shaver

We got up early today, and had a mediocre breakfast at the hotel restaurant, while poring over the classifieds. In absolute terms, I’m sure the Toronto rental market is considered pretty tight, but compared to the last time we tried this — spring of 1999 — it’s a dream. We found and called about a half-dozen promising ads, but only ended up with two appointments (a 3-bedroom house near the Eglinton West subway station, and a 2-bedroom condo for rent in the Annex that we’ll see Sunday). Maybe more people will call back later. That would be awfully nice.

The place near Eglinton West station was OK, but not OK enough to overcome the run-down feeling of that stretch of Eglinton, so we gave it a pass. Madhava knows an awful lot about this city, and having him around makes this process much more pleasant and entertaining. Everyone should go find themselves a Madhava at once.

We met up with Kristin and Mike and Alasdair for some nachos and drinks and chatter, and eventually solidified a movie plan. Tyla had been making various “we’ll call you” promises all day, and I wasn’t really able to keep track of the details, so she was in charge of wrangling everyone over to the Varsity. While we were eating — and, indeed, throughout most of the preceding afternoon — we were treated to a prolonged display of patriotic soccer-honking. It was nice to see the various country-cliques play nice together, and nothing more aggressive than back-and-forth horn volleys resulted.

Minority Report was pretty good, though I agree with the reviewer in Eye who said the “ending” at 130 minutes would have made a much better finale. The last 20 minutes didn’t really improve the film much, though I suppose they did tidy up some bits that were only tangentially addressed. Based on some comments that Aven overheard as we were leaving the theatre, that might in fact have been for the best. On the (short) walk from the theatre back to the hotel we got to see an impromptu parade of Turkish flags and related cheering, again quite civil and friendly. I do so love Toronto.