By Lynette Lim

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

It’s been four months since I left Singapore for a 24-hour plane ride halfway across the world. Four months later I feel like I’ve grown more than I have in any year in Singapore; four months later I feel like I’ve found a second home here.

Toronto is a big city that feels like the suburbs to me. The pace of life is markedly slower than Singapore, but the streets are as wide and clean as the roads in Singapore, the stores as aplenty, the food as varied and almost, just almost, as good as Singapore’s. The sun, while setting earlier and earlier each day, when it is out, is equally, sometimes even more, glorious than in Singapore. The Canadians are inexplicably friendly; people talk to you randomly along the street if there’s something interesting happening, and when you look lost grasping a city map in your hands they stop, smile, and ask where you are going. The fall colours, in their full brilliance just one month ago, were beautiful. It really does put a spring in your step as you trod on fallen dried leaves of yellow and red and walk down the street with even more of the same leaves falling from the trees above you. The first snow fell a week ago, and the pristine white holds promises of the real winter to come early next year, a sneak peek at the feet of packing snow, and the snowmen and snow angels along with it, to come. There is always something going on in the city: whether it is a festival at Yonge-Dundas Square, movie screenings around the city for festivals like the International Film Festival, fireworks on Saturday nights at Nathan Philips Square or weekly hockey nights as excuses for get-togethers in pubs with chicken wings and beer.

You can see, feel, and breathe all that if you came on holiday to Toronto. Yet living in the city is a completely different, albeit no less magical, experience. You find yourself checking the temperature online every morning before you head out of the house. You find yourself leading a more spontaneous lifestyle, instead of the rigid fixed plans you used to make and force yourself to adhere to back home. You have classes discussing the constitutionality of prostitution and aboriginal rights of First Nations. You walk 20 minutes to school every day and try not to reach your class with fingers that hurt from the cold. You find your jeans freezing cold the second you step out of a warm diner, and skip your way back to your destination in an attempt to warm it up. You sleep over on a friend’s couch after a study group session that ended late without a second thought, and finish up leftovers from sushi takeout from the night before. You find it warm when the temperature is anything other than sub-zero, and complain about the wind literally pushing you around. You realise you’re out of bread one morning and run out of the house to the store opposite the street without realising you forgot your jacket and you’re freezing in your slippers in 6 degree Celsius weather. You leap for joy and go for a run through the streets when the sun is out and the real feel is 5 degrees Celsius. You find yourself missing the lights of the CN Tower when you’ve been away travelling through the States or in another part of Canada for too long. You live a life vastly different from the one you had in Singapore, and you love it.

So ends my four months in Toronto, and I can hardly wait to see what the next six will bring.

Lynette Lim is an Overseas Senior Editor of the Singapore Law Review, and is currently on exchange at University of Toronto, Canada (Semester 1 & 2).