Author's Note: This is the Sims 3 version of Heather and Haruo (my RL wife and I). There will be element of "truth" and "fiction" in the vein of telling a story. I won't tell you what's true and what's fiction, but I will be drawing elements from "my own life" as well as utilizing the Sims 3 to tell this pseudo-biography and hopefully I can show a bit of the city that I call home. I will be utilizing @sneakfeline0's Vancouver, BC...(unfortunately something has gone corrupt in the Exchange file and it is no-longer downloadable - at least on my end)
As a growing metropolis, the Lower Mainland was an interesting dichotomy of the rich and the no-so-rich. Located on the Pacific Coast with the western tip reaching English Bay and the Pacific Ocean and the the eastern-most tip extending all the way to Hope, it was a great place to settle down, if you had the money.
However if you didn't, you were hard-pressed to make a living. It was money during the 90s that had fueled the real estate boom and outlying parts such as Burnaby, Coquitlam and Port Moody as well as Surrey and Delta that had seen a major building boom. Offshore investors looked at taking as much as they could and building up luxury houses for themselves to park their money leaving many long-time residents of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland to depart to places that their pocketbooks could afford. Housing prices skyrocketed, it seemed almost, overnight, but Noel, Phil Haruo and his girlfriend Heather managed to snag themselves a property at the south end of Knight Street and hang onto it, but after they had purchased the property, they barely had enough to survive on.
Luckily Richmond City Council were too busy exhorting the virtues of Richmond to off-shore buyers to care about evicting a few indigent land-squatters, even if it was on prime development property, just so long as they paid their taxes and bills on time.
The various city councils were too busy with their development plans that they didn't care what happened to those who were not as fortunate as they were and didn't have enough to put on the table. Mayor Robertson of Vancouver was more interested in developing Fraserview into a cultural hotbed and the area around the arena where the Vancouver Canucks played. At least that would bring in more money and well, more "cultured" people with more money to spend was good for Vancouver coffers.
But it wasn't so good for the ones without money, like the four that were living on a barebones lot in the south of Richmond wondering if they were going to be able to pay the bills.
You did what you had to to survive. And Vancouver didn't like vagrants or people binning. they planned to force as many of the vagrants and indigent out of the main city and out into the outlier areas where they wouldn't see them for what they were: a reflection on how society treats their less fortunate.
But despite how society viewed them, Haruo and Phil did get some enjoyment out of picking on each other. It was the typical guy thing to do and scaring each other seemed to be par for the course.
Heather and Haruo had met "on the internet" an year back and it seemed as though the two of them had been destined to be together. They had fallen hard and fast for each other and of course, their relationship had formalized over the internet and it was only natural that Haruo would definitely pop the question when she "landed" in Canada. And of course, long telephone calls and e-mails had cemented their relationship and Heather said "yes..."
Proposing was pretty much a formality as the both of them had pledged that they had wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. And it didn't matter a heckuva lot that Haruo didn't have much money to begin with...it was love and rose-colored glasses; but eventually real life would sink in, hopefully.
Their first house was practically a garden shed from Wal-Mart with a couple of bunk-beds stuck in the house where the four of them could sleep and with no running water it was not a very comfortable situation, but at least it got them out of the elements. Thank goodness for "socialized health care" - they wouldn't have to pay a whole lot of money if anyone got sick. :D But it was still pretty uncomfortable in the rain which in the summer was warm, but as fall approached, the temperature would drop and although Vancouver was temperate rainforest, it was not a place where you wanted to be outdoors when the celcius dropped through the thermometer floor.
The Vancouver skyline was visible over the hill from Richmond and night practically turned into day when the lights were on.
Tosh spent the majority of his time head-first in the dumpster trying to find things to sell off so that they could make sure that they paid off the bills/taxes and were able to eat at least something. But it was tough...
though on his behalf, he did, however, find a gemstone, a geode and three metals which he promptly fired off in the mail to get the metals smelted and the gemstone cut. Unfortunately they had too little money to get themselves a gemcutter and do it themselves. Things cost money and in Mayor Robertson's Vancouver - life was tailored to the rich.
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