Friday, August 17, 2007

45. Yesterday I went to a restaurant called Coach House with people from work for one guy's farewell breakfast. It's located near the northwest corner of Yonge & Wellesley. It's a quaint little place, like a cross between a diner and an old-fashioned saloon. (Think: lots of wood and brick.) I had a 3-egg, 1-meat-product, toast, and home-fries combo, which was $4.95. I don't know much about breakfast prices, but I think it's pretty decent. There was a ton of food though, and a lot was left over. Overall I didn't think the food was that great - the bacon was really salty, and the home fries turned to mush once they got cold. It was a nice quiet place for us to eat and chat, so I would suggest it as a cheap place to go just to grab breakfast and catch up with an old friend.

62. I went tonight to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which is presently featuring a number of exhibits including First Nations art, photography by Chuck Close, works by Bernini, and contemporary Indian art. I came across Bernini's name in high school, studying Renaissance art, so I was intrigued to see more of his work. Without knowing anything more about the exhibit than its title - Bernini in Focus - I was dismayed to find that only two sculptures were on display, besides his famous bronze Corpus. I decided that I'm really not into Native art at all; I find the totems and icons sort of creepy and disfigured. The contemporary Indian art exhibit was... alright. There was one piece that I liked: there was a huge installation of a rupee coin, and then a set of four panels on the wall with holographic text. Depending on where you stood, you would either read a story about an Indian girl who committed suicide because her mother wouldn't give her a rupee (two cents US) for food, or a news blurb about a new long-distance phone plan in India. There were other creative pieces there as well, including paintings on dried leaves, and bindis on aluminum. The works made of bindis just looked like great splashes of colour... one of them featured millions of little sperm-shaped bindis (I don't know who would ever wear a sperm-shaped bindi), arranged into intricate lines, a dancing, multicoloured orgasm. Anyway, while this was interesting in some ways, it was only interesting. If it was a larger exhibit, perhaps it would have impressed me enough just by its volume. The piece on poverty in India brought the issue to my mind again - it was placed there initially by an article on Bombay I read in Maclean's once - but I can't say that the exhibit overall spoke to me, though, so unfortunately I can't bring myself to cross this item off.

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