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.

I seriously don’t know if I will ever have enough time to tell all my Cuba stories online, because there are just that many. You’d think I’d taken a six-month sabbatical there, I’ve gone on and on and on about it so much. And no, I’m not getting paid by the country’s tourism commission — the place captured my imagination and fascination in a way that doesn’t let go easily.

I wanted to come home from work and do a whole lot of nothing, where “nothing” means I’ll feed myself then spend most of the evening Photoshopping over a cup of tea. (I prefer Photoshopping to retail shopping any day. Shopping isn’t relaxing at all!)

Pentax K-1000
Centro Habana

View larger for detail.

I was taking pictures on the street where this little lady was sweeping in front of her house. I asked permission to take her photo, and she stopped what she was doing and motioned for me to come inside!

She sat me down at her kitchen table and fed me Cuban-style custard with marmalade (I eat practically anything, including marmalade, but this stuff is like nothing edible on earth and I tried to tell her I was like a borderline diabetic or something to that effect, though it probably got lost in translation and came out like "I like to roll in sugar"), and yogurt. I quite like Cuban yogurt, so I ate more of that to counter some of the marmalade that made its way to my plate.

I told her I would mail her the photos I took of her and in her house, and she gave me her address.

These Cubans are some of the most hospitable people I’ve ever met. Every day it would blow me away how friendly and trusting they were.

Technorati tags: Cuba, hospitality

December 25, 2006
Pedro (a high school physics teacher who now works as a musician because he earns more money)
Hershey Station, Matanzas

I arrived at 10:30 at the Hershey Station in Matanzas on Christmas Day to catch a train that was supposed to leave at 12:30. The next train wasn’t until after 5 o’clock, and I was on my way to Havana.

The train had electricity problems all the way from Havana, so those of us diehards (I was the only non-Cuban) had to amuse ourselves all afternoon because they cancelled the 12:30 departure altogether — it would never make it to Havana and back before the next scheduled departure of 5:15. The train sat from about 2:00 until after 5:00 with no guarantees to anyone that it would actually run.

Such is life in Cuba, and many other countries where people depend on public transportation but can never count on it. It reminded me a lot of taking the train through Thailand.

I got out my iPod, which no-one had ever seen before, and played some music for people. Some requests:

"Beehees!"
Me: "Beehees…? Ahhhh, BeeGEES… I have Stayin’ Alive…"
"Boys 2 Men!"
Me: "What? Are you kidding me?"
"KC and the Sunshine Band!"
“Do you have Celine Dion?”
Me: “No way!!!”

Pedro was camera shy, so the only way I was able to get his picture was to flip the LCD screen so it was facing him and while he was distracted I pressed the shutter button.

Gotcha!

Technorati tags: Cuba, digital photography, black and white, portrait

July 4, 2005 — seen while driving with David on the QEW

Last month I made a rather cryptic reference to December 12 as the day after which I could tell the sorry tale of what happened on my drive back to Toronto in early October. Basically, I received two moving violations in New York State less than a mile from the U.S./Canada border, two violations in two minutes that — if I pled guilty — would give me something like EIGHT points on my license and make my auto insurance rates go through the roof. Why? Because New York, Quebec, and Ontario have a reciprocal agreement whereby points are applied to your license if received in any of those jurisdictions.

It’s amazing how much one learns in a few quality moments with a very bored officer of the law.

Near midnight I’d mistakenly turned off for Niagara Falls too early and found myself in an industrial area that was nearly pitch black, full of potholes, and the lane markers had all but faded away. (I revisited this area a week and a half ago to see if my imagination had run away with me in the heat of ticket denial. It had not.) The posted speed limit was 30mph, which I might’ve seen if I wasn’t in such a hurry to a) leave this sketchy area and b) get to where there were more lights. And people. There was a car in front of me along the boulevard that didn’t seem to know its whereabouts either, veering slightly to the right in an unsure move to make a turn. Not seeing any lane markers, I figured it was a wide road with one large lane in each direction and went around the car to continue forward. That was apparently my first moving violation: “Failure to keep right.”

When I finally saw some lights again I slowed down, and that’s when I noticed the officer behind me. He followed me for a while and decided to put on his flashers when I was practically walking distance to the border.

“Have you consumed any alcohol this evening?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

He still didn’t seem convinced and asked me if I had any objections to getting breathalysed. ‘Not if it’ll make you stop asking me if I’ve been drinking!’ I thought.

“No objection, sir.”

more…

Rolled into the underground parking at 10pm. I think this might be a record for mileage covered in one trip, although this was spread over nine days — longer than I normally take. There was no deer-dodging today or near-accidents, thank heavens, but there were some light snow flurries near Buffalo and some heavier flurries west of Pearson Airport.

When I crossed the border into Ontario tonight I thought I was home free, then the snow worried me a bit. I already had enough bad weather on Friday to put me off long-range driving for a while, just let me get to my front door before I have to do this again! I was relieved to see the roads clear after the airport, and I completed Trip #8 (?) in six months in one piece.

Between Rochester and Buffalo I passed by one car that hit a railing, which saved it from ending up in the ditch. I kept thinking, ‘I can’t let that happen to me…’ — having an accident late at night, far from home and in the middle of nowhere is a monumental hassle even if it’s a minor one. It happened to me in January 2002, when I was returning from Los Angeles to SeaTac Airport. The flight was delayed due to weather, and I finally picked up my car around midnight and hit a raging snowstorm near Bellingham, slid on black ice at the bottom of a hill, spun around a few times and finally smacked into a railing. The grille went flying into the next county, and I ended up perpendicular on the I-5 while cars were coming over the hill and heading straight toward me. I tried not to panic and got the car started — !!! — and pulled over to survey the damage. The car was still drivable — old Volvos are like tanks — and I crawled through the rest of the snowstorm, nearly picked a fight with the border officer who didn’t think I was answering his questions quick enough, and dragged my sorry carcass into my apartment as dawn was breaking to report the incident to ICBC.

(Now, come to think of it, although Friday’s storm was rather harrowing it didn’t quite rival the endurance test of that snowstorm in Bellingham.)

Technorati tags: driving, flurries, cameraphone, Nokia 6682

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?

more…

July 22, 2003
Chez Gail, Beach Avenue, Vancouver

Something bizarre happened when I was in New York City at the end of September. I was enjoying a Magners with JimmyOK and LarimdaME at an Irish pub in SoHo when Jimmy turned to me and said, “I met you years ago.”

“Really?” I said. I mentally scanned back to early trips to NYC in 2000 and 2002, and I couldn’t recall meeting him. My facial recognition skills have always been above par, but maybe the last year has taken its toll on my faculties.

I was flummoxed. Could it have been abroad? He has family living in Europe, did we meet in Amsterdam? I’ve been there four times. Finally I broke down and asked, “Where???”

“Through Ramon Stoppelenburg,” he said. “I’d been following Ramon’s travels and when I saw your photo on Flickr, I said, ‘I know her!’ Ramon stayed at your place, and I’d invited him to stay at mine, but he never came to the U.S.”

The backstory is that a Dutch guy named Ramon Stoppelenburg travelled the world for free from May 2001 - July 2003 through his website called LetMeStayForaDay.com. (The website is still active as of this writing.) I don’t remember how I found his site, but I sent him an invitation and he stayed with me for a few days in February (by that time the “a Day” part was found to be rather unsustainable) at the beginning of his Canadian tour and passed through in July at the end of the trip.

February 21, 2003
February 22, 2003
February 23, 2003
July 22, 2003

Steve Savage of TheSavageFiles.com also stayed at my place in 2003, and between their websites, I gave up the idea of anonymity on the internet. My name was out there. (Nearly four years later, I can tell you it didn’t matter. You know what’s worse? Putting your name in a prize draw at the shopping mall and getting junk mail and telemarketing calls forever. At least on the internet there are spam filters.)

When I found this mock interview video clip to upload to YouTube (it was previously hosted on my SFU webspace, which is now defunct), I remembered some of my conversation with Ramon that day and how he felt about reaching the end of his travels through the website. It’s been several years now since that afternoon, but for some reason his words stuck with me. Ramon write a bit about it on his homepage:

I know some people can be very happy with one job in a lifetime, but I didn’t see me travel the way I did for a very long time. I am even surprised that it took me so long!

When I just finished this project in August 2003 I was very bitter about it all. I did not want to think about it and for once not care about a website.

Fortunately things went better with me. Nowadays I look back much more happier about the amazing feat I have accomplished.

- Ramon Stoppelenburg, LetMeStayForADay.com

Interesting how perspectives change, given enough time.

I told Jimmy that I had one other connection to Ramon, that is he invited me to Orkut.com back in January 2004, and that was where I met David. In a huge twist of irony, David was invited to Orkut by his first girlfriend from high school. (The ironic part is a whole other story.)

The point of all this, other than the need for some kind of flowchart for my life, is that the intersection of lives and experiences is

1. accompanied with varying degrees of risk (i.e., fear of strangers), and
2. resultant in outcomes we won’t know for years, or maybe will never fully realise.

Last week someone asked me about when I met David, which later led me to admit, “If I had not bought that plane ticket and met David when I did, I’d… never have met him at all.”

While I edited this videoclip I thought, “Thanks, Ramon.”

Technorati tags: gailontheweb, gailatlarge, Ramon Stoppelenburg, videoclip, interview, worldwideweb, travel, life, Flickr, LetMeStayForADay.com

I’ve mentioned before that David belonged to a fraternity at Penn State; many a yarn was spun from that time in his life. I’m sure some (Greek — ha!) mythology slipped into David’s stories, too, considering how many years had passed. Not to mention whatever clarity they might have had at the time.

Some of those stories come to mind when I’m in BFO’s neighbourhood because I pass by some fraternity* houses along the way.

As news of David’s passing made its way through the fraternity grapevine, some of his brothers have been in touch with me and I’m grateful for that. One story sent by email before I head off to work (edited for spelling only):

One fun story from Toronto Canada road trip came back to me. When we arrived at Kappa Sigma at Toronto their house was right next to a sorority. But the Kappa Sigmas did not communicate with the girls who lived right next door. So me and a few of the brothers knocked on their door and introduced ourselves. The girls were nice and invited us in to talk. I asked to go to use the bathroom and the girls showed me upstairs. The second floor was where the bedrooms were and I panty raided the bedrooms.

Later that night we returned to the girls’ place dressed up in their lingerie and panties. The look on their faces was hilarious as they quickly recognized that the lingerie we were wearing was none other than theirs!!! Just a blurb from that crazy weekend. I am sure [David's] pledge brothers have more and better stories and hope they share them with photos with you. Someone has a photo of us in drag that night and I, too, would love to see it again.

* From what I can gather, the Greek system is nowhere near as popular as it is in the U.S., but I think much of that can be attributed to culture, and differences in the university systems between the two countries.

These may be sorority houses, I haven’t looked them up.

Pentax K-1000, 80-200mm

It was beautiful yesterday, so after my last drop-off at Salvation Army, I went to nearby Lake Scranton to take some wildlife photos with the zoom before it got too dark.

If there’s one thing photography teaches, it’s patience. I gripped the lens barrel for a full 10 minutes, waiting for this gull to take flight. I locked in the focus and waited. And waited. And waited. It was getting colder, and I was losing feeling in my fingers. Waiting. Finally, I had to give up my position to get circulation going again. I shifted, then the blasted bird skuttled across the ice out of the frame, and this is the best I could do to capture some wingspan.

And while I’m on the topic of birds, here’s a long overdue story of a rather nasty bird episode in Steveston (near Vancouver), from June 12. (I was in Vancouver from May 7 - August 6, waiting for my fiancée visa.) I’ll copy and paste the e-mail I sent to David: more…

A clipping from this blog when I was in London last year.

I finally heard back from my friend George — he’s the last person I’d been waiting to hear from since Friday. I couldn’t find his mobile number in my address book, and I only had an e-mail address. I was getting a little anxious, since it’s been five days since I wrote.

He was apparently at work already when it all happened. An excerpt from his e-mail:

“… I work close to these sights [sic] but my neighbohood seemed unphased by the whole incident. it was business as usual. my life was uninterrupted by the events and was just as shocked as the whole world when i saw the images on tv…”

Londoners have been accustomed to bomb threats from years of IRA activity. The first time I went to London in February of 1993 I was in the middle of TWO bomb scares in THREE DAYS. ‘Business as usual’ seems a harsh way to live, but the skin must thicken if you make London your home.

BACKTRACK

February 2, 1993

Arrived at Heathrow Airport from a long flight — Bangkok, Thailand via Sofia, Bulgaria. It was a SMOKING flight, too, and I was sitting in the smoking section beside a German fellow who was especially excited to come away from Bangkok with a carton of Camels WITHOUT FILTERS.

“You can’t get these in Germany!” he said enthusiastically, puffing himself into a cloud of Camel smoke. Did I mention it was a long flight?

I was perhaps the last person to get to Passport Control/U.K. Immigration. I was alone. I had next to zero in cash. I had no credit card. My only ties to the U.K. were rather flimsy ones, at best.* I had only a one-year open-return ticket to Bangkok with Balkan Airlines.

*ding*ding*ding*red flag*ding*ding*ding*

I was interrogated, needless to say. For more than two hours. I was finally released after they confiscated my address book and phoned some of the U.K. numbers.**

I was exhausted. But relieved. I went to catch the tube to central London, where I’d found a cheap place to stay.

BOMB SCARE #1. Tube stations immediately shut down, everyone evacuated, forced to catch buses. Chaos, with everyone trying to get on the buses or catch taxis. It was nighttime, and all I could remember was a blur of faces going in every direction. If I hadn’t been interrogated, I would’ve passed Hammersmith station before they shut it down. It took me a long, long time to get to Gloucester station.

Fast-forward two days.

BOMB SCARE #2. I was having dinner in Piccadilly Circus with a guy from Durban, South Africa. We were chatting about universities. Suddenly we were told to get out of the restaurant. When we went out the door, it was eerie — all of Piccadilly Circus, which is usually teeming with people, was completely deserted.

I went to live in Scotland shortly after that. Not for this reason, but the strong cultural connections did make Scotland a relatively ’safer’ place to be in terms of IRA activity.

The following month, March 1993, a bomb exploded in a busy shopping centre in Warrington, Cheshire, killing at least one child and injuring dozens of people. I remember this clearly — it was just before (British) Mother’s Day.

March 20, 1993

A month after that an IRA bomb went off in London, wrecking Liverpool Street station and nearby churches.

April 24, 1993

Those news stories show a chilling timeline of IRA terrorist activity from the 1970s to 2000s, not just around London but other large cities like Manchester. Terrorist activity is not ever something one would like to ignore, but after many years of terrorist threats and realities such as this, it should be less surprising to people why Londoners might express a more subdued reaction to last Thursday than expected.

* Long story.
** If it wasn’t for one contact, I probably would have been deported back to Thailand. And then I would’ve been — as they say – really stuffed.