There's Always So Much To Write About
Wednesday July 9, 2025
It's been an eventful four months since arriving back in Toronto. Upon returning to my apartment, I'd discovered a pigeon had disposed of the rosemary plant in the planter I'd left outside and replaced it with a small white egg, and multiple piles of pigeon shit all over the balcony. It was too cold to clean everything up, but the next day, a second egg had appeared so I knew I had to do something. Fortunately the temperatures skyrocketed to 16C one wet day in March, so I took the opportunity and binned everything.
The weather didn't really warm up properly until May. But when the city's cherry blossoms, magnolias and tulips burst into bloom, it heralds the start of True Spring and it's such a wonderful time to be out and around the city to visit all the beautiful trees downtown. The University of Toronto, Queen's Park, Christie Pits and High Park have some magnificent flowers, and it's all a matter of finding the less crowded ones so you can avoid the Instagrammers. We had the Victoria Day fireworks and very soon after, the official 1.0 launch of Lynked: Banner of the Spark.
Though it's only been a year and a bit since I joined FuzzyBot, it's felt like I've slid in and made myself useful pretty quickly. Shipping a game is intensely stressful for everyone. Console development is hard. Programming for TRC requirements is hard and often those features will never been seen by the majority of players. But we did it. The team did it. We pulled through for a largely successful launch and quickly patched some major issues. Reception has been very positive, but I think the game has struggled with discoverability, which is a very common problem these days. It's satisfying though, and we're all incredibly proud of what we've accomplished, and we should be! We celebrated in style - the three of us in Toronto, with partners, at Barberian's Steak House.
There was also Doors Open (Got to see the Mayor's Office and a bunch of cool things in the City Hall, as well as a guided tour of the murals out in Islington), a week in Montreal, Eurovision, and the usual street festivals like Taste of Little Italy and Do West Fest. There was the inaugural Toronto Video Games Month; one of the events they had was to project some video games onto the wall of a factory building by Billy Bishop Airport while people played - that was really cool to watch for a bit, but the highlight was getting to meet the Mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, who has an incredibly strong Asian Auntie vibe about her. She tried really hard to sound like she knew about video games but ended up talking about Angry Birds. There was also the Rat Race, a scavenger hunt of sorts through Toronto's underground PATH system, which we achieved second place for! There was Pride, a few days in Bruce Peninsula, and a week in Sudbury visiting Manitoulin Island and Killarney Provincial Park, some of my favourite places in Ontario.
Summer is truly a great time to be in Toronto, it's really a shame that it goes by so quickly. This autumn though, my parents will be visiting me, here in Canada, for the first time since I arrived eight years ago, so there's plenty to look forward to in the months ahead.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:35am on Wednesday July 9, 2025 :: 0 comments :: 
Summer Turns to Fall, Turns to Summer
Wednesday November 16, 2022
I was interviewing someone for a designer role at work who mentioned he had read my blog prior to the interview, and I said I hadn't updated in a while because my summer was so busy and good.
It really was. At the end of June and beginning of July, I spent ten days on the east coast of Canada in the Atlantic provinces, gorging myself with the most delicious seafood the country has to offer, as well as witness the incredible tidal phenomena that the Bay of Fundy is so famous for. We landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first day and wandered around the Halifax Citadel and the waterfront, taking in the wonderful salty smell of the sea that I've missed for so long. The next day, we were up early to get to the seafood market where the nine of us splurged on $270 worth of lobster, oysters and fish cakes for dinner that night. We visited Peggy's Cove, shrouded in fog but so interesting with the rock formations overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, as well as Lunenburg, a small little town further west. That night, I murdered over a dozen lobsters... :( but it was so delicious. Sweet and meaty, absolutely delectable, I felt like Homer Simpson tearfully eating his pet lobster Pinchy. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.
We continued our tour of Nova Scotia with a hike at the Cape Split Trail, which overlooks the Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy, and then to Cape Breton Island's Skyline Trail the next day, where we saw a black bear in the distance further down from the lookout point! After a long drive, we were in New Brunswick, covering Moncton and the tidal bore, the Hopewell Rocks, Crooked Creek Falls, the Third Vault Falls in Fundy National Park, the Reversing Falls in Saint John and the Ministers Island Gravel Bar in Saint Andrews. Our last night in New Brunswick was celebrated with a proper lobster dinner that cost me $100, but it was totally worth it; it came with scallops, mussels, shrimp, potatoes and delicious garlic butter and I completely demolished it like a boss.
We were in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island for Canada Day, and we caught some spectacular fireworks from Victoria Park being let off less than 500 metres away from us. It was so close by that the shells from the fireworks had hit some people in the crowd! We did a bit of hiking as well but the rest of our time in PEI was rained out. However, we managed to visit the famous Cows Ice Creamerie a few times during our stay. On the last day, we took the ferry from Wood Islands to Pictou to get back to Nova Scotia and Halifax Airport. While waiting for our flight, Sunshine casually mentioned she found some "New Zealand chocolate" being sold at the airport convenience store, so I had to take a look - and sure enough, Whittakers Peanut Slabs, the chocolate equivalent of gold bullion, were being sold for $3 apiece (they're available in New Zealand for $1!!!).
I bought four. It was worth it.
In July, I started my job at Crop Circle Games, being the seventh employee there. A few days later, my friend Marc, from Catalonia, arrived in Toronto, and for three weeks, we ate like kings: Korean barbeque, Filipino kamayan, Vietnamese pho, Japanese Izakaya, Chinese dim sum, Toronto’s finest ice cream and exotic desserts like Mabu Generation’s matcha cube toast tower. We kayaked around Toronto Islands, we went for karaoke and we explored the Warsaw Caves east of Peterborough.
At the end of the month, we began our sixteen hour drive to Thunder Bay, with our first stop being in Sault Ste. Marie. In Lake Superior Provincial Park, we visited the Agawa Rock Pictographs and Sand River Falls, and we saw a black bear as well! Closer to our next destination, we stopped for a short hike at Scenic High Falls before continuing on to the town of Wawa, famous for its geese monument. I found a "Lai Restaurant", but it wasn't the same character as my name, and it was closed, like many of the other restaurants in town. We ended up having to eat at Subway.
The next day, we covered Pukaskwa National Park. Though it was raining slightly, there was still beauty as we walked around Horseshoe Bay. We had ambitions to reach the White River Suspension Bridge and Hook Falls, but the terrain was wet and muddy, and we ended up having to turn back. That night, we arrived at Thunder Bay. For our first day, we checked out an historical village called Fort Williams, staffed completely by actors in costume to fit the 1860s theme. It was interesting to learn about life back then, as well as how they used the land and resources around them to survive the bitterly cold winters. I learned to throw an axe (successfully!) and met tons of adorable animals on the farm, like Pygmy goats and a ginger cat.
Over the next few days, we covered Kakabeka Falls, Silver Falls and Dogs Falls; we managed to see the whole city from Mt McKay's viewpoint before a storm blew in. We had ribs from Tony Roma’s! We walked along Canada’s longest suspension bridge at Eagle Canyon and saw the massive Ouimet Canyon. We took a dip in the shallow pools of the Cascades Conservation Area but hurried out when dark clouds of rain began to approach. The highlight of the trip was Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, where we did a mammoth three hour hike called The Top of the Giant. We followed a relatively flat path for two hours, then a steep uphill for one hour to the final viewpoint, the Gorge, a gigantic crevasse and rock formation. The weather was absolutely perfect and the views were stunning.
Our last meal in Thunder Bay was unfortunately some disappointing Thai. We stopped by Aguasabon Falls in Terrace Bay before driving back to Sault Ste. Marie, and then finally Toronto. All in all, we covered close to 3,000km over 9 days in some of Ontario's most beautiful scenery.
Summer didn't end there though. There was plenty of time to enjoy festivals and food popups as well as Summerlicious. I counted 42 ice creams consumed over three months - that's almost one every other day! There were meet ups, urban hikes, axe throwing and great food all around.
As October rolled in, the temperatures started to cool down. I visited the Toronto Zoo for their Terra Lumina light show. We took a trip up to Killarney and Sudbury for the fall colours. We were super lucky to be there at just the right time, and with perfect weather conditions again. Last time we were here in 2020 and we did The Crack hike, but this time, we were going to conquer Silver Peak. We started with an hour of canoeing, then two hours of hiking to the highest point in Killarney Provincial Park, where the magnificent reds and oranges of the leaves were hitting maximum. On the way back, I sprained a muscle but was able to keep going and we all made it safely back to the canoe rental. We also covered Lake Laurentian Conservation Area in Sudbury, and the North Shore Rugged Area Hike in Parry Sound that weekend.
I was fortunate enough to see Nigel Ng's HAIYAA comedy show, where for the first half, he roasted the audience as Uncle Roger, and for the second half, he was himself, talking about all sorts of weird and awkward situations. Though some of the topics were pretty dicey, the night was full of hilarity and chaos; at some point in time, he had managed to force a couple to get engaged for a packet of MSG. I also went to see fellow New Zealander Bret McKenzie in concert at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which was a chilled out and pleasant night full of 80s electronica and easy, relaxed music.
Last week was the final total lunar eclipse until 2025, which I got up at 4am to see. Thankfully the skies were clear (for once!) and I could see the entire spectacle from my balcony. The eclipse was still visible as the sun began to rise around 6.30am, but I was back in bed around that time.
Today was our first major snowfall of the season, which only reinforced my excellent decision to leave this barren wasteland in two weeks time for the tropical heat of Malaysia and the summer vibes of New Zealand. Things are going to be super busy over the next few days while I catch up with people before I leave. The weather is going to be consistently hovering between -5C and 5C, so it's definitely the onset of winter, but the days are counting down and I absolutely cannot wait to see everyone again.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:21am on Wednesday November 16, 2022 :: 0 comments ::