Not Coronavirus

Okay, so there continues to be a flow of new information on the virus. However, before everything blew up, I already intended to talk about a number of events that I had failed to blog about, so I'd just like to talk about those things before they get even more out of date.

Firstly, Valentine's Day. This was the first Valentine's Day in... I dunno, seven years? that I had someone to spend it with, which was very nice. I won't go into full detail, but I wil mention that the morning after, we went to St Jacob's farmer's market, which I'm sure is closed at this time. I was under the impression that I'd never been, but once I got there I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I was brought all the way back to my childhood, when I went to the marketplace with my Big Brother from the Big Brothers association. It's so weird how you can completely and suddenly remember a place that you haven't thought of in years, and which you've only been to once... But my memory must be faulty, because apparently the original market burned down, and the one we were at was a recreation. Let's just say they did a really good job at recreating it.

On another day, me and Lee-Anne met up with one of my aunts in Toronto. This means that she's been able to meet my mother, brother, cousin, and both Toronto aunts. We were kind of doing our rounds meeting the people in my family. My Toronto grandparents were next on the list, but that won't be doable for awhile.

We went to a French bakery. I had a croque madame, which is like a fancy ham and cheese sandwich. If it has an egg on it, it's a croque madame, because the egg is supposed to look like a lady's hat, and if it doesn't, it's a croque monsieur, because I guess men don't wear hats. They actually didn't have the monsieur option, probably due to low demand because eggs are awesome. It wasn't presented like a typical sandwich either, it was spread across the plate and there were three pieces of bread. We all got macarons, too, which were better than I thought they'd be. I sure do hope some restaurants survive all this.

This was a leap year, which means we got February 29th. This is the original Rare Disease Day, which is funny because it's a rare day. However, while this used to be the only day it was celebrated, people with a passion for rare conditions got it expanded to "the last day of February", so you can celebrate it on February 28th when it's not a leap year. This spreads four times as much awareness, but ruins the joke. It's kind of interesting that we got this virus on a year with a proper February 29th Rare Disease Day, and February 29th occured during the spread, although it's not the day it originated and not when it's been at it's worst.

Other notes I took were about being at the gateway to being a coffee snob. I'd been going to Starbucks instead of Tim Horton's because Starbucks makes sure there are outlets available to charge your phone, while Tim Horton's hides them, and I was spending so much time in the community that I would frequently run down my phone. I know Starbucks isn't "fancy" but to give American readers a frame of reference, Tim Horton's is largely considered to be the Canadian equivalent of Dunkin' Donuts. Also, Burger King owns it.

I'd developed a taste for lighter roasts, and at home I was grinding my own beans. Even at work, I'd upgraded from instant coffee to using a pourover.

This isn't true anymore though. Now I just have a giant club pack of Folger's and never leave the house.

As far as classing up my living style, I had gone from using manual toothbrushes to electric. Apparently dentists recommend electric over manual. Lee-Anne found a pretty decent electric toothbrush in my bathroom cabinet and asked me why I had it if I didn't use it. It was a concept that I'd played with at one point, but never saw through. With her encouragement, I started to engage in my previous investment.

But I've since downgraded back to manual since my electric ran out of batteries...

As far as quality of life improvement purchases go, I also got a WiFi booster for my room. Our router is in the living room, and the signal is pretty weak in my bedroom. The WiFi booster creates an extension that offers a strong signal, but still occasionally clips out. Still better than what I had, and having a strong Internet connection is especially nice now that I'm inside all the time.

I wanted to talk about the new Conestoga Campus, which is at the Market Square. I think I've mentioned it before, but Market Square is an old shopping centre which has slowly lost most of its businesses, and the only thing to try and establish itself there since its' decline is a cafe called Elevensies. Anyway, it was to be converted into a Conestoga campus in January. Curious, I decided to visit it. I was surprised to see everything the way it used to be. Same deserted gym, same two final surviving restaurants in the otherwise barren food court. The nail salon and electronics store were still open. Trios college and Service Canada were still open. The only thing that had changed was, the fake plants on the bottom floor were gone.

I checked a map, and it turns out that only the basement, which I didn't know existed, had been converted to a Conestoga campus. According to the map, you could only get to it through the parking garage.  I tried to get in, but couldn't find the entrance and eventually gave up because security was giving me weird looks.

I really wanted the two remaining food court restaurants, a pita place called Grill Inn and a Chinese spot called Mr. Wu's to be reinvigorated by the new Conestoga students as a reward for their tenacity, but this virus is probably the last nail in their coffin.

Apparently I never spoke about Emotional Intelligence training. This concerns that MESH Diversity testing I did a while ago, the one where I answered a bunch of questions, and other people answered a bunch of questions, and I got to see how I perceive myself, and how other people perceive me. At this training, we got to see everyone in the agency's results merged into one, and see Extend-a-Family's results as a whole.

One of my weakest areas was Meta-Perception, which is the ability to see myself through the lense of someone else. Well, Extend-a-Family received the same score as me. Apparently that's one that most people are lacking. Extend-a-Family also received low scores for drawing boundaries, which I was also low in. Not surprising, honestly, since we're so community-oriented.

I was surprised at how similar my results were to the general agency's. Both mine and EaF's overall strongest category was Leadership, and we both ranked 10/10 on Principle (we all prioritize doing what's morally correct). I did have a higher score than the agency for Civility (my ability to talk, knowing how to disagree without being disagreeable).

The bulk of the session was examining the concept of Meta Perception. We broke into groups, and had to decide as individuals, and then as a team, what our favourite to least favourit characters were in a story. Despite it seeming obvious to me what order we should put the characters in, I was surprised that everyone had different answers. I told the story to Lee-Anne later, and our decisions actually matched, which means we have the same moral perception.

As far as agency things go, we did something during the holiday season called Secret Friends, where you get the name of someone else in the organization, and someone else gets yours, but you don't know who has your name. Then you do nice things the person you drew secretly throughout the week. It's kind of like a Secret Santa.

I was surprised on the Monday when I got a custom tarot card, called The Fox and Ivy which freaked me out, because it meant that this person knows I read tarot cards, that my spirit name in Chisasibi was Fox Man, and that I'm into plants. The day after, I got a tube of shea butter hand cream, meaning they knew about my fixation with the iconic Malian miracle nut, and the day after, I got a Boston cream donut. Not even the WALES staff knew about my donut preference... How was this person's research so good?!

I was also freaked out because it was supposed to be an activity done on a volunteer basis, and I hadn't thought I'd signed up. Turns out, somebody asked me if I was participating before I knew what it was, and I said something vague and non-commited, but someone in charge of running it overheard, took it as an affirmation, and signed me up without my knowing. So when I got my first gift, I was a day behind and didn't know who I was supposed to be being kind to. When I found out, it was someone that I didn't even know existed, and I thought I knew everyone in the agency. Wound up doing some last minute research.

First person I talked to said she liked white wine and cinnamon hearts, which when put together seemed a little creepy and romantic. I didn't want to become secret friends with benefits! I eventually wound up getting her a bottle of wine, a bag of popcorn (her favourite snack) and some toys for her dog. I wasn't going to reveal myself but she figured it out and sent me a thank you email.

I also found out who was giving me stuff, and it turns out about half of what she got was researched and half was just pure intuition. Pretty good intuition.

And finally, I wanted to talk a bit about transit. The month after the bus strike, they made passes half off, which is nice but doesn't really make up for the inconvenience of that ordeal. I also wanted to talk about the impracticle nature of fare payment for the Ion train, since literally most of the podiums that you're supposed to pay at are broken, making it impossibe to pay, even if you wanted to. That doesn't matter anymore though, now that all transit is free.

And there you have it. I know it was a lot, but I'm glad to have covered the non-pandemic related content I was hoping to speak on.