Charles Dunlevy – Page 6

2021-02-242021-03-01

Side-effects of a Pandemic

Oh no, the dreaded P-word. I’ll be honest, I have been avoiding video games and movies with ‘pandemic’ in the title. I am sick and tired of the altered lives we have been forced to live for nearly one year, but this is not the reason for this entry.

Let us focus on the positive side-effects of this pandemic. It is hard to believe that anything “positive” has arisen from this nightmare, but hear me out.

It is winter in Toronto and I have yet to brave the nasty weather commuting to work. I have been working at home since March of last year. We can take this as one of the positives.

I always loved video games but have not really played since high school due to time constraints. Prior to the pandemic, I would spend the vast majority of my time on the road. I simply did not have the time to play video games.

Since the pandemic began, I find myself at home with plenty of time for games. Video games help me take my mind off the pandemic. Since travel is severely restricted, I find I can travel virtually via video games.

I can to explore the United Kingdom and Germany via Train Simulator and Train Sim World. I fly around the world via X-Plane 11 and Infinite Flight. I drive around Italy and France in Euro Truck Simulator. I drive around the western United States in American Truck Simulator.

I explore Victorian London via Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. This game is underrated and a lot of fun. The architecture is beautiful and being able to scale any building in the city via parkour is a thrill.

I fight for survival in a post-nuclear war Russia, beginning in the Moscow Metro and exploring the monster-ridden forests. Metro Exodus is a fantastic game with unbelievable graphics.

I experience the difficulties reintegrating into society upon returning from the Vietnam war in Mafia III. This open-world game is set in a fictitious city called Bordeaux, modelled after New Orleans in the 1960s.

Medieval fantasy is explored via two of the most highly-regarded RPG games of the past 10 years… Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3. Both offer the ability to escape the real world and live vicariously through the characters throughout the vast lands they inhabit.

Those who know me know of my deep connections to Asia. I travel virtually to Hong Kong by playing Sleeping Dogs. This is a game where you play the part of a triads gang member who ends up working undercover for the police. The streets of Hong Kong are incredibly replicated in this game. You feel as though you are really in Hong Kong.

While in Asia, we cannot forget Tokyo and Osaka Japan. Yakuza 0 is a fantastic game set in both cities. Walking the streets to me feels so authentic due to the time I have spent in both cities in real life. This game makes me want to go back to Japan so bad.

Gaming has been a lot of fun for me and has taken my mind off the isolation brought on by the lockdown. Another positive side-effect is cooking.

Now that I am home, I have time to cook every single meal I eat. Although my community contains hundreds of restaurants, and we have easy access via delivery applications, I have rarely eaten takeout food this past year. I can count how many takeout meals I have consumed.

I am enjoying cooking all the foods I love every single as opposed to weekends only. Another side-effect if you can call it that, is the fact that I have lost weight due to eating healthier and maintaining an exercise regiment at home.

Friends tend to be temporary items in our lives. Only some friends remain with us through thick and thin, year in and year out. I have been blessed with having a lot of wonderful friends. The pandemic has allowed me to realise who my true friends are. It has given me more time to actually speak with friends who I have not spoken with much over the past few years because we all lived such busy lives.

My favourite side-effect of this pandemic is that isolation has given me more time to focus on writing. I have much more time to contribute to these blogs and my books. I love to write, as most of you can tell by now. Be on the lookout for many more products on the horizon.

2021-02-22

The Healing Powers of House Music

House music has been around since the 1980s and is still growing stronger today. It has spread its wings around the world from its humble beginnings in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and New Jersey. It is now a force to be reckoned with hailing from London, Berlin, Johannesburg, Central African Republic, Iran, and many other places in addition to its origins in the USA.

This form of music has the ability to uplift your spirits regardless of the mood you are in. I find this to be a very therapeutic genre of music. It has spawn dozens and dozens of sub-genres, my favourites being Garage, Soulful, Tech, Afro, Deep, and Ancestral Soul.

This evening, as I sat by my large living room window writing and viewing the city skyline, a song called Transitions featuting Ade Alafia (AfroKillerz Remix) by Boddhi Satva began to play as the last track on a 90-minute mix-set created by me a week ago Friday.

Despite the pain I have been experiencing all day, something made me jump out of my seat and start dancing around my living room. I found myself dancing in a traditional Yoruba style and simply enjoying this wonderful song. The pains which had been nagging me all day were completely gone as I danced to my heart’s content. I whipped up a good cardio pump in the process.

How many times have you found yourself feeling down and then found happiness when a certain song begins to play? Music can be uplifting. Music can help us relive good memories. Music can be comforting.

Around 2016, I decided to stop listening to negative music. I listen to uplifting music every day and it has done wonders for my psyche. I have now also discovered that music may actually heal us from our pains, both mentally and physically.

I am now listening to a song called In & Out of My Life by the legendary House diva, Adeva. This song contains strong, beautiful vocals along with an infectious piano riff. I absolutely love the piano. I enjoy listening to the piano in house, Korean ballads, and classical music.

2021-02-192023-05-21

My Commute

TTC Subway Train at St. Patrick Station (c) 2011 Charles Dunlevy

We were stranded in the tunnel for maybe 20 minutes. The train was PACKED to capacity this morning. The air conditioning and lights shut off because the power supply was cut. Through the darkness, I could see a light above every other door. I was fortunate to be seated at the front of the first car.

I kept thinking about the people in the middle and the back cars who probably did not know exactly what was happening because the announcements were scarce and kept breaking up. From where I was sitting, I could hear the operator speaking on the telephone. Hearing that kept me from panicking because I knew what was going on. He was not happy because apparently we got screwed over. I could hear him telling the person on the other end of the phone that they should have let him reverse to Bloor Station before cutting out the power.

This ordeal felt scary because the section of tunnel between Union and Bloor is the narrowest in the entire system. It is the original section from the 1950s and does not have proper ventilation. The tunnels on the newer Sheppard line are wide and spacious. There are platform edges along the entire tunnel so that people could walk safely. There are also more lights and good ventilation. The old Yonge line had no such feature in its original section between Bloor and Union stations.

It started to get hot on the train. People were taking off their shirts and jackets. A man knocked on the operator’s cab door and asked, “Can we get some air in here?” The driver opened his door and explained that there was no power on the train. He had a small fan in his car and left the door open so that we can get a little air. He also opened his window.

They claimed there was an unauthorized person on the tracks at Wellesley Station. I could hear them telling the operator that supervisors were walking the tracks from Bloor towards Wellesley. I suppose that was in order to catch the person. I could hear them walking in the tunnel. I heard a voice yell, “careful, don’t fall there.” I saw a supervisor approach the front of our train and start speaking with the operator. He then slowly continued his way towards Wellesley. Another supervisor appeared and did the same. I quietly asked, “why don’t they walk faster?”

The power was finally restored and were cleared to go. We entered Wellesley Station to see the platform packed with people. The operator said, “They let out the train that was ahead of us.” There was no way those people could fit onto our train. There was a supervisor on the platform. I overheard the operator say to him, “but I thought you said there was a person on track level?” Right there I knew that they had lied to him. I have no idea what happened but it seems to me that nobody was on the tracks.

We pulled into College Station and shortly after the guard warned people to stay clear of the doors, the train did not move. The doors opened again and the operator got out of his cab real fast and I heard him say, “I’m gonna have to check on door number …” as he took off. I gave up at that point and left the train. As I approached the exit, they gave the all-clear but I kept walking. I was not going back into that mess.

This post was originally written September 22, 2011 by Charles Dunlevy