Visiting Seattle, Vancouver, Nanaimo & Victoria (Discussion)

okay so let me ask you this we're right
now in Seattle Washington State USA you had hopes and expectations of this place you know I remember you be really excited and first artivist yeah we first got on the train to come here you know we first talked about it back when we were living in China together I was just thinking this because you were mentioning that Thailand used to mean something to me very different for what it means today and I was starting to say after that you know for me that's like a reason to move to Ireland or a place like Ireland where I really have no expectations where it doesn't mean anything to me I don't want it to mean anything you know my expectations around are really really low I'm really really realistic but you've just come through a series of places Victoria BC Vancouver and now Seattle Y I don't know but what was what were your expectations for sale well you know growing up in Michigan I didn't and I always thought being particularly beautiful I have been to California because my oldest brother lives there and I was really impressed by but I knew after seeing pictures it was really beautiful so that was you know that was really my expectation I didn't have a lot of rotations about the city itself you know I think I think on that specific issue I think Vancouver lived up to expectations on the specific issue of using the moments Vancouver I think more so though yeah yeah I would say Victoria didn't but it was partly just because it was so overcast when you happen to be there you couldn't get the view because it was just so dark and right here because you noticed that within a few days in Vancouver we came back and saw the same view a few days later where we go we can see another mountain range before we want you to close this mountain right no I know it seems else I'm sorry I'm it seems shallow but it really does like you know change just living somewhere yeah nice living in Michigan it was just like dreary the weather sucks and like just you know what what is what is positive about living there and just on a basic level being able to look out at the horizon and see something beautiful is you know it's so um but you know everywhere in Victoria if you look out you'll see the ocean and that's yes sirree Boise when we only have a few days in Victoria before we came out here to Seattle yeah many of those same views like when you let you south from Victoria when the sky is clearer you see over the ocean two mountains beyond suspension actually when you get back there were more views and I'm with him you know for me the mountains out there kind of represent something quite different from what they do for you like you know again I've been to places you have to I've been to places like Austria and Switzerland and France and even the Cote d'Azur is also known as the ALP Maritim you know the maritime Alps you know what you are the melons are right there rising up and Austria oh really okay you okay you I thought you'd seen some mountains but your parents have been travelling in Europe lately too so I thought okay never mind though your parents are about to go to Finland of all places but look my point was in some of those places where the mountains are ancient and continuously inhabited by culture and definitely Laos is like that Laos is all Mountain I mean yes it smells and mountain valleys but you know in one river one big river that goes through it the Mekong River but in Laos you know I've said this to you in other words but you're on one side of the mountain and there's one culture and language spoken and you go out the mountain come down the mountain there's another culture and language spoken and for me you know the mountains and the geography they're really tied to my sense of one yes the genocide in general when history of British prison that's a little bit too simplistic it's also the the failure of the colonial culture or coming in after that like I the same mountain it's not the case that I look at that mountain I see some kind of great accomplishment of French and English culture I mean you know it's it's been kind of exploited for what it was worth cutting down wood or digging up gold yeah and then it moves on now there's nothing of nail most of the beautiful views we get in terms of intact forests is forced that's grown bad yeah after it's all good we just saw it mean an eyeball another city we've been in where were visiting University but you know it was a coal mining town it doesn't it doesn't look like that now but a lot of those views no row it looks like I mean it looked like old forests but it's probably less than 50 years where you know we knew the coal mines went under it came up in the other Island so that Island is probably grown back since that coal mine ran out of coal right I felt that way I felt that way when I visited the Upper Peninsula in Michigan because like you know the views of the forest seemed pretty spectacular but knowing that it used to be completely barren because of logging was that's pretty sad you know it's not old-growth forests up there so yeah it's the same it's the same issues too with you steppe native people you know like this kind of this kind of setting with with the water and with the forests so you know it's it's a really good set up for native peoples you know they were able to fish at the fish in the water you know it's the same the native language is extinct the exalted soul the native people are yeah so I've never lived in a place like Egypt like in Egypt you have the ancient indigenous culture you know the pyramids you know we just saw several museums showing this council just mentioned a book coincidence we lately been seeing some ancient Egyptian stuff and then you have the modern civilization or continuous with the modern era which is Islamic and linked to Arabia and you know trade with the Ottoman Empire and with Arabia and it's part of a very different geography and linguistic group of languages it's over the world you know I don't know how I feel where you have one civilization replaced by another which is just as dense shall we say for life in her word well what I feel when I'm in a place like the west coast of Canada is well there was indigenous civilization and what it was replaced by was the industrialized wild it was just exploited in the landscape for mommy and then on the other hand these cities you know I've mixed feelings about so we can move arm that I just mentioned you haven't read my old like I was gonna say teenaged philosophy but it's really early 20s philosophy but I really have these two like manifestos I wrote at the end of my first university degree what kind of a philosophy of that time which would be really weird for me to look back at now now to but every one of them I think has the industrialized while in the title you know cuz back then that's before veganism was defining my identity it was when I'm you know ecology was defining my identity and it's harder it's harder to define yourself until t I've said this before mother is a like veganism is that it just it just clarifies and makes easier a lot of things about life is an act was before I'd latched on to that idea and it's before I got into Buddhism heavily to so interesting turn our life but yeah that that sense of discontent I think it by just say it would be different in Egypt it would be different in you know the Alps of Switzerland or something and it would be different in a place like Laos or Cambodia which have you don't have mountains to I have little bits and pieces of experience of that but yeah for me I definitely feel uneasy with that that landscape now okay moving on from the the physical jars to the actual cities in this day and age it's a weird thing that's on whether we're talking about Thailand we're talking about Japan or talking about Western Canada like what did you expect this is no I'm not gonna preform your response here but let's face it on a technological level a city in Japan is so similar to a city in America you know like that buildings are made at a concrete like 98% of the buildings look the same in Japan and in bridge Colombian in town you know I mean just there was a time 100 years ago when if you flew okay I don't know if you'd be flying if you do this if you took a ship whatever however you're traveling you know however you're traveling from Egypt to Europe and Europe to America America Asia immediately architectural you know the way people live and how the things have very fundamentally different and we now live in an era when all those things are fundamentally the same yeah so then given that given that base level of sameness we're like when we went from France to Detroit and from Detroit to Seattle there's a sense in which we're expecting everything to be the same so what were you expecting to be to be different will it be more pedestrian-friendly yeah no you know growing up in Detroit it's all based on cars and it is surprising getting here and seeing how the city is still still built on cars we have not made use of the public transport much here transportation here yeah we have another week approximately to get to know Seattle yeah and draw our conclusions yeah you can just see like the infrastructure and I I hmm I got the sense that maker was yeah okay that's not I thought you were gonna say Vancouver is kind of making the same mistakes but dehumanizing yeah structure event so so does just so much of it nobody's thought of how a pedestrian would get through these towering freeways yeah overpasses and underpasses and and what-have-you we're the you know there's some possibility to exist there was a pedestrian but it's very much there was a as an afterthought or something yeah it's not by the way nice is a city in southern France a lot of people don't have nerve you know I probably grew with you that Vancouver is better than Seattle in that way but I mean another big late motif in both cities is just seeing the armies of the undead walking the streets you know drug addicts in Vancouver they sometimes were sagging around like zombies it's not they were they were more zombie like than most zombies and they were literally staggering on the streets here in Seattle I wonder if the quality of crack is better or something they seem to be more lively and cheery but there are a lot of drug addicts on the street yeah now look I'll ask you - so the France France is not paradise but did we do we see that even once like maybe I'm forgetting like maybe once we saw a drug addict on the street in the Cote d'Azur but honest honestly it may not even be once we may not have seen one person in that state of distress Joe say I saw you know as you say it's Street buskers yes really yes so I mean that that's that's a that's a big difference and you know I bought Bob Dylan it's a wine in one of his own strong's you know it was part of his own songs the weak and the strong and the rich and the poor you get them together there ain't room for no more it is a strange thing to be in the United States America but in Vancouver is I think just as guilty of it or more so and you do see this these really incongruous contrasts between wealth and poverty and I mean all cities are projects that are measured out in centuries but in France we were looking at cities where you really could feel that the weight of the centuries of the gradual rational progress of trying to make the best of the limited land that God and here I mean I'm walking around last night trying to get home you know we were walking home most of the streets that we were on looked very similar soon yes style of condo same yeah same blocks of cheap and cheap apartments and in some cases a bouquet same cheap they're not everything here is overpriced yeah but yeah block after block are the same the same kind of development yeah anyway I didn't come here with any real expectations for Seattle to live up to um I have seen Seattle named as a kind of success story in American urban planning in American cities in contrast to the self-evident disasters of Los Angeles and Chicago Hollen again I'm even over those places are disasters but they're often regretted as if their disaster they're talked about as if they're disasters so people say well you know there is Seattle also like it's not all like south-central Los Angeles or it's not all like the worst parts of Chicago that there are these positive examples to to counter it to I don't know I mean you know yes Seattle's got mountains Seattle's got ocean of all the places in the world do I mean I'm just saying this is not the only place to hold that hold that claim to fame um I'm I'm pretty uncomfortable with regarding this as as an exception to the rule and I guess the the ray of hope here was you know hearing that they raised the minimum wage but you know so the minimum wage sure in Seattle that was $15 an hour is it an even more disappointing $15 an hour for jobs that I could apply to yes so that's true because we have been looking at maybe they've announced that they are raising it to $15 an hour and it's gonna be a gradual hike well this is the opposite I think part of the effect of that it's the same thing we found the grocery store it's just that a lot of the businesses moved to the city limits because a large part of Seattle is not technically in Seattle you know there's a dotted line where Seattle stops so you know Tacoma is not Seattle or whatever you know and in Seattle is a weird spread out city again for a pedestrian very very hard to hard to get around hard to cope with you know so you wonder if it just you know removes those jobs from the downtown core two more of those two more of those suburbs but no we have been both both just for our own education and no more missing out on and possibly to apply for a real job we have been looking at job listings in all these places and yeah I mean two really brief things on that one it's hard to imagine surviving just though the income to rent ratio is really bad in all these places is it worse in Vancouver than it is Seattle it's hard to say but these are some these must be some of the worst places or I don't know what's worse is Rome in Italy worse and what's what's worse okay maybe sure I'll give you I'm not gonna debate me oh but I mean these these are remarkably black bad places to live just in terms of the ratio of your income to to the cost of housing yeah yeah it's possible this the urban planning is good to other cities and around America you know like yeah comparing it to Miami I don't know what you're doing right yeah Atlanta Georgia yeah sure right I presume it's cars well in a way it's also the history is related segregation it's really us you know historically then I'm trying to cope with that but it was created in the era of segregation I mean black neighborhoods I'm waiting for it some do I just say Atlanta there are many many examples of that Chicago is too so you know it's then how do you cope now given that the map was all divided into the colored squares until recently yeah yeah so yeah compared to America probably is a success story for sure but compared to European cities I think work to do right well I just mentioned one part of Canada - you haven't explored and it is too cold for you is Quebec and Quebec is the one part of this whole continent where they're not imitating the United States of America they're not trying to be like New York City where they're trying to imitate and emulate a european standard of quality of life so that is always an interesting thing about Quebec even when you heat the government in Quebec it's no different elections different governments come and go like you know what it's the Conservative Party in Quebec and you don't like them you normally can still recognize that that the Conservatives in Quebec are people who fly back and forth to Paris and the Cote d'Azur and other parts of Europe they're cosmopolitan in that sense and they know they say look it's not enough for us to measure up to Tacoma Washington or something like this or Washington DC for that matter that there is a higher standard out there for them to dump title about to look the other thing is the other criterion for why would you move to Nanaimo rather than you know Seattle you know why are we looking these other places is the cost of tuition and that's you know this is the deep dark hole it seems nobody in America is gonna take their way out of yeah what is your income worth relative to your cost of rents and then what is your income worth relative to the cost of education and for me you know I joke about it as soon as I look at these offers and it's for a couple thousand dollars here and there it's like do you want me to just estimate how much I've spent on education in the last five years not even in total for my whole life for something how can I justify taking on this this kind of work you know thanks to veganism I do have a justification I mean for me if I take on work as a baker earning $12.50 an hour which is an option you know it's kind of job I've been applying for lately I can justify that to myself ideologically you're idealistic Lior politically what everyone's saying okay baking is meaningful to me because of the vegan movement you know this leads me down this path I'm getting an education or experience in this area and I really care about this so you know there's caring about baking and this caring boat about veganism but for the vast majority of people living in these cities I mean it's it is look it's bleak even if it doesn't look a bleak on the surface because of the cost of Education and because of the cost of rent yeah that's lurking behind okay look so we're giving we're giving Seattle another week and then we're going back to Canada um I don't know I mean from my generation I don't know what it would be like to land somewhere you know get off an airplane and get off a boat somewhere and say wow this place is really happening this is the land of opportunity you know I've never had that experience I never felt that way in London England I never felt that way in Madrid or Barcelona I was like you know I've never gone somewhere I thought oh wow that's having if I gone to Japan you know I applied to go to Japan but I ended up in China said maybe I would have maybe I would have gone to Japan I thought wow this is a place where I can earn a good living and live a good life and support my daughter at before year old daughter you know what I mean maybe I would have felt that way about Japan but I have never had that feeling in my life so if I came to Seattle thinking this is a better brighter future and this is just a place where I can earn a living commensurate with the cost of rent and the cost of my own past education or something um I've got to tell you long story short my feeling is this ain't it and the flip side of that is a city like Victoria which is a one-hour boat ride from here dramatically lower rents dramatically cheaper cost of education and you know I hope there are enough intelligent people aren't there that I can practice you know improving my Chinese we can both practice and improve our ability to speak French we could also do German there yeah so far I've I've been impressed the most by Victoria so you like three days there so far three very rainy cold days this I've really appreciated being able to see the surrounding cities incidental weren't able to move into the apartment when we were in Victoria you know we were ready to move in right but since it's not ready right still not ready we've been able to visit Vancouver and now Seattle so I'm getting to see what I'm missing in the other cities and the surrounding areas I had one I had one professor he used to say all the time I hate it but it was true his cache line was you know don't don't compare me to the almighty compare me to the alternative and in a lot of ways for a generation we were just talking to a phlegm face the alternatives include Scotland the intro of the alternatives include Ireland they include Hong Kong and Thailand it's a long long list of alternatives for people you know people in the 21st century you know but yeah I mean you know you do have to compare it to the alternative you do have to see the value of a place like Victoria in that in that comparative context and yeah yeah I just concur with you and look guys don't worry this is not the final word in this is already a 20 minute video but bomi's I'll be interested to see you come on three months from now or six months from now and talk about where you're at then in terms of how you view the Pacific Northwest how you view Canada does an interesting thing yeah we've been going to museums and you've been learning some Canadian history for the first time oh no offence as an American she doesn't really grow with any appearance of of Canadian history or what's what's unique and difference you know in what ways our healthcare system doesn't work if you're learning this do you learn the ropes because it'll be interesting to see oh how you progress on that and then also I think it'll be interesting to catch up and get your perspective on on baking