Adrian Mercado

I’ve been living in Vancouver almost 5 years now. And there’s something that I’ve noticed with the different groups of friends that I’ve had along the years.

People don’t chill unless there’s an occasion. It has to be someones birthday, or there’s a concert, or someone has to throw a random party, or organize a dinner.

Maybe its just the friends I keep out here. Back out in Winnipeg you could just call someone on any given day/time and say I’m coming over [sometimes you could just show up] and you would do absolutely nothing. Watch TV, play games or whatever it didn’t matter. What I’ve found out here in Vancouver is there always has to be an occasion to do almost anything with your friends. I’m trying to figure out the reason behind this.

I think the number one reason is distance. When I talk about Vancouver I really mean the Lower Mainland, because of the fact that you and everyone you know in the Lower Mainland probably live all over the place. And that is why I think it’s hard to just chill on any given occasion. I live in Burnaby, but I have friends who live all over the place surrey, delta, east van, downtown, you get the point. No one wants to drive or transit out towards a friend without knowing for sure that they could chill. [though a phone call could solve that problem]

Thats why I think the next reason is everyone is busy busy busy. When I moved here the first thing I noticed is everyone is [or at least appears to be] busy. People do everything like they’re going to be late or miss out on something. They run for a sky-train when the next one will be there in a few minutes. The power walk everywhere! no taking an easy stroll down the street. I know everyone has a lot of things to do, Work, School, Gym, etc. I understand that after a long day people usually just want to go home, but I’d rather chill with some friends, relax and maybe vent about my day.

The last thing I think of that could be the reason behind this is maybe I just don’t have friends who like to chill all the time. Maybe they like their friend time in small doses? haha Who knows. BUT I have talked to two different friends from two different groups of friends I have about this and both of them agree with me about this. Then again both of them aren’t from Vancouver so they are probably just noticing the differences between where they grew up and Vancouver.

So what do you think does this happen to everyone around the Lower Mainland?