Random events worth noting

I still can't believe that there's a hemp store right on Yonge street. I'm waiting for someone to tell me they sell tea products, or hemp-derived hair products (which do exist), or fashion items representing the smoker culture. But that hasn't happened yet, so I'm still left to believe that they sell mostly hemp products (bongs, etc) and probably some cannabis under the table. They're not shy about advertising either, and their website has listings & videos of all their media appearances. At some point, they made a custom pipe for Busta Rhymes, and have had many celebrity visits over the years. Interesting...

The Toronto subway system is not strictly monitored. Besides the regular card swiping, there’s a booth with an attendant where you drop $2.75 into a coin box and walk through. It’s an expensive one-way ride, but it’s very clear that many people don’t pay the full fare. If you’ve got many smaller denomination coins, you can pretty much put however much you want. There’s no machine counting the change.

The other day, I put liquid soap in my dishwasher. I think I was distracted by the Olympic Games or some other random TV program. I came back to the kitchen to find a foam tsunami developing. Fortunately, I stopped it before it got out of hand. Cleaning was not fun

I felt like a bad ass on the highway doing 90 in a Volks Wagen Zipcar. Then my friend pointed out that they use the metric system in Canada. It's clear that I’m still getting used to some changes.

I was very upset when Nigeria lost to Argentina in the Olympic football/soccer finals. I had woken up at 6AM and/or 9AM on multiple occasions to watch them thrash Ivory Coast, USA and Belgium. I had talked a lot of smack to people I just met. And then I had to swallow my words the next time I saw them. The game was terrible. We were completely dominated, and the players seemed nervous. Yes, it was about 90 degrees in the stadium. Yes, they had to stop the game twice for a water break (never done before in any soccer competition). But there’s no excuse for the way we played. I watched the game with 3 other Nigerian guys, 2 of whom I just met that evening. It was a yelling contest every time our players screwed something up. I left as soon as we lost. I refused to watch the medal ceremony. When I got home, I logged on to cbc.ca and watched it anyway. After all, silver is still a precious metal. Besides, we finished above Brazil (who got bronze). Bad day.

Before I started working on a case, I began taking pictures of other very random things. A few of these were: squirrels at the University of Toronto campus, writings on walls, etc. The Finnish guy in the picture is a street performer on Queen Street West. One of his tricks was doing push-ups on his thumb. That was ridiculous. The he pulled someone from the crowd and asked him to lay on the floor, with two guys holding a chain over the subject's body. This was for the grand finale, where he did a side flip over the chain & the guy. Quite impressive. The video below doesn't quite do him justice.

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