Hamilton and My Insatiations

Downtown Hamilton, always deserted on Sundays. Picture taken on John Street South to show the Gore Park.


It is amazing sometimes how we can take a furious snow hit from mother nature one minute and then witness 7 inches of snow melt away at a record pace the next minute. 24 hours ago this area around gore park was treacherous to my snow boots, with ferocious winds compromising my purpose driven strides by a quarter of an hour. Someone once mentioned to me that Hamilton is relatively warmer than the rest of Ontario, but sometimes I question the validity of this assertion. Anyways, on a brighter note, today has been a blast, brilliant weather with no winds. I will be the most pleased woman in the city if mother nature's good mood spills over to January. To hell with global warming rhetoric, we need this land of our weather friendly to humanity.

Yesterday I was so caught up in the holiday stress wondering what gifts I can afford to throw my little hard earned bucks at that I missed the obvious. Later that evening when most malls and grocery stores were closed, It downed on me that we only have two pull ups remaining for Primrose, no cereals for breakfast and salt. SALT, for christ's sake is something you can not just ignore, we ended up with a furious Hopes behind the wheel trying to zero up on a 24 hour store! We got one at the corner of Dundurn street and King St. West only to realize everything there costs a fortune. When we got in there I was trapped between higher prices, the option of doing without any of the stuff until Monday, and Hopes' constant angry reminders that he did not waste his time and gas to opt out of the whole purpose of the trip...I can't win in this part of the world most especially if salt and pull-ups are missing in action.

Everybody seems to be talking about this movie re-do, King Kong! Some of these movie critics are now pecking on to my nerves like somebody's paying them to do the hyping on their behalf, but if what they say about this movie is what it is I am ganna watch it. Forget about going out to the movies, way tooo expensive; forget about downloading it from the internet through my k-lite pro because I gather the authorities call it pirating which makes it a dangerous and risky prospect. Rather I am ganna play the patience card for 1 or 2 months till the DVD release, then borrow it from the central library and burn it with my decrypter, sounds like a plan? Naaah, don't fall for that. That explains my new democrat blood in me, for I am learning to live with the horrors of scarcity and the enlarging govenment control or supervision of my life...everybody's life!

I was so into this new gadget on the block, the Sirius a pocket satellite radio, owing to the fact that Hopes kept on bringing it up. Well, he has a PC powered one that is stationally but picks up most channels in the world. I started planning on ways of saving some bucks to own one when reality checked in. My impression of this ipod-like gadget was that you listen to any radio station in the world with the benefit of portability. I realize now that it doesn't receive live feed at the go but that it records like 50 hours of programming on an internal hard drive, and still limits you on the radio feeds. I wouldn't be able for instance to listen to radio simba, or any Rwandese radio feed on the go!!! As if that was not enough, you need like $15 per month for subscription. There goes the S50 Sirius, waste of money in my opinion.

I am out but not before commenting on the political fiasco in Kampala, Uganda. That the ruling govenment is slowly turning larger than life is not surprising, don't all governments? What surprises me though, is the opposition's faileur to learn from the Kenyan mistakes of opposition politics of inclusiveness and mergers with only one unifying factor, WINNING the election!! I gather its the worst govenment they have had since assuming power in Nairobi. On a brighter side though, political uncertainity has gripped the globe as whole...it is a globalisation thing. We are tussling here in Canada, the Egyptians are crying foul, Venezuela, the Americans...rest be assured Ugandans, it is not only you.