My last day in Toronto for HACS

My last day

• So I checked out and as my friend, Asra had said, her coworker, Jeremy got there a couple days early and was able to check out some of the museums. She said that I should definitely do this before I went back. I was particularly keen to check out the British-Caribbean exhibit, and it did not disappoint. It was also helpful as I am working on writing for a Mathematics blog (the article should come out in April), and needed to walk and clear my head a bit after back to back days of the workshop.

Here are some photos

• Okay, so Asra recommended this Thai place called Pai which did not disappoint. They serve the thai green curry in a coconut. The last time I had thai curry in a coconut, I was in Los Angeles. Also, they did have fresh coconut water; as someone who grew up with coconut trees in their back yard, believe me, I can tell the difference! It was so amazing that the waitress did not even have to ask me how everything was; she kept giggling because she knew I was enjoying everything!
• I went to the Art museum and it’s interesting because this is a generation before some of the artists that I knew growing up who were working. Some of them are the children of these people whose work were in this museum. So it was like remembering a generation before some of the current people locally known in the Arts industry (if one can call it that; it’s still not supported by the government in a real way, nor is it acknowledged as a real industry, which is a whole topic I don’t even want to get into), which is interesting.

• mango sticky rice!

• Thai green coconut curry with shrimp…in a coconut! And yes, there was jelly in the coconut that you could scrape off and eat from the coconut with the curry!

• The people at the museum were so respectful! This little boy was fascinated by this structure and I was saying that there are houses that are made like this; the top is galanize, they have the stilts, etc and he was curious about if they had the drawings on them, too. That surprised me that they cared so much, and it was heart-warming.

• This was a bit hilarious. Everyone who was actually Caribbean who passed through this space was like “um, this reminds me of X”, whether it was growing up, a relative’s space in Brooklyn or some auntie’s house where they grew up back in the day. The artist literally got a lot of things right. My parents have the hutch, we used to have that map and I do know relatives with the clock in the shape of a Caribbean island, etc. And then we would burst out laughing about how this artist basically recreated the spaces in which so many of us lived. It felt uncanny but I wanted to stay in there forever.

• I love that the name of this is “The Sitter”. A mentor of mine who lives in NYC had a child of their own and only then did they realize the whole childcare power dynamic within cities like New York. As a Caribbean person, I was well aware of this early on. Every one of us knew people who had overstayed and was taking care of some wealthy white American’s children. And that always coloured the way I saw New York City, and influenced why I ended up on the West Coast.

• Sorry this is sort of an art blog post today or whatever. It is what it is lol.

And that’s it