying there for a week. Our accommodation for the night was a university dorm, where we were split to two people per room. It was spacious and clean, and I was very impressed overall by the accommodation that was picked out for the trip. We ended the day with dinner at a local brewery where we were once again joined by another traveler, filling up the van to full capacity.

Day 4 (Green Gables - The Ride)

Anne of Green Gables is a really famous novel that documented island life (it was based on PEI), and was published way back in 1908. Due to its (seemingly unreal) popularity, Anne of Green Gables is one of things that makes PEI a tourist attraction, and some people go out of their way to visit the place. Keltie was telling us that our first stop of the day, Cavendish, being the place where Lucy Maud Montgomery (the author of the famous book) grew up, was so popular that she once met a woman who was doing a 4-day tour of the whole of Canada. Her 4 stops were Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper... and Cavendish. This blew my mind, seeing as I had never heard of the book before coming to Canada.

Our main activity for the day was a bike ride around Cavendish, which was really fun and quite beautiful in that rural kind of way. We also had a stroll around the beach once we finished the main trail. Some people also wanted to check out the Green Gables museum, but this involved a fee, so a lot of us just stayed in the parking lot and played around with a Frisbee.

We left PEI via the Confederation Bridge, which was a 1 billion dollar construction project connecting PEI to New Brunswick in the mainland of Canada, and is supposedly the longest bridge crossing over ice-covered waters (in winter) in the world. The toll for crossing the bridge seemed incredibly high ($40.75 for a 2-axle vehicle), though I guess that crossing over wasn't really an everyday activity for people. On the other side, past the viewing area for the bridge, were some moose models that somebody had made using only driftwood, which really odd.

Our final stop of the trip was the Masstown Market, which is just what the name suggests - a marketplace at a place called Masstown. What made this place special was that they sold local produce (apparently good quality), and had an ice-cream shop that had some phenomenal tasting ice cream. Michael and I had won ourselves a free large ice cream after we were both declared winner of "tractor" by virtue of the fact that we were the only ones that persisted with playing it throughout PEI. After the ice cream and shopping break, it was time to head back to Halifax. We hung around at the Economy Shoe Shop before finally heading our separate ways after one of the best guided tours I have ever been on.

Salty Bear tour overview

Days spent: 4
Salty bears: 0
Tractors: Lots
Theme song/s: Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple

The 'lost' photos

There was a moment in St. John's when I had forgotten to insert a memory card into my camera before going out sightseeing. As a result, I had to use the limited amount of space in the camera's in-built memory, meaning I could only take a total of four shots at high quality. These pictures are what I refer to as the 'lost' photos, since they're still on the camera, and I've been far too lazy to dig out from my bag the cable to connect the camera to the laptop (I currently use a card reader to transfer all my photos). If, some day, some photos turn up that seem out of place, this is the reason why.

The four seasons

I only just found out about this today. There are three different ways to determine the current season, which are astronomical, meteorological, and traditional. I only found this out because I was wondering when summer officially ended, and read that it actually depends on where you go.

According to the meteorological reckoning, which is the one I was used to, the seasons are broken up into batches of 3 months, determined by the temperature, with summer being the hottest quarter of the year, and winter being the coldest. So, in a country that uses meteorological, such as Australia, summer would begin on the first day of the hottest three months of the year, December 1 in the southern hemisphere.

However, and this is what confused me when winter officially ended, other countries, such as the USA and Canada, use the astronomical reckoning to determine the seasons. That is, seasons start at the solstices and equinoxes. So, autumn would begin at the autumn equinox, winter at the winter solstice, spring at the spring equinox, and summer at the summer solstice. It kinda makes sense, but it means you have to remember specific dates, and it's not necessarily the same every year. In short, I'll be stuck with summer for another month yet.

The traditional reckoning is based on solar radiation but I won't get into that because it's not going to affect me any time soon. In any case, there's a whole explanation on it at Wikipedia.

Backtrack

The backtracking phase of my trip officially begins today. Until now, I haven't gone back to any place I had already visited during the trip, unless it was on the way to another location. Now, it's time to slowly make my way back west on the slow road home. The first repeat is Halifax.

First impressions suck (and, evidently, so does Notepad)

I seem to have a knack for having a first impression of certain places that never last. When I first arrived at St. John's I was demoralized due to a perceived boringness of the city, and indeed the province as a whole. But then... well actually, I had the next few paragraphs written up, but the laptop decided to close the window I was typing in without saving, and I'm quite sleep-deprived, so I'll spare everybody the details. Here's a quick rundown: I liked Newfoundland despite first impressions; I'm the supreme Scrabble player; Stardust was good, but the novella was better; St. John's airport sucks, but Tim Horton's did an excellent job of keeping me awake and (relatively) sane.

St. John's overview

Days spent: 12
iPod thieves: At least 1, that bastard
Places named 'Dildo' visited: 1
Theme song/s: The Waifs - Lighthouse

Oh yeah, and I bought a blues harp (harmonica) today to keep me musically entertained while I can't enjoy my music in pre-recorded form. Got pulled up by airport security for having a suspicious object. I thought that was amusing. I'm pretty sure they knew what it was, but they checked it anyway (which I had a feeling might happen), so it's good to know they're doing their job.

Thieving rascals

Let me get this out of the way first: a few days ago, my iPod was stolen. Now, I've been meaning to upgrade to an video-capable iPod for a while, but it doesn't diminish the fact that I'm utterly irritated at the gall of some people. I would say that 99%, perhaps more, of travelers are generally easy-going and well-mannered, but that 1% are the ones you have to worry about. Some people can just be so self-centered and don't take into consideration that they may be ruining other people's experiences by doing things such as stealing some food from the fridge (which had happened to Matt a few days prior) or worse, stealing valuables. Now, part of this is my fault, I admit, as I should have had the iPod under lock and key, but, in my defense, I have been keeping my valuables under tight guard during this trip, and until recently have not been keeping things out. I only happened to leave my iPod out after listening to it late at night, and had forgotten that it was not secure the next day. It wasn't too unreasonable not to expect the thing to get stolen straight away. I'm particularly annoyed at this recent development because I still have a good two months left in my journey, which will now be without music, save for the stuff I get from YouTube.

From Dildo to Heart's Content and beyond

I've worn myself out in the past few days. The day after the long hike from Cape Spear to St. John's, I decided to join a hostel-run tour of the southern shore of the Avalon Peninsula. We ended up doing the Irish Loop, which follows the road along the southeastern shoreline of the peninsula. The first stop was Ferryland, a beautiful town, whereupon we visited the historic lighthouse and ate some lunch. We followed the road along coastal towns, occasionally stopping by scenic landmarks. One of the more interesting stops was the sub-arctic tundra, which featured a rather curious tree-less vegetation expanse, where one could walk along and experience an odd sinking feeling, almost as if one were treading on a field of sponges.

The trip was made rather interesting by the presence of a fellow traveler who persisted with stupid or otherwise pointless questions and requests along the way. Kathleen, Anna, and I had been previously acquainted with one another, and were comfortable with the dynamics of our personalities, but this new companion (if you could call him that) was just so intent on talking as much as he could about anything he could think of, even if the conversation seemed fruitless. Needless to say, everybody else in the car (being the three of us and the driver) were quite tired of him by the end of the journey.

Kathleen and Anna actually offered to accompany me to Gros Morne National Park, as they were hiring a car from Deer Lake, which would have been excellent, but I figured that I wanted at least a couple of days, probably more, at the park to fully appreciate it, so I kindly declined their offer. I'm hoping that I will eventually make a trip back here some time in the distant future to fully appreciate the province. My view of Newfoundland & Labrador has definitely changed since getting here - I know appreciate that there is a lot to see in this province, certainly more than meets the eye upon first arrival.

Yesterday, I took another tour around the Avalon Peninsula, this time around Trinity Bay in the northeast of the area. It took another full day, and it was with a new group of people. Our first stop was Cape Spear, which I had already been to (so I did not bother with the camera). After that, we headed to Trinity Bay, famous for various firsts, such as the first transatlantic telegraph cable (Heart's Content), and the site of the first transatlantic flight by a female pilot (Amelia Earhart from Harbour Grace). We did visit Heart's Content, but we didn't actually go to Harbour Grace due to time constraints.

We did, however, go to the place that I had been meaning to go to since landing on the island - a place called Dildo. It's pretty self-explanatory - I wanted to go to this place purely for the name. Sure, it was actually a nice little town, but the name itself was worth the price of admission. We ate at Dildo (say that three times quickly) Dory, a local restaurant, and had a quick look around, taking as many photos of signs with the word 'Dildo' as we could. We stopped off at some other places, sightseeing and berry-picking (something that I had gotten quite addicted to after meeting Kathleen and Anna), but I think Dildo was the highlight of the entire trip. I feel as if my time in Newfoundland was well-spent after that.

Today was spent doing not much at all, mainly due to recovery purposes - I have been outside for the past three days straight - but also because I had been meaning to read Neil Gaiman's novella, Stardust, the movie adaptation of which had previously premiered at theatres nationwide, and which I want to see. The story was rather good - brilliantly written, and in the style of old fairytales. I can see, judging from the trailers, that the movie has had several changes from the original material, presumably to appeal to the masses... whether or not this will do movie good or bad is something I shall determine when I finally view the film (hopefully in the next few days).

And the photos. Oh my goodness, with the photos. I have barely touched them since I arrived in Newfoundland, mainly due to the fact that I've been snap-happy since I've been here, and there are so many to go through that it would take a long time to sort out the good from the bad (which I would say would be a rather low percentage). Hopefully I'll have them up by the end of the week.

The great outdoors

I've found out in the past few days that mostly everything that can be done in this island is one (or both) of two things: 1) something outdoors, and 2) something that is only accessible by car. Because of this, a lot is dependent on the weather, which can be really disagreeing in Newfoundland.

The first real outdoorsy activity that we did was the hike up Signal Hill, a national historic site famous for various things, like being the site where the first transatlantic wireless signal was received. The next day, we headed over to Bay Bulls to do a whale- and bird-watching tour. We saw a tremendous amount of puffins, due to the fact that we went by Witless Bay, which has the North America's largest Atlantic puffin colony, and is an ecological preserve. We also spotted a couple of humpback whales during their lunch break.

The trip to Gros Morne National Park was ultimately scrapped. Matt had to leave earlier than anticipated due to a miscommunication on the part of Matt's travel agent in regards to his flight to England, so he didn't have enough time to swing by to the west side of the island for a few days. I, myself, could not justify doing the trip alone, so I decided to just stay in the east coast for the remainder of my stay, which will now last until the 18th of August after some travel plan changes.

For the time being, I've decided to see as much of the Avalon Peninsula as possible. After a few days of rain, sunshine finally broke through the clouds again, and made for better conditions for outdoor activities. Today, a few of us from the hostel (myself plus Anna and Kathleen from Toronto) were dropped off at Cape Spear, from where we would hike all the way to Fort Amherst, which is on the other side of the St. John's harbour. We started off by doing a bit of whale-watching off the easternmost point in North America. I actually spotted a lot more whales today than I did during the other day's tour (though I guess that was mostly for bird-watching). I believe they were minke whales, though I think I also spotted some dolphins, though I can't be 100% sure on that.

Anyway, the hike took quite an effort to complete. We were told that it was around a 15km hike, but what we were not told was that it involved lots of steep climbs and descents. We started the hike at around 11:30 in the morning, and didn't really get going for a while because we were too busy picking blueberries, which were growing freely along the trail. After a while, we decided that this would take up too much of our time, and we soldiered on. At about the halfway point, we were really starting to feel the strain on our legs, and after lunch time we were working up quite a sweat. About an hour or so before the end of the trail, I landed awkwardly and twisted my ankle, which was not too pleasant, but I kept going, and by the end of the trail, we clocked a good 6 and a half hours worth of hiking. It was a beautiful and brutal trail (and incredibly tasty too), and my legs are still aching from it.

St. John's

Halifax overview

Days spent: 7
Percentage of time spent sleeping: Close to 50%
Change of plans: 2
Theme song/s: Architecture in Helsinki - Vanishing

Newfoundland

I was quite excited to leave Halifax and move onto a new place. St. John's in Newfoundland was the destination, and though I was to spend a seemingly unreasonable span of time in Canada's easternmost province, I was hoping that the island would be filled with things to do. Alas, upon landing at the provincial capital, my hopes were dashed. It's a small city, just like Halifax, but for some reason it didn't feel the same way. It felt more isolated, with less things to do, and indeed less people around. I hear the pubs are big at night, but that wouldn't really keep me occupied for too long (well, ok, it may be able to, but that would involve lots of money). Of course, that being said, I still haven't had a good look around and see what I may be able to do around here, but at the moment St. John's doesn't seem like a place that I want to stay for more than a week.

The rough plan that Matt and I have in mind to get to Gros Morne National Park is still in the works, and I'm hoping that eats up at least half a week, providing some fun in terms of hitchhiking and just plain hiking, as well as other activities the park has to offer. The original plan included a trip to L'anse aux Meadows, the Viking settlement at the north tip of the island, but after talking to a few people, it doesn't seem like it would be worth the long trip. Ironically, it was because of this (going to Newfoundland early so that I could have somebody to travel around with) that has made my stay in Newfoundland longer than I anticipated.

I've already started to make some contingency plans for what is to happen after we get back from that little journey. I've called the owner of a little Maritime operation called Salty Bear Adventure Travel to answer a posted advert to work at Cape Breton Island for free accommodation and food. I am awaiting the exact details of this, and am hoping that this will work out, especially according to my schedule, but failing that, I might look for something to keep me occupied for two or so weeks here in the island.

The hostel of infinite sleep

Halifax is a really nice and laid back city. In fact, it's perhaps a little too laid back. In the span of the last week, I haven't gotten up to a whole lot. Most of my time has been spent hanging out at the hostel either on the computer, sleeping, or talking to the other guests. The company has been great - everybody I've met has been nice, and it's always great to talk to other travelers. For some reason, though, I've been sleeping quite a bit. I can't explain it - every time I come back from going outside of the hostel, I've headed straight for bed for a nap that usually lasts a few hours. When I wake up, it's dinner time, or close to it.

Despite this, what little I've been doing has been pretty cool. The first day I went out was when I first got into the hostel. A few of us went and had a stroll around, checking out a few landmarks, then checked out the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which was free on Tuesday evenings. That night, we all went to the local pool hall to have a few games and some drinks. The next day, we went to Point Pleasant Park, which was nice, although I didn't do all of it because I was too tired from walking around. I headed back to the hostel early to crash. After having dinner, a few of us headed over to a pub oddly called The Economy Shoe Shop. They had awesome nachos, supposedly the best in town. I didn't stay out too long, because I wanted to make sure I woke up the next day, when we were to head to Peggy's Cove for a half-day trip.

Peggy's Cove was cool. A prototypical little town by the sea, lighthouse and all. In fact, Peggy's Cove's lighthouse is renowned as the most photographed lighthouse in the world. I don't know how much of that is true, but the amount of tourists that were there seemed to back up this claim. We got there fairly early, so I was lucky to get a couple of photos without people in it. On the way home, we stopped by the graveyard set up for the victims of the Titanic disaster. Apparently, when the Titanic sunk, the two closest ports were Halifax, and St. John's in Newfoundland. I had something to eat when we got back to the hostel, then I went to the cinemas to watch The Simpsons Movie, which came out the previous week, but I didn't want to see it in French. It was pretty funny.

Yesterday, I watched two movies. Well, technically speaking, I watched one of the movies today, but who's counting. The first one I watched was The Bourne Ultimatum, part three of the Bourne series loosely based on Robert Ludlum's series of spy novels. I'm not sure if they'll make a next movie, but this installment was as good as the last, perhaps even better. The second movie I watched was at midnight, as part of an outdoor film festival that Halifax is holding for the month of August. I saw Donnie Darko on a screen projected on a small screen hanging from the roof of a warehouse at the pier. It was a pretty cool experience, both figuratively and literally. I should have brought my jacket.

Today has been filled with more nothingness. I went to the waterfront to check out the market they have every Saturday, but when I got there, there wasn't a lot to see, so I headed back to the hostel and got more sleep. Now, as always, dinner time is looming.

New photos are up. There's a few shots from the end of July, and several from Peggy's Cove.

Halifax

The last day in Québec turned out to be, by far, the best in terms of the weather. The humidity had miraculously disappeared, temporarily removing the thick layer of haze from the city's skyline. You could particularly notice this by the beautiful yellow sunset, as opposed to the hazy reddish-orange sunsets that had been the order of the past week. Alas, check-out time was 11 in the morning, which meant that I had to babysit my backpack (I didn't feel it was worth it to pay for a locker), so all I could think to do (apart from eating) between then and the time I was to walk to the train station was to go and find an English copy of the latest Harry Potter and read through as much of it as I could. I'm actually quite impressed at how much I managed to get through in the one day. I must have read at least half of it. The train delay later in the day also helped.

Québec overview

Days spent: 7
Humidity: Extreme
Awkward language moments: At least 10
Theme song/s: Regina Spektor - Summer in the City

I took some photos on that last day in Québec, but I'll wait to post them up until I get some from Halifax.

Somehow I was expecting this

I gave the Canadian rail system too much credit after my incident-free trip from Toronto to Québec just over a week ago. The train that was to take me to Halifax turned up about 3 and a half hours late. After waiting that long, it was about 2 in the morning when we got on the train, and all I could think about was sleep. I didn't end up getting a whole lot. I only managed about 3 or 4 hours. I spent the rest of the trip reading a book, listening to music, and writing.

The hostel in Halifax in which I was planning to stay was very close to the train station, so it didn't take me long to walk there. Unfortunately, since I was expecting the train to be delayed, I didn't book ahead, and when I got there, it turned out that they were booked out. So, I took a taxi to a small guest house across town, which was charging fairly cheap prices for a private room.

The next day, I headed back to the hostel, and met a few fellow travelers with whom I hung out with for most of the day. We went to the library, the park, and played pool at a pool hall at the end of the night (which involved drinking and kebabs). When we were at the library, we saw Ricki Lake (as in, the talk show host) doing some filming outside for a made-for-TV movie. Go Ricki.

Harry Potter

Well, it only took me about 4 sittings to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite not having bought the book, I really couldn't help myself. I needed to know how it ended. I don't usually read that quickly, so it goes without saying that it was quite a page-turner. A great end to a series that I, admittedly, had ignored until recently. I think the only other time I read a book so quickly was when I read the second half of Speaker for the Dead in an afternoon. The book brought closure, but also gave me that annoying feeling of "gah, now what am I going to do?"

Hot in the city

Before I get to my short rant about summer, I've uploaded quite a few photos from Toronto, Hamilton, and Québec, so enjoy.

It's been searing hot here in Québec. It hasn't reached ridiculous temperatures, but the humidity has made it quite unpleasant. Even today, when it was cloudy (it's actually just started to rain a few seconds ago), the moment the sun made any appearance, you would just start to broil inside your clothes. The fact that the city is very hilly doesn't help one bit. Walking uphill in 30+ with the humidity amped up are perfect conditions for dehydration.

Accordingly, I haven't been outside of the hostel for more than one hour at a time. I just sweat far too much and, even armed with a full bottle of water, I need some shade and refreshment at regular intervals. It's a nice city and all, but the weather hasn't helped me out in seeing all of it... not that there's a ton to see. In fact, I've probably seen most of what the city has to offer despite the limited time I've had to walk around.

The other reason I haven't done a lot is because of the money situation. I forgot to mention this, but I lost my Canadian bank card in Burlington before leaving, and had to cancel it. This encouraged me to save up some money and only spend what I had left in my wallet until I got a replacement card. I finally decided to get a replacement card on Wednesday (after much confusion, partly due to the language barrier) but figured it would be good to continue the trend, so I kept eating self-prepared food, resisted the urge to join the several pub crawls, and haven't entered any attraction that has an admittance fee. I think I've done pretty well.

To the Maritimes

I've just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it was a good read indeed. I really want to read the next book now, but it's not yet out on paperback, so I think I may have to just start reading bits and pieces at bookstores when I get to the Maritimes. I suppose the three other books I've started reading will have to do for the train to Halifax.

I leave for Halifax tomorrow, getting there the day after (as the train takes about 20 hours). I'm sure hoping that the coastal weather at this time of year is a lot more forgiving.

Québec

I haven't actually done a lot in Québec. I got here late on Sunday night, and today I've mostly been recovering from a body-wide soreness that I got as a result of way too much time on the trampoline on Saturday (more on that later). I guess I should give a bit of a recap on what the hell happened between now and a week ago.

Bowling for Burlington

A few of us went bowling on Tuesday, for the most part as a rematch between Shelley and I, stemming from a friendly feud that Shelley had gotten the better part of from our Panorama days. This time, instead of 5-pin bowling, we went with the more traditional 10-pin version. I finally got one up on Shelley (literally) in the first game, winning by one point on the final frame. It was the taste of sweet victory. She beat me on the second game, but that matters not.

Climbing rocks

On Thursday, we went and did some outdoor rock climbing. I hadn't done any outdoor climbing before (all my experiences with rock climbing had been indoors), so I wasn't really expecting to get too far on my first attempt. It turned out to be a lot of fun, albeit a lot of hard work (as is always the case whenever I go climbing after a long period of not doing it). On my second attempt I got more than two thirds of the way up the climb, which is about the point where it got really tricky, so I was satisfied with my achievement.

Dead by dawn

On the Friday night, we were scheduled to watch Evil Dead: The Musical in Toronto. The original plan was to leave at around 6, pick up Janna from Mississauga, and go to the theatre. Sadly, things don't always go to plan. We left at around 6:30, and were left to rue the traffic heading towards Toronto as we slowly made our way there. Thankfully, we were only late by a few minutes. We sat down at our table (each 4 seats had a table, which was neat), and enjoyed the show.

And what a show it was! Having only seen about 4 or 5 musicals in my entire life, I can safely say that this is the best that I have seen. It's a low-budget musical that both satirizes and pays homage to the low-budget cult classic trilogy of the same name in a fittingly cheesy fashion. Everything from the songs to the dialogue to the cheap production values to the excess amounts of fake blood fits so well with the franchise, and it's no surprise that both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) approve of this theatrical interpretation of the Evil Dead. It's really silly and really really fun, and I honestly hope that it gets productions worldwide.

That wasn't the end of the days fun though. There was still the Harry Potter book release. But before that, an unfortunate and very sad incident occurred... upon inserting the Clerks Animated Series DVD's second disc into the DVD player (after we got home from the show), it soon became apparent that the second disc was exactly the same as the first disc, just with different printing on the front (saying 'Disc 2' instead of 'Disc 1'). This quite irritated me, because I hadn't thought to check if the discs were faulty when I first bought it in Banff. I have since gotten rid of the receipt, and obviously it would be more than a hassle to go to Banff just to get it replaced. I'm hoping that any HMV store (or any store that stocks the DVD for that matter) will replace the faulty disc with a proper one.

Friday night also happened to be the night that the seventh and final Harry Potter book was to be released. Chapters, one of the nearby bookstores, was having a midnight release of the book, and Shelley wanted to buy it, so we went and lined up. It was pretty cool, the doors were painted as a brick wall, and when you entered it said "Platform 9 3/4" (a reference to the secret train platform from the series). All the staff were dressed up, as were many of the people lining up for the book. There was much excitement as it got closer to midnight, and huge applause once the book was finally revealed. As an apparent joker was heading out of the store he screamed, pointing at a random page of the book, "OH MY GOD! HARRY DIES!" to much laughter. I bought the paperback of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, as I am not fully caught up to the whole Potterverse. The lady at the check out looked at me funny and said, "you waited in line for that?"

Golf game and BBQ... OF PAIN!

Saturday was my last day in Burlington, and it was only fitting that it was filled with a lot of activities. I was going on about 4 hours of sleep from the night before, as I had stayed up to pack my bags. The first order of business was golf. The ski club that Shelley, Dave, and Terry belong had organized a golf game and BBQ for the day, and I was invited. It was only my second time golfing, and this time it was on a proper course, which was fairly intimidating. However, it was a social outing, so scores didn't really matter, as long as we had fun, which we did. I shot about 10 over what I got last time, which was pretty good considering the course was slightly more difficult. It's something I want to at least get decent at.

After golf, the BBQ commenced. It was held at Terry's backyard, and the many attendees could enjoy food, badminton, volley ball, and a trampoline. The trampoline was what I picked to be the main source of entertainment. I love bouncing around on them, and Dave had brought along his trampoline board, so I was doing snowboard tricks on it. It was incredibly tiring, but incredibly fun. The day was a long one. We sat down around the fire, drank some beer, did some more trampolining, ran through the cornfields, got bitten by lots of mosquitoes (damn them mozzies), before finally crashing on Terry's couch at around 3 or 4 in the morning.

When I woke up, I wasn't really feeling very sore, as it was around 8 in the morning, and my body had not yet had time to register the muscle pain from the excess trampolining (but I did feel those mozzie bites). It was only after I caught the train towards Québec that I started feeling just how much my body was hurting. It especially sucks when walking down stairs. When I got to the hostel in Québec, all I could think about was getting some food and some rest.

Burlington overview

Days spent: 20
23rd birthdays: 1
Last 9-hole golf score: 73
Theme song(s): Holly Throsby - The Shoulders and Bends

The clueless guide

I met two French guys (actually from France) at the hostel who asked me for some help regarding hostels in New York, which was where they were headed in a few days' time. I helped them out, and they were really friendly and appreciative, so we hung out and toured a bit of the area. I didn't really know a lot about the area, but I seemed to know enough of the immediate area to make them think that I was an expert on the city. I assured them that I only knew what I had seen during my couple of searches for food. If anything, it's a lot more comforting for me to have them around, just in case I run into some language difficulties with said food locations.

I have six more days in Québec, and apparently it's not such a big city, so there's no doubt that I'll have some free time to post new photos within the next week.

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.

Some days are long

One thing I've noticed here on the east coast of Canada is that the days are ridiculously long. I guess the time of year doesn't help in the matter. It only really starts to get dark before 9, and once it is dark, it's basically late night already.

On a totally different but equally curious observation, the bilingual nature of this country baffles me. There are signs everywhere that include both English and French, since both are official languages, presumably due to, for the most part, Quebec. The thing is, signage in Quebec contains no English. Now, I know French is spoken in other places outside of Quebec, but I think it's safe to say that most of the French-speaking areas of the country are in that province, so I don't think it's unreasonable to say that signs outside of Quebec should only be in English. It's unfair to have to contain English and French in the mostly English-speaking areas of the country while the rules don't seem to apply in the predominantly French-speaking areas.

But I digress. Onto the stories.

Drink, drunk, drank

I was feeling a bit sick when I arrived in Burlington, and this wasn't at all helped by the fact that I went golfing with Dave and Shelley a couple of days after I arrived. It was only my second time golfing (the first being at a driving range), and my first at a course. Mind you, this course in Hamilton was not exactly the best course in the world. We played 9 holes, and I shot a 63, which wasn't as bad as I was expecting, especially for my first time. Still, I was feeling quite bad the next day.

The illness receded, only to be replaced with a few consecutive hangovers. The first of these hangovers came when Shelley was in the process of cleaning out her fridge. A bottle of liqueur and some beer were among the items that needed to go, so I gladly obliged in getting rid of them. We watched Live Free or Die Hard at the movies afterwards, which was pretty enjoyable.

The next night, we went to a local pub with some of Shelley's friends and hung out there for the night, with Shelley determined to finish the night early so that she could go mountain biking with her brother the next day (yesterday). This attempt didn't go exactly to plan, as we continued drinking when we got back home, and ended up sleeping at 3 or 4 in the morning. Shelley ended up canceling on her brother as she couldn't get up early enough. When she finally got up, she showed me around Burlington, which isn't really much of an exciting area in terms of tourism.

Yesterday night, instead of sleeping early to get up for our trip to Niagara Falls, we went to a pub for some karaoke. The night was a lot of fun and I didn't have too much to drink, but somehow ended up with a pretty big hangover this morning, although I guess it was mostly from the lack of sleep. We picked up Mira, who was currently staying in Toronto, at the train station, then grabbed some breakfast before heading over to the falls.

It was an overcast day, with some sprinkles of rain, but the weather was still rather humid, and you could certainly feel it. The falls themselves were very cool. It's funny that Canada gets a good view of their falls (Horseshoe Falls) and the USA's falls (American Falls), while the USA barely gets a good view of either. It was a good thing too, because it meant that we didn't have to cross the Rainbow Bridge into the USA and deal with the hassle of going through customs twice just for a view. We ended the day at Niagara Falls by watching the IMAX movie about the myths and legends of the falls.

Harry Potter and the somethingorother

Jenn, Shelley's friend, mentioned to me that the new Harry Potter film comes out on Wednesday, to which I replied that I've never actually seen any of the movies. She immediately recommended that I watch them all so I can watch the new film with them on Wednesday. She lent me all four movies on DVD so that I could catch up before Wednesday comes. So far I've seen two. Two to go.

Photos(hopping)

Finally, I've uploaded the photos from Montreal, and also the photos from Burlington and Niagara Falls. I started messing around with some stuff in Photoshop, so you'll notice a few of the pictures are a bit 'different'. Despite never having done a lot of it before, I like it this way, since it can make otherwise bad photos look rather nice.

Speaking of Photoshopping, I also made a mock postcard for Montreal.