1st post of Fall 07

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I know I haven't use Livejournal much. Tomorrow is the 4th week of Fall quarter and time sure fly by. I'm glad to have the opportunity to get out of Rochester with Stephen Persinger. He had two tickets for Acon/Rihanna concert in Toronto (September 22, 2007) and could not find someone to go with him. For some lucky reason, I was free to attend. We drove 3 hours to Toronto from RIT. Once we got there, we parked at the Ontario Place where the Molson Amphitheatre was. They were having their annual Chinese Latern Festival and the concert for Acon/Rihanna. We arrived there around 4pm and the concert did not start until 8pm. We walked the streets of Parkside. Mainly King St. W and Queen St. West. First, we stopped at Medieval Castle because I've been to one in Chicago and it was fun seeing horse entertainment while eating food with our bare hands. Unfortunately, the showtime was not in our time frame and it was $60 to eat there. We decided to check out that Gossip Restaurant we saw on the way and realized our dress code did not appear to meet the restaurant's standard (very fancy dining). We were too early for dinner at Gossip and decided to go for a low-budget meal. We walked along Dufferin Street and saw Subway on King Street. Ate there and then decided to walk around some more. Stephen saw a black squirrel for the first time and I tripped saying that I wished I could live in a life of a squirrel to see what it is like. Squirrels hunt for nuts and hop from trees to trees. We went into the residential area and saw houses were tightly connected. These houses were beautifully designed and I wished Colony Manor or Riverknoll would be something similar. Saw Gladstone House on Gladstone Avenue, Stephen mentioned it was a street he lived on in another state. We saw some stores with some artwork features on the exterior of the building. One advertisement board has a naked embarrased couple showing their back and it said "place for rent." There was another place with black and white painting of people in action (Dr. Seuss style) and some weird blue sculpture. We kept walking on Queen Street and stopped at Bar One for a chat. Then we head out to see some more places. We saw some dog parks and one of them have a homeless man playing puppet as entertainment for money at Trinity Park. We made a turn on Strachan street and then onto King Street. We passed a local football (soccer) stadium called "Allan Lamport Stadium Park." We went into a crowded pub "Shoeless Joe's" to see the Toronto FC spirits. Everyone was singing their football cheers and it felt like I was in the movie of Green Street Hooligans. Its one of my recommended movies for hardcore football (soccer) fans. We chatted with some drunk guy who thought we came in with a bunch of women since we walked behind them and hope to be introduced to "our friends." We left to return to the Ontario Place. We went under an old subway bridge and up toward the pedestrian bridge over Gardiner Expressway to take a picture of Downtown Toronto. We entered the Molson Amphitheatre and saw Acon's performance. The music has a dance club theme and some of the time he was walking across the crowd. At first I thought that a mohawk-hair guy in a skirt was Acon but it was one of his band members. After 1 hour of his performance, Rihanna appeared for her performance. Her music style was different from Acon. It was a layback and sensual music. It was fun hearing the performance and seeing the crowd participate and flash their cellphones or lighters. After the performance, we had an easy way out because we parked at the end of the parking lot away from the congested side. We sang random songs on our way back to Rochester.

Good time, fun time. I'd love to have that again at the busiest time of the quarter. A great way to get some relief from hectic schedule. Oh by the way, I'm going to the Rihanna concert again at RIT on October 5th. It will be closed captioned and interpreted.