It’s noon and I leave my apartment to get some lunch in the little family-owned bakery around the corner, in Mid Town Toronto.

On the 6th floor, a Chinese couple enters the elevator. They are discussing something in Mandarin – I believe – and I have no idea what they’re talking about. It could be plans for the day, could be a sharp critique of my sweatpants. I quietly envy their ability to have secret conversations and I make a mental note to ramp up my partner’s Portuguese classes so we can do the same soon.

Out on the street, I cross paths with a Sikh family. There’s a dad in a large black turban and beard, a little girl of about 3 years old and a mom speaking on the phone with someone. The little girl keeps deviating from the path to inspect some dandelions, bugs and just the grass in general. Dad tugs her gently, and by the look on his face, I can see that they’ve been at this routine for a while today.

I get to my destination and the owner of the bakery, a Turkish woman, greets me with an excited “Hi, how’re you doing?”. I exchange a similar greeting. We introduced ourselves some months ago, but honestly, neither of us can remember each other’s foreign names, so we make do with what we have. If I was already notorious for messing up people’s names in just one nationality, imagine what I can do with 10.

I’ve been frequenting that bakery for a while and she already guesses what I want, and shouts to the cook in Turkish to get me some lentil soup. While I wait, a delivery guy comes in. By his accent, I guess he’s probably Nigerian. He exchanges the same type of greetings with the owner (name recalling is a complicated feat in this city) and leaves after she gives him some packages. I pay for my soup and go back home.

After lunch, I have an online meeting to discuss a new product that the company wants to launch before the end of the year. The Head of Product (French) discusses with the Program Manager (Indian) some last-minute alterations. They bring in the new QA Specialist so she can get familiar with the changes. I don’t know her very well, but from her features, accent and short last name I deduce that she might be Chinese. I don’t openly ask her this, of course – trying to guess people’s nationalities is an indiscretion that we all learned to avoid.

Luckily for me, everyone has their names under their images on the screen, and it’s much easier to associate the sound with the person. Getting the pronunciation right, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Most of us got used to having slightly different versions of our names floating around, depending on the mother tongue of the speaker. Usually, in the first week of a new employee, there’s a concentrated effort to get the sounds right, but after having to explain how to pronounce the “r” to people from 3 different continents, people usually give up and just go with the flow.

It could actually be worse. Once I worked with a guy whose first and last name formed a very nasty sentence in Portuguese. Things like this are bound to happen when you have 20 different nationalities working in the same office.

But anyway, after a couple more meetings I’m done with work and ready to head to the park with my partner. He’s Canadian, and probably the first Canadian I interact with in the day. We go to our favourite shaded area, just after where a group of Indian men are playing volleyball. Their kids are usually around too, playing Cricket, but today the diamond is occupied by the local junior baseball team, mostly Canadian, I believe. My partner explains to me the rules for the 10th time and try to actually retain some of them this time, but honestly, the kids are not very focused on the rules themselves, to the annoyance of the coaches.

After the sun is down we go home and prepare to head out. We’re going to see a friend’s concert. The venue, a bar that describes itself as “a heartfelt homage to the lands that stretch from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea”, was founded by a group of Eastern Europeans that love music. They proudly host attractions from several different countries and we’ve seen many Brazilian groups perform there. But today we’re here to see my friend from Guatemala, an amazing singer.

We order their famous pierogies and settle in with a Czereśnia drink and a beer. My friend gets on the improvised stage on the sidewalk and introduce her new band members – a bassist from Korea and a drummer from India. We then lay back and enjoy the delicious Eastern European food while musicians from Asia and Central America play some classics of Mexican folk music.

There’s just one thought in my head at that moment – Gosh, how I love this city!

Because yep – their names already escaped my brain, once more.

Some notes on this post – These are all real stories, a collection of events that happened on different days. And yes, I know that immigrant life in Toronto is not always a bed of roses. Many of the people living in precarious situations in the city are foreigners, and we could write a whole book on the tribulations people go through to find decent jobs, housing and health care when they arrive. All those things are true. But so are those moments I’ve described. Those are little pockets of joy that give me hope that multicultural neighbourhoods and cities can be thriving spaces.