New Blog for the New Year.

New blog for the New Year.

It is hard to fathom that I have been in Los Angeles for one year already. My feelings are mixed. On one hand, I am relieved from the torment of extreme Ontario, Canada coldness. On another hand, my life got turned upside down moving here. Los Angeles. It really is a love-hate relationship and here is why:

LA the good:
Weather; the weather is truly remarkable. It is literally sunny everyday. Temperatures barely fluctuate and LA “cold” is understood as 10C during the “cold” winter nights. Weather-wise, it’s everything I dreamed about.

Beach and the city. Rightly so, it’s hard to think of LA without thinking of the beaches. Long stretches of beautiful beach border the west of LA and OC with tall mountains guarding the east. The rest of the city is spattered with pockets of diversity.

Money. This job in LA has greatly increased my income to a level which wasn’t realistic just two years ago. Of course, this is not saying I am super rich now, but rather I was dirt poor then.

LA the bad:
The façade of Hollywood. The movies make LA seem glamorous, exciting and fun. On the surface, it really looks like the movies, but digging deeper and there really isn’t much. It’s all so superficial and all so annoying, but I suppose it can be expected from a city populated by aspiring actors.

Sprawl. Living in Marina Del Ray, means driving 30min minimum to get anywhere interesting. How far is 30min in distance you ask? 10km. Yes, that works out to about 20km/h. You can literally bike faster. Except of course, you have a high chance of injury when biking on roads designed solely for motorised vehicular traffic.

Money. Making more just means spending more as demonstrated by my $1350/mth 1 bedroom rent by the ghettos. I have yet to figure out how people afford to live in this city.


Sometimes I love being here, sometimes I hate it. Lately, it has tended to be the latter. This is one of those cities you either love or hate. Most people coming from densely populated cities as Toronto, Boston and New York tend to hate this city. Incidentally, I met a Texan who seemed to love it here, but then again, she is Texan. Others, who grew up in Socal, tend to love it. Very few people who live here are actually from LA, so most people I know are not particularly fond of it. For me, LA seems like a terrific place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.