The office where I work part-time has moved. You can now find the newcomer in a snazzy, environment-conscious(which means we aren’t allowed garbage bins in our rooms) suite of rooms located in the heart of the campus of one of the many smaller universities which are so numerous in this part of the world.
Everything is new and shiny, with lots of light-coloured faux wood. There are glass partitions, which I hate, for obvious reasons. Colleagues keep stopping by and congratulating us on our move, as we are no longer “isolated” on Spring Garden avenue, and have joined the mainstream university. I am grateful for their sentiments, but I am missing Spring Garden horribly.
I don’t want to sound like a tourist brochure for downtown Halifax, but honestly, the food! the shopping! Just in the last week, I got a nice-sized fresh crab-cake with a generous portion of beet salad from Spring garden food court for 6 dollars. Turkish, Indian, Lebanese, Japanese, Italian, continental and country cuisine were all five minutes walk from the old office, and at reasonable prices. You want caramel and pecan pie? Just across the place where they do steak-and-kidney pud.
Here, the options are: the student cafeteria, the student union, and the staff lounge, which I am told has the most limited options. Considering that the cafeteria offers ONLY turkey BLT sandwiches, the staff lounge probably has only stale bread and coffee.
Oh, and did I mention that the turkey blt sandwich cost over 7 dollars?
Oh, the good old days…
