Well it's no forest like we had back home in France, but it's better than nothing I suppose.
Our city has a few nice wooded trails within walking distance from where we live; different ones in all directions actually so we have several options.
None of them are all that long or expansive like our French forest but they are definitely a nice bit of green space that makes you feel a little closer to nature. No wild boars or deer though.
You kind of walk down a trail for a bit and than pop out in another neighborhood, cross a street or two, and then end up on another trail.
It was kind of neat walking around our house when we first got back to Canada and seeing what's changed in our neighborhood.
"Holy shit!" That highrise is new. They built that fast. This was a field when we left. Whoa, damn. Looks like they're building another one across the street."
I can actually see these cranes in the distance when standing on my driveway. Not as close as the photo depicts mind you, but still a clear indication that the neighborhood is changing.
Most things looked exactly the same though, other than the crap ton of traffic calming measures. Those are new. I like to think of it as a fun sort of road pattern. A game really.
Divided Speed bump, bank of delineator posts, divided speed bump, bank of delineator posts, divided speed bump, kid skateboarding down the middle of the road at night veering super close to my car as I'm passing, Holly fucking shit!
Swerves car out of the way. Angrily yells at kid in his own head,
"There's a fucking dedicated bike lane 10 feet over to the right yeh fucking dipshit!!!"
In the kids defense, cars these days are much quieter and he was wearing headphones so it's not his fault that he couldn't hear me coming. Good thing he was wearing all black too, otherwise he might have stood out. No amount of traffic calming devices can fix stupidity.
I remember when I was young and stupid though. Those were the days. My mom always told me that cars can't see you at night so don't walk on the road and don't wear black. I don't know if I listened to her then but she was right. I've acknowledged that fact many times before.
A little off topic here but one of the biggest shocks when we first arrived was the price of food. The first grocery shop is always expensive but fuuuuuccccckk! I remember thinking at the grocery store I really hope that this doesn't go over $250...then we cashed out.
The shop came to...
Wait for it...
$417!!!
I about died.
The crazy thing though was that we got nothing it seemed. The cupboards and fridge were practically bare. To be honest, I don't even know what we spent it on. We didn’t get spices, condiments, or canned goods. No rice or pasta, or anything non-perishable really other than chicken broth, tomato puree and natural peanut butter (I missed peanut butter in France).
We never buy junk food, frozen food or processed food so we had none of that. We only bought meat and vegetables for the week... I really don't know what the hell happened. Obviously there was laundry detergent and garbage bags and that sort of thing and two very large boxes of tea (English Breakfast and Green) and a large tin of coffee. Those actually took a big chunk out of the bill, but still. Fucking nuts if you ask me.
The second shop was better. It was "only" (note the quotation marks on only) $200. I was really looking at the prices for round two but it was still fairly expensive. It was actually pretty close to what I would spend in France, but in France the quality was much higher for things like produce and cheese and other things and I bought a lot of organic goods there as well. That price would also include wine, and beer on occasion. If I were to buy 3 bottles of wine here in Ontario (even if it was the cheapest crap stuff available that I would use for cooking) it would cost a minimum of $40, probably more though. It's no wonder that no one cooks with wine in Canada.
By the way how long can I rant talk about food before I start losing people?
Takes a deep breath in...
Okay I'm done.
Thanks for stopping by.
P.S. stay tuned for next week when I dive into the absurdity of buying dairy products in Ontario.
You're still lucky to have walking trails in close proximity that are stunning.
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Yeah, the cost of living is high AF! I love to cook with wine, but there's no fucking way I'm gonna be able to do that when I go back to Jamaica. I'll have to get the BBQ grill and pour beer over the meat...and that's being optimistic!
Cost of living is expensive in the UK, but food shopping is a lot cheaper for healthy meals, and I guess you'll find yourself comparing every thing in Canada till you get the hang of it all. If I had land I would grow my own fruit and veg, and rear my own chicken, goats,
pork chopspigs and cows... since I'm a big animal lover;-)Beer is super expensive in Canada as well. All alcohol is. It's taxed super high.
We would love to have land to grow our own food as well and have talked about getting chickens for eggs. We will see if it ever happens though. I'm hoping.
That would be brilliant! 🤞
Well tbh it's much better than many of the places that we have here nowadays!! It has become more like a robotic life out un here lol.
Taking a walk on that road definitely would be worth it! Get away from the trouble and just take a walk for few minutes. That should be enough 😉
While damn, that's kinda expensive. $400 + for grocery is kinda a great deal. But I suppose new area and new environment can indeed be a handful sometimes.
Yeah the walking paths are really great for a city.
Sorry, I'm not sure I understand- are you saying that $400 is expensive or a great deal here?
I guess it depends on how much food you get in the end. We didn't really get that much for that it seemed.
You would get almost couple of months grocery here in $417 :) I would also die, seeing it does not fill half of the spaces.
Yeah it's expensive. That's in $CAD not $USD by the way and I'm sure that there is a relativity factor at play that doesn't allow for a proper direct comparison between the two countries. i.e. wages and cost of living vs the cost of groceries and all that. But still, it is quite high and definitely higher than I remember from 3 years ago.
Looks quite nice right enough. Bearable!
Good shopping now is a bit of a nightmare. I used to joke about popping out for a few things and coming back having dropped a tonne as they say. But now I do that and more as a matter of course!
Yeah shit is expensive these days. The last I heard was that inflation was at 7% or something. Certain things in Canada are especially brutal to buy, like alcohol and dairy for instance. The latter makes no sense though given that dairy is probably the biggest food related products of Ontario. But people will literally drive for 2-3 hours to cross the border and buy groceries in the US, especially milk and cheese lol 😆 I could not be bothered to do that but I know that quite a few people do lol
speed bumps and cyclists, I share your dismay. We have dedicated cycle lanes on a lot of our roads in my town,
A) you rarely see people on bikes
B) if you do see the odd one, they are in the middle of the fucking road, totally ignoring the cycle lane!!!
ps.that fridge needs alcohol!!!
Haha yeah. I really like the bike lanes and will probably start biking more now that we have them. Fucking kid skateboarding down the middle of the road at night in black when there is a bike lane right there is just fucking idiotic. Him veering into me suddenly was a true story haha. I really did need alcohol after that encounter 😂
😂😂😂
Welcome home to Trudeau's green-left Canada! Only Germany is better at inflicting massive damage on herself by having a bunch of incompetent green-laquered commies running things straight into a brick wall. But don't worry, give Justin a little more time, he'll get there eventually.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you're not a fan of JT
😆😂
What gave it away? :-)
😂
I'm surprised you follow Canadian politics so closely. Any particular reason?
No, I'm not following that closely, but took note when the Trudeau gov't started trampling all over your charter rights, especially during Covid.
I have a thing for Canada; it used to be like a better version of the U.S. and it is a wonderful country with an overabundance of space and natural resources shared among a comparatively small population.
I would have considered retiring there, but to my disappointment, wokism and similar crap is taking hold there as much if not worse than in western Europe. Might as well save my money.
Anyway, I'm glad you made it home safely. Don't let the politicians ruin it for you.
I would say that it's way worse. Society in N. America in general seems to revolve around business. You don't even notice it when you're in it but when you leave, it becomes glaring. You can see that it drives policy, lifestyle and even the mindset of the people. People mostly only talk about work here. It's like the first or second thing brought up in conversation with anyone - friends, family, strangers. It's really strange and disheartening once you recognize it. It really is a "live to work" situation here. Even the novelty of stores shutting down for half a day on Sunday in France was a shocker when we first got there. Now it just seems like common sense. I think Germany goes a step further and shuts down Saturday afternoon to Sunday in some parts.
The political situation seems inevitably fucked however you look at it hahaha. You're screwed either way. I have a bad feeling that we will lose universal Healthcare in Canada probably within my lifetime. The conservatives keep chipping away at it and it inches its way closer every few years. The newest one was that the Ontario government (Conservatives) announced that they will start paying for Healthcare services that people use in the private sector. That is obviously a huge move towards privatization. They say it's to ease pressure from the public sector, which it does, but it also undermines the public sector. Instead of using that money to invest in the public sector (more nurses, doctors, equipement, facilities...etc) they are essentially pushing people into the private sector and then paying those private companies. It incentivizes nurses to leave public and go private and incentivizes people to turn to the private sector. I don't like the Liberals but I really don't like the Conservatives because they push for oil and fossil fuels, privatization of Healthcare and public services, and basically anything that favors businesses over people. The liberals are fucked too though so like I said, you're fucked either way ha 😂
Sorry for the novel/essay but on a somewhat related note, did you hear that the liberal government is partnering with Germany to evolve the hydrogen fuel production industry? Germany wants a green energy fuel source and wants to partner with Canada.
Yup, that's how it is for us, the little guys. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What Germany wants and what she's getting are two different things entirely. Being a fully deindustrialized shithole pretty soon, unless the people get off their asses and force policy changes by means of mass protests and general strikes, the question will arise how Germany intends to pay for all her green pipe dreams? Do you think any Canadian investor will put a loon into this kind of financial uncertainty? Trudeau is a liar for selling you this bill of goods and Habeck (minister of economy) a fool. Only, being a writer of children's books, he doesn't have the education to know any better.
By now - after not even a year of green governance - we're already looking at rationing of energy (HEAT IN FUCKIN' WINTER!!!), rolling blackouts, and people having to decide whether they want to eat, drive, heat, or have the lights on: pick one. I'm confident this is going to become a lot of fun once people get their annual energy bills in December. Mind you, those bills won't even fully reflect the Ukraine situation yet - that's coming December 2023. At this point, we're at third world level here.
Germany is pretty much broke at this point, and so is the Euro / EU. The EU will only exist as long as Germany is footing most of the bill (Maggie Thatcher) and it looks like close to game over. Our producer price index is at 46% inflation to date (official numbers, probably higher in truth) and roughly one third of that will hit the consumer immediately. (ex energy cost)
Time out! I won't get into it any deeper; there are so many construction sites that need work, we'd be here for a week discussing it back and forth after barely scratching the surface. I'm sorry, I should have kept my mouth shut.
Bro I am not commenting that early normally, but here we go!
I'm sure you miss that peanut butter. The other cool thing is you got weed shops everywhere, though you probably missing the booze by now.
Let me remind you of all the thing you gonna miss:
Dog shit on the pavement, "je ne parle pas anglais", rude shop owner, real 🥐, real coffee, but on the other hand you just left before ww3 so, put your 3d glasses honey, the show's bout to start 😎
Hahaha that's funny. There's a long list of things that I miss already. Bakeries are probably the biggest but you would be surprised about the other big one...
Driving. Driving in France is 1000% better. I could drive for hours without hitting a single stop light or stop sign. Here I hit between 12 - 24 just trying to get out of town. Then another 6-15 while driving on highways to the next location. Round-abouts are seriously genius devices. Drivers are much more courteous in France as well and I rarely got stuck in traffic there. Day one in Canada I was stuck in traffic coming back from the airport for at least an hour and and half. A 40 minute drive took over 2 hours. You wouldn't think that driving in France was good but it was the best country of any that I've driven in and I've driven in a lot by now lol.
I can already hear in your writing that the old Canadians habits are sinking in again, it's cray how quickly it comes back, almost overnight.
It's kinda similar when you visit the family and old habits come back, you take back your role in within the family like when you were a kid. Weird isn't it?
Same thing about place where you lived. The feeling of the place comes back, and also what you loved and hated about that place.
Haha that so true man. It feels like I never left really. It's almost like my time in France was just a dream. It already feels so long ago. It's really weird actually.
I love the light in these photos. It is very autumnal.
Ah, the prices! It seems they are going up superfast everywhere. I keep getting emails from the providers (like phone people, electricity etc.) too, letting me know that prices will increase. I wonder how much of it is just increasing the prices and actual need for increasing them.
Also looking at your cupboard photos, I wonder how interesting it would be to keep them and compare them with new ones at increments of 6 months or so. I bet it will get a bit worse before it gets better. I hope I am wrong though and it will get only better instead.
Yeah it was a good time in the evening for photos. The sun was right - the Golden Hour as they call it. It's getting to be that time of year though. The leaves are starting to change colors.
Yeah I should save the photo to compare it down the road. Good idea.
I think that some things are increasing for legitimate reasons but there are also cases where companies are just jumping on the bandwagon to make bigger profits. That's super annoying.
No kidding!! Welcome back, right!? I cannot believe the driving and your neighborhood. Yikes! Growed all up while you were gone.
Food. Oh, that. Must we shop this week? We did that last week. What a drag.
If i drink enough wine, i cant tell i didnt use any in the sauce. I'ts getting ridiculous.
Haha of I drink enough wine all of my problems go away 😅 either that or I just don't care about any of them anymore lol
Bingo!! That's the spirit!
😁👍
🍷🍷🥳
🍷🍷🍷🍷😵💫
Shits expensive no doubt bro. We keep rockin anyways. Nice spot tho, love that greenery and scenery.
Yep. One must keep plowing ahead haha
The landscape is so beautiful.
Yeah it's quite nice for being located in a city.
$417 🤔🤔 that can even be someone salary in a full year converted to my local currency. I think in the next one month you won't have to buy groceries. But things are quite expensive 😜
Nice Wednesday walk in home town with beautiful shots💜
yeah it's not quite like that here. The cost of living is much higher. $400 wouldn't get you very far. A person would probably be homeless pretty quick if they only had 400. Thats not even close to a months rent lol. Funny how that works around the world.
😂😂😂 i understand
Our currency has not much value that's why
First and foremost you got those shots right you made me love nature more, All those greens very beautiful 😍 it almost made me cry, The sunset was so beautiful as well where are you i mean are you in your state? Or you are out for a visit.
Okay now relax.. haha 😉
Yeah it was a nice spot though, I agree 👍
Yeah I'm back home in Canada.
It was definitely a nice spot and thank God for safe journey back to Canada.
hoy en día todo esta realmente costoso :/ por otro lado me gustaron mucho las fotos se ven bonitos los paisajes de esa zona, saludos
Yeah everything is expensive indeed.
Thanks 😁
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