In a similar vain of my coverage of the changes that had occurred in Beijing and China over the last year, I thought I’d write up a few of the things I’ve noticed around my old stomping grounds that is the Fort Rouge area.
Up at 4am and out of bed by 530am, I decided to take a stroll around my old neighbourhood and see what had changed, if anything. Here they are:
-Three people greeted me with ‘good morning’.
-Some construction on Wellington, more apartments?
-Still no cat cafe.
-Lots of tree stumps. Why are so many trees getting cut down?
-The change of seasons in Winnipeg is very nice. This leads me to believe that the problem with the city’s climate is summertime mosquitoes and an extended winter.
To which a few people responded that Dutch Elm disease, Emerald Ash Borers and Black Knot (some kind of tree fungus) were responsible for all of the tree stumps I had seen. An example of a tree stump:
And a couple people also pointed out that the mosquitos weren’t an issue this past year, and a friend even suggested that they were preferable to the smog I encounter in Beijing. And they have a point: Winnipeg’s AQHI is at “Level 1” which means it sits somewhere between 0 and 30 in terms of PM2.5 matter. Here’s a screenshot from the Government of Canada website:
Here’s the construction of more condos along Welling Crescent. This place was empty for a long time and now is all of a sudden being developed:
And finally, no cat cafe.
Why am I disappointed? The place used to be a mini market for years run by an Italian family (I’m told) and then a Korean family before closing down. The people working on the building last year said it would be converted into a cat cafe which I took to mean it would open soon. Obviously it has not.
The other thing I’ve been asking about is the availability of digital payment methods. Specifically, I ask about Alipay or WeChat, both of which permeate my life in China, but also Google Pay and Apple Pay, just to see if they’ve caught on here. The answer is “no”, though the Greek restaurant I went to did say other people had asked about them, too.
One of the things I like to do whenever I come back to Winnipeg is hit the places I used to frequent. These include mostly food joints, such as Niko’s for Greek food, Daly Burger for burgers, Garwood Grill for Greek food and pizza, Santa Lucia for pizza, and of course, Tim Hortons for their coffee, sandwiches and donuts. And of course, my Mom makes perogies to eat at home, which is something I definitely I don’t get to have overseas. Oh, and Safeway’s pumpkin pie. And Starbucks’ pumpkin scones which you can’t get in China. Healthy choices, right? It’s one of those things I like to do regardless of the calories involved since some of those I can’t get in Beijing at all.
One other thing I like to do is go through my CD collection and reminisce about the good ol’ days. Well, I finally went through it and picked out a few (ok, a couple dozen) albums that have influenced me over the years mostly for their music but sometimes for their showmanship and presentation. Though it may not be hard to imagine that many of the bands I played with in the Winnipeg bars are no longer together, what is tough to imagine is the work that went into all of those shows and CDs we put out at that very time. I’m not saying it makes me want to pick up the sticks again, but it does make me re-consider how much effort needs to be expended and where that efforts needs to be given most.
But the subject of drumming did come up in another post, something about cults:
So there you go. Drums bring peace. Amiright?