Canada Fall '24 - Ep 03 - Watching Them Argue About Real Estate
First Morning in Toronto
After 11-hour of good night sleep and two hours of rolling around in Juli’s comfortable bed after I woke up, I finally dragged myself out of bed in search for food. It’s past 1 pm and my stomach was starting to grumble in protest, demanding to be filled since my last meal was only half a cup of Machi Machi’s black milk tea from yesterday afternoon.
Apparently, Juli hasn’t had her lunch yet either so she heated up the leftover food from yesterday’s lunch for us to eat (which also reminded me that food portion here in North America is huge).
“Do you want soy sauce for the seafood pancake?” She asked while pulling out a large ziplock bags filled with single packaged condiments from one of the kitchen cabinets.
I was shocked looking at the bulging clear plastic bag she’s holding and how many condiments it holds.
“What is inside this thing?” I asked while laughing at the slightly absurd view in front of me because I don’t think any one person needs this many packaged condiments in her house.
She smiled and while digging through the pile to find a package labeled with ‘Soy Sauce’ she said, “I know right? It’s crazy how many I got and I don’t even know when all these are expired.”
“Are you collecting these ma’am?” I teased because her hobby of collecting things seems to extend from toys to packaged condiments.
“Tell me about it. And I don’t even use these. I have high blood pressure so I don’t eat soy sauce.”
“But you keep them?” I asked curious.
“Yes, cause it’s a waste to throw them away,” she said with a concerned face, making me laughed even more.
“So Asian man.” I teased as she put the ziplock back to the kitchen cabinet after pulling one of the soy sauce out for me to use.
Half an hour later, we finished our lunch and both of our stomach were full and stuffed. Juli went back to work while I went to shower and freshened up myself.
A Walk in the Park
Later that afternoon after Juli is finished with work, she suggested that we go for an afternoon walk since the weather was really nice. We left the house around 5:30 with Tom—Juli’s boyfriend—who joined us and drove us to the park.
The 19°C weather was a nice welcomed change from Jakarta’s constant hot 33°C+ weather. I was still able to walk around outside without wearing a jacket on, enjoying the cool breezy temperature without getting sweaty or feeling cold. A rare occurrence since I rarely travel during in-between season.
After 30 minutes of Tom weaving through Toronto’s afternoon rush hour traffic, we found ourselves at Sherwood Park. It’s a large family and pets friendly wooded park in midtown Toronto with walking/running trails, picnic area, large playground, wading pools and a fenced off dogs off-leash area. It looked like a beautiful park with plenty of area to walk around in.
Finding myself hanging out with Juli on a weekday when the sun’s still out without the sight of her glued to her phone was a pleasant surprise. It did feel a bit foreign to me since our hangouts usually involved her checking her work phone every so often to reply to work-related messages. So it was really nice seeing her having a normal afternoon after work for the first time.
Honestly, I was keeping my expectation low for this trip given what happened during our Disneyland trip (read about it on Ep. 02 post). I didn’t exactly know how busy her new job is so my plan was to just go with whatever is more convenient for her schedule. But turned out, this trip started with a bit of an unexpected surprise seeing how she actually clocked off at the end of a normal business hour.
Another (totally unrelated) unexpected surprise that I got this afternoon was the inclines that were present on the route Juli and Tom took me to. What I thought was going to be a relaxing afternoon stroll in the (flat terrain of the) park turned into some sort of a hiking session (at least according to my own definition of hiking. It might not be for everybody else who’s more in shape than me I think). It wasn’t that bad, but it was a bit of a hike up and down hilly terrains and stairs. Juli told me that if we were to come during peak autumn, the view is supposedly really pretty. But since it’s not peak autumn yet, most of the leaves were still green.
Real Estate Talk
After we got to one end of the park, we decided to take another route back to where we parked. Mainly because Juli wanted to show me what she called the rich people’s neighborhood around the park (and not because I was scared of the climb up back to where we started as she said in the vlog). So our afternoon stroll in the park turned into a before sunset stroll in the rich people neighborhood.
Yesterday, I was listening to her telling me all about her favorite Pop Mart and Labubu collections. Today, I was listening to her telling me all about her preferences in real estate while looking at the nice residences we passed by along our walk. She told me about which type of houses she likes and dislikes and which type of houses she wish she could buy in the future. And honestly, with the amount of hard work and ambitions that she has, I wholeheartedly believe she probably could own one someday.
“If you ended up buying one of these houses, I think a Mercedes-Benz is a requirement,” I said after noticing the type of car parked in front of the third house she pointed out as the type that she likes.
“Why?” She asked confused.
“Didn’t you noticed that all the houses you pointed to have at least one Mercedes-Benz in their front yard? At this point, it just looked like a requirement to me,” I shared my observation with her. “Look, another one,” I said pointing at the German luxury car in front of a house with her preferred look and style.
She just laughed and shook her head. “Nah. I won’t get one. Car is a depreciating asset and I don’t even drive.”
“That’s exactly what my cousins said!” I said surprised. A couple of my cousins told me that car is a depreciating asset when we were talking about asset and investments and that’s why they never really feel the need to upgrade or buy another car as long as their current ones are still useable. It’s funny how they have the same view on the subject.
At some point, Juli and Tom had a little disagreement on which area should be included in the rich-people-neighborhood list (and I was just standing in between the two, listening to them arguing back and forth). Tom seemed to think that the area we were in is not part of the list while Juli think it is. In the end, they still disagreed with each other on this particular area but both agreed that Bridle Path, a neighborhood a couple of blocks north of where we were, is definitely part of the list.
“We’re talking about homes that are worth $26 million,” Tom informed me on the housing price of the said most affluent and prestigious neighborhood in Canada.
“You know Drake? The singer Drake? He has a mansion in the Bridle Path neighborhood,” Juli added excitedly.
Thai for Dinner
We finally made it back to the main road where we started right during sunset and just in time for dinner. The walk we did in the past hour seemed to have burnt a lot of our energy because all of us were starting to get hungry. Juli asked Tom if he prefer Italian or Thai for dinner and surprisingly, Tom chose Thai. And so we went to their favorite Thai spot around the area, PAI (see full review and more photos on this post).
The place was pretty busy when we got there. But fortunately, there were tables available for people who did walk-ins like us. The host led us into the dining area where a lot of yellow lantern-like lamps are hanging from the high ceiling (which immediately reminded me of the lantern scene in Tangled, but maybe not as romantic considering we’re inside of a casual Thai restaurant) and we got seated immediately.
The energy was high inside the dining room. Chatters were heard from different tables with patrons half-shouting to their dinner companions trying to talk over the loud upbeat live music playing in the background. It was a fun atmosphere if you like this kind of vibe like my friends do. For me though, it was fun, but the place was a bit too loud, especially because we were trying to talk to each other during dinner. I was tired from shouting over the music by the time we finished our meal. I think I’d enjoy it more if we came her to just get a drink, listen to music and wind down.
Dinner was nice. I really liked the spring roll we ordered for the appetizer. The Pad Thai and Pad See Ew me and Juli ordered were also good. But I personally think that the flavor profiles were a bit different than the ones I usually have in Asia. Understandable though since they probably adjust the flavors to cater to the local market.
Juli told me her favorite menu, the Pad See Ew, is the closest thing she can get to an Indonesian Kway Teow in Toronto because there seemed to be no good Indonesian restaurant in the city. And I can totally see what she’s saying. The food is definitely good enough to satisfy your cravings when you’re missing a little taste of home.
MILK TEA RUN
After dinner, we went across the street to Coco because I wanted to get a Jasmine Milk Tea to bring home. Random TMI about Coco, I was introduced to Coco by Davina when I was visiting her in NYC. Since then, every time I see Coco, it would reminded me of her. They really do have great milk teas though. My go-to is the basic Jasmine Milk Tea. An 8.5/10.
With my Jasmine Milk Tea safely tucked inside Juli’s take away paper bag from PAI (once again, we didn’t finish our food since the portion was pretty big for us so we took home the leftovers), we made our way to the car to head back home. After 11,308 steps (6.3 km) of walking today, it’s a wrap for my second day in Toronto.
