And You've Got Time

So during those quiet moments in the evenings before bed, I’ve become hooked to Orange Is The New Black, the TV drama about a woman’s experience in prison. It is fantastic, I can’t recommend it enough… my only criticism is that every time I watch it, I start comparing her experiences in prison to mine in my new flat. When she gets starved out by her inmates in her first week, I watch, holding my rumbling stomach, because I too am hungry, except my reason is that I’m still catching up with the responsibility of feeding myself at regular intervals. Our hero’s prison cell is small with limited light - as is mine! My - uh, my bedroom, I mean. Not my cell. When she is faced with limited communication to the outside world, I nod my head in sympathy as I feel a twinge over the fact that I can’t meet up with my best buddies for a coffee like I used to in Scotland. I am Piper Chapman!

And then I have to shake myself - Olivia, you are NOT IN PRISON, you are in Canada. 

So I go out for a walk.

Stepping out of my door and turning West, I walked out one clear, cold evening. The sky was getting a bit darker, the sun was making up its mind about setting. I was planning on exploring Roncesvalles - about a ten minute walk away. As I reached the junction, I was caught unawares by Lake Ontario. It gave me a little wave (or, several! Ah! Ahahah! I’m too funny!), and I decided to abandon Roncies (as the locals call it) for the icy shores of the lake. The sun was melting behind the skyscrapers of Mississauga, and the lake was so full it almost felt like it rose above me. I walked right up to the edge of the bank and looked at the mini-icebergs floating on the cold water. If I looked straight ahead, I could block out the city behind me, the skyline to the West and the bay on the East; I could focus on the tide of the lake, and the glowing horizon which burned pink and lavender, and I could pretend I was in some kind of Arctic landscape, totally alone.

Of course, as poetic as the whole thing was, being totally alone isn’t really on my agenda.

I have been out, I have seen people, I promise! I met up with a friend of a friend for my first drink out in Toronto a few days ago. Athena took me to a place called Rock Lobster, for my first real taste of a very Canadian drink. We sat at the window, with a massive Canadian flag blocking our view of the street, and soon enough we were brought two Caesars - glass tankards with red liquid inside, sporting celery stalks and lobster tails. When I was first introduced to the idea of Caesars, I was at Robert’s house in Barrie. Robert’s mum Audrey explained that it is essentially a Bloody Mary, but for one difference: instead of tomato juice, Caesars are made with something called clamato juice. And what is clamato juice? Well, take a moment, because it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Tomato juice with clam brine. For real. Yummmmm. I thought the whole Caesar thing sounded absolutely revolting. Audrey had a bottle of clamato juice in the fridge and poured me a taster. It was tomatoey. And salty. And… fishy? I tried to make a ooh I’m enjoying this! face by raising my eyebrows but instead it came across as more of a there’s a party in my mouth and I definitely wasn’t invited. However, the Caesar I had at Rock Lobster was a little hard to swallow for a different reason - it was really, really hot. Athena and I chatted and were joined by a couple other of her friends, we ate seafood and I tried to not choke every time I took a sip of my drink, as it caught me at the back of the throat with the tabasco. We picked at our lobster tails and chomped on celery, and I agreed that the Caesar was an acquired taste, perhaps one I could learn to like (but let’s not be too hasty - I think this is my Caesar quota for at least the next few months filled up).

So now that I had a place in town and could easily traipse out at night and drink salty clamato juice, I had to initiate phase two of life in Canada: get a job. About a week ago, I had one of the guys I met from the Magical Musician’s Flat (which I sadly couldn’t end up living in) forward my resume to the boss of his band’s publicity company. They were looking for interns, and I was looking to work. After a couple of days I got back in touch with him to ask if he had forwarded it on. He said he had, and that I should do a follow-up call or e-mail! Gosh, a follow-up, I thought, this is what I’ve read about on thousands of articles about job-seeking and interning. I immediately googled “internship cold call” and opened several zillion tabs on all the do’s and don’t’s of calling up for an interview. I ummed and ahhed, spent a couple of days thinking about it and trying to write up a script so when The Moment came I didn’t flounder and just start stuttering down the phone. I eventually gave them a call, and on my second try, I got through to the person in charge of internships. I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what I said, but apparently it was good enough, because he wanted me to pass my resume on to him. I gave him a super-courteous thank you, and about an hour and one resume later, I was sitting in a local cafe (which was full of tragic hipsters, think guys with beards in vests on their laptops and moustachioed men talking film scripts… also in vests. What is it with vests here!?) when I got a reply from him, asking me to come in for an interview on Friday afternoon. Ah, Friday. Wait - that’s the day after tomorrow!

I wrote some letters to friends and did some more reading up on the company, while sitting in La Hipsteur Sérieuse, before packing up to do another evening walk around the block. Walking down one of the residential roads, I nearly gasped as I saw that the sun, red and swollen, was taking up the whole of the road’s end, like some kind of alien presence. It was huge, I have never seen the sun that large. I quickened my pace, determined to chase the sunset to the lakeshore, but I was several blocks away. By the time I reached the lake, the sun had slunk below the horizon, leaving a blood orange trail along the West.

Back home, after dinner, I was cleaning my dishes when Benedicte, one of my flatmates, popped her head in from the patio door, where she was on the phone and having a cigarette. “Hey, do you want to see something?” she whispered, in her French lilt. I stepped to the doorway, and saw, silhouetted on our back wall, an animal a little bigger than a cat, with a thick body and legs that tapered to little paws. It was a raccoon, and it was looking at us - I could just make out it’s black bandit mask. The raccoon then turned it’s head away to look up at the sky, before then slinking along our wall, and attempting to climb down on to our fence. We live in an apartment which is on the second storey, so if the raccoon fell off the fence, it’d have a fair bit to go. It put its paws tentatively on the wooden fence, and as it wobbled, I heard a little “urk!”, reminiscent of Meeko from Pocahontas. Soon, he disappeared off into the night, to wherever it is that raccoons go.

I can’t believe it’s been less than a week since I’ve been here. Everything is still new and confusing, but Barrie seems a world away. So much has happened in the last few days, and I have achieved so much - hello, internship interview! What I’ve come to realise is that things can turn around so quickly, especially at this stage. One day, I’m holding my head in my hands, worrying why I’m not out and about, doing a million things, making a million friends, worrying my butt off about the choices that I’ve made and the plans I’ve planned… and the next, I’m sending out messages and organising weekend plans and brushing up on my interview technique. I think anyone who has gone to live abroad will agree, it’s a total rollercoaster. And, yes, sometimes I feel like I’m serving a sentence instead of living my dreams, but at the end of the day, I have Lake Ontario just around the corner, showing me the colours of the setting sun, and reminding me that it’s only a few hours until the sky lights up in the East.