Char siu:

"Char siu" literally means "fork roasted," which is the traditional cooking method for the dish of the same name. Forks hold long strips of seasoned boneless pork in a covered oven or over a fire.

The meat, typically pork shoulder, is seasoned with a mixture of sugar or honey, five-spice powder, soy sauce, red food colouring (optional) and sherry or rice wine (optional). These seasonings turn the exterior layer of meat dark red, not unlike the "smoke ring" of American barbecue.

Char siu is typically consumed alongside a starch, whether inside a bun (cha siu baau), with noodles, or with rice (cha siu fan). The accompaniments served with char siu are strongly influenced by regional variation.

This is the BBQ pork that I love so dearly from our own scrappy Din Ho.

As an aside, one of my personal challenges in Toronto was to find places where I could get a decent meal for at or under C$5. This turned out to be more difficult than one might think. Luckily, I was walking distance from one of Toronto's two (!) Chinatowns, where there were several restaurants where one could get an ample serving of char siu pork on white rice with a pot of tea for right about $5. Man, what a discovery that was.

The other day, I got my hands on a jar of char siu sauce and some pork from the HEB at Parmer & Mopac. I'm gonna take a stab at some roundeye chinese bbq in the next couple of days or so.

While in Toronto, I stayed in a room in an old duplex Victorian on Brunswick Avenue. While there, my landlady kept mentioning some female urban planning expert who had moved from the U.S. to Toronto and had lived most of her life in the neighborhood, claiming it to be her ideal neighborhood. She had died just a few months before I'd arrived. I did catch her name at one point, but I never really looked into her work -- too many other things going on, I suppose.

So, lately, I've been reading Fred Clark over at slacktivist. He's been performing the heroic feat of reading -- and then reporting on -- and then deconstructing -- the first Left Behind book, practically page-by-page. Seriously, he's been doing it for over three years. Clark is an intelligent Christian, one who questions his faith and takes the matter seriously, and he is also apparently a journalist and a pretty decent writer. When you combine all of that with the absurdity inherent in what is essentially a collective snuff fantasy, you get a pretty good read -- simultaneously hilarious (ie, Russia's strategic alliance with... Ethiopia?) and horrifying (millions of Americans believe this, and think the President should, too.) Clark is a great guide through what is really some morbid stuff; stuff that's morbid in a spiritual way, and in a kind of way that's really only possible when you somehow haven't quite mentally progressed past age thirteen or so.

(Note: I mean no offense to any thirteen year-olds out there. Fifty year-olds who think like thirteen year-olds, however, are another story.)

Seriously, if you have some time to fill, you should check it out. It's a hoot.

Anyway, so I'm going back over the archive tonight, and he mentions taking a break from the slag that is Left Behind to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities. That sounds interesting, so I look into it, and lo and behold, it's by Jane Jacobs, the urban planner who'd lived a couple of blocks, and a couple of months, away from me in Toronto. I look a little bit more, and she indeed lived in my neighborhood (or I in hers), although I don't believe I ever saw her home.

So, the The Death and Life of Great American Cities does indeed sound like a fascinating read (and is apparently now a classic urban planning & activism text.) She's written some other interesting-sounding stuff, too, including the appropriately apocalyptic Dark Age Ahead:

Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in the U.S. and Canada. She argues that this decay threatens to create a dark age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a dark age as a "mass amnesia" where even the memory of what was lost is lost. The pillars Jacobs lists as under threat are:

- community and family
- higher education
- science and technology
- taxes and government responsive to citizen's needs
- self-policing by the learned professions

Jacobs' arguments

The following is a summary of Jacobs' description of the decay in each area.

Community and Family
People are increasingly choosing consumerism over family welfare, that is: consumption over fertility; debt over family budget discipline; fiscal advantage to oneself at the expense of community welfare.

Higher Education
Universities are more interested in credentials than providing high quality education.

Bad Science
Elevation of economics as the main "science" to consider in making major political decisions.

Bad Government
Governments are more interested in deep-pocket interest groups than the welfare of the population.

Bad Culture
A culture that prevents people from understanding/realising the deterioration of fundamental physical resources which the entire community depends on.

Jacobs' stance against ideology

Overall, Jacobs argued that the very concept of "ideology" is fundamentally flawed and detrimental to both individuals and societies, no matter what side of the political spectrum an ideology comes from. By relying on ideals, she claimed people become unable to think and evaluate problems and solutions by themselves, but simply fall back on their beliefs for "pre-fabricated answers" to any problem they encounter.

... Which, you've got to admit, is pretty frickin' awesome!

Er, not the actual collapse of our collective memory, but, y'know, the book. The book about the pending collapse of our collective memory.

Awesome!



There's a lesson in all of this, I think.



I'm not quite sure what it is.

Man, there's something weird and synchronous about Toronto.

Before Stu and I decided to go to Toronto, we'd been planning to head to Oaxaca, Mexico. Obviously we don't, and we eventually wind up going to Toronto. A terrible running joke is their chain of Scotia Banks, which we'd drop by when we needed to withdraw some delicious smoked salmon. While in the city I do a bunch of work on boomstick, and in the process stumble across a Markdown processor called MarkdownJ, which will prove to be integral, and whose author happens to live in Toronto.

Some stuff also happens that's weird in its own right, but I won't get into that right now.

Anyway, we return to the states. There's a huge surge of political unrest in Mexico, centered in Oaxaca, where several Scotia banks are bombed. I stumble across an interview about the situation in Oaxaca, and of course the interviewer lives in Toronto.

But tonight I'm writing an email to the author of MarkdownJ, the first I've written him in months, and I jump to the project's sourceforge page for a moment, only to see an ad for this.

Yeah, yeah, selection bias and blah blah blah, but seriously, WTF?

So I'm sitting around in the Toronto airport. I've gotten no sleep whatsoever the night before, it's 8am, and I just want some damn breakfast before my flight. I get my food, navigate through the chaos in the dining area, find a table, and start eating. After a minute, I notice that there's a police officer standing next to me, talking in a very serious tone to a middle-aged woman. I look down, and there's an unconscious old man lying on the floor. As I continue eating they bring in a paramedic. I take a bite of my sausage. They bring a defibrillator. I eat a piece of bacon. Another paramedic drives in on an emergency cart. I eat some eggs. A couple of other police officers arrive. I take a bite of toast. The officer is taking down the woman's contact information. I eat some home fries. He consoles her, reassuring her that it will be okay. On and on and on, not but five feet to my right. I'm half-conscious and hungry and on a schedule so I keep eating, although I feel progressively more and more guilty as I do so. Finally I throw away the rest of my food and head to my gate. They were loading him onto a stretcher as I left.

It was an extremely disturbing breakfast.

Strange dreams last night. I received a visit from someone I used to know. It was sad, but also sadly reaffirming. In an unrelated dream, the universe decided to get all pissy about how long some of this shit was taking me. At first I was kind of intimidated by its attitude, but I eventually began to see through it and I woke up telling it off. This shit takes a long as it takes, and the universe had better learn some fucking patience. I also managed to piss off Vince Lombardi, but I contend that he was just being a tightass. I brought his truck back in the shape that I got it in, and if he's too much of a dick to acknowledge that then that's his problem.

Today is my last full day in T.O. I've been here just long enough that it doesn't feel quite new anymore. I've got a routine and the streets are small now, and that means that it's probably time to move on. I spent most of yesterday wandering the city, taking a couple hundred photographs, having a beer, dancing and singing a little. I also finally tried lupini beans and Korean walnut cakes, both of which are remarkably tasty. Toronto is an amazing city -- beautiful, crazy, friendly, dense but open, cool but homey -- but I can't wait to get back to Austin, and my gal, and the lot of you. I'm a lucky man. I have a wonderful life back home, and I miss it.

There have been several times out here when I have gone to sleep with one arm under my pillow, only to wake up later and find it asleep. One time I awoke and my arm was completely paralyzed. I could not feel it, I could not move it, and for a minute or two it simply hung at my side and swung around limply as I moved.

I now make a point of sleeping on my back.

I went out, full of vigor and spirit.

Progressively, the world soured beneath me and I grew disgruntled.

Toronto does not permit disgruntled.

I got a slice of pizza, and walked past two people.

I was walking home and not noticing where I was going.

I saw a pair of boots on the ground, one of which was wrapped up in duct tape.

I looked around, and saw no one, but realized that this corner was, in fact, my street.

I had last seen this pair of boots several days ago, at the intersection one block north of here.

I wondered about them then.

I looked around. There was no one but the couple a block or two back.

I wrote a note that said YOU TWO SURE GET AROUND., and put it in one of the boots.

The one without the duct tape.

I know it's not very clever, but it was the first thing that came to mind and, I felt, engendered a certain level of honesty.

I am generally somewhat skeptical, and even specifically somewhat skeptical, but there is a part of me that wonders if this is not a hold message of sorts.

I like that part of me.

Today I finally tried peameal for the first time. It's the same cut of meat as what we in the States call "Canadian bacon," but subtly different. Better, I'd say, but again, subtly so.

Also, get a couple of beers in me, and I can belt out the classics with the best of them. What I lack in artistic finesse I make up for in spirit, my brothers and sisters.

Canadia -- or at least Toronto -- is a damn fine place, full of damn fine people. A very big part of that, of course, is what you bring and who you go with, but part of that really is where you go. I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to ever live here -- it just doesn't feel right -- but I certainly wouldn't mind if, through some dark quirk of fate, I had to. It really is a fine place.

I've been up here for just over a month, and it feels like a very long time, but I expect the next couple of weeks to go by very quickly indeed. I expect to spend a few days in the sweet embrace of my lady, but after that, we really should get together for a beverage or two. I'll miss this place, and I'll be sad to leave, but I can't wait to see Austin again. I miss it -- and y'all -- dearly.

My body is on this crazy schedule that I seem to be powerless over. I'll go for three days or so, and for the life of me, I cannot sleep. I'll finally force myself to fall asleep, and will pop awake -- wide awake, totally awake -- after only two or three hours. After that, I'll have about three days or so in which I am completely exhausted -- I wake up exhausted, I doze off here and there in the mid-evening, etc. -- unless I get, like, thirteen hours of sleep. Despite my best efforts to correct it, this cycle has been going on for weeks. Timezones don't explain anything -- Toronto's just one hour faster than Austin. What's strange about it, though, is that it's not just me. My Australian housemate has been having exactly the same experience.

My gal and I agreed yesterday that we'd get together online today sometime and talk about various stuff. There's a little bit of email tag, but nothing quite seems to work. At around nightfall, I go for a walk to explore my mind and to determine an intention. I wander for two, maybe three hours.

I notice some things about myself. I perceive other people, strangers, as obstacles. When confronted with them I try to avoid them altogether, or deal with them in a very calm and rational way. People are like... horses, or cattle, to me. Large and obstructing but moving and I'm not afraid of them, but I'm not entirely sure what they're going to do, either.

I find the (a?) Portuguese part of town.

I find some electronics shops. Electronics shops in Toronto are what electronic shops are supposed to be: tiny little rooms filled with all kinds of crap that someone that was neat. Surveillance equipment, aquarium case mods, LED marquees, spools of wire -- whatever you want, they've got it in there. Somewhere.

I find myself in Kensington, so I drop into Planet Kensington for a beer. Planet Kensington is awesome, it's just this old Canadian punk bar run by old Canadian punks. You get the impression that it's kind of a regular's place, but everyone is totally friendly and cool. Monday is movie night, and they are showing The Exorcist: uncut. Monday is apparently also $3 pasta night. There are a few guys and we just kinda hang out and watch the show for a while and marvel at the 1973 references to ritalin. Man, that place is what a neighborhood bar should BE.

I make my way home, head to my room, realize that I didn't determine my intention. I check my email -- nothing yet -- and head back out again. I walk a few blocks, and find a place to sit. I make a deal with myself in which I will give myself one cigarette and let that run interference for my self-loathing if, in the span of that one cigarette, I determine my intention. I sit for a few minutes, and ponder what I want. Then I admit to myself what I want, and of course it's huge and insane and perfectly reasonable. I want synchronicity, I want crazy reality-bending beauty, I want magic -- same as anyone else. I find a way to articulate it to myself materially, symbolically, and then I commit and release that intention. I take the last puff off the cigarette, throw it away, and wander home.

I get home and notice that, in my ten, twenty minute absence, my gal has emailed me. Crazy! I email her, but get no response. I fire up skype, planning to call her, but get distracted. After a few minutes I receive a call and notice that it's from my friend, a shaman in Vancouver, who I haven't talked to since before I came north of the border. We chat for a while, and try to conspire a way to meet up. We do some scheming, and plan to get back in touch shortly.

And then my gal's home.

Beautiful.

I couldn't sleep, so I decided to take a walk. I was feeling basically pissed off and jaded and angst-ridden, just empty and dull and pointless. I managed to walk for probably about a dozen blocks that way, finally arriving in an area near the financial district shortly after sun-up.

I was walking down the sidewalk, when I felt something under my chin, and then, after a moment, a burning sensation. I brushed at it with my hand, and a bee fell to the ground and lay there, doing a little spastic death contortion. I jumped in to a nearby coffee shop's rest room to pull out the stinger, but I couldn't find it. Annoyed that there was a stinger hiding in my beard I carefully combed through it around the affected area, but I couldn't find it, and it just didn't sting that badly. Eventually, I just had to conclude that it hadn't stayed in or something. And, you know, the tiny serendipitous shock of that little incident snapped me out of my funk and actually kind of cheered me up.

Being stung by a bee put me in a good mood.

I went into a small corner grocery where they make sandwiches, and got a toasted egg and cheese and tomato on rye and a small bottle of water from quite possibly the happiest asian woman in the world. I ate half of it in a small park in an alley, and then made my way home up the big financial thoroughfare, watching all the businesspeople driving to work. Along the way I passed a building with a large sign that said, "TORONTO REHAB." A smaller sign, hanging in the window, read, "Try our fruit smoothies: $1.99."

Now I am home and my chin still kind of stings, and I feel much better about the world. I am going to bed now.

It began at Bloor and St. George around 2:40pm, when a man hailed a taxi, got in and then told the driver he was carrying a bomb. The cabbie quickly departed the vehicle and alerted authorities, who took no chances and brought out the heavy artillery.

...

Negotiators began talking to the distraught man, hoping he would surrender before they had to move in.

"I tried to get a verbal communication going with the person in the back, but he was non-responsive," relates Det. Murray Barnes.

The situation was even more tense because the taxi came to a screeching halt outside a high rise Toronto Community Housing building with tenants inside.

E.T.F. officers eventually had to fire tear gas at the suspect and then cops moved in en masse to subdue him.

"He shoots the cans of gas, whatever gas it was," recalls Brian Deegan, who taped the drama as it unfolded in front of him (top left). "So he stands up a couple of steps, stumbles and almost falls. They were all jumping him, hold him, tie him up, strip him, spray him down with water."

In the end, there was no bomb found or any kind of explosive, but it took police nearly two hours to bring the standoff to an end. They towed the cab away for closer inspection just to be sure.

The suspect, identified as 47-year-old Brian Downey, was taken to St. Michaels Hospital to be examined. He's believed to be suffering from drug problems and has been charged with threatening death and several mischief related offences.

A fare in a taxicab threatened to blow himself up. The driver called 911, and traffic was blocked off for several blocks for the past two hours. A few minutes ago officers stormed and teargassed the cab and arrested the guy, who apparently has a history of mental illness.

All of which, really, would make a pretty kickin' art project, too.

Why not just rent two helicopters and park them 200' above the main field for an indeterminate period of time for no apparent reason?

VOILA: INSTANT ART INSTALLATION.

Yes, good morning to you, Toronto. Now why the fuck is there a helicopter flying around outside my fucking window?

Goddamnit, it's too early for this crap.

A couple of weeks ago, a stranger told me that I was one of the smartest people he knew. I pointed out that truly smart people seem to have some vision of and for the world, and that I lacked that. He countered by pointing out that those kinds of people are idiots. He said that Einstein would walk down the street carrying two ice cream cones, with ice cream melting all over his hands, because he had his head stuck in a problem. I'm not sure if that makes Einstein an idiot, although I suppose it does call his situational awareness into question. And, of course, there's that whole "atomic bomb" thing, which remains somewhat controversial.

He asked me what I wanted to do, what I really wanted to do. That question kind of caught me flat-footed. I don't know if I don't know, or if I just won't let myself see it. Everything outside the scope of my experience is either enormous or irrelevant and uninteresting. Sometimes I avoid seeing that I would see something as enormous by only allowing myself to see it as irrelevant and uninteresting. Conversely, everything I've done once or twice immediately becomes small, at least until I forget that it's small, and then it becomes enormous again. Maybe I want bigger enormous things. Now that I write this, it occurs to me that I should do something stupidly huge.

I stuttered for a few moments, and he half-changed the subject, remarking, "I know what you want to do. You want to get married. And you will. And you'll love it for a few years..." As the ellipses indicate, his voice kind of trailed off at that point. There's a lot of baggage he brought to that, no doubt, but some truth in it, as well. I've always wanted to get married. In my mind, however, I have a whole checklist of things that should be done first. I should know what I want to do and be doing it. I should have figured out my emotional issues and perceptual hangups. I should have had sex with countless women. I should have... actually, that's pretty much the whole list. Short but disasterous, just like life!

It's been about two weeks, and Toronto is flat now. It's cool and I like it, but it is no longer sparkly mystery amazing like it first was when I got here. Planning to come here, the thing seemed enormous, and now it is small. There's still a lot left to see and do and explore, but I understand the shape of it, now. All that's left is coloring. I like coloring, mind you, but it's not quite the same. Likewise, my perception of the area has lost at least one conceptual "dimension." I want to be able to maintain that state, but I just don't know how. I want a life where I am in that state, that state of newness and awareness and presentness, that great sense of unreality in the acute awareness of reality. Even if it is not perpetual, I want a life where I am frequently in that state, where it doesn't spike for a week or two and then disappear into the everyday for months at a time.

That's what I want. I want to be alive more. I just don't know what will let me do that, or why I won't let myself do that.

But that's what I want.

Also, I want my life to effect lots of people. Enough that they consider my name worth remembering, at least for a few generations.

But I know all of this. I forget it from time to time, sometimes for quite a while, but I know it. And that, I suppose, is the first thing I want: to move beyond the knowing and forgetting, and start with the doing. I want to kill the part of me that's holding me back, and release the part of me that's ready to go.

Toronto has started me thinking about some of these things. It's been good in that regard.

Booze is a little strange in Toronto and, I gather, all of Canada. On the one hand, the drinking age is 19 almost everywhere, except for the places where it's 18. Booze seems perfectly accepted by society, and there is certainly no shortage of places where you can get a drink until 2am. When you order a hard drink, they give you a good, solid pour. And while they'll cut you off at 2am, they don't do it in the same sort of nagging, panicky way that they do it in the states. Here, they just stop serving at 2, and let everyone take a little while to finish up and move on; back in the states it often feels like they'll practically try to run you out at 1:45am. On the other hand, if you want to actually buy alcohol outside of a bar here, you have to go to a state-run store. There is a beer store, a wine store, and a liquor store, and all of them seem to sell only what they advertise. They seem to tend to have fairly conservative hours, too. I've only found one beer store near me, and it closes at 8 or 9pm every day of the week. It has directions to another beer store with later hours, but I have yet to make the trek. Prices seem a bit steeper, too, maybe a couple of bucks higher for a six-pack than in Austin, although this *might* just be a function of Toronto.

And I have yet to even bother to try and find a *liquor* store. A friend of mine who is dating a Canadian in the states recently mentioned the following:

"Seriously, my BF is really bummed about this no liquids on planes thing cause he usually brings some cheap vodka with him. I don't remember what the problem with Canadian vodka is, but it's like not as strong or something. Whatever. Hope you brought some rum."

There is a case to be made for all of this, of course. This way, all of the profits go back to the government, and apparently a good portion of them go to fund the health services. The selection at the beer stores I've seen isn't spectacular, but it's reasonable -- a decent selection from across the price spectrum, and amply stocked. The beer stores also double as recycling centers, so that's pretty convenient -- bring back your empties, and apply the refund towards the purchase of more beer. And, while their drinking age is lower, it may be easier for them to control under-aged drinking this way.

But the net effect is odd. There's certainly no shortage of alcohol or drinking around here, but it feels very much like one must go through The Official Channels in order to do it. There are two dozen places I can easily walk to have a drink, but it's significantly harder to buy a six-pack, any day of the week, than it is in Texas on a Sunday, and I have yet to figure out where the hell to go to if I want to actually buy hard liquor... or if it's even worth the effort.






A footnote: I explained to my friend that it's still okay to include liquids on checked baggage. I may have single-handedly saved her boyfriend's greatest joy in life.

I got a webcam, so now Ms. B and I can do the whole lookin' at each other thing. I like it! I like lookin' at Ms. B.

I believe I am starting to get a cold.

I have figured out how to make fairly cheap noodle bowls that are tasty and nutricious and healthy. Throw some bouillon, diced onion, and garlic into a pot of water. Heat. While the water's heating, dice some tofu and break up some spinach with your fingers. Once the water boils, throw in a small nest of lo mein noodles. Stir until it starts to break up, then throw in the tofu and spinach and some Emeril's Original Essence spice mix. Try not to think about the phrase "Emeril's Original Essence." Stir occasionally. It'll probably take a while for the noodles to get al dente, maybe ten minutes, maybe longer -- you can spend that time brewing coffee, brushing your teeth, whatever your action-packed life demands. Season to taste with soy sauce or whatever. Takes about 10 or 15 minutes total, but it's worth it. If you're vaguely clever, you can get away with using one pot to cook and one bowl for both prep and eating, so it's easy to clean up.

Hey, I didn't say it was rocket science.

After a week and a half, Toronto isn't as novel as it first was. Quelle surprise! It remains, however, awesome.

For example, there's a street with a jillion little electronics and computer shops just about three or four blocks from my house.

That street intersects a few blocks down with another street that is basically one of the area's two Chinatowns. It goes on for blocks and blocks with a bunch of eateries with bbq pork and roasted ducks hanging in the windows. Endless stores crammed with wicker and rattan. And baby, if want an over-sized, $10 decorative wall-fan, they have got your hookup.

A few blocks to the north there's a sort of Koreatown, just a jillion Korean noodle shops with a bunch of dishes I've never heard of before. A number of groceries, karaoke bars, and internet cafes loaded with Asian kids playing online games.

Lot of English-style pubs. Good fish and chips and whatnot, and a few places that even have a decent curry. I haven't found any places yet that have a *crappy* curry, though, or anything like a ploughman's or a sausage sandwich or other similar horrors, so they're not quite authentic on that count.

I realize I'm talking a lot about food here. This is in large part because I like food. Take heart in the fact that I have met a number of people, some who seem really cool, and some who annoy the living fuck out of me. Most people fall into the former category. Thankfully, all of my housemates fall into the former category.

Ms. B is currently doing something on the couch! I can't really tell what, though it looks vaguely like she's threading something.

Dealing with people, especially new people, is actually remarkably difficult for me. I have basically a love-hate relationship with people. There have been ups and downs so far, but on the whole things seem to be working out.

I may drink a beer in a little while.

The source of all human knowledge says...

David Zancai (commonly known as Zanta) is a street entertainer from Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. Zancai travels around the streets of downtown Toronto doing pushups for the amusement of passersby. While in character, Zancai wears nothing but shorts, boots, and a Santa hat, even during Toronto's harsh winters. He performs this routine every day of the year except on Christmas day. He estimates he does thousands of pushups per day.









Zancai's self-described "brash" act of doing pushups in thoroughfares and shouting "yes yes yes" has garnered him significant notoreity among Toronto's citizens. "Zanta sightings" are often the subject of posts on Toronto-based Internet forums and weblogs.

Zancai was banned from the downtown core of Toronto in 2005 following a number of complaints filed by CHUM, owner of CityTV. The television station, which films live programming against the backdrop of its Queen Street West-facing windows, was growing tired of capturing Zancai in almost every one of its newscasts, and some of its employees reportedly felt threatened or aggravated by Zancai's presence. Zancai's continued desire for fame and exposure resulted in at least one arrest on mischief charges.

More...

In my travels, I have learned that Toronto houses a dark and terrible secret, with far-reaching consequences for us all:





Stop worrying about "Autobots" or "Decepticons." We face what may be our gravest threat yet...



The Vanbots have arrived.

( It was the only warning we ever got... )