Day 18 (14.vii.08)
I achieved four things today, only 3 of which were actually deliberate. The first two were both located in the same building, and along with the third constituted the milestones in my Excursion for the day. Specifically, I decided that enough was enough with regard to my headphones, and went to the U of T computer shop in the Koffler Student Centre on St George Street to buy some new ones, which I did for a bargain £5 – the new ones are amazing, not only because they work, but they also muffle out external sound and have lots and lots of bass emphasis. Second of all, I went to the Student Housing Centre (a flight of stairs and a few twists and turns away from the computer shop) to ask about off-campus accommodation just in case I might need it at some point, and was given a couple of leaflets by a bored-looking office-girl with which to go about looking for it (not exactly the help I’d been expecting, but hey).
Then on the way back to my room I remembered that I wanted to look into the Manulife Centre on the junction of Bloor Street and Bay Street, partially to find out whether the name is pronounced in a way that conjures up images of Old Trafford museums, and partially just to see what it has. It’s basically a smaller, classier version of the Eaton Centre, with boutiques, a Blackwell’s-esque shop called Indigo and a few pricy food outlets. As I wandered past, inspecting with languid interest the shop windows on either side, I did a double-take when I beheld what must be the largest bottle of Jaegermeister I have ever seen (unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, so I haven’t got a photo) being wheeled around in one of the shops. I looked inside, and my jaw literally dropped – every extant facet of wine, spirits and beer that in England would be bunged away in the children-proof corners of Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s, and that in Canada is nowhere to be found in normal shops, was there proudly on display. I wandered through, browsing nonchalantly and reeling a little at the sight of some of the prices being demanded for perfectly ordinary-looking bottles of Chateau de whatever, and eventually picked out what I can definitively say is one of the oddest-tasting drinks I have ever sampled, and the only thing in the shop the English have yet to discover: Growers Pomegranate Dry Cider. That and a modest bottle of Jaeger (probably a younger relative of the big daddy I saw earlier), as a novelty way to mark the day. I had to laugh when I looked up the shop’s acronymed name later, and found it stood for The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which just makes anything you buy there sound illegal and government-sponsored (and unrepresentative of the truth, since they didn’t even ID me – must be my manly stubble…).
Anyway, this unexpected result attained, I headed back to my room for the fourth, and by far the most tedious of my day’s chores – reading the designated bits of Rawls for tomorrow’s lecture. Where Rawls is concerned, I have moved on emotionally beyond the initial attitude of ‘you’re wrong, now leave me alone’ (which, though entirely justified, is about as useful as a second appendix), and have begun to form concrete ideas about why the old man has (like the theories he critiques) completely missed the point. Basically his ‘original position’ needs all societal agents to simultaneously know nothing about themselves or each other AND be better-versed in the effects on society of all possible systems of government than people who currently live under them – both ridiculous assumptions. Also, even if we pardon that as a necessary part of his theory, Rawls persists with the irritating view that absolute equality to the point of correcting the faults of not just society but even nature is not just possible but actually desirable, which as far as I’m concerned constitutes the biggest disincentive possible for talented and skilled citizens to contribute to societal advancement, and is one of the reasons communism is destined to fail.
Other than that, I had my usual proportion of chats and Skypes throughout the day, notionally earmarked next weekend for my trip to Niagara Falls, got irritated that I won’t be able to watch a Blue Jays-Boston Red Sox game while I’m here, and still didn’t manage to watch anything on iPlayer. Business as usual! 
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