Wha's happenin? Not a whole heckuva lot really.

As you know, I moved here last fall from the Toronto area of Ontario, Canada. Toronto is Canada’s largest city, and has been touted as one of the world’s only “truely” multicultural cities. I’ve lived in the Greek neighbourhood, little India, noshed in China-Town, wandered drunkenly along Queen Street West with the crazy freaky Goths, and I was born in Scarborough. I grew up near Stouffville, about 45 minutes north of the city, moving back and forth when either one started to annoy me enough that I needed a break. Even in Stouffville, I had 3 pubs within walking distance of my apartment.

One of the first things I noticed after moving to North Carolina? The almost complete LACK of diversity. The only Asians around town own the Chinese or Japanese restaurants. The Greek restaurant has been so “Americanized” there’s no freakin’ garlic in the tziki sauce, and the Thai restaurant in Hickory has no ginger! The population of this “city” is about 17,000. The racial makeup of the city is 75.67% White, 12.76% African American, 0.55% Native American, 1.99% Asian, 0.81% Pacific Islander, 6.64% from other races, and 1.58% from two or more races. 11.16% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. (source, Wikipedia/US census). Comparitively, Toronto’s population population is 2,518,772 and demographically White: 53.3%, Chinese/Asian: 14.2%, Indian/South Asian: 10.3%, African/Black: 9.8%, Hispanic/Latin American: 2.5%, Mixed: 2.1%, Other Race: 7.8%. And, Toronto has 79 ethnic publications. I don’t think there are any here in Morganton. Tho there is a Spanish page in the local newspaper.

Why should this bother me? Well for one, when I first moved here and some of the neighbours came to introduce themselves, they all mentioned how happy they were that we bought the house and “not some stinkin Mexican”. Then they go on to disparage immigrants in general, but of course I don’t count, because I’m Canadian and close enough to being American anyway :-p Ugh! Plus, it makes things really boring! Whenever I think of going out for foreign food, there’s no where to go because its all been dummed down for the sensitive local palet. I want some souvlaki dammit!

I get rather tired of hearing racial slurs, disparaging of immigrants, people tossing around the word “nigger” all to freely, at the very least a helluva lot more than I’m used to, and I’m tired of feeling uncomfortable around quite literally Everyone! I really don’t fit in here, and I really wouldn’t be here at all if Canadian Immigration had not banned my James from entering Canada. They suck!

We’re about an hour away from just about anything interesting to do. Here in town I guess there are a couple of “sit down” family restaurants, 100 bazillion fast food joints, and apparently one bar that I’ve been warned not to go to. There are no “clubs” like I’m used to back up in Toronto, and even if there was, there is no public transportation to get there if we wanted to have a few drinks. Apparently there are clubs in Charlotte and Asheville and Winston-Salem that have “Goth Night”, but there are no Goth clubs anywhere in the state. Although, there is a new bar in Asheville that we have to check out soon called Joli Rouge. It’s a pirate bar, and was in the paper as a “member only”. I’m not sure exactly what that means. Can’t be all bad if its run by pirates tho ;-) Too bad its so far away.

We’re considering moving elsewhere, but for now we’re kinda stuck here, as James doesn’t want to move while his mother is so ill. She’s been having chemo therapy for a few months now, and doesn’t look good. Not to mention of course, James would need to find a job first before we could consider moving somewhere else. Me, I can take my job anywhere. Which is part of the reason I started this home based biz, other than there are no jobs here in town except retail or fast food.

Oh, and get this! I saw a commercial on TV for that farmer’s market the other day. It’s a PSA sort of from the mayor. He says something like “a little bit of the Big City, right here in Morganton”. Now I ask you, how is having a Farmer’s Market anything like being in a Big City? Huh? He must be on crack.

Tonight I’m goin up to Marion to the book store for a Paranormal Investigation thingy. She does them once a month, and the speaker is a new Watkins customer of mine, so I figured I’d go check it out. At the very least, it’s a night out. I hope the gas prices have gone down a bit.

*sigh* catch ya later!  ¶ 2:19 PM