I won’t get too specific about the curses except that they
involved trying to muddle through toxic environments, which included: being
almost overcome by fumes, and bracing for what I was suspecting to be a vermin
infestation. Thankfully, the latter issue didn’t actually end up manifesting
itself, and I could put my paranoia to rest.
My blessings were realizing that the stuff I put effort into
learning a whole year ago didn’t just simply evaporate and disappear into the
ether. I’ve been daring myself to use the Swedish and German I learned to read
correspondence and interact with other new contacts by text. No one has
reported to me yet that I’ve been too flawed or incomprehensible (or they’ve
been too kind to say so). The fact that I’ve been cogent enough to remember these
languages despite the lapse of their usage (and a fume-fogged mind) amazes me. The
jeans issue as mentioned above, was my personal Harajuku moment (see The 4-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss, page 38).
It forced me to recollect what I did when I first primed myself to begin my journey
back in the years when I became the fittest I’ve ever been. I realize that I’m
actually in a better state of organization now, than when I started way back
then, as I’ve been trying to reconfigure and reclaim some space in my office to
set up a sensibly useful home gym. My last medical results shown that my lung
tissues are now just about completely regenerated, and so I have no excuse to
not get back into a regular exercise regimen. First, I must build up my core
strength and joint flexibility, especially in the arm I injured back in 2016. Reclaiming
and reconfiguring my space is a source of giving me some clarity of vision and
purpose, nothing wrong with that, an extra motivator to reorganize other things
beyond just this room.
Another bit of a blessing I guess, albeit a
bewildering one for me, is for the fact that the New York Times recently listed
the top 52 places in the world to visit in 2018, and strangely enough, my
city, Saskatoon, was on that list. It made something like number 18 on it, and
weirder still is the fact that it was the only Canadian city to appear on that
list. If Saskatoon is considered to be such a gem, how bad off are the other
places in Canada really? I won’t complain that it appeared in this card deck
full of places on this globe that merit a visit. I guess it’s even more of an impressive
accolade considering that the dominant buzzword circulating in the news for
this week, to describe other places, even though it isn’t even being said outright,
is “shithole” (no thanks to the grand poohbah of all idiot US presidents,
Trump). Thankfully with this review, Saskatoon has managed to rise above all that.
I’m just befuddled though as to the how and why it became selected. I would
reckon that their research team obviously didn’t account for the winter months.
They cite the Remai art gallery as an attraction; I have yet to see it
myself, because I’m saving that visit for company who would genuinely appreciate
it with me, so I can’t yet judge based upon that. But if I were asked now what makes
Saskatoon an attractive city, I would suggest that wandering the Meewasin
valley trails in the summer is the best thing you can do to figure that out for
yourself, or visiting the Farmers Market, or else grabbing a coffee and
enjoying it outside around the park by the Bess or by the river, or a pint in
one of the pubs downtown or on Broadway. It’s quite festive during summer (to
offset our all too brutal winters). It’s a bigger city that still feels like a
small town, with enough people around who’ve been raised rurally, or remain
connected to each other in a down-to-earth, close-knit folksy manner, who help diffuse away the
pretentiousness and snobbery of something more urban and edging towards elitism,
sided along with a huge multicultural blending that gets along a lot better
with this sort of mix than most other places on Earth. For the most part, the
people are generally approachable and friendly. The food scene is very diverse
for a smaller urban centre. People from out East who come here for the first
time generally express surprise at how seemingly cosmopolitan Saskatoon is, with
their beliefs dashed by not finding more of a redneck culture being prominent for
this place, as what is typically expected by them about Saskatchewan. One point
of infamy about Saskatoon though, is its perceived high rate of crime. The city has been rated in the top ten worst Canadian cities for criminal activity for
many consecutive years. I argue that Saskatoon actually isn’t that much more harsh
or severe for criminal activity over most other cities in Canada. Sure, it’s
higher, but not so much as to make it among the worst per capita. It’s just that with the close-knittedness of the community here, citizens here are far
less likely to be complacent or dismissive when dealing with, or witnessing, suspicious
activity in their neighbourhoods, and so are far more likely to report it, while
people in most other larger centres tend to under report actual criminal
activity. This naturally skews the crime stats on a higher rate for Saskatoon,
I’d even say drastically. The shithole parts of this city (or of any city) is
where people under report crime because of the sectors of the population that are
intermingled in gang activity, and thus won’t squeal on each other. The police
here are awesome too, both in terms of response times and availability, and
dealing with most civic problems very tactfully, responsibly, and
professionally no matter how trivial or severe on the spectrum. The city isn’t
huge, so they can respond faster than bigger centres, and they give attention
to calls that cops in larger centres wouldn’t trouble themselves to expend manpower
for (and thus not recorded and accounted for in their statistics). Naturally then, this extra availability
and responsiveness of the peace officers here thus generates and facilitates
more stats processed for criminal activity. In reality, I feel quite safe here
in this city, as opposed to someplace like East Hastings in Vancouver. The Pareto
principle also applies to crime stats where it’s figured 80% of criminal activity
is done by 20% of a sector of criminals, except here in Saskatoon I’d say that
it’s more like 90% of such crime is committed by 10% of the criminal population.
Throughout
this week, the best blessing of all of them all was reuniting and reconnecting with
someone from my past on a more soulful level. Thank you, you know who you are.
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