Moving to Vancouver Day 1

Jail hostel: $76

Gas: $20

Goodbye Montreal

Been a while since I’ve written anything, but being on the road pretty much brings me right back into in every time. My journey started at 4:30PM Tuesday July 20th 2010 when my agent told me “You shouldn’t be here to wait for the buyer” and proceeded to convince me with the most profound reasoning. I agreed and left the premises of my condo immediately without waiting to hand over my keys to the new owners. Sure enough, my agent called me while I was in traffic, asking where the microwave is. The conversation is something like this:

“Microwave? That wasn’t part of the deal. The only appliances included are stove, oven, dish washer, washer dryer so I gave it away. In any case, they inspected the place 2 days ago and didn’t raise any question about the Microwave.” This is exactly why, my agent suggested that I leave with tail in between my butt cheeks. The closing of the sale deserves its own post and is a well of knowledge that I wish I knew before but alas, if every first time home buyer/seller knew them, the industry would go bankrupt.

I considered visiting all my friends a final time to say good bye, but decided against that option because closing the deal took longer than usual. On top of that, I believe I’ve said my proper good byes throughout the past two months already. Why destroy it with a hasty 10 minute visit? So off I went, knowing that I will see them again, just not as often as I’d liked. With Facebook around nowadays, the regret is not as profound as the heart wrenching goodbyes said when I immigrated to Canada. Back then, that was like a death sentence to relationships.

First night Ottawa

With little day light left, I only have time to drive the 2.5 hour drive to Ottawa and stay in the famous haunted jail hostel. Let me tell you something, the hostel and backpacker scene in Canada, is pretty much a rip off nowadays. Actually, you can probably say this for any established hostel that shows up in lonely planet or any established guide book in 1st world countries. For $70 dollars, I get a small jail the size of my old queen sized bed with no air conditioning, one parking spot and no wall plug for electricity. They don’t even allow my cat inside so I had to constantly check back on Lethe in the car throughout the night.

This is what my jail looked like:

This is what I woke up to:

The one thing I did enjoy was walking around the Ottawa university campus and reliving all the memories I had. As I walk past each piece of familiar landmark, a random insignificant memory gets triggered and tears welled up inside. These memories will be forgotten because I will probably never come back again.

There’s that monument where we met for our first date during the frosh year when I still couldn’t tell east from west in the city. A bit further, we have the Thompson residence where I spent most of my time while I was in school. Buried within the maze of interior corridors is the international house and the big space in front where we practiced dancesport every night. I thought I’d shed some tears here, but I didn’t. It was not as emotional as I’d thought.

I retraced our usual route back to the bus stop, where you’d snuggle underneath my long trench coat while we wait for the bus, to steal my warmth on a cold winter night. It was pretty convenient arrangement I am exothermic and you are endothermic.

The journey ended with the SITE engineering building. “It still smells the same.” was my first thought… “Poor engineering students” the second. As expected, the engineering building is the only building where students are still lingering about cramming and pulling all-nighters. All other buildings are empty in a hot summer night in the middle of summer. I was reminded of the time I did in this prison like existence.

Oh nostalgia. Why do you taunt me with lives I can never relive?