the transplanted traveller

A rejuvenated thought on travel blogging

2010-12-20T17:52:00.000-05:00

I seem to be a great example of ignoring my own advice. (Although, it does need to be said that journalism school is a huge reason for this!)

In the spirit of revitalizing my waning wanderlust...here's a few thoughts I had after reading the first 50 pages of John Stackhouse's book, Timbit Nation.

- - -

I think it stemmed from that, for me. I’ve always been amazed at where people come from, and regardless of the disdain I have for being tied to a front desk job for the first three years I lived in Canada, I do have to say it’s given a lot of worth to my worldview, to the eventual path my life would take me.

Properly entering street (or rural road) addresses into a computer comprised a large part of my day at the desk; and so did chatting up visitors, tourists and businessmen about the reasons they’re in town and how long they plan to stay. As with any customer service job, small talk rules. But with working at the front desk that job gets magnified a little bit, what with the ever-present presence of managers around reminding you that “guest satisfaction” is what makes or breaks your next paycheque (and also guarantees your hours). It didn’t matter whether guests gave a big-city Apartment 311-A address or simply a PO Box in some distant Ontario town I couldn’t point out on a map for the life of me; I always seemed to be drawn to where people came from. Probably relates to my incessant inquisitiveness, and desire to become a journalist. Whether out in suburban Vancouver or right in the heart of downtown Toronto, the ebb and flow of people into that hotel lobby certainly made for un-boring days, perhaps if just for the fact that you never knew what to expect.

So you wanna be a travel writer

2010-07-05T03:25:00.000-04:00

Step 1: Do not neglect your blog.
I admittedly have not travelled much further than several blocks outside my regular commute in Toronto, but if I aim to take travel blogging seriously, I need to acknowledge the fact that ignoring my blog for lack of having "original travel content" is no excuse for slacking off. To that note, I send my apologies. I'm lured by the idea of *hopefully* being established enough as a novice travel writer to attend TBEX '11! This year's festivities seem to have been epic - most all of the travel blogs in my Reader had TBEX-related posts following last weekend.

I've got an idea for a Toronto-specific blog...but until I actually get to spend time in the city of Toronto, that idea might be put on hold. Won't be much longer though! The next two months should be interesting, as I plan to move out of my parents' house and into an apartment in the east end...

Step 2: Be efficient with travel-related reading.
That means balancing time spent reading RSS feeds, Twitter updates and travel literature...while trying not to be overwhelmed by the massive amounts of information out there.

Step 3: Don't lose the wonder.
My extensive travel knowledge might not be more than armchair fare for now, but just the excitement of watching a good Globe Trekker episode (and irrepressibly comparing it to Departures) needs to always be there...because frankly, that's pretty much what's going to drive me forward, I think. I'll talk to people, of course, and have others regale me of any and all travel-related stories they have...but my safety net, huddled in the world of television, reigns. I want to see those places, speak to those locals, and find out why travel can spurn such inexplicably unique experiences.

Why I STILL think Departures is the best show, ever

2010-05-30T02:22:00.000-04:00

During one of the commercial breaks in tonight's episode of Departures, I thought: this is what it feels like, to know that a television show changes your life.

And it's not just restricted to the stereotypical sci-fi fan - the realization just sort of hit me, that with something so good, you can move mountains and in this case, a camera and two travellers across North Korea.

I know I've lagged a but and have since missed a few episodes in the third season but even just one show is enough to change you - and I know I hardly seem like sound authority, but heed my advice on this one. If you haven't yet seen Departures, and you consider yourself a traveller at heart, try your hardest fucking best to find a way to see it. OLN has some episodes online, but get the first two seasons on DVD and it's seriously the best you'll ever spend well-earned money on.

In a couple quick points, here's why tonight's ep ruled:
-It's where Andre shot that BEAUTIFUL sequence in the season three opening, with the dancers holding fans, washed in an orange glow
-They visit a water bottle factory (I just burst into random giggling throughout this part)
-An animal souvenir comes back
-Towards the end Justin says something about how, at the outset, North Korea sort of has the power to scare people away, maybe because of travel restrictions, and just the capped limit of things you can do...

...but to my mind, that's what the heart of good travel is. If you plan to go someplace, know where you're going, do tons of research beforehand, and try to set aside as much time as you can for doing and seeing the stuff you're interested in. But keep all your senses open to everything around you - and accept. Accept everything, from the unintelligible signs pointing to eight different directions, to listening in to snippets of strangers' conversations on the subway, to trying food (in all its wondrous forms!) and going where a friend or acquaintance takes you, without question. Like a water bottle factory.

North Korea is just a mystical land to me right now, as it likely is for many people (regardless of the fact that it wasn't that far from me geographically growing up, and the fact that my hometown now has more Korean than actual Filipino restaurants in it). But what amazes me, and what continually makes me just inherently glad to be HERE, is that there's a whole different mindset involved with this travelling business.

Whether I make my way (hopefully!) back to Asia or across the Baltics and Western Europe - it's the experience of being someplace foreign to me that I'm looking for, and it's why I think moving to Canada has helped a lot in this regard. I've learned how to overcome (minor forms of) adversity and I continue to learn the meaning of diversity, every damn day. Without the ups and downs and lessons learned of moving to a new city every year within the last three, I don't think I'd have appreciated the intricacies of little things like the way people dress, and I certainly wouldn't have cared a damn for cultural nuances, which might have been something I picked up gradually through just watching and talking to people.

With the North Korea episode, the boys just brought a different light to travelling in a communist state republic - it just didn't matter how boring (on the outside) what they were doing seemed to be. They travelled, and talked to people, and just went farther than anything I've ever seen any travel show attempt to do. And everyone behind the scenes - editors, producers, sound managers - did their jobs so well. A big shout out to all y'all for bringing Departures so close to home :)

Why I love travel blogs

2010-05-22T03:31:00.000-04:00

By now I think it needless to say that I am in love with travel blogs, and everything that goes into a person's decision to start one, and keep one going by travelling.

I have a habit of reading some of my favourites late into the night, like at 2 or 3 in the morning. Yes, I do not have much of a life (and although changes to this situation are most welcome, whether I actually live up to these changes is another story).

So I've been scrolling through a few bucket lists, and they're all right on and inspirational, no doubt about that...but I find that when I do eventually sit down to write mine, it'll be significantly different. In content, as well as the general nature of the stuff I want to accomplish too. I keep harping on about how the desire and the drive to travel is different for a person from the East than a person from the Western world, as in folks from Asia vs. North America or Europe. And it's not to discriminate or to say our goals for travelling are all that different - at the core of it, it's really just a love for exploring the world around us, and not passing up opportunities that could lead to visiting someplace you've never been before. But here's my deal, and I promise to make it short (I figure it might be easier to tell my story instead of generalizing Eastern travellers as a whole).

I grew up in a middle class household in the Philippines, in its capital city, Manila. No doubt my bouts of homesickness shine through once in awhile. As a kid, travel wasn't really part of my vocabulary - besides the annual family summer trip to a beach or swimming pool complex two hours from home, all I really knew about travelling was that a) it was done during the summer, and only with groups of 15 or more, and b) it cost quite a bit, so when you did get the chance to travel with a group, you better take that deal when you can.

And I'm not complaining, because I really did enjoy my childhood trips through places like Laguna and Batangas (resort towns south of Manila that are really close to my heart). However, now, I get this agonizing desire of wanting to establish my independence far from home (or rather, my current home in Oakville)...and it seems that with each passing year that desire to keep moving on and away just gets stronger.

So why do I want to travel?

Maybe it's because the concept of travelling has changed so much for me, even through just the last five years. In 2007 I uprooted completely from everything that I knew to be home, to move to Vancouver - where I worked my ass off and walked pretty much all of downtown to discover "Canada" and kill time. I went back to the Philippines for a few months, flew back to the west coast, and then moved to Toronto - where now, I'm still in (as always) emotional limbo over whether I'm doing what I think is enough to keep me happy and sane. In the past three years, I've gone through a whole slew of changes - and in the same way that certain songs create the soundtrack to your life, being in different places meant that certain locations (i.e. the 98B bus in Richmond, some coffee shop in White Rock, Surrey, or countless hours spent in Toronto's subways) marked some significant point in recent memory.

Although we weren't particularly struggling with finances back home (or if we did, my parents never let on as much), by the time I hit my teens I figured that if I really wanted to travel, really wanted to go to Italy or France or Australia, I'd have to fucking win the lottery ten times or forever think of visiting those places only in a dream. It used to seem like a ridiculously far fetched idea, and admiitedly until now one of the benchmarks that I have for gauging progress is this - the amount of time left until I become a Canadian citizen, and become proud owner of that little black passport, key to my own partial world domination.

That, I think, is why I'd like to travel - because while it satiaties my wanderlust, travel also gives me a chance to reflect on how far I've come, because let's face it, I'm doing a horrible job of acknowledging this in real life.

The Montreal Canadiens

2010-05-21T21:29:00.009-04:00

In celebration of last night’s Habs win over the Philadelphia Flyers, here are the promised pics from last week’s trip to the Canadiens’ home ground. Go Habs Go!

I prayed early on that week that we would be in town for a game, just to see how Montreal fans showed love for their hockey team (I don’t follow sports all that much, but I do know that the Canadiens made quite the comeback during this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs). And I was right to expect madness...only we had no idea just how crazy it could get!

We had no clue how much mayhem to expect. Last week’s game seven against the defending Cup champions (Sidney Crosby among them) was definitely a big game for Montreal, and we saw signs of just how important this game was early on in the day, with corporate business folk wearing Habs jerseys under their suits as we walked through the downtown financial district.

After a quick dinner at Schwartz’ (much advertised, but two thumbs up still for smoked meat) we hung around an already filled bar to watch the last half of the game. En route downtown from Mont Royal, my friend, Minshu, commented on how empty and deserted the streets were. And they were, literally, empty. It was dead as night by 7 p.m. except for every bar and pub we passed along rue St. Laurent. Hell even the poor folks at Schwartz’ who had to work that night were glued to a tiny little TV along the diner’s back counter.

As the final seconds ticked down the whole bar erupted into cheers and yelling and beer pint tapping, bottle smashing glory. I couldn’t hear half of what people screamed; all we could tell was that it was gonna be a long fucking night!

And then it started...people burst out into the street, screaming and jumping up and down. Guys (and some girls too) thumped their chests and yelled stuff in French that we couldn’t understand, they talked loud and fast and started running into the middle of the street waving Habs flags and ripping their red shirts off and holding them high over their heads like they knew for that night, all that mattered was that Montreal was an invincible force. Cars sped on by and people stuck their heads out the windows and sunroof, whooping and yelling their ears off and pumping their fists so hard that it was, it seemed, a sin not to follow suit.

We were so not prepared. Police were everywhere, and by the end of the night we could see why -helicopters, CTV and CBC camera crews can attest to this!

(Clip above from Thecanadianpublic.com)

It was just ridiculously infectious. It was one big f’in street party, and both of us not having been in Canada for very long (and in Toronto, where understandably no one ever cheers for the Leafs) it was just such an incredible experience. Can’t even remember how many times I said “This is the best fucking night to be here!”

The horns...oh the car horns. Our hostel was one block away from Bell Centre (can’t even describe how hard it was to get there, wading through the sea of red and white!) and those car horns went on until two in the morning.

So yeah...definitely something we wouldn’t exchange for the world :-)

Here's some snaps:

We couldn't not take at least a couple pics of drunk rioters...

And just to prove I was there.

Someone interviewed on CTV the next day said it best: amid the window smashing and Foot Locker looting that pretty much dominated the headlines, 90% of people out celebrating were simply having a good time. Vive le Habs! Thanks to rowdy, noisy, all-night-partying Montrealers, I actually now give a damn about hockey. Sports page was the only thing I read in the Globe today!

*All pics above taken by Minshu Mo.

Montreal - Day 1

2010-05-18T14:23:00.001-04:00

We left Toronto's Union Station at 9:30 am Wednesday, on board Via Rail to Montreal. My friend and I bought mmmmuffins (great stuff!) for the five-hour trip.

We weren't particularly sure how to get around...so we semi-planned the next few days out en route to Montreal's Gare Centrale. Because we'd be staying at Auberge de jeunesse (aka HI-Montreal) the first night, we'd hang around that part of the city, close to the Museum of Fine Arts.

We arrived just past 3:30 pm, had lunch, and got ourselves lost heading to the hostel. Best way to get your bearings around a new place! It wasn't far at all from the Metro station we got off at, Lucien L'Aller, but we turned a different street (against directions from someone we asked) and I graciously reminded my friend, Minshu, that although I had a fairly good sense of direction, listening to me isn't always the best idea.

It was my first time staying at a hostel - def something I will be doing more of! The people around you are great, and pretty much willing to help out and talk endlessly. Plus, there is the immediate sense of non-isolation.

We tried to go into the museums but they closed at five, so we walked around a bit and decided to get lost (yet again!) on the way up to Mont Royal. We definitely got a hang of the STM (Montreal's transit system) by the end of the first day. One thing in particular that struck me was how much STM passes cost - a single day pass (unlimited rides on subways and buses) cost $7, while a three-day pass cost $14. And, a monthly pass was $38 (!!) and for students, a FOUR MONTH pass (one semester) was just over $140.

And I pay $109 every month for Toronto's Metropass! On student pricing! It was ridiculous. And so for most of our first few rides, we debated on reasons for just exactly why the TTC needed to catch up with the rest of the urban transit world. In true journo-student fashion.

We got up to Mont Royal and spent an hour or so in the mostly empty square (save for a group of middle-school kids visiting). It was hard to take pics because the light contrasted so strongly at dusk (when half of downtown was thrown into the mountain's shade)...but then again it could just be that my photo skills needed a lot more work.

What I did have fun trying out though, was some low-light photography inside the Chalet du Mont Royal, at the centre of the Kondiaronk Belvedere plaza. In the 30s and 40s, big bands used to play just outside the hall's steps. Must have been an awesome sight.

We stopped by a few other places too; the main McGill University campus downtown...

Shops along rue Sherbrooke...

And the east entrance to Mont Royal, where a monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier stands. Also, on Sundays, people gather along this side of the mountain's slopes (and across the street at Parc Jeanne-Mance) for Tam Tams. Too bad we were there on a Wednesday!

Next post - all about the Canadiens, and how we partied into the night with thousands of Habs fans!

On the train home

2010-05-15T18:18:00.001-04:00

Greetings fellow travellers!

First off, my apologies for not posting any updates on my short trip thus far...at the moment, I am on my way home from Montreal back to Toronto. I might have been a little slack with the blogging because I’m not too certain if a “trip” to a city five hours away warrants three thousand updates. Or maybe it’s because this is sort of my first real trip away on my own (or with a friend, at least) and as well, away from any semblance of home. Regardless, Montreal’s been great! I can certainly feel the beginnings of a serious travel bug biting me.

I’ve got about a hundred things I want to write about, but perhaps to narrow things down I can start a sort of “NALLI WRITES Travels” tradition – five words to describe the trip, within a day of boarding the train or plane home.

Here's my first five:

FUN

FETE LA MUSIQUE

FOOT HURTS!

DESCRIPTIVE

DISCOVERY

Not the most enlightening words to describe a city tour of a couple days but nonetheless fairly dead-on, I’d say.

I’ll spend the next few days uploading pictures and captions of some of the stuff we did in Montreal; because we relied solely on public transit (which isn’t too bad – save a half hour waiting at a stop for a bus that was likely rerouted!), we stayed within the city boundaries.

I’m a little reluctant to have my first travel word as “fun”. It seems too general, too ordinary. But because it was really sort of my first foray into travelling on my own it sums up the experience pretty well...I did most of the things I wanted to do and got a taste of what Montrealers did on a Friday afternoon (which was, as any urban centre, fill pubs and restaurants along downtown streets to bursting capacity, rue Crescent in this case). Fun is the word because we tried, at least, to strike a balance between must-do tourist things in the city and getting around to places that aren’t really on guidebooks or websites. We headed down to Vieux-Montreal (Old Port) and (in a quick instant that turned my mood sour) took photos of the oldest street in Montreal with bus loads of tourists in Ed Hardy crawling through the narrow street like ants. I wasn’t much of a great travel companion to my friend at this point, but I just couldn’t help but feel irritated, annoyed, and deeply saddened by the fact that yet again, overt tourist-cash hungry capitalists have taken over what’s supposed to be a historic piece of the city. I think what wrecked it for me was the sexy-lady aprons and downright vulgar t-shirts that were in window displays right next to classic French bistros along rue Saint-Paul.

Anyway. We managed to save ourselves by watching a jazz and blues ensemble at the Festival Musique de Chambre Montreal, as well as heading out on a really beautiful day to Parc Jean Drapeau for the Festival Plein Air et Voyage. My friend and I are both from Southeast Asia; watch us stand out from the crowd! At the jazz fest we misplaced our tickets during intermission but were greeted back in with a smile (I imagine the doorman remembered us well amidst the sea of mostly middle-aged Quebeckers), and at the adventure travel show we stood in queue to go ziplining along with several families, some with kids that couldn’t have been more than five years old but whose language skills en Francais could make even bilingual speakers in Toronto blush.

As I settled into my seat on the train I decided to check my social media stuff for the first time in four days. I opened Facebook and spent a few minutes reading friends’ status updates, and clicking through endless photo tagging notifications. And then I looked up from the screen of my little netbook and saw farmland, a stream and the after-rain glow of the sun peeking out from behind gloomy grey clouds. We had just passed Dorval, Quebec, and the end of my mid-week trip.

In that same quick instant that I fell in love with travel writing, I realized that I could seriously care less about the outside world. Think I’ll be happy blogging my thoughts for a little while.

Day seven of what could be the longest vacation I'll ever have

2010-05-10T03:45:00.002-04:00

It's been a fairly eventful week...at this time seven days ago, I had no damn clue what to do with my suddenly-cleared schedule (this is what happens when you barely have a life). But, since Monday last week I have applied to and been hired for an internship at a magazine (hurrah!), solidified my working hours to a couple more shifts a week (I'm a rambling hotel worker bee; witness past attempts to blog about that here) and have decided that maybe, well, biking might have to wait...the bruises on my knees and sore legs should offer proof to this. Cue a genuine cause to laugh out loud.

And so instead of rightfully allocating what time and energy I have left to more useful things (such as finishing that manuscript I wanted to submit to Diaspora Dialogues' Open Call) I've decided to spend my Sunday night crawling through the Web, through the network of travel blogs I follow on my RSS reader, some of which are on my delicious page. It's an all-consuming task, and I would LOVE to have readers and fellow bloggers comment on my site, but I'm not too sure I've got the chops to get a good handle on this blogging business! Getting a good blog up and running is going to require a lot of time, work, and boundless energy; things I'm not sure I'll always have. And right now, in the middle of another of my countless bouts of writerly self-doubt, I'm not too sure anyone wants to listen to a transplanted journalism student in her early twenties, caught in limbo between here and home, shot right down deep with a bad case of media-induced wanderlust.

Anyway. I've made headway on what we want to do when we get to Montreal, so expect a post in a few hours!

P.s. My apologies for going crazy with the links on this post. This is an attempt at better blogging!

Day one of what could be the longest vacation I'll ever have

2010-05-03T14:46:00.001-04:00

School's ended for the year, the weekend of boozing and nonchalant mucking around has passed and I've rolled into Monday of the first week of an absolute no-work-no-school state since 2007...and I've gotta admit, it's quite something.

Today I attempted to ride a bike - and I successfully did, for five metres! I was horribly elated and just astounded that I could do it. It's an awesome feeling, being able to bike several seconds straight without falling. Yes I am in my early twenties and that just made it all the more awesome. Then of course I had no one to share my elation with - and this is where the Web comes in. It's a saddening fucking feeling.

I also tried to compile a LONG LIST of things to do. Following included:
-Keep my journo-blog updated (and work on my Web design skills)
-Read up on Toronto's history and architecture (ultimately leading to an internship with Spacing.ca)
-Get in shape
-Submit to Diaspora Dialogues' open call for submissions - which ends in exactly a week!
-Send out resumes and look for possible short term internships
-Get all my journo-files (interviews, transcripts, video clips, etc.) online
-Build a workable schedule into my days - which seems to me the only way to survive the next four months!
-Plan for trips - first up, Montreal.

Did I mention I started getting really bored today? Here's what I did earlier this afternoon in between lounging on the grass and reading The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj.

Yeah...say hi to our overtly spolied cat, Hershey.

The final stretch

2010-04-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

It's the last week of classes!

Instead of focusing on that horrid LAST STRETCH of things that need to be done I choose tonight to do other things - projects that have been put off for too long and magazine articles that need to be rewritten have their place, but they're nowhere near the central nucleus of what my brain wants to work on.

Instead I've been listening to this song for the past 30 minutes, over and over:

YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND. 'Nuff said.

I've been listening to the last bridge of this song and staring up at the ceiling. My head bobs up and down and the only thing I can think of, seriously - is having this song in the background, as I look out over a cliff or a ridge. Insane total freedom. Out of the blue.

I can't find the lyrics to it online, remarkably enough...guess not everything's on the internet.

On to trip planning...

I am heading to Montreal on May 12th!

I've decided on this today. A friend of mine from journalism school bought a train ticket during their 60% seat sale (clearly a smarter lady than I am!) and so I have little room to complain for being the compliant procrastinator I am...I've gotta figure out what sort of ticket to get, but other than that I think we're set. What's important is that a trip is taking place soon, and it may not be to somewhere all that exotic, grandoise or unusual...but hey, anywhere is better than here.

Hope to post up some of our itinerary soon!

Travel plans?

2010-04-17T22:06:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I haven't written anything yet for the month of April. And we're more than halfway through it now (two weeks til the end of classes!). I haven't been this excited for a break in, well, three years.

So. I am still determined to make travel plans, of any sort and form. Those plans will likely still centre around taking the train somewhere. But I haven't decided yet on whether to head out all the way to Nova Scotia or stop and wander around Montreal. My decision will depend on how long a break I have 'til I start a job (that I have yet to apply for) in the city.

That's one thing I'm sure of, at least - I have no plans to staying in Oakville all summer long. That would be the early death of my yet-to-be-proven journalistic career.

On that note I've set up a proper journo-blog! Head over to Nastasha Alli Writes to view some of my work.

My Ian Brown interview is in a day and a half. I have yet to finish writing two of my online stories for the Toronto Observer. I have to quit procrastinating and delaying the inevitable - must.finish.work. On a Saturday night. Yipee.

Travelling through a writer's mind

2010-03-29T19:13:00.006-04:00

I am reading Ian Brown's book, The Boy In The Moon, for an advanced interviewing class we have at j-school. He's coming in two weeks and with three other people, our group is sitting down to an interview with him.

How do I ask a man who has a disabled child what he's going through?

Brown's prose is fluid; it's heartfelt, conversational and real. The emotions that run through the text make every other word jump off the page...I've kept my highlighter pen out to mark passages and I do this only to books that I love.

I have an immense respect for Mr. Brown; I imagine what I'm going to say, hopefully it's something that conveys what a pleasure and honour it is to meet him.

It's quite surreal. I'm at page 42 and already I've had that heart-sinking feeling, that feeling of caving in to cry that I am all too familiar with, four times. And that's in the midst of trying to understand the situations he describes, of living a life with Walker, his son diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disorder called CFC (Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome).

In the beginning of the book, Brown writes about his son's Filipina nanny, coping with endless human complexities and Edward Hopper - needless to say, I am hooked. I know that the short break I take to blog now will be one of few that I'll take as I read the book.

It amazes me, consistently, how good writers tell a story. Whether it's biographical or not, the clarity and honesty with which a story is told gives you an indication of how dedicated the writer is, and how far they're willing to go to expose themselves completely to the unyielding eye of a reader. It's a deep-rooted faith, I believe, this business of storytelling.

Voices From The Train

2010-03-27T19:10:00.002-04:00

I'm listening to a CBC Radio piece called Voices from the Train. (Have I mentioned how much I love that everything the CBC airs is available online?)

Host Micheal Enright did Voices on the Train while traveling on The Ocean, the train that crosses Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Voices was played on the Mar. 14 episode of The Sunday Edition, a weekly program on CBC Radio One.

I stop every other line typing, because I'm ridiculously into the interviews he's done. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO DO.

What I'm listening to now is an interview Enright does with a man named George Elliot Clark. He talks about how his strong connection to the railway is still an important thing to him, as an African Canadian in his 50s; about how his father worked for CN Rail in Nova Scotia and he was waved away on the train before heading off to college at the University of Waterloo. He talks about Canadian nationalism and Canada's future, as a writer and an Ontarian who sees the rail link as a vital part of Canada's growth.

This is amazing. You really need to listen to Enright's interviews; I know, I'll likely spend the next few days going through them!

Music

2010-03-25T23:38:00.003-04:00

I'm supposed to be writing a proper, journalistic blog post...I'm supposed to be writing two of them now and I was supposed to have posted them online six hours ago. But instead I feel compelled to share what I've been listening to over the past two hours.

Here's my play list:

Hale - Kung Wala Ka
Sugarfree - Burnout
True Faith - Perfect
True Faith - Alaala
Noel Cabangon - Kanlugan
The Teeth - Prinsesa
Imago - Sundo
Rivermaya - Ulan
Eraserheads - With A Smile
Side A - Forevermore
Wolfgang - Giyang (Razorback cover)

They're all OPM songs - Original (P)Filipino Music. Which it is, really. And even though only one of these songs actually came out when I was a teenager, I just like listening to them...I think they encapsulate what home means to me.

It's my perspective of home that's changed, too. I was on Youtube earlier trying in vain to remember the names of the bands that I liked growing up. Like others, I then realized that what I listened to between the ages of 12-16 was pretty much garbage. But I kind of liked these songs, a few way more than others, because they were just done the way songs are supposed to be done - with raw honesty, emotion and ability. The musicians who did these songs were themselves and nothing else.

In the craziness of life at j-school, I wanted to remember what that - being yourself - felt like.

Moderation

2010-03-11T17:56:00.002-05:00

Since my last post in January, things have been so hectic at j-school that blogging has taken a back seat. Although I do prefer earning a paycheque (or being in school en route to a hopefully decent paycheque), I kind of envy people who have the time to blog...the time and energy to get their thoughts down, organized in some way, to provide some form of guidance for the guileless reader who wanders over to said blog and your own self, as well.

In the past two months I have learned that:
-30 minutes is enough time to write a straightforward news story
-my ideas sometimes aren't that stupid and I really need to speak up during meetings
-I can learn to live with my awkward, Tagalog-tinged voice and survive through a radio broadcast class (quite fun!)
-flash is the saviour to indoor photography
-ten minutes of sleep between the Port Credit and Union GO train stations (on the Lakeshore West line) make a world of difference in the outcome of my day
-I still need to get a life.

Since I also last posted, I have been able to interview the guys from Departures twice!!

Life's pretty sweet in that regard. All I need now is to regularly send updates here to reiterate the fact that yes, I would still LOVE to hop on the trains eastbound this summer and I am still trying to find some form of identity, which at the moment, remains unidentifiable.

A worldwide perspective

2010-01-15T22:05:00.003-05:00

I'd like to think that one of the stronger points I bring to the table is the background that I have with hotels and travel and tourism. In a class discussion earlier, our instructor had everyone's post-secondary qualifications, interests and cultural backgrounds listed on the board. Quite a diverse list, which helped bring his point of wanting to start up a news site about Toronto's equally diverse communities (which I'll talk about at a later time, hopefully when the site gets running).

As I sat in my seat listening to my classmates' stories for the fifth time, I found it quite surprising that I felt the way I did. Surprisingly, still very much amazed at how a good mix of people has the potential to bring something great as an end result, and not surprisingly, still uneasy about having someone else talk about me.

That's the day-to-day bit of my piece tonight; what I really wanted to talk about was having a world wide, globe spanning view of travel. Or perhaps more specifically, I can talk about the plans that I want to make and some of the stuff that's been brewing in my head.

We already know that Nastasha wants to see and travel the world, and that she wants to start off in her backyard. Traveling around Canada excites me to no end, and honestly, cheesy as it sounds, it's just the prospect of seeing places and talking to people that gets me. Like in a perfect world I can imagine working for the CBC and being sent all around Canada covering small-town events, and maybe doing freelance work on the side for lighter feature stories where all I get to do is talk to interesting people and write articles and shoot pictures.

Once that gets done, going out to other countries and seeing more places would be ideal. I know this seems like a crazy, only if I won the lottery or married a rich man kind of idea, but with a lot of hard work I imagine that to at least be a plausible idea. Keeping in mind that I should likely utilize all the resources and contacts I possibly can, I can hook up with professionals in the hospitality industry and maybe start off from there. A logical thought is that because Filipinos are the most scattered bunch of them all (in terms of working overseas), the idea is that there is at least one (if not one hundred thousand) Filipinos working for any destination I can care to think of. At least one. And I even thought hey, should I blessed with enough video and audio talent I could even make a documentary! About how Filipinos work and live in so many varied places so remotely different from home; how their family structures change, values, traits, etc. I won't bother going further than that because that calls for a social studies person to step in, but because I want to focus on travel I had this idea of shooting, or doing a series of stories on, people (not necessarily in a single ethnic group; hotel workers for instance) and where they live. Just sort of showing the world about their world and what they have in their own backyard and how they enjoy life, spend free time.

I'm all over the place here and I apologize for that. Anyway, that's what I thought. More updates later.

A fascination with Atlantic Canada

2010-01-12T20:49:00.008-05:00

The first week of classes are, like many first things, quite awkward. Particularly if it's the 'second time' around, i.e. you're returning for another semester and you're not particularly sure what to expect. Are you going to run into the same problems as as before? Like a rekindled relationship, are you just as nervous starting over considering the same people are involved? Do you feel like never returning from vacation bliss?

Alright so I went overboard with the metaphors there. But that's what the first week back is shaping up to be for me; a little nerve-wracking, like it was in September, with the persistent reality creeping in that I have SO MUCH to learn about...about Canada, politics, history, the placement of a "u" in "favourite", etc. But because I am also somewhat of a wannabe nerd, it's exciting, and I catch myself smiling when I realize that I could potentially be sitting in a room six hours a day, listening to people talk. That might not be the case for hands-on journalism, but our short lectures are my form of university education, so I effectively have little to complain about.

So while we're all getting settled into the groove of deadlines and looming projects, I thought I might as well continue diverting attention away from school work and on to brighter thoughts of travel, and the possibility of traveling over the summer...in particular, this is what I'm hot for.

A map of The Ocean's route - the Montreal to Halifax train by Via Rail through Southeast Quebec, along the St. Lawrence River, to the Maritime provinces

I looked into the cities en route section of their site today and got excited with the idea of planning for this trip. I envisioned sitting down with the little traveler's journal that I bought and making a list of the train's designated stops. I'd decide which of those stops warrant a visit and have enough interesting things to see and do, maybe I could write articles for local papers and blogs and podcasts and so on. And I could have different running themes for articles throughout the trip, like a little grab bag for story ideas; write for a theatre company in this town, a hotel in another, a local fisherman in the next port town, an author who grew up along the coast, etc.

Should I have honed my journalistic skills well enough by then, that would be an amazing trip to take. Even though the amount of planning involved by such a potential trip is enough to scare my money back to its rightful place in my bank account, I get giddy thinking about having an itinerary planned out and preparations for transport and accommodations all set. Sweet! Plus, in the book How to Write Creative Non-fiction by Donna Kakonge (who also teaches at the college I attend) I found out that certain Canadian tax exemptions are available for travel writers. If, when you travel, your intent is to get the work resulting from your trip published, you qualify for a tax break regardless of whether your articles actually get published or not. I'll have to clear the specifics of this, but isn't that awesome?! Hooray Canada!

Quebec deserves its own entry, but primarily one reason for me wanting to head out East is in this blog entry's title. It's a fascination with Atlantic Canada.

Frankly I'm uncertain where this particular fascination stems from, of whether it's just me wanting to say I've visited both ends of the country (the East and West coasts) or whether it's something I unconsciously absorb from my father and his friends saying "One day, I'd like to take my family on a road trip out to where the cliffs end in Newfoundland and earth ends." And because nothing in that sentence makes sense (the phrase "family = endless road trip = earth ends" doesn't string together nicely, but works as an equation!), I think my brain has defaulted to thinking "must go on trip alone."

Oh, and there was something called scenery. I'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

There's fresh seafood (lobster included), the music (CBC's East Coast Sessions plays a huge part in this), the people, and what I generally perceive (hopefully rightly so) to be a more laid back, easy going pace to life enjoyed by the folks who live there that I see and hear about.

After taking a ferry and crossing through PEI, I'll find myself down at the docks in Cape Breton with this song by David Myles playing in the background. Like when the lead character in a movie looks out to the ocean, sombre, and he wishes his current dilemma to be taken away with the tide. It's cinematic bliss.

Why Departures is the best travel show there is

2010-01-09T00:23:00.016-05:00

I'm going to be highly biased in explaining why I think Departures is THE BEST TRAVEL SHOW ON TELEVISION. Not that it's restricted to being a travel show, which it is, primarily, but Departures is so much more. It's journey between friends, a reminder to live your life to the fullest, a reason for seeing the world and the people in it. It's just everything.

I don't fully remember when it was that I first started watching the show but it was back in Vancouver, about two years ago. I realized that I hadn't really seen too many episodes until I finally bought the Season 1 & 2 DVD set that I gave myself as a Christmas present. And I really don't know why I waited that long.

I'm three quarters through the first season, and watching the episodes in the proper order and in their entireity. And I guess it's sort of come at a good time too, with the three weeks that I had off school for the holiday break.

If you have never seen this show, I strongly urge you to log onto OLN and find out when the next episode airs next. The first two seasons are on at least every other day now, with the third season premiering in March 2010. Here's a clip of the opening sequence too just to get a glimpse of what the show's got in store.

Departures is a great way to see the world, and it doesn't matter whether you're nothing more than an armchair traveler (like me) or a seasoned travel buff with more than a dozen stamps on your passport. The cinematography is stunning, breathtaking, and inspiring; this is all thanks to Andre Dupuis. I knew this about Departures, that the photography and the scenes shot were just absolutely beautiful, and from another blog post I read about how Dupuis' camerawork took hold of so many people that he now has a Facebook group entitled The Andre Dupuis Fan Club. If you ever read this, Andre, you are AMAZING. I wish I had bigger type to set that font in because I'd make those uppercase letters reach the fuckin' roof! He is a cinematographic genius, and something else that I've found I enjoy while watching the show is trying to guess where Andre's standing (or kneeling) in order to get that shot. The scenery is spectacular and the epic editing and post-production with the music (also a highly recommended download from iTunes!) makes for an incredible viewing experience.

Departures has been to places like Jordan, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Libya, and across Canada. Much more info on the show's destinations can be found here. The show's two on-camera travelers, Scott Wilson and Justin Lukach, are in a class all their own.

Before I continue on being a walking ad campaign for the show (which I wouldn't mind at all!) I will say this: Departures has changed certain ways in which I see the world, which I guess is the point of shows like this in the first place. Even if I haven't been out as much as I'd like to, I'm certainly geared up for it, and I can't freaking wait for the day my Canadian passport allows me to travel places without needing an extra visa.

I think it's partly why I'm highly psyched and just so into the idea of traveling. A certain part of me doesn't want to get too excited, because it's the part of my brain that says in a sing song puppet voice "You need to be realistic, this isn't really logical, everyone else works hard around you and all you want to do is escape and leave. You need a paycheque, the immigrant's dream does not include going broke over adventure tours and you really don't want to rub it into your family's faces that you have all this time and money to blow traveling around the world because you want to."

But at the same time, I can't really deny the fact that I am just itching to get out there, particularly because it was a long shot dream of mine in the first place anyway, even when I lived back home in the Philippines! Only when I watched travel shows on the Discovery Channel there, I visualized visiting those places as a Globe Trekker host, something I scored through some awesome fictional internship that was the job of my dreams. (And just for the record, I'm not giving up hope on that far-off dream either.)

Anyway. I just thought that travel would seem fitting for me, knowing that I'm used to packing up and moving around.

The Ascension Island episode on Season 1 was particularly memorable (spoiler alert follows). One of the reasons that episode is a fan favourite is because it relates to so many of us on a human level in that it dealt with isolation. In the episode they're on a remote island in the Pacific ocean only reachable by military plane, there's only one internet station, one bank, and establishments open and close at different times each day. Justin goes through some personal problems with his girlfriend, and just the time the boys spent alone on the island presented so many opportunities to reflect on what their travels have meant so far.

Isolation is something I've dealt with in the past, on too many occasions to count that I could even venture to say it's a feeling that stays with me. It's something that has become a regular fleeting feeling, familiar to the point where it doesn't surprise me when I start to recognize its presence. That's also thankfully the key though, that it's "fleeting". Like many other things, I can squint my eyes and sit through the uneasiness, and find something nicer at the other end. The hallowing feeling passes.

It's going to take me awhile to do this. For now, at least I've covered some of my reasons for staying up way too late to watch my favourite show. :)

There is always someone awake, somewhere in the world

2010-01-04T03:44:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons I fear having designated time off is the fact that I slip into this: being fully, wide awake at three in the morning, more alert and conscious than I'll ever be at any time during the sunlit day. I am truly a nighthawk.

Time off school or work has meant me preferring to sleep in, and get most of my 'work' done in the early hours of the morning; in true writer's style, it might seem to some, although for the most part I have also come to realize what a waste this makes of my day.

I have been browsing through endless travel sites and blogs and writer's resources the past couple nights and have found that I do quite enjoy it, to see what people in the blogosphere read and give a shit about. You could potentially be the bulk of where my paycheque comes from, after all.

And what I wanted to get at was that, in spite of being fully able to leave in the middle of the day and pretty much roam Toronto as I please, being an armchair traveler (or in this case, a laptop-wielding aspiring travel blogger) seems to appeal to me quite strongly. There's something about reading about a place, seeing pictures of a beach where there's no one around at three a.m. that comforts me and tells me "Hey you'll be fine, you can't do anything about it now because it's four a.m. but save the traveling for another day". Which is ample excuse for me, in that present time, to be alright with being stuck at home.

Triggers to memory

2009-12-26T01:08:00.005-05:00

You know how they say that scent is the most powerful trigger to memory?

Songs are the equivalent to that for me. And I assume for a good number of people out there too. It's like you're transported right back to a certain time and place whenever you hear this one particular song, and it doesn't matter where you currently are; if it's a sad song that reminds you of a break up, no matter how happy everyone is around you, the possibility of suddenly bursting into tears seems very real.

It's the day after Christmas and no, I won't go on about some lost love of mine (particularly because I have none) but the song that does come closest to making me break down every time is the song "Kung OK Lang Sa 'Yo" by a band from Manila called True Faith. It's a great song, basically about a guy trying to serenade a girl he's in love with. But it's the melody, and just the vocals of this song that bring me back home every single time...and with other folks who have been transplanted from wherever they're originally from, I'm sure this rings a bell.

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On to Christmas, which for various reasons can sometimes be that sad elephant in the corner of a room. I will not go on about missing Christmas back home, as I'm sure a lot of other bloggers away from their own homes are doing, and I will not express sadness, disappointment or anger towards the fact that I in all good honesty want to cry for missing friends and family. Yesterday I came to the resolve that the best way to get through the holidays was to find something to pre-occupy myself with until the general season of Christmas and New Year's have passed. I have quite a number of issues that all relate to me still trying to find my place in the general scheme of things (at home, in school, amongst the migrant population) but what I frankly find most aggravating, and what I would sincerely most like to change, is how I act like such a douche at home. Trust me, living with me isn't the easiest thing in the world, and it's not because I shout or throw stuff or do anything outwardly embarrassing. It's the stuff that goes unsaid, and my predilection for keeping everything I want to say bottled up until I can't stand being in the same room with other members of my family for more than five minutes, that makes me highly revere the amount of tolerance my parents have for me...not that I'm a teenager, I'm 22, but still.

Sorry for the outburst / excessively long rant. I know I wanted to keep this blog about travels, my travels, but like they say, you can't move forward without looking to your past. Or so some old Filipino saying goes.

Sitting in a coffee shop

2009-12-23T17:04:00.003-05:00

I have fallen into one of the traps of those writers who leave their homes to escape the rambling noise the accompanies living with children. I find that I prefer the half-solitude of sitting in a Starbucks, typing away.

I've been thinking about the things that I want to write about. Travel, for one, and my incessant, innate desire to get out of here, not that the 'here' is all that unfavourable. It is, and I live a fairly good life, but like people who have ADHD or are just generally very antsy, I seem to look forward to the idea of escape fairly often.

It would be nice to write about my adventures, or mis-adventures, going to places I know little to nothing about. They don't necessarily have to be far places, just places that are new to me, and considering that I am a fair newcomer to Toronto, there might be a good amount of those untraveled spots I could write about. Maybe downtown Oakville, a good 10 minutes away from where I am now; where, on a good clear day, you can see the skyline of downtown Toronto pretty well and from a sideways perspective that accompanies how people living in a suburb see the downtown city centres.

When we first moved here, a year and a half ago, one of the first places we went to was Coronation Park along Bronte Road. A beautiful place, and different enough from the seaside of Vancouver that I very much appreciated the quiet of a smaller (-ish) town where people generally practiced a slower pace of life. We brought out a grill (this was in the summer) and my sisters spent the afternoon and early evening chasing around ducks. I tried with my Russian-made film camera, in vain, to get a semi-decent picture of the distant skyline. I vowed to work, or at least study, in the midst of all that busyness.

Lake Ontario is beautiful from that vantage point, with the numerous sailboats anchored to dock and some heading away into a cool August night. I loved the fact that people could just sail away with ease as they pleased; certainly not in my demographic, but watching from a distance brings you close enough to the reality of being at a lakeside dock and enjoying the scenery.

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I was close to my 22nd birthday at that point, and just as anxious as ever to get on with my life. Should I never get onto a yacht, I could at least say that I got close enough to them to take an up-close photo of their sails billowing in the wind.

Intro

2009-12-21T01:51:00.003-05:00

Hi,

I'm Natasha. Well, Nastasha if you go by what's on my licence, even if I don't drive.

I am a post graduate journalism student entering my second semester by winter 2010. I am an intrepid, wannabe traveler.

I live in Oakville, Ontario, and make my daily commute into Toronto just to make life easier. I lived in Vancouver for a year, and before that called Manila (capital city of the Philippines) home for 19 years.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's not all that interesting. I thought my moving around would sound more exotic, but seeing it onscreen, I'm doubtful. Maybe if I share a few things it'll sound a bit more interesting. But for now, all I can say is that I would LOVE to have as many chances as I can get to travel, and it doesn't matter where. You can send me to Kingston (with the highest concentration of federal penitentiaries in Canada), to London (I don't even know a whole lot about London except that it snows, a lot) or to whatever other corner of Ontario you can think of. Give me a reason to go someplace, and I'm there.

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I thought about the various reasons that I wanted to start this blog. Maybe it would help to outline them, for myself and my future, hapless readers as well (pardon the hostility).

1: I need to figure things out for myself, while being completely honest about what I think and conversely, what I say out loud. Being uprooted from something you are comfortably familiar with and then being dropped into a different reality is hard, although I'm coming to terms with not feeling too bad about it.

2: In that phase of self-discovery that I hope to get to someday, I think travel is an excellent example of how to best describe it; with traveling you're never alone, seldom the outcast, still bumbling around and being forgiven for it. It's like that metaphor for a dark room and bumping into things...well, I forget what the rest of that saying is, but what I mean is that when you travel, you're given ample room to be awestruck, and it's ok to blatantly admire things. Living in a city and trying to be a 'resident' of it, sometimes you don't get that luxury.

3: I want to take beautiful pictures of beautiful places.

4: I want to meet people. All kinds of weird, wonderful people. People fascinate me, and although yes it is very strange and odd that I converse better with people who aren't in my age group...I just gravitate towards them. I'm too formal sometimes, and it's a direct effect to being trained to be polite and friendly in a hotel setting. And yes, that is my current line of work (apart from longing to be a writer).

5: I kind of want to disassociate myself from certain things. Traits, values, and bad habits, such as always leaving things to be done til the last minute, or never leaving an extra second before my train leaves for the city in morning. It's horrible, and I know that I will be getting slack for turning my back on 'traditions' and culural references...but that, like I said, I'm still figuring things out for myself.