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| courtesy of drum 118 at Flickr |
Did my 2-hour odyssey to my old student's apartment in the wilds of Mississauga. Took the Yonge Line down to Union Station where I got the Go Bus en route to Square One Mall in the spread-out city ruled by 90-year-old Hazel McCallion. On the bus over, I ran across those two curvy towers officially known as the Absolute World Towers on Hurontario St. but cheekily called the Marilyn Monroe Towers (I guess in Japanese, they would be called Norika [Fujiwara] and Ryoko [Yonekura]).
My student, who lives in the penthouse floor of a condo, was a member of my old English circle known as The Beehive, up until her husband got transferred to Toronto for the next 6 years. She'll be heading back with her two daughters (hubby will most likely be staying on longer here or be headed for another foreign posting) in July back to Japan. As all married female Japanese will in any social occasion, food will be exchanged. I gave my student a cake my mother had made last night, while I got some o-hagi (to be explained in a later entry) and some homemade bread to take back to the parentals. In any case, we spent the next 90 minutes talking about our futures and our pasts. It was fairly evident that my student was ready to head home; she gave me the impression that she had felt somewhat trapped in Missy, a feeling I'm sure a lot of folks feel there, and my student has a pretty big wagon in her garage.
She was kind enough to drive me back to Square One, since my walk from the mall to her condo took about 20 minutes. We spoke on those two towers. Apparently, some Chinese entity had bought the top penthouse on ol' Marilyn for millions of bucks. My only question was who would ever want to buy a rooftop condo in Mississauga? I mean, was it sight unseen or what?
