Montreal vs. Hamilton

After returning from my trip to Quebec, I've decided that either the city planning, transit systems and bohemianesque way of life need to be transplanted in Hamilton, or I'm just going to have to pack up and move to Montreal (when my lease expires next year).

First off, Hamilton could take a few pointers from Montreal's transit system. I'll be completely honest here, I fell in love with the Metro. Everything is accessible via this intelligently planned rapid transit system, and even the online maps are interactive and clickable, giving information about each station and some of the nearby attractions. Each stop is even shown on Google Maps, which made it even easier to figure out how to get where my friends and I wanted to go. This was definitely an improvement over the horrible HSR site and trip planner that I'm so used to, and the insanely complicated and non-intuitive interface of the TTC site.

On top of the ability to easily pre-plan our travels on the Metro, I also must give a huge two thumbs up to the people who decided that three day tourist passes should exist for only $17, which is a definite steal when compared to the very restrictive day passes you can purchase for use on the TTC. Rather than spend $2.75 each time we got on the Metro, all three of us bought these tourist passes and could use them for unlimited travel on all busses and the Metro in Montreal. Although we only used the passes for 2 days, by the time we'd finished our sightseeing ventures on Saturday and Sunday, the passes had saved each of us close to $5 in fares.

Another thing that I really believe needs to be adopted here are the small parcs that are maintained in various places around the city. It'd be a definite improvement over the vacant lots and decrepid abandoned buildings that line the streets of Hamilton.

As for the bohemianesque way of life I speak of, it just seemed to me that while every one we met in Montreal had a little niche in their respective neighbourhoods, the general feel of the city was one of acceptance, art, culture and civic pride. I feel the same about Locke Street here in Hamilton, but it was just so incredible that the entire city seemed to be on the same page.

Musical Nerdiness

I've owned my ipod for over a year now, and haven't downloaded music from itunes or any other sites, just because I own so many CDs I really, really love. That said, I came to a realisation last Thursday night as I was prepping my ipod playlist for my upcoming road trip to Montreal... I really wanted "Informer" by Snow on my playlist. Did I own it already? That's a loud, resounding NO! In all my glorious nerdiness, I proudly logged onto itunes and clicked on my selection. Yes, that's right, my first (and probably only) itunes purchase was a one-hit wonder from the 90s. On second thought, I wonder if they have anything by Milli Vanilli...

Inconsiderate Laundering...

I realise that I'm not one to talk with my hoardes of clothing, but it really bothers me when I go to do laundry and one person has taken it upon themselves to fill all four of the available washing machines in the laundry room. Yes, the washers are fairly tiny, but really, 4 machines at the same time?!? That's $8 for washing and at least another $8 for drying, because I'm sure that they're not going to hang dry four loads of laundry in their apartment..

All I wanted to do was a load of laundry, pack my luggage and eat my dinner. :S

A Room of My Own

I'm now approaching the two-week mark in my apartment. Slowly things are starting to come together, although there's a few boxes still unpacked, and shelves not put up yet. There's also some stuff left up at my parents' place too. At this point; however, I need to get my shelving installed so I can continue to put stuff away where it belongs. Installing these shelves is a bit of a challenge, since some of the walls in my apartment are concrete, while others are just drywall. Eventually, with an electric drill, screwdriver and wall plugs, the storage solutions will be complete.

My apartment's now starting to look more like a home, rather than just a box in which I sleep and store stuff. This past weekend included a shopping trip to the greatest big box store of them all: IKEA! I went in with a distinct list of items that I thought would make my life easier, and along the way, with my sister's advice ended up scratching items off and substituting other things. As a result, I now have an end table, wall mounted CD/DVD shelving (which I thought was excellent, due to lack of floor space), a shelf for above my stove, knives for cooking and finally, curtains in my living room/dining room area. Upon bringing everything home, I'm thinking about a couple more of the CD/DVD shelves to make room for books on my bookshelves. Yay! This means another trip to IKEA in the near future!!!!