Category: Uncategorized

The Last Week of Normal

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized3 Comments

In life we are reminded of historical events in many ways. Of In the song American Pie, Don McLean sings about “the day the music died” referring to the plane crash on February 3, 1959 that killed musicians Buddy Holly, Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

Perhaps your Facebook Memories are reminding you about what you were doing this week one year ago. I know mine have been reminding me each day. A week that was not normal by any imagination. As a travel professional that specializes in Europe my world was already turning upside down, but still not even knowing what would happen as we approached the events of the week of March 14 – 20, where the world as we know it changed.

On Friday March 6th, 2020, my parents and I ate dinner at Sea Hi restaurant, as March 8th would be its last day being opening. This was a long time coming as I am sure regular patrons know all too well, but an institution in the community for almost 60 years. But like a great musical that has to close, the curtain needed to come down on this restaurant.

Not surprisingly, it was very busy on this Friday night. The demographic was an older crowd and many of them were reminiscing about their times in the restaurant and their experiences. There were people taking photos. It really was the end of an era in the community.

It was a neighbourhood spot. My father would tell the story about being 17 years old and parking cars for the patrons on a Saturday night. It may have been almost 60 years old and it looked its age. When you walked in and saw the Budda in the entrance way there was something comfortable and familiar at Sea Hi. If you look over the counter at the front door I am sure the calendar was still from 1959 and so were the piles of papers and receipts piled up on the desk by the calculator.

Their takeout business was large and you could tell because the restaurant was almost always empty. But as soon as you sat down, you were greeted with a large plate of their fried noodles and that delicious plum sauce. I would have loved to know where they purchased their plum sauce from because it was so good you could drink it.

Everyone has a different menu item that they enjoyed as was a staple every visit or take out order. I always enjoyed the honey garlic spare ribs and their fried rice. It had to be rice on the bottom, with ribs on the side with a nice helping of sauce on top of the rice.

There is a symbiotic relationship with Jews and Chinese Food. Everyone has ‘their place’ and to be fair, our places have changed many times over the years. I remember my father closing the store on Christmas Eve and we wanted anxiously for him to come home with our large brown paper bags filled with our favourite dishes from not just Sea Hi, but other places we have eaten from over the years.

This dinner was enjoyable for the fact that it was our last meal as this restaurant that we knew was closing. I wonder how many of you out there were eating at a restaurant that week in our lives that, perhaps due to the pandemic is not there any more. If you had known then what you know now, where you would have eaten that last week before everything changed.

Now that restaurants and establishments are starting to reopen it will be interesting to see the landscape as it starts to unfold. Many places have not survived the last year and there will be new ones that open in their places. As someone who loves food and the restaurant experience, I am looking forward to when it is time to start discovering new places to create new experiences in this new world we are living in today.

What do you remember about that week in March of 2020?

From Zero to Covid

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I have been thinking about ways to share my Covid journey. I know that with this blog and by posting on social media I have chosen to share my experiences. I appreciate that not everyone feels the same way. It was evident when I posted about having Covid the messages I received about others having it. I had no idea. The most common question I received was, “you go nowhere and you see no one, how did you get it?”

That in and of itself is a hard question to answer. It would be easy if I contracted it from a family member or if I was in a work place that had an outbreak. But that was not the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Due to a close contact with someone back on December 23rd, I tested negative and spent 14 days in isolation, until January 6th. After that I went back to my once a week grocery shop, visit to get bagels and maybe one or two other places. That was it. Since the start of 2021 I have been out in a public place five times. That sounds crazy just writing that, but really, I went no where and saw no one.

Once I tested positive, the contact tracing tracing team calls and they want to know everything you did the 48 hours before your symptoms started. They want specific details to determine who you were in contact with and if they were in “close contact”. My contact tracing was very small since one of the two days I was at home in my condo.

It started off with nasal congestion. The last place I went was the grocery store to get the ingredients to make a chicken soup because I thought I was getting a cold. The same store that I have shopped at once a week for the last 12 months. I came home, put the soup on the stove and then came into my office to work on the computer. I heard something and looked into the kitchen to see the soup boiling over, I didn’t even smell it on the stove. By the time it was time to eat the soup, I couldn’t taste it. I remember saying to myself, “you have Covid”. By the end of night I had back pain, a headache like I never had before and many other symptoms.

They recommend you wait four days after symptoms start to get tested, which I waited and went for my test. I looked at the doctor after the test and asked him a couple of questions and I remember saying to him, “I know I have it, but of course I have to get tested”.

I came home from the test and was standing in my elevator lobby. The door opens, I was about to step in and there was a man inside. I looked up at him, pointed to the sign above his head and said, “You know masks are mandatory, right?” He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, lifted his hands in the air, and the door closed. I waited for the next empty elevator and came upstairs and waited. Waited for the test results to report positive.

As I shared on Facebook I did have to spend two nights in the hospital. I am not going to talk about those experiences in this post and perhaps not for a while.

Something that is very confusing to those who have not experienced this personally and have heard things from others. If you have been tested, the paper you get at the testing centre states that if you test positive, you must isolate for 10 days. If you have no fever for more than 24 hours prior to the end of isolation, your symptoms have not gotten worse and no new symptoms start, you are considered clear. You even get a ‘report card’ from Public Health. You don’t get retested as you now have antibodies in your system and can test positive for a few months.

I was cleared of Covid as of February 11th, but the virus caused me to develop pneumonia as discovered when I had my CT Angiogram in the ER at the hospital. That is what I am recovering from now, alone with the lingering symptoms of Covid that have not yet returned. It is now week four of recovery and it is getting better. I went outside the building today for the first time since coming home from the hospital.

I know I have learned many things. Everyone experiences Covid differently. Everyone recovers differently. I am very grateful that even though a hospital visit was required, I got the meds I needed to be well enough to recover at home.

It has been a very long year. We are not there yet. I really appreciate you coming along this journey with me.

In continued good health,

Remembering

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized2 Comments

For many, they will remember what they were doing or where they were March 13, 2020. I know I remember. It was the Friday before March break. The kids were finishing school for March break (yes I know, it just ended this week), and those of us in the travel industry were witnessing the closures of every border in the world. That night I had a horrible experience as the shelves of Walmart were bare, every aisle worse than the one before.

Then I went to work the following day. I helped clients book flights home from Spain as the borders were closing all around them. Call after call, I was there. Much like I was on September 11, 2001.

For those who work in tourism, travel agencies specifically, they will always remember the where, when, why of everything they did on that day in our history. I remember that the information was so confusing, much like it was in March. We would hear, planes are falling out of the sky. There were at least six planes, no eight. It was impossible. And then it was silent. All the planes were out of the sky and we were all left in shock and disbelief.

It didn’t quite happen that way in March. Planes kept landing in Canada and people were all trying to get home before getting stranded where they were. While the rest of us crawled in our homes, many were just trying desperately to get back to theirs.

The skies were never totally silent during Covid, but they were very quiet. When I lived at my parents house, and at my condo, we are on the flight path to the airport. In peak flying time, we used to sit on the porch at the house and we could look at our watches, every 90 seconds a plane flew over the house. On the days after 9/11 there was silence. I never really understood the saying, silence is deafening until that time.

A few weeks ago I was out for lunch on the patio of Lone Star by the airport with a friend from my travel agency. On that bright sunny day we heard a large plane coming in for landing. We looked at each other and smiled. The sounds of planes is something that a lover of travel appreciates. It was an unspoken understanding about wanderlust.