#i finished it in an hour 30 (meant to take 2h 30)

[enpassants]

fellas how we feeling abt that a level english revolution test bc i am feeling GOOD

[nuald]

Living in Calgary

I've been living in Calgary for 2 years already, and I think it's time to recap few things about living here, pros/cons and possible remedies to the issues you might face here.

Please note that life now is different compared with what you could have even 10 years ago. I guess both Vancouver and Calgary (as those are the only cities I've lived in long enough) were nice for newcomers (by newcomers I've meant people who just moved there and didn't have a lot of money to settle in). Right now, both cities have changed and introduced more obstructions to residents.

That's why despite a lot of cons of Calgary below, it doesn't mean that this city shouldn't be considered for living. It's all about tolerance and life choices. If you have proper expectations, it will be easier to adapt. There are definitely people who love Calgary (esp. if they are mortgage-free and/or love winter activities), and who hate it (e.g. who got their houses ruined by hail or flood).

I'm not going to provide a simple list of pros/cons (as cons for me could be pros for you, for example, long winter season), but rather take the most important areas and describe them.

Services

Calgary is definitely a family-friendly city, much more friendlier than Vancouver. Schools and kindergartens are not so busy and expensive. If you want some particular school, you still need to be in the wait-list though, but if you’re not picky, there are definitely some options available. All levels of education, including universities, are presented.

It’s not a problem to get the family doctor too. Walk-in clinics are not so busy too, and emergency wait times are bearable.

Entertainment options are quite good: museums, libraries, one of biggest YMCA in Canada, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Alberta Ballet, Calgary Zoo etc

However, I have to note the prices of the dental services. Alberta has the highest prices for dental. Historically, oil and gas companies provided full dental coverage and didn’t care much about prices. It’s all changed, but the prices are still high. I hope it’s going to change, but right now please be careful about it.

Transportation

I can’t say much about public transit, I guess it's ok-ish in downtown and not so good in the outskirts, but that's applicable for all cities in general. For reference, in 2020 the single fare for adults is $3.50 for 90 minutes (there are no zones in Calgary). There is CTrain too (light rail transit), but it's not as extensive as in Vancouver. There are some plans to improve it (e.g. add Green Line), but it has been delayed many times already, and it's difficult to predict when they will finish it.

Calgary is a private car city - it has 2 major highways (100 km/h limit) through the city, plus there some long streets and avenues which could be considered minor highways (the speed limit up to 80 km/h). Essentially, you can get to any location in Calgary in 30 minutes on average. I guess the only real traffic jams I’ve seen was during Stampede, and it’s just a week in a year. In general, it’s a real pleasure to drive here, especially if you leave Calgary core and takes any of the scenic routes it has on the outskirts and further in the numerous parks.

Despite that there are few obstacles for being a happy driver here:

 a lot of speed cameras. Speed tickets are a source of income for the city, and sometimes they abuse it. Radars are legal, including hidden mobile radars, and the abuses include sudden speed sign changes and school zones limits which disregard the school days, and enforced from 7am to 9pm everyday including weekends and holidays.

gravel on the road. They use sharp-edged gravel in the winter, and considering speeds on highways and lots of semi, you may forget about having a nice non-cracked windshield and sunroof (I've got huge cracks on both). Glass insurance is not included in the basic packages, and should be bought separately.

a note about insurance. It's not cheaper than ICBC, it's actually more expensive and has more restrictions (at least for immigrants).

a lot of construction. Mostly closer to downtown, but major highways are affected too. Fortunately, there are not many two-lane highways like in BC (mostly 4 or 6 lanes), so the delays are not so huge, but could easily take 20-30 minutes.

My recommendations: don’t buy luxury cars (not only winter tires and windshields are expensive, it’s difficult to maintain the low speed), get glass insurance ASAP, use apps like Waze to check the road condition ahead.

Climate

Calgary has more sun than Vancouver, however I can't say it's a sunny city (I guess Canada just in general doesn't have a lot of sun). Moreover, the sun doesn't matter so much as it doesn't mean that the city is getting a lot of its heat - it has snow for at least 6 months a year (first snow could fall in Sep, but usually it doesn’t stay for long, and the last snow is melted in Apr/May).

Sun is very bright (due to altitude), and the humidity is low. Nice green grass requires either irrigation or rainy days. There is no dedicated line for irrigation, so you would need to use the “drinking” water, and a lot of it.

A note about “drinking” water - its quality definitely worse than in Vancouver (it's quite hard and has other chemicals). While they allow us to drink it from the tap, we don't risk it, plus we don't like having stains on every glass surface we have in the house. Fortunately, it's possible to avoid it with softener (plus we have a reverse osmosis system for actual drinking). It’s not cheap though, but it’s a long term investment that could be worth thinking about (we’ve installed the systems from https://www.jugfree.com/ and they have prices there for reference).

Short summers don't always bring warmth and sun only, but also heavy rains, hail and tornado. Hail damages houses and cars, and the last storm in Calgary (June 2020) has the estimation in damages nearly $1 billion: https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/cost-of-damage-from-weekend-storm-could-total-1-billion-nenshi 

Winter is not so harsh though due to Chinook. Visually it looks like huge dark clouds cover the city and the temperature is rising. Even without it, the winter is mild enough, but it's not always good. As the day/night temperature could differ in 20C, the ice (usual or black) is the real issue here, and winter tires are strongly recommended.

My recommendations: South Calgary has a better climate and usually hail is not so bad here (we live in South East). It’s better to avoid the north (besides that, North East has a high crime rate).

Real Estate

The houses are cheaper in Vancouver, definitely. Medium income families can afford decent living conditions here. Surely, nothing fancy, the same overpriced wood frame houses as in North America overall, as the construction lobby is very strong here, and having sound-proof, properly thermal insulated houses, preferably from bricks, is a luxury.

Please note though that the taxes are increasing. As Calgary (and Alberta overall) in a financial crisis (they put in motion a lot of expensive projects when the oil/gas industry boomed, and still couldn’t recover after its collapse), so they burden their problems on residents.

Also, they have tons of other cash grabs there (carbon tax, some administrative fees nobody can explain), so the utilities are not cheap either. Insurance is also one of the highest in Canada (the official excuse is they are losing money because of hail storms and other disasters).

My recommendations: Towns near Calgary could be worth researching (like Okotoks or Chestermere). Surely, there are some disadvantages living there (for example, I’m literally 5 minutes drive from both major highways, so don’t have to deal with the slow traffic), but it’s definitely cheaper. https://www.realtor.ca/ is a Canada-wide database, you can look up the property ahead.

Geography

Calgary has quite a good location if you like nature. It has the unique position to provide access to several big natural areas at once, so if you have bad weather in one region, you can drive to the opposite direction and still find something nice. Please note that Calgary has the international airport with the decent choice of direct flights too.

On the west:

Banff National Park. It's a two hour drive (depending on traffic jams, usually they have some esp. on weekends). Please note that you don’t necessarily need to visit Banff and the park, and can find nice places near Canmore and Kananaskis (K-country).

East K-country, has several provincial parks. More accessible, shorter (1+ hour) drive (not necessary Hwy 1, but also Hwy 22), almost no traffic jams. A lot of ATV options, lakes and mountain hikes.

On the east:

Badlands. Surely, the most famous is Drumheller region (1.5+ hour drive), but they have much more than that as the badlands are presented in many places in Southeast Alberta, like Dinosaur Provincial Park (2h drive).

A lot of lakes with kayaking, fishing and jet skis options. The examples are Lake McGregor (a little over an hour drive) and Lake Newell (2 hours drive).

On the south:

Waterton Lakes National Park, 2.5 hours drive, a lot of activities there, but due to recent forest fires not everything is open.

US border (the traffic is much lighter compared with Vancouver, almost no waits). The prominent examples are Glacier National Park, Montana (3 hours drive) and Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (10 hours drive).

On the north:

Shortcut to Jasper. While driving through Banff in theory faster (5 hours), in reality due to constructions, traffic jams and two-lane Icefield Parkway it could be faster to drive through Rocky Mountain House (6 hours).

There are a lot of parks there too, we just never got a chance to explore them yet. I guess Big Hill Springs Provincial Park could be an example of those (1 hour drive).

Shopping

It’s easier to shop here due to easy commuting and close availability of the big stores: Costco, Walmart, Superstore, Save-on-Foods, Home Depot, Lowes etc. Definitely, there are big malls (i.e. Chinook Center, CF Market Mall), outlets (i.e. CrossIron Mills) and big specialized stores (i.e. Cabela’s) too.

Diversity is not so good though - mostly North America merchandise. We found only one decent store for Asian products: T&T Supermarket. There are some small Asian stores too (mostly in the North), but they usually don’t have anything extra special compared with T&T.

Seafood options are not so great too (both in restaurants and in stores). Oysters and lobsters are quite uncommon for Calgary. I guess T&T has the best selection, but still less than in Vancouver.

[wanderlustayne-blog]

This week we completed a 3 day yoga retreat in Rishikesh.

Due to our illness earlier in the trip, our stay was cut short. We lost two whole days of exploration. I feel there was much more to see in this humble riverside city…

Located in the state of Uttarakhand not far from the Himalaya mountains, it sits peacefully on the hills as the river Ganges winds through it. Two halves of the city divided by the holy water and connected by a rather questionable narrow bridge, where people, bikes, dogs and cows cross suspended by steel wire. – If you have motion sickness like me, the first time on the bridge is gonna be a challenge! –

Many people told us about doing yoga here. They told us people come here for that reason. That we must try it, or if we were going there to practice? Apparently Rishikesh is the yoga capital. Now I don’t know if this is true (do comment below if you know) but we thought being that it was mentioned so often we would get stuck in.

After we found our room; decent size, big double, ensuite with a large balcony over looking the Ganges for R500 – bargain! – we took some time to explore and find a stall to negotiate on rafting. We managed to find a place that was offering a 2h rafting experience for R500. We thought that was a pretty decent deal so we said we would come back the next day.

Rafting Down The River Ganges

This stall looked unofficial. It was small, two young lads sat there on their phones but eager to get us to join. The time now reduced to 1.5hr which made me dubious about how long it really was. As we spoke, two Israeli girls approached, confidently said they wanted to raft and haggled them down to R400, we jumped on their negotiation and introduced ourselves as their raft mates.

I didn’t bring my phone and unfortunately my GoPro is currently dead so I didn’t get any footage of how incredibly breathtaking it was to raft down the river but I 100% recommend it. We drove about 12km up the mountains to a set off station. Had a quick lesson by our instructor, a cheeky 22 year old man with 5 years rafting experience. We were given certain instructions for rowing and an emergency procedure in case we capsized. He taught us how to sit so we wouldn’t fall out – basically jam your feet into the side of the raft or under the inflatables in any way that makes you feel secure. So for me as far deep as I could get them with an extremely unnatural kink in my ankle, forcing a rather severe cramp. Not going anywhere. Safe. – And we set off!

We went through five rapids, each exhilarating and fucking terrifying. I drank about a gallon of river water. And we also got to swim in it while the waters were calm in between rapids. We stopped for a break to eat Maggi noodles and finished our ride back where we started.

It was heaps of fun. Definitely try it.

Later that day we went on the hunt for a yoga retreat to try a 3 day experience of intensive yoga. We checked out a few places but decided on one in the centre of town called Swami Yoga Centre. We were looking for an immersive experience where we could hide away in an ashram and focus solely on yoga, meditation and inner work if there was any that came up but we found them all either full, too expensive or far too noisy.

Swami Yoga Centre

This yoga centre offered a decent timetable, teacher training courses and drop-in classes. They offered prices including yoga philosophy, food and a room. We decided that we wouldn’t do the philosophy class, wanted to stay in the room we were already in as it was bigger and cheaper and we decided it would be more exciting to eat out so we could explore.

In total it was R3000 per person for 3 days. Here was the programme:

6:30 – Pranayama

7:30 – Beginner Yoga

8:45 – Ashtanga Yoga

17:00 – Hatha Yoga

18:45 – Meditation

We paid our deposit and went back for an early night.

I found myself feeling very fatigued and achey. My stomach bug was still lingering insidiously in my system. – Now, I just have to make a statement here. Nothing gets between me and food, okay. Not even a ghastly gastrointestinal bacteria that makes me shit every hour. Nothing. – And so I merrily ate my way through Rishikesh, eating thali, salads, soups, rice platters… I didn’t want to take antibiotics, I thought I wouldn’t need them but i found myself feeling weaker and weaker…

DAY 1

We awoke at 5:15, got ready and headed over to the yoga centre for our morning class of “Pranayama”.

Pranayama is a breathing exercise practice. In Sanskrit “Prana” means life force and “ayama” is to extend. These exercises are meant to clear any physical and emotional blockages in our body to free the breath and allow the flow of prana – life energy.

After our breathing class we chose to do the Beginner Yoga class, being that we hadn’t done yoga since our last visit to India earlier in the year. My body was weak, it was extremely difficult to hold poses and stretching was hellish. But I was proud of myself for persevering. I slept until our next lesson and Brad went out to get me antibiotics, I gave in.

Hatha Yoga was challenging but it was good to stretch out the aches I had been feeling all day. So in a way, despite the pain I felt it was doing me some good.

Meditation was our next and final class of the day. It was an interesting experience, it was hard to get your focus away from the noise from outside and I found myself indulging in my thoughts too much to let go. Brad fell asleep – hahahaha! – obviously. Though, I was also very close to falling asleep myself, it was relaxing to say the least. We learned about awareness, bringing your focus inward and making every movement, every breath something we could be present with.

DAY 2

Feeling a little better I felt ready to challenge myself both physically and mentally.

Pranayama – I was finding these exercises in the morning quite revitalising, it was waking up the body ready for our yoga practice. Some of the exercises were kinda weird. Like, inhaling deeply then bending forward exhaling everything. Once everything was out of your lungs to suck in your throat, stomach and your perineal – or that muscle that twitches in your butt when you cringe… – Moving on. I found that exercise difficult. It made me cough and it was very hard to keep your breath held for longer than a few seconds.

Beginner Yoga – These beginner classes we revery basic. More like a stretching class. – Which I was totally grateful for as I felt I needed to warm myself into yoga again. – It was a bit more challenging than the first day and my body was definitely feeling more flexible. Brad is far more nimble than I am and so for him these classes weren’t challenging enough for him. But he did enjoy the stretch.

Hatha Yoga – Classic yoga, we do our sun and moon salutations, lying down poses both front and back. Sitting poses and standing pose (balance). I absolutely revelled in this class. My flexibility was on point, I was enjoying the deep stretches and I felt my mind become clear and relaxed.

After the class our teacher Mohan would give us some words of wisdom. He made us td an exercise that was kind of awkward but at the same time beautiful. We needed to find a partner (at first Brad and I went together but we got separated because we already had a connection so it defeated the point.) We sat opposite this person and were told just to look into each other’s eyes. – CRINGE! – But it really did work. It totally broke down those walls you have on first meeting people and it made you see another being in front of you. We are all the same after all right? What is it about the world today where we aren’t able to allow kindness into our hearts and look people in the eyes when we speak. Why are we all so afraid to show vulnerability? Everyone is battling something, the support of a stranger, a simple smile… could change everything. At least for that moment. I found myself really smiling and feeling quite emotional after.

Meditation – This meditation class was a bit more intimate. We did first 30 minutes of deep meditation or in other words trying to block out the sound, not running away with the fairies or falling asleep… – I thought about some weird shit, stuff that you don’t usually think about… I imagine it’s cos you are lying with your eyes closed in “silence” for 30 minutes. That it gives your brain a chance to get creative… – We did some more eye gazing and hand holding and swaying *insert laughing emoji* then left to have chai and veg momos with the teacher and our new friends.

DAY 3

We were so beat by day three, I dunno how some people can do weeks to months at ashrams but I guess it gets easier or you push yourself less with more time? Not sure.

Pranayama – We didn’t get up for this class. I had a terrible nights sleep because of my stomach flu so I slept some more before our next class.

Ashtanga Yoga – Ashtanga yoga (explain what it is) Brad LOVED this class. It was a more intermediate class and the poses were held for longer and much more challenging. It definitely challenged me. I think I will stick to Hatha for now! Brad left feeling like he had cleared tensions that he had been holding onto for a while.

At 3:30 we did a beginner yoga class with a trainee yoga instructor from Ireland that we met the day before.

Then we skipped meditation to rest and restore.

Overall I really felt a huge benefit from doing yoga as often as three times a day in three days. I want very much to keep it up and to incorporate it into my daily life. It teaches you discipline, to be more present and in the moment. To nourish your body in more ways than just food. To take time out in the day to allow healing and rest & relaxation.

If I have taken anything away with me from those three days it’s to definitely respect my body more and treat it with more care. To nourish myself in every way and to take more time for inner healing and to spend the rest of my life becoming every day more self aware. To treat those around you with the same love and respect that you know yourself also deserves. Because at the end of it all, we are all the same.

I am now currently on a train from Delhi to Varanasi. The holy and very sacred ancient city where many Hindu pilgrims come to bathe in Mother Ganga and were others choose to die and be cremated to ascend finally to the source. More of this in the next post. First we must explore.

Phir Melenge, Until the next post xxx

3 Day Yoga Retreat In Rishikesh This week we completed a 3 day yoga retreat in Rishikesh. Due to our illness earlier in the trip, our stay was cut short.