I wandered around the unfamiliar streets of the city, cars, horns and sirens whizzing past, now and then the sound of chatter and laughter would pass me by. The sky darkened, and night had fallen. I was surrounded by tall steel and glass buildings, and suddenly it felt pretty lonely in the big city.
I guess the feeling is magnified with the fact that I was tired from having woken up at around 6 in the morning, and have been running around non-stop since then. First in search of an apartment, which still is as desperate as ever, and then going to class and having to wait a long time to be registered as a student. What made it worse was to hear that if by the end of the month I still do not have my student visa done, I will be deregistered and barred from attending class…
Earlier, I had gotten up early to go see an apartment with the lady at the hostel reception. She drove me there, and it took only 10 minutes with the car. For the first time, I could see how it was to go from the city into suburbia, and see that transition from crowded and busy sidewalks to white picket fences and mowed lawns. It was a very quiet residential area, and the apartment is huge, with two bedrooms, one living room, a kitchen and bathroom—all for around CA$600 only. But, later I found out if I were to commute, it would take me around 40 minutes to get to university, and I would much rather live nearby where I study, so I could blend more into the student life.
I treated the lady to some breakfast, for she had been so kind to offer her help in my house hunting. As we chatted, she mentioned something that struck me. She said that she was helping me because I was Asian, and if it were anyone else, then she would rather not extend a helping hand. Perhaps this is because of her divorce from a (white) local, whom she does not much of an opinion of. But then when it came to giving me advice on where to look for places to stay, she actually said that certain areas have a lot of Indians, and told me to avoid that. So much for the exciting multiculturalism and mix of peoples and languages, from Arabs to Europeans, from Jews to Muslims, from Chinese to Vietnamese, that I had encountered on the streets in the very short amount of time I have been in Canada.
I made my way back into the city on the metro. It rode on rubber wheels, like the ones in Paris, and soon I arrived at McGill, and it took sometime to find my way in the underground complex that lay under the main streets of Montreal. Riding the escalator to street level, I was again submerged under the shadows of tall towers housing many important banks and businesses. Then, at the end of the broad street, was an arched column, behind which scores of old building sheltered amid trees.
This was the McGill Campus, and I wandered inside, passing by countless other students on their way to class. Everyone dressed so informally in sandals and shorts, while I felt a little out of place in my white shirt and long dark trousers. It felt peculiar to be in a campus, the kind of place I have seen so many times in American movies, but never before experienced or seen. My first university was merely two buildings in central London, which housed a total of less than 3000 students. McGill was simply a giant, in terms of its student body and the scale of its campus.
I stumbled into my first class, and already a few classmates had sat down. They were pretty friendly, at least the first impression, and we briefly chit chatted. There were only around 15 students, all with diverse educational and professional backgrounds, and each from different countries, which should make the class really interesting. One thing that bound us together was our shared interest in and acceptance at perhaps the foremost institute for the study of air and space law.
The first three hours of lectures was intense, though the professor is really good. After a light-hearted introduction to the institute and to the staff, in the following hours we were bombarded with information on the intricacies of international air carrier liability. All I could think of was whether my long delay and missed flight the day before had anything to do with what we were learning about.
After the lecture, everyone seemed to just vanish somehow, which was a real shame. I was soon left wandering around the campus on my own, and it felt a bit disorientating, as everything was so big and there were so many people and buildings.
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