I walked home in the humid night tonight and was overcome by a sort of quiet contentment. I realised in that moment, that despite the few things I complain about in this city, I am really happy with how things have turned out for me here. Toronto has welcomed me into its arms, introducing me to all it's different neighbourhoods and a few subcultures as well. It's hum sings me to sleep at night and it's what keeps me going during the day. The people have been, on the whole, both pleasant and inclusive, and I find that even in the right light, the sidewalks are pretty... you only have to look to see it.

Toronto is not home, but as a guest in its halls, I have come to feel like family.

It's taken me a few weeks to get into words the reasons around my leaving the company that has helped me grow over the last two and a half years, but I think I've finally managed to get it.

If you look at it all in the right light, there are really only three machines in the world: One that works to make the world better, another to make it worse, and a third that is essentially neutral. I'd always known that in working for an advertising company I was not a cog in the Good machine, probably not even the Neutral one -- but despite all that is wrong with advertising, I never felt that my company was playing an important role in the Bad machine... That is, I felt this way until I discovered we were running recruitment ad campaigns for the U.S. Navy.

At this point, my employer showed me and the rest of the world that it was willing to be a "greater cog" in the machine that is working in opposition to the forces that try to do Good in the world and that was something I couldn't be a part of. You can help recruit people to kill other people in an illegal war, but I won't help you do it. And so, I gave my resignation today.

I've accepted a job at a larger company which, to the best of my own research is playing an active role in either the Neutral or Good machines and better yet, they're offering me a great opportunity to learn a lot of interesting things. It's been a wonderful two and a half years here, but on a matter of principle, my choice was clear.

As fate would have it, my birthday fell on Pride here in Toronto this year, and so Paula and I ventured out to Yonge & Bloor to see the show... It wasn't great this year (not as outrageous as last year) but still generally enjoyable. I even saw Corinne in the show, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, I took a great many pictures, sifted out the bad ones and placed everything that was left here for those who are interested.

I got this from my dear old friend Shawna just now, and it sums up the perfect Happy Birthday wish. (Hope she doesn't mind me posting it here):

Dear Dan,

Well your 27th birthday has come round and do you realize you're only one year away from your high school 10 year reunion, 3 years from 30 and 9 years past your supposed sexual peak? hehe... I've always been the best at making people feel good about themselves eh?

Well, I have to say you've done many things in your 27 short years...I talk about you a lot to my friends, about your hard work and passion for saving the world, the environment and saving stupid people from ignorance. :)

Well I hope you have an amazing birthday and don't think about the aging thing too much. You know the expression- you're only as young as you feel and you've been old since high school! :)

Otherwise, I'm thinking about you today and although I'm not sure the next time I see you, I'll be looking forward to it.

Oh ya, and don't drink too much tonight, it's a school night :)

Love ya dude,
PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I love you too Shawna. Thanks for the great card.

I had a lovely time last night. For the first time since I left B.C. I've had what I'd come to feel was a "traditional birthday party". There were no hats and cake, no, by "traditional" I'm referring to the way I used to host parties when I lived back home. I'd invite friends from all my different groups together and see how they all interact. The whole evening ends up being a sort of meeting of minds with all the people I care about. Taavi talked Linux with Lara's new boyfriend Nick, Melanie had brought a friend and chatting with Andrea and Paula about sex toys, Tan & Aaron showed up and met with Robin and Melissa for the first time since our collective exodus from Vancouver and everyone seemed be having a good time. I ate fries and shmoozed with friends and even did a few shots of something called a "Crispy Crunch"... It was tasty!

The only thing I regret from last night was that I was a complete fucking moron and forgot Melanie's card at the restaurant. When I got home @1:30 I realised that I didn't have it and checked with Taavi to see if he'd recovered it... sure enough no. I then called 411 and then C'est What to find that they had found it and would hold it for me today... so that's one of our destinations for the day. I will have to appologise to Melanie personally later.

So now that Paula's here, we're going to wander the city and see whatever there is to see for tourists here. The plan at the moment is to do the Danforth, C'est What, then Casa Loma, then a rooftop party hosted by some coworkers in honour of our 3 birthdays. Should be a fun day.

I'm drowning in unread or un-replied emails today. It's the result of just too much happening these past few days and to those of you who have been wondering if I've dropped off the face of the Earth, I just wanted to assure you that this is not the case. Hopefully, things will calm down some after this weekend because I'm expecting quite the storm in a few more weeks and could use the rest.

I just saw a brilliant piece on throwawayyourtv.com called Bullshit: Creationism. In Penn's words, it's a biased, but fair look at the "debate" surrounding the wingnuts trying to force "Intelligent Design" to be taught in schools.

The site itself looks kinda neat too, though I just discovered it today. I encourage a peek if you have a few minutes.

An interesting thing started popping up in my server logs the other day... referral links were coming from Torontoist. Now, for those of you who don't know, Torontoist is a pretty big site with lots of new information about the city every day that covers all sorts of issues like public space, transit, civil politics, and cycling etc. Why or how they got a hold of my URL is beyond me, but I'm honoured to take up the bit of space in their side panel :-)

One of my employer's longest-running staff members got poached by Yahoo this month and to celebrate, we threw her a going away party. It was the first shindig that my social committee got to work on and thanks to Reeshma's organisational kung-foo and the rest of the groups knowledge of nice patios in Toronto, we were able to throw a pretty impressive bash as a send off (course the Brass' budget was a nice springboard for the event).

I spent much of the night doing what I do best at these things: taking pictures of other people, so I can stay firmly behind the camera. There were a few pics taken of me with my camera though, so if you're interested, they can be found in my imager here. Note however that company policy dictates that I can't have coworkers posted here publically, so you'll have to log in if you wanna see. ...and you do wanna see. There's a fun set in there with me and Markus ;-)

Additionally, a big thanks goes to Colin, who rescued me from my stupidity when I accidentally blew away all the pictures off my camera card before putting them into my imager. He had the right software available to recover all of the pictures from the card without any corruption. Thanks Colin!

I'm hoping that Shawna or Emily-Jane can correct the spelling of the title here.

My day started out simple. I woke up earlier than usual and headed down the Danforth to grab some brunch and buy some sponges so I could get to work cleaning my apartment. However, as it was Greek town, nearly every patio was alive with patrons watching the World Cup game, and on the field was France and South Korea.

Now I'm a Korea fan, not only because I miss my friends who have moved there, but I just like the people. Koreans are so damn friendly and they're the only Asian country that makes food that I can eat. France on the other hand... I just don't have the same enthusiasm.

The problem in my case however was the fact that the majority of people on the Danforth seemed to be rooting for France which was no fun for me. So what do you when you live in Toronto and want to find a Korea-friendly bar? You hop on the subway and ride to Christie station to be innundated with cheering fans and Korean flags.

Korea town exists roughly on Bloor street between Christie and Bathurst and during halftime, the fans were out in force. There were flags, cheering, drumming and dancing in the streets... and Korea was down 1-0 at this point. I found a patio that seemed to be friendly to outsiders just hanging around watching the game and stood there for the remainder of the game while everyone, myself included, gasped and cheered with Korea's trials. One enthusiastic group had brought along a snare drum and every time their star player graced the screen, he'd hit it in sequence while the whole bar cheered: "Dae Han Min Guk!"

And then, with about 10min left in the game, Korea scored and tied it up. ...Everyone screamed until they were hoarse.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie, but as I understand it, France has been doing so poorly that this is still good news for Korea. I'll have to watch the schedule for when they're playing again.