from Father O’Five

My older brother, Allan, recently scanned and uploaded this photo of our family (minus Alvin, who was still a bun in the oven) of the day we left the Philippines in October, 1974, from a photo album that belongs to my Aunt Felipa (the lady holding a bag). We were bound for SASKATCHEWAN*, by the way. I mentioned it was October, right? My parents had never seen snow before. Click on the pic for more info.

Guess who’s wearing the boogie trousers in the front row?

* Unsurprisingly, we didn’t last long in Saskatchewan. Although, 10 years in Manitoba wasn’t exactly tropical, either.

I was digging through David’s stuff to find something to wear to a theme party tonight, and I came across his fraternity gear from Penn State.

David shoved this in the back of the closet because he didn’t want to get any sticky questions from his Civil Air Patrol cadets.

It wasn’t for prescribing Nyquil, put it that way.

I also came across Han Solo and a t-shirt from his childhood.

David was a total packrat. There was Star Wars memorabilia in the garage and the house, but I couldn’t haul it all to Toronto, so I kept only a few choice items. I think David was 10 years old when Star Wars mania hit.

From sometime in the early 90s, the ’stache and beard phase. It’s a picture David had framed in our house, that I now look at every day in my house.

I’ve been thinking of how long it’s been since I’ve been in a (non-commercial) airplane. Looking back, it was only October 14 (Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome), but it feels like ages.

I think I need to go up in a little plane again, to hear the roar of the engine and see the world from a couple of thousand feet in the air. It’s like therapy for me.

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I scanned this first page of the 1992 Aussie road trip journal recently to email to Lachlan, and because my book is completely falling apart at the seams. I’ve been keeping it in a box because there are bits glued and taped in, and the adhesive isn’t working anymore! I flipped through the book for the first time in a very long time a couple of weeks ago and it made me laugh and cry, as these sorts of memory lane-ish activities tend to do.

This first page is actually the least interesting part of the road trip journal — I wrote long entries, doodled and pasted things on the following pages — but I wanted to show the post-it note glued into the book. Isn’t that how all modern-day road trips with strangers begin? With little square notes stuck or tacked to bulletin boards? I’m really glad I kept this one, though, it’s how I ended up in Scotland (and some other countries) in the first place.

I’m currently reading Timbit Nation, a book written by a Globe and Mail journalist who decided to hitchhike across Canada to experience his own country through the eyes of the locals — the locals who pick up hitchhikers, anyway. I’m thoroughly fascinated by this book, not just for the hitchhiking stories that bring back memories of my own crazy times spent with my thumb out on lonely roads in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, but the political and cultural background information the author incorporates into his documented journey. It’s like a crash course in Canadian history mixed with travel journalism. Some parts are absolutely hilarious to me, because I can relate to some of the frustrations the author expresses about hitchhiking and some of the, erm, unusual characters he meets along the way.

Maybe one day I’ll think more seriously about putting some stories together — with a little more than weak tape and glue — but for now I’ll start with some here and there on my website before I get senile and not remember a thing… like about writing that bit from Day 4 of the road trip in Canberra: “…lost a treasured pair of yellow knickers…. where???” What??

Yes, that’s me hurtling to earth, circa 1992. I did this bungy jump in the Kuranda rainforest (Australia) on a dare. And because I bought a ticket for it off a bloke for $15, cuz I’m cheap that way.

The guy who dared me took the picture, and I just noticed on the date stamp that it was Halloween 1992.

In case you don’t believe me, that I might have just pinched any old silhouetted image off the web, I present Exhibit B:

I really did do it on a dare. I get major vertigo when I see the ground at close range. It’s not a fear of heights — that would make flight training impossible — but a fear of falling. A guy I met while travelling dared me to bungy jump, and to shut him up I bought the jump ticket from someone who was leaving Cairns and wouldn’t get a chance to use it but wanted some money for it. Sooner would I part with $15 than my pride, but you know what they say about pride… it goeth before a… yeah.

And fall I did, something I still remember very vividly, although it was so long ago. There were people bungy jumping naked — in those days jumping naked was free — but the girl jumping before me wouldn’t go at the count of three. I figure if you have the courage to take all your clothes off in front of a crowd of strangers, why would jumping off a platform 50 metres from the ground stop you cold? Hmmm. Anyway, I was a little spooked by the fact that she took forever to take her turn. When it was my turn, I did exactly what the operator told me to do: not look down, look at the horizon, and jump at the count of three.

One… two… three… I didn’t even hesitate, but I was well and truly scared. I think I stopped breathing. It was like I was in slow motion, the faces in the crowd rushing up towards me, the palm trees big again instead of little fronds. When my hands touched the water, I sprung back up and that’s when I started to breathe and look around and wish for more airtime. I would’ve done flips if I could figure out where my limbs were.

Next stop? Paragliding, I think.

While I was rooting around through my self-portraits, I came across this oldie from the archives:

May 1992. Wow, this was almost 15 years ago! Japanese tourists took photos of our silliness to show the folks back home.

I’d been travelling for weeks in a Volkswagen campervan with a Scottish guy named Lachlan and a Dutch guy named Fedor. We left Melbourne on May 4, and if we’d driven straight to Sydney, we’d have made it in about 12 hours. Instead, we camped on beaches and sites all the way along and took our own sweet time. It was Lachlan’s van, but sometimes he got sick of doing all the driving, but neither Fedor nor I wanted the responsibility. Fedor even went as far as giving the excuse that his English wasn’t good enough to navigate, so while Lachlan got stuck with 100% of the driving, Yours Truly got stuck with the navigating (we often argued like an old married couple), and Fedor had the entire back of the van to himself, doing bugger all. Maybe not quite bugger all, since our little van fridge was always stocked with VB (Victoria Bitter), and Fedor was only too happy to have it at his disposal. Which also meant there was far less driving than hanging out at the beach telling tall tales over some tins, because it just wasn’t fair that Fedor had the contents of the fridge all to himself.

Fun times. They tried to chuck me into the ocean on more than one occasion. I think they were successful the following month on my birthday, when we were in Surfers Paradise. Really, it could’ve been much worse, temperature-wise — say, at the north end of the Pacific Ocean.

There are more stories from that journey than I have time to ramble on about tonight — three complete strangers in a van? this is reality-TV material, folks, long before reality-TV — but there was one memorable stop in the Kangaroo Valley where we met two blokes panning for gold. The four of us got together and found the oldest hotel-pub in the area, where Lachlan and Paul taught me to play pool with dirty snooker-type tactics. In those days, winning pool matches meant the loser had to buy pitchers of beer as a penalty, so it really didn’t take long before everyone was well on their way to a morning hangover in the Great Outdoors.

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A second picture from my lunch walk series that I started a week ago. I haven’t made a set yet, ’cause there are only two pics so far. Haven’t taken any lunch walk photos this week, which will have to be remedied soon. Today’s weather was brilliant and warm — around 20C! (68F!) — but I took lunch hour to attend a bargaining unit meeting a short walk away and didn’t take my bag, or my camera. I felt a bit lost without the camera.

* * * * * * * * *

Whenever I see the notice ‘Post No Bills’, I think of my friend Eden Aminoffe, from Israel. I lost touch with him after he visited me in Edinburgh and I hope he’s alright. I wonder because the last time I was able to reach him, Eden was still completing his required military service, something he’d been avoiding by travelling as far away as he could. Our paths crossed in Queensland, Australia, which is about as far away as an Israeli can run from conscription and a home life which included Orthodox (with-a-capital-O) parents. After hearing from him what that meant, I know I’d probably run away, too.

Both of us were working under the table, but it was much more obvious that Eden was illegal because Australia and Israel had no reciprocal agreements for working holidays, while it was common knowledge that Canadians could obtain working holiday visas. I didn’t have one, but it was assumed I did.

Eden and I were both in the same boat with money — we were skint, flat broke, didn’t have any. If we wanted to keep travelling we had to work illegally, or get out. (Possibly both, by getting deported.) We had to be careful, and careful with money. So we worked out this arrangement where we would pay for one bed in a hostel by working and sleeping at different times. When Eden was filling out employment applications, he gave the number of our hostel and I would, as “Eden”, pick up his messages for him. Eden would sneak into the hostel at odd hours and sneak back out again when the coast was clear. I can’t remember how long we kept up this charade, but I don’t think it was for more than a month or so because I found a way to live even more cheaply: commune-style, in a tent near the beach.

Eden continued to board at the hostel but we still spent a great deal of time together while trying to stay under the immigration radar. We were so young and naive, both of us fairly fresh from a conservative upbringing. We had NO IDEA what we were doing. We went to our first rave together and even secured some, er, rave materials beforehand. Not five minutes in the club Eden turned to me.

“Do you feel anything?”
“No. Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Did we just buy aspirin?”

To give you some idea of how clueless I was at the time, the thought never even crossed my mind that Eden might be gay. It’s not that it would matter either way, it was more the fact that we were always together and the subject never came up. I guess we were too busy with more pressing matters like trying not to get deported and how quickly we could save up to go to New Zealand. I didn’t find out until about a year and a half later, when I was living in Edinburgh and Eden was back in Israel.

I was half asleep sitting on a bus on my way to a mindnumbingly dull job doing data entry at the Royal Bank of Scotland, and I’d picked up a letter from Eden as I was going out the door. In his dramatically expressive way (how could I not know he was gay?), Eden had written in big, bold letters a few words on each page. He always wrote in big letters when he was excited.

I HAVE SOME
*page flip*
BIG NEWS FOR
*page flip*
YOU, GAIL, I AM
*flip!*
F$%*ING GAY!!
*flip!* (loud page turn)
???
*flip*flip* (now people on the bus around me are craning their necks to read)
I AM COMING TO VISIT YOU!

Eden always had a way of spicing up my often colourless days at the bank by writing such letters for me to read on the bus, but this one was particularly dramatic. He told me the part he was dreading was telling his father he was gay. Eden told me the story later in person, and I can tell you that no matter how you may feel about homosexuality, a person would not bring such wrath upon himself willingly if he didn’t have absolute conviction in its truth.

Eden went to the Reading Music Festival before coming to visit, and by the time he arrived in Edinburgh he had a thousand and one questions for me because his English was out of practice. In Australia I was his de facto English teacher only by proximity, and I knew he’d have some trouble understanding the Scots. So where did he visit next? The Fringe Festival…

I think Eden’s eyes were permanently widened after experiencing the Jim Rose Circus. I had to work that day, but came home to Eden trying to demonstrate how a man swung a lawn mower around by a cable attached to his testicles. English simply lacks the words to properly describe this.

After days of attempting to break down English (Scottish, really) into simple phrases for Eden, we were walking down the street and he pointed to a sign.

Whew, I thought. Something easy this time.

“What does ‘Post No Bills’ mean?” Eden asked.

We stopped. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Is it funny?” Eden prompted, wanting in on the joke. “Tell me! What does it mean?”

I could barely breathe, so I pushed out the words one gasp at a time.

“I… don’t… know!”

Eden was totally confused by this, but I really didn’t know. I never considered it. Here I was, the native English speaker, and I had no idea what it meant because all I could think of was “post” meaning “mail” and “bills” meaning what the Brits call “notes”. After living in Australia and learning Queen’s English the hard way (by being made fun of) and then living in Scotland, I’d been mixing up all the vernaculars and cultural references in my head and ended up with a sentence I’d seen a million times but couldn’t make heads or tails of at all!

Eden, my friend. In the name of all that is good and true, I hope you’re still alive. Please Google your name so you can find me again and I can tell you what “Post No Bills” means. I promise I’ll even come to Tel Aviv or wherever you are and tell you in person.

The best way to end 2006 was on a sand beach in the Caribbean. Taken New Year’s Eve at Veradero, Cuba.

I thought winter was over this week, but then it snowed last night!

A couple of weeks ago I was on the phone with my friend Lucy in England, and she reminded me about a poem we submitted to a radio contest when we were living in Scotland to win a holiday in the sun:

Edinburgh is glum,
Our senses are numb,
We’d give our right thumb(s),
For some Caribbean rum.

I’m amazed she’d remember it after — say what?!? — 13 years, but we had a good belly laugh over it. We still think we should’ve won!

Technorati tags: silly poetry, tropics

Click to Play Movie

Helma Gurzinski wed Hermann Hoepken
at Peace Lutheran Church on North Main Street,
Scranton, Pennsylvania.

A bond was formed for life.

Today would’ve been Helma & Hermann’s 42nd wedding anniversary.

Dedicated in loving memory to Hermann Hoepken
June 3, 1922 - December 4, 2005

Music: “It’s Wonderful” by Ella Fitzgerald
These photos were scanned from Helma’s Kodachrome slides.

Technorati tags: videoclips, film photography, slides, slideshow, wedding, anniversary

On my way home from work, I saw that they iced over the fountains at City Hall. It wasn’t even that cold out, but I suppose it’s cold enough to sustain the rink. I reached into my bag for the Canon digicam, but when I turned it on I noticed I did it again — I left the memory card in the card reader. Which is at home. Argh!

I do this once in a while, but just for these occasions I also carry around two EXTRA cards in my bag, but I did I remember that then? Noo-o-o-o-o… I do this to myself all the time: I’m nearly always more prepared than I think I am — I carry around postage stamps, extra pens, stash cash in odd places in case I run out, but then I forget that I’ve done it.

Speaking of being prepared, my workplace had its annual fire drill this afternoon, which was an annoyance to some but a source of amusement for the rest of us. Imagine an entire Toronto office building emptying out onto the sidewalks of a major thoroughfare in the middle of the afternoon. With our government-issue key cards hanging around our necks, we looked like refugees from a convention, easy targets for heckling by the smart-alecks returning to work from their lunch:

“Fire drill?”

“No,” someone shot back, “we’re having a meeting.”

Overheard in my group: “The fire alarm went off just as I pressed ‘START’ on the microwave. I thought I did something wrong!”*

“At least it’s a sunny day.”

“Where’s [fellow employee]?” — said someone taking roll call. Another pointed to him sauntering down the street, one of the many who probably never read the email memo and was totally oblivious to the fact that no one would know if they burnt to a crisp or snuck out to buy a doughnut at Tim Horton’s.

The fun part was, of course, trying to get BACK to work. Why on earth are we stampeding back to work?

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