## End of an Era My _Great Experiment_ has come to an end. As this post is published, I will be just about to fly out of Toronto’s International Airport for the last time as a resident of the city, as well as a resident of Canada. When I left the United Kingdom, back on July 13th 1997, my thought was that my permanent home would be the United States of America, and that I might meet someone with who I would spend the rest of my life with, start a family, and all that comes with that. Of course, that didn’t happen. Around May of 2001, I first lost the job that brought me to the US. This was right at the worst time of my permanent residency process, and had to scramble around to find another one to avoid having to go back to the UK. I managed to find another and started that one in late July. But the US economy had soured, and I was never able to start the permanent residency process again. I was let go in layoffs somewhere around end of July/September of 2003, and looked north to Vancouver, Canada, to avoid having to go back to the UK. Fortunately, the job I’d been working in since 2001 set me solidly on the career that I’m in today, and I was able to get an offer from a company in Vancouver who made DHCP and DNS software. It was down to that company, who I was with for over 13 years, that I was able to get permanent residency in Canada – and later citizenship – which meant that my life in North America was secure and I would no longer have to worry about being kicked out and back to the UK. I left that company in the beginning of 2018 as it had been bought by a big, publicly traded software consortium, who only seemed to care about making profits for shareholders rather than the relationships we’d built up with customers. In the year prior to my leaving, about half the long tenured staff who were there had quit for elsewhere, including core engineering people. That showed me the writing on the wall and I went looking for new employment, realizing that my Canadian citizenship meant I could now move freely to anywhere in the country…. Well, except Quebec, because that’s a special little place. I interviewed with another company out in Toronto that was doing much the same as my current company, just in the Enterprise space instead of Broadband, and they liked me well enough to make me an offer. I signed it on my birthday that year, and on January 12th I left the Vancouver area for the last time and started driving east – going south first into the US to avoid possible winter woes I might have had driving through a Canadian winter. I arrived in Toronto on January 17th. It’s now almost 8 years later, and the company I’m with still likes me well enough. But things changed in other ways. My brother got married, and now has 3 kids (a boy and twin girls), 2 cats, and a dog. He lives just a couple of miles from my parents’ place. My parents are getting older, and unfortunately my dad has developed dementia. He doesn’t have it too bad, at least, but it was enough to stop him from driving, and his memory is definitely not what it was. My mum has a few health issues herself, but nothing that stops her from going on with life as normal. My aunt is also closer than ever to everyone, and the family there has come together much more than when I was there. So, my parents need help, I have neices and a nephew that want to know their uncle better, and a family that misses me. That’s one reason to go back. Another is that while I’m very comfortable in my life here in Toronto, my social lift has never been what it was when I was in California. I have one very close friend I meet up with often for dinner and things like movies, a dinner group I saw once a month, and maybe another person I saw sometimes for dinner. So, not that much overall. When the weather is decent, I might also go out and join one of the Pokémon GO groups as well. Still, hardly a big social calendar. The idea I had back in 1997 of me being married with a family, and ties to keep me in North America seems so incredibly naive or at the very least dated now. I had really one relationship when I was in California, and that ended with that person cheating on me. But I’m not sure it would have worked anyway, as it’s only in the last five or so years that I realized why I had never looked at people and thought “I fancy them”. I’d never even looked at people that way when I was in secondary (high) school, despite my peers being of such mind. It was just in these recent years that I finally understood what this asexuality thing was, and that really I’d always been this way, and that looking back on things, the idea of having a family probably wasn’t on the cards anyway. Thus, I had no real ties to keep me here in Canada. I know one friend that might disagree, but it’s not quite enough with everything else. I already have a few plans waiting for me for when I arrive in the UK. Of course there will be the usual Christmas related things with family, and I’m sure that at a number of points during the various gatherings I will be made severely uncomfortable by their political views (they’re seriously looking at voting Reform, need I say more? :P), as well as the occasional bit of racism. Certainly by moving west I’ve become a lot more liberal thinking than when I was in the UK, and looking back I’m horrified at myself for when I was back in school – the surroundings that you’re in when you’re growing up definitely have an effect in indoctrinating your ways of thinking, and I’m very happy to have broken out of those ways. Other than the family related things, I do hope to see more of friends I know back in the UK, even though that most are not that nearby. Though there are occasional gatherings that bring people in, such as regular LondonFurs and Berkshire/Surrey folks meets. I’m at a bit of a disadvantage there as I’ll certainly be one of the more older people in attendance, and I only really know a few people from each group. Also there’s podcast related things. I used to do my own podcast with a couple of other people where we reviewed old Doctor Who stories – mostly from TV, but sometimes from the Big Finish audio range as well. That led me to meet another group from the UK one year at the _Gallifrey One_ convention near the Los Angeles airport, and I got to be good friends with them. I’ve been a guest at a few of their recordings, which conveniently takes place about 30 minutes drive away from where I’ll be living – and I’ll be joining their group permanently come the new year. That’ll be a social session every two weeks, so that’s really good. They’re a good bunch, and I’ve got a similar sense of humour to them (ie, British), so we already get on pretty well. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any large local _Pokémon GO_ group near to where I’ll be, with the nearest large one (with a community ambassador) being either a 40 minute drive (into Greater London, which would be ‘bleh’) or about 1h30 by train. There’s a slightly smaller one – again with a CA – a _smidge_ nearer at a 25 minute drive or 1 hour bus ride. The big issues here are the costs, since it costs to park, and public transit is not as cheap as a Cdn$3.30 fare on the TTC (and good for 2 hours of travel) I have the _Confuzzled_ convention to look forward to in May, as I managed to get a room in the main hotel for that. No other convention plans yet, though. There _are_ also Renaissance (or Fantasy) Faires in the UK, and I was extremely surprised to find out that one of them (near Oxford in July) has _already_ sold out of tickets for the Saturday! I’m still trying to get one friend I know to commit to coming up for the Sunday one. There’s also another one on the first weekend in September (no Labour Day in the UK, but it is the same weekend), but I’m already planning to hit up a _Doctor Who_ event in Derby on the Saturday, but _might_ be able to do the Faire on the Sunday. There are also some other event as well, so I do have some chances to bring out Athra the Khajiit and have him play around. One thing that I really want to get to as well is the annual _Elder Scrolls Online Tavern_ event that happens in Germany, usually around July. I will finally be in range to make it to that, and if _ever_ there was an event I need to bring Athra too, it’s that one. Then there is also the chance to travel places by rail in the UK. Over the past couple of years I’ve gotten into the habit of watching various YouTubers travel all over the country by rail. This is something that I used to do with a small Railway Society I was in back in secondary school. We got to go to a number of places around the UK that way. Watching these videos I’ve realized that there is a lot about the UK rail network that I was never familiar with, such as the whole “this station is a request stop” concept, where you have to tell the guard you want to get off, or if you want to get on you actually have to flag down the approaching train. If I do this, I think that I would like to vlog my travels. I have no plans to become a “professional content creator”, but if the odd person through me some contribution through KoFi that would offset things. Eh, we’ll see. Personally, I don’t think I’m an interesting person to watch, having a face for radio and a voice for silent movies. But, if I do it for fun… (if I actually stick with it, which is a big problem I have) In other words; I think that there is plenty of things that I could find to do in the UK, and I think that there’s _more_ things open to me there than there were in Toronto. We’ll see… Wish me luck.