A rather inadvertent trip down memory lane

So.  Good.

I am currently blogging to you live, from my old stomping grounds in South Surrey (full disclaimer: I was born in Vancouver and moved away from South Surrey in my mid twenties, so keep your "Surrey girl" jokes to yourself).

The initial plan was that I was to meet my good friend L for coffee, check into my hotel, and then meet another friend for dinner later on.  That got kiboshed for family reasons, and tonight's dinner has now become tomorrow's lunch.

This left me with the dilemma of WTF to do in South Surrey on a Saturday night.

I gotta say it's been weird coming back "home".  Strip mall central.  My hotel is kind of dark and depressing.  I noted, on the way out to visit L in Ocean Park, that the Surrey Eagles were playing.  I must confess to mulling over going to see tonight's game.  The Surrey Eagles are a fairly accomplished team, and the last time I saw them was on one of my and Michael's first dates.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a rather violent game and I think Michael was slightly aghast that I had taken him to it (and I just checked and they're losing to the Penticton Vees which is ironic, because that's where Michael's mom and sister live).

Bright lights.  Big city.  Just like NYC.

So, after watching the Canucks lose yet another goddamn game (to the Leafs, no less), I decided that I would get sushi from Kappa Sushi.
Of course, there is a story behind Kappa as well. If you know me (and you don't), you know that I love sushi.  But it has to be good sushi.  I'd rather not eat than have substandard sushi.  Back when Michael and I first started dating (and he would bring wine and chocolates to me when he visited), I had never had sushi, and so one night he cajoled me (somewhat tipsy) into trying it.  And lo, a sushi fiend was born.  I loved it.  I still love it.  It's my favourite food.

Tonight I decided to walk over to Kappa and get some take out and see if it was on par with what I remembered, given that I am a bit of a connoisseur now.  I ordered the gomae, a spicy tuna roll, and the Peace Arch roll (if you ever lived here, you would get it).  And it was the best gomae I've ever had, and the Peace Arch roll was killer.  It was so good!

I had to wear a hair net.

I decided to walk along the main drag to get back to the hotel.  It was quite the nostalgic trip: past the (now absent) tea shop where I used to hand wash china dishware and chop vegetables when I was fifteen/sixteen years old.  And past Baselines (which used to be called the Sandcastle Club) where I used to get drunk every weekend and play pool (and occasionally dance, when sufficiently inebriated). I walked by The Pantry, where I was hired by a manager that said they needed "more women in the kitchen".  One evening when I was working there, the police or RCMP came in to interview us, as a girl only two or three years younger than me had been dragged off of the same street that I walked down tonight into some bushes and killed.  They wanted to know if anyone had seen or heard anything untoward.  We all said we had not.  That night, in the dark, at 18 years of age, no one from the restaurant felt it prudent to walk me to my car.  I quit rather shortly after.

I walked past the Golden Lion restaurant where my family went when me and my brother were kids.  Later, when I was around fourteen or so (and had taken a babysitting course!) I babysat a girl whose mother was a waitress at the restaurant.  At the time I thought she was beautiful and glamorous.  She once walked naked from her bathroom to her bedroom to get ready for a date with her boyfriend who I heard her call "sweet dick".  I was amazed by her wanton lifestyle (which often meant showing up much later than she promised which made me anxious because I had school the next morning and I was just an all around anxious kid).

Rawr.

There's really no point to this blog.  I was amazed by so many of the random little shops that were here ten and twenty years ago were still here.  I was kind of thrown by how easily I got around and how little I had forgotten over the years.  And I was intrigued by how overwhelmed by nostalgia that I was, that I couldn't properly critique my home town like I would have down with any other place that I visited.

I suppose it's just weird to visit a place where you lived for almost twenty years, a dozen years later. And it's weird to juxtapose my current life with my previous one.  Have I changed so much simply because I aged, or was it because I moved away? Or was it because I met people that expanded my horizons?  Or was it because...?

Anyways: the Peace Arch roll.  I will be coming back in the next decade for another one.