Upper Canadianize Me
Tall ship moored in the harbour, with tanker in background.
We Finches have been in this part of the world for near 200 years,
But I guess it's seen the last of us. Come on Marie, we're going to Toronto."Finches Complaint", Stan Rogers
Not Toronto, exactly, but close enough. Yeji and I are moving to Mississauga.
We're busy packing right now, but I just realized I'll need to set up a time before we go for the internet company to reclaim their cable modem. That means I'll be disconnected reasonably soon and had better make the announcement now.
I've griped and complained before but I'll spare you the details. My big concerns with Halifax were longterm employability and the despair I was feeling over the obvious population decline which will continue to occur. I was also starting to dread the demise of print media as a whole, also. More layoffs had occurred over the last month and cut backs have been steady all over.
There was also the three-year-old nagging disappointment that after returning from Korea, I never fully reintegrated into Halifax. I used to walk the streets, dwell in the coffee shops and know half the faces I'd pass by. Not now. The streets always seem empty and I never picked up a new hang out. My old friends span the globe, but only one or two remain in the city, all of us too busy to ever get together.
So I opted to solve it all if I could -- but it took a while. My resume is fine for the business I am in, but I wanted to make the leap to new media, away from the death rattling print publishing world. I also decided to set my sights on the Big Smoke. It's the centre of English-language media in this country and the least likely to have to worry about population decline. It's big, vibrant and a perfect place to strike out after one's fortune. The problem, was that they don't often take notice of someone applying from outside their area, much less Nova Scotia.
I got lucky on Victoria Day, of all days, and someone who liked my qualifications opted to field me a phone call. The matter was made even stranger by my wife having a premonition of the call in a dream the night before. My interviewer and I decided to meet face-to-face so I was off to buy a new suit and a plane ticket west. I made my trip on Thursday, flying out in the wee hours of the morning and returning home just before midnight. All went well and I was offered the job.
I even managed to find an apartment ten minutes away. People say Toronto is "so expensive" to live in. Poppycock. Of all my price comparisons, the commute was the only thing I could see that would cost me more (and at that, the price per litre of gas in Ontario is still five to ten cents cheaper than here.) By finding a place so close, I figure I will save money on gas. Furthermore, most apartments in Toronto include utilities, whereas Nova Scotia places seldom seem to do now. Perhaps it's because, again, utilities are cheaper in Toronto. A quick search informed me NS Power is at around nine cents per kWh and increasing, while the area I am moving to in Mississauga is billed around six cents per kWh. At the end of the day, I'm paying about a hundred bucks more per month but it's for a two-bedroom facing a park, while here in Haltown we only have a tiny junior one-bedroom. I'm sadly giving up indoor parking, but we're gaining a swimming pool, sauna, exercise room and tennis courts.
I may still find some time to post a few more briefs here. Even when I lose my current internet, there's still my work computer, and internet at my folks' place. We'll be staying there a few nights starting this weekend, however, by Wednesday I expect to be heading west and racing to get moved in to the new place before Friday the 13th.
Most relieving to my blogging however, is that I can finally semi-retire this version of Latenight and now fully concentrate on the mainpage. I don't think I will split the site into a Latenight: Mississauga (never say never) but I'd rather get back to one regular destination for posts and the top-level blog is the place for that. Expect it to become more busy once we're settled in our new home. For the first time in a while, I'm also eager to dust off the ol' camera again and get some fresh photos to send up.
