Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Walkin' downtown

This was an awesome warm weekend and of course, I wanted to spend it outside.


I haven't been downtown for a while and I really wanted to take a serious walk and get out for a whole day. Since I have a guest here (her majesty, Ana Flo), we decided to use this nice weather and go somewhere I usually wouldn't go alone.


I wanted to go apple picking, but Ana didn't feel like it. So we agreed upon spending some time in High Park and some time downtown. I haven't been downtown for a while so we were curious at what's there to see.


Turned out, there's plenty to see, especially if you're bored and yearning for a little city hype.

I wanted to visit Brookfield Place to see a World Press Photo Exhibition, so we headed there first.


Some nice, some interesting but mostly sad stories told thru photographs by award winning artists and photojournalists made a strong impression on both of us. I recommend to go and see for yourselves.


We took a walk towards the lake and on our way there we stopped at Union Station - the place I've seen only from the outside until now, so we decided to walk in and take a peek at what's in there.







Outside, hungry pigeons chilled on the Union Station sign.



Soon enough we found ourselves by the lake and enjoyed the sun and warm breeze.



We entered the Power Plant gallery where we took a look at three standing exhibitions, but I was most impressed by "Black Cloud", an installation by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales. 30000 black moths cut out of paper and placed on the walls of the gallery made a splendid view.








More about him and his moths you can find here











After coming back towards Eaton Center and a huge meal, we needed a break so we had a coffee on Nathan Phillips Square. Plenty of people was there, despite being the Thanksgivings day, and they laughed, took pictures by the Toronto letters, posing for selfies, smiling, chattering and enjoying a beautiful afternoon. I do love to look at people sometimes. When they're happy.



We spend some time in High Park (as if that was a fair alternative to apple picking), but it was nice. Crowded, but nice. We barely found a parking spot after a while of driving around, just before we almost gave up. I swear, half of Toronto was there that afternoon.







We even made it to the Cherry beach.

It was a good weekend. I hope this weather will last.

I want to make an apple pie, so I still have to go apple picking...

Instagram









Saturday, 18 April 2015

Girl from far away land - Anamarija

Here's the thing: all important females in my life are called Ana.
She's one of them.

We back then
She's one of those people you meet and never let go. And she sticks around, even if you're stupid sometimes. She's the one that comforts in hard times and the one that laughs with you in good times.

You know when you talk to somebody and you're trying to remember a certain detail from the past, like what date that was or how were you dressed, and you can't?
Or if you're missing a paper, a document, a password?

You should ask Ana. She will know exactly what happened, where and how, or where did you put the thing you're looking for ten years ago.

Our home far away

Even if she wasn't there, she will remember. She will know what happened that day, back then in my high school, cause she heard it once from someone and she engraved it in her brain.

She's like a walking encyclopedia of past. She's our official life log.

(There was one time she made a mistake, hint: Billa). But let's not get down that road now.

Back then, when we used to live together, Ana was the responsible one. She was the voice of reason and moral, and she used to take care of Gian and me, in our glorious times of fun and recklessness. (She was also the one who couldn't study because Gian and I switched the power off.
We weren't exactly the  most empathetic sometimes.)

But let's face it - she thought us a lot. She survived with us, and she led us on a better path.

She is very committed - once she begins something, she doesn't stop until she's finished. She read a Dan Brown's book in 24 hours with no pause, and when she starts the video game, she has to finish it at once.

Playing the endless game and reading even when we're out

She spent endless hours on a crappy computer we had back then, playing The Sims (unfortunately one of the games that has no end) and it took a while for us to get her off of it. Any other game where the end can be reached, she will finish it within the next 3 days. And I was the one who was addicted to games, not her.

Sometimes she gets crazy
We did had some issues, though.

Once, I offended her deathly by saying she can't cook an egg (she was the only one who was cooking when we lived together).

She thinks life's too short to see the same movie twice, and I couldn't agree less.

She never really understood "A Clockwork Orange" and we endlessly fought about whether the movie is worthless (her point) or fabulously extraordinary (my point).

She never crosses the street on red light, no matter how small and irrelevant the street is, with no traffic, so I often continue walking, talking to myself like some weirdo, to realize later she's still on that side of the street, waiting for the green light.

She's the one that said, after watching "50 Shades of Grey" that the movie is good, only that they blew it up with that Playroom, and then offered a solution where they should have get married and redecorate the room to be a nursery.

She can drink one bear for an hour, and after 3 of them she's already wasted, but she doesn't give up. And that's still more than I can drink. We did have some drunk times though. Some were polite and fun, and some were just fun. We used to waste bottles and bottles of wine, home alone, and we needed nobody (those were the times when Gian didn't live with us anymore - otherwise, he would be very present).

Without any comment
Generally, we couldn't be more different. She's a private person, she drinks almond milk and she wears Tom Tailor. She is very analytic and careful, she re-thinks, double checks and stores all important papers in files. She made a big fuss one time in a certain bank, because they wanted to charge her something and she found a mistake on the paper she got from them like 10 years ago, in a different city. Once she's done with somebody, she deletes all the contacts. She is super romantic, but principled and determine.  Nobody wants to mess with her.

Who's who?

I don't even know how we got along in the first place. But I guess we do share the same values and eventually we figured that out.

There was this seminar few years back, where we were learning something about management and how people work - and the teacher made us answer pile of questions, after which he made an assessment of us (there was 10 of us or so). Basically, while all the others were somewhere in the golden middle (which is normal), only the two of us were in the extreme areas.


Below's how that looked.



We're like heaven and hell, yin and yang, black and white cookie. We have the balance.

I proposed a marriage to her once, but she refused. I had this idea where we could be married (not in a lesbian way, more like a friendly community), we could adopt some kids and we could have lovers aside. She somehow thought that this might be an unhealthy environment for everybody. I'm still processing that and hoping that one day she might see the obvious advantages of my plan.

I love her - because she's kind, polite, bold and fearless. There is nothing in this world that she can't do (except cross the street on a red light).

Like when she said, let's go to Canada, and she just left. We left.

So I'm here now, and she's not.

And all I can say is - come back! Miss you.
















From Toronto with love,

Giove


Thursday, 9 April 2015

Back then: Mr. Gianfranco Diesel

No, he's not an Italian fashion designer. Just sounds like that. 


I'd say he's just a friend, but he's actually a lot more.

Natural position
I cannot even begin to explain how SPECIAL that person is. I can't stress enough the IMPORTANCE of his existence, and how lucky I am to have met him. He's fancy, Fior del Fiore, cream of society.


We all have that friend who gets all of your dirty laundry and puts it into the washing machine to the highest program possible, only to find out later that your cashmere sweaters are shrunk, faded and colored.

Or the one that you can laugh with for hours, for no special reason.

We

Or the one who cleans the bathroom in a way that he takes EVERYTHING out, closes the doors and shower the whole room, flooding the floor on purpose, and then drying it with clean towels, by foot.


Or the one who, in the middle of the winter, on -5C,  leaves ALL of the windows open, for the WHOLE DAY while we're out, just to get some air. And you find it out when you enter into the coldest apartment ever.



He is the one who eats mayonnaise, butter and peach marmalade on the same loaf of bread.

Not his

He's the one who wished he was adopted and that his real parents are wealthy and rich and once when he finds them, they would love him and they would buy him lots of expensive cars and a boat.

He's the one who, while standing in the bank, pretends to talk to me like a wealthy, "yacht owner" gentlemen, to fool others in the queue, only to get embarrassed when the clerk loudly states that he has $12 on his bank account.

He's also the one who will wait for humid days to wash 3-4 machines of laundry one after another, with no place to hang the clothes, and we didn't have a dryer. The sheets were all over the place, including the balcony, and they would never dry out because of the humidity, very common thing on Croatian coastline, when Jugo starts to blow. When they finally dry, they smell like wet dog's hair, and as a result, he washes them again.

Naphthalene ball

He's the one who will bring naphthalene balls to the class and secretly put it into people's pockets.

He's the one who puts an ad on your behalf, about how you're collecting kittens of different breeds or how you provide escort services.

Regardless of everything stated above, I was inspired to write this post after he told me he was going to put a tattoo of a dollar bill with his face on it, and the king's crown, on the middle of his back. That's where I got worried.

 I'll have to summon some close friends and organize an intervention.

Overall, he's the coolest person ever. We had some great times, and the years we lived together were awesome.

Lazy Dalmatian - Wannabe Big House Tough Guy - Way of cooling down

He was my jogging partner. One time, we laughed the whole 5 kilometers of the run, not knowing why we're laughing. The best training ever, try it out. Your abs will hurt the next five days.

Once we walked for 20 kilometers to another city, just for fun, so that we wouldn't take the bus.

We used to do all kinds of pranks to our friends, including, but not limiting to, ringing the buzzers and then run away, switch off the power so that our roommate couldn't study for the exams, embarrassing people around us on public places,  teasing, stalking, following and lots more.

Lots of times we just wasted the day doing nothing.

That was the age of fun. We were broke, but happy. Careless and young.

We 
Now, we're far away from each other, each living our own life. We both have fun in different ways now, we're older, more responsible and wondering about the future. Nothing like before.

This post now got a nostalgic note - what I didn't originally wanted - but thinking about that stage of our life brings back feelings and memories I can't fight.

Gian, this was for you. You're a LOT older now and with lot less hair :) but you're still special.

From Toronto with love,

Giove