Thoughts – Page 6 – By the River

2020-12-13

The Beginning of the End

Train Simulator: North London & Goblin Lines by DoveTail Games
© 2020 Charles Dunlevy

The beginning of the end of the pandemic is here. Finally there is a light at the end of this long tunnel.

As human beings, we are social by nature. We need contact and interaction with others. Being cooped up alone or with your immediate family is not a natural state for human beings. Prolonged isolation leads to a wide variety of side-effects.

I hate the term, “we are all in this together” because some of us have it better than others, but the statement rings true in terms of mental health. Some people are suffering the effects from being alone. Some are suffering the effects of being around the same people every day. Families are struggling. Couples are struggling. Single people are struggling. From this viewpoint, we really are all in this together, except for the covidiots.

For me, the second lockdown does not feel as bad as the first because this time around there is an end in sight to the pandemic. I am quite confident that by this time next year, the pandemic will be talked about in the past tense.

Post-pandemic, I expect most of us to have an increased appreciation for the things we missed. Going out to live theatre, live classical music at a music hall, rock concerts, house music festivals, or just hanging out at a coffee shop will all feel so much better once we are able to do so again. Watching the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors, and Blue Jays in-person or at a local bar will be incredible. Attending Toronto’s many incredible cultural festivals will feel like a dream. True joy will return when we are able to participate in Caribbana, Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Little Italy, Beaches Jazz Festival, Little India Bazaar, Taste of Lawrence, Pride, and the Santa Claus Parade… plus the several others I may have forgot to mention.

As human beings, we tend to adapt to our immediate circumstances over time. At first, I was really struggling with the first lockdown. This time around, I am feeling much better due to optimism about the end of the pandemic. I have grown used to my time at home enjoying good food, movies, music, exercise, gaming, and computer coding.

I do look forward to getting out and enjoying this wonderful city again. I also look forward to going around the world to enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed. I am looking forward to Saturday nights in Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Lagos, Abuja, London, Paris, Halifax, Berlin, Nairobi, and Toronto.

Let us all make the best of this time to plan for our post-pandemic lives. I am using this extra home time to study various computer programming disciplines. I have learned more about programming during the past 9 months than I did in the preceding two years.

2020-12-05

International Music Saturday

Okay, we are in lockdown part II. I am home, better safe than sorry. I chose to make the best of the situation by enjoying some good food and music. Tonight, yours truly cooked up some delicious hamburgers. After stuffing myself, I went out to the balcony to enjoy a cold beer while reading and plane spotting.

Did I say I went outside for a cold beer? Cold was not the adjective… more like freezing! It was so cold out there I could hardly hold my beer for too long. Eventually holding the table became a chore so I went inside.

Before cooking the burgers, I started my evening listening to old school hip hop from King Tee. I discovered that he had recently released a new album, so I started to listen…I could only get through two songs before giving up. It turns out that one of my favourite rappers from the old days has adopted the current style of hip hop which I have no use for.

I switched to Hall and Oats… a duo from the olden days famous for blue-eyed soul and adult contemporary music… music our parents listened to… and I always loved as a child. This fantastic duo also released a new album for 2020 which I had just stumbled upon. A few songs in and I realized, although the music was good, it could not live up to their classics from the 1970s and 1980s.

I switched genres to house… my go-to. I just love soulful house, garage house, African house, tech house, etc. I let this play while I cooked the delicious hamburgers. Yes, those hamburgers were delicious. I also realized that I had not eaten a restaurant burger in close to a year. Why bother when I make such good burgers at home?

After eating, I went to relax on the balcony while reading, drinking beer, and listening to house music. Remember I said it was too cold outside? Yeah it was. I went back inside and set up a laptop by the living room window.

I started listening to Korean ballads, then Korean trot, then Afrobeats, then songs by Fela Kuti, Femi Kuti (his son), and others in the Afrobeat genre. Yes, there is a difference between Afrobeats, and Afrobeat. Afrobeat is the original jazz-fusion-African sound made famous by Fela Kuti during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Afrobeats (plural) refers to the new hip-hop/reggae/African-inspired sound by artists such as Tiwa Savage, Wiz Kid, and Davido.

I really do love music from around the world. So far this week I have listened to Salsa, rock, house, Afrobeats, Afrobeat, traditional Yoruba music, blue-eyed soul, dance hall reggae, Korean trot, Korean ballads, and hip hop.

I just love music and I am sure that music loves me.

2020-12-022020-12-02

“Foreign” Languages

I am fascinated by languages. The fact that people communicate via sounds that may sound like gibberish to me but is clearly understandable to them has always been a source of fascination to me. English is my native tongue and the only language spoken by me during childhood.

I remember feeling envious of my friends and classmates who spoke other languages. During my elementary school years, I had friends who spoke Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Greek, and Hindi. I always felt left out and envious whenever they spoke with their parents other languages. I found it amazing how they could understand what sounded like gibberish to me.

I became quite good at imitating languages. I would find myself repeating things that my Greek friend’s were saying when speaking with their parents. I remember my friend’s mother telling me that I am good at languages and should learn to speak Greek because I was repeating what they said very accurately. Unfortunately I had no idea what was being said.

During my middle school years, I was exposed to even more languages. I now had friends who spoke Hebrew, Korean, Russian, Farsi, Chinese, and Japanese. The Japanese boy spoke very little English but we got along great. He had the coolest clothes and was a break-dancer.

While attending high school, I was exposed to Tagalog, Punjabi, Romanian, Arabic, and Spanish. You can see a trend here… the older I got, the more multicultural my environment became. This is one of the blessings of living in Toronto.

Fast forward to my adult years and I found myself working at an awesome software company and studying accounting at night. I still had the language itch and decided to enrol in Spanish classes at Don Mills Secondary School.

I really enjoyed the class. Our teacher was from Mexico and treated us to a night at an authentic Mexican restaurant at the end of the course. She contacted the restaurant in advance and asked that all staff communicate with her students in Spanish only.

It was an interesting experience. I learned that Mexican food is completely different from that which is served at Taco Bell. Taco Bell is American food. Everything I ate was incredibly delicious. I felt stupid looking for items that I was used to finding at Taco Bell.

I did not further my studies in Spanish because I became too busy studying accounting. I simply did not have the time between working full-time and attending accounting classes part-time. I no longer had a social life. These were pretty dark days.

Somehow around 2011, I started to study the Korean language. I was no longer studying accounting after work and had more free time. I met a girl named Jessie at a local bar. After introductions, I asked her where she was from. She said she came from Korea to study English and gain work experience. I was amazed to find out that she came alone. At that time, the thought of me going overseas without my family scared me.

Somehow I took an interest in her language and she started to teach me. I would visit her often to enjoy some cold beer and study the Korean language. She eventually changed job locations to another bar even closer to my home. It was there that I met her co-worker who offered to be my Korean language tutor.

I went to that bar every evening for my language lessons. Both of my tutors filled my notebook with all sorts of texts. One evening, one of them told me that she was returning to Korea in a couple of months. She said that I should visit. I quickly agreed then wondered to myself later that night, did I actually just agree to fly half-way around the world? I had only been on a plane once for only 2 hours to Nova Scotia. There was no turning back. I had agreed to go and could not chicken out.

I have since been to Korea several times and made an unbelievable number of Korean friends in both Toronto and South Korea. Although I am not yet fluent, I can proudly say that I am a speaker of the Korean language. I had accomplished a childhood dream by acquiring a second language.

I plan to resume my Spanish studies someday. I would also like to learn French and one of the West African languages such as Igbo, Yoruba, Efik, Akan, Twi, or Ewe. I am also interested in the Japanese language and Chinese. I know a little Japanese. I am currently learning Nigerian Pidgin English which in many ways is remarkably similar to Jamaican patios.

One positive side to the pandemic is that it have given me more time to put towards studying the wide array of subjects that interest me. I have spent most of the time since March studying various aspects of computer programming. Yesterday I decided it was time to add Chinese to the list. I will also resume my Japanese studies.