A town in a city.

The other day at work I was walking around and I came to a realization. I may work in the middle of the largest city in Canada, but where I work is just like its own town. When I got right down to thinking about the details of my new discovery I realized that you could live at the Manulife Centre and never ever step outside.

Realistically who would want to lead such a miserable existence, but the fact still remains such an existence could quite easily be maintained. Think about this now, you have an apartment tower with 800 units bellow that you have a full mall containing everything anyone might need to survive. It is exactly like a town. You have your market which in our case is the Valu-Mart, you have your pharmacy, post office, shoe repair, tailor, dry cleaner, 3 full restaurants a full gym a bank, several clothing outlets, a doctors office and optometrist and of course theirs us. Security or the town Police force, but the list goes on and on.

Manulife Centre is a very proper place, an establishment that prides itself on being snobby and better then everyone else. But because you have people who live there you end up with situations like the one I saw the other morning. A resident walk across the mall to the other end to get to the bank in a tank top and flip flops. But what can you do? This is his home is it not?

And just like a town everyone knows everyone. And there is always gossip, it is really neat to watch the complex function day to day as a somewhat 3^rd party. There may be close to 1000 tenants, and who knows how many staff but everyone greats everyone.

From the time I started employment at this site I vowed to be out with in a few months. But here I am a full year later and my attitude has change greatly. I don’t view this as a burden I view it now as a opportunity to help keep this bustling community running.

So even when you walk outside and look around at the thousands of people during rush hour and the many tall towers surrounding you. You can step back and appreciate the little patch small town in the middle of a massive cosmopolitan.