Just like a “Two-piece-feed” with a side of Popcorn Chicken and a Pepsi Max from KFC all good things must unfortunately come to an end; and for me my rather obtuse metaphor relates to my time over the last seven weeks of basically being a bum.

You see on Monday I will once again join the sheepish herd that is man-kind in their Monday to Friday work routine of early rising, nose to the grind stone, sleep and repeat. Really though I can’t complain, I’ve had an amazing time since leaving Australia. I’ve explored Toronto, ducked off to New York for a week, I’ve had fantastic fun albeit rather fuzzily remembered fun due to an array of alcoholic boissons (That’s French for beverages people, see I’ve been learning too!).

So what’s the job and more importantly why aren’t I working at the bookstore (Chapters) like I’d planned essentially continuing the life of freedom? Well you see, life doesn’t always go as planned, even for casual free-loaders like myself. In a nutshell if I was to take a part time job I’d be living in a dwarf’s shoebox that has newspaper for carpet and seven other people whom also claim certain vermin infested areas of said space. Having upgraded in quality of living I also needed to upgrade my employment expectations saying goodbye to my dreams of lattes & books to welcome the cold hard reality of my world of professional comfort, PHP programming.

It’s not that bad really, in fact I’m quite looking forward to the job to be honest. I’ll be working for a media agency called “ClimaxMedia” in a nice converted warehouse not far from where I live. An easy commute on the road bike I’m yet to purchase but I promise I’m definitely getting! Climax’s main office is in the next city over, Mississauga, and have just setup in Toronto so it’s an interesting time to come into the company.

Now with a new home, new job, new mobile phone on a ridiculous three year contract and new furniture I’ve really settled in and whilst there’s always cracks of home sickness that creep in from time to time I’m still really excited about what’s to come!

As if Canadians weren’t already the butt of the iPhone world, being America’s North American co-inhabiter they’ve been denied the iPhone longer than anyone would’ve thought. Today however that was all meant to change, I say “meant” because as any of the hundreds to thousands that lined up this morning were sorely disappointed in a severe shortage of stock.

Out of the four stores that I walked between checking out lines and chatting with their patrons I didn’t find a single store with more than 30 phones and then each store seemed to have a 50/50 split of 8GB & 16GB another move I find strange.

So who’s to blame? Well you could say Apple, they are the ones who’re distributing the device across the world today but the majority, whether they’re right or wrong, will say Rogers. Let’s for the moment forget the fact that Roger’s contract length is 3 years, a period that will surely go well beyond this generation of iPhones life-cycle, and again forget that they have a huge monopoly in being the only GSM provider in the country; what really puts the nail in the coffin for these guys is the past week’s worth of controversy in regards to their exorbitant pricing and that “supposedly” Apple decided they’d teach them a lesson by not supplying much stock.

Now there’s no “official” word that this was the case but all fingers point to Rogers. That said I can understand where they’re coming from, this things a cash cow for them. The 3 year contract, high rate plans, it’s money for jam, not to mention they have no competition why would you make your plans cheap? I’ve worked for a telecommunications company for 7 years and trust me the one thing that drives good pricing is competition and Rogers has none.

So blame who you will, it’s unfortunately not going to change the fact that there’s little to no iPhones out there today and you’ll most likely be waiting another week to get a “Jesus Phone” in your hands. Sorry Canada.

In case you’ve been wondering just what I’ve been up to the past week and a bit let me sum it up in a single word, drinking. It’s been an arduous task of constant lifting from table to mouth consuming countless litres of some foul tasting liquid called “beer”.

It all started when my faux housemate and fellow patriot Dansie and I took a leisurely hour and a half flight to Newark, New Jersey, just outside of New York to where we’d be staying with an American friend Aimee and her housemate Andrea. Joining us in this pilgrimage to the “Land of Opportunity” was another Australian schoolmate Jimmy who would arrive later that day and meet us next to Madison Square Garden for welcoming brews.

The next week is somewhat of a blur. There were moments of clarity in which activities such as the driving range at Chelsea Piers, viewing the Statue of Liberty and viewing the world from atop Rockefeller Plaza were performed however these were mostly scarcely placed admits long nights of beverage consumption ending in sunrises without bed. I can’t complain, or rather I could, most specifically to the tune of my rapidly depleting bank balance but how can you put a price on the true New York experience I ask you?

Whilst I was basked in the glory of all things New York it was blindingly obvious how different my new home country and America actually are. The levels of service and friendless pale in comparison to T.O’s demeanor and the required gratuity (tip) that is expected seem completely unearned in many places we went, but such is life and that’s the American way, you learn to live with it and move on.

After a week of blurred memories and far too much photographic and video evidence of what had actually occurred on nights prior it was a welcome thought to be returning to Canada our entire crew in tow aiming towards a camping adventure in the Algonquin Park three hours north of Toronto. Not so inspiring in thought was the 6am flight that needed to be caught and the three hours sleep barely stolen the night before.

Between New York and the camping adventure to come was a short respite in a drive from Hamilton to Niagara Falls. Hiring a car (in which I drove and actually stayed on the correct side of the road) we travelled contently to a breathtaking destination. Dividing Canada from the US are a set of waterfalls so breath taking that when you stand at the top of them, metres from the megalitres of water that cascade over their edge, your breath is literally sucked from your lungs with the ferocity of the falls power. Water plunges over the falls splashing definitely into the river beneath only to be vaporized and form a cloud of mist that stretches hundreds of metres above it soaking standers by as if caught in a thunderstorm. It’s hard to imagine anyone surviving that has gone over but visit the museum or ask a local and you’ll hear all about it.

One could be forgiven in thinking that perhaps a camping trip would not entail such dizzying drunken heights to which I can only through recorded media attest, but one would be wrong. Despite the four hour drive each way (we started in Hamilton an hour south of Toronto) and despite the daily physical activities of canoeing and hiking (I steered clear of the canoes) each night was met with celebratory liquids. It was Andrea’s birthday on one of the nights after all.

Algonquin park is without a doubt one of the most amazing pieces of nature I’ve bared witness to, and for those of you who know me that’s a pretty remarkable thing to come out of my mouth; or rather fingers; you know because I’m typing this; let’s just say “remarkable thing for me to think”. There.

Laid out over 50,000km is one of the most picturesque wonderlands filled with lakes, trails, forests and wildlife that you could spend a year exploring. I spent the majority of my time jumping from lake to lake, river to river and hiking lookouts trying to capture just a small percentage of its beauty but photos unfortunately just can’t do it justice.

Finally returning to Hamilton yesterday afternoon our numbers have dwindled, Andrea returning to Jersey, Aimee continuing her holiday flying to Costa Rica, Jimmy off to Germany this morning, myself moving up to Toronto today and Dansie left back where we started in Hamilton a chapter closes on this one of the great Canadian Tales.

Photo Sets:
New York
Niagara Falls
Algonquin Park

As if they’d never been away (what a quick 6 months it was boys) Gav, Stu & Fu are back with a new season of the Hundred Pennies podcast. It seems like they always seem to wait until I’m overseas to record these but that’s fine by me because when I’m walking down Queen West in Toronto it’s just like I never left home!

Looks like the schedule will be once a fortnight in this new season, I’m looking forward to some quality programming to come!! Good work lads, now just figure out how to Skype me in for the next recording session! ;)

For starters that title up above, that’s a rhetorical question, we all know I’m awesome and just to prove it I came across this video by mistake the other day… It has nothing to do with Canada, nothing to do with New York (where I am now), it’s just some awesome dude (named Raj) being an idiot. Enjoy.