Great Expectations

So one thing you learn quickly when you head into the unknown, is how to lower your expectations. And quickly.

I blame TV shows like Friends that show poor twenty-somethings living in stunning apartments in fabulous cities like New York. They create unrealistic expectations. They make you think that if you throw enough purple and green paint on a wall, and have a waitressing job and a great hairstyle, you can live somewhere that's trendy, large and slap-bang in the centre of a fabulous neighbourhood.

So when you picture your move across the world, you imagine yourself staying somewhere like this:

Which is not too shabby at all.

Or else somewhere like this:

I think we could force ourselves to live here too.

So you get in touch with an estate agent, explain that you want to live in one of Toronto's coolest neighbourhoods, find out if they have a Canadian equivalent of Monica and Chander, tell them your budget, and they come up with something like this:

Living next door to:

Then, when you timidly comment that you're worried that all the discarded needles in the crack den might injure one of your four pets, you get told told that the crack den does not accept pets because the pimps are allergic. WTF?

Sigh. So needless to say, we're still looking... with slightly lowered expectations...