Journey to the West I
Journey to the West is the travelogue I’m writing for my recent trip to the West Coast with Wan, which chronicles our adventures on the road. Enjoy!
Taxi ride to Pearson Airport
Pearson Airport is very inaccessible from downtown Toronto by public transport; one has to travel all the way to the end of the Bloor-Danforth subway line and transfer to bus 192 at Kipling station, a 90-minute journey excluding waiting time. Hence taxi has always been my preferred mode of transport to the airport despite its hefty $40 price tag, mainly because of the amount of luggage I have when I fly back to Singapore. While Airport Express buses do pick up passengers at various downtown locations, I’ll not save much since I need to take a taxi to the pickup point from New College residence anyway.
So when I hear that the Iceland trio — Howe, Calvin and Weixiang — are flying off on the same day as me, I decided to share a taxi with them even though my flight is 3 hours later than theirs; in fact, I was more than happy to sit by myself in the airport and daydream.
After finding out Howie is from Malaysia, our driver Gure proclaimed that former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad is the greatest man alive in the world. We were already quite surprised that he actually knew Dr Mahathir was Malaysia’s PM, and for him to make that statement about Dr Mahathir was even more shocking to us. Gure’s exaggerated description of the man whom Singaporeans love to hate started to make sense after we learnt through further conversations that he’s a Muslim and he respects Dr Mahathir for standing up against those who look down upon Muslim nations.
Our conversation inadvertently turned to the topic on why we chose to study in foreign universities instead of local ones, and we explained that we wanted to see the world and experience a different culture; this standard explanation usually draws favourable reactions, at the very worst perhaps envious comments on how lucky we’re to be able to afford an overseas education.
However, Gure couldn’t understand why we should choose to leave our home country to live in a foreign land where immigrants are treated as 2nd class citizens. It might have sounded ironic since he himself chose to settle down in Canada, but a glimpse into his background reveals the reasons behind our contrasting views. Gure had no choice but to leave his home country Somalia due to the ongoing civil wars; and while I feel that racism in Canada isn’t as severe as in Australia or the US, it does exist. On the other hand, we’ve chosen to study in Canada voluntarily; and racism is not a huge problem for us since Toronto has a very large Chinese community.
Gure further commented that we should go back Singapore after graduation and contribute to our nation, his reasons being that Singapore has spent much resource to educate us, and Western countries like Canada just want to exploit our skills and talents we acquired back in Singapore to help their own economies grow. Initially this sounded like another conspiracy theory cooked up by an angry Muslim, portraying the West as an evil power trying to take over the world. But is Gure’s comment without truth?
That certainly was food for thought as I sat in the departure lounge, waiting for my flight to Vancouver.