Last night, I went to the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM, as it's known (pronounced like "bomb"), is and always has been one of my very favourite Toronto destinations.

Back when I was a student, admission on Friday nights was free. These days, to my grudging surprise, it's half-price. I suppose it's because they have to pay for their fancy-pants new crystal addition:

"The ROM at Night: a thing of brave beauty?" by Flickr user livinginacity

Which, I have to admit, looks amazing, despite causing a hike in Friday night's prices.

I was feeling bored and restless last night and in need of a change of scene. I didn't feel like sitting home by myself trying to work and getting distracted by the internet. Thankfully, the ROM is only about a 15 minutes' walk away. And even though I didn't really have the $10 admission fee, I went anyway.

The dinosaurs weren't available last time I was there, because they were being put into their new home in the crystal. Now they've finished assembling all their bones, so I spent the good part of my evening wandering around marveling at things like chasmosaurus:

"Chasmosaurus" by Flickr user PhylG

Which looks much more impressive in person, I assure you.

And glyptodon, which is my new favourite extinct animal:

(Image courtesy Wikipedia.

He's a mammal. He's in the armadillo family. He's much larger than he looks in this photo. Glyptodon's Wikipedia page has this to say about him: "Flatter than a Volkswagen Beetle, but about the same general size and weight, the Glyptodon is believed to have been an herbivore...."

I want one. If I had one, I would keep him in the garage and call him George.

And, there was my now second-favourite extinct animal, the giant ground sloth:

(Image courtesy Wikipedia)

He's also much larger than he looks in this photo.

I left much cheered up. Seriously, how could you not when things like this used to roam the earth? I like God for being this creative.

The tall, dark-haired man who rushes toward the subway train doors and lifts his hand like Superman to try to part them, too late, as the door chimes ring and they close. He turns and stares at me for a long moment, then turning his back to the train, delivers a swift and powerful kick to it with the bottom of his foot that sends a sharp loud shock through the station. He then stalks off again up the exit stairs, leaving behind several surprised and shaken people.

One of the highlights of living where I do is the proximity of a Korean supermarket. I shop there fairly often, both for Korean staples and other basics.

The aisles are crowded with Korean people, mixed with the odd Caucasian, and chatter goes on all around in Korean, briefly breaking to English when they have to interact with the white person. The shelves are stocked with all sorts of intriguing delicacies, and it takes all my willpower not to add twice as much as I came for to my shopping cart. I make mental notes of some of the more interesting items and plan to find out what they're used for.

Today I go to buy ingredients for pa jon, Korean pancake. I've read that Koreans usually buy a premade mix of flour and other ingredients to use as the basis, so I slowly scan the aisle where I think it most likely to be. There are bread crumbs, of every variety. Flour. Sugar. English pancake mix. But I don't see the Korean kind.

I wander down the next aisle, till I find a man who works there, marked out by the white cotton gloves he's wearing to protect his hands. "Excuse me," I say. "I want to make pa jon. Where do I find the mix?"

He leads me off confidently, and my hopes go up, until he stops and points at a shelf of pre-made pa jon at the front of the store. "No, no," I say, "I want to make it at home."

"Ah!" he says, finally understanding. He leads me off in another direction. "First, you need vegetables," he says, and I show him my shopping basket full of vegetables, to forestall a trip to the produce section. "Then, you need egg," and we stop to grab a carton. He also puts some imitation crab in my basket, which I later discretely return. Finally, he leads me to the same aisle where I futilely hunted for the pancake mix, and pulls a small package off the shelf, marked with a photo of pa jon. "Kam-samnida," I say, bowing slightly, and with all the needed ingredients, head triumphantly for the checkout.

The girl who's ahead of me in line squeezes behind me to rejoin her shopping, plunking another item on the pile and loosing a stream of rapid Korean in my ear. I turn, surprised, and she laughs and says, "Sorry," in English. There's some debate about something, and the cashier calls out "Un-ni!" An older woman, maybe one of the owners, rushes over and resolves the problem. When it's finally my turn, I proffer my credit card, and the cashier, as they always do, shouts out "Card-" followed by a string of Korean syllables to indicate to the others that a card transaction is going through.

On my way home, I pass a little Korean cafe where my friend Angela and I once ate years ago. Unknown to me at the time, it's nearly across the street from where I live now. I smile at the thought, and go home to put my spoils in the fridge.

Overheard in Toronto:

Guy, walking down street, to his girlfriend: "...this is America we live in!"

(To do him credit, this is the only part of the conversation I overheard. For all I know, he might have been quoting somebody.)

Yesterday my housemate and I walked to Sunday evening meeting. Yes, it's three miles from our house, but we felt like some exercise. Sometimes I get tired of the TTC, and driving in the city is an exercise in aggravation.

As we came to a particular intersection, we heard a man shouting. Clusters of people were gathered round the street corners staring. We pinpointed the source of the noise, a basement door entrance set below the sidewalk, guarded by a metal fence. A disheveled man was screaming over and over, "Aah! Aah! Aah! Call the police! Call 911!"

My friend Lynette and I went out the other night for a drink. We were happily strolling along a downtown street, catching up on the news from the two years since we've seen each other, when we came across a very busy scene.

Heavy cables were strung across the sidewalk and big lights were set up at strategic points. A firetruck was parked by the curb with its lights flashing, and the sidewalk was blocked. We had to navigate around the firetruck and cross the street to continue on our way.

As we did so, we gasped in astonishment. Parked on the other side of the firetruck, on the corner of a major intersection, was the blackened hulk of a burned-out bus. The body and even the frame had been blown apart and the windows were gone. Most of the bus was open to the sky. It looked as if it had been bombed. "Road closed" signs and barriers blocked the street and a policeman was directing traffic.

It's the night of my move to Canada. I'm back in my city. I'm driving to my new house, someplace I've never seen or visited, much too late, in the dark and the rain with a car loaded full of my stuff. Somewhere out there is a house with three roommates who've promised to help me move it all in.

I'm numbly tired; up at 4 am, traveling for 13-plus hours, worn from the stress of the border crossing. The intersections slide past: Jarvis. Church. Yonge. Bay. Avenue. Spadina.