Rich and Strange Aeons

Suburb east of Vancover, on an eastern tip of Burrard inlet. Was there just a week, filling a gap between 2 weeks in Surrey and a month in east Vancouver. The nicest thing about it was Noon Creek, a small but dense preserve of creeks and plants. Like a 5 minute walk across the edge but you could spend far longer meandering inside. And it was just across the street. Also nice was the much bigger Shoreline Park, and my first "don't don't don't go on the mudflats" signs. Commercial center was a 7 minute walk away, small but decently; OTOH there was *nothing* north or west of me, just houses. I dared the train a bit more, riding to the end of the Millennium line which I guess means I was exploring Coquitlam. Lafarge lake, town center around Lincoln station...

Following on the earlier post.

Haven't done much that's too Exciting. Focused on job search and not getting covid. It's been a pretty nice neighborhood, though. No barriers to the south like further west, so I can go on long walks through nice neighborhoods. The niceness is enforced by a ton of traffic calming measures: diverters, neighborhood traffic circles (both of which tend to have nice plants maintained by someone), speed bumps. These exist north of Hastings as well. Many streets are lined with trees with deep pink flowers, which I'm guessing are plum trees -- too late, I think too pink, for cherry. Also a lot of people have planted tulips and they're ALL blooming right now.

Parks: nothing quite like Minoru Park. But Hastings Park has a pond, with ducks and herons and a cormorant, and has been nice to hang out at. There's another big pond to the south too.

I procrastinated on housing, and still didn't feel like flying somewhere else, so will be spending two weeks in Surrey for price reasons. Not cheap, but cheapest. Bit far from anything, like Richmond; the other Surrey places were even worse... I should look now for the next place, but I'm still dithering. Mexico would be a nice change but the air is bad, Montreal would be nice but I'm plane-averse with all the unmasking, though Canada's probably better than the US, anything in the US, well, thanks unqualified judge.

Hastings here isn't the Skid Row that it is 2 km west, and has a lot of shops and restaurants. It's also even more of a car sewer: multiple lanes, lots of traffic, no curbside parking, so I don't spent much time walking along it even with my anti-particulate mask, and have mostly lived on groceries rather than takeout.

Fujiya, the nice Japanese market I may have mentioned, is like 16 minutes away. It's at the intersection of two sewers, Venables and Clark, but I can get within a short block via calmed residential or bike boulevard streets. I discovered though that they make the prepared food in the morning and let it sell out, so you have to get there early. And at 12:30 on a Sunday it was packed, with like 50% mask-wearing, vs. the 100% a month before. Also there donburi rice doesn't stay fresh that long, so I stopped going much. The Italian market a couple minutes away also got annoyingly unmasked, though the poor employees still have to go through nigh-useless sterilization routines. So I've been going to the open-walled Chinese market.

Venables is a weird street. Due south of me it looks like any other residential street, hardly even wide enough for cars to pass each other given the parking. But west, it widens up a bit, and gets very busy.

Paying more attention on my walks... yeah, mostly grass, sometimes fences or hedge bushes, occasional tree. Some houses have flowers or other ornamental plants; more of them on a couple side streets I found, vs. Azure or Camsell.

Pacing it out at corners or cut-through paths, I'd guess front yards tend to be at least 7 meters deep. I found the zoning code, and the minimum front setback is 6 meters. The closest street is maybe 7 m wide, 3-lane-ish, so wall to wall is at least 6+7+6 = 19 meters. Two story houses, zoned height limit of 7.5 (flat roof) or 9 (accessory) meters, so at best there's a 1:2.1 height:width ratio.

Azure is 4 lanes (including parking) and about 10 m wide, so at least 22 m wall to wall; if I trust my paces, often 8*2+10 = 26 m wide, and around 1:3 height:width.

And while there are occasionally front yard trees, there are no street trees to break up the space. One side of the street doesn't have sidewalk at all, and the other is sidewalk abutting the street, no planter strip.

My streets in Osaka were probably at least 1.5:1 -- 4 m street, at least 6 m height for 2 story buildings.

Walkable City said 1:1 or higher was often considered ideal, and invoked "prospect and refuge" theory, about humans tending to like forest edges, view + shelter. At any rate it works well for me, and helps explain why I'm not thrilled walking around here. Too-wide open space, without trees or even nearby walls.

How does this line up with other Vancouver experience? In the West End, buildings were often mid to high rises over 3-4 lane streets, so some ridiculous height:width ratio. And buildings were close to, often right on, the sidewalk. Or a bit further back on residential streets, which had trees. So fairly pleasant in those respects.

East of Chinatown? A bit more open, but houses still maybe 2-3 m setback, not 6+, and with more diverse and bushier plants than grass.

Walking around the superblock itself hasn't been very exciting. Part of that is the long streets, but I think it's also dull use of front yard area. Big areas, but mostly driveways or grass, plus occasional tree. Compared to rather creative front gardens in Glendale CA, or the use of even 1-3 feet strips in Berkeley.

I have achieved novelty. I am not enjoying it.

I may have complained about being in a rut in the old location, or experienced time flashing by rather than feeling full. I certainly complained about the latter to a friend. 6 weeks east of Chinatown, caught between two rain lines so not a ton of new exploration space.

Well, now I'm in Richmond. Near here, in fact. Chosen because it was the only reasonably priced thing at the time. And I figured Richmond has a lot of Chinese immigrants, there'll be stuff to check out, right?

Well, if you click through to the map, you'll see that I'm in a minor maze of crescents and culs-de-sac, within a larger grid of roads half a mile apart. It could be worse: there are pedestrian cuts across the long sausages, and from at least one of the dead ends out to the road, so it's kind of like a very boring version of Dutch unraveling or Barcelona superblocks -- I have connectivity, cars don't. But the superblock seems to be entirely residential, and even the border roads are in fact more like roads than stroads -- few businesses, mostly more industrial, with few driveways. Good for safety, but dull. There is a Chinese diner ('Golden Coin') nearby that's well reviewed, though basically Canadian diner food + some Chinese options. Plus the quickest way to it involves crossing a four lane highway! ...there's a wide grassy median, and the 'highway' has traffic lights half a mile apart, so it's not insane: cross to median on one break in traffic (guaranteed by a red light at some point), etc.

But all this is soooooooooo different from West End Vancouver...

Nearest supermarket is a T&T 16 minutes walk away; next ones are in the 22-30 minute range. I assume I'll be using the former a lot. Even the nearest other restaurants are 15+ minutes. These distances would be great with a bicycle, though I'd be biking on sidewalks... not that wide, but hey, almost no pedestrians.

Bus? The 401 runs every 15 minutes at the moment, which I guess is *really good* for a suburb like this by US standards -- hell, buses inside Montreal itself don't run that frequently -- but would have to be timed to save much time going nearby.

Unit kitchen is decent but could be better equipped: normal sized saucepans, sieve/colander, rice cooker (no cooker! Asian hosts!)

Let's try to find positives. I have lots of new walks to take; even if they're not too exciting, they'll be new sights and routes for my neurons to be stimulated by. Neighborhood seems quiet (thanks to being deep enough in the superblock; those dead ends get a fair bit of traffic noise, I can tell you.) Not too much distraction, so I can focus on more job stuff. I have my own 'place', that's a unit in a house so I have a direct exit outside.

And hey, only two weeks! Then it's back to 2 km east of where I just came from, again optimized for cost... at least it'll be 11 minutes from an okay supermarket, and 17 minutes from the spiffy Japanese food store.

Welp, I'm a month behind! Highlights:

* Byrne Creek Ravine park, nice overgrown ravine.
* Central Park, looks like redwoods but probably western red cedar.
* SeaBus to North Vancouver. Walked west past Waterfront Park, back over via 3rd, up Lonsdale commercial district. Nothing too exciting. Did see Squamish land. Boat was fully enclosed, no sea breeze for me. I wore my mask brace over KF94. Came in handy on the way back, with a woman on the train coughing loudly with no mask on.
* Moved to east of Chinatown for 2 weeks, then just a bit north of *there* for 4 weeks. Experienced my first induction plate. Steamed frozen dim sum and broccoli. Discovered bad and good ways of steaming.
* Found Portside Park, didn't believe Google that it was hard to get out to the west. Google was correct; train tracks are massive barrier without relief, I finally escaped through a parking garage.
* After I started counting, 52 people masked outside, 94 unmasked.
* Tried salted duck eggs. Edible, not great. Maybe better mashed into rice.
* Tried century egg. Refused to swallow.

Well, kind of. And of course it's a 5th story studio condo, not a house, but whatever.

I haven't been out since my last entry on account of Unseasonable Winter. -12 C for days, snow in a city not used to it, plus all the omicron stuff. And it looked like I do have groceries to last the month. But today was up to a balmy -7 C ;_;, there's yet *more* snow tonight, and I'd been telling people about how light exercise is good for depression. Not that I feel depressed, maybe unproductive, but anyway I figured it was a good window to go for a walk.

Walked over the bridge to Granville Island. Nicest part about that was all the lights at night. Granville itself was "more city". I thought about getting some food, but passed. Ended up turning north on Maple, which I regretted: downhill on a residential street in a snowy city not used to snow... usually walking on snow is fairly safe (vs. concrete/ice mixture) but I found a block of really slipper snow. Survived, though.

Oh, and before that I found myself walking on a bike path, because the city had clearly plowed it, unlike the sidewalk.

Maple led to Cornwall, and eventually my taking the 2 bus back downtown (the bridge is long and cold), with trepidation, since the driver wasn't wearing a mask at all (also true of another bus I looked into later) and some old guy was a dicknose. It wasn't long by bus, so I held the edges of my mask down and hoped.

(Valved N95, with backup surgical mask; I discovered while out that the valve undermines the 'scarf' effect of wearing a mask...)

Decided to get a treat while I was out, hitting Poke Bar on Davie. Returned home, to find 3 people talking loudly in the lobby, 2 of them unmasked despite building policy. And the building is managed more for 'security' than safety: there's only one way in, through the first floor lobby and an elevator. There are various ways *out*, but you can't get back in via any of them, and there's no stair up from the first floor. So more praying to my mask.

Lots of people happily dining away on Granville. You'd think there wasn't a super-contagious pandemic happening.

I made it!

( Long )

Weather forecast has *four days* forecast of -6 to -11 C. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Stayed in Sunday and Monday due to snowing at near-freezing temperatures. The cold is one thing but I hate being around the possibility of ice. No, I didn't enjoy Boston winters, why do you ask? Plus I don't travel with snow boots, just crocs and shoes.

Yesterday was slightly nicer and I had a dental cleaning, plus some shopping, and going for shawarma. I rediscovered how *long* the wait to walk at Dufferin is. Toronto definitely not optimizing for pedestrian comfort. I also had two car scares on the shawarma walk: crossing Bloor, a truck tried to run the yellow light and would have been stuck in the intersection if we pedestrians hadn't waited to let it pass. And combing back, some other car left-turned into a driveway in a way I wasn't happy with.

It occurs to me that when Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes talk about stroads, they mostly use examples of suburban six+ lane roads with lots of parking lots and businesses (thus creating tons of intersecting paths and chances to hit someone.) It occurs to me that while urban streets are rarely so wide and fast and don't have quite so much parking, a fair number of them do have the proliferation of driveways and intersection risk.

Unrelatedly, I think I'd never actually run a dishwasher before staying at this place. Most places I've lived haven't even had a dishwasher. If they did, well, I live by myself and am used to washing up after meals, so I didn't use them. If staying with people who did have one, I might unload or load the thing, but left running it to the owners.

But my current hosts seemed really insistent that I use it rather than and wash, and there's no drying rack or scrub pad (though there's a brush), so I acquiesced. Actually ran it once without obvious problems. But the second time I used more soap, and... SUDS. Apparently you're not supposed to use dishwashing soap (which they do provide) in a dishwasher. Or more precisely there's hand dish soap and machine dish soap.

books: Shogun, Clavell. Long, decent. Simply dropped a plot point.
Circe, Miller. A re-read. Still good. Though Circe has a very inconvenient set of "weak god" powers.
Complete Persepolis. Had never read the second half.

Reading All the Birds in the Sky for a book group. Critics seem to have liked it a whole lot more than I am; I would have called it "poorly written" and "joyless", not a Locus and Nebula winner.