A new millenium

Tonight Melissa and I celebrated the turn of the millenium.

What's this you say? You think I've suddenly come down with amnesia and forgotten the passing of 7+ years? Well, you'd have a lot of people to convince if, like us, you visited Christie Pitts Park this evening where great crowds of Ethiopians gathered to usher in the year 2000. You see, Ethiopians traditionally use a calendar based on the old Coptic Calendar. Somewhere along the line (around 500AD), some historian decided that the date had been calculated wrong and they added almost 8 years to the European (Julian) Calendar, while the Ethiopians continued merrily along with old calendar. OK, Something like that - I haven't really researched this in a lot of depth. Anyway, they had a nice live concert, except that it was very much too loud, so we walked around and looked at some craft booths and then decided to set out on foot for home (as opposed to subway which is how we arrived). Tried to take pictures but it was already too dark.

Having been a very visible minority amongst Ethiopians at the park, we noticed ourselves again to be a very visible minority as we passed through little Korea on the way home. It is pretty fascinating to live in this city and sometimes be reminded what it is like to be the odd one out.

Bloor St. between Bathurst and Spadina is a very interesting neighbourhood. Lots of trendy shops and cafes with people swarming about. We stopped at a book store and bought Spanish for Dummies. On our trip to Colombia I really found I loved the Spanish language even if I was too meek to try out even a few rudimentary phrases. Now we figure we'll try to learn a bit more in case we ever return to that part of the world. I'm not sure how or if it will go: neither of us are that great at learning languages (well, Melissa has a pretty good chance I think).

At this point we came across this guy:


Do you believe his claim that there are "no tricks"? We watched him assemble one of these delicate rock piles. If there is a trick, I don't know what it is. There are naturally occurring famous examples of rocks that ended up precariously balanced on other rocks. I don't see why this guy can't design these rock piles with a little bit of patience. Anyway, neat stuff.

Oh, the things you will see when you walk the streets of the city on beautiful late summer evenings.