Assorted Notes That Didn't Make It Into Previous LJ Trip Entries

[rfmcdonald]

• I only saw 11 SARS masks in Toronto, including one Toronto leaving for Charlottetown with me. In my opinion, Toronto's SARS scare was a needed exercise; what if SARS was a pandemic disease comparable to the bubonic plague? That said, the hysteria over the disease was overblown. Oh, and Mel Lastman is an idiot.


• I went to the Bau-Xi Gallery on Wednesday. There was a fantastic exhibition by one Andre Petterson there. I took a photo of one work; I'll link to it when the films are developed.


• Kingston is a very pleasant town. It is palpably less multicultural than Toronto, but infinitely more advanced than Charlottetown. Then again, in the early 1990s Indian restaurants were apparently thin on the ground there, too.


• On Friday, I met with Dr. Marta Straznicky, head of the graduate program in English at Queen's. She recognized me, I think from the E-mails that we exchanged. We had a nice little chat about my involvement in the program, Kingston, the difficulty of getting residences, and the large number of courses (22) available in the coming year. Queen's looks good.


• Talking to Craig Saturday night, he mentioned how Margaret Cho called SARS Severe Asian Racism Syndrome. Pak Wei, in Kingston, mentioned how he heard from his friends in Toronto how non-Asians were avoiding Chinatown. I didn't notice this, but then I was the visitor. (And the only reason I didn't eat in Chinatown is that I can get Chinese food here.)


• There was, in the College Hostel on my second visit, a fetching young brown-haired woman from Mecklenburg, on the Baltic Sea coast of the former East Germany. She was impressed that I knew where she came from.


• Heavier-than-air flight is wonderful.