Guess I can claim I went to North America now!
Spent a week in Vancouver visiting my aunty’s family and my grand-dad, its a odd place. My aunty lived in this Vancouver suburb called Richmond, its kind of like Parramatta to Sydney and Surrey to London: Its considered as part of greater Vancouver but not quite. My first impression of the Vancouver is that its felt just like Hong Kong! During the early 90s alot of Hong Kong people migrate to Vancouver during this time and with these immigrants they also took their culture and lifestyle with them. To most outsiders it feels odd to be in Canada yet be in the middle of a slice of Hong Kong.
After living in Sydney for 16 years as an immigrant I used to have a belief that its best for migrants to integrate with the culture of their adopted country. Coming to London showed me that its in human nature to attempted to surround yourself with things familiar regardless of who and which culture you from. Cultural integration is a nice ideal but only that…..and ideal. The first generation of migrant is unlikely to fully integrate to their adopted country, but as each generation passes they will have less of a tie with the “mother country” and more with their “adopted country”. As people goto school, get marry, have children, grow old and bury together, they become essentially one culture. Multi-culturalism does work eventually, but not unless the country have a stable governance system and after a few generation. (Greeks in Australia now is considered “Australians” but also with a tinge of Greek characteristics. Maybe I will never be considered as full Australian, but I know my children will.
Anyway back to Vancouver and away from social commentary, more about the city itself.
Vancouver is a beautiful city very similar to Sydney. I guess the Canucks are kind of like a Northern Hemisphere version of the Australia. But it differs from Australia in that Canada is a dual-culture country. West Canada has a heavy British influence and east Canada has a heavy French influence, I do wonder what will happened if Australia has such a diametrically opoosite culture divide when it was found. Than again the French doesn’t consider really consider Quebecios as “French”, maybe its not a bad thing for Australia to have one dominant culture.
The main Vancouver city is actually on a peninsula with bridges connecting to North Vancouver (North Shore) and south to Richmond where most people actually live, just like Sydney the traffic across the bridges sucks at peakhour!! But the best bit is that an hour from central of town and you in the middle of a ski slope on the Grouse mountain. The main thing is they still have beaches for the summer months! What a city! Shame I didn’t do any skiing or plans to head up to Blackcombe or Whistler.I will make the pilgrimageto the Mountainbike nirvana!
Its a bit of rip-off on a CDN $20 to walk across suspension bridge, but the tree platforms on the other side is awesome.
These pics are of the buddist temple from across the road, I am just amused of its name. Maybe Junpei will also one day run his own temple at Kogarah and actually have the balls to called it the Kemlo temple and not claimed it to have an Asian hertiage. Oh, they also do bingo on Wednesday! Ooommmmmmm………..
Great city Vancouver, its a bit boring but definitely a nice place to live. I personally found Canada strange experience: Its heavily influenced by America. Its awesome experience to have Hong Kong culture collide with American Mall cultures and come up with a weird bend of East meet West that I have not seem anywhere else in the world!
Final note its great to see the family again. I dun speak to them that often and its good to see that dads been doing well after his by-pass. Its good to see that brother Micheal has grown up a little since the last time I saw him. Its good to be able to sit down with the family and be a “family” if only just for a week, when you dun see them for almost the whole year, even little things like going down to the shop are anything but mundane.
