Changed perceptions, or how my safe world is no more.

Late this afternoon my husband and I headed out to go have a meal somewhere, just so we could escape the heat in our apartment. The joys of not having air conditioning...

We had just made it to the bus stop when my husband realised he'd forgotten to take his medication, so back home we hoofed to get it. Stupid fibro pain slowed me down so he went ahead of me. As I was making my way back, I started hearing loud popping sounds that reminded me of the gunshot sounds you hear when you watch war reports. I kept thinking to myself, can't be, must be fireworks, but it was only 6 pm!! Who would have fireworks in daylight?! The popping sounds varied in speed and loudness and I started worrying that it might be something bad since the sounds were coming from the downtown area. I could also see a blue haze rising from the downtown area which really frightened me.

I got back to the apartment as my husband was coming out and I asked him if he'd heard the popping sounds to which he said yes. But he couldn't tell what they were caused by and my mention of gunshot sounds didn't inspire us to go anywhere near the downtown area. So we opted for a cab ride to Mandarin which is a good distance away from that area. 

On the cab ride there, I asked the cabbie (who else would know better) if he knew of anything going on downtown and he said there was a Portuguese festival just ending. I mentioned hearing fairly loud popping sounds and he said something about firecrackers. That was the best thing I'd heard since hearing those sounds.

Amazing how your perspective changes once you've seen how horribly things can go wrong even here in Canada! in what we think of as a safe place to live. It also saddens me that the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the above sounds as that of guns being fired. If the anarchists wanted to instill a sense of fear into us, I think that part got across really well, sadly enough.

A day in the life of a police officer during this weekend past.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/27/g20-toronto-protest.html#

They may be trained to do this, but they are not trained to not feel fear and apprehension as this video shows. 

As my daughter put it so simply. "This is why we spent $1 billion on protection!"