#2 Walking from the Montreal airport (is not a great idea)

Transcript

Hello, welcome to episode two of my travel podcast. So there's a bunch of stuff that I thought about doing podcasts about, about how I was packing for this trip and just the state of how flights and airbie and bees and stuff has changed since last time I traveled, which was before COVID. But I didn't want to do those, I mean I'll get to them all eventually, but I just didn't want to do that stuff while I was still in my hometown because it's just too boring, you know? I mean technically it doesn't matter what street I'm walking down or where it is, but it does matter. I mean this is just, now I'm in Montreal and it just feels way more exciting to me.

You know, it's like, fuck yeah, we're going. The trips are moving again. Doing the intro episode in my hometown, that was alright, but I couldn't do more than that. The whole, I mean I really don't know what the point of this podcast is gonna be because it's just gonna be me talking about walking around different cities and stuff, but I'm just hoping I guess that if it feels kind of interesting to me, it'll be interesting to someone else. And this is sweet because I have not been to Montreal in like four or five years and it is an awesome city. However, I made the probably ill-advised choice to walk to my Airbnb from the airport. And I'm finally basically on the route there. I'm on this street called Victoria Street that is just long as fuck. I should just be able to walk down this street for like two hours and basically get where I'm going. But the sun is almost down. If I didn't know Montreal, this would be a super terrible choice. But basically, my Airbnb is by Agrenon Park between Agrenon and Monk, the two like last stations on the Metro. And I've stayed near both of those stations before and now I'm right in the middle. So I know that neighborhood pretty well. And I've gone a little further. If you go past Agrenon Park, you can kind of go to the edge of how Montreal is in Ireland. You can go to the edge of the island and walk along it. And there's this cool little outcropping where people just stand there and fish.

But that's as far as I've gone. There's a guy standing at a bus stop who I just walked past who had a child seat like for your car. You strap a kid into, but he didn't have any kid with him. It's mysterious. I can't figure out the logistics of that. You wouldn't need to put your kid in a child seat while he's on the bus presumably. I guess he's taking his child seat to see if he has a car why's he waiting for the bus as weird anyway. I was always a bit curious like I wonder what's beyond here because I've explored Montreal pretty extensively but generally on the metro line. Once you get to the end of the metro line you know in any city that's just sort of no man's land. It's not sure reminds me quite a bit of sort of suburban Toronto when you get way far east in Toronto. You take the train like all the way to the north. You take the subway all the way to the north and go east from there. Anyway I just thought I'd talk about my adventures so far but man this one thing this fucking bookbag holy fuck it's heavy. I mean I think it's kind of cool that I still you know I used to always just have everything I own fit in this one bookbag and over the past four years of being in my hometown being locked down. I tried not to gain any extra stuff and I did a pretty good job. I didn't have to leave too much stuff behind but yeah I'll definitely have to do an episode about packing. Man I forgot how tough it is like when you have these hard limits of like there's literally not any more room. Even just really basic stuff that I kind of wanted to bring like a parallel long underwear. It's like well I just don't have room where am I gonna put it. And then I remember some of my weird tricks were coming back to me of one of the biggest items in my bookbag that was just kind of a waste because I usually didn't need it was a second pair of jeans because I only need the second pair of jeans when I'm doing laundry when I'm cleaning the first pair of jeans. Other than that it's just taken up space and I tried briefly to travel with just one pair of pants. The first time I went to Amsterdam I believe that was 2017. That was a bit of an ill-fated trip I'll talk about 5:00 that sometime but I only had the one pair of jeans and I was like let's see if I can make this work. I'm not quite sure how but let's see. And then I was having some trouble getting into this Airbnb that I had booked and there was like a a manhole cover that was elevated a little bit and I sat on that as I was trying to figure out what was going on. I never have data plans on my my smartphone so it makes everything a lot harder than it needs to be. But for some reason I mean I guess somebody just took a piss like right on that elevated manhole cover. I don't know why but it was a bit damp which I hadn't realized when I sat down so I was like oh that's annoying my pants are wet and then I realized that I smelled like pee. And I was like for fuck's sake man what the fuck. So I went to a Starbucks bathroom because it's pretty hard to find public washrooms in Amsterdam. Starbucks is one of the few places you can kind of guarantee as long as you have the door code you know you always have to get the door code off your your receipt. But I went in there and I cleaned my pants just enough to at least not smell like pee. But I pretty much had to immediately go by another pair of jeans and man that was a disaster because I don't know maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing to buy slightly more expensive jeans just so they would last a bit longer. But right now I'm wearing like $15 pairs of discount jeans like I do with those. And if they tear or something no big deal just buy more.

Hmm tons of detour signs but I assume that doesn't mean me right since I'm on foot. Yeah surely I can get through here. So in Amsterdam I could never figure out where to go to buy cheap stuff. I even remember I had to buy a pair of socks once and I just ended up going to Uniqlo and spending way too much money on. I don't know there's some people that swear there's like a Japanese guy I've been watching on YouTube who he only buys Uniqlo brand underwear and socks. So he was delighted to find out that Amsterdam had a Uniqlo. I just went there because I didn't know what else to do overspent for socks. And same thing with jeans I just ended up going to like a Levi's store that was right in like the buy central station tourism zone. And I got these like button fly jeans that were a pain in the butt because you know you got a button them all the way up every time. And they were 99 euros which like man what is that in Canadian dollars like a hundred and thirty bucks absolutely out of control. What a waste of money. But I guess they did last me for a while. Anyway that's when I learned that you just can't travel with one pair of jeans it's just not enough. So as I was staring down my full book bag and lamenting that I couldn't fit my long underwear in there which I don't think I'll really need because I heard Tokyo gets to like in the winter like six degrees Celsius which is no problem for me. That's like warm by Canada standards. But I need the two pairs of pants that's like oh wait instead of long underwear. I could just wear both pairs of jeans at once and then I remembered like oh yeah that is what I was doing toward the end of traveling before just to keep space free in my book bag is on travel days. I stroll through the airport wearing two pairs of pants extremely strange behavior but you know how is anyone really gonna notice. No one's ever caught me yet. But anyway to catch us up to the present I was kind of dragging my feet a little bit on booking stuff and getting things rolling because momentum is just hard it's hard to break you know when I was traveling all the time and suddenly with COVID I had to stop. I was losing my mind at first it's like how this sucks so bad I can't believe I'm just stuck in my hometown. But you know momentum is just hard to change one way or the other so after four years of staying at home it's just kind of a little apprehensive about like you know once I once I set this all set this all up like I'm releasing myself to the winds you know there's no coming back I'm letting my apartment go I'm buying a one-way ticket. I'm just booking things with no end in sight. Roughly I mean I'll probably try to get back home by next Christmas. It's mid-October right now. So about a year from now I intend to be back in my hometown but even 10:00 that I mean it's just because my mom lives there. She's all by herself now that my poor dad passed away. I mean if it was up to me I would just never go back getting I just keep traveling. Uh-oh. Now it seems we have a for real for real the whole street is blocked off. Some brave person in a car thought they could make it through. There's turning around. Even on foot I don't know if I can maneuver past this. Oh sweet I can't get around it on foot. Being on foot so good man this is one of the the huge reasons why I was glad to leave my hometown and already it just feels so much better to be in a place like Montreal. It's like ironic that my hometown's not that big I think it's like 60,000 people if you count all the outskirts areas it's like a hundred thousand but it's not that big of a city but that makes the traffic problems like it's terrible for being a pedestrian because everybody uses cars all the time like if you need to go travel four blocks probably get in your car and it just makes it so there's major arteries major streets all through the city all around where you would be walking they're not separated at all and even on the calmer slower streets just because it's a pretty small place there's just a lot of traffic just the likelihood at any given intersection that you'll come upon a car it's very high and it just gets so tiresome day after day no matter where you go you just feel it you just feel that you as a pedestrian are not wanted there you know that city's not made for you where Montreal is amazingly awesomely made for pedestrians it just feels so good to walk around Montreal the traffic is really slow really calm all the really big horrible you know arteries of traffic they're all somewhere else they're all like mega highways over on the edge of town or something they don't like cut through the middle of the city and even just traffic wise I don't really know a ton about traffic laws because I've never driven I never got a license but there's no turning right on a red light here so you can just cross as the pedestrian without without you know jockeying for space with some car because I don't know I feel like people in cars especially in my hometown I think they just don't have a lot of empathy for what it's like to be a pedestrian because they just never do it they don't realize the yeah okay sure you're stopping for me you're being polite but it's so uncomfortable to walk in front of an idling car it's just a bad feeling and especially in Canada where it's fucking freezing cold half of the time it's much nicer to kind of walk slow at a casual pace just to be careful you don't step on some black ice and slip and break your fucking knee when there's a car in front of you blasting its headlights and just vaguely you just feel that tension of like I should just hurry on past to get past this car it's just not a pleasant feeling and to feel that all fucking day every day I just hate it you know Frederick the New Brunswick is a shit fucking place to be a pedestrian Montreal awesome feels good but anyway how'd I get on that so what so yeah I was dragging my heels about getting plane tickets and stuff set up and again I'll get into that more in a future episode about specifically what all my travel plans are and what I ended up doing but I noticed that we only have a couple of major airlines in Canada and the one of them that was slightly cheaper it's still expensive to get to Tokyo no matter what you do but the one that was a bit cheaper doesn't fly in the winter I found out which makes sense but pretty much the last semi-good deal to get to Japan was like end of October so I was like okay fuck I'm not gonna wait till the spring not gonna stay here for another winter just get things rolling so I got that ticket and then it works backwards from there so I'm only here in Montreal for 12 days my plan was to spend a lot more time in Canada before I left but again I'll get into it more later but Airbnb prices in Canada are really bad COVID really messed up my old message where I could usually find somewhere relatively cheap to just stay like a whole month in a 15:00 city and that's just not the case anymore to stay a whole month in Montreal it's very expensive and to stay a whole month in Vancouver was mind-numbingly horrifyingly expensive so I was like oh nuts to that like if I'm gonna spend a bunch of money I don't need to do it in these Canadian cities that I'm already well aware of I might as well just try to get straight to Japan, you know. If we're gonna spend money on an adventure, let's make it a real one. And the prices in Japan don't seem that bad. Getting there is brutal, but once you get there, not that terrible. And I keep seeing little parks and stuff. They feel familiar, but I'm quite sure I've never been over here. I think maybe it's just that all the outskirts feel similar. I think what I'm thinking of is like... Velti, which is also the end of the subway line, but up north. Yeah, this neighborhood. It's feeling familiar, even though I'm quite sure I've never been here.

So yeah, I got this flight to Montreal, and I should be thankful, I guess, just that Fredericton has an airport at all, but there's very few options. Like I said, we don't have that many airlines in Canada. And there's really just no budget options. Like I feel so jealous when I see, you know, Ryanair and stuff, these people in Europe that could fly to London to Amsterdam for like 18 pounds and these crazy fucking deals. And even one of my flights in Japan is from Tokyo to Fukuoka, and it's only $55. I was like, man, that's awesome. Because this flight, very short, 55 minute flight from Fredericton to Montreal. And I got it for about $300, not the worst.

On certain magical days, it was less, but on some days it was much, much more. And I was like, I'll just take it. 300's fine. That'll do. But I'm sure I used to have, I don't know, weird stuff where like I would fly to Halifax and transfer in Halifax and double back to Montreal for cheaper, but nothing like that exists currently.

I'm passing a major street, so this could be a good landmark to figure out how far I am.

Toronto is the M Avenue, 32nd Avenue. Oh man, yeah, like I'm passing a library. That looks so freaking familiar, but yeah, I guess no, never. I look at it more. I've never been here. This looks awesome though. It's like a two story library, tons of seating.

All these windows, this looks pretty beautiful. I think this is a little too far away for me to really come to. But I could see hanging out here. That was one thing I loved is the library right by Central Station in Amsterdam. I hang out there all the time because they had a bathroom for one thing. I know it's made seem weird to have often I'm bringing up bathrooms, but if you've ever been to the Netherlands, you know what I'm talking about. It's fucking really hard to find bathrooms. Public washrooms.

It was just nice there. Like I was saying, that first trip I took the Amsterdam, I didn't stay that long. I had a little culture shock, so I just hang out in the library. French back too, by the way, one of the things that they always drilled into my head in French school as a kid. The French word for library is not Liebererie. Liebererie is a bookstore. A library is a bibliotech. Alright, where am I? Let's see.

32nd Avenue. Oh, I'm not on Victoria Street anymore. How did that happen? I guess it doesn't matter though. What the fuck am I? The Ruse Saint Antoine. Let's all go into the same place.

And I'm trying to get to, I believe, Dolaude Avenue. What time is it? My fucking smartphone is saying it's 8 o'clock, but I think the time changed. I think it's actually 7 o'clock here. I think that's my old local time. So that's not too bad. It's not super late. It's just getting dark this time of year.

But that's not, man, a lot of, I guess there's going to be a lot of tangents in this podcast, but that's fine. I'm talking about nothing anyway, right? So who cares if I get off topic? Barely is a topic. It's one thing I didn't realize so much when I was younger. Is there's a huge benefit to just being a guy. You can just walk around at night without even thinking twice. I mean, I'm just yammering a podcast to myself. If I wasn't doing this, I'd have headphones in listening to like a podcast. I'd be oblivious to my surroundings. And it just doesn't matter. You're just very safe as a guy. And I never really realized that until in Vancouver, I was dating this girl in like 2004, 2005. 20:00 We were at the Sky Train station by Metro City.

And I don't know where we were going or why we were cutting a ret, like trying to get to Patterson station or something. And I was like, hey, let's just cut through here. Let's just cut through this fucking dark park. And she said, like, could we, could we not do that? You know, I've got to prefer not to walk through the dark park. And Canada is not an especially dangerous place in general, but there are things that happen in that very area.

It was like a teenage girl who got murdered in the park right by there in the middle of the afternoon. So at night, it's especially potentially daisy, but I just never thought about it. I was like, oh yeah, you're at a good point, you know. If something did happen, Lord knows I can't protect you. I'm a skinny, weak nerd. So yeah, let's stick to the major street with the street lights and not. Because that's the other thing I learned mainly in New York, I guess I learned this. I mean, obviously by the time I was in New York in 2008, it was nothing like old school 70s New York. But by my standards, it was still pretty crazy. But the lesson I learned about New York is as long as there's people around, you're fine. As long as there's a crowd around, you could be two in the morning and who cares? It's only when you're alone. When you're somewhere where no one is around. But that's when things get dangerous. And I've been watching, like even if you watch on YouTube, like people who live out of their cars and stuff, my inclination would be like, I guess if you're sleeping in your car, maybe you'd want to go find a somewhere dark, right? Somewhere out of the way. But it turns out it's the exact opposite. I feel like Walmart parking lots and stuff where there's a bunch of other people around. Because if you're parked by yourself, especially if you're in some kind of creepy van with all the windows blacked out or with curtains up, and people don't know who you are, you're just asking for bad attention. So yeah, I can walk around, dark ass Montreal, all the live long day and night. And I'll be fine. And that is not something I take for granted anymore.

Yeah, definitely how I was saying before, how these neighborhood, that neighborhood was reminding me of Toronto. Not anymore. Now I very much feel. The Montreal feeling, all these buildings. These apartment buildings, they're all like two stories. They all have little balconies, little metal railings.

I haven't seen any spiral staircases yet. That'll be when I get more into the downtown area.

Oh, I spoke too soon. The back of this apartment building has spiral staircases, literally, literally seconds after I said that. There's just these certain very distinct design elements of Montreal. I've always been curious to go to Quebec City, and see how much Quebec City is like Montreal. Because Montreal is cool because it really does have a bit of a European flavor. Probably by European standards, it doesn't, but by North American standards, it very much does. It feels way more European than anywhere else I've been in North America. And yeah, for whatever reason, spiral staircases out to doors are very popular. And it's just a little scooter. They just want to buy, man, that thing's fucking loud.

Now what the fuck is this? Oh, bingo! Just a big-ass building with huge windows, tons of tables, and yeah, bingo! 68 is the current number. Man, my mom used to work bingo all the time at her church. And back in those days in the 80s, you could still smoke. She would come home every night smelling so much of smoke. It's crazy. I noticed no smoking in that bingo hall, but if this were 30 years ago, you can bet every fucking one of those bitties that be smoking up a storm. So where the fuck was I? So, oh yeah, so I was kind of forced into getting things rolling because WestJet is the cheaper of the two airlines. Our Canada and WestJet and WestJet did not go to Japan in the winter, so it's good that it kind of pushed me, forced my hand. So I got that rolling and I've got a bunch of stuff all lined up all the way through January. It should be able to stay in Japan till the end of January. But I'll get into all that stuff. But as the time approached, once everything was set, and I guess also not only is it just the inertia of like it's hard to leave because after four years in my hometown, it did just, you know, I was just kind of set up. Internet power was in my name, had a fucking apartment to stay at. 25:00 Pretty much I got a cousin who lives there and I go visit my mom every week. Again, just, I wouldn't have felt as bad about leaving if my poor, poor old pile was still around.

But with him gone, I felt like it was my suddenly duty to make sure my mom was doing okay. But I mean, that's been a couple of years. Realistically, I don't think she needs me that bad. But also, I guess there's the economic factor of everything just is expensive. Even if I really try to keep things cheap, try to get cheap flights and try to get cheap Airbnb's. First off, everything is just more expensive since COVID. And it's just not cheap, you know? It's just all this stuff is expensive as fuck.

But I could kind of, you know, I did have to kind of remind myself that there are extra costs. It's not like it's free to just live somewhere consistent. My rent was actually pretty good. But it just some, some apartment, you know, is whatever. It's actually like a cat apartment. The cat's only apartment and I just stayed in my little room. But the power was in my name. The internet was in my name. And I just paid for it, you know? It's just like, my roommates are nice people. But I hate being the guy who's got to harass people for money. It's like, just, I'll just pay it. Who cares? So the power bill was like 100 to 150 bucks every month. The internet bill was crazy. It's one of those deals where it started off, you know, initial price wasn't that bad. Then it became like 150 bucks a month for internet. But I mean, I guess I didn't need the internet. But you know, it had TV and a phone and I was crap. I didn't use. That was a horrifying cost. So when you take all that out, it's like Airbnb's aren't cheap necessarily.

But they always have internet provided. And even if the internet doesn't work, it's kind of a nice vacation from having the internet. I don't mind it. There's Wi-Fi everywhere in the world. It's very easy to maneuver around that situation. You don't have to pay utilities. I'm not some amazing cook where I was like buying a bunch of ingredients and making food at home all the time. So I mean, I guess when you added all in like that, traveling is not that bad. Life costs money no matter what. So even though this is more expensive, it's infinitely more interesting. And it makes me infinitely happier about my life. So fuck it. I kind of realized this especially when I first moved to New York because New York was horrifyingly expensive. And I realized like for the price it cost me to live in New York, I could have gone to a different country every month, including the flight. You know, I didn't. It still took me many years to really kind of start traveling more. But that got that idea in my head of like New York was exciting at first, but I shouldn't have tried to live there. A visit was fine. It was because the visits were so fun that I was like, I should move there. And then by a year and a half later, I was like, please get me the fuck out of here for fuck's sake. I'm dying.

So once I did finally get the ball rolling and all this stuff. And you know, it feels bad when you're setting stuff up and you're spending the horrible amounts of money. But once it's spent, you know, and I got my flight to Montreal and I got a flight to Japan and I got the Airbnb's lined up. And then you sit on that situation for a few weeks and you kind of forget how it felt to spend the money. The money's already gone. And that's when I started feeling very excited, you know. I just wake up in the morning and just be like, it's almost time. Oh man, it's almost time. This week in specific. Man, it's a Thursday as I record this. And I was like, fuck, why didn't I set up the flight for a Tuesday? Ah, these extra couple of days are just hanging around waiting. I'm just, I'm going nuts here. Especially with this tiny little quick flight. Just go to the airport, 55 minute flight. Walk down a different street. And I'm in Montreal. It's so easy. I'm dying. Wow, this is a, let's see if I can figure out what this park is called. I'm walking by an extremely beautiful park. What the hell is this called?

Ah, here it is. Man, Google maps is fucking sweet. I'll get into that a bit too. Park La Salle. And in fact, if I walk through Park La Salle, it'll get me back on Victoria Street. So let's do that. It's a perfect opportunity to walk through this beautiful fucking park. And maybe I'll put down this book bag for a few minutes and rest my poor shoulders. And that's one thing. I just sort of forgot how heavy these fucking book bags are. I should have started training.

I should have filled this book bag up and just started hiking around with it like three weeks ago. 30:00 Build up some shoulder muscles again.

This sucks.

But I'm actually doing okay. I think even just because I'm doing this podcast, it's helping. It's keeping my mind off of the weight of this book bag. But man, this is a perfect example of what I was just talking about. There's not a soul in this park. It is pretty well lit, but still. I can just cut through this park without giving it a fuck. It's very nice. Oh, that feels good to get that fucking book bag off. Holy shit.

So yeah, the day finally came. Did all my final stuff, my final load of laundry. Take my final shower in that apartment. As I'm leaving, locked the door for the final time. But yeah, by this point, I really just... Just my normal Airbnb life I was doing before COVID. I just slipped right back into that with no problem. It just felt that same way. It just felt like I was leaving an Airbnb and heading on to the next one. I had just been in that particular Airbnb for like three fucking years.

There's a little sign being back in a relatively major city. This is really never alone. I was saying when I came into this park it seemed empty, but I just took a little quick break to go into these really dark woods. These dark trees, I'm just going to go pee real quick. And as soon as I unzip, first I'm wearing two pairs of pants, that's awkward, but it's like, oh there's somebody over there. And then I turn back around and like, oh there's some people walking dogs with flashlights.

And as now here's a guy with a bicycle going by. And there's more people, I'm just going to put this book bag on and keep walking, this place is full of people. And yeah, I remember I ran into this issue a lot in Vancouver because I was trying to record an audiobook. I wrote a whole book about the video game The Last of Us. It's called Surviving the Super Apocalypse by Keith McNally, if you're curious. But I've been putting it out as an audiobook and rather than going to a sound booth at a library, I just don't, it didn't feel comfortable. It's actually pretty tough to record an audiobook. I didn't realize how much different it is than just talking.

And I just needed to be by myself to not be self-conscious. And it was so impossible anywhere in the greater Vancouver area to not have people around, just literally impossible, till I finally found a place where I had to go off a trail, like down this weird trail, the new penzance trail, I think it was called in Bernabé, I believe. And you got to go past the sign that says do not cross past here and then go past an active train line and then walk down a deserted beach toward, like it's kind of blocked off because on the other side is some kind of fishery or something. And even down there, a couple of times there were other people, but generally there was no one there. So I recorded my audiobook on the beach with the beach sounds around and it kind of turned out okay, but it was so hard to not have people around. There's somebody with like the little walking sticks, there's people everywhere. I guess this is bringing back another memory that doesn't feel this way in a small city, but in a big city, it feels like Grand Theft Auto, like in the older Grand Theft Auto's in San Andreas and even to some extent, GTA 4, you could really tell that, you know, it wasn't just a city happening around you, everyone was just being generated and spawning around the player, you know. Things were only happening because you were there and you could tell, you know, as you went from one neighborhood to another, different types of cars would start spawning in, and different types of gangs would come in. And that's how it feels, I don't know, maybe I'm a sociopath, that's how I feel in real life. I feel like it's because I stopped. It's like I stopped and then the game started to like, okay, he's not leaving the park, spawning some people. I swear to God, there was not a fucking person in this place and now they're everywhere. They're just all over the place. It's like I can see why kind of like people who's grip on reality is maybe a little more tenuous how you can feel that way. Like you're in the matrix, you know, like none of this is real. Like you're the center of the Truman show and everything else is just happening around you because it really does feel that way.

Anyway, left the apartment, hiked across town, got my like, oh no, the book bag. I had already at this point kind of had my plan to maybe walk from the airport, but the airport walk is triple this walk I was just doing to my mom's, that was across town. And it's like, oh jeez, I'm dying right now. Might be a bad idea, but as we can tell right now, I decided to do it anyway.

Oh man, no more stuff, just city stuff. It's like dark, it's nighttime. 35:00 There's guys playing fucking ping pong.

So test of my recorder, can you hear that? Can you hear the fucking ping pong? Bad cities are so good. Man, cities are the best. I used to be like, I kind of believed the hype where people in my town, you know, city and name only. It's really like a big town. They were like, ah, you shouldn't live in big cities. It's too dangerous. Meanwhile, my grandmother who was extremely old, she lived to be 101 years old. She lived here in Montreal, and I never really put that together when I was younger, that like, how is this dangerous for me? How could this ever be dangerous for me when my, at that point, like 75-year-old grandmother lives right in the middle of Montreal, and it's fucking fine. And then when I finally did, start going to other places, I do remember, I mean, Montreal was one of the first cities I kind of went to by, not by myself, but with a friend who came here to watch wrestling in like 2003, and compared to my MTS hometown, which my hometown feels like like a movie set when it's not being used. Like you're on the Hollywood back lot after hours. You know, an occasional person is wandering around, but it's basically just fucking empty, which was excellent for COVID, I might add. But the first time I came here to Montreal, I found it a little stressful because relatively speaking, you know, it was busy. But nowadays, this place is like very calm, compared to New York, compared to Tokyo, no problem, even compared to Toronto.

And you just get fun stuff like that, you just get guys playing fucking ping-pong. I mean, that's just so cool. I mean, just to exaggerate maybe a little, but I can't think of in the last four years that I was just moseying around my hometown. I can't think of a single piece of evidence I ever saw that anyone was having fun at any time. Now I've been in Montreal for like three hours, and there's guys playing ping-pong in the park. It's fucking sweet. If you're from like a small place, I know it's hard, it's hard to move, stressful, it's difficult, but you really gotta try it. It's way worth it. And I mean, I don't know about your specific hometown, but mine is not that cheap.

It's not like rent is like really affordable. You can spend a crap ton in a big city if you want to, but there's also way more options. If you look around, you can find ways for it to not be that bad. It's very much worth it. Okay, where am I? My sense of direction is very, very poor, so I think I'm on the right path, but I should double check.

Yes, I've done it. I'm on Victoria Street. Awesome. Yeah, this is the only trouble to this is if I do, hopefully I shouldn't have any trouble getting into my Airbnb, but if I do happen to have any problems, it's getting a bit late. This would be easier to handle to sort out earlier in the day, because at this rate, it's gonna be another hour, at least, before I get there.

Ooh, a pizza place. Ooh, Val. Do they have any gross pizza slices this time of night? No, they do not. Probably better that I didn't get one anyway. That's a little candidate, that's a little candidate tidbit for you. If you ever visit Canada, you'll see that most of our packaging, pretty much all of it, is bilingual. Everything is in French and English, which is sometimes very silly, because tortilla chips, in French, you just reverse it. You say chips tortilla, so in the bag, it just says chips tortilla chips, you know, like there's times when I guess legally they have to put it in both languages, but it just makes everything look very dumb sometimes. But in Quebec, all the signs are just in French. People think Quebec is bilingual, because Montreal in particular is quite a bilingual city, but by the letter of the law, it's just French around here. You only need to have your signs in French. In fact, the only bilingual province is New Brunswick, the one I'm from. It's the only thing New Brunswick has that makes it even remotely notable in any way. But that's another reason I like it here, because I did go to French school as a kid, and I never get to use it that much. So my vocabulary 40:00 has gone to heck, but I know all the grammar, well roughly, and my pronunciation is good. Used to trick my teachers, like, you know, the French teachers would always try to figure out who spoke French at home, and who was just a tourist. And I tricked a couple French teachers into thinking that I spoke French at home. I mean, my family is half French, like I said, the grandmother was from here. Aloquit. Gamon Sava. Even that though, let's get off another tangent. Man, hearing the, like, the announcements on the airplane and stuff, I feel like some of these French accents, they're almost like a joke. They're so strong. Like the way they talk, I guess it's the equivalent of, like, maybe normal people don't talk like this. It's the equivalent of, you know, just the airline voice, like they got a talk. Please put your seat back in the upright position, closed your table tray. The French version of that is like, no, it's not like that, no, it's not like the whole French. It's, how do I describe it? It's just like, it's just, it's way overdone. I don't know, whatever. I like it though, because people generally do also speak English here, because I think my French would be fine if I was just forced to use it, if I did go to Quebec City someday. But as it stands, I get stymied pretty fast, you know, I just run out of words, I just forget a word, and then I try to talk around the words that I don't remember, and eventually I can't remember enough words that I just can't progress anymore, and I have to speak in English. And I like this sort of how you can just mix it up around here.

Like I was at a Tim Orton's in the airport when I first landed, and you could just talk half in French, half in English, and it's all good. Or like I was at a pizza place, and I just remember like, like I could ask me if I wanted it for here or to go in French, and in English I could just answer out to go, please. And like we're both just like, yeah, that worked. Oh shit, what the fuck is this? Another dead end? What is happening? Where the fuck am I now? Okay, I think I see. Alright, this street does continue, it just takes a little tiny turn to the right for some reason. So I went to meet with my mom to get a ride to the airport, and unfortunately she was sick. She was coughing up a storm, and it just like instinctually took like the step back, and just like, ah, damn it. Frig. I do not want to get all sick. But what can I do? It's my mom. I got to say my goodbyes to my mom. The only reason I can do all this traveling and live this silly life is because her and my dad became real estate lawyers, put a bunch of money in the bank, and God blessed my mom since I, you know, she would have paid for me to go to school, but I didn't go. Instead, she was like, well, you know, you're going to get this inheritance money someday. But you're going to be an old-ass man before you get it. So why don't I just give you some now? While you're relatively young, you can go travel the world, have some fun. Like what's this money for anyway? It can't take it with me. So yes, super God bless my mom for this life that I leave. If I was going to get sick, then I was going to get sick. There's nothing I could do about it.