Otaku and Fanboy rejoice for the 14th annual Fan Expo Canada is in full swing at Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre. Running from August 22nd through 24th the convention is covers gaming, comics, anime, horror and science fiction. This year the expo showcases over 600 exhibitors over an area of 220,000 square feet.

More photos here.

I’m going to give you the ending to this story before I begin to tell it, not because it’s some clever film noir script, but because if my Mum reads the title she’ll freak out and worry that I’m lying in a ditch yet somehow able to write this post with my dying breaths. So, obviously the end is that I’m fine. I’m nursing a rather swollen right knee, feeling extremely stiff and sore the day after but I’m alive and walking and there’s no stitches.

Now for the story behind said injuries. The so called “Summer” here in Toronto seemed to last the first week I was here amidst the humid heat wave of mid 30’s, pffft, whatever… mid 30’s. Since that first week there’s been a mixture of rain that seems scheduled to start at 5pm each day and torrential downpour that just ruins the entire day. With that said I haven’t really had the opportunity to ride my lovely new bike to work; that is, until yesterday.

It was such a beautiful day, the sun was out, some light cloud cover of the fluffy white variety adorned the sky and a cool breeze flowed over me as I rode through the streets of downtown Toronto. So there I was, happily riding down King St heading towards work, a small bird had perched itself on my shoulder, the two of us whistling to the tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” when all of a sudden a car door begins to open about 10 metres in front of me.

Now I can’t blame this guy for causing what was about to ensue but it was the catalyst. The door opened gently as they’d obviously not checked for anyone coming, be it car or bike for that matter, and I did what any cyclist would do, check my left shoulder and swerve out to avoid smashing into the door. That was all well and good, no problems getting out of the way there but in swerving out of the way of the car door I’d managed to get my bike tires firmly lodged in the rather deep rut of Toronto’s street car (tram) tracks.

From realizing I had my tires caught in the track and picking myself up off the ground to a resounding yell of “f@#k” took about 3 seconds, most of which was spent sliding along the asphalt in a sort of baseball like position on my right knee and shin. Brushing myself off inspecting the scene I’d remarkably not scratched any part of the bike frame nor any of my body besides the now large hole in my jeans and a sort of cheese grated knee. I was pretty happy with my fall skills, who knew that those two months in Boy Scouts would actually pay off!

The worst part of it all, other than today’s throbbing pain and swelling, is that because I’d passed the car a while back and slid so far on the ground it looked like I’d fallen off for no reason what so ever to those viewing the spectacle. I just looked like a complete numpty that didn’t know how to ride a bike. Good thanks!

I’ve always been a fan of Quicktime VR (QTVR), you know those funny little images that allow you to rotate around and get a 360 degree view of wherever they were taken. There’s something about them that just fascinates me so when I bought a new Canon SLR Camera not long ago I had it in mind that I’d explore the style more and set about taking some wonderful panoramas while I’m away.

Little did I know to have the “professional” set up and tripod mounts to do it would cost a small fortune and seeing how I’d already sold one kidney to fly to PAX at the end of August it seemed like my dream was over. Fortunately for me I found this little baby called the “Panosaurus” which allowed me to have a fully functioning panoramic camera mount for under US$100.

Armed with my new SLR, the Panosaurus and a trial copy of PanoramaFactory I quickly threw together this quick QTVR of my new living room. It’s nothing special but a good trial run and a chance for me to have a play! Look out for more of these (of much more interesting topics) in time to come.

Lets for a moment forget the fact that I’ve started a new job that has me slowly taming the beast known to the technorati as “Drupal” into a well trained, obediant King Charles Spaniel and concentrate on the rather unbelievable fact that I haven’t had coffee in about a month!

Yes children of the Internets I know it’s a hard fact to comprehend that I Raj “let’s-have-a-coffee” Sanchez could have been turned away from such a wonderful socially accepted addiction. You must be asking yourself “Why? What has happened to my little friend Raj to turn him away from his only true friend, coffee?” Well that’s a fantastic question really, why don’t you pull up your favourite Japanese-restaurant-sitting-cushion and get all settled in while I explain in intricate detail the justification in my passing on the joe.

Coffee in Canada sucks. Explanation over.

OK, I’ll go into a little more detail. If I wanted brown water I’d go down to the street and scoop out a cup from the nearest mud pool I can find. Why and more importantly “how” people can drink percolated coffee is beyond me! Yes it costs about CAD$1.50 for a jumbo mug of the garbage but that’s no reason for the millions of Tim Hortons’ franchises that exist here in plague proportions putting the US’s Starbucks chain to shame. Dare you ask for a “latte” you might find that you’re given something that resembles frothed milk but 9 times out of 10 it came out of an automated machine the likes of which you’d find in a Shell service station midpoint Melbourne and Adelaide.

There is one place I’ve found that does a good coffee, even if the late does come in a glass cup the size of a small water tower, and that’s the hotel I stayed in last year whilst I was visiting, The Drake. I’ve had about three there now and they’re generally pretty on the money.

Now before everyone (well mostly Canadians) out there starts screaming and rushing me in a mob like fashion I open up the comments section of the post to all of you T.dotters to please, please, tell me where I can get a good coffee!

P.S. If you tell me to go to Starbucks, Second Cup or any other chain that serves crap I’ll hunt you down and pour said establishments scolding muck in your lap ;)

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

It’s taken three weeks, ten return bus rides between Toronto & Hamilton, twenty seven home visits, over 30 kilometres walked and one custom written web application to map Craigslist entries onto Google Maps but I have finally, FINALLY, found somewhere to live!

Canada unfortunately doesn’t have a great way of finding real estate options. There’s no realestate.com.au or Flate Mate Finder instead you have a whole heap of crappy websites relevant to a company that owns a couple of apartment buildings (sorry, “condos” as they say) or the basic listing style of Craigslist or Kijiji (some retarded Craigslist rip off that eBay recently bought).

From what I found, and what others told me Craigslist was by far the best in terms of number of listings so I went with that, trawling through page after page starting in the lower CAD$500 to begin with. Let’s just say that CAD$500/month isn’t exactly up to what I’d call “livable” conditions. I’m not being a snob here, I’m just saying that if I’m paying you for somewhere to live and you’re giving me a basement the size of a kitty litter box and I’m sharing the house with 6 other people I’d like to know what the other CAD$490 I’m giving you each month is actually for!

Quite obviously my search began to escalate on the fiscal scale and as each week passed and each day turned into another depressing venture I quickly broached my “live-in-Canada-and-not-work-much” limits entering “find-a-real-job-you-bitch”. Now looking at apartments over CAD$750/month I at least guaranteed I’d be living somewhere that had a laundry that didn’t require coins to operate and there’d be no more than 3 people in the house/apartment.

At the end of my tether and only a few days to go before the end of June (they only rent starting on the 1st or if you’re lucky the 15th of each month here) I pushed CAD$800 and looked at what are considered “upper class” condos in downtown Toronto. My last visit entailed trekking between four different options and quickly began liking what I saw, pools, gyms, party rooms on the rooftops of 30 story buildings, and nice new apartments with floors that your feet didn’t stick to as you walked through the kitchen. Unfortunately, the fact that I liked them meant that so did a million other people and I often found myself coming up against others in a war for the available space.

My charisma not being a particularly strong point, especially when I’m exhausted from walking in this freakish Canadian weather all day, was not going to help me. Luckily the 2nd to last place I looked at contained two delightful gents who seemed to be on the same wavelength as myself. One a graphic designer and computer science grad, the other a film grad, into their sport and a PS3 in the lounge. The clincher, once I was in, I offered to buy Metal Gear Solid 4 for all of us to play!

Thanks jebus that’s all over! Now it’s off to New York for a week of fun with Dansie, Jimmy & Aimes.

So while most of you are under the impression that I haven’t been doing anything other than drinking and sleeping here in Toronto last week I popped into the office’s of MGImedia to catch up with Amber Mac and CommandN co-host Will Pate filming a new episode. Unbeknown to me I was to be dragged in at the end to tell a rather embarrassing story of one of my first days here in Toronto when I went shopping… you’ll see.

Now I’m hardly the type of guy to complain (stop laughing) so rather than relay my lovely, fun-filled plane ride half way around the world I thought I’d point out a little discovery I’ve made here only one day into my Canadian journey. It’s hot; it’s mother frakin’ hot; so fraking hot that I’m a tad worried that I might have gotten off in the wrong country or something?!

To all those people that constantly took pleasure in reminding me just how cold it was going to be here in Canada I say “You were wrong bitches!”. Now I take no pleasure in pointing out this fact, nor am I enjoying the fact that today Toronto bear fruits to it’s hottest June day in recorded history! Thank you global warming! Maybe that Al Gore guy is on to something after all?! Hmmmm…

It wasn’t that bad really (33 degrees with 47% humidity), I wore jeans after all, but that may have had something to do with the fact that I only bought one pair of shorts with me and when I pulled them out they kinda needed a wash. That in mind I waded through the steaming heats and went downtown to the Eaton Centre to buy a new pair of shorts only to come back with new shorts, a belt, a new jumper, a prepaid phone (it was cheaper to buy a $70 phone that came with $50 free credit than a SIM separately for $40 and $50 credit) and a bag of Doritos! Ahhhh what a day.

Well that’s all so far folks, I’ll leave you with this photo showing off the view from my quite lovely hotel room…