O Canada

Is it ironic or just pure chance that on a day when most people are wallowing in patriotic fervour I've decided to blog about some good ol' Canada days?
Well, c'est la vie I guess. I decided to write this because I was chatting with Bidisha about some of the crazy times we've had in University and that set me thinking. I don't intend to make this post a very nostalgic, sappy one but if it does turn out to be one.. my apologies!

University: (Starring - Pooja, Juvi, Josh, Bidisha, Tara, 'The network')
- Cody Hall and the quad: life in windsor began here. Landed up in Cody Hall residence at 1 am, one week after classes had begun! 2nd Floor lounge, Juvi's room and the quad were the scenes of the collective crimes of Josh, Juvi and Pooja. We did pay for all the ruckus we created when the head Resident Assistant made us create 'silence in the halls' posters. What a terrible punishment :D. Cody was inhabited by a bunch of colourful characters, at least that's what it seemed like to me. I'm sure they also found the strange foreign student equally weird.
- CAW student centre: the place to stay awake the whole night just before midterms or exams. Most of the time was of course spent socializing with other (strangely enough mostly Indian) students, going over to 7 Eleven every two hours to fuel up, sleeping at odd angles on artfully arranged seats and at odd mad moments having food fights.
- Riverside: outside class and outside the CAW I was mostly to be found at the riverside rollerblading, biking, hanging out (literally) at the monkey bars. Met Bidisha here the first time the day after I landed. There was an awesome fireworks display every last wednesday of June to commemorate the Windsor-Detroit international freedom festival.
- Shwarma joints: open till 5 am, suited my insomniac ways perfectly. The amazing baklava was a big incentive too.
- Partington avenue: offcampus life began here. Met BD here the second time , she lived in the apartment below ours, and thus began our partington adventures with Tara as the third star. Partington was the scene of "sun, moon, water, land", backyard bbqs, 2003 Cricket World Cup matches (collectively bought by Indians & Pakistanis @ $35 per match), network dramas, watching pirated Hindi movies rented from the "Indian store' run by the Bangladeshi aunty.
- coffee counter at Marche: work started at 7 am. I can't believe I used to make it there early enough to grab a coffee and croissant before my shift started - having a monster for a manager might have had something to do with it though. I guess all the cookies and nescafe's newly introduced chai-tea I scarfed made up for the early start.
- the crocodile grill: on campus grill, open till 11pm and thus the food source for my unlearned Indian stomach that never got used to the idea of getting done with dinner by 7 pm. I survived on grilled cheese sandwiches from here for the first few months and when I could eat larger portions of meat - spicy chicken burgers washed down with lots of coke. Needless to say, after one year of Croc dinners, I never regained the thin frame I'd brought to Canada.
...
so that was about university life. Oh and there were classes too - the best part of those being that you could eat and drink in them, call the prof by name, sneak out of class, blatantly walk out of them sometimes, and that almost all midterms were multiple choice.

When it rains... it pours.

It has to be the mother of all traffic jams when it takes 2 and a half hours to cover the 7 km stretch from my house to office.

Sunflower

In our company there is a raggedy little dog which the security guards have kindly quasi-adopted. Nothing unusual in that, it seems to be a common occurence across the country, having a stray 'pet' dog and group ownership. The difference is that while most of these dogs have standard names like Tommy, Moti, Sheru, Tuffy (on the fancier side) our resident ragamuffin has been lovingly named Sunflower by the guards!
I don't about you, but that's just about the most unusual doggie name I've ever heard of, not to mention the most droll. The logic can't be questioned - Sunflower's (!) coat is a patchy yellow-orange and white which obviously reminded the enthusiastic guards of a sunflower. I don't know what variety has orange and white petals but in their defence, their intentions were noble!