I’m resigned that in the future, I have to live in the “‘burbs” and drive or (shudder) take transit to get to work. One day, I will have a live-in partner and we decide together where to live. Until then, I continue to be loathed to have more than a 10-minute walk to work, hah!

At first, I thought I’d get a Concord CityPlace apartment, perhaps even in LV’s building. But Lil Sis and I noticed the Pinnacle development and particularly their amenities. During a whirlwind tour of apartments available for rent, we saw older (2-5yo) units and new units (a few months old), the latter with an address the same street as my workplace.

Living so close to work in Vancouver was something of a coincidence. I did chose my apartment on the west side because I thought I might (and did) end up at the cancer research facility 490 meters away. But it was not for forever and I spent a year commuting to North Vancouver and did not know that I would really luck out and get an offsite UBC job located just 253 meters away from my doorstep. This time around in Toronto, I got the job first, then looked for a place to stay. Work is a whole 651 meters away and it works out I can say that I work and live on Bay Street.

Others: “Who wants to see their office from their apartment?! What if you have a bad day at work?”

Me: “If I have a bad day at work, or if I’m quite loathed to go in (because I’m tired or cranky), I’d rather just get home or get into work after an 8-minute walk instead of dragging it out!”

My little apartment hit all that I wanted (and I pay dearly for it): new one-bedroom, first tenant in, high-30s floor (of 52 floors in total), good view (mostly north and east facing), undermounted sinks, ensuite laundry, laminate floors, 24-hour concierge, the “Club” amenities that include a state-of-the-art gym, pool, hot tubs, saunas, tennis court, squash courts, outdoor running track , and basketball court.

But… aside from being right next to the Air Canada Centre (ACC) with an event or game very second night on average, it’s super-quiet and dead after business hours thanks to the nearby Financial District and all the businesses existing to serve it shutting down at 6 p.m. My daily commute takes me through the grubbiest of grubby Toronto, under some overpasses that is the Gardiner and Union Station train platforms, and through the god-awful messy headache that is Front Street so-called revitalization. A view of the CN Tower would be the cherry on top but I don’t have it and only see corroded train station roof, a maze of train tracks and industrial Port Lands. My building is so fancy and new there’s no visitor parking, event rates apply nearly every evening at the public lots, and it took two weeks at gouging rates to get to know some parking attendants and get down to $10/day parking at a public lot.

My favourite Canadian/Toronto series from 1999 was the short-lived show The City and I remember one line in particular said about city Councillor Katharine Strachan by her lover, played by chiseled James Gallanders, “She gets a nosebleed if she goes north of Rosedale.” Heh. Rosedale is darned close compared Richmond Hill and Scarborough where I have to go every now and then!

When I do have to leave the core and foot power will not take me there, being just 400 meters from Union Station is a boon. The Union stations house the subway to get elsewhere in the city, GO trains to get around GTA, and VIA rail should I really need to bust this joint. The Gardiner Expressway is at my doorstep which means arriving and leaving by car is efficient, more so than living deeper in the core. All this access and I’m happy as a clam just spending time at home. I haven’t even visited LV yet who is a mere 20-minute walk towards the Entertainment District but we’ll blame it on the weather and not my laziness. ;)

Right now, I’m totally satisfied tripping down to the condo gym that with Life Fitness treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes equipped with television screens, I’ve been timing my workout with the televisions shows I want to catch since I’ve cut the cord and don’t have a television. At some point, I will need to train outdoors (booo…) and the Running Room is 800 meters away and we will probably often connect with the Waterfront Trail and head out to Humber Park and The Beaches ad nauseum.

Finally, supermarkets are more important to me right now than restaurants in the vicinity and I thought I couldn’t have it better than before with four to chose from within a 10-minute walk. It’s close. Going to to Longo’s (300 meters away) involves stepping into the shiny and bright ACC/Maple Leaf Square area and Longo’s has a great high-end market feel like Whole Foods. It’s a bit like an Urban Fare, actually, in that it also carries the the Western Family house brand. The 24-hour Loblaws where Top Chef candidates are taken to to shop is 800 meters away but a bit of a sketchy trek past the Redpath refinery. I would never have to visit the Sobey’s 600 meters away–they are so expensive–except it houses a Wine Rack and Wine Racks carry the Inniskillin East West series wine that I’ve adopted as “my” wine (more on that later).

There, that’s my world outside of my apartment. It’s pretty complete with the large and glaring exception of NPY’s absence. :( Next up, an apartment tour!

if i ate in the caf, which i don't usually,i can look at my apartment.

******** This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

< Next | Previous >

January I went to Toronto twice, once on the way back to Vancouver from spending Christmas in Halifax and once for Lil Sis’ graduation ceremony. I was in month 3 of being really restless about my future and over breakfast that Leo cooked and at the dining table in his condo overlooking Toronto’s financial district and CN Tower, he encouraged me and told me that “when you come to Toronto, things will happen.” In 2011, I was able to DineOut Vancouver and Winterlicious.

February We went on a small three “couples” road trip to Seattle. It doesn’t happen often so it was really nice because we were out of town and the three of us girls could go out for a drink while the guys stayed in the hotel playing video games and watching TV of course. I also discovered Zumba and the updated dance-inspired fitness classes work very well for me.

April We did not train well at all but since I paid for it, we were doing the Sun Run, damnit! We slid in just a little bit over an hour and I completely tanked half way through. NPY beat me by less than a minute and completed his longest race to date, a 10K. We started learning how to play guitar and that expanded my horizons. I also made my third trip to Toronto of the year over an extended Easter holiday.

May After 26 months working at UBC, my contract ended without further renewal and change was inevitable. Unemployment was nice for two weeks only. BiNK’s wedding was at the end of the month and I can safely say it was the party of the year–it has the funny effect of forever ingraining in my memory the association of 2011 songs (like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, “No Speak Americano”, and DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win”) with that evening and summer.

June NPY and I started looking for somewhere to live together. NPY not being a proponent of renting, we looked at condos for sale and figured out quickly after one big condo-touring day what we wanted (none of what we saw). NPY and I celebrated five years together. In one particularly “cultured” week, we saw the traveling Broadway production of Wicked and a Rihanna concert. ;)

July We went on a “double date” roadtrip to Bellevue. Shopping was not the focus but eating still was! It was really blissful although I didn’t have that much stress to run away from.

August After a whole summer of deliberation and discussion, I/we decided that I would go to Toronto for a while. Reason: I really miss my sister and it doesn’t make a difference where I am if I’m just studying. We went back to Victoria to visit for the first time in five years. At the end of the month, I brought Daddy to visit his family in Vancouver for the first time in 11 years and I had packed up, given up my apartment (my first apartment) of six years, and relocated to Toronto.

September I made sure to stay busy during my first month hanging out with Vanna, checking out The Ex at CNE and TIFF. Lil Sis and I did a wine region tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake but according to my cousin Alan, we missed all the good (small) wineries.

October In a “birthday trip”, Lil Sis and I went to Detroit… and Ann Arbor. I can now cross Detroit off my list.

November NPY’s Toronto visit at the end of October rolled right into our NYC trip, second time in three years and now we have to move on to somewhere else! I started doing NaNoWriMo, a romance, but then I couldn’t face it any longer. I got a job at a really good company and started my new job at the end of the month. It was a stressful month of getting everything together after six months of under-employment!

December Settling into working downtown and a routine which was really welcome after so long. I leased my first grown-up apartment and jumped through all the hoops of a real, fancy downtown apartment. I went was back in Vancouver at the beginning of the month for a whirlwind trip and back again for an extended long weekend to celebrate Christmas. I’ve never spent Christmas away from my family but isn’t NPY my family by now? Then back to Toronto for a couple of days and Halifax for New Years!

I don’t go seeking my horoscope forecast for the year but sometimes it comes through to me anyhow. I think Lil Sis found my Chinese Zodiac for the lunar year that started 3 February 2011 and it was just an awful year for me in the work realm. I don’t have the link because you just don’t think about documenting that, you know? It may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g., not getting a new job so I was working without a break) but my contract not being renewed wasn’t my doing. And after the prophesized bad time for half the year, things seemed to fall in place again after some effort of my own. After this year, I really don’t want to hear next year’s forecast!

NYR

1. knock off some of those races: Toronto Yonge Street 10K (April 22), WWF CN Tower Climb (April ~14), Ottawa Marathon (May 27), Manitoba Marathon (June 27), Quebec City Staircase Challenge (June ~26), Marathon de Montreal (September 23), Detroit Free Press Marathon (October 21)
2. complete four courses and the second Level towards my designation
3. work work work (but that’s a given)
4. travel with MY in April (Europe)
5. be a super-duper long-distance girlfriend
6. travel with NPY in the fall (Asia, or Hawaii)

Some of this is really (really) ambitious, but — however inaccurate it is — you know what they say about setting your sights on the moon….

I thought I would save time writing out this blog entry in my notebook in the odd downtime but–what do you know?–on a bleary red-eye flight on Tuesday-Wednesday, I left it on the airplane! Oh well, I needed to move on and start using a new notebook anyway.

My mini-holiday to Vancouver over Christmas could be described as perfectly splendid. I want to do it all over again but in fairness, I think next year will be in Halifax and it will be 180^o different. Sniff, sad already.

Friday. As I last blogged, I made it to the airport in the nick of time despite having a departure time very close to when I got off work. Traffic not being crazy and a last-minute half-hour delay of my flight gave me time to queue in the longest YYZ Tim Hortons line ever and get dinner for the flight. We were further delayed another hour for take-off with having to remove checked baggage of passengers who failed to show up at the gate (I don’t know how that happens) and let on stand-by passengers. Knowing that flying west takes longer than flying east, and having gotten myself onto the flight, I was rather impatient and for once flying wasn’t a pure joy. Perhaps I was also not accustomed to sitting on the right side of the plane which is where I had to sit based on checking in “late”. My flight was so late NPY got to watch his entire Canucks game before picking me up and we did a little shopping on the way downtown. I was adamant about having Japanese ramen this trip but nothing was open in Coal Harbour on a Friday after 11 p.m. We ended up at our old stand-by, Congee Noodle House, which was acceptable to me on the grounds that we were ordering different dishes from “the usual.” Using FourSquare, I checked in which was fortunate because Ed and Olive saw the notification and joined us and it is super fun and energetic whenever they are around!

Saturday/Christmas Eve. Since I passed out so hard the night before, we successfully managed to meet up with my paternal grandmother and uncle at 12 for lunch. I selected Duotian where you design your own noodles and design your own claypot rice. It’s a bit new-fangled for my relatives but then I don’t mind taking the reins because I get what I want! Then I met up with Kitty for coffee and a short turn around the mall. When I saw her last in the beginning of December, we also met up with Cari and Cari and I really dominated with our fresh and exciting news (all about jobs) so it was nice to just get caught up with Kitty. Then we were scheduled to join NPY’s parents and his paternal grandmother for a gut-busting four-entree Chinese dinner at Congee Noodle King, another favourite of ours. I was too full of food somehow already and ate only vegetables and egg tofu. And two shrimp and a few bites of rice forced upon me. I cannot pass up the fried egg tofu in the Buddha’s Feast dish there.

Sunday/Christmas Day. I wondered if I would dread Christmas Day and opening presents at NPY’s as I do at home with my family. Although Christmas Day usually turns out alright, there’s a fragility to the merriment in my household that comes from the family dynamics, the overbearing sense of broken dreams, and whatever else. I’ve griped to NPY about how he couldn’t understand where I come from, his family being so normal… but is it his fault? With three “kids” and parents who are young and young at heart, there is a lot of levity in his house on Christmas Day. They bought presents in pairs like the same Bench jacket for me and his sister, the same North Face jacket for brothers, and magenta Hunter boots for mother and daughter. Of course we took pictures wearing our matching gear! Then we had to scatter and hustle to prepare for being out the rest of the day. NPY and I stopped by my aunt’s house in Point Grey. We were there before dinner to spend time with the family before their rush. I enjoyed getting caught up with cousin Meg who was studying abroad for a year and when her sister Karin speaks up, we pepper her with questions because she often takes part in some really unique activities… like recently being a wine fairy through her circus school…. We stayed long enough for my Toronto cousin Alan to come by for dinner and NPY could meet one more of my cousins to get the complete(ish) picture of my family. Then we were off to NPY’s Uncle Andy’s for their buffet-style meal in their house that’s kind of like a playhouse with Fußball, table tennis, movies, gaming devices, and poker and mahjong table set up! The house was full to the seams with each of four siblings on this mother’s side having two or three children apiece amounting to a large number of cousins and significant others. NPY and I are the oldest cousins but we don’t really notice with the parents’ generation being so active.

Monday/Boxing Day. I wasn’t sure I could last much longer with the abundance of food and waking up “early”. We met up with Ed and Olive (again) and Bonny for afternoon tea. Thankfully where I had chosen for us to have proper French afternoon tea on Boxing Day was a winner. Faubourg is a bit of Paris (they say, I haven’t been) in Kerrisdale and we had Pink Tea sets augmented with some bowls of cream of mushroom soup. We might have been feeling burned out and went over to Andy’s where rules and propriety don’t really exist and just hung out. I love when he gives a tour of his PH and friends are just floored by his new digs on the west side. I still hadn’t gotten my Japanese ramen and my craving was strong so we brought Ed and Olive along to Kintaro for the most unfabulous dinner with the 20-minute wait, not sitting together, and very hole-in-the-wall venue. Still, I got my ramen and finally got to try out Kintaro! Then we were back to Andy’s and fatigue just overtook me. Alas!

Tuesday. Originally, we had plans to meet up with Frank and I had selected Yagger’s where one could get from a light to real meal. But, like us all, the holiday burn out caught up with him and we’ll have to catch him the next time. Eventually, NPY and I made it out the door and to Thierry where I originally wanted to meet Kitty. Another new patisserie, this time in the heart of downtown. We couldn’t try nearly as much as I wanted to which just means there’s a reason to return next time! We hit a couple of malls to get out of the soggy outdoors–it rained every day I was there prompting NPY to say I brought the rain with me, ha!–before joining his family for a birthday dinner at Fatty Cow for hot pot. Hot pot is a fun way to get together for an informal good-value group dinner and seems to be a “traditional” ever since it was so funny (not) that time Lil Sis and I had hot pot before a flight and I was just miserable in discomfort. These days, I’ve learned to wear leggings for the dinner and going into the flight! NPY saw me off to the airport and… we’ll just skip ahead to the part where I got onto my flight! ;)

96 hours in Vancouver. 37 hours in Toronto. 60 hours in Halifax. Then back in Toronto. That was the last week and the week to come!

******** This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

< Next | Previous >

Grad Student Etiquette from PhD Comics

Yikes, so we closed November 2011 and my NaNoWriMo word count is 27,638, half of a fairly short 50K-word novel. I outlined quite a bit ahead but life happened. For full disclosure, I actually wrote seven days’ worth in October (!) because I knew I would be in New York 1-7 November and only wrote 8 days in November proper. :o

My very first gap in writing started on 11/11/11, the day I went from unemployed with no prospects to unemployed with future employment. Then there was the scramble to get everything in order while I still had whole days free. Mum came to town because there was a funeral and the whole family gathered together for a weekend. Then I took a look at my study schedule and realized I must finish a course by 1 December! These are legitimate reasons, no? :)

I also hit a wall in writing. It came to a point where I could not face the subject material and not so much because I had spent too long on it. You see, I was writing a “romance novel”, fictionalizing a relationship that preceded NPY. It was a bit of a metaphor for taking chances and the story became a bit Eat, Pray, Love-like which was fine for a while but then I didn’t believe EPL is so great after all and I no longer had the same steam to write about events that are temporally so close. So maybe there will be enough distance, enough answers come through, that I can continue when I’m off for Christmas….

On Monday, as we were watching the latest episode of Being Erica, I noticed the ad spot inviting watchers to submit a 15-second video of themselves enjoying McCain Ultra Thin Crust Pizza for a chance to win a cameo spot in an episode in the final season of the show. The final 10 videos will be chosen by the judges then voting is open to the public.

Me, shoot video? Expose myself like so? But somehow the idea stuck with me because as opposed to gratuitous and uninvited video, there was a purpose to this self-promotion.

I love pizza. I love Being Erica. Humiliating myself is confined to how I take a bite out of pizza (which is challenging) and not due to having said something stupid or wrong. There is so much noise on the Internet, really, I’m barely registering as a blip. This is the kind of thing Scare Yourself EveryDay Greg Tung would do and he’s been doing it over over 200 days! If I didn’t try, I would always wonder…. And it’s just like me: Sometimes if I get an idea into my head, I just have to pursue it!

The “script” simply reads,

“YOU EAT MCCAIN ULTRA THIN CRUST PIZZA
(Take a bite and enjoy thoroughly)

End Scene.”

Thus began the planning and analysis phase which was really fun to do with Lil Sis who has ideas but wouldn’t do this herself. She only merely likes pizza and only merely likes Being Erica. What should I wear? What small touches to add? Do I make any sounds? What happens in my “scene”? How to convey delight without words and how to smile with my mouth full?

As with most things, the process was more fun than my conservative result. I wanted to produce something that I wouldn’t regret later…!

So… here’s the video: 15 Seconds of FAME

********

This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

< Next | Previous >

I recently learned Big Uncle and Second Uncle (my mother’s brothers) are working on the family tree and some documents have been circulating between them. Although I attended a one-night Chinese geneology seminar at the VPL over the summer, I have no idea what Chinese family tree and history documents are like. There was the family tree page, of course, with the names of all my male ancestors dating back six generations. There were also pages and pages of a poem or story that Second Uncle, a retired researcher who can read Chinese, couldn’t make heads or tails of. I hoped it might be our “name poem” containing my mother and her siblings’ names, but it wasn’t. Of course, the pages that caught my attention–although I don’t understand them any more than the others–had diagrams like this. Is it our village? Where different generations have lived? The diagram is so… Chinese in nature.

Even though I am holding a copy of a copy of a copy (etc.), I still felt the weight of importance of holding something really personal and historical with these diagrams. I just don’t know if I’ll ever know what it means.

********

This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.

< Next | Previous >

In my dream, I was having a meltdown because I realized that I might not be able to accommodate two invitations to go camping, one from an aunt and one with a friend. I thought I was double-booked but checked with my friend and with her, I wasn’t going until later. In the dream, my aunt was keeping me in the loop while she made phone calls to her friend (also going camping) but she never asked me to do anything for preparations, as if she was prepared for me not to go. Meanwhile, I was aware of a male friend of mine hanging out in shadows on the wings, not part of the planning frenzy or anything. And then, like a signal to exit the dream, I heard an iPhone Tri-Tone alert in my dream (but I’m currently using the Tweet alert so I actually did dream an iPhone alert and did not have a real-world text message) and woke up.

Ignoring the inexplicable iPhone alert and the male friend, and any symbolism that I, in fact, detest going camping, the indisputable symbolism is that camping represents job opportunities I learned about earlier that day and my aunt and friend represent the cities they live in, Vancouver and Toronto respectively.

That’s all.

His:

He says, “Happy 1st Birthday to D–!”

Indeed! It’s so hard to believe that D– has entered our lives and our married friends’ lives have changed so much as those who have married approximately five years ago moved on to the next stage. Earlier this year, we attended another first birthday party where I bought clothes and felt a twinge because the birthday girl was far more interested in imaginative gifts like toys. So, before I left, as much as NPY and I like buying ourselves clothing, I told him we should give the gift of entertainment and fun!

Hers:

I said, “I could wake up to this every day.”

This isn’t even the best day in terms of weather or the wide-angle view that we can perceive with our own eyes. It’s merely the view when you own a slice of condo in the sky in the middle of everything–alongside other glass condo towers and with an inspiring view of business towers and world-famous city landmarks. When I was growing up I went to school in Halifax but lived in Dartmouth. I despised living in the suburb area of a satellite municipality to Halifax with all my might. When I selected my first apartment in Vancouver, I went for central and affordable. A compromise, because I was a student six years ago, so my second-floor suite was in a 30-year-old building. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t change my space in six years (five of them with NPY) even after visiting Vin in Toronto nearly every year and being inspired every time by her her living space. I like to think I was meant to live high up in a glassy condo albeit in smaller quarters. But I tend to be far too sticky about making decisions (read: indecisive) and resign myself to “compromises” far too often (i.e., conservative). We only have one life to live.

********

* NPY’s Picture of the Day. While I’m in Toronto and he is in Vancouver, 3400km away, we will try to share with each other (and consequently this blog) pictures that capture our day.

< Next PotD | Previous PotD >

On Friday, I’m writing the first exam I’ve written in several years and the darn thing is worth 90% of the final grade. While studying during the week, I also have to arrange selling or getting rid of all of my furniture and packing things up… I’m moving! I can’t entirely explain it and/or don’t want to. It’s a good time for a change and Toronto is the only other place I should be. If this last month of preparations and introspection upon the reality of moving is any indication, I’ll be back and not in too long.

Next week, my father is visiting in addition to an aunt (his sister) visiting from Europe–I don’t know how many years it has been since all branches of the family were in the same place. Then, on the final day of August, 7 years and 1 day after I tempted fate and came here, I’ll be coming to you from the Eastern time zone!

The premise of Being Erica has been vaguely familiar to me: by some mechanism, a grown woman gets to go back in time and re-do significant life events. Anyone who is plagued with “what if’s” and regrets in life can connect with this idea. But it took a “recommendation” from blogger Darren Barefoot who is consuming only Canadian products for one year to prompt me to actually watch the show. He characterized Being Erica as “Cathy meets Quantum Leap but, you know, not awful”.

The pilot’s opening narrative is already catchy for someone like me, delivered as we see a thirty-something woman navigate a few busy blocks in downtown Toronto: “You know that friend you have? The girl who seems to have it all figured out. She’s got the great job, the great guy, the great life…. Well, I’m not that girl. My name is Erica Strange. I’m 32, still working a dead-end job, still sleeping… with my cat. I know people wonder why the cute girl with the great education and the great friends can’t get it together. There’s a simple answer: bad decisions. I could teach a course on messing up your life, really I am that good at getting everything wrong. The worse part is it wasn’t always like this. I used to be a rising star, but these days I just feel like a flame-out.”

For some reason, I thought the episodes would be just 22 minutes long, but it’s an hour-long show (dramedy) and that’s going to be quite an investment of my time….! I’m starting from the very beginning and episode 6 was a “game-changer” in terms of getting me firmly hooked, with dealing with a questionable marriage and using historical events as a plot device. To try to fix her sister’s relationship, Erica goes back in time to possibly prevent the relationship from continuing. Instead of convincing the hot-headed boyfriend to reconcile after a fight, Erica lets them break up and they are in the boyfriend’s apartment elevator when the power goes out. It takes place on August 14, 2003, the day of the blackout that crippled Toronto, New York, and the eastern seaboard. As apartment dwellers poke their heads out of their doors to figure out what’s going on, the sisters meet a neighbour and are invited to a party going on. They step into the 22nd floor swanky condo with a giant balcony with a view of the CN Tower and downtown buildings. The sun was lighting everything up brilliantly and someone changed the song to Sean Paul’s party song, Shake that Thing.

The music is another thing. Sure, they need to set up a set fitting to the early 2000′s or back to the ’90s and get details like hair and fashion correct and reduce anachronisms. But music is also a powerful device to tap into your subconscious memories of being back in that time.

It might be a little bit of a spoiler but the show is already three seasons in with a fourth coming in the fall, but when Erica goes back, she usually doesn’t affect the timeline much. The fight between her sister and boyfriend lasts a little longer but they are still together in the present day. When Erica goes back to set right the incident that terminated her friendship with her lesbian friend, things go a little differently, they do not fight, but the friend is still largely out of the picture.

For people who, ahem, wonder a lot “what if”, it is reassuring so far in the first season, that even when she went back, she couldn’t change anything: she is reminded of and still has the convictions that made her act in the first place, and sometimes you didn’t actually have control over a situation. That is kind of assuming that the values you had fifteen years ago are ones you stuck with, that you were basically good in the past. I’m not sure that is true for everyone.

With a shot of Erica running across Dundas Square in the pilot episode and a glimpse of Canadian/Toronto shops like Second Cup, I feel like the show celebrates Toronto in a way that I read the movie, Chloe, was supposed to but I did not quite feel it did. Perhaps, for my standards, “celebrate” requires in-your-face presence. I just love seeing Canada as the backdrop in television.