I haven’t taken a photo of Vancouver lately. It’s cold and wet, with the occasional sunny or cloudy days. Recently I’ve tried to bike to UBC for school, and the majority of the times I’ve biked it’s been pouring rain, leaving me soaked when I arrive. I don’t remember Vancouver being this wet ever!? Or maybe my memory is just bad.

Since coming back, I’ve moved to 49th and Fraser, a working-class, less exciting southern part of Vancouver. I enjoy the proximity to working-class (aka cheap) food places like Samurai Sushi and Fresh Slice, but I miss the hipsterism and (generally) biking culture of Main street. I’ll be moving back to Mt. Pleasant in a couple of months – I need to get back there before the area is gentrified!

The city has been heavy lately – or perhaps I just haven’t had time to look around. My face is stuck on the computer screen or on my desk. It happens every year that I feel tired and blue from being forcefully hauled into a non-stop whirlwind of school or work, but this year it’s exacerbated by my recent travels. I miss feeling free – but at the same time I feel good that I am getting things done. Checking off things to do from my agenda.

I guess you never really live in a city until you are too busy to look at the city, at which point you stop living in the city. So if you’re lucky and catch that moment right before things get hectic, you can maybe live as a local without drowning in work. A great city has to support its working class and lower classes before it starts flashing off to tourists. It has to attract its inhabitants and workers enough that they don’t feel left out while trying to earn a living.

While many are leaving Vancouver for various reasons, mostly financial reasons, I hope to hold out here for as long as I can. It’s a privilege to live here among the millionaires and billionaires, and if it costs so much to be here, so be it. If it wasn’t for UBC, I think I would stay on the East side for as long as I can, because the Duffin Donuts, Bonn’s off Broadway, and the Black Lodge, Storm Crow Tavern, Formosa… A lot of times I feel like “going where the locals go” should be”going where the working class goes”.

This is, then, officially my ‘coming home’ blogpost. Home is Mt Pleasant and Sunset for now. Hopefully I’ll find a new home soon.