109 sleeps

I don’t know how I’m going to readjust to Canadian winters. I hate snow; I do not participate in winter sports; my idea of cold is around the 5 degree Celsius mark. I see photos of wintry street scenes from Toronto and the first thing that pops into my head is a time calculation of how long it would take to de-ice a car. In my mind, the best thing about living through a Canadian winter is … is … hmmmm … let’s go with indoor heating. Canada has been blasted by Mr Winter this week – my brothers and my father are buried in snow and my mother and my cat are sitting in -35 degree Celsius weather. Horrified by the prospect, I shudder.

I am looking forward to seeing the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra again. When I lived in Canada in ’98, I stayed in Toronto and worked on a French speaking team for one of the big banks. Once in a while, some of my colleagues and I would go to see the Orchestra and then hit up a local Vietnamese restaurant afterwards. The amazing thing about the orchestra is that they play ‘period’ instruments – instruments that were produced at the time that the music was created. And, while I am certainly no expert on the matter, I have seen/heard enough orchestral concerts and even participated in two in my youth (first violin, fifth chair then first clarinet, third chair, thank you very much) to confidently say that the period instruments do make a difference to the tone of the music.

Toronto restaurants are pretty cool… no Tokyo, but not bad. One of the great things about Toronto is the city’s cultural mosaic. When you go through Chinatown, you might as well be in a city in China; likewise, if you feel like Indian, you can go to Little India. And the Greek area on the Danforth is nothing short of legendary. It’s just a shame they can't sort out that horrendous traffic problem.