Turn The Page

It has been three and a bit lightning fast months since I last wrote and I can scarcely believe that I’ve now been in Canada for more than five.  The trip hasn’t been exactly what I expected but so far I’ve learned quite a lot and despite the gross expenditure it all feels like a worthwhile exercise at this point.

The opening six weeks were a bit of a nightmare.  With no place to call my own I accomplished very little and let everything slide.  When we finally moved into our flat on March 1st things improved immediately but the job hunt led me into a new set of problems.  Bar and serving work was very difficult to come by at that time of year and I was wrestling for a handful of positions of thousands of would-be staff.

I’ve suffered through employment droughts before but being thousands of miles away from home with a big flat to pay for (though I reckon it’s worth every penny) added a lot more pressure.  I was feeling desperate midway through April when I embarked on a FOUR interview journey just to get a job in Starbucks.  It was a route I didn’t want to take and thankfully I was offered a much better position in the Hard Rock Cafe at the end of April which resulted me binning the coffee shop before I’d even worked a shift.

The training process at the HRC was lengthy and involved a quite ludicrous amount of product knowledge (there are exactly 1.9qt of tortilla chips in the nachos, in case you were wondering) but I got through it without any hassle and began clawing back some of the deficit I had racked up.  By the time my Mum came to visit at the end of May I was just about back onside money wise and a trip back to Barrie plus a few lazy days lounging in the sun certainly helped make me feel that the struggle of the past few months had been worth it.

I’m pleased to say that the time without a job wasn’t a complete waste.  I spent a lot of time running, playing football and tennis and I’m in the best shape of my life now and contemplating marathon training for a race in October.  I’m back playing 11-a-side with a good bunch of Irish lads, we’re second in our league with five wins out of six and it’s been a lot of fun to be back playing competitively after a spell out of the game.

The grey clouds and slush of the first third of the year have given way to a much brighter outlook.  Suddenly summer has arrived with a spate of hot, dry days, I’m spending my free time playing a game I love and making a decent wage while still having enough time left over to relax and enjoy myself.

I arrived home from football training tonight to an email from two of my closest pals containing their flight details for their on a whim trip to Toronto.  I need to get that barbecue on the deck fired up, things are looking rosy in the garden.

Grin

A Nearby Waste

I was having a look at the Sunday Mail’s website last weekend in an attempt to keep in touch with what’s going on in Scotland and I was a little shocked to read this story about a murder in Springburn.

Unfortunately, these things happen in Glasgow.  It’s especially terrifying when they happen less than a mile from your old front door, and where my mother still currently lives.  Apparently it has come as a result of a dispute between the young Springburn Peg (YSP) and a rival gang.  I’ve seen the graffiti all over any vacant wall in the area (usually something daft like ‘fuck the Polis, YSP#1) and also the dodgy types huddling around in big groups but suddenly the problem seems a whole lot more real with a boy of just 19 being axed to death in a planned attack.

If you read on you can see that the boy did not have a very nice life.  His mother stabbed his abusive, alcoholic father to death when he was just 10 and he was also involved in a bungled police raid whilst on the way back from visiting relatives in prison at age five.  Incidentally, it is worth noting that his mother only got three years for the murder of his father but admittedly no further details of the case were published there. I’m picturing a Trevor and Little Mo from Eastenders type scenario in my head.

How do we stop this from happening though?  This culture of violence paints a very sad picture of life in the west of Scotland.  Is it a matter of poor education that Scotland, particularly Glasgow, has such a high murder and violent crime rate?  How much blame can we place on the council for not giving the kids enough to do?  The huge imbalance of the city council’s spending between the affluent areas in the west end in comparison to the likes of Springburn, Shettleston and Govan is very unsettling indeed.  Why do we seem to have so many young people in poor areas that don’t give two shits about life to the extent that they’re willing to stab and kill other people?

There are those that would argue that gang related deaths are of little concern to the common punter in Glasgow because you’ve essentially got idiots pursuing and killing other idiots.  I walked to work in the city centre and university in the west end from Springburn for years and although I never felt threatened I was always questioned by those who thought it wasn’t a risk worth taking.  When stories like this come out it’s not hard to see why.

Are we just hoping that the problem will fix itself?  Is that the best solution we can come up with?

Rats, Rickety Stairs & Cabbage

Somewhat typically I followed up another guarantee of regular blogging with the sound of silence.  However, my current circumstances make it easy to let myself off the hook.

I haven’t been myself in February and  I blame the flat search for this.  The buzz of being in a new country was already beginning to wear off on January 30th when Jon and I found a beautiful, big flat in Little Italy  on a tree lined street.  It was both the nicest we had seen and peculiarly also the cheapest.  We viewed it just one hour after the advert went online and had our rental application submitted by 10am the next morning.  Over the next few days Jon charmed the landlady with status report seeking phone calls and it looked as if we had secured the dream pad.

But the line went slack.  She stopped answering her phone and we were bewildered.  Some ten days later we finally got a negative response.  We weren’t best pleased.  We were still scouring the market during the waiting period in anticipation of our failure but found it really hard to get excited about smaller, dirtier flats for an extra $400 a month.

As we stretched further into February the chances of quickly finding a place dried up as landlords began advertising for March 1st starts.  The temptation to settle for any place we could get our hands on and resume a normal home life was kept at bay only by the dilapidated states of most of our potential homes.  We found a huge place at the heart of downtown but there were twenty reasons for why it was totally unacceptable without even mentioning that I fell down the rickety stairs.  Basements with prison cell bedrooms and apartments the size of a car backseat were par for the course by now.  On February 13th we arranged a viewing that involved us wandering through an area with enough crack addicts to inspire an Irvine Welsh novel.  When we finally arrived we saw barred windows, a crumbling rusted roof and smoke coming out of little cracks in the front door.  We walked away without uttering a word.

Not every place we saw was terrible though.  In fact, there were several nice options that we tried in vain to secure.  The lengthy application process was often our undoing as we didn’t measure up to our competitors due to our foreign backgrounds.  For the dream pad we were up against fifteen other applicants and by the time we saw any other nice place we were warned that there were already plenty of people swarming around it.

The initial intrigue of searching for a new place to live had long since been replaced by anger and disillusionment.  More unsuitable places came and went on a daily basis before the wait was finally made worthwhile last Sunday.  A huge, two-level place with a living-room-sized bathroom in Cabbagetown was to be our saving grace.  We said we wanted it and we got it.  No dumb ass application process, no 200 job referees, no bullshit.  A handshake, a cheque and it’s all ours.

We move in on Sunday and I cannot wait.  I’m looking forward to taking my life off of pause.  My own room, my own things and time to think with this weight off of my mind.  And if the temperatures rises a few more degrees then I’ll be back on the tennis court soon too.  Things are looking up.

Half A World Away

With no place to call my own maintaining this blog could prove tricky.  However, I have maintained a steady internet presence since I left for Canada last Wednesday so I really have no excuse to neglect it any further.

I arrived in Toronto on January 14th and after a brief wander around the city I hopped on a train to Barrie.  It certainly was strange to be back in the town where I grew up after eight years away.  The place has changed so much but at the same time it’s still pretty much as I remember it.

I spent the week visiting old friends and taking it easy.  Going out drinking with people who’ve never heard of Billy Connolly and don’t find temperatures of -25 celsius strange has certainly been hard to adjust to.

I’m now in Toronto to begin the job and flat search.  I suppose when I think about it I don’t really know what I’m doing.  But that’s all part of the fun.

Young Without Youth?

I spoke to my Dad on the phone on New Year’s Day and the contrast in our Hogmanay celebrations was quite striking.  He was nursing a hangover after a night out with his workmates in Amsterdam while I was feeling perky after a relaxing evening in with a beer and TV.

What’s going on? At 23 I’m already settling nicely into my slippers.