new york

Finally went to NEW YORK CITY at the age of 36. I actually keep thinking I'm still 35 because I missed my birthday last year. We were flying from Toronto to Delhi and got on the first plane late at night on July 29th. When we got off the second flight in Delhi it was afternoon on the 31st. Poof! Birthday gone! Seems to me like that gives me ample allowance to start running my birthdays backwards now. I'm not against my late 30s or the rest of my years ahead (please let them be long and enjoyable) but you know, I've been getting older for all my life. Isn't it time for a change of direction?

So: NYC. I had wanted to try to put together some kind of sweeping tour from NY down through Rhode Island and then maybe back up through Boston because:

a. I've never been to any of those places;
b. I should've been to those places;
c. I want to see those places; and
d. It would be handy for doing research for the play I'll direct in November*

*The play which was written by students (and me!) this past semester is about a young girl in the late 1600s who is growing up in Providence, Rhode Island. Her parents die of typhus and she's left to fend for herself. At first she becomes a pickpocket but then hides away on a merchant ship which is then captured by PIRATES! She decides to join the pirates and adventures and hi-jinks ensue. Interesting facts:

a. Rhode Island was a pirating hub in days of yore!
b. In the late 1600s pirates moved from the Caribbean to the Indian ocean!
c. The biggest pirating haul of the era was when an American pirate attacked and captured one of the Mughal emperor's ships on its way to Mecca!

Eventually, the girl battles the pirate captain, joins forces with a Maratha pirate who also happens to be a girl, and exposes the corruption amongst the pirates and endorses the true spirit of piracy.

At any rate, I had hoped to try to get down to Rhode Island, but it looked like the schedule wouldn't quite work out, so instead I thought it'd be a good time to check out New York. I booked tickets for Ji and I to head out on Wednesday morning, and then arranged for Emma and Dad to come on Friday as an advance Father's Day / Turning 60 gift for Dad. The trip turned out to be excellent.

On Wednesday, Emma gave us a drive out to the airport. We left pretty early, at 6:30 am, and were all super duper prepared. No bag checking! Boarding passes already printed! Nothin' but a rollie bag and a back-pack! US immigration sucked. There was a big line-up. But on the good side, the lining up area is very clean and spinky-spanky. After about half an hour we got through and decided to use Ji's special lounge passes - yes, he is in a higher frequent flier points bracket than me - to go to the business class lounge. We filmed some sequences with a monkey puppet - Mr. Monkey's Guide to Monkeying Around in New York City coming soon to a youtube channel near you - and then went to catch our flight. I love flying to places when it takes less than 12 hours to get there. It's the travel equivalent of an amuse bouche: tasty, tantalizing, intriguing, never dull. Or at least rarely unendurable.

When we arrived at La Guardia I was a little bit surprised at how small the airport was. I, of course, had no idea what to expect and I was sort of thinking that it would be full on NEW YORK as soon as we stepped off the plane, but it was more like we'd arrived in Iowa. It was maybe a 4 minute walk before we hit the cab stand, and even that was incredibly easy to navigate. I guess I'm sort of used to dealing with cabbies who don't speak my language, don't want to take me where I want to go, don't have air con, don't have "brakes" etc etc, yes, but I'm still always a little anxious arriving at a new place. Second time, no worries. First time, a little nervous. Anyways, the cab was perfect, the driver was nice, and in no time flat we were at our rental apartment in Harlem.

I didn't really have much clue about what to expect from the neighbourhood. I had searched pretty hard to find an apartment with at least one bedroom with a shutting door at a reasonable price and in a handy location. The one we ended up staying at was perfect-looking online, and luckily turned out to be great in real life as well. The area of Harlem that we stayed in was, as Ji put it, a lot like Toronto but with more cool looking guys wearing necklaces. Our block seemed to be just veering into a somewhat sketchy area, but really nothing more unusual then you might see in downtown Toronto, except with a few more houses that were boarded up as they waited to be buffed up. The one problem with the apartment was that we got there at 11, and the owners didn't show up until 12! We had told them the arrival time of our flight, they told us we'd arrive at the house at 12, but clearly that was an over-estimate. I figured that of course they'd be there early just in case, but nope. I think they're pretty new to the whole renting-out thing, and probably if I'd had a cell phone it would've been peachy keen, but instead Ji and I ended up having to take our rollie bag out on the street and had to hunt for somewhere to use a computer since I hadn't printed the owners' telephone number off at home. A very kindly printing shop man took pity on us and let us use his own computer and telephone for free - FRIENDLY New York! - and then the owner came quickly after we contacted her.

The apartment was great and seemed very spacious for NY. Two decent-sized bedrooms, a backyard with a tree and a swing, a nice bathroom and kitchen, and a pleasant living room / dining room area. All for 200 bucks a night! If you want the contact info, just ask me. I would definitely recommend it. I think they had just done all the renovations in the past year, so it was very nicely done. Ikea-y but good. And they had a gorgeous new washer and dryer and a dish washer! It was pretty funny, though...the owner met us and was like, "Oh there are some nearby shops where you can get organic eggs and milk," and we're like, yes, ok, and as soon as she left us alone we raced out the door and around the corner to White Castle. Yes, the teeny burgers were lip-smackingly tasty, especially since we hadn't eaten since 6:00 am. I had two regular doubles and Ji had two double cheeseburgers and he wouldn't even let me have an extra bite off of his burgers.

After lunch, we went back home and got our backpacks on and then headed off on a trek down the west side of Central Park. It was rainy, but that turned out to be kind of cool: it felt like we had the entire park to ourselves. I was very, very surprised at just how big Central Park is. I mean, yes, of course I've seen it in a billion and twelve movies, but it's REALLY big! The kids' playgrounds there are fantastic, and Ji had fun trying not to get wet while playing. Eventually we made it down to 81st street all the way from 123rd, and went into the Natural History Museum. It, unlike the park, was pretty busy due to the weather, and we were sort of sleepy from walking so much, so we didn't spend ages there, but did have a good two hour walk around. We also went to see a special lizards and snakes exhibit that was ok, but seemed better suited to a zoo than a museum. I don't know, I think that I'm not a major museum enthusiast. I think I'd rather be at a good art gallery. I always feel at museums that I'd rather have access to their stacks and secret warehouses than the actual exhibits. But I do remember how completely amazing I thought museums were when I was a kid. I'm not sure if I think that they're less cool now because I get out more now? Or is it because I've seen a bunch of museums? Or do I have less imagination? That's a definite possibility. I also seem to get dozy at museums now more quickly. And honestly, Ji is really MOST interested in the gift shops. Like, seriously, he had more interest in a mood ring at the shop than in any of the displays in the actual museum. I should learn my lesson and just go to the shop, and then to the cafe for a coffee, and pocket the 50 bucks it usually costs for an adult and a kid to go into the museum.

When we finished up at the museum, we walked allllll the way back home in the rain. I just hadn't been ready to figure out the subway system yet, and didn't even think to take a cab, so we roughed it. It was a memorable mother-son experience. We trekked all through the section of the park near the museum, up past the resevoir where we practically got our umbellas blown away by the wild wind, along the jogging paths where insane shirtless men powered on through the downpour while we sported wool scarves, then up past the big rocky cliff sections, and onwards into Harlem where we went and picked up groceries and walked up Lennox towards home. We stuffed ourselves with pasta and then chilled out with our books for the evening.

On Thursday I carefully planned our subway routing before we left and bought all-day tickets for 7 dollars. We started out by walking a few blocks up to the 125th Street station, just down the street from the Apollo Theatre. I got us on the wrong direction train right away, but luckily I noticed that by the first stop and we got ourselves turned around. We headed in the correct direction and went downtown to the Sony Wonder Center, a free smallish science center type of place. All visitors receive individual ID cards that you swipe when you play a new game or try a different activity, which was pretty cool because your photo was also taken and it got beamed around all over the place, like on these little robot cars that we got to program. Our hands-down favourite exhibit was a touch sensitive walking area: as you walked, your footprints would light up a small spot on the floor, which would then spread outwards in beaming concentric circles like the kind of circular pond rippled you get when you toss a stone in the water. If they 'bounced' off another walker, they would then come back to you. The super cool part was that if you got close enough to another person, your own personal spot would merge with theirs and blob together until you separated like dividing cells. After the Sony Center, we took the subway to Greenwich Village to have lunch at an all-peanut-butter restaurant. Ji had a huuuuuge fluffer nutter sandwich: marshmallow fluff, nutella, and peanut butter. I had the very tasty apple butter, peanut butter, and toasted wheat germ (added a kicky crunch) on rye. Once we had stuffed ourselves silly, we went around the block to check out Washingston Square, and then wandered back to the subway. We went down to the South Street Seaport to check out the South Street Seaport Museum. Due to some rain that sprang up, the museum closed the ships that visitors can normally go into, and all we got to see was an indoors exhibit of FDR's model ship collection. The collection was actually pretty fascinating, but it seemed like a big rip off to see one little exhibit for, like, twenty bucks. Still, the area was nice, and the rain cleared up and we got to see gorgeous views of the Brooklyn bridge and Manhattan skyline. Our final stop of the day was a big theatre books bookshop, where I picked up a few new scripts and Ji poached cheese and crackers from a wine and cheese party that was being hosted at the shop.

On Friday, we went on an epic walk. Surprisingly enough, Ji didn't want to relax and take the subway, he was up for endless walking. Me: "Are you SURE you want to walk all day?" Ji: "I'm sure." And he was. We walked all day long from 10:00 am until 7:00 pm.

First, we skirted the north eastern and eastern sides of Central Park and wandered past the fishing area and into a big hilly section where Ji went rock climbing. We walked halfway through the park and then cut out onto Park Avenue to go hunt down a big Chapters bookstore because Ji wanted the next book in the Percy Jackson series. Turned out the Chapters had moved and we walked right past it and we had to ask for directions from a bank employee who was absolutely lovely and helpful. On our way back to the store, we got distracted by a Burger King and had hot-off-the-grill Whoppers for lunch. Yummy! After picking up the correct book at Chapters, we walked the rest of the way down alongside the park till we got to F.A.O. Schwartz. We both found the toystore to be underwhelming. I had kind of expected a huge nook-and-crannies, stuffed-to-the-gunwales place, but the selection was about the same as a very average Zellers, and not much more inviting. Ji and I both love really random and odd toys (and of course dollar store crap) and we both found it kind of boring. Outside, Ji noted that the simple exterior of the Apple Store looked better than all of F.A.O. Schwartz. He's his father's kid! We kept going after a short rest, this time along the southernmost perimeter of the park, and got on the subway at Columbus Circle and hopped off at 81st Street. I had read about a robot shop that I wanted to check out. Sadly, it was nowhere to be found, but then we hit upon a lovely neighbourhood where we found a superior bagel bakery and then an awesome deli where we picked up treats for dinner. We walked up north towards our apartment and noticed a nice theatre, so we stopped and watched Karate Kid which turned out to be surprisingly fun and enjoyable. Then, onwards, onwards, every onwards back up into Harlem. That evening, Dad and Emma arrived and had some snacks and then went up to the corner where Dad got a bunch of White Castle burgers and we had a chat with the nutty floorsweeper about Canada Dry gingerale. "Everything up there in Canada is dry!"

On Saturday, we went on our major family outing. First, on the subway down to the Staten Island ferry which was great: free, convenient, comfortable, interesting, not too long of a journey, and it included a gander at the Statue of Liberty. And in the ferry docking building we had the world's yummiest hot and fresh pretzels. Mmm! From the ferry, we wandered through the wharfy district and along into Chinatown where we got a tasty and inexpensive bowl of pho, and then hopped into a taxi to try to get to a good spot to watch the US vs. UK football match. Unfortunately, we were a little late in getting to the pubs, and all the seats were taken. Dad decided to stick around and stand to watch the game and Emma, Ji Hong and I decided to walk back home and shop along the way, I think on Amsterdam street or somesuch. We walked and walked and walked and walked and finally ended up going through Columbia University, and the cut back over to Harlem, where we crashed for a couple of hours. After Dad got back home, and he had his rest too, we went out for our night on the town. First stop: the Carnegie Deli for smoked meat "sandwiches" that were the size of buffet troughs. Second stop: Broadway, to watch the terrific musical Fela, about the Nigerian musician and singer Fela Kuti. INSANELY AWESOME projection and animation design and sets made me unbearably envious but also inspired. Finally, we hopped in cab and went home.

On our final day in NYC we did my favourite USA activity: we went shopping at Target! I made everyone walk over, and my directions weren't great, so it took longer than expected and we had to boot up Emma's iphone to get correct map directions, but in the end we made it to the very brand new Target in the Bronx which is right beside Yankee Stadium. There were actually people having tailgate parties as a game was coming up that afternoon! At Target, we spent ages rooting around to find bargoons while Dad sat at the inhouse Starbucks marking papers. After the shopping spree, we thought we'd try to go eat soul food, but the place we wanted to try was completely out of business, so we stopped at a pizzeria two blocks from our apartment that had shockingly delicious pizza. At home, a little packing and a little cleaning, and a little napping and showering, and we were ready to head home.

Overall opinion of NYC? Excellent. Sort of weird as an international destination because it's so similar to Toronto (in terms of things like shrubs and trees and shops) so it feels very familiar for a new city, but also kind of like Torontozilla. Just bigger and more epic every step of the way. So much to do, so much to see, and really a truly beautiful metropolis populated with surprisingly kind and friendly citizens. Two thumbs up!

[On the road-26-July-2010]

kicking off the world cup in style

The World Cup is just around the corner, y'all! For sensible folks in the know (and thus not for most Americans or Canadians) this is a BIG DEAL. Everywhere else around the world, football (PROPER football, played with FEET) is the glue that holds society together. Or, I guess you could say it is the glue that holds particular geographical segments of society together, and that the force and friction that erupts when those glued-together bits rub up against each other creates a kind of global net of passion, excitement and epic failures and spectacular glories that end up enveloping the WHOLE WORLD (except for North America)!!! Yes, World Cup season is upon us! And if all my hyperbole and excessive use of both brackets and exclmation marks haven't convinced you, this should:

I actually asked my Dad to get proper TV connections for the countryside house so that we can watch World Cup games there and he won't have to, like, drive off to the one Spanish-owned juke joint on the Bruce penninsula to get his fix of the beautiful game.

Ha!

In super cool news about the World Cup, Knaan's song "Wavin' Flag" is the official tune of the games. Dad introduced me to Knaan at Christmas and he is amazing. Somalia-born, then moved to Canada, spent time in the US, and is an insanely great hip hop poet slash superstar. His songs are the best I've heard all year for sure. And Wavin' Flag is not only an incredible football song, it is, like, completely happiness- and pride-inspiring.

Anyways, the whole point of this post was to tell you about how we rang in the beginning of World Cup season. First, though, let me diverge on one of my I've-been-so-busy rants, ok? So, I've been so busy! OMG I haven't had a moment of downtime in forever. It has been b-a-n-a-n-a-s bananas around here. The end of the school year is always nuts for me because I run the yearbook (and I'm an obsessive compulsive freak about the layout and I spend hour after hour making sure every single border is exactly perfect), but then I have also had 3 drama projects on the go: we did a massive integrated arts evening a few weeks ago and I had my kids performing a Romeo and Juliet mash-up that they had written (and what made that crazy was that I had two classes performing together who never actually got to rehearse together); last week I presented an hour-long one act play starring two kids that I directed with two other kids (awesome play - written by a Canadian playwright, it's called Legoland, for sure go to see it if it's every produced near you - totally hilarious and heart-touching); and then I am also in the thick of trying to have a team of kids finish writing our play for next fall. CUCKOO! CUCKOO! In the meantime, of course, I've been sorting out all the usual stuff: eating, writing report card comments, planning for next year, shopping, putting together a poster of all 340 students in our school (lovely idea: have each kid draw their own picture, then we scan them, colour them, and put them together on a poster...CRAZY IDEA because it took about eight billion years to finish...but it looks super), talking to my son for at least 10 minutes a day, etc etc. Oh, and speaking of family, I have also had the blessing / curse of having Phet and Seung Yi out of town. Blessing because I haven't had to feel guilty about working till 8 pm every night, curse because I've been letting myself work till 8 pm every night, and of course because I miss them. Alot. Apparently, back in Toronto, Seung Yi has been having a great time and only had to go to emerg once. Smart little tyke stuffed a piece of pussy willow up her nose. Hey! We don't have those here in India. She probably thought it was some kind of cheap Q-tip. Phet's busy busy with meetings in Ottawa, but managed to make it to Toronto for some quality time with the fam and with Sunil for one weekend. He's got one last week in the Ott Dott and then he's off to the Philippines for some more meetings and hopefully some tasty fried chicken.

But back to the World Cup...

Ok, so I have one student who went to KL with me this year who is South African. And as you know, OR YOU SHOULD KNOW, South Africa is hosting the world cup this year. There are only 28 days until the competition begins, this is the first time an African country is hosting, and you can find the match schedules here. Anyways, my colleague mentioned last year that she had happened to get invited to the South African embassy's annual fiesta, and that it was the best party she'd been to all year. I put two and two together and had very little wheedling to do in order to get an invitation using my high level connections. The only problem was getting the kid to remember to take it out of his locker and pass it over to me. Eventually I had to hunt him down outside the lockers and wait for him to find it amidst the piles of papers and shoes and give it to me. Happily, we were able to bring guests, so in the end Patricia and Phet decided to go as well. We only had two days to get things sorted out, and I took a careful look at the invite. Dress code? Football shirts! Yay! No need to dress up. Since I was so busy (see above) Phet took on shirt-buying duty and came back with a Brazil shirt for him and an Argentina shirt for me. After a very long day at work - the celebration of Nelson Mandela's release from prison fell on a Tuesday this year - we put on our shirts and some clean jeans, picked up an exhausted Patricia and had John drive us way far away in the suburbs of forever-to-get-theres-ville to the official residence of the SA ambassador.

We knew we were on the right track after 45 minutes when we saw giant signs of an animated lion in a football jersey. We passed by the overflow parking lot, and came to a place literally covered in sparkly strings of lights. We hopped out, walked in, and passed more giant lions, and made our way to the party in the park-sized backyard. As we were passing the front of the house, a huge limo pulled up and several men in very fancy traditional clothes stepped out. Cool! In the backyard, Wavin' Flag was playing and there were hundreds of embassy types all casualed-out in jerseys from their nation-of-choice. Our students came by and made fun of our non-South African shirts, but they were happy to see us of course. We got some delcious cold beers, and stood around checking out the scene. A few minutes later, the same fancy dudes from the front of the house stepped out onto the very fancy patio - turned out they were the guests of honour, one of whom was Nelson Mandela's grandson! He had a long speech that began with a pretty funny anecdote about Mandela, and then everyone just kept chatting while he spoke. It was kind of odd, but it seemed like that was what everyone expected. He kept reading, people kept chatting and drinking, everyone was having a fine time. After the speechifying, everyone chilled out some more, and the speaker went around hobbing and nobbing, and even got his photo taken with Phet. Later on, a terrific SA band played for a couple of hours and everyone - yes, even me - ended up dancing on the lawn. It was a pretty great evening. Super duper music, cold drinks, good friends, comfy clothes, oh, and SUCH GOOD food. There was a huge buffet, and there was an unbelievable array of meats. It was meat-tastic. The best thing I ate was kind of a pulled-meat stew type of dish that was salty and spectacular. The second best thing I ate was amazing kind of spongy but incredibly delicious white bread. It was AMAZING. Then, after we ate we danced some more, and then there was a very odd Delhi moment when there was a sudden wild wind, and 10 minutes later there was the first rain shower in over 4 months, and everyone kept dancing in the rain, and then the rain passed, and everyone kept dancing, happy and damp and cool. The next day, there were photos of my student, Patricia and our other two colleagues in the society page of the newspaper, and best of all I woke up well-rested and full of energy.

And that, my friends, is how you kick off the world cup in style!

[Delhi-13-May-2010]

bangkok! pakse! bangkok! aw yeah spring break '10!

Currently kicking back with Ji Hong in the master bedroom of our dramatically large and luxurious 'family suite' here at the President Park Hotel in Bangkok. We're watching the bedroom TV - not to be confused with the other TV in the living room. Seung Yi is crashed out in the lesser bedroom after a very long and busy day filled with walking and shopping and shopping and walking. It's our last day on holiday, sadly, but we've had a terrific spring break. We started out with a late night departure from Delhi that sucked rocks. Why, for a three hour flight, they need to schedule departures after midnight, I DON'T KNOW. It is baffling. You stay awake until, like, 1 am, get on the plane, sit for 3 hours, which isn't really long enough to actually sleep-sleep, then you arrive in Bangkok at 6:00 am, just in time to start the day utterly wrecked. We immediately checked into our hotel and slept till noon, and then went out to enjoy an entirely miraculous day in terms of weather. Somehow, there was a cold front that hit Bangkok and it was the coolest, most perfect, most pleasant day I have ever experienced in Thailand. And I lived here for two full years! It was so cool that I actually wore a linen jacket outside just after noon - unheard of, I tell you. We even took the kids to play at the crazy dangerous play park at Queen Sirikit park outside Emporium, and they played for an hour without even breaking a sweat. When we went back to the hotel after enjoying all the spinky-spanky, non-dusty goods at the mall, Phet went in swimming with the kids while I relaxed and fell completely asleep in a poolside deck chair. It was the perfect way to recover from several months of very, very busy and very worky days and nights.

The next day we left early - but not quite early enough - for Pakse. Phet had mis-read the tickets, and we thought we were leaving an hour and a half early from the hotel, but it was actually only 45 minutes early. Luckily we zipped out to Don Meaung airport without any trouble, and easily made our Nok Air flight. In Ubon we got off and the cold front was still colding things up. It was actually brisk on the tarmac. We commandeered a taxi to take us to the border and didn't even turn on the air con until halfway through the drive. At the border, we started our visa applications and then Phet's Dad turned up with a nifty Toyota pick up truck to take us to Pakse. He was in fine form and Seung Yi was really excited to see him. Phet and the kids sat in the back of the truck all the way into town and I chatted with Phet's Dad the whole way and got the round up on everything happening with the family. Here's the latest, from him and from the rest of the fam: his new house is almost complete and looks wonderful; Long's been helping him out with the building; Ming's wife, Nek, is 3 months pregnant; Meh is doing well, following doctor's orders not to eat meat, not to drink much, and she's also cut down quite a bit on her smoking; Ing is good, and her little daughter is adorable; Ling was supposed to get married to this old friend of hers who is living in the States, but it was called off - no one knows by who or why - at the last minute. Suki is 12 which is completely impossible, and as cute as can be, and just about as tall as me. Yaki is not super skinny anymore and he is a lovely boy. Fuji remains C-R-A-Z-Y but not quite as violent.

We spent our week in Pakse chilling out at Phet's Mom's. Mornings we breakfasted in the backyard under a huge tree and feasted on crispy baguettes (never, ever, ever seen in Delhi) stuffed with pate (also never seen in Delhi) and crunchy pickled veg. On the side we enjoyed fresh-from-the-wok Chinese bread donuts and sesame circle-donut-thingies. [Ooooh, speaking of donuts, I saw a commercial today for little wee rectangular donuts for sale here in Bangkok at Mr. Donut that are decorated to look like SUSHI!] Freshly iced Lao style coffee finished things off. For lunch and dinner we had all our favourites: pho, grilled fish, home-made barbeque sukiyaki, pork sausages, spicy bamboo shoots, meatballs, and more, more, more. The best dish was the noodles Phet's Dad made with, get this, the massive noodle-maker that Phet's Grandfather used at his noodle house!!! It was a big metal contraption with a spinning wheel, and then he fed more than a kilo of noodle dough into it to get rolled out thinly, and then it sliced up the dough into perfect noodles. I stuffed and stuffed myself with the noodles, which I had dry-style: instead of adding broth to the noodles, you put the noodles (cooked, of course) in a bowl, and top them with all the fixins like green onion, chewy deep-fried garlic, bits of crunchy pork skin crumbled up, sliced cooked meat, coriander, and so on, and then you sauce the noodles up with a little oil and seasonings and lime and special vinegar and fish sauce and oh boy are they ever good.

We were also lucky enough to get to go to the waterfall outside of town and had one dinner out on a floating restaurant in the Mekong. Other than that, it was lots of showers, playstation, and naturally, endless card games!

Here in Bangkok we've done our favourite things: we've eaten, slept, shopped, and gone to see movies. I can report that Training Your Dragon is quite wonderful, and Alice In Wonderland is pretty much what you might expect from Tim Burton. Nice costuming, a little not-quite-the-greatest in terms of stoyline. Seung Yi has had a few very saucy moments the past few days. She's great almost all of the time, but recently if Phet "gets mad" at her, she'll cross her little arms, frown her little eyebrows, and glare at him! It's totally hilarious and very naughty. She'll also come up with stuff like, Me: "No more candy today." SY: "That's impossible!" and Me: "Pa is not happy that you weren't listening to him and wouldn't go with him when he called you." SY: "I am angry at him." Me: "For wanting to go on a nice walk with you and have fun with you?" SY: "I am weally, weally angry at him!"

Ok, must run - bed calls.

[Bangkok-3-April-2010]

happy birthday, jake!

And many happy returns for the day. Love you! Red letter day here at Fixed Address.

[1-April-2010]

field trip in delhi

Last week, our grade-level team went on field trips throughout Delhi to help the students gather research for their major end-of-year project on population and development issues. We had a trip to visit the terribly polluted Yamuna river, one to an AIDS care home, another to a women's centre, one to a health centre, another to a shelter for children who live at the railway station, and the one I helped organize went to visit a school in a slum area set up by an international NGO called the HOPE foundation which is run by two parents of kids at our school. (We found out that the school, which serves about 300 children who would otherwise not be in school, is run on a budget of about 2000$ per year, which pays for their small space - one large room, three small rooms, and a small kitchen - supplies, lunches, and teachers' salaries).

The trip was really interesting. In the morning, we went to the school and our kids (pockets filled with ipods and phones of course!) played with the other students and led games and singing with them. Then they watched a normal lesson at the school. At lunch, they helped serve the free mid-day meal of rice and daal. Then, after lunch, small groups of our students were partnered up with small groups of the kids who then took them to visit their homes.

Now, I said the area is called a slum, and it is slum-like in some ways (no trees, most families live in one or two small rooms, there are semi-open drains along the streets), but it is a development of two-to-three-level buildings, not lean-to type homes. It is also quite a new development, so the buildings are fairly reasonable-looking. What was incredible, though, was that just behind some of the more regular-looking streets were massive byways filled with small-scale industrial work going on, like plastic recycling centres. We stepped into the first side-street like this and it was like, woah, we had hit the post-apocalypse. Just huge mountains of carefully sorted and stacked plastic everywhere, people processing it, random dogs, chickens, kids, moms, cows, goats, bullock-pulled carts, workers, walking to and fro.

One of the girls who was leading the tour then took us to her house, which was right off this crazy side street. The area in front of her house was just dirt with planks, shared outhouses at the side, and drying papdams laying in the sun. Her Mom lifted up a tarp that covered their small (like, one metre by two metres maybe) dirt yard, and then invited us into her home. What was amazing was how beautifully kept and tidy her extraordinarily minute 'house' was. Just one rented room, but everything was set up just-so. All the shelves were decorated with hand-cut newspapers in fancy patterns, all the cups were stacked in pyramids...it was so jarring to walk from what seemed like complete chaos into her home. Of course, there weren't any windows, it must be absolutely unbearable in the summer, and she looked like she worked incredibly hard. She was very open and talked to our students about how she had gotten married before she was 15, and how she thought it was really important for her daughters to go to school and get an education so they could have better lives than her. I think Dad was an ironing-man (here, the ironing folks iron at the side of the street - me, for one, I LOVE my ironing man).

Just made me think, a lot, about how everyone tries to carve some order out of what they have.

We visited six other families, and of course at each stop all the neighbours came out to say hello. Who knows what the moms thought of these strange kids trooping up to check out their homes and ask them really personal questions ("Are you going to have more kids?" "Will you have to give a dowry when your daughter gets married?" "What job do you want your son to have in the future?") but they were very kind and open in hosting us. Imagine living on about a hundred dollars a month for a whole family. Imagine the effort it would take to keep your kids in school and not working.

I had one of our students, who is in the class that creates our website, take photos of each family we visited. This week, I got all the photos developed and framed and gave them to the woman who runs the NGO that supports the school. Two of the photos that were taken at the school were amazing - like, I opened the folder and was literally blown away by how great they were. I still haven't figured out which of our kids snapped the photos, but here they are. Wish I could take credit for them:

Look at these beautiful girls - in school! Wearing uniforms! And hairbows!

[Delhi-6-March-2010]

don draper ate my life

So: got back to Delhi after the christmas holidays, immediately had to organize the trip to KL, came home and Phet went out of town and you'd think I might've found some time to post but OH NO I didn't. It's all due to the curse of the downloading of all 3 seasons of Mad Men that Phet did. Curse the availability of collected TV series!

This happened to me last year, only it was the curse of Freaks and Geeks. Then, before Christmas I succumbed to the Canadian siren call of Slings and Arrows. And now, Mad Men. While I loved the show, I hated feeling like such a crackhead. "Hey Ji, why don't you go watch three hours of movies with your sister so Mummie can feed peanuts to the monkey on her back?" "Hey Seung Yi, why don't you read yourself your own goodnight storybook because Mom has important business to deal with and she needs to wear these earphones and find out whether Peggy Olson is going to go to Confession or not!"

It was awwwwful. And the worst part of watching a series like this, shooting it directly into the vein over the course of a two week binge, is that you feel so empty and used and sick afterwards. TV shows are meant to be digested slowly. They have their own internal story arc logic that only works at a very specific time scale, and if you try to take them all in at once, there is a queasy non-resolution and dissatisfaction at the end of it all. It's not the same for sit coms or comedies in general; no one really cares what's "happening" in the show, it's the hijinks that are fun, and the characters sort of stay the same. I could watch any episode of Thirty Rock in any order and be quite content. But it just doesn't work the same way for drama.

Let's compare watching a TV series with watching a movie. When you watch a movie, you dedicate a couple of hours max of your life to experiencing it. Most movies have a tidy storyline and dramatic structure that leads, at the end of the movie, to the viewer feeling basically satisfied and that the various ends of the story have been tied up. (Ok, Dad, not for all movies, like weird Latvian poor house experimental documentaries, but you know what I mean...) If you watch a TV series on a weekly basis, you get your hit of the the show, and then you have a full week to come down from the experience and be ready for the next episode. With TV, the storylines have to sort of arc in each show, but have to have meta- and super-meta arcs so that you want to keep watching not only to the end of the season, but to the end of the very final season. So you're strung along. No surprises, of course, in my analysis. But the problem is that now when you can get a bunch of episodes at once it destroys the moment of satiation. You're like, watch! more! watch! more! watch! more! And the more you watch, the more conditioned you are to the experience and the more you need to watch to re-capture that fleeting satisfaction you might've felt when you watched your first episode. It's a scourge, I tell you!

I have to say, though, that Mad Men was plenty of fun. I've created my own 3 Question Mad Men Personality Quiz. Here are my answers - for those of you Mad Men viewers out there, write back your own answers to the questions and I'll post them!

MAD MEN PERSONALITY QUIZ

1. Which Mad Men character do you like best?

2. Which Mad Men character do you most resemble?

3. What should happen in the next season of Mad Men?

MY ANSWERS:

1. Sterling, obviously. Dude who plays him is an insanely good actor. I actually can't imagine him having a life or personality outside of his character. The white hair, the slim-cut suits, the boundless good humour and the ability to drink and drink and drink and drink and drink some more, his real affection for the ladies, and best of all, his snappy comebacks to stupid questions. He's all that and a pack of Luckies.

2. I'd like to think I most resemble Miss Fuller, Sally's teacher, who dances around the Maypole, entrances Don with her un-shellacked hair and ability to make pinhole cameras, and who is deeply empathetic towards her students (I supposed one might question whether sleeping with the Dad of the student who she most empathizes with would be considered a good idea or not, but c'mon, it's Don Draper)...

See how cute she looks, standing in front of the classroom map and the alpahbet? That's TOTALLY how my students see me every day.

Unfortunately, I think I probably most resemble Betty Draper. No, I don't look like Grace Kelly, I can't wear stockings, I don't smoke while I make pot roast, I am not having a secret affair with a congressional aide (shame about that one, really), I'm not blonde or a size zero, I don't own sheer drapes or sheer lingerie, and I'm not so great at horse jumping. But I am really good at doing the angry Mom look, and I have acquired the knack of telling my kids to go watch TV when I want to indulge in my secret vices (see above)...

3. My expectation for Season Four: Roger Sterling gives up his slim brunette poetry-writing trophy wife, moves to Delhi, and hosts marvellously indulgent gin-fuelled parties that he invites us to. Dream come true!

[Delhi-14-February-2010]

travel to kl for drama festival - whoot whoot

THE "DEPARTURE"

Things went so very well at the beginning of the trip.  Our students were all ready at Gate 2 in plenty of time - aside from one, who was stuck in traffic in Gurgaon, but assured us she'd meet us at the airport.  They were bursting with excitement and bouncing around happily.  Our lovely parents assured us that everything was well with them.  No last minute tears, no anxious looks from either side as the buses pulled away from AES.  Just a warm and happy hum of energy as we hit the road after preparing for this trip for three months.  

The drive out to the airport was uneventful.  The air was cold, the fog was lowering, but it looked like we might have a window of opportunity to sneak out before it thickened.  When we got to the airport we were brilliantly well prepared (if I do say so myself!)  We had all the tickets sorted by name - in duplicate.  We each had dog tags with our kids' passport and visa details wrapped up inside.  We had water, we had medications of all sorts just in case, and of course we had our clown noses.  We hustled the kids in towards our check in counter and felt pretty confident over all.  An hour and a half later, when we were STILL in line at the check out counter we were beginning to wonder.  The kids kept looking anxiously at the clock - in between bouts of random dancing and song-singing - while we patiently waited and waited and waited in line.  When we finally reached the counter the staff person started to check us in, and after a few minutes said something about the system breaking down. For some reason, he couldn't print our boarding cards all at once, and had to type in each and every passenger's information separately and print each card separately.  The time got so tight and the typing took so long that he finally invited Patricia to go back behind the counter and help him enter the information!

When we finally got our boarding passes, we raced to immigration.  There were long line ups and they all moved desperately slowly.  I managed to get through first and went to rush ahead to make sure the gate agent wouldn't let the plane take off without us.  Unluckily, I had to get through the madness of security first.  The scanning fellows were apparently on some kind of relaxation program, because they would very slowly put a bag through for scanning, let it drop out the other end, and then they'd just hang out for awhile, not looking at the scan, or the bag, or anything at all, just staring into space.  It was very odd.  I finally managed to get through, and I forgot to put my very-well-organized folder full of papers in the scanning conveyor belt, so I had to go back out and start again.  The second time around went just as slowly, but when I got out I ran over to our gate to check on how things were going.  The entire plane had been boarded, but there were still a few stragglers.  I talked to the agent about my SEVENTEEN KIDS coming through immigration, and they assured me they'd hold the plane.  So, back to security. Our littlest student got stuck behind a massive line up of tall men - it looked pretty funny to see her peering around them to check the progress of the security check, but I'm guessing the kids didn't have too much fun nervously wondering whether we were going to make it in time.  When all the kids but our high schooler had gotten through, Patricia took them to the gate to board.  Meanwhile, I waited for the last one while he got into a long and difficult checking-process / discussion with the security dude.  He's got his phone.  He's got a pen.  He's got his wallet.  He's got a really big metal belt buckle.  All of these items get a great deal of attention and then each one has to be put through the conveyor belt process.  Oh, goody!

Eventually, we go running to the gate, and rush through the door.  The boarding pass-ripper rips our boarding passes into a few pieces because we're in such a rush, and passes them back to us.  We run onto the plane and........

......everyone is just chilling.  It is very clear that the flight attendants are in no rush to get us seated or buckled in.  There's an air, an atmosphere of relaxation that is rather unfamiliar in the normal context of plane-about-to-take-off.  A man seated across from me asks whether we'll be leaving on time and he's told, “Don't worry, if this flight doesn't take off you'll get rescheduled for tomorrow."  Not really the highest level of confidence in our imminent departure.  Nonetheless, we settle the kids and prepare for a few hours of playing the waiting game.  And wait we do!  We're on board just after 11:00, and it's past 1:00 am when they finally decide to pull out onto the runway.  Why they do this is not clear; the fog is thickening by the minute and it is very obvious that if they didn't have 200 m visibility earlier on, they are definitely not going to have it now.  Somehow, though, there's a slight hope that we'll get off the ground.  That hope builds when they announce that the flight attendants should get ready for take-off.  We all wait with anticipation while the engines rev, but after 10 minutes, they call it off.  We sit for awhile on the runway before they decide to pack it in and go back to the gate.  They officially cancel the flight, which is bad, but then it gets worse: there are no free bays anymore for the plane to dock at and so we sit on the tarmac for another two hours before we can escape from the plane.  In total we spend SEVEN HOURS aboard a plane that never goes anywhere.  

Despite the flight cancellation and despite knowing that we are going to miss our first tour day in KL and despite having had very, very little sleep, the kids are in good spirits.  We pack everything up and finally get off and have a nice breath of cool Delhi air.  We walk out of our gate – hello, check-in agent, you must have missed us! – and attempt to leave the gate area.  No luck.  Remember those boarding passes?  Well, we've got all of them but three: me and two of the boys have left ours back on the plane somewhere.  Can we go get them?  No.  Can the security guy call someone to give him the authority to let us through?  No.  He must stay and stamp all the other six billion boarding passes – and then some – before he can do that.  Can the airline staff help us out?  No.  Dear Heavens Above, can we bully everyone into just letting us go?  No.  So:  we wait some more.  They finally send an employee to check the plane and he finds one boarding pass and brings it back but mine and the other one are nowhere to be found.  Patricia takes the other kids out through security, and me and the two boys wait a little longer.  We wonder: are they going to keep us in the corridor forever?  Will we have to eke out our existence on the fringes of an airport walkway, eating shreds of potted plants, and begging departing passengers for left over meal scraps?  How will we wash our clothes?  For some inexplicable reason (possibly a dawning realization that the boarding passes weren't miraculously going to reconstitute themselves from the ether around us) the Malaysian airlines staff finally relented and let us through without the missing boarding passes.

Note to self: DON'T LEAVE THE BOARDING PASS ON THE PLANE!

When we get off the plane, we are eventually found by another staff person who tells us that we can be bussed to a hotel for the day.  We figure that sounds better than trying to drop off every student at their houses, and will also mean a bit more group bonding time.  So, we wait for 20 minutes on a chilly bus in the fog and then get driven to – and here's the good bit – the Shangri La hotel!  On the way, through the thick fog, we see something like a vision…there are rows of drummers marching through the streets, rehearsing for Republic Day.  Gorillas in the Mist; Drummers in the Fog, same kind of deal, and very cool.  At the hotel, the kids pile into the 5-star lobby happily and we're sent off to enjoy our free breakfast buffet.  There aren't any tables in the dining room big enough to accommodate us, so the host has us sit the kids in the bar!  There we are, 19 very tired and unwashed drama enthusiasts, sitting at the bar at 9:00 am, with a median age of about 13.  It's like some very strange and convoluted dream made real.  Am I really eating smoked salmon while four kids stuff chocolate-sauce-covered-waffles into their mouths while I'm surrounded by jeroboams of champagne?  Why yes, yes I am.  Just for fun, we call Patricia's humanities class to say hello.  We ask Mr. Oliver if we can speak to one of the students.  The kids all scream hello and tell him where we are.  He gets Patricia on the phone and asks if the kids at school really have to do a 2-page assignment in her absence.  The answer is an unequivocal yes.  We hang up and cheer.

The kids go back for rounds two, three, and four of food while Patricia and I drink some very strong coffee.  I go back to the front desk to try to get rooms, but there aren't any available.  Eventually, after an hour and a half at the bar, I make a more emotional plea for just even a single room where the kids can wash up and lie down for awhile.  The desk staff relent and give us a single room with a Queen size bed.  We stuff the kids in and it is like a kid explosion: nine flopped on the bed, Patricia on the floor by the door, eight on pillows on the carpet, and me by the window.  Sneakers get kicked off, the TV gets turned on, and we watch a couple of hours of American Idol.  No one is complaining about missing school.
We grab a little lunch before getting back on our bus, and then settle in for yet another ride through Delhi.  It's a lovely, warm, sunny and not-too-foggy day.  We hit traffic half-way to the airport and sit for ten minutes without any movement.  The cab drivers around us get out of their cars and stand beside them, watching the traffic not move.  We all watch the traffic not move.  Eventually, it kicks into gear again and we're on our way.

At the airport we are informed that the flight has been moved up from 3:30 to 2:00.  We race to the check-in counter and lo and behold it is our old and dear friend the ticket agent from the previous evening and morning.  He looks a little fresher than us and actually smiles as we run up to his counter.  Another furious flurry of boarding passes later we're off to immigration.  Same slow line there, same achingly painful security check.  Same run for the gate.  Same seats when we get on!  Patricia and I swap around so the kids can sit together and we get the bulkhead.  Everyone buckles up and within a mere half hour we are airborne!  The kids all cheer and clap as the plane takes off, and we settle back to “enjoy” the flight. Five and a half hours later, we're in KL.  We blearily remove ourselves from the plane, change money for everyone, and make a pit stop at our favourite ISTA restaurant: yes, Burger King.  The kids stuff their empty tummies with burgers, chicken fingers and fries, and then we hop on our bus at 12:30 in the middle of the night.  It takes an hour to get to ISKL, where we are greeted by the most wonderful organizers imaginable.  They have all of our registration info, bags for each of us, and best of all every host family is there – at 1:30 am – to pick up our kids.  They are whisked away in an instant, Patricia and I are dropped off at our hotel, and finally after 30 hours of traveling and waiting and waiting and traveling we get to shower and sleep.  The clean, crisp sheets are the most beautiful things I have ever experienced.  

THE FESTIVAL, DAYS ONE, TWO AND THREE

Well, none of us were prepared to wake up after four hours of sleep.  When my alarm went off, I integrated the beeping sound into my dream.  Someone was saying to me, “I'm not sure BEEP what I need to BEEP about BEEP because BEEP BEEP BEEP!”  My subconscious slowly gave way to my awake-brain and I realized that I had to get out of bed.  Not what I was expecting, and my eyes made that very clear by being very red.  At breakfast, we weakly accepted that yes, we needed to eat some toast and drink some coffee.  We stepped out into the warm Malaysian morning and walked up to ISKL.  At school when we met, the kids didn't look much better than us.  Well, ok, their 11- 12- 13- and 14-year old complexions were a little dewier than ours, but their eyes were just as pained looking.  But!  As all performers know, the show had to go on and the fat lady sure hadn't sung yet.  She hadn't even stepped onstage.  So we stiffened our upper lips, put on our game faces, and went out to make new friends and take dramatic risks with people we'd never met before (and yes, that's a fine series of clichés there to describe our epic resolve).  

First up was a full group session with all 160 kids.  One of the first excercizes was a massive group cheering bonanza and I was so proud:  One of our boys stepped up to lead an entire group of kids without hesitation.  He has been absolutely wonderful on the trip.  He is so good natured, and isn't afraid of anything.  The kids then broke into their ensemble groups.  At ISTA, there are theatre professionals who run these groups and create a performance with the students that becomes a seamlessly integrated arts event with all eight groups working on a common theme.  The theme for this year's event is “the void”.  The theme is based on the Petronas Twin Towers in downtown KL, which are absolutely beautiful.  The ISTA organizer explained that while they are amazing buildings, the architect who created them felt that the empty space, the void between them, was elemental to their impact.  At this first session, the students got to know the other 20 people in their group, and started to explore the theme.  

But the first day at ISTA is also dedicated to getting to know the host city, so we went on a major outing just before lunch.  With our ensembles, we started by taking buses to the KLCC park surrounding the Petronas Towers.  We were all still on Delhi climate settings, and the noonday sun of the tropics wilted us just a little.  I lived in KL for two years, and as I wandered through the park, I had suddenly remembered why I was never able to take Ji to the playground at lunch: if I put him on the plastic slides, the underside of his legs would get scorched!  I stayed well away from the slides and took pictures while we walked around.

The organizers wisely kept us at that location for just an hour, and then we got back on the buses and traveled out to a gorgeous, wide-open park to go kite flying.  Three kite flying experts described different types of kites and introduced us to the Malaysian “wau” kite that makes a vibrating buzzing noise as it flies.  But the best was yet to come:  all the kids got free (really nice!) kites to fly and take home.  I stood in the middle of the field and snapped pictures of all of them running up and down the field.  It was lovely – I'm sure you can picture it: big puffy clouds in the sky, a lake in the distance, and eighty kids running across a field with kites lifting up behind them.

Our final stop of the day was the Batu Caves.  Our kids were a little nonplussed by the scenery.  Ah, a massive Hindu temple with the WORLD's LARGEST MURUGUN STATUE.  Yes, yes, quite familiar.  The real attraction were the troops of monkeys hanging out on the steps leading to the caves and of course the caves themselves.  Everyone had to go up not only the 5-storeys of steps, but also the subsequent in-cave stairs leading to the inner sanctuary.  We're hard core theatre professionals here for sure!

By the time we got back to ISKL the students were pretty much done in but somehow they found hidden reserves of energy to get them through the evening, and by dinner time we were all completely wired.  A couple of the guys led everyone in a Beyonce dance sequence, and another kept us in stitches with his antics with the satay sticks.  One girl had made new, close friends with students from another school, so we all (yes, all of us!) went and sat with her and her friends and sang and danced to her.  She was remarkably patient with all the ridiculous antics and we eventually relented and left her alone.  The evening ended with all the kids heading back with their host families, and we went back to the hotel to crash.

The next morning dawned way too early, but happily we had a late start and the kids didn't have to be on campus until 9 am.  During the day the students first worked with their ensembles and then after lunch did workshops.  The workshops are a really cool part of an ISTA festival.  There are a variety of about 15 different ones offered, everything from storytelling to clowning to mask-making to wu shu martial arts.  The general consensus was that the workshops were wonderful and everyone was very energized by them.  They're also nice because it gives the students a chance to work with different leaders and kids while they're at the festival.

In the evening, the highlight was the student social (aka the dance!).  We had all our AES students in our team room before the dance and got them all to take turns teaching each other dance moves while working in their clown character – lots of fun.  Then, they raced off to change and get ready to show their moves off on the dance floor.  I had two more proud moments while watching the beginning of the dance: first off, the second song the DJ played was Thriller and our grade sixes (who had all worked with the dance crew for Fright World) got up and did the entire piece together.  Then, when a group of professional break dancers who had performed earlier that evening joined the kids on the dance floor, our students got up and danced with them.   It was a fine ISTA showing for our gang.  After the dance, they headed home with their host parents and got a reasonable night's sleep.

Today was the final day of the official festival and much of our time was spent rehearsing the final performance.  I worked with the tech crew and was backstage much of the time.  It was very impressive that the ISTA staff were able to pull together a show with 160 kids in just two and a half days.  The performance was an interesting mix of ideas and concepts and featured beautifully integrated tech elements.  One particular part involved a group scene in front of a parachute fabric which then moved behind the fabric and was backlit to create a silhouette effect, and then the backlight was cut and a photo of the students in the same pose was then projected onto the front of the screen, the actors all melted away behind the stage, and the fabric was dropped, leaving a silent and empty stage.  Very nice!

And then, the kids went off with their host families to get an evening of fun exploring KL (and doing, I expect, quite a bit of shopping).  For Patricia and I, it meant a moment to sit back and appreciate all the hard work our students had done…and of course, it's given us a moment to sit back and pray that our return journey is easier than the one we took to get here.  

PART THREE: CLOWNS ON THE TOWN

Originally we had planned to have two touring days in Malaysia.  First, we'd planned to do a city tour right after our arrival, and then a trip to the historical city of Melaka on our last day.  Sadly, the city tour got cancelled because we arrived 18 hours late, but we were still on for Melaka.  Patricia and I were expected to catch a lift up to the school at 7:40 am and the kids were to meet us at 8:00.  I  got packed up all right, but Patricia had an alarm clock disaster and woke up at 7:37.  The conference organizer was very strict about timing, so she had to fling all of her clothes and school supplies and books into her suitcase and rush out the door in seconds flat.  Not quite the most relaxing way to begin our long journey home, but luckily we were all collected up together at ISKL by 8:05 and had a chance to check that all the kids had their gear, their water bottles, their sunscreen on, their hats and noses, and of course their hair in pigtails.  I had picked up fuzzy pastel hairbows at a wholesale shop on Petaling Street in Chinatown, and we all put our hair up, even the boys.

We were taking the tour along with the team from Dhaka, and so all the kids hauled their luggage out to a big, beautiful tour bus and hopped on for the ride.  It was a good one and a half hours to Melaka, and we started out with one of the boys letting the girls borrow his portable speakers and play DJ for everyone on the bus.  A few of the kids fell asleep in little clowny heaps, and the trip zipped by.  We really enjoyed seeing the lush scenery outside the city; beautiful green palms and trees and fields everywhere, dotted with low-lying Malaysian homes.  I've always really liked the housing style of Malaysia – the yards are spacious, the porches are inviting, and the houses are often painted in pinks, yellows, and greens that fade prettily over time.  As we got closer to Melaka, the tour guide gave us some information about the city.  From what I can recall, it was first founded by and Indian prince, then conquered in turn by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the English.  It was the key stop-over point for the spice trade, particularly before Jakarta became more well-established.  I had been there in 1995 backpacking, then again in 2002 on a tour with Mum, and now with a herd of clowns.  One can only imagine what the next visit will be like.

We stepped off the bus into the humid heat of the sun and waited next to a café while a few students went to change their money.  The Dhaka teacher nearly had a conniption fit when the bus started to drive away to the parking area and a couple of kids from her school casually mentioned that one of their friends was still asleep on the bus.  The bus was halted, the student was woken up, and our tour began.  The first stop was a several-hundred-year-old Chinese temple, and then we walked up Jonkers Street to do some shopping.  The kids were a pretty big hit with passers-by: a motley crew of pig-tailed professional entertainers with red noses.  As we passed by one house, the owner stepped out to do his morning stretch and survey the street.  When he caught sight of our kids he let out a huge guffaw and just stood there laughing at us for awhile.  Sorry – laughing with us, of course.  The students were impressed at the cheaper prices in Melaka.  They'd been taken out to fancy malls with their host families, but now they were able to find some good souvenirs that they could actually afford.  Everyone picked up gifts for their parents and siblings.  My favourite find was something one girl picked up for her Dad: it looks just like a white plastic bottle, but when you try to take the lid off, it turns out to be an umbrella!  I picked up a couple of items to send to Grampa; I picked up a plastic chicken that when squeezed ejects an egg, and a little tin wind-up chicken for his tabletop.  

Miraculously we re-assembled with Dhaka at the correct time next to the famous Dutch colonial Stadhuis in the centre of town.  I noticed that two of the boys had picked up wooden samurai swords (great props, not perhaps the best choice for trying to pack into suitcases and take on the airplane!) so we started shooting some wild clown swordfighting scenes with them.  Up to the top of the fortified hill, across the sides of the hills overlooking the ocean, upon the steps of an ancient church, and finally down the rough stone steps on the other side of the hill the battle raged.  We also fit in filming a clown fashion show, and some cute pieces with a new lime green paper parasol.

But whoo hoo it was hot.  It was one of those muggy days when just standing in the shade is difficult and sticky, let alone running up hills and down dales.  Luckily, at the bottom of the hill there was a brand-new mall, filled with shops and a Starbucks and a McDonalds.  We got chicken rice and duck and stir fry at a small food court, and did a little more filming involving roller-shoes. We met up with the Dhaka group at McDonalds and then had to get on the bus and go to the airport.  Earlier, we had been told the trip would be 45 minutes, but it was really more like 2 hours long.  The guide had been told that Dhaka wanted to be at the airport at 3:00 to be ready for their 6:00 flight, but at 4:15 we were still 19 km away from the airport.  The Dhaka teachers got very quiet and made sure their kids were ready to leap off the bus.  The rushed ahead of us (with our blessing of course) and managed to sneak in just in time.  We had quite a wait to get though the check in counter, but it all seemed pretty relaxed compared to the other two check-ins in Delhi.  The kids put their noses on and amused the airport patrons.  I spent most of my time filming while Patricia checked us in, which turned out to be quite a terrific idea.  The flight was not only full but overbooked, and Patricia used her magic powers of persuasion to get some of us bumped into business class.  The prospect of having to sit on the tarmac in Delhi, or worse yet get diverted to Mumbai, or even just circle for an extra two hours seemed so much better knowing we'd have big, wide seats we could stretch out in.  So, we happily got everything sorted out, headed off to our gate, and boarded the plane.  

The staff hadn't been able to seat us together, but we did manage to get people to switch so that all the kids were sitting with at least one friend.  The flight was actually pretty fun.  Our kids kept coming up to check on us and we kept going back to check on them, so it was unlike a normal flight where the business class is an oasis of calmness, but we did our best to keep the goofiness to a minimum.  It did get a bit silly when I let the kids take out the facepaints…a bunch ended up with speckled faces, most of the kids had fake tattoos all up their arms, and one went through customs looking like a creature from the Black Lagoon, complete with black teeth.  Miraculously, we landed and exited on time and went through immigration quickly and in fine form.  Last year, we had a student come through wearing a dinosaur costume, and this year the kids had their sparkly face paint.  Hurray for ISTA!
Happily, the bags all got through safely, our three kids being met by parents at the airport were all safely picked up , and then we were off to AES.  At school, our remaining students were gathered up by their parents after they all gave us big hugs, and thus concluded a very memorable ISTA trip.  

[On The Road-14-February-2010]

trying...to stay...awake

It's just about 9 pm again and I am trying desperately to keep my eyes open. I forced myself to keep going back to sleep from midnight to just about 6 am, but I am getting to the point from which there is no return. Except back to bed.

Last night I had many dreams, most of which were very lightly overlaying my awareness that I was consciously not sleepy while yet still sleeping. I had a tough time convincing myself to stay in bed from 3 to 4 am when there was a very loud dog outside roaming around the neighbourhood. We don't have too many noisy dogs here - interesting, because there is a high density of dogs living in Golf Links, both in homes and on the street - but last night was a real doozy. I was drifting in an out of snoozes and started counting how many barks the dog would make. His favourite was a sequence of seven: bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! The final bark would hit a higher pitch than the rest. Sometimes he'd get up to eight or nine in a row, and occasionally he'd settle for just one or two in the sequence, but there was barely a breath between each set. I started thinking about the number of barks, and then about school, then the barks, then my drama class, and I came up with a great idea (oh so very great I'm surprised it hasn't been patented yet) that partnered up with one of my trademark horrible semi-puns:

I could use this experience to teach the text of Romeo and Juliet this semester using (get this!) iambark pantametre! I tell you, there are times I kill myself laughing at my own terrific jokes. I even worked up into a full-on ten syllable phrase: barkity barkity barkity bark!

Otherwise, an uneventful day. Chilly and cool, but sunny. Phet made us all egg sandwiches for breakfast, and then I tidied up and later on Iaimon came over and I headed out to school to deal with the yearbook stuff. Got home at 2:30 and have stayed awake since then through a combination of ingesting caffeinated beverages and cleaning out our messy filing cupboards. Woot woot! Oh, good news on the luggage front: apparently our missing bag has been found and it is en route back to us. Let's hope it gets here in one piece.

[Delhi-9-January-2010]

dateline delhi 20:58 hrs

Namaste - we're back home in Delhi, where it is chilly, foggy, smoky and lovely. Seung Yi has passed out on our bed after a great day of naps and playing with Laree and Iaimon. Ji just finally had a shower and is munching on a salami and arugula sandwich. Phet is hanging out in his new fleece jacket and I am doing my very best to stay awake for another hour before crashing.

The flights and travel went mostly very well. We got picked up at the aunts' by Emma's lovely taxi man and after a short delay on the Gardiner downtown, we made good time out to the airport. Pearson was shockingly quiet and relaxed given what we were expecting with all the froo-frah recently. We were checked in within 10 minutes by a very helpful counter lady, and she let us know that it looked very good to get an upgrade into business for one ticket. We then went to get some free drinks at the business class lounge. We tried checking at the gate about our upgrade, but there was no one on duty yet, but when we went back about 20 minutes later all the boarding was well under way. Weird. Luckily, they'd oversold the flight and were happy to bump me into business, and didn't even take our upgrade certificate! Sadly, it is only useable until February, so we won't actually reap any benefits from their niceness, but I must note any good service since I'm usually complaining about the airline.

The trip to Frankfurt went super great for me. I had the comfy pod, and got to watch a movie and eat tasty treats, and then lay down and slept for a good 3 hours. Phet, on the other hand, had to endure a testy Seung Yi, rotten service, and bad food. Still, SY finally fell asleep after much drama and Phet got to relax a little as well. We had gotten delayed on the ground in Toronto, so we arrived in Frankfurt almost an hour late, which was worrisome because our next flight was scheduled to depart in less than 45 minutes. The airport there is quite large, and we've had to change terminals and cover really long distances in the past, but somehow we lucked out and our gate was just 4 minutes away. We hustled over and raced to the desk because the Air Canada folks hadn't been able to give us boarding passes for the 2nd flight (which is really weird and often happens, and I don't understand why the Delhi desk can always issue 2nd flight passes, but never in Toronto). Turned out that not only did we not have passes, but they hadn't even assigned us seats! The desk guy was like, "You should have reserved seats ahead of time," and I'm like, "I DID." The long and the short of it was that they seated all four of us - yes, including a three year old - far apart from each other. All the seats were more than 3 rows apart, and one was on the complete opposite side of the plane. We had just one aisle seat, which we very luckily managed to swap for another aisle seat, and thus I was able to take care of Seung Yi while Phet and Ji got squished by random strangers in their middle seats.

The flight to Delhi was the usual for Lufthansa: 100% sold out, reasonable and efficient if not kindly service, lots of families and kids on board, adequate food, crappy entertainment due to the lack of in-seat screens. Nonetheless, time went by at a decent pace, and we got near to Delhi on time. With about 50 km to go, the pilot got on the PA and let us know that weather conditions were "very bad" on the ground. This was crappy news indeed. Flying to and from Delhi in December and January is kind of like Russian Plane Roulette. You might get to leave or you might get stuck for days. You might have delays, you might get sent to a city you didn't want to go to, you might not get fed for hours. Last christmas, our flight not only circled Delhi for an hour and a half, but it then got diverted to Mumbai where we sat on the tarmack for THREE HOURS and then went back to Delhi. I can't remember whether we got diverted twice, or whether they finally landed, but the news said that it was the foggiest day of the year. Well, it happened again. Visibility on arrival was less than 100 metres. Somehow, miraculously, the pilot landed the plane, but then, get this: we were kept on the runway for about 2 hours because they didn't have any disembarkation parking spots available!!! Can you imagine? Every flight out of Delhi was grounded, and I guess they wouldn't swap off a plane for 45 minutes just to get us out, so we had to wait and wait and wait and wait. When we finally got off, all our bags were waiting in the priority section - except for one. We waited another 45 minutes to see if it would show up, but it didn't, so then we had to spend another 45 minutes filling in missing bag forms. I was really scared it was the bag with my laptop, but it turned out to be the bag with all the kids' clothes and our camera. Stoooopid. I was delirious by the time we got out to see poor John, who was very happy to see us despite having been kept waiting for five hours in the cold and fog.

Speaking of the fog, I didn't take my own pictures, but here are two good ones I found that will give you an idea of how things looked when we got out of the airport. We could very literally see only one car ahead of us. It was so foggy that cyclists at the side of the road would appear seemingly out of nothingness when they were about 15 feet away from us.

Spooky, huh?

At home, it was cold. I put 6 blankets on the bed, turned the radiator on high, and then had one of those strangely light but dead sleeps for much of the day. Iaimon brought Laree to go to school, and Seung Yi was thrilled to see her. After Laree got back home at lunchtime, Seung Yi played and played and played with her for hours while we all slept. In the evening I forced myself to get up at 5:00 and went for a walk to get some fruit and veg. My veg man was friendly and happy as usual, and all the greens are wonderful at this time of year. I came home and took Seung Yi for a walk to the candyman and then we've spent the rest of the evening unpacking. Ji is amazingly cheerful despite the fact that BOTH his new aerogarden and his lavalamp blew out the electricity and won't work here in Delhi. Note to self: no plug-in electrical stuff from Canada from now on!

We've got Saturday and Sunday to get rested up (and to do a bunch of work - I have a huge yearbook deadline on Wednesday and will spend most of the weekend dealing with Indesign minutiae). Many, many warm thanks to everyone for making our holiday so wonderful and relaxing. Phet and I really enjoyed the chance to just take it easy and veg out with great company. The food was amazing, the fun was fun, the times were good. We've both kept saying to each other how much we love our families and how happy we were to be able to chill out when we are usually so super busy. We are both also still quietly pleased that Grampa said he's planning to come out to Ontario again in the summer. Although he was pretty snoozy this visit, we were so happy to get to spend time with him.

Thanks to everyone for the great holiday!

[Delhi-8-January-2010]

holidays!

It is 2:59 pm on Christmas day. You know what that means. Yes! A bellyfull of fried golden perogies and a deep desire to crawl under the comforter and hibernate for a few months.

It has been a perfect Christmas so far, and we haven't even gotten to the turkey yet -- not that I have any concerns in that area as Uncle Pat is at the helm of the bird-basting, which means that in just a few short hours I will have a bellyfull of turkey and stuffing and will once again be ready to be trundled into the cave for the remainder of the winter.

I woke up at 6 am with a dried-out throat today, so I guess it wasn't completely perfect but close enough. We're all a bit sick. Seung Yi and Ji had to go see Dr. Gupta before leaving Delhi because they had super congested lungs, then Phet got an evil super sore throat / cold, and finally I picked up one of those sore throat-but-no-coughing bugs. Everyone's on the mend, but there's a little lingering unwellness. After I woke up, I quickly got to work catching up on the latest online gossip and then read the Ontario College of Teachers monthly magazine from front to back. Well, I read the headlines in depth and then flipped to the 'bad teachers' section to read the real dirt. I don't know what the deal is, but they have this policy of publishing bad things teachers have done. Maybe it is legally mandated for the college to have that kind of forum, but it is weird that it is published side-by-side with "Students Rule!" and "Teaching Excellence!" kinds of articles. The bad bits range from the 'wow-my-high-school-teachers-did-that-all-the-time-and-were-never-reprimanded" kind of stuff (berating kids, cuffing them gently, etc, etc) to the weird stuff (guy who went on to marry one of his former students) to the truly awful abuse of power stuff. But all this is a rah-rah teachers publication. Odd.

At 7ish Dad got up and made sure all the stockings were ready to go. The night before he and Mum had hosted the annual Eastern-European-style Christmas Eve and everyone was knackered early on, though Mum did stick it out and washed up the kitchen with Ryan's help. The dinner was, as always, marvellous. Here is a list of the treats we enjoyed:

mixed salted nuts, chips with onion dip made by Ji Hong, crudites, pickles of several sorts including Strubs, pickled herring three ways, smoked oysters, smoked mussles, sprats in oil, salmon roe, three types of kolbasa, tiny peppers stuffed with tuna, rillettes made three ways - with chicken, duck, and pork, smoked salmon on rye with capers, perogies, baked white fish, grilled asparagas, dilled cucumber salad, sauerkraut with smoked pork and sausages baked with white wine, vodka, beer, wine, butterball cookies, shortbread cookies, chocolate truffles, and I think there was a raspberry cheescake

We all sorely missed Emma's sour cherry soup, and sadly bemoaned her absence due to work related demands taking her to Ottawa. Boo! Aside from Emma's absence, however, the party was delightful. John and Katy hit the gifts-for-kids jackpot: Ji got stuff to blow up in the bathroom and Seung Yi got the most adorable doll from the latest Disney movie about the Princess and the Frog. Jake and Ryan were in fine form, Jake in a serious art-professor turtleneck of epic proportions (we're talking Andre Leon Talley approved), and Ryan in his muscles of epic proportions. Uncle Pat came wearing his wooden reindeer tie that I bought him back in about grade six - that's why I STILL call him Uncle Pat Wonderful. Aunt Cathie did not wear a reindeer tie but looked great nonetheless. Jodi wore a spangly sparkly dress that was unbelievably cute and the other gents, Nick and Brad wore manly stuff sans sparkles and sans reindeers. Phet came in his festive red Fabindia shirt - huzzah!

This morning the kids managed to stay upstairs until 9, at which point we unleashed them on the stockings and gifts. We were all still kind of deliriously tired and nodding off, not just Grampa Paul. Great goodies were received by all - I got a sound system for the kitchen in the countryside, Seung Yi got the exact red boots and furry jacket she wanted from SantaGrammaGrampa Claus, Ji got the Newton's balls he has been dying for for nigh on two years, and Phet and Dad got matching Quick Gun Murugun costumes:

Yes! Green satin shirts! Leopard print vests! Pink silk neckerchiefs! Just add white stetson and orange jeans, two guns and they're all set!

Ho ho ho!

[Toronto-25-December-2009]

sleepover with five eight year old boys

Dear god. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

We hosted our annual big-party-in-Delhi last night and as usual we combined Ji's birthday with a shindig that we invited all our friends and colleagues to. The preparation was pretty relaxed: I emailed the caterer and the cake baker, Phet talked to the tent dude, and I dropped into the toy shop to order the entertainment. The thing that took the most time was making the playlist for the party tunes. Ji wanted to have a Rock 'n Roll themed party, so we had to have just the right mix. I spent a few hours downloading from beemp3.com (greatest downloading ever, please don't arrest me online police, I'm a really nice person, honest) and savoured previewing such greats as "It Takes Two", "Mamma Said Knock You Out", and "Push It". Of course, there were healthy lashings of actual rock and roll and some recent treats (one of which came on waaaay to early in the night, when all the 3 year olds were still dancing and featured the line 'blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-al-co-hol'). On the day of the party, all the expected dudes came on time, and we were quickly set up with our fancy lights, tent awning, red carpet, trestle tables, fancy shiny chair covers, etc etc. The party shop guys came, too, with their stuff: a foozeball table, a guy with a rifle and a whole whack of balloons for the kids to shoot, and a dancefloor, strobe lights, and smoke machine.

Everything was fine except for the "dancefloor" which looked literally like a piece of crap that I could've personally hacked and nailed together with old two-by-fours in a badly-lit workshed. Still, it came with two guys who sat beside it all night and who would every-so-often put on a blast of the smoke machine - which the kids thought was great, and which they started INHALING smoke from and then blowing out their noses!!! (Note to any parents of kids who were at the party and who are now reading this: NOT MY FAULT. DO NOT SUE ME WHEN YOUR KID GETS EMPHYSEMA AT THE AGE OF NINE.)

The party went off very nicely - kids all had fun, pinata got walloped without anyone getting injured, food was yummy and hot, drinks were served quickly, no one burned themselves on the charcoal-burning heaters. We hit the sack before midnight, and the whole house had already been mopped by Iaimon - three cheers for her, she's brilliant. Phet and I had "enjoyed" the libations at the party but were in decent shape until all of Ji's friends WOKE UP AT 5:30 AM.

Dude, what the hell???

It was like I actually woke up thinking, "Are you serious?" They'd played their socks off the night before, and if nothing else should've had severe Coke and candy hangovers, but no. No, at 5:30 am they were up and running. Like, actually running around. It was revolting. We tried twice to convince them to go back to sleep, but it was a no go. Instead, they started shooting small, sharp lego pieces at each with Ji's catapult and slingshot. We spent 6:00 am to 8:30 am shepherding them from here to there, trying to stop them from killing each other and also from messing up the rooms that had just been cleaned. It was a long, hard, painful job. Eventually, they went outside to play and get out some energy, and they decided it would be fun to play Blind Man's Bluff, which ended up with Ji getting the crap smashed out of his eyeball when someone hit him with the stick they were using instead of just using their outstretched hands. Nice. When the boys all came back in and we sat them down to eat some breakfast, I realized we had only one egg left, so Ji had to run out to the corner store to get more. While he was gone, I forced the boys to wash up, and it turned out one had slept on top of a bunch of chewed up gum, which had gotten stuck to his forearm and to the back of his shirt. After the kids ate, we forced them to sit and watch Kung Fu Panda - two of them were like, "Oh this show is so BORING, I've seen it SO many times," but then they sat and laughed their socks off and quoted ever line before the characters had a chance to say them. One kid decided he was anti-movies entirely and sat on a rollie chair in the hallway for an hour. I kept on trucking until the last kid was picked up AT ELEVEN THIRTY and then we all collapsed and Ji himself had a 3 hour long nap.

Please, gentle readers, remind me next year: no bloody sleepovers. No boys. No nothing. We're all going to Chuck E. Cheese.

[Ji Hong-13-December-2009]

weekend with three year old

SY: If you do dat I will attack and destroy you!

Me: Don't make threats.

SY: Dat not a threat, dat's a beating.

*

[After a 20-minute furious crying jag when Seung Yi didn't get what she wanted]

Me: Stop crying and settle down. That's enough.

SY: MY BRAIN CAN'T STOP!

*

[Seung Yi and Laree are hanging out with Phet early in the morning before he's gotten dressed for work]

Laree: You have nipples!

Phet: Yes, everyone has nipples.

Laree: My Mom has big boobs!

Seung Yi: My Mom has really big boobs. Big like a BOX! Big like a HOUSE!

[Seung Yi-13-December-2009]

unique...SO UNIQUE

Some of you may have already gotten an email with this link, but if not check out a fascinating moment at a meeting chaired by a UN grand vizier. Trust me, UN meetings: not usually this full of gavel-ular excitement. We here at Fixed Address have decided that our future designation for anything really, truly, and utterly not meeting with our approval is "really unique...SO UNIQUE!"

For example...

Me: Hey Phet, the passport control officer just gave me a body cavity search.

Phet: That's really unique. SO UNIQUE!

In other unique news, Phet and I have decided on a retirement plan. Hey, it's never to early! Now some of you may be aware that it has always been my dream to own a corner store, and then it seemed like it would be a great idea that if I had a corner store then Phet and Dad could run the next-door greasy spoon. Right? But then we realized that the problem is that if we actually ran a greasy spoon we'd have to, like, serve customers. And have health permits and whatever. And it would make it really hard to travel. And nap. And go to the library. And slack. So, what we really want to do when we retire is to buy a greasy spoon on the Danforth (hard to come by, but there are still a few) and then keep the deep fryer and the giant flat frying station and the cash register and the spinny stools and the lunch counter and the thick ceramic mugs and plates and the coffee pots but then we would just have that be OUR HOUSE! And we wouldn't sell food at all. We'd just live in an awesome greasy spoon.

You can imagine it...wake up, put on your slippers, go down and get a cup of coffee and sit on the stools. Pull out a laptop and go work in one of the leatherette booths. We could even have booths for every family member! Then, pop the door open, put a brick in front to keep it open, and go sit outside on the sidewallk and enjoy another cup of coffee! People would walk by and be all like, "Hey dudes," and we'd be like, "Hey," and they'd be like, "That looks like a great cup of coffee," and we'd be like, "It is." And then they'd be like, "Let's go in and get a cup of coffee!" and we'd be like, "Sorry, this is a private residence." And they'd be like, "That's really unique. SO UNIQUE!"

I guess we might have to be careful that people don't then throw our door holder brick through our front window out of frustration. Are there bylaws that say if a place looks like a restaurant it actually has to sell food to people?

Then I thought maybe we could be like the Dave Eggers shop, the one that is a tutoring organization but has a front shop that sells pirate supplies like bottles of "Scurvy Begone". At our greasy spoon we could sell t-shirts that have our restaurant's name of them, and our slogan. Our name is going to be Double Double and the slogan will, of course, be "really unique...SO UNIQUE!"

Wouldn't that be awesome?

[Toronto-10-December-2009]

girls night out

Phet is in Sri Lanka and Ji is having a sleepover at his friend's house (the one we met up at Neemrana; hopefully no monkey invasions tonight) so Seung Yi and I had the evening alone together. I got in a little early after a slightly longish-feeling day and the girls were still in the bath, looking adorable. They jumped out, got dried off, and then each had clothing-related melt-downs. First, Seung Yi was NOT happy that Laree picked out and got to wear a blue velour dress that she has never once before looked at with even a slight bit of interest. She therefore burst into tears and refused to be consoled until five minutes later. By then, I'd put a pair of blue tights on Laree and she was NOT happy about those tights. She therefore burst into tears and refused to be consoled until she was able to pull off the tights and put on leopard skin print fuzzy pants under the blue velour dress. Ah, the age of three.

Once the drama had subsided, we all walked out together and dropped Iaimon and Laree at the bus stop and Seung Yi and I carried on to Khan Market for an early dinner at Big Chill, the 'American'-ish cafe where we've gone since she was about 4 months old. Incidentally, despite having gone there for what basically amounts to HER ENTIRE LIFE, she still refuses to speak to the very sweet waiters. She's all like, "I do not see you, I do not hear you, do not speak to me." She has quite an Anna Wintour side to her personality when she's out in public.

We ordered the usual, tomato basil soup, grilled prawns and veggies on salad, and a lime soda with sugar and salt ("lime soda mixed" in Delhi parlance) and then hung out and chatted and looked at the movie posters on the walls. Seung Yi was especially interested in one called "Monsters from Another Planet" that featured a massive-headed green alien carrying a sheet-draped naked lady towards his spaceship. After a long discussion about what the alien was up to, we got on to the question of who the lady was:

SY: Mumma, who dat lady?

Me: It's just a lady. It doesn't say.

SY: But who IS dat lady?

Me: I don't know, it doesn't tell the whole story.

SY: Yes it does. Look at all dose words!

Me: That's just the title. It doesn't say the name of the lady.

SY: But what is the lady's name, Mumma?

Me: Why don't we make up a name...how about Suzy?

SY: No, it not Suzy.

Me: Ok, what is it?

SY: Arielaniahasha!

Me: Great name.

SY: So what dat alien's name?

Me: I don't know. Make one up.

SY: How about Suzy?

[Seung Yi-9-December-2009]

stuff 'n such

Me: ...so then my crazy student said that if he had to be stranded on a desert island, with one person of the opposite gender, he'd choose to be marooned with SATAN!

Phet: Ha ha ha.

Ji: Who's Satan?

Me: [Clearly not a good parent in the Christian sense AT ALL] Satan, you know, the devil?

Ji: Oh.

[Ten minutes later]

Ji: Hey, that was so funny about your student and Martin.

Me: Martin?

Ji: You know, your student and MARTIN?

Me: Huh?

Ji: On the desert island?

Me: Ooh, you mean SATAN?

Ji: Yeah, Satan.

Me: Ha ha ha. Hey Phet, watch out or you might spend eternity in hell with MARTIN! Oh no, Martin's stabbing me with a pitchfork. 'Get thee behind me, Martin!' Ha ha ha. 'Could it be...Martin?!' Ha ha ha. Martin. Ha.

*

Ji: Hey Pa, I can't get Mozarella Firefox to open up.

Phet: What?

Ji: Mozarella Firefox.

Phet: Oh, MOZILLA Firefox?

Ji: Yeah.

Phet: Ha ha ha.

*

How you can tell Mom's been visiting: you find THIS in your cupboard...

*

Phet's favourite snack box:

*

Seung Yi's most intriguing birthday gift:

[Delhi-6-December-2009]

neemrana pics

Hey, this weekend we went to Neemrana Fort Palace Hotel with Mum and kicked back and ate and drank and relaxed for two days. Sweet! It was Ji's 8th birthday, and very luckily he met up with a kid from his school who is in the grade above him, and said kid was staying in a room that was a TENT (like a huge, 10 foot tall tent on a terrace right beside his Mom and Dad's room) and he invited Ji to sleep over and then at 4:30 am a MONKEY came into their tent and if you click on the album here you can see the monkeys going back into the tent the next day plus other great photos from the trip! Whew!

[On The Road-29-November-2009]

chris hitchens can suck it

I'm a big fan of Vanity Fair. I'll even pay ten bucks here to get a current copy, and as most of you know it is not easy for me to part with ten bucks. A pair of jeans for ten bucks at TJ Maxx? Ok, if they're really great. Say, if they've been knocked down from a hundred and fifty. Then, alright. Maybe. But most stuff, not so much. Magazines, I'm sometimes willing to spring for. I picked up the latest copy of Vanity Fair - with Robert Pattinson on the cover, swoon - yesterday and started flipping through.

Here's my usual modus operandi for reading VF:

1. Read the table of contents in its entirety.

2. Read the upper crust scandal article first.

3. Zip over to the "More from the VF mailbag" section (ah yes, the one I was published in last year - that's me, the eminence grise of VF letters to the editor...)

4. Flip to the best photos of the issue, usually the party section and the other major articles, but only look at the photos and the captions, not the text.

5. Slowly, over the next week or so, read the articles in the following order: more scandal / crime, hollywood, other arts and entertainment, evil finance stories, "opinion" pieces, fashion, letters to the editor, contributors' profiles, proust questionaire, politics, editor's letter.

6. I never read the book section. I hate it. "Elissa Schappell's Hot Type"? More like "Elissa Blah Blah Yawn Snore". Ha, I'm so funny and snarky. I should send another letter to their editor, huh?

I always end up reading the Christopher Hitchens articles though I think he's also a bit of a hack. He thinks he's all, like, gonzo and audacious with his whole "people with boobs aren't funny" and "I love to smoke" and "I'm trying to stop smoking and to start exercizing" and "god who" schtick, but his rants just aren't fresh. Seriously, Turner could write a funny, incisive, effectively digressing but then getting to the point dramatically article with both his hands tied behind his back so that he had to peck out his opinion with his nose on the keyboard and that article would so kick Hitchens' article's butt. If an article's butt could be kicked. Which it can. Cause I said so. Neh neh!

This month, Hitchens got top billing on the front cover with the headline: "Hitchens: The Mystery and Cult of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". I recently read all three of the books (uh, in one night a piece) in this trilogoy by Stieg Larsson, so I was pretty interested to find out more about the mystery (and cult!) surrounding them. Unfortunately, the article ended up being short, relatively uniformative, and Hitchens had a totally VF take on the stories. The VF take can be summed up like this: hoity toity wah wah cultural degeneration plus also I I don't get it fully. Hitchens complains because the heroine, Lisbeth Salandar, is unbelievable. Well, dude, how many super master sleuths do you know who are boring normal people like you? That's why it's POPULAR FICTION. So she has a photographic memory, is a super hacker, got buried alive, and had breast implants. That makes her COOL and fun to read about. But that wasn't what annoyed me the most. Nope, there were three additional points that Hitchens made that are So Wrong.

Wrong the first: Hitchens says that the male protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist is "lumbering" and that he supposes "Philip Seymour Hoffman will be offered the ursine Blomkvist role". I find this fascinating given that Blomkvist is consistently described as fairly fit and exceedingly attractive to beautiful women of all ages and sizes. Whassup, Hitchens? (And no offense to you, Philip Seymour Hoffman if you're reading fixed address - I think you're great! Loved you in Almost Famous and thought that when you brought back the rock-and-roll character for Pirate Radio you were verging on cute...but you're just not a chick magnet like Blomkvist, sorry).

Wrong the second: Hitchens pulls out a cheap quote from Larsson to demonstrate his poor writing. I just don't buy this kind of critique. Like, come on, an airport-bookstore-type-of-book doesn't sound like it was written by Nabokov? Really? Nooooo, I don't believe it! VF also did the same thing with Twilight, excerpting some of the cheesier passages. Once again: not Jane Austen? Really? Nooooooo, I don't believe it. And this gets me on to my larger rant about VF: why are they spending all their time bemoaning the lowering of culture? Who cares? It's not like there hasn't been lowbrow entertainment since, like, ancient times in every civilization in the whole world. Get over it! Either have fun satirizing stuff, or proclaim the brilliance of the latest avant garde installation art but stop the bloody moaning and complaining. In the Pattinson issue alone, there is also an article on "How Grandmas and 12 Year Old Girls Are Corrupting Our Culture" (no, not because they're sexing it up in miniskirts, because they like things that are CUTE! OMG herald the death of all things good in the world! Head for the cultural fallout shelters!) and then in "I'm a Culture Critic...Get Me Out of Here" James Wolcott cries like a baby over how reality TV has ruined not just TV, not just culture, BUT LIFE ITSELF. Note to Walcott, Hitchens, Carter et al: PULL YOURSELVES TOGETHER BOYS!

Wrong the third: Finally, Hitchens does a complete misreading of the entire Larsson series when he writes that in the novels, "there is much sex but absolutely no love." There is a serious undercurrent of love rippling through the books, but perhaps it takes forms that Hitchens doesn't recognize. Like, unrequited love despite requited sex. Or, decades-long-love matched with decades-long-physical-love-affair but no marriage. Or short term love that doesn't last. Or confusing love that is also friendship. Actually, come to think of it, Larsson is pretty heavy on the friendship side of love. For his characters, sex is important, friendship is important, and love is important. It's just that all three don't necessarily combine together in equal amounts every time; connections are more complicated and difficult and yet also sometimes easier than in traditional, straight-forward love stories, and maybe Hitchens' universe just can't comprehend that.

And so, to Hitchens and the other whiners at VF, I say unto you: go suck on some lemons! At least then you'll have an excuse for being so sour.

[Delhi-29-November-2009]

banner day here @ fixed address

***NOTE: The album now has better-definition pics for your viewing pleasure!***

OMG: I put together a new photo album for your viewing pleasure! Shots of Seung Yi and Laree, Diwali, Mum and I rafting in Rishikesh, and a slurry-eyed photo of us with Patricia from the Saturday night debauchorama. Check out the album!

[Delhi-23-November-2009]

weekend roundup

Here's my beautiful girl, looking as cute as can be in her coveralls and long-sleeved shirt. It's hit Delhi-wintertime with temperatures dropping down to 10' celsius and even a little lower at night. It's still 25ish during the day, so basically as I've always said, winter here is essentially the same as summer in Calgary. In other words, lovely!

We had a great weekend - it kind of went from very busy to extraordinarily lazy between Friday and Sunday. On Friday, I worked all day of course, and then stayed at school because my drama classes were doing a show that evening. I had told the kids they were welcome to relax in my room from 5 to 6, so we ended up playing cards, eating popcorn, and listening to their ipods attached to my really fantastic speakers before the show. The show itself went really nicely - since it was a semi-curricular thing we didn't really advertise but we did invite the parents of all the kids and we had quite a healthy and enthusiastic audience, which was great for the kids. The show itself was called "Making the Familiar Strange" and was all student-written. I went off on a tanget with them on tech-related ideas, so the outline of the show went like so:

- video intro that I drew still-by-still and then photographed and turned into video and then overlaid with wonky versions of a kids saying "making the familiar strange";
- a kid-created video about how weird moose are;
- very random scenes / skits about the existence of aliens, the invention of the fork by a caveman, a magical unibrow, and then one about a kid whose parents' brains were stolen by aliens and flushed down the toilet and then she had to go and rescue the brains and she was mostly successful but in the end wound up with her Mom's brain in her Mom's head but Snoop Dogg's brain in her Dad's head;
- interspersed with the skits were these super short dance sequences that the kids choreographed to music written by the gr 6 music class;
- then, they did this lip-sync adaptation of a really popular commercial on TV here (you can youtube search for 'docomo train ad')
- and finally we finished off with the lights going totally off and the kids lip synching and dancing to music that was on the sound system, but they were lit only with the light of the itouches that they held in front of their faces. Sounds weird, looked COOL!

So: pretty familiar and pretty strange and lots of fun.

On Saturday we had a very relaxed morning and then went out for lunch at Sundar Nagar where we stuffed ourselves with vada, dosa, golegappa, and puri with spicy sweet chickpeas. We wandered around the curio shops in the market there for awhile, but Seung Yi was in a very saucy mood so that didn't last long. We headed home, tossed her into bed for a nap, and then Iaimon and Laree came over to babysit so Mum and I could go out. John took us out to the mall at Saket where we spent a couple of hours leisurely drinking tea and shopping. I bought a great gift for Jake and Mum picked up some mugs from Good Earth (home of all things spectacularly pretty - where we also ogled the most adorable little um, what do you call those things where ladies do their makeup? Vanities? Anyways, it was one made just in Seung Yi size - so cute!), and also a gorgeous soft and cozy black wool jacket.

Laden with bags, we called for John and had him drive us out to the place we were meeting my colleagues for dinner. It was quite the adventure. I had read about the restaurant a number of times and it sounded very nice - it's in a spot called "The Garden of the Five Senses" and I'd gotten the impression it was sort of a park-ish area with upscale restaurants. It turned out it sort of was like that, but to get there you had to drive through about 3 kilometres of dusty, creepy, uninhabited construction areas. So every so often we'd see a sign saying "Garden of the Five Senses ->" and all around the sign would just be rubble and dust and dirt and maybe a guy lying around all wrapped up against the cold. We finally went down the right alleyway, and got to the correct spot, a beautifully arranged restaurant called Magique, but it was all super surreal.

The restaurant looked great but was pretty awful aside from the pleasant company. It took ages for the waiter to take drink orders, and when he did he had a completely blank look on his face, like no smile, no nothing. We ordered a bottle of wine. Ten minutes later, he came back, and said they didn't have that bottle available. We tried again. Same thing, only it took longer. Instead of recommending one they did have, he just kept looking at us utterly blankly. It was weird. And meanwhile, there are, like, 10 other staff just standing around. I finally called one of them over to take our food order, which also took forever. They didn't even have any bread or snacks on the table - nothing. Finally, the wine and the food came, and lo and behold they didn't bring the main course Mum and I were going to share. So, we each had like 2 little skewers of meat, and some crappy cold calamari with tamari on top (yech), and some very oily corn patties. Really, I just don't think that "fusion" food works for the most part. I'd really rather just go to a place that does one thing properly. Like good portuguese-style grilled chicken and fish. Or pho. Or dosa. But there is no reason to try to be the place that will serve all three of those dishes. Totally unnecessary.

Still, a good time (if not a good meal) was had by all, and we were in high spirits upon departure, so we headed out dancing to an American-style bar with a few friends. It was all good fun until this morning when I woke up and couldn't lift my head. Wasn't the alcohol - at the bar they had played all kinds of rock and roll and I had stupidly head-banged all night. And now I am paying the price - it's 9:25 pm and I still can't shift my neck properly. Note to self: NO HEAD BANGING!

[Delhi-22-November-2009]

congratulations, betsy and pheuy!

Just got an email from Phet that Pheuy asked Betsy to marry him (IN PARIS! ON THE PONT NEUF! SUAVE!) and she said yes. Hurray!

[Toronto-19-November-2009]

seung yi

Seung Yi has been going through some interesting phases these days. Earlier this week it was the saucy-pants phase. Anything that she didn't like the sounds of, she'd make an evil mafiosa threat afterwards.

Me: Seung Yi, you have to go wash your hands now.

SY: Then I will destroy this house!

Me: Seung Yi, you have to stop whining and finish your dinner now.

SY: Then I will put fire on the table!

Me: Seung Yi, if you don't settle down now, you can't watch your show.

SY: Then I will go away and when I am an adult I will never live with my family!

We are on a severe diet of no threats now as a result. After a few very challenging days, she decided that she was going to rejoin the world of the pleasant and she was highly praised on Monday by not only Iaimon, but also her teacher and by Mom for being a good girl. That evening we took Mum out shopping to Connaught Place and the conversation went like this...

Me: Hey, Seung Yi, look out the window. It's India Gate!

SY: I'm a good girl. Right, Mum? I'm a good girl.

Me: Yes, you're a good girl. How was school today?

SY: My teacher say I'm a good girl. Right Mum, I'm a good girl?

Me: Yes, Seung Yi. You're a good girl. What did you have for lunch?

SY: At lunch, Iaimon said I was a good girl. Right Mum, I'm a good girl, right? Mum?

Me: Yes. Hey, Seung Yi, were you a good girl today?

SY: Yes, Mum! I was a good girl today! My teacher said so. I'm a good girl. Right?

This evening a big wedding band danced past the house. We all went out to dance along and then when we came back in, Mum asked Seung Yi about her future wedding.

Mum: What would you like for your present?

SY: A big water bottle.

Mum: What would you like Auntie Emma and Uncle Adam to get you?

SY: A violin. And then I will play violin for them. I play violin with chopsticks. I will get a big horse. I will give you a card and you can come to my wedding.

Fun times!

[Seung Yi-19-November-2009]

middle school fun

So...as a middle school teacher I am introduced to some pretty spectacular online videos. For your viewing pleasure today I bring you MS. NIEDZWIECKI'S TOP 5 YOUTUBE VIDEOS AS PLAYED TO HER BY HER STUDENTS. Most of them are school appropriate. Sort of.

In decending order of awesomeness (ie the last one as you scroll is the super-est) the videos are:

Narwhals: Yes! There IS a song about narwhals and it DOES contain the lyrics "They've got a kick ass facial horn / they're the Jedi of the sea / the stop Cthulu from eating ye," and the tune the song is sung to is totally insidious. I guarantee you will be humming "Narwhals, narwhals" for the rest of the day.

Detective Mittens the Crime Solving Cat: Check out the dialogue in this video! The cat speaks cat! It's sooooo great. It inspired my drama class to re-do an entire short play in cat language. Then we decided that was too cat and we cut it down to just one character speaking cat. So, I guess he's like a cat? But he does all the normal syllables that he would've done as a human character. Just like Detective Mittens! Only our skit is less bloody. Unfortunately.

Klay Nation (Pancake Mines Episode): Expressionless blue tongue-like plasticene dudes engage in spectacularly violent and random behaviour? Sign me up, man! Check out this episode, in which the immortal line - subsequently written up on my classroom quote board post-haste - is spoken: "I don't have time for pancake bombs!"

Charlie the Unicorn (Candy Mountain Episode): This is an oldie but a goodie from my kids last year, and it inspired me to force the yearbook artist to include a drawing of Charlie the Unicorn on the cover of our yearbook. Definitely the greatest voice acting of all time: Charlie the mythical unicorn sounds like a grouchy American janitor while his pink and purple buddies (or ARE THEY?) hassle him into going to Candy Mountain with can't-help-but-copy-them high-pitched, repetitive cajole-y voices. Don't miss the magical Leuropleuridon!

Charlie the Unicorn (Banana King Episode): Even better than Charlie the Unicorn 1 is Charlie the Unicorn 2 in which Charlie's pastel friends disappear into a glowing vortex in Charlie's back. OMG! At which time one of them says, "We're being pulled into the vortex! Swim away fugu fish, swim away!" Because, of course, they're snorkelling in the air before they get pulled into the vortex. And then, like, they go see the banana king and there are all these GIANT Lebowski-dream-sequence-esque bananas floating around? And it is the best!

[Delhi-16-November-2009]

mom rulez, ok?

Mum's been here for a month or so and here's what I've got to say about that: hurray! It has been so great having her here with us, not just for my own selfish benefit of having my Mommy around, but also - I guess - for her grandkids. When we left last week for Rishikesh on a school adventure at 4:30 am and then Seung Yi woke up, you know what her first response was? She cried for half an hour because DaWamma hadn't kissed her goodbye. Right now, Ji is off at an origami workshop with Mum at the Japan Centre. I suppose I'd say they're both revelling in the love like angels at an all night party.

The trip to Rishikesh was SO MUCH FUN. Our school usually does a one week trip for each grade starting in middle school. The grade 6s go to a tiger reserve, the grade 7s go camping, and the grade 8s go river rafting at the very start of the Ganges river in the Himalayan foothills near Rishikesh. I went on the grade 8 trip the first year I was in Delhi and it was awesome. Then, I switched to grade 7 last year, and our trip got cancelled after there were several terrorist bombings in Delhi. This year, I switched back to grade 8 and had been waiting desperately anxiously to find out whether we would really get to go. I didn't entirely believe that we'd get out of the city - who knows what might happen to make the trip get cancelled again - but someone everything went perfectly smoothly and I got to go once again. My colleague very kindly said it'd be no problem for Mum to join in the fun, so we both got to the school buses at 4:55 am on a bleary Sunday morning.

Once she'd gotten on the bus, Mum realized she'd forgotten her iphone at home so we quickly called John and told him to race to meet us at the train station with the phone. Impressively, as soon as we pulled up, we could see him grinning triumphantly on thesteps of the train station at exactly the right gate to pass on the phone to Mum. It was a very fortuitous beginning to an excellent trip. The train station was of course busy with lots of people sleeping on the floor and bustling about, but it's easy to feel insulated when you're surrounded by 200 middle school kids. Naturally, they all started the morning off by buying litre bottles of Coke, which they downed quickly on the platform. On the train, we were lucky to have the mellow car. Other teachers kept dropping in on us and saying every time, "Wow, is it ever relaxed in here!" Apparently our kids were the ones who were able to ingest massive amounts of caffeine and yet still fly under the radar.

The ride up to Haridwar was pleasant; lots of nice green fields and dusty towns outside the window, a decent toilet, comfortable seats, free tea, toast and iddly service, and good conversation. One of the kids had brought an oversized package of Pixie Six and tapped about 25 packets of sugar powder down his throat, but still somehow sanity prevailed. We had three minutes to get all of the kids off in Haridwar, and everything and everyone got off in good time. We stood around in the sun for a little while, and then headed out to the buses in the parking lot. We had to keep the curtains shut for most of the trip (so we wouldn't be too obviously a bus full of foreigners - maybe just overprecaution, I don't know whether they've had trouble there or not) but we could still peek out and see the busy but semi-countryside around us. Near to a major pilgrimmage spot, they had blocked the river so the river bed could be cleaned of plastic and garbage - don't know how they manage to divert the water, or where it goes, but it seemed like a good idea, and when we did first catch sight of the Ganges it was lovely and translucently pale slightly bluey green.

After a couple of hours we disembarked at the top of the pathway leading to our beachcamp. It sounds like the spot ought to be very quiet and pristine, but in fact it's right on a very busy and terrifyingly scary mountain road. Amazingly enough, after a 4 minute hike down the side of a hillside, you come out onto a gorgeous and surprisingly quiet white sand beach. I turned to my colleague when we got to the beach and told her I really figured I ought to be up for a raise after enduring such a hardship as chaperoning this kind of trip. On the beach, there are a few covered areas that have been created using white parachute-type awnings, and underneath these are lots of comfy wicker chairs. At either end of the beach there are canvas tents just metres away from the river. The tents are really great - you can stand up in them, they have cots inside, and little windows, and yet more comfy chairs you can pull out and repose upon while you contemplate the beauty of the river. Best of all, perhaps, is that when we got hungry it was tea time, complete with TEA and fresh pakoras right out of the pan. Mmm, mmm.

On the first day, Mum carried on to her nearby hotel (where she met a lovely family who'd come to scatter their mother's ashes in the river, and who invited her to enjoy some tasty beverages with them) and I went hiking with the kids to a nearby village. It was just enough of a hike to help us feel better after a long day spent in transit, and the area we hiked through was so pretty. Lots of low mountains, smoky villages, and plenty of fat, well-fed babies and kids. The students were naturally impressed by all the peeing and pooping cows we encountered on the way and enjoyed flinging themselves down a big sandy hill, and screaming when they skittered down the steep pathways. Good middle school fun.

The next day was our first day of rafting. It was a sort of lazy-river day. Not too much in the way of wild rapids, mostly just paddling, meandering, swimming, splashing, and screaming camp cheers (our camp definitely had the most absurd one: "HRR is the best / that's because we're better than the rest / and we don't have tuberculosis" and the next day we also had a great Mom-inspired one: "Wah, wah, wah, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, HRR, Arggghh!"). The river was shockingly cold, but probably no colder than Sauble on a refreshing July morning. We were on the river for hours, and came back happy and soggy to camp and yet more tea and pakoras followed by a super delicious dinner and campfire fun that Mum joined in for.

On our second day, Mum came along rafting. At first the guides seemed a little suspect what with her slight inability to walk straight at all times, but once we were on the river and the guide said people could swim next to the raft, she slipped right into the water and splashed around cheerfully, and the guide immediately chilled out. We had a really fun group of kids that day with us and they had push-each-other-out-of-the-boat-battles, and we went over MASSIVE rapids, and we sang some more, and we all got wet, and it was a big barrel of fun. I was secretly a little scared in case anything happened to Mum on the rapids, but she had a blast and we were all 100% safe and sound at the end of the day. It was pretty fun hearing her screaming with the kids as we rolled into more and more white water. Mum also successfully climbed over an entire beach full of boulders as we portaged along the side of the river (well, whatever you call portaging when you don't actually have to carry your boats because they're floating down the river with a minimum number of occupants who will then flip over because it is the most treacherous part of the river and everyone else walks around over a very huge heap of boulders so that the kids and Grammas don't get flipped and stuck under a boat). It's interesting going rafting up there because the water is so very cold, but it gets pretty hot portaging under the sun - made it very satisfying to jump into the river once we'd gotten back onto the boats and carried on downstream. That evening Mum once again joined in for TEA, dinner, and fun times. It was nice, all the kids started calling her Mom and kept chatting her up very sweetly. I felt proud of myself setting a good example to 13 year olds that Parents Aren't Always Completely Embarassing.

On our last rafting day, we hit our biggest rapids. It was scary, but good times were had by all, and no one flipped out of our raft. We heard some good gossip from the kids in our boat, sang more songs, bodysurfed a bunch of rapids, and Mom watched me jump 7 metres off a boulder into the river. I was super duper scared, but somehow managed to jump in the end, along with all the kids from our camp. Woot woot! After our final set of rapids, we had a great lunch on the beach and headed back to camp. The afternoon was - for lack of a apter word - delightful. The camp guides let the kids go out swimming and kayaking on the river and Mum and I joined them. She got a circle-floaty thingy and a paddle and paddled around happily. One of my kids wanted to kayak battle me, so we lined up our inflatable kayaks and tried to push each other off. I was mostly successful, but ended up in the water a few times anyways. The sun went behind the mountains around 4:00, and then we all showered off, had TEA and pakoras, and sat under the awnings having a very relaxed time while the kids played a very sandy game of British bulldog, a sandy game game of Texas hold 'em, a very sandy game of bury people in the sand, followed by a sandy chemistry lab with river water, and a super sandy series of beach debates, and a not sandy at all dinner, and a warm and happy and sandy campfire replete with smores and GET THIS a kerosene-gulping, fire-breathing and fire-juggling performance (no, not by my kids) by our camp guide, Phil.

The next day, we rolled out of our tents at 6:00 and were in buses by 7:30. The TWELVE HOUR trip to Delhi was actually pretty fun and they only started singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall during the final hour, once we'd already reached the city limits.

Three cheers for Mum! Mum is the best! She is better than the rest! Because she comes to stay and take care of us and go river rafting and she doesn't have tuberculosis!

[On The Road-8-November-2009]

trivia night: can you answer my awesome questions?

My family totally bagged out and failed me on my Tom-Sawyerish move to get them to come up with trivia questions for our school's annual trivia night (which I organized). Pooh pooh to them. Let's see how many of the questions that I slaved over they can answer...

First up, the literature category! Caillebault chocolates for the most correct answers sent to me at my hotmail address (my first name underscore my last initial at hotmail dot com).

LITERATURE

In which Jane Austen novel does Lady Catherine de Burgh say, “There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

Two Indian-born authors have won Nobel Prizes for Literature. Who are they?

Name one of the top-selling books in the United States in 2008. Hint: Three of them were written by the same person.

Which advice-offering chapter of the Old Testament suggests “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those who have heavy hearts.” (Chapter only, not verse)

In which Shakespeare play does the love-sick Count Orsino say “If music is the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.”

Which American novel, published in 1852, was the first to sell a million copies?

The world's largest book has 1460 pages. Each page is 3 ½ feet wide, 5 feet tall, 5 inches thick, and is made of marble. In which country is this sacred Buddhist text located?

Which troubled, usually blonde but occasionally bald, American pop princess said, “Every night, I have to read a book, so that my mind will stop thinking about the things I stress about.”

What is the name of Euclid's famous text on geometry, which was first set in type in 1482 and is second only to the Bible in number of editions published?

Name the book that was recently made into a film starring Johnny Depp, and which opened with the line: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold”?

Game on!

[Delhi-3-October-2009]

things SYSS said

Me: Who is your friend at school?

SY: Raghav!

Me: What do you like about him?

SY: His nose!

Later that evening...

SY: Mum, when we die we will look like Sponge Bob, right?

Me: We'll look like yellow sponges?

SY: No!

Me: Oh, you mean the episode where he sprayed himself with invisible spray and turned invisible?

SY: Yes! We will be invisible and go somewhere else!

[Seung Yi-23-August-2009]

FRRO spa day

We are lucky. We spend very little time in our lives dealing with soul-crushing absurdist beaurocratic minutiae. We also don't spend time doing things like, say, waiting in a crush of thousands to wait for handouts of UN-distributed bags of rice. We haven't had to come to a new country as refugees with nothing but the clothes on our backs, make new names for ourselves, and rebuild our lives from the ground up. Well, ok, Phet had to do that. But it was, like, a really long time ago. For the most part, we live a pretty sweet life.

But once, every year, we are faced with a dreaded trip to the FRRO office.

[A short-ish sidenote here, we also regularly enjoy the thrill of applying for a new Indian visa before we get to go to the FRRO office. This year we flew with the kids to Ottawa to get our visas done two days after Phet had gotten in from Delhi. We would've, of course, preferred to have stayed and relaxed in Toronto, but we chose to go to Ottawa. Hm, why? Well, there was that first time we applied for visas. Went to the annonymous building at Sherbourne and Yonge, had to take a weeks-old Seung Yi and a none-too-happy Ji Hong along with us, had to wait endlessly, only to be told that - among other things - they weren't issuing visas for teachers anymore. I was pretty worried about that. We decided to try our luck anyways and left the passports there, but then two weeks later once we were already up in the countryside some random employee left a message for us in Toronto that one of our passports didn't have a long enough validity and therefore they were returning ALL the passports to us. Which left us in the unenviable position of having to race back to Toronto, race to Ottawa where we figured we could get the visas done faster, and then hope for the best that our jobs and new lives would be ok and not totally down the tubes. When we went to Ottawa that time, the embassy was still accepting applications. They had a neat little office, friendly and helpful employees, and a one-week turn-around time for most visas. (This, compared to the Toronto office's posted schedule of 4 to 7 weeks!). They even Fed Exed our passports back to us so that we didn't have to pick them up. So you can see why we like Ottawa. Oh, and they DO issue teacher's visas. So there.

This summer, I was really anxious about getting the new visas and we decided to go to Ottawa again. Intriguingly, the embassy has now - get this - outsourced their visa application operations. So, we went to a really truly annonymous building on Bank street across from the Shwarma King and found the correct office just down the hall from a very retro dentist's office. (Not cool, tongue-in-cheek - ha - retro, more like haven't-redecorated-since-1962-retro). We went in. There were two other applicants waiting. We took a number. We looked around and checked out the help desk and - double get this - all of the employees were French African Canadians. Like, ALL the employees. Even the security guard. We wondered how things went with all the Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil speaking applicants... Still and all, they were pretty helpful, sent in our applications, and we got our visas within a week once again. Three cheers for Ottawa. And now, back to FRRO...]

The Foreign Residents Registry Office is located somewhere near the Hyatt hotel in Delhi. It's got a scrubbly and large parking lot, no snack vendors (there are a few drink sellers located outside the office property, though, but they're pretty sketchy), a few beggars, and lots of traffic too-ing and fro-ing. When you want to get into the office, you have to line up outside. We always seem to luck into having to do this during the summer season. It seems to help to go early. Everyone lines up about an hour before the office opens. Truly, all manner of people end up mulling and waiting alongside you. There are Afghan grannies, Nepali shopgirls, African embassy types, Italian ne'er-do-wells, British NGOers, Pakistani dudes, passels of kids of all shape, age, and volume-level, and of course plenty of unhappy babies. I had heard from my colleagues that things were going pretty well at the office lately. Some mentioned a short hour-long wait, others whispered unheard of times like TEN MINUTES. I therefore made the unbelievable error of not bringing any food with me to get through the day's excitement. Very unwise.

We started off standing in the outside line. You have to line up, they look at your ID card, and you sign yourself in in a lined-paper lab notebook type thing with the security guard. Then, you enter line hell. Actually, we enter waiting hell and Phet's assistant from the office enters line hell. In line hell, every applicant has to go over all their documents with ONE GUY. So, there's a line up of about 60 odd people, which trickles like sand through a very, very tight hourglass past this guy's desk. We left the house at 9 am, we left Phet's office at 9:35 am, we got to FRRO at about 9:50 am, we were in line hell by 10:00 am, and it was 12:15 before we got to the front of line hell. You have to visualize this scene, though, to really get the bigger picture. Ok, so 60+ people in a single file line-up entering a rectangular room with a very, very low ceiling. The paper guy's desk is in the middle of the rectangle. The "Afghan Line up" is off to the right. (And if the normal line is line hell, then their line is some deeper, ever-more-torturous seventh circle of specifically Afghani-Indian hell. If that's possible). The center of the room is filled with rows of chairs with suspect murky plaid upholstery. Ranging around the walls of the room are the various numbered desks that one must pass through (though not in numberic order of course) in one's quest for the correct paperwork - only accessible, naturally, after having gotten the correct approval from desk guy first. Now, mind you, many of the numbered desks have moments of not-so-business. After all, line hell holds everyone up for agonizing hours because ONLY. ONE. GUY. IS. THERE.

We got through desk guy at 12:15 and Phet's helper made his way over to, let's say, desk 3. At desk 3, he waited supplicantly until he was able to pass our documents over to the official residing behind the desk. After several fraught exchanges, it became clear that we were - for the second time in our history of going to FRRO, if you can believe it - not going to get through even the first of the desks. Apparently, there were two problems: 1. we didn't have the original residency papers that we ought to have kept in our passports (and which, ok, we did know were missing, but I thought we could just tell them that they were stolen and carry on with things since we had an exact photocopy of the papers) and 2. our lease was not printed on the correct type of paper. We were therefore ejected from the desk and told not to return until we had fixed these problems.

I was not happy. I hadn't eaten since 6:30, I had been expecting to get back to school in time for my second class, and I was really grumpy because all my colleagues had been getting whisked through in no time flat. I think that in their case, the paperwork is always perfect before they go, and then the helpers wait in line hell and only call them when they are at the paper guy's desk, and then they flit in through the desks and leave quickly. That, or some palms are getting very worthwhile-y greased. The end result of me being grumpy and Phet having had to deal with beaurocratic absurdity was we got quietly mad at each other and didn't talk till the end of the day. The good news was that we didn't beat our children in public after our rejection from desk 3.

John dropped the kids and I back at home for some much-needed sustenance and Phet and his helper raced over to the local police station to get our papers signed and checked and inspected by the correct officials. He had to tell them we'd had our papers stolen the previous day. The policemen - smartly - were curious, then, why our photocopies were so out of date, but Phet somehow managed to get them to sign nonetheless. Then, John came back to get us, we had a quick stop at the office for some new photocopies, and we rushed back to FRRO. The FRRO office, of course, closes at 3:00 and will not admit any new applicants after that time. We hustled through the doors at 2:52 and jostled our way into the eyeline of the desk 3 officer. Phet's helper had to wait there for, oh, another 20 minutes while the desk officer took his tea. AT HIS DESK. Right in front of all the applicants. Sipping his tea. Not looking at any papers. Not adjourning to, say, a TEA ROOM or the OUTDOORS. Just...sitting...at his desk. After tea time he deigned to assist people again, and finally after much flurrying and fussing our papers were accepted. I whiled away the time letting Ji put my fingers in knots and watching all the crazy other people in the office. The one group that really caught my attention was an American family. The Dad was in line hell and the mom had four kids with her. She was dressed in a sari and all the kids were dressed in Indian-style clothes. She had a 6 year old boy, a 4 year old girl, a 2 year old girl, and a month old baby in her arms. She was chatting with a British mom nearby and she explained that the whole family was staying at an ashram in Delhi, as they do for several months as often as possible, and that her 7 year old and 8 year old were left back at the ashram to take care of themselves. Must note here that her kids were without doubt the best behaved American kids I've met in a horrible office. Ever. Though they were a little rash-y around the elbows.

After desk 3, our helper moved on to desk 2, and then after desk 2 he was finally allowed to go to the cashier's desk. I'd seen at least five people get turned away from the cash desk for not having correct change. Amazing, a cash desk with no float money. Who knew? Then, after the cash desk it was back into the other nook of the rectangle to go to the final grand official who made everything spinky spanky and stamped and allowed us to carry on along on our happy way.

We got home at 5:00 pm.

[Delhi-22-August-2009]

monsoon hits late; calgary cucumbers freeze

Here in Delhi we are enjoying the much-awaited arrival of the monsoon rains. There has been a terrible drought this year and farming reports have seen an 80%+ drop in the regular amount of rain. Apparently, farmers have planted more than 3 crops in some cases and each time the paddy rice just blows away. It's likely that this rain is still going to be too little too late, but it's very pleasant for us. It is still super duper hot. I was waiting for Ji outside his class (ie not in the air con school area; out on the grass) for five minutes the other day and by the time he came out I was utterly drenched with sweat. This was on a day just before another big rainfall, and the humidity levels and temperature were astounding. It's still not as bad as Thailand, though, where it would be hot and humid year-round. I actually quite like Delhi so long as I have an air con available. It's wonderful once you get to October and stays pleasant until the end of March. Kind of the opposite of Canada, really.

Speaking of Canada, I had a lovely chat with Grampa Paul this morning. He's well and was telling me that Cecylia's cucumbers all froze in a recent frost. Now Calgary really is truly topsy turvy. We were there, what, two and a half weeks ago and it was 95' and now it's below zero. Psycho!

Seung Yi just wandered in to ask for a cuppa tea. She's wearing this adorable little tank top that she CUT INTO WITH SCISSORS this morning. She was standing by the door, holding her shirt, flaunting a smirky smile and saying "Mama, no look at my shirt" when I defied her and looked right at her shirt. Two slices, right in the middle. Naughty! But still terribly cute. She and Laree are doing well at school although they both almost got sent home for not doing their homework. I can't keep track of what we're supposed to keep and what we're supposed to send back. Hallelujia for Ji's school, where they've made a decision to have no homework at the elementary level, and instead have parents encourage the kids to read for fun. Meanwhile, Seung Yi gets worksheets like, "print out a painting from Delhi's Museum of Modern Art and paste it onto the square below and then draw a line connecting the map of Delhi with the picture of the Museum." Dude, half the kids in the class aren't even toilet trained! They got in trouble cause "they" didn't do "their" homework for Independence Day: cut out a 2" in diameter circle and write a patriotic message on it. NOT. TOILET. TRAINED!

Ji's good; his best friend had to move up to Grade 3, but he's got a new buddy and seems pretty happy. He tells me one of the girls has a crush on him, and I think she's adorable, so I'm fine with that. We love his teacher. He's joining Tae Kwon Do and Crafts with Recycled Materials for his after school activities, and he did not want to do Little League this year. We let him escape from that (which we really like cause we get to watch games and hang out and enjoy the field with Seung Yi) so long as he agreed to do soccer in the spring, which Phet thinks he'll coach again. Great line from Phet's coaching career last year when he was trying to whip some kids into shape - attention shape, not physical shape, that is...

Kid: Ji, does your Dad beat you?

Ha! Anyways, Ji's also arranged for his first sleepover with his buddy who moved up to gr 3 who will come and spend next Friday night with us, which is great.

Things at school are good and busy of course as always. We had auditions for the play this week and had our casting meeting on Friday. We had 66 kids try out and have a great cast and dance crew and about twelve hundred other kids who want to help out with crew etc. It's going to be a real spectacular-spectacular for sure. Must run and get ready for school tomorrow.

[Delhi-16-August-2009]

35

It's official: I'm 35! Happy birthday, myself. The best birthday moment (of which, admittedly, there weren't many due to jet lag) was with Seung Yi.

Seung Yi: Mum, I make you da tate!

Me: You made me a cake? How sweet!

Seung Yi: Eat it.

Me: [Looking at the bowl filled with "cake"] Is that two olives smushed up with a pickle?

Seung Yi: Yes! It is tate. For your birthday. I love you Mum!

I ate it, and it was probably the best birthday cake ever. I daresay Emma would've enjoyed it too, though she might've wanted the cake rolled up in a slice of salami.

Currently enjoying a lazy Saturday morning with the fam. The gardener, Mala-ji, is outside sweeping up errant leaves. Ji is reading in his pajamas. Seung Yi is running around in her underwear with bed head filling up a knapsack with important items like toothpaste. Phet has a bunch of barettes in his hair and he's lying down puttering around on his new laptop. We just listened to "7" by Prince at volume a million. Great lines: "With their intellect...and their savoir faire..." How many pop stars today use the word savoir faire in their lyrics? Not too damn many. My recent most-hated and super catchy lyric is one that goes "This used to be a fun house, but now it's full of evil clowns." What the falafel? Isn't a fun house generally filled with evil clowns? I thought that was the whole idea. And actually saying "EVIL CLOWNS"? Can't songwriters come up with something even vaguely enigmatic? Whither the obscure poet of the pop song?

I'm back at work, happily, and up to my eyeballs in work. We're hosting a robotics competition for 200 kids from around India in 2 weeks, then I'm organizing the school's annual Trivia Night, while concurrently we're in rehearsal for our play, which goes up at the end of October and which will be an insane epic of mad proportions. So, you know, the usual. And of course the whole "teaching" thing that I do full time. Insanity! But good insanity.

The trip back to Delhi was remarkably good. We flew out of Calgary which was GREAT. The lineups in Toronto inevitably suck and in Calgary we were the only people in line, and we were helped by a very lovely Air Canada clerk who checked us in super pleasantly. Calgary has nice little play areas for kids at their gates, which is always a bonus. Although the flight to Frankfurt was full, it was just fine. We had 2 bulkhead seats and 2 seats just behind those. The kids watched a few shows, ate, and slept around midnight. I got enough sleep to see me through for the rest of the trip, and when we got off in Frankfurt we were doing just fine. I am thrilled to report that the Frankfurt airport has been upgraded significantly. In the past they had horrible gates that never (like, seriously, NEVER) had enough seats for the number of people going on the plane, and now they've expanded and not only was the gate spacious enough, but there was also a special business class gate right above where we were all able to go with Phet's gold air canada card. Previously, they'd only let him have one guest but this time we all went in and ate a bunch of fantastic salami sandwiches and pretzel buns and mocchacinnos and muesli yogurt and stuffed mini bags of gummis into our carry-ons for later. The flight itself was delayed by a door problem and I was sure we were going to be ejected and put on a later flight, but the handy dandy German crew sorted it all out with the help of some burly engineer types who drove up to the plane in golf carts, and then we were off. Again, completely full flight, but it turned out just fine. The flight attendants went out of their way to seat families and even just travel mates together and kept everything working smoothly. Clean bathrooms, decent food, really about all you can ask for from an economy flight. They have the sucky shared movie screens, but that's actually not so bad for the second leg of a journey because it forces you to go to sleep. Or to was the latests Shah Rukh Khan film in which he plays a normal office worker dude with a mustache who marries a beautiful girl whose fiance has been killed in a bus crash and her Dad wants her to be married before he dies and so SRK marries her but she's so sad and so he invents an alternate personality, a young, funny, flirtatious dude (with NO moustache) who courts her in her dance class. Pretty good, actually.

[On The Roadish-9-August-2009]

pittsburgh, P.A.

It's 5:13 pm on a lovely, sunny afternoon here in Pittsburgh, home of the winners of the Stanley Cup (and I think also of the winners of the Football Cup whatever that's called, and also interestingly enough also home of the Pittsburgh Passions, the all-women's football team that won last year's US National Football Cup For Ladies or whatever that's called). It's a pretty winning town.

I flew down here on Sunday for a week of training on - get this! - robotics and programming. In addition to learning all kinds of good stuff about robots and programming, I have also learned more about - double get this! - math. I know, I know, no one is more shocked than me. But I think I may actually now remember how to calculate circumference and possibly even how to cross multiply. For many of you that may be easy peasy lemon squeezy, but I have had a long and illustrious career as a very serious and dedicated math avoider. I've sort of treated anything vaguely math related like an evil genius enemy, one that can be best dealt with not by actually grappling and fighting with it, but rather by simply ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist. I think I may have turned a teeny tiny corner, say more like just a minor angle in the wall, and I might now be comfortable with some math concepts up to about a grade 5 level. Maybe.

On the really, really good side I am now oh-so-much-more confident about my ability to program the robots we're using. I've always managed to fly by the seat of my pants in class but now I think I may be able to spend less time pretending to know what I'm talking about while really getting the kids to figure everything out for themselves, and now I'll be able to know exactly what I'm talking about but still force the kids to figure everything out for themselves. But now at least I'll be able to know how and why they get the solutions they come up with. Very pleasantly, the class started right at the very beginning of the concepts we work with, and then worked up to just opening up and exploring all kinds of new things that I'd been very curious about but had never had the time to figure out, and that were also things that aren't that easy to figure out by yourself. I am 100% satisfied with the whole thing and I'm very happy that I've done it. It's going to make next year's classes breeze along delightfully.

I have seen a very limited amount of Pittsburgh, but I've liked what I've seen. Phet and I were here once before when we took the bus from Toronto to Raleigh, and I concur with myself about my observations at that time: very cool downtown with old-school skyscrapers (like, oooold school, not 1970s old school) that's a little bit skeevy and underpopulated surrounded by very nice outlying areas. I took the very-handy public bus from the airport through downtown and out to my hotel near Carnegie Mellon for the exceedingly reasonable price of 2.60$ and its route went right along the riverside, past the arena district, through downtown, past the really creepy smashed-up houses area, and then out to Oakland which is where I'm staying, passing by University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, and Carnegie Mellon as well. That was pretty much the extent of my tour of the city. The rest of the time I've been hanging out in Shadyside, which is a pleasant residential neighbourhood, and have been enjoying my one week of child-free living which has as usual boiled down to me working and reading like a freak. Thank heavens I have children and a husband and a family because otherwise I'd be like a cat lady but with books. I'd sleep with my books, I'd let my books up on the table for all meals, I'd let my books pile up in corners of every room, I'd have books heaped up on every surface, and I'd turn into a complete weirdo cause I'd never talk to anyone, I'd just read books and then in those very few moments when I couldn't read (I guess only in the shower or when involved in a cooking enterprise that required two hands which would I'd be really unlikely to undertake if I was only cooking for myself) I'd probably talk to myself in my own brain and debate which book I was going to read next. Freak!

I'm very excited to be seeing Seung Yi and Ji tomorrow. Mum sent emails with photos of the two of them and they are so beautiful. Seung Yi suddenly looks so grown up and adult in her photos, not a little baby at all any more. Also can't wait to see Em and Adam's house with actual stuff in it. It's like living the dream of being in an HGTV home makeover show!

[On The Road-26-June-2009]

things i learned from the haunted house industry

1. Some fake blood tastes bad. Some tastes like mint. You should spend the extra money to get the good stuff.

2. Good water-based makeup is incredibly cool. Unlike normal greasy face-paints it goes on smooth, can be painted on like watercolours, doesn't smudge or drip, feels like absoutely nothing is on your face, and best of all it comes off with just water. No need for cream or vaseline or even makeup remover. See exhibit below, in which Emma and I are dressed as the Hindu goddess Dhumavati, who is basically an evil widow dressed in white clothes she has stolen from a corpse:

I'm especially proud of my scary mouth, which I first painted white and then made deep red bleed lines from the inside stretching out. I hate my stupid eyebrows, but I couldn't fix them once I'd done the first stroke. Oh well.

3. You CAN fake pee-pee smell! We went to this awesome booth at the trade show where the guy was selling fake smell pellets that haunted housers use to make certain rooms smell certain ways. I was interested in trying out the pleasanter smells ("cotton candy", "freshly baked cookies", "ocean", etc) but Emma jumped right in and picked up the canister marked "urine". Unsurprisingly it smelled like nasty pee-pee. We stayed well away from evil scents like "vomit", "ashtray", and "just plain bad".

4. Pink glow in the dark makeup pops out first under blacklight. We went to a super cool makeup workshop and the artist taught us that the neon colours will pop out at different levels - pink looks closest to the eye, then orange, then yellow, and then the darker colors like blue and violet look like they're in the background. He painted a model's back, and then we all got to put on these amazing spectrum specs and holy crap, the models back had these 3D bubbles floating in front of it.

5. Massive headwounds can be simulated with latex or a stocking stuffed with cotton! The other workshops we went to was also great. We learned how to stick latex to faces and make it look like gaping zombie flesh, and the artist also taught us a cool trick: pull a stocking over your head, cut out a spot for one eye, then stuff cotton into the eye to form weird bulbous blobs around the face, and then just paint right over the stocking and skin to make a psychotic creature.

Can't wait for Halloween!

[On The Road-12-June-2009]

gaming rocks, haunters rule

It's 9:30 am on a lovely Sunday morning here in Columbus, Ohio. I like to keep mentioning where I am cause I'm so excited to be here. In Columbus, Ohio. It's like I can't say the name of the city without saying the name of the state too. Is that a freaky American thing? Like, are there really so many other competing Columbuses that you always have to identify the state too?

Great moment on the elevator on Friday... We step in with a crowd of video gamey type boys and ask them what the deal is with all their type being in Columbus, Ohio. Turns out there is a Major League Gaming Halo competition going on with a top prize of 40 000 bucks. I ask, "So, is it for the whole country?" and the kid replies, "No, just for the U.S."

Around here in the Arena District / Convention Centre district, then, there was a fascinating mix of creepy haunted house types, under-19 video gamers, and a generous sprinkling of wedding attendees. Wild bonanza!

On Friday Emma and I went to the first haunters event, the Friday Night Party at a nearby bar. There were plenty of people in costume and in character - most notably grossly offensive obese dancing dude and scrawny pseudo drag Granny with a walker and a permanent cigarette hanging from her lips. We sat down at the bar outside to kind of observe and, well, drink. Our bartender was really pregnant which was kind of weird. We ended up talking to a number of people and did some "investigative research" about the haunting industry. We made friends with folks from a haunt in Sheboygan (sp?), Michigan who were pretty cool, and had fun watching the Scare-oke singers inside the bar later. We stupidly drank a few tequilas after our few g & ts and then had to roll ourselves home. I had to stay up and watch some shows cause I was, uh, a little dizzy. When I woke up the next morning I had that brain-in-a-jar feeling. Like, my skull was the jar, it was full of liquid, and my brain was suspended in the liquid and didn't move at the right time when I turned my head. Our first makeup workshop was not a great deal of fun from that perspective but it was totally fascinating from an actually-learning-stuff perspective.

Ok, must run and pack. More about the conference to follow.

[On The Road-7-June-2009]

columbus! ohio!

We are currently kicking back at the Crowne Plaza here in Columbus, Ohio. Although being "at a conference" is sucking money out of my wallet like, I dunno, an elephant snuffling water out of a brackish pond or whatever, it's been fun so far. Em and I got up at the crack 'o dawn and it was cold cold cold in Toronto. Say, 8 degrees for the sake of argument. We got a cab with Dolly's husband driving and got to Pearson precisely on schedule (with not a moment to lose in Emma time and with about 2 hours to spare according to everyone else in the world). I stupidly checked my bag. Why stupidly? Well, after you go to all the trouble of checking yourself in and printing your own damn boarding pass, you then have to wait in line for them to put a sticker on your bag, after which you have to walk your bag all the way through the security check and then all the way through immigration. Um, why? And since we were flying on a turbo prop, everyone who had a carry on larger than purse size got to drop it off at the door of the plane anyhow. Oh well, should've followed Emma's example.

When we got to Columbus, we went and picked up our rental car, whoo hoo. Sounded like a sweet deal online - 13 bucks a day. But, ah, it adds up when they then attach random insurance fees and taxes and such...but excitingly it gave us the freedom to go check out Easton Mall and go shopping at the Container Store. Ooh, ahh. Easton Mall was fascinating. It was out in a pleasantly treed area and was a huuuuge mall that was made to look "townish". Like, with street names, and with all the stores opening onto streets, and with (get this!) metered street parking even though the entire area was surrounded by free lot parking. We went and checked out one alleyway, the "Northwest Passage" up close and discovered that there were many rules for visitors to Easton Mall, including the fact that groups of 4 or more are not allowed to congregate together. Tianannmen Square or suburban Ohio: you decide. We bought a bunch of totally random and AWESOME stuff at the Container Store, had lunch at the Istanbul Cafe, and then drove relatively successfully into downtown Columbus. We kind of accidentally and only briefly trespassed into the skeevy neighbourhood (clue: an explosion of random shoes on the street) (clue 2: the boarded up windows on all the houses facing the shoe explosion), and then got back on track on High Street (heh heh) and found our hotel which is within spitting distance of the big sports arena here, whoever may play there. We had to switch out of our first room because we were beside a bunch of yahoo boys shouting freaky video game control sequences at each other, and now we're in a nice quiet place on the 11th floor. We're off to check in at the Haunters Convention and either we stay there till the party at 7 or we're going to go check out a Target or some other shopping.

[On The Road-5-June-2009]

cheers canadian beaurocratic services; jeers me

[In the voice of Professor Farnsworth from Futurama] Good news, everybody! Fixed address is back online. And I'm a horse's ass!

After many months of struggle, I've finally gotten this site set up on my school-loaned laptop, which I drag along with me everywhere. This is good because a) dreamweaver (the program I update this with) stopped functioning on the Mac; b) the Mac was full and couldn't accept any more photos for months until we backed everything up on a massive external hard-drive; c) the Mac drives me crazy. So now I can update from the comfort of my own machine. Huzzah, huzzah.

I'm back in Toronto with Ji and Seung Yi and we're enjoying our traditional begining of our holiday: doing stupid beaurocratic business that always manages to gets screwed up somehow. I was vastly over-proud and due for a come-uppance today. I had all the papers ready to go to get Seung Yi's new passport and got to the passport office at 7:25, was ushered up the stairs 8th in line at 7:45, was issued a ticket number at 7:55, entered the office at 8:01, and GOT SERVED at 8:06. And found out that I had the wrong paper for Seung Yi's birth certificate. Somehow, despite having messed up the birth certificate once before, I managed to mess it up yet again and brought the Registrar's statement rather than the certificate. Curses. Had to go, yet again - seems like I make a run every visit back to Canada - to the birth certificate office and chuck another 65 bucks at the government coffers cause I am so stupid that I can't even keep track of my kids' birth certificates. I blame (casue, come on, I've got to blame someone or something!) the long form certificates. Those small card-sized ones are so much easier to keep track of than, like, a normal piece of paper. I hate the long form certificates. They're dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The good news, however, was that my trip to the birth certificate office ("Service Ontario" located at 777 Bay, in the basement of College Park) went like so: 10:34, arrived. 10:35 got number. 10:36 GOT SERVED. What the falafel? All I have to say to all Ontarians out there is: Thursday is the day to get stuff done, and morning is the time. Word.

I'm rushing to get this done cause I'm off on the first annual Niedzwiecki Sisters Weekend Away. Emma and I are headed to - get this - the Midwest Haunters Convention in Columbus, Ohio tomorrow. Awww yeah, an entire convention of folks who run haunted houses. There's a Friday night party, a Saturday night masquerade ball, all-day conferences on cool stuff like makeup, building foam prosthetics, using creepy audio, and more. Fascinating, especially with a buddy to join me.

[Toronto-4-June-2009]

family!

Just a quick post to tell you about my evening. First, my DAD made dinner. Mashed potatoes, crispy baked pork chops, and Auntie Shirley's famous anchovy and garlic green beans. So very, very good. It's now 8:00 pm and Ji is opening up a new blender that his Grampa bought while Seung Yi plays cards with her Gramma. I tell you, it doesn't get much better than this!

In other news around here, all's well at school. I've been busy but happily so. I'm particularly excited this week because I got news that I'll be joining the grade eight team again next year. I was on seven this year, and while the team was very kind and lovely, I missed the grade eights. We have a system whereby whichever team you're on, you're a kind of homeroom teacher for a group of kids in that grade. I've missed my bunch of grade eights this year, and I'm happy I'll get a new set next year. Not only that, but so long as our school trips go along as scheduled in the fall, I'll get to go rafting in Rishikesh again. And that, my friends, is good news.

Ji and Seung Yi are doing well. Ji had a tought time around February and was acting up at school, but he's gone through reform school and is now doing much better. Seung Yi is just a doll; she and Laree are finally really playing with each other rather than battling all the time. They are too cute for words -- often wearing matching outfits, with their hair fancifully combed into matching hairstyles. Their school year is coming to an end and they're going to be starting new classes in April. It's a big deal because they're going to go into separate classes. Their current teacher was saying that Seung Yi doesn't really play with any of the other kids, and Laree is always taking care of her -- drying her tears, fetching her shoes. They are therefore getting SEPARATED shortly. Send goodwill and emotional strength along to Seung Yi as she deals with this new challenge!

[Delhi-16-March-2009]

buying things

Shopping in India is amazing. Apart from Thums Up, admission to several historic Delhi sites, Time Out Delhi magazine and a copy of the Love Delhi guide, I hadn’t bought much of anything until today. The hardest part about shopping in India is that there is just so much incredible stuff. Here’s what I managed to acquire today:

- 2 kurtas
- 2 dupattas
- Fabric for 2 salwaar kameez (currently with the tailor getting stitched)
- 10 packs of hand-printed notecards
- 4 packs of little wee hand-printed gift tags
- 3 jars of Kashmir honey
- 1 copy of the Love Delhi guide (present for Thaba)
- Delhi – Jaipur return rail tickets

I share this list as a point of reference: it took longer to get the two train tickets than it did to get all of the other things combined. It took an hour. Maybe longer. Why does it take so long to buy train tickets in India? As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the great mysteries of our time. Tata Motors can create a car that’s going to sell for about $2,000 Cdn, but you can’ t just walk in to the station and buy tickets without investing an hour of your life.

First, you need to get a slip of paper and write down which train you want to take, the specific day, your name, circle your sex and list your age. Why does the Indian National Railway need to know how old I am? I suspect that somewhere there is a team of civil servants gathering important statistical data from these forms. Average age of the person traveling to Jaipur, average age of the person who takes the overnight train from Hyderabad to Chennai during the rainy season, seat preferences for ladies traveling alone, etc. Either that, or these forms are gathered, shipped someplace (Nagpur?) and never looked at again, though filed for years to come just in case someone might decide to mine them for important data.

Once you have this form, if you don’t know which train you need, the next step is to stand in line at the Enquiry wicket. There, a person will tell you when the trains run and if you can get a seat on the train you want. Right. This is good. Now, if you’re thinking that you could just buy your ticket right there, well, you’ve obviously never purchased a train ticket in India.

So what happens next? You must go to another wicket. Of course. Then you will stand in line for an ungodly amount of time. No less than 20 minutes, no maximum time. For me it was about an hour. Other people seemed to be getting tickets, things seemed to be happening in front of me but for about half an hour, the line didn’t seem to move at all. Eventually, an hour later, I made it to the ticket agent. Amazingly, I was able to get the tickets quite easily at that point. Thankfully, I’ll soon be on my way to Jaipur. The funny thing is that it wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d been told to go to another wicket. I’ve had this happen before.

One more interesting thing about the wickets. They have special ones. I was in the queue for the “Ladies” wicket. Next to it, there was another wicket for seniors (60+) and the handicapped. It was nice to see this special wicket for seniors and the handicapped. I liked the sign on the window that stated, “Handicapped and blind (self only).” I had a lot of time to think about it, but I’m still not sure how the blind are supposed to read this sign to know that they have to stand in line to buy their own tickets. Another great mystery.

Ah well, one hour is better than two and we still made it in time for Ji Hong’s soccer practice.

[On the road-16-March-2009]

holi mackanaw

Today is Holi – quite possibly the best holiday EVER. I’m not entirely sure of its provenance, but any holiday that involves massive water fights and throwing coloured powder at friends, family and perfect strangers is fine by me. In fact, Holi is right up there with Hallowe’en for holidays I love.

In honour of my visit, Thaba decided to host a Holi party. This takes me back to the old days, when Thaba and I would host truly EPIC parties in university. Yes, gentle reader, we ‘re getting ready to party like it’s 1993 at Clark Hall Pub. I don’t normally have my first G&T at 10 am, but hey, when in New Delhi…

A little bit after noon, Ji and I decide to venture out from beyond the walls and see what was happening in the neighbourhood. Knowing that it might be a bit of an adventure, we took before and after photos. We returned home about half an hour later, drenched and covered in day-glo powder. I guess on account of the fact we’re both foreigners, the neighbours were very kind in confirming that we were indeed playing Holi.

My favourite part of the expedition was a day-glo red Ji Hong saying, “Well, Auntie Anne, these holi colours would be all natural, wouldn’t they?” While there is a booming market in organic Holi colours, there was nothing natural about the stuff we were covered in from head to toe. My hair is a slightly darker blonde now with a decidedly pink undertone.

Naps were in order after that initial round Holi, which was really just a warm up for our own holiday party here at 97 Golf Links. If plenty of food (including the best samosas I’ve ever tasted) and four types of gin (in the city of Djinns, no less) doesn’t say PART-TAY to you, well, you probably aren’t friends with anyone associated with fixedaddress.com. But alas, I digress. Again…

Guests started to arrive at 3 pm and by 3:20 the festivities were in full swing. (No Indian Standard Time here.) Imagine thirty people, from little kids to adults - two to sixty, to be exact - running around like lunatics with water guns, buckets of water and packs of gulal (the aforementioned coloured powder). Think of Holi as a national water fight day, with rainbow special effects (courtesy of the gulal) and you have a good idea of just how RIDICULOUSLY fun Holi is. Hopefully, Thaba can post some photos. I’m okay with words, but that old adage about the picture being worth a thousand words is an understatement when it comes to Holi.
It is now just before 8 pm in Delhi and we’re all getting ready for bed. It was that kind of crazy good. A plan is now in the making to bring Holi to the countryside house this summer. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

[On the road-12-March-2009]

people

Not the magazine, but actual people. Here are a few observations about some of the people I’ve met along the way . Thankfully, with one notable exception – see the “Another Roadside Attraction” post - they’ve all kept their clothes on.

Margie. Thaba’s mom. She arrived last night from Toronto, just in time for our Holi party. Margie has a solid reputation as being someone you want at a party. Case in point: when Thaba and I told her colleague Elizabeth that Margie would be her for the Holi party, Elizabeth rather innocently asked what that meant.

The response, in unison was:

Thaba: “More Scotch!”
Anne: “Tequila shots!”

You get the idea. Needless to say, we’re thrilled she’s here.

Tiffany and Professor Hayashi. Yesterday, I was at the Red Fort. Amazing, even more amazing if one stops to think of HOW MUCH MORE OF IT THERE WAS before the Britishers (love that term) razed most of the city after the Mutiny of 1857. But I digress…

I stopped in the shade to relax and had the good fortune of meeting Tiffany and Professor Hayashi. This is one of the really nice things about traveling alone, people are more apt to stop and talk to you. Tiffany is a charming young Taiwanese-American from Houston who is studying in Mumbai and traveling in India on her own over the spring break. Admirable. Professor Hayashi hails from Tokyo (another city I love) and is a professor of economics at the prestigious Waseda University. He is touring India to see the Indian economy first hand. He tells his students that if they travel alone for one month outside of Japan, then they might (might!) have a chance at earning his respect. To say he is fascinating would be nothing short of a gross understatement. I spent a pleasant half hour in their company and can only hope that our paths will cross again some day.

In the midst of this conversation, we met The Family from Sohal. Admittedly, language kept us from really getting to know each other. Their thoughts on the new India? I’m afraid I’ll never know. What I do know is that Tiffany, Professor Hayashi and I will be forever immortalized in their photos from the Red Fort and that their small baby – immediately thrust in to my arms – may have a fear of blondes and abandonment for years to come. They were warm, friendly and I wish that I could have said more than hello and thank-you to them.
I mention The Family from Sohal because this posing for photos with Indian families isn’t unusual. This happened to me the last time I was here and it’s happened a few times since I arrived in Delhi. I like it. I’m also used to it from my time in Japan. Many Japanese schoolgirls have great photos of Kyoto with a giant gaijin (yours truly) in them. As much as I love entertaining these supermodel delusions, I know that I’m no match for the scenery in India or Japan.

Okay, so that I’m not a supermodel is hardly a surprise to anyone who knows me. Reasonably photogenic, yes. Supermodel, sadly not. What is surprising is how seemingly annoyed some foreigners are by these photo requests. To them, I can only say this: get over it. Hey, when you ran into that celebrity during TIFF, do you really think s/he didn’t mind you taking a photo with your cell phone? Believe me, the only reason they didn’t keep walking was that they didn’t want you blogging about what a jerk they were when you approached them. When you run into a group of tribal women in Rajasthan, or those cute little Hmong kids in Sapa, Vietnam, you’re fooling yourselves if you believe they really want a photo taken with you. Just in case you’re wondering, here’s what they’re really thinking: “Oh great, another bloody foreigner who won’t give us so much as 2 rupees but will parade these photos around as part of our their authentic travel experience.” Enough said. Pose and smile with everyone who asks - at the Red Fort or anywhere else.

Hiroshi Miyamoto. I didn’t actually meet Hiroshi, but I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. Hiroshi is originally from Japan, lives in Toronto now and is an accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was performing in a show called Mango Cherry Mix here in Delhi. I love this small world thing. And I think Hiroshi was pretty surprised to have one of Joanna DeSouza’s kathak students calling up to find out about tickets. Ji and I went to the show. Admittedly, I don’t really “get” modern dance, but it was a pleasure to watch Hiroshi and Navtej Johar perform.

Jamaan and Ishaan. I met these little charmers on Sunday when Thaba and I took Seung Yi to the park. They're my new fans, aged 5. We had a great chat since we all speak English. The best part of the conversation had to be lovely little Ishaan's parting words: "When you go back to Canada, be sure to tell everyone that you met a very cute little Indian boy." Seriously. Those were his exact words. Indeed I did.

[On the road-12-March-2009]

anne's first guest post

After years of Thaba saying that I should come to Delhi, I finally arrived on Saturday night. I would highly recommend the Pensione Niedzwiecki Sayo to anyone traveling through these parts. But I didn't really decide to post on how amazing the apartment is, how comfy the beds are or how wonderful it is to see Delhi courtesy of John the Driver. No, I wanted to share some thoughts on Delhi as this is my first trip back to India since I volunteered in Hyderabad twelve years ago.

I'd like to title this post: Another Roadside Attraction

Fortunately, I've spent enough time around Indian men to know that they aren't all depraved. (Yes, when my first post starts with a statement like this, you know it's going to be good.) In fact, if I had to generalize, let it be said from the outset that I'd be happy to go with charming and handsome. At the same time, I've been to a lot of different countries, but the only ones where I've ever been groped or grabbed in the street are India and Japan. Not looking to increase that count, but I have a new experiene to add to the depraved list, though I'm not even sure how to describe it...

You see, I decided to leave the lovely Golf Links enclave and walk about 1km along Lodi Road to visit Safdarjang's Tomb. It was the last great Mughal monument to be built and having a lot of interest in the Mughal courts, the architecture and because I just read an epic book about the Last Mughal Emporer, I thought it would be a good idea.

As a tall, blue-eyed, blonde, I am used to getting a lot of stares in Asia. I can handle that. It's not like anyone is going to mistake me for a local. I also don't mind being asked "my good name" or what country I am from. I appreciate the warmth and curiousity behind the questions. Admittedly, Indian folks look at me like I'm on crack when I ask them what country they are from, but I like how quick and proud they are to say where they are originally from in this amazing land and tell you a bit about it.

So... staring, the odd question. I kind of expect that. Tell me, am I being unreasonable to think it's a bit depraved for a man to stop his bicycle, pull his, uh, "equipment" from his pants and play with himself as I walk by? 'Cause that's what happened on the way to Safdarjang's tomb. It seemed a bit odd to me when I realized what was happening, depraved in fact, but maybe I'm just not that creative. I mean, I often ride my bike around Toronto, but I can tell you that it has never remotely crossed my mind that perhaps, you know, just to just spice up the trip, that roadside masturbation would be a good idea. Or is this something everyone does but no one talks about? My vote is still for depraved.

In case you're wondering how I reacted to this, let me tell you that I don't know much Hindi but I do know how to swear. I looked straight ahead, snarled "bechod" as I passed him and kept on walking.

One more thing about walking around in Delhi. I did feel it was a minor miracle that I managed to cross the street and not get run over in traffic. I felt like I was six years old, crossing the street by myself for the first time but with the knowledge there was no way in "H - E - double hockey sticks" that any of the vehicles were going to stop for anyone or anything.

There's a lot of it, but it's worth venturing out into it the traffic for the variety alone. There are an incredible number of Japanese imports - rare twelve years ago, now the norm. (India has been good to Toyota.) The traditional Ambassadors, autorickshaws, cycle rickshaws, bicycles, motobikes. In addition to people, you may also come across stray dogs (lots of stray dogs), wandering cattle or monkeys crossing the road. It's exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Like the roller coasters at Canada's Wonderland, but without federal safety standards. Much like at home, there are lines on the road, but here they are largely decorative. It's as if someone thought, "Hey these yellow and white lines LOOK great." Like modern art. Or something. For all the difference these straight lines make, they could just have enlisted Jackson Pollock to do his thing... but one thing you can say about India, whether it's the walk to Safdarjang's tomb, the traffic or the stray dogs, it's never boring.

[On the road-9-March-2009]

ji on youtube

Check out Ji's birthday present for Grampa on youtube: a mashed-up version of the Beastie Boys' eternally awesome "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)".

[Ji Hong-9-March-2009]

shanghai

(Collected emails from the trip to Shanghai, sorted from recenter to previouser, sorry you have to scroll down to start the story. Check out my awesome video slideshow of the trip on youtube!) Oh wait! Here's the second awesome video I made of the trip - this one is sort of the end-of-the-trip looking back kind of deal.

Well. All of our students arrived home safely and have been returned to their rightful owners. Their passports are no longer in my backpack, and with any luck they are all getting some well-deserved rest. While I'm relieved that they are at home with their families, I'm sad that the trip is over. It was a wonderful experience. Last night when the parents were picking up the kids at the unholy hour of 4:30 am, and I was telling them what fun we'd had, I realized that on the entire course of the trip I hadn't once had to reprimand a kid and hadn't had to deal with a single instance of bad behavior or poor choice-making. The ten students that we had the pleasure to travel with were unfailingly polite and were also supportive of each other. Despite the fact that the ISTA festival was very demanding, despite having to live with less sleep than they're used to, and despite having two teachers bugging them to jump at every command, the kids stayed the course enthusiastically. The artistic director for the festival said he'd never worked with a group with the same level of focus - and this is 120 students working together in Shanghai that he's talking about. Very impressive.

Our last days in Shanghai were busy. On the Saturday, the kids were preparing their final piece for the large group performance. Each group of about 20 students put together one section of what became a single, unified performance piece. We were very proud of our students in the show, and we were also very happy because a teacher

who had taught at AES and now works at SAS, joined us to see the students onstage. As soon as the show was over, the students were picked up by their host families. Some got to go out for fancy Italian food and then were later treated to foot massages, others ordered in pizza and watched some movies, and a couple got taken over to the Racquet Club. (We staff started off at the Racquet Club as well, then took "the party bus" downtown to the Glamour Bar and later headed over to Zapata's...speak to me in person for the details!)

On Sunday morning, we picked up all the kids from their homestays. Most of them were ready right on time. When we got to the pick-up spot for our two grade eight boys, however, they were nowhere to be seen. I called them up and their host Mum said, 'Oh, they're still packing'. The boys then had to endure getting yelled at by me, but I think it worked, because they somehow made it to the bus stop within about 4 minutes. Then, we took the bus out to the airport. Originally we were expected to stay at SAS all day with our kids, but Patricia and I had other ideas. We wanted to get the kids out into town to experience more of life in Shanghai, so we dropped the bags at the left luggage counter, changed some money, and went back into town on the Maglev train. The trip that had taken about an hour and a quarter took just ten minutes. We went so fast that we figure we're now younger than when we left Delhi. We hopped off the Maglev and onto the local metro. Boy, getting ten teenagers to get tickets, swipe the tickets in the right place, keep their tickets safe, and not get crushed by the turnstiles is a tough job. But somehow we did it, went two stops, and got off at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. The Museum was wonderful, though we didn't have quite enough time to explore it, but it was definitely worth visiting. Our old colleague joined us at the Museum, and then ever-so-kindly hosted us ALL at her apartment nearby for snacks, sodas, and then made the kids a beautiful home-cooked pasta dinner. The kids sat back and enjoyed a little Cartoon Network and actually polished off an entire plate full of fresh cut veggies (along with, of course, chips and nuts and dip and what have you). We were so happy that our friend had opened her home up to our motley crew, and it was so helpful for them to have a tiny bit of down time before leaving Shanghai.

What with all the fun we were a tiny bit late leaving, so the kids had to hustle to walk back to the Metro station and get back on the trains. Somehow, though, we did it and they even had the energy to compete in escalator races at the airport. Immigration went smoothly, everyone got an ice cream, we boarded the plane, and then we sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half. Fog, apparently, isn't just thick in Delhi! The kids were completely relaxed, though. No whining, complaining, or even annoying endless song-singing. Just hanging out and relaxing calmly. After take off, they ate and then fell asleep in little curled-up heaps. On arrival in Delhi they all looked like they'd had their eyeballs screwed in backwards, but they were happy to be home and so were we.

Getting to know the students better was a real treat. Our grade 6s were like the sweet younger siblings of the group. The girl is definitely cut out to be an accountant - or maybe a fashion designer. The boy was unfailingly good-spirited and it was so much fun to watch him in action: bargaining hard at the markets, break dancing on the stage at the student social, dissing the older kids very memorably. Our grade 7s were the warm fuzzy heart of the group. Their warm good spirits and hilarious observations and silly antics kept us in stitches. And our grade 8s - all suave nonchalance and coolness - were like secretly-nice older brothers and a sister who actually let us in on their jokes. One grade eight girl was willing to wear a fake foam dinosaur head through both Chinese and Indian immigration checks.

At the end of a drama festival, what more can you ask for than a kid looking 6 feet tall with a dinosaur head on, six passport checking guys laughing at the sight of her, and three maintenance fellows going "RAWWWRR!" as we passed by? Not much, I say. Not much.

***

So, how may you ask, is Shanghai? In short, grey and standard-lookingish  but very very liveable. Gorgeous downtown, nice parks, good shops, plenty  of things to do, decentish park downtown, pleasant people for the most  part, just very nice. And man, was the flight from Delhi ever good. It  makes the idea of going to Bangkok at three am seem very unpleasant. For  this one, we left school at 8:30, had the flight at the calm hour of 11:30  am, and then after a five hour flight we arrived in the evening in  Shanghai, just in time for some good dinner, and then bed. It was  wonderful and I would totally recommend it. The other cool thing is that  it's kind of like coming back to the motherland. Like, I know, not MY motherland, but THE motherland. Like, dudes: this is CHINA. The source  of all things Chinese. Like: my husband's family! And Chinese food!  And Chinese characters! And the Chinese zodiac! And chopsticks! And  great red and yellow banners! I've been to Hong Kong, shure, but this is the real d eal, my friends. It's cool to see Chinese grannies actually IN CHINA.  And gorgeous red-cheeked chubby kids swaddled in red velvet coats IN  CHINA. And ladies on the streets shucking the bad leaves off of bok choy  IN CHINA. It's all very cool.

The one thing that would make it even better would be if I could get a good bowl of noodles here IN CHINA but so  far that hasn't quite worked out. I've seen some shops, but one weird thing is that I haven't seen many stalls outside - there have been a few  shops and some good looking small restaurants with piping, steaming-hot  vats of broth, but I've been kind of in amenable traveller mode and  haven't wanted to make anyone else go into a weird little noodle shop.

Our motel has been...interesting. We are staying at the poetically names  MOTEL 168. And yes, my friends, it is located directly across from the  even more sweetly named motel, MOTEL 268. Now that's differentiation for  you, huh? Best of all? They're named after the price that it costs to  stay at them. And we're talking big places, with, like, the sinks and towels stamped "MOTEL 168". What happens, I wonder, when inflation grows and suddenly they want to become MOTEL 368 or 3680, but  all their sinks and towels are already branded?        

Negative points thus far have been pretty few and far between and pretty  much boil down to: men smoking in the lobby at 6:30 while breakfast is being served, and the fact that the sky is always grey. And there are  alot of seriously grim industrial areas. Aside from that, though, good  good good. The school here is unbelievable well equipped. We're mostly working in the performing arts centre and it is extraordinarily beautiful.  We're talking a stage kind of like a kid sibling to a very nice Broadway  theatre. Huge fly areas, massive wings, a gigantic carpentry shop, lights  out the wazoo, it's incredible. They also have a black box theatre that  looks like something out of Mad Max. Three storey box with a metal  gridded roof, lights everywhere, seating around, SO COOL. We are very  covetous and envious. VERY. Today I did a great dance workshop, if you can believe that. There are a few dancers who work with ISTA and our workshop leader was great - he did  this whole thing about 'learning to fly' ie, learn how to do jumps, leaps,  and lifts. It was really fun. I also joined in with the Wu Shu martial arts workshop and learned how to do crazy kicks over my head. Most of the  teachers don't really join in, they just take pictures, but I've found  that the workshops are the best part. It was just great.

This afternoon  there was also an excellent workshop on devising and developing stories  and monologues that was super fun. He started if off with this great  exercize that was to have everyone write a very exciting / fun / sad story  of their own, and then he got three people up and read one of their  stories. Then, the three at the front all had to pretend that the story  was theirs as they were interviewed by audience members. It was a lot of  fun - for the audience, I was totally involved because of course you're com  peting to see who can pick out the liars. Then, as the person up front,  you're like totally panicking to think of answers to everyone's questions  as they're asking them. It was great fun.        

The kids thus far have been very sweet and funny. They have been pretty  game about trying new stuff. When we arrived in Shanghai we did stop at  Burger King, but that was actually wonderful. I mean, coming from Delhi, Burger King is unique and unusual. The Shanghainese food I've tried has  been a little on the heavy and greasy side, but maybe that's because it's  been out at restaurants. I'm sure at home people have normal and nice goodies. Yesterday we went to Yuen Gardens and the kids were first squished, smushed, and squeezed by a trillion elbowy Chinese tourists, and  then they went nuts buying and bargaining for stuff. I put our best  bargainer to work at buying me some wigs and we got a bunch of wonderful,  really high quality ones for pennies a pop. It was the perfect snapshot  of the trip so far: 30 odd middle school kids jammed into a wig shop, all  of them snatching and grabbing at the wigs, trying them on, and my  bargainer standing in the middle of it all with his grumpy bargaining face  saying,  "No. You need to give me a BIGGER DISCOUNT." Very rewarding  trip, my friends.                   

***

Another fine day here in Shanghai!

We started off with grey skies and continued in that vein for the rest of  the day, but everyone's mood was sunny. We met up with the kids after breakfast and a bus trip to SAS. At the school, the kids told us that  they were all housed in mansions, and poor unlucky teachers we were still  back at Motel 168. Patricia and I are starting to look with envy at the luxurious Motel 268 directly across the road from us. In the morning, the  kids got into one big giant group and did some fun warm up exercizes.  After getting into gear, they broke into their ensembles and worked away  for the rest of the morning. At 11ish we all headed off to buses to go to  visit the Yuen Gardens. We were prepared to see something sort of quaint and pretty, and the Yuen Gardens are definitely quaint and pretty, but the  surrounding area is filled with a BILLION SWARMING PEOPLE. We somehow  stayed together and kept the kids safe despite old grannies and chubby  little kids elbowing us in the guts. The kids had a great time shopping and practiced their bargaining skills. Our wild and crazy kid entertained us all and of course the passersby with various antics including drinking two cokes at the same time, and then -  fun! - another two cokes right after that. "Wired" is too calm  a word to describe his mood. When we got back to the buses, we staged a  photo using our wonderful first aid kit's neck brace - with one intrepid student lying gamely under the front of the bus. On the way home the coke-drinking-kid entertained us by needing to pee REALLY badly. Hee hee. Back at school, the kids got into costume and  ran their show, to fine acclaim. They've all headed off to homestays, and  Patricia and I are bunking down for the night. Best regards from Shanghai.

***

Just a quick check in. Everyone is doing well. The kids were sent to their own rooms to bed by 11:00 last night, and we passed an uneventful evening. The desk clerk had somehow given me the room that had a fish-eye view of all the kids' rooms down the hall, and I am happy to report that I did not hear or see any doors opening after curfew. The kids were up at 8:00 and were showered and packed quickly. They had a buffet breakfast at the hotel, and the whole "cake for breakfast" concept was a big hit. We met up with the Dhaka group just after breakfast, and then spent the day touring with them. Shanghai is grey and chilly, but not as cold as we'd expected. The kids looked very cute in their winter hats. We drove downtown and then went up the Pearl Tower to check out the views. Afterwards, our very kind tourguide (the performing arts centre's tech director) took us to a great restaurant where we forced the kids to mingle and eat. They had a good time, and I am happy to report that nearly every one of them went up to get fresh fruit for dessert. After lunch, we had a very speedy 45 minute shopping spree. The girls bought sunglasses, bags, scarves, and trinkets, and the boys bought gifts and a hat. Patricia and I splurged on a huge pile of DVDs and some good toys. We headed out to SAS next, and HOLY SMOKES is their performing arts building beautiful. It's nicer than most professional theatres I've been in. Seriously amazing. The organizers are very well-organized indeed, and our kids were quickly briefed and handed over to their homestay partners. They all headed out with their partners, we had a meet-and-greet with the ISTA staff, and we're planning to head out to dinner with the other teachers staying at the awesome MOTEL 168. Tomorrow, the madness begins.

***         

We have all arrived safely in Shanghai and the kids are fine if just a teeny bit wired. The departure from Delhi was flawless. Hafeez my favourite driver drove my van (the fun one) and we made good time to the airport. We checked in smoothly, and our passport checking officer was actually jolly and joking with us. Once inside the terminal the kids stuffed themselves with cake and croissants from the coffee shop and then we waited a little over an hour to board. The flight was pleasant and uneventful. Many of the kids did - I am happy to report - actually do their homework. On arrival in Shanghai we changed our money, had a bathroom break, and were met on arrival by a nice lady and a nice man who tried to guide us to our bus. We'd been warned to feed the kids first, so we did just that and asked the guides to wait while we went to ------- OH YES, BURGER KING! Our wee grade 6 girl had a double cheeseburger, our kid whose Mom wrote "no fruits or vegetables" on his health sheet ordered 10 chicken wings, and between the other kids they polished off a huge amount of fries, ice creams, sundaes, onion rings, and chicken fingers. We made sure to take a commemorative photo, with all of us in our winter hats, of course, in front of the giant Burger King sign. Then, well-fed, we went to our bus.

The bus was great - big, clean, ready to go. The ride was....well, a ride for an hour on a bus full of middle schoolers. One kid entertained himself by writing Batman quotes in the fog on the window, while the girls serenaded us with a full count down from a hundred to no bottles of beer on the wall. Then, it was on to John Jacob Jinglehemer Schmidt and that crazy song about the five elves trying to get to heaven, and after an hour or so we finally reached the amazing MOTEL 168. The kids took pictures of the fake, plastic fruit decoratively arranged inside the floor tiling blocks made of glass while we registered every kid and their passport details and their DOB and their visa numbers and on and on until finally we had rooms for everyone. The kids are now in their rooms, chattering away, full of zinging Coke-fuelled
energy. The desk guy was utterly confused when I tried to get him to help me dial out to India, so this is it in terms of communications for today! Please tell parents their kids are in good hands.

[On The Road-18-February-2009]

hello brain!
wait...whose kids are those? where's my husband?

After a month and a half of pure insanity, I finally had a weekend to decompress and re-enter the universe. I kind of feel like the David-after-the-dentist kid-high-on-dental-drugs youtube video sent around by Aunt Katy. Like, is this real life? I feel funny.

December was an absolute haze of play mania. Coming back from holidays, still jet-lagged, we all started in on four day a week rehearsals. Mondays for main cast, Tuesdays for Dance Crew, Wednesdays for Tech, Fridays for full cast, and Saturday mornings for everyone. I mentioned in the previous post that it was crazy, but really it was CRAZY. I didn't really eat or sleep for the last two weeks of the show. Y'all know I am a very conscientious sleeper, and for me to be lying awake until 1 am thinking about stupid, stupid stuff like the colour of the lights on the front of the stage in the 24th scene is NOT GOOD. Ji Hong and Seung Yi existed as sort of blurs in my peripheral vision, smears of humankind that I could only focus on for brief moments before falling into non-sleep sleep.

The good news is that the play went incredibly well. We had 42 kids in the cast, and the kids did all the lighting, music, make-up, costuming, and stage crewing for the show. All the adults sat in the audience. OMG it was scary, but the fact that we did it that way made the audience very kind and patient with our scene changes and minor technical glitches. Along the way there were dramatic moments: the stage left crew kid suddenly didn't show up on Saturday, there was a power outage - luckily during the intermission, praise be to all the gods who were looking out for me, the cast nearly died of hunger during the first show until our kind Principal came backstage with goodies for them, etc. We had a great adults-who-were-involved party on the Friday night and then after the Saturday show we had a kids' cast party as well. It was all incredibly fun and entirely worthwhile and everyone who saw the show had great comments afterwards. But man, was I wiped out.

Then, two days after the show wrapped, I headed to Shanghai with ten kids and my colleague to attend a drama festival. I had attended a similar festival in Delhi the previous year, but getting to travel to CHINA made it much, much awesomer. My daily posts from the trip that I sent back to my admin will be in the next post.

Since coming back, I've been taking it pretty easy. I had a long weekend so I just mellowed out with the kids most of the time. I've been obsessive compulsively putting together two videos for the drama trip and have actually had a few minutes to catch up on my marking and to tidy up my classroom. Yesterday Phet got back from Canada at about 4 am. He fell asleep with all of us for the morning and then we all got up at 8 am and he piled up a heap of gifts for us. I got my first ipod - thanks, dear! - and better yet a big fat storage drive so that I can finally clean this machine up a little and be able to download some photos once again. Ji and Seung Yi got cute new clothes from Gramma, and jellies and mango gummies from Gu Pas. And then, the food! Many cans of anchovies and tubes of anchovy paste from Mum and Dad, 200 bucks worth of cheese from the Leslieville cheese shop, sacks of valentine cinnamon hearts and smarties, black licquorice, cans of pate from the aunts, and another 100 bucks worth of salami and prosciutto. YUM! Then, after lunch and a nap Phet had to leave at 5 pm to go to Columbo. Boo. The kids and I staved off the sorrow by going to play and the park and by enjoying what has got to be THE finest Delhi weather ever known. It has been truly spectacular here this week: pure, crisp blue skies, clear air, pleasant and cool breezes, warm sunny sunshine in the sun but not too hot, just beautiful. Pretty much like my favourite Canadian weather, which is warm summer days in Calgary. They're basically the same: something like 25' max, clear and fresh. So nice.

Ji has his buddy over today for a playdate - now that I'm aware of the universe around me once again, I can organize such things. It was so bad in December that I got an invitation for a birthday party for Ji via email, but I couldn't open the attachment, and then I totally forgot to ask the Mum for info, and then yesterday I was like, 'hey Ji, it sure seems like a long time since someone in your class had a birthday party', and he was like, 'Well, everyone else went to Alexander's birthday but I wasn't invited.' And so of course I said, 'Why weren't you invited? Oh...wait a minute, you WERE invited...' Bad Mom! Seung Yi, meanwhile, is doing very well. She and Laree have both had sort of congested coughs (not noses, just lungs) for a little while, but have been in fine spirits and have been really quite healthy this season. Laree had a bad hive-y reaction to something early this week, and I think it might've been strawberries. But she's fine now. I took Seung Yi to school for the first time in months today and it was so cute to watch her go in. They have this thing where the kids get dropped at the gate by family or nannies, and then there are teachers lined up strategically along the pathway to help herd the kids into their classes. I thought it was nice how they encouraged that kind of independence. Seung Yi brought me right into her class and then I just said a quick hello to the teacher and headed out - but still nice to see where she spends so much of her time. She and Laree are there from 9 - 12 now, so it's a pretty considerable chunk of her life, given that she still naps for part of the afternoon!

Seung Yi is just delicious - ruddy, wonderful, want-to-bite-them cheeks, and she seems to slowly be moving out of her awful whiny phase. She is learning to do new things on her own and yesterday showed me how she can take off and put on her own pajamas and how she can get up on the toilet and wipe her own bum after she pees. She talks about all kinds of stuff and is a very quick study. Ji has only to do something incredibly dangerous once and she'll instantly follow right behind him. She also notices so much around her - perhaps unlike my elder child. The other day we were out driving and a little girl was begging for money, and she said, 'That little girl no holding hands on the street.' I said, 'Well, she's asking for money.' Seung Yi asked, 'Where her family?' I said, 'I don't know, maybe they're busy asking for money too.' Seung Yi then said, 'I want to find her family,' and then engaged in a rather long discussion with me about why the girl had no money, what it means to be poor, and why some people are poor. She's a very observant and thoughtful kid. She and Laree are entering a sort of older-and-naughtier era at the moment. They ransacked the rangoli sand (this very colourful sand used to create patterns on the sidewalks or on the cement outside houses here) and made a HUGE mess of it the other week, and then more recently they WASHED Ji's itouch. The itouch was touch-and-go (ha) for a little while but now seems to be ok. Well done, Apple. Still, they're lots of fun, and they seem to be getting more like friends and less like SWORN ENEMIES these days.

[Delhi-16-February-2009]

directing a play

So. I decided to take on a couple of drama classes this year. And agreed to direct our school play.

That was back last spring. It's now almost this spring, and holy jehosephat has it ever been a trip and a half. Tonight, after our almost-dress-rehearsal I came back home, knocked back a couple of the drinks that make the countryside famous (I'll give you a clue: it starts with a G and ends with a T), Phet put Ji's iTouch on shuffle, and then we danced up a storm to everything from George Michael to the Violent Femmes, with some Beastie Boys and Ramones in the middle. It's been that kind of night, and THANK HEAVENS.

Our play goes up on Friday and then there's a second show on Saturday.

Some first timers might have taken the easy route. Some smart folks might've gone for simple and easy. Not me, no sir. We've gone knees deep in the mud, my friends. We've got - get this - FORTY TWO middle schoolers on stage. We have - no, really, I'm not kidding - TWENTY EIGHT scene changes. Cause, yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. We've got a pretty accurate set built that accurately represents Kerala and yes, we've got a MORE THAN THIRTY FOOT HIGH COCONUT TREE on stage that our poor carpenters built for us. We have everyone in the cast joining in for a MASSIVE Bollywood dance number. We cut a HOLE in the stage so our lead actor can "fall into a well". Insanity.

I've been planning and plotting the play since we were up at Don and Frances's this past summer. I came back to school, told my colleagues I was going to go with the play (Rice Boy, by Sunil Kuruvilla) and then spent the next couple of months tweaking it so it would work with a middle school audience. I RETYPED the entire play. That, oh that, was a treat and a half. But it helped to focus me on what needed to be done with the script. Then, we had our auditions and more than 60 kids came out. We spent a looong time discussing our final casting decisions, and then I spent the following month working with the kids on blocking, memorizing lines, knowing when their entrances were, and so on. The whole time, I've got to say, was a fantastic experience. I can't believe how much work I've done, but it was one hundred percent worthwhile. I've had a GREAT time. Sure, I'm delirious. But happily so.

When we got back from our winter vacation we went right into major rehearsals three or four days a week. Keep in mind: these are 11, 12, 13 year olds we're working with. A couple of 14 year olds maybe. And they're coming, like, every day after school. To work on A PLAY. These kids are INCREDIBLE. Sure, a couple of knuckleheads, but even them: they're there. At a play rehearsal on a Saturday morning. Crazy.

The past few weeks have been an insane blur of rehearsals, lighting problems, costume fittings, prop finding, coordinating, ticket selling, and general mayhem. I was directing but also did all the costumes, helped with the poster and program, did a lot of work with the lights, selected all the music, and also created a stellar playlist for before and after the show. Oh, and by the way, the yearbook met its first deadline last week, and I leave for Shanghai with 10 middle school kids on Tuesday. Not to say I am the greatest (yeah, I know I am, but that's not my point with this particular post...it just sort of goes without saying, right Mum? Dad? Em? Jake?) but I have had about 5 minutes a day to NOT think about the play.

All of that said, I am THRILLED about this show. I wish you were ALL here (sorry about the caps, I'm all hepped up on goofballs and adrenaline) to come and see the show. It is SO GOOD. So. Good. Not because of me, but these kids, and my colleagues, and the script.

Expect to have a grand showing of the video up at the countryside this summer. And free soundtracks for all my friends!

Wish you were here.

[Delhi-28-January-2009]

post from the north country

Back in the saddle here in Toronto. Only three days until we have to go back to Delhi and we've finally gotten settled into our Canadian lifestyle. Feeling humble without our driver and fancy car and back in our putt-putt black Suzuki and on the crusty-yet-still-beloved TTC. Feeling - to put it politely - rather, um, full shall we say from our vast ingestion of meat and treats. Feeling chilled to the point that we're all wearing double pairs of pants today. Mmm TTC, meat, and double pants. We must be in Toronto!

Always, always weird to travel around the world and leave one universe and re-enter another one. Always surprising. This time, even though I knew it would be cold when we arrived, I still couldn't help but just wear a thin jacket to exit the airport with Pheuy and Betsy and then was shocked at how actually truly COLD it was. This Canada, it's no Hyderabad Snow World. Fer shure. The flights to Canada were actually not so bad. I am now enjoying making totally obvious and banal statements about European countries. London this summer? Well, the food was crap and expensive but the transit system was top-notch. Flying with the German airline Lufthansa? Always on time, straightforwardly good service, absolutely zero sugar on the top, nice wide flat seats for large buttocks. (Air Canada flights to and from Europe? Bitter, large, and very tired flight attendants, superior in-flight entertainment, really quite tasty food and drinks). We were scheduled to leave Delhi at 3 am, so we put the kids and myself to bed and Phet puttered around until departure time when he woke us all up and we hauled our big bag of gifts and our smaller bags of inordinately large winter clothes into the car and then John drove us out to the airport.

The airport in Delhi has been renovated and is in many ways better than it used to be. The entrance area is easier to navigate, the check-in counters are more convenient, and the passport stamping dudes shuffle everyone through quite quickly. The bathrooms are much more spacious and always have a couple of ladies standing at the ready to go and clean things up (this, for the record, does NOT happen in Canada...people only wait to give you paper towels in Delhi and in that fancy restaurant in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Some things still suck: the business class lounge never has enough seats and the crazy Russians still sit around drinking beer in their undershirts at the gates. One of Ji's classmates, Aagam, was waiting with his folks and his elder brother who used to be my student, so Ji played with him for awhile, and then we all just kind of hunkered down to wait. Of course the flight was delayed, but only an hour, so that wasn't so bad. Two of my drama students were on our flight - funny to see middle school kids with their parents after being used to seeing them act insanely in class. They're always super well-behaved and calm and polite around their families. Or, if they're nearing the end of grade eight, they sometimes get that yecch-parents face at times.

The stop over in Frankfurt was stupid, of course. They only let one guest in with Phet to the business class lounge, so Seung Yi and I went to wander around and play on the moving sidewalks. That was fun, but the airport itself is still crappy. I had this really elaborate plan to post up "THIS AIRPORT IS HORRIBLE" posters in the bathrooms, but then I forgot to make the posters before leaving Delhi. I don't know about any of you readers out there, but when I'm angry about stuff, I stay up at night and lie in the dark composing virulent letters or I design really awesome payback posters. I find it very soothing. This summer, I had a whole pro-Big Box poster plan for "Leslieville". It went something like, "YES to BIG BOX STORES...long time east enders DO like baloney and Wal-Mart and crackheads and those restaurants that only serve beer to senior citizens on zippy wheelchairs with oxygen tanks on the back". The Anti-Frankfurt-Airport posters were supposed to have key points on them, chief of which was to be WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ENOUGH FREAKING CHAIRS? Indeed, when we got to our gate, everyone was stuffed in like so much thyme scented bread up a turkey's back end, half of the passengers milling around with nowhere to sit. The flight from Frankfurt to Toronto was just fine; very full but with the stop-and-start movies that I love. I watched Tropic Thunder and just about fell out of my seat when there was the line, "Guys, we're not even in Vietnam anymore. We might be in Myanmar. Or Lao!" followed by, "What the f**k is Lao?" Hyaw hyaw ha ha.

Arriving in Toronto was weird. It always is. The weather is weird. The wide open roads are weird. The lack of people sleeping under the underpasses and in the parks is weird. The way that everyone's clothes are really, really clean is weird. The beef is weird. The ability to breathe the air without coughing is weird. Feeling like a teenager - cause I'm doing stuff in the same places I used to do stuff when I was a teenager - is weird. Listening to people speak Spanish and Ethiopian is weird. Seeing Ethiopian words written on the sides of Ethiopian shops is really, really weird. Seeing our family, though, is great.

The first few days in town we spent getting over our jetlag and enjoying SNOWMAGEDDON. The very day after we flew in their was a HEEEYUUGE snowstorm that basically shut down Pearson airport. I don't know which gods were looking out for us, but whoever they were: thanks. On the snowiest day of the year, we took a cab up to Dad's school and went to visit him on his last day of classes. Seung Yi and Ji Hong ate their own weight in treats and had fun watching Wallace and Gromit with Grampa's students. Then, I figured we'd kick it Canadian style and we walked home the whole eight blocks to my folks' place. It was nuts. The snow was piling and pelting down, only Seung Yi had boots, and we couldn't see farther than two houses in front of us. Seung Yi naturally had no interest in walking, and so I had to grab her by the scruff of her incredibly slippery snowsuit (note to self: must send the angry 'where are the snowsuit handles?' letter to the snowsuit making consortium) and carry her most of the way. It's kind of like how people go on retreats to get away from their hectic lifestyles, or do Outward Bound to get in touch with their inner caveperson; I figure the eight block snow walk allowed me to experience - if just for a half hour - the incredibly cold and brutal life I would live if I were in Canada year round. Must admit, thought, that the exertion sure does make a hot cup of tea and a nice slab of beef taste good.

Shortly after snowmageddon melted, we drove up to Don and Frances' place for Boxmas Day. It was marvellous, as always. Phet did HIS Canadian parent thing and spent most of the day outside with Ji snowshoeing, snowballing, and fort-building. They both came in with frozen ankles and lovely rosy cheeks. I stayed inside and chatted and read magazines and the newspaper and a cook book. I kind of passed out after 9 due to the ongoing jetlag, and then got up with Dad the next morning as he started crepe preparations (creparations?). First, though, I had to have some of Dad's INSANELY delicious cheesecake from the previous evening. OMG. So. Good. The spring time relinquishment of carbs and fats that always follows our winter time trip to Canada is entirely worth it. I like to do my bit for that remaining part of me that needs to build up a nice layer of fat before hibernating. Speaking of that part of me, I realized that there are some really key skills that Ji lacks because he doesn't live in a country with really cold weather. He doesn't kick the snow off of his boots at the side of the house before coming in the door. He doesn't understand that thin and stretchy gloves won't be the best handcovers when making snowballs and playing outside for hours. He never remembers to zip up his jacket before he exits the house. Oh dear. Anyways, after the cheesecake it was onto crepemageddon: crepes, smoked salmon, cream cheese, mmm.

The crepe fest was followed, very soon afterwards, by a Randy-led meat fest. Mum, Seung Yi and I went home in one car (the Healthy Mobile, I like to call it) while Dad, Phet, Ji and Grampa Paul when in the van (the Meat Mobile). Dad took them first to Starky's marvellous eastern european mart, and then to some insane place that I think Ji referred to as the Royal Meat Palace. Phet came back clutching his gut after eating the one pound burger, and Dad kindly sent me a wee treat back from the take-out section: a "kaleidoscope-sized" (those are Dad's words) snack made up basically from a piece of schnitzel which had been rolled up, stuffed with a very tasty kind of garlicky cream cheese and then (of course!) deep fried. I had a few bites and then was so full I couldn't eat for the rest of the night.

Christmas eve showed up shortly thereafter and Dad put on a banquet fit for a Czar. Everything was delcious, but I have to admit that the really best thing was eating fried up, left over perogies and onions the next morning. (Uncle Pat sent around a joke the other day: an old Polish man is on his death bed...he's lying there, sure he's about to die, when he smells the wonderful aroma of perogies. Ah, he thinks, my wife is trying to keep me well by cooking, she is truly an angel. He crawls down the stairs, sees the perogies on the table, reaches up to take one, and his wife whacks his hand with a wooden spoon. "Those are for the funeral," she says.) The perogies were out of this world they were so good. It was also so wonderful to have Grampa there with us, and then on top of both of those marvellous things, EMMA had the day off and was there for Christmas morning. Hurrah! We'd also been lucky enough to see Jake not only at Christmase eve dinner, but he and Ryan also took Ji out for a day on the town and took him climbing on some very very scary and high pretend mountain climbing ranges. I'll try to post the pictures soon.

Christmas day was perfect. Seung Yi LOVES presents now and is happy about every single item she got. Whenever there was a present lull over the holidays, say she didn't get one for a day or something like that, she'd go around saying "Where my present?" Ji, as always, loved opening his gifts and his stocking and was thrilled with his gifts. I even stepped it up a notch and got him not only a book but also an address book! Red letter day for the Jimeister. In lieu of post-Christmas Boxmas day, we had an unfortunate few days of bad health. Mum had a massive flare-up of her arthritis and had to get some help from the kindly crew at East York General's festive emergency department. Apparently morphine's going to be high on her christmas list for Santa next year so she can get it from the comfort of her own stocking rather than through a drip next to a cranky, coughing, shouting Russian grampaw. Despite Mum's illness, the feasting continued unabated. We had some prime bowls of pho, insanely delicious grilled lamb, christmas shortbreads (thanks, Jake, Adam, Ryan, and Emma!), leftover chocolate mousse, many kinds of mouthwatering cheese, and naturally more beef.

Must run and nap. More soon.

[Toronto-29-December-2008]

a letter for gramma

[From Seung Yi]

SY: Where's the letter? I have it. In there, there.

TN: But let's send it to her on the computer.

SY: No, in my home. No, I send it for Damma. Yesterday I put special letter on the this this this.

TN: The computer?

SY: I will stick it!

TN: But I'm writing it right now. What should we tell Gramma?

SY: Where's Gramma? I want to see Gramma.

TN: Where is she?

SY: In my home.

TN: In your home? Where's your home?

SY: In Delhi.

TN: I don't think you're making any sense.

SY: I'm making no sense. [Ji walks by with a gingerbread man] Ooooh, I like it. Nice, nice nice. Where's Gramma now? Gramma now is in Toronto, dat side, Mummy.

TN: What do you think she's doing in Toronto?

SY: I want to sit.

TN: What are you going to do in Toronto?

SY: Brrrr! And mittens and tafff, and you wear tafff and your big mittens and I wear little mittens.

TN: But what will you do with Gramma?

SY: Tafff for Damma also. I will put the tafff for Damma. Damma want tafff because br, br br br. And my feet is cold there. And every...Miles house.

TN: What about Miles house?

SY: Big Miles house. Member I go to Miles house. I play there. Member I play da fire? Tary! (scary!). I'm all done letter for Damma.

[17-December-2008]

mummy, mummy, where's my mummy?

[Warning: caps ahead]

Boo, Mum has returned to Toronto and we are now grandparent-, mom-, and m.i.l.-less. Wah wah wah!

We had a marvellous time with Mum and really, what a treat it has been having first Emma come for such a long visit and then to have Mum come for nearly a month. We are very, very lucky to have the chance to hang out with them. If only they had more free time. Wait...Mum's retiring! How handy will that be? Apparently it should be SUPER handy. She's already agreed to come and babysit the first week of February when both Phet and I will be out of the country. If only it didn't get up to 44' celsius here, I'd kidnap her for good. Speaking of good, Mum got to fly home via the motherland. No, dummy, no Ireland...UKRAINE! How about them perogies? She got there before me OR Emma and we're the actual semi-eastern europeans. Apparently she was the only passenger in business class on the Kiev - Toronto leg and she was very well taken care of. Meanwhile we have to fly by stupid, rotten Frankfurt this winter. (I'm starting to think / hope that maybe since now I have such incredibly low expectations of Frankfurt that maybe it will seem slightly better in comparison. I just always remember being there when Ji was still little-ish and I think Seung Yi was a wee infant, and there weren't enough SEATS at the airport for all the passengers to sit down, and so we went to the horrible, awful, ugly, dirty McDonalds "play area" and I kind of deliriously propped my head up against a tube slide while Seung Yi lay in my arms and Ji got grimy from the never-wiped surfaces that sixty kids had already drooled on that morning. Oh, and on top of all that? Smoking is allowed in Frankfurt airport in "designated areas" which are totally UNseparated from the rest of the airport. Like, if you stand in one spot and smoke and blow smoke all over everyone else, there's NO PROBLEM. Frankfurt = Poopy).

While Mum was here we mostly took it easy. We made an effort to cook more at home, although Mum did just fine with food outside and even ate at the outdoor market, Dilli Haat. She had a crappy cold, very sore hands, and a headache on one occasion, but no double kidney infection so we scored the trip as a winner. Aside from the jaunt to Hyderabad, we stuck close to home. Mum made a couple of touristy forays with Ji, but our main outings were to go shopping. And we did great shopping! My closet is stuffed to the brim with christmas presents, yay. Mum went to Khan Market, Santushti, Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar, and many shops and handicraft fairs. We hit the great American Women's Association fair at our school, the German christmas fair, and also the International fair at the Ashok Hotel. The latter was definitely my favourite. I didn't actually buy any gift items - I was a little gifted out by that point, and the fair was really heavy on sparkly spangly stuff - but had the most awesome bowl of chicken pho there. I was walking around the stalls in the embassy-run section (opposite the spangly side) when I suddenly caught the scent of broth. It wafted over and I couldn't take a step in the direction I'd been headed, I had to go to the Vietnamese booth. Ooooooh, it was so good! It was real Hanoi-style pho, which I have never had outside of Hanoi. In Canada the pho is all southern style, and while southern style pho is certainly delicious, it just isn't the same, and the first pho I really came to love was Hanoi-style pho. It was so good that I actually got teary-eyed slurping it up. And it came with little side bowls of garlic marinated in vinegar. Ah, Hanoi pho.

Back when I was teaching in Hanoi I wrote textbooks for our tourism faculty and then I recorded the reading portions with Phet, Emma, and some friends. They still tease me to this day (yeah, I know, that's so unlike my family to tease someone about something for, like, more than ten years) about this one bit where I said, "I've had pho in Paris and pho in America and pho in Saigon, but nothing compares to pho in Hanoi."

It's getting late and Seung Yi is still yapping and yapping away to herself..."Dat funny! Oh my gosh! I'm bald. I'm Zuko. I fighting. Ha ha!" She is a very amusing child, that one. But she goes to sleep way to late.

In honour of Mum's safe departure, I'm putting up my top three favourite product packages here in Delhi. Two are from last year when Mum was in the hospital, and one is from my kitchen cupboard. I actually had one even favourite-er box, but it's gone now. It was also from the period of Mum's illness, and it was a big brown cardboard box on it and it was printed in huge block letters: LIFE SAVING DRUGS. I think Phet kept his stash in it for awhile. (Just kidding if you're reading this, Phet's boss!)

Exhibit 1: Woodward's Gripe Water
This just looks so very soothing and old fashioned. I love the paper packet around the bottle, and it really lets me know that there must be SOME alcohol in the product. I like the engraving-type picture of the happy baby on the top, and the fonts are all excellent. Plus, the gripe water smells amazing. Points off only for the snickety-snick sharp metal band near the cap that will cut your hands as soon as you try to open this up for a swig.

Exhibit 2:
"Solar" Active Dried Yeast packet. Nothing says homebaked cakes like a...OH MY GOD! Like a crazy Kung Fu actor in baker's drag from nineteen sixty eight! With some kind of massive graduation-style bling around his neck and a sparkly look in his eyes! That is gonna be some angel food cake with lemon chiffon icing, baby. "Best for baking"? You bet!

Exhibit 3:
And now, my all time favourite (after the LIFE SAVING DRUGS, of course), the Sat-Isabgol psyllium husk. Check this out. No seriously: check it out. In detail. Not only does it have a truly great colour scheme (honestly), it has the best layout of any package I've ever seen. It's called "telephone brand" psyllium, and check out the telephone on the front. Woah! It's like, I've had daily BMs since great-great-Grampaw George stepped in for tea after placing an order for his first Model-T. And the, the factory in the back with smoke a-sweeping from its chimneys. How many companies do you know that put their factory on the packaging? Not many I bet.

But really, the piece de resistance is not even a graphic at all. It's just two simple words. And here they are (this punctuation mark is for you, Adam):

Hm...I'm here, at the shop, at the pharmacy looking for something to help regulate my bowels, and I'm wondering what to buy...I look at the Metamucil...nah, too dull...I think about getting some of those new fangled, fancily-named laxative products, but they're not what I need...what I really want is...yes...this is it, here it is....PSYLLIUM HUSK! Score!

I think that all foods should come with an exclamation mark. It would make opening the fridge or cupboard so much more exciting. Enthusiasm previously set aside only for describing the actions of really awesome superheroes and supervillains now available for use on your groceries. Dairy aisle...YOGURT! MILK! CHEESE! Holy crap, I LOVE buying food. Down at the bulk barn...CORNSYRUP! BAKING POWDER! FLOUR! No kidding? Really? Flour? Yes, FLOUR!

Wicked.

[Delhi-10-December-2008]

hydera-not-so-great-but-really-not-so-bad

Thanks to the family and friends who wrote to find out how we were doing with the crisis happening in Mumbai. We are all fine but hearing about the situation there was of course very, very scary. Our friends at school and work are also safe, but there were a number of my students who reported really close calls. Several had family members who were supposed to be in the areas that were struck by the terrorists but happened to not be there at the time of the crisis. One student did have her father staying at the Taj on the night that it was attacked, but he managed to escape and got back to Delhi safely. I'm sure that the events will translate into much higher security at school and probably will impact on Phet's work, but all that will be long term. In the short term, just very scary and so awful for the people who were affected.

We were in Hyderabad during the attacks. We actually arrived at about 11 pm and we found it really weird that there were police check points all the way into town. We were sort of like, huh, Hyderabad is serious about security. It was strange.

The new airport in Hyderabad is AWESOME. I propose that rather than go into town, tourists should just stay out at the airport. It is set in a lovely countryside-ish landscape, there are rolling hills covered in beautifully arranged flower gardens, and the sky was briskly clear blue with big puffy clouds. I think they (ie the powers that be) should just shift a bunch of shops and a few hotels and a carefully selected collection of biryani restaurants out to the airport and then no one would ever have to actually go into the city if they were just touring. Hyderabad wasn't really that bad, but there just wasn't alot to write home about. It is a very busy and extremely sprawling city. It's the fifth biggest city in India, but also seemed to be the one with the least amount of character that I've seen. There were some neighbourhoods that were quite interesting and the sights to see were pleasant, but it was just that the city itself was so endless and without alot of distinction between areas. Still and all, we had a very pleasant visit and I had a wonderful time hanging out with my Mom (who is in town, yipee) and my kids and my husband.

On our first day in Hyderabad we went out with Phet's colleagues to do a little touring. We were pretty tired and that meant that we probably didn't make the very best use of our one sunny day, but we still did get around to check out both the Charminar and the big local museum. Here's the Chariminar, a four-minarretted tower that is the key landmark for Hyderabad:

It was busy around the Charminar but we weren't unpleasantly accosted by the touts around the site. I'm happy to report, also, that there were lovely white cauliflowers available for sale at a fruit and veg stand right at the foot of the tower. Too bad we couldn't put those in our luggage! Instead we went on to visit a pearl shop. Hyderabad is apparently known for its pearls, its biryani, and its relative tolerance towards boys who like boys. Pretty decent combination, really. The pearls, I have no idea why those are so common...Hyderabad is way far away from any ocean. I could google that and find out, I guess, but I am SUPERLAZY. At the pearl shop, everyone ended up buying the same necklace and pearl earring sets. I took Seung Yi out for a little walk and Phet almost bought me this massive string of pearls, but I forced him not to buy them -- not really to my taste, but to the great sadness of the shopkeeper. It was funny, the shopkeeper had only taken out the fancy jewellery box when Phet said he'd buy the big string of pearls, and then when I rejected them everyone else gave him back their little jewel bags and made him give them fancy boxes too. Hee hee hee.

In the afternoon, we all conked out and had deathly deep naps, except for Mum, who stayed awake and on alert. In the evening we took it easy and ate a big buffet dinner at our hotel. The hotel (as Mum notes below) was great. Excellent value for the money given the usual situation in India. Weirdly, hotels here tend to be very expensive and extremely packed. I used to work at the tourism faculty at Hanoi Open University and several of my colleagues taught hotel management. They would tell their kids to aim for something like 60% of the hotel rooms to be filled during the good times and around 30-40% to be full during the low season. Here in India, hotels are routinely full. Like, completely full. This in turn seems to have (duh) led to a corresponding lack of competition between hotels. You get decent enough rooms but you pay about three to twenty times as much for a room here than in South East Asia. The hotel we stayed in Hyderabad was about a hundred bucks a night and the rooms were great. Clean, nicely furnished, delightfully hot baths, TV with all the fun channels. In addition, with the daily room rate we got not only a free and massive buffet breakfast, but also a free and even more massive buffet dinner. Every day we could call room service for a free fruit plate and every day at 5:00 pm they brought around a free plate of baked goods for tea time. I pretty much spent my entire day scarfing down a variety of delicious carbs. Croissants and iddlies for breakfast, biryani for lunch, naan and papad and more biryani (with a side of rasmali) for dinner. To paraphrase the Beastie Boys, my pants are tight and that's ok.

[The whole time we were in Hyderabad I kept thinking about how Anne had volunteered at an orphanage there back when I was at Guelph, and especially I kept thinking about how I drunk dialled her one stupid night and I think I finally got through and man, I had no clue what Hyderabad was like at all that night...]

The next day dawned rainy and wet. Mum and I spent the morning playing with the kids and watching the ladies in the apartments nearby do their chores and hang their laundry. It was really - really! honestly! - pretty interesting. After lunch we took Phet out and went to the biggest local movie complex we could find. Before going to see the movie Phet took Seung Yi and Ji to explore the crazy other attractions at the mall, which included a house of mirrors, a scary house, and a "believe it or not" (no Ripley's) house. On our third day it was rainy again but we went out to a nearby mall and then to a handicrafts shop up in Banjara Hills, the posh neighbourhood. Hyderabad had nutty traffic, no areas for pedestrians to walk, seeingly no parking on the main shopping streets, and the city has also been hobbled like Delhi with the construction of a massive Metro project. We spent alot of time sitting in our rented car with our driver jostling for position and us racketing back and forth with the hem and haw of the traffic.

Speaking of traffic, I stupidly decided that we should go out for dinner that evening and got everyone into the car to go to a restaurant called Punjabi By Nature that also has locations in Delhi and which has always been recommended highly to me. The drive took FOREVER and of course we were all really hungry and tired. When we finally got to the restaurant, we sat down and ordered and it was really, really loud (it's sort of a bar/restaurant) and so the waiter added in an extra dish that we really didn't need and we ended up with way too much food which we then gave to our driver so at least I didn't feel terribly guilty about wasting it, but I was still irritated. But I digress. The really important thing about our visit to PBN was that I ordered us these drinks that they are famous for here. I have to explain what the drinks are like in detail so that you understand them in their entirety. Ok, here goes: there are these common snacks that I often eat in Delhi called golegappa. To make the snack, the snackmaker takes a wee little thing about an inch and a half wide and an inch high. This wee thing looks like a pouri; it is a roundish kind of a deep fried bread object. But unlike a pouri it is hard and the dough is thin. It's a bit like a spherical cracker of sorts. Anyways, the snackmaker takes it and pokes in the top, so there's a little hole in it. He then spoons in a mix that is made of cooked potatoes and some herbs and spices and salt. So far so good. Then, the last and final and only at the very last minute step is that the eater of the snack takes a thin green salty and spicy liquid and pours it into the golegappa and then kind of eats and drinks it all in one go.

They're really weird but really yummy. I like them on a plate, covered with yogurt and sweet tamarind sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds.

Now, back to the drinks. This restaurant is famous for serving vodka shots in golegappa. I had sort of imagined that they would use the spherical cracker as a vodka shotglass, but in reality they still fill the cracker with potato mix, and they serve that with the vodka on the side and you put it into the cracker. Not only that, but the vodka is mixed with your choice of thick spicy sauce. We tried it with tamarind and then also with the salty green sauce. But they weren't thinned 'essence' type of sauces. No, they were thick, sludgey, full-of-spices sauces. The result was spectacularly awful. I seriously almost hurled. Mom didn't even make it to the pouring-the-vodka-into-the-golegappa, she quit after just tasting the vodka. Here, you can see for yourself the face she made:

Oh. My. Goat.

Just looking at that gives me the shivers.

On our last day in Hyderabad, we made an effort to enjoy the not-quite-rainy weather and drove down to the lake at the centre of town to go to a park with the kids. Sadly, the park was only open at 12:30. Why? Who knows. But at any rate, we couldn't get in. Instead, we wisely followed Mum's suggestion and drove up to see Golkonda Fort. I hadn't read anything about Hyderabad before going (and surely that's obvious to you, gentle reader, by now) and I was happily surprised by the fort. The drive out there was capital L long and meandered through some teeny tiny streets, but the fort itself was great.

This photo above is taken from the lovely gardeny grounds at the base of high part of the fort; the gardens and other areas are enclosed by further walls. The fort was really cool and as you can see was built on top of this roundy rolly rocky outcropping. We all climbed up about halfway and paused to enjoy the view. Here's a picture of Mum and the kids with - oh, is it someone we know? Nope! Just another random guy who wanted a picture with Seung Yi. How many people wanted pictures with Seung Yi? Hm, I'd say at least seven. This guy was very sweet and after he posed with us he swapped spots with his friend and then took a picture of his friend with us. Here's to you, random yellow shirted Hyderabadian!

Margie here: I've been told I can guest blog. Don't know if I have to be as intereting and funny as Thaba but here I am.

I liked going to Hyd'bad also. It was about a 2 hour flight very pleasant, much better thaan 18 hours! The hotel was great, do stay there if you're ever in H'''bad. It's called the Aditya Park and the staff were super nice to the kids, they all knew Ji Hong and Seung Yi's name the second day we were there. The weather.... not too great kind of rainy but warm...ish. Sadly we couldn''t go to the great parks for kids but the kids and T. & P. went to see KUNG FU PANDA at the Imax theatre which they liked a lot.

I tried to buy pearls but ehhh something just held me back. I really wanted to buy black Tahitiian pearls with a small diamond on them but nehhhhhhhhh just kind of didn't like the jeweller so much, plus he had a 3 inch long baby finger nail which kind of grossed me out, he told Ji (who had asked him) that it took him 6 years to grow it. So, I remain 'pearless in Delhi'.

Today John and I drove hither and yon in Delhi out to the tailor's back to the shopping mall where you can buy meat. Then I made nummy sphaghettin and meatballs for dinner (not aas good as your's Phet).

I am having a lovely time here, but definitely could do with out the horrible smog.

And finally, a few quotes from the kids for you tonight:

Upon hearing that our landlord Mr. Singh's Mom had pneumonia but was recovering at home, Ji said, "If someone had pandemonium in my family, I'd send them to a hospital. You know, like, pandemonium breaks out in the cities down below."

And a conversation between Seung Yi and Mum:

SY: What is it?

Mum: A ukelele.

SY: What is it?

Mum: A ukelele.

SY:What is it?

Mum: A ukelele.

SY: No. It a guitar. What is it?

My mother is so very patient. So. Very. Patient.

[On The Road-1-December-2008]

finally: not hot! and a new post

I have been thinking and have come to the conclusion that there are four main reasons (aka excuses) for me being so quiet lately. 1: Holy moley it's been busy at school. In four of my five classes, I'm doing entirely new curriculum and I'm the only one teaching these subjects. Then, in my other class, I've added in a completely new class into my previously existing old class. I used to just have the yearbook class, but now I've gone ahead and added in a video yearbook class. At the same time, in the same place. It was a teeny bit of a "challenge" as we like to say to get that off the ground when I had no idea how to edit video. Which leads me to 2: I had to learn how to edit video. To do that, I made Mum a video for her 60th birthday (Happy Birthday, Mum!) and it took eight trillion years to finish it. Because I didn't know how to edit video. But now I do. And now the video class is coming along pleasantly. But the busy-ness and the learning-something-new meant that I had, oh, less than zero percent interest in getting onto the computer after getting home from work. The busy-ness also includes a number of after school activities (like: video editing!) which are only going to increase as the year goes by and as our drama performances and yearbook deadlines come up and steal all my brain time. This past week we finished auditions for our travelling drama group which will be going to an awesome conference in Shanghai come February. Mm, cold! Mm, hot noodles! It's also been difficult because 3: Phet has been out of town for so long it's not real. He's back now, which is why I'm here relaxing and writing, but he was travelling like a madman for almost two months. Mongolia (lots of meat, gorgeous cashmere gifts), Rome (brought home a 2 kilo block of parmesan along with salami and prociutto), Australia (returned with booze and lovely gifts from his family in Sidney), and I think he also hit Sri Lanka somewhere along the way. While he was gone, very very very happily Emma came to visit. Of course we would have loved to have her stay with us anytime, but it was especially wonderful to come home to a house guest with Phet out of town. Seung Yi and Ji had a FANTASTIC time with their auntie and she played with them hour after hour after hour, which leads me to my final point which is that 4: Anytime that I have had to kick back, I've been spending playing with Seung Yi and Ji. Seung Yi is so much fun these days. She talks up a storm, she now plays by herself (and does stuff like 'read' her books and make comments like "Awesome!" when she finds a picture she particularly likes), and is just generally entertaining as can be.

Today, she woke up and snuggled in bed with her Pa. She has wonderful bed head each and every day. It's so fluffy and cute. And she's currently obsessed with wearing the bunny pajamas that Phet's aunts sewed for Ji, so every morning she's a fluffy headed little bunny baby who giggles and snuggles so sweetly it is almost too perfect to be true. After she got up, she helped Phet make pancakes. She's very insistent on doing everything herself so she pulled her own chair into the kitchen, carried her own plate out to the table, poured her own syrup on the pancakes, then went back into the kitchen to get her own knife (saying loudly while opening the cutlery drawer, "MY knife. MY knife. MY knife."), and then cut her pancake up and ate it all by herself. Then, it was time for a little playing. She got out some playdough and pulled little bits of it apart, saying "puuuullll....puuuulllll". Then, she took out her puzzles and put together three 7-piece puzzles (ie interconnecting, not just those oh-so-simple stick-the-shape-in-the-hole puzzles) a few times. Later on we hung out outside, then we wrestled for awhile, we danced a little bit to the playlist I made for the Halloween party we're hosting this Friday, then we had lunch, and now she's conked out on the living room mats wearing her adorable kelly green sweatpants and a matching t-shirt. How could I not want to hang out with her ALL THE TIME?

Meanwhile, Ji is doing all kinds of great stuff. He is still getting in trouble on a daily (if not hourly) basis for being aaaassss slllllloooooow asssssssss molaaaaaaasssssesssss to do anything. Seriously. If I say, "Ji, could you go get me a glass of water?" before Ji so much as blinks, Seung Yi will have run to the kitchen, climbed up on the counter, pulled open the cupboard door, pulled out a cup, climbed down, filled the cup with water from the dispenser, and then run back to me with the cup of water. He's like, I don't know, living in a universe that moves at an entirely different speed than the one I live in. But I digress. Generally, he's doing great. He learned how to throw a baseball and to catch one too. With a glove! He's practicing his batting with a cricket bat, though, because we can't buy a baseball bat here. He's been swimming like a champ, and this semester he's brushing up on his basketball skills after school (and continuing the knitting too, of course). He's reading much more fluently now, and is working on books with a couple of paragraphs of writing on each page. I bought him a new book the other day about Ulysses, and he came back home and read three chapters of it without being prompted to do so. He's continuing to do gorgeous artwork - he made a good copy of his comic book hero, "The Crosser" and got me to frame it for him. (In exciting framing news, we found a spectacular framer here, who framed an oil painting and a print that one of the high school kids gave me last year, plus several of Ji's art pieces and man, do they ever look great. Oh, and also these very cool cut-paper artworks from Mongolia that Phet brought back...will try to take a photo once the carpenter comes to hang stuff up). At school he seems to be making friends with kids in his class. We were supposed to have a playdate with his friend Matthew today, but his Mum didn't know the driver wouldn't come in because today's Diwali, so hopefully he'll come over tomorrow.

And speaking of Diwali: Happy Diwali! Tara, we sure we wish we'd been with you for your party, but at least we feel content that we helped pick out the candles that Emma brought to you. Our Diwalidays have been just lovely. The week before Emma left the weather finally took a turn for the normal, and now it is drop dead gorgeous season in Delhi. It's warm and sunny and dry during the day and pleasantly cool in the evening. We haven't had the fans on since Emma left. Mind you, it's still hot enough that the kids went swimming at Ji's buddy's birthday on Sunday. (His friend, Karl, was in his class last year and his lovely parents - Lee from Texas and Vanessa from the Philippines - made a point of still inviting Ji to this year's party. I made triple sure that we went because Vanessa is an insanely good cook. Phet rarely goes to birthday parties with us, but this time he hopped on the loot bag limo and came along and was very happy he did. Karl is a very nice young man, but the best part was that we had ooh so good homemade kind of crispy not-potato-but-something-else chips served with two chunky toppings, coconutty spicy meat topping and corn, cheese, and egg topping, and then this was followed by savoury beef stew and the most incredibly delicious fried chicken ever cooked in the history of man.)

Ji and I had a weekend plus three days off and we've mostly just been relaxing and hanging out at home. We did a little shopping and we took the kids in for shots on Saturday. Ji never gets bothered by shots and Seung Yi watched him get his done and then laid down without a peep for her first shot. I was so impressed. She cried a little tiny bit for the second one, but still: wow.

*Later, the next day*

Man, oh man, Diwali is INSANE. Last night the kablooming started just after dusk and continued well on into the evening past midnight. It literally sounded like we were in the middle of a hard-fought battle. There were the long-distance, far-away earth rumblers, then there were the random rat-a-ta-rat-a-ta-ratters mid-distance, and then right next to us were both the cha-cham bam-bam-bam bangers and the incredibly loud sudden-blasters. Our house looked beautiful. Mr. Singh's droopy-eyed son, Angad, went around all the balconies, laying out tealights everywhere. They lined the garden, our walkway, and the gates around the house as well. We went outside to watch a big series of colourful fireworks set off a couple of doors down from us, and then after I kicked it in and went to bed to read yet another romance novel set in the early 1800s (curse you, Emma, curse you!) Phet took Ji and Seung Yi to watch our adolescent neighbours blow up an unbelieveable series of crackers. The best one was the one that had TEN THOUSAND CRACKERS in one long series of blowing ups. Apparently, on a previous year, they had had one with a HUNDRED THOUSAND but they scaled things back this year. See? Insane. Lying down on the mat with Seung Yi at home, all I could hear was Ji's wild laughter and screams of excitement as the guys set off blast after blast after blast. It was a great Diwali.

And today, on our final day off, Phet got his birthday present: tickets to see Russell Peters live in Delhi. Pretty nice, huh? I ordered them and everything. It was funny - no, not the show, of COURSE that was funny - but before the show, on the way there I got really anxious because we were late. I had counted on double the usual amount of time to get to the auditorium but it ended up taking quadruple the time. Stupid traffic. We got there at 6:11, and the tickets said "Six PM Sharp". I was worried we wouldn't get let in. But there were a good number of people lined up to get in through the door...so many, in fact, that I pulled a "Huh, I don't live here, I don't understand how line ups work" and cut into the front of the line. We got into the auditorium (which was about double the size of Danforth Tech's but with less fancy seats and shabbier atmosphere) and only about a quarter of the guests were seated. In the end, the show didn't start until SEVEN. Good ol' me.

The show itself was very amusing. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Actually, I kind of have a headache from laughing so much. But a good headache. I was pleased that - hm, how do I refer to him? Russell? Peters? just "he"? - anyways, I was pleased that he did a good amount of India-specific bits and kept the har-har-Irish-people-are-so-white kind of stuff to just a part of the show. I have no problem with Irish jokes, but I think he's funnier when he riffs on stories rather than just ha ha pieces. Anyways, he got in a ton of great jokes and kept everyone in stitches and it was just awesome to see him up there representing - Canada, of course - in India.

And that, my friends, brings me to the end of my post for today. Let's hope they get frequenter now that I've shovelled away the backlog.

[Delhi-29-October-2008]

guest host...

This is my first-ever blog post!

Thaba smells!

This morning Thaba, Ji Hong, Seung Yi and I had a wonderful Sunday brunch of coddled eggs, toast fingers, duck pate (16 EUROS!), prosciutto, and brie-like cheese. Last night around 2 am Phet flew in from Rome, left lots of yummy food, picked up some presents for family in Sydney and then left again for business at 6 am. The whole situation was very reminiscent of Christmas Eve, with Phet playing Deli Santa. Of course, the taking away of presents is a bit backwards, but maybe with the toilet water going counterclockwise, the whole Santa thing is also muddled up here....

Now that we are all full to the gunnels, Ji is riding Seung Yi around on the trike, while Thaba is trying to finish editing her school's play.

Yesterday, the kids had swimming lessons, and we all went and watched Ji play baseball. He made it home one time up at bat, and the second time his hit brought in two runs. Afterwards we went over to Monica and Allan's house for pizza and brownies and sparkle glue! Mmmm...sparkle glue pizza. Lovely time all around, except when I tripped over two beer glasses creating a giant mess of glass and Kingfisher.

So far, the visit to Delhi has been wonderful. Lots of time just hanging out with Ji and Seung Yi. Ji's really excited about the upcoming Hallowe'en/birthday party. Some ideas he wanted to mention about the party:

"Well, we're going to have tomato juice, but we're going to put salt in it, so it will taste like blood. You know how when a door opens, we could have a string, when the door opens and a ghost atteched to a string, so then the door opens the ghost floats in midair because it's still not fully to the ground.

And there's another thing we thought we could do. We have a robot suit that we made, then we're going to put a Frankenstein around it so it looks like the tools used to electricute him, attach phone wires to the helmet and the chest and gears and stabilizers and 'zzzzz' and buttons.

I'm going to go as Zuko, someone in Avatar. The fire-prince guy with the long ponytail thing. The guy who wants the avatar with the big fat uncle. The guy who owns that ship.

Elementary doesn't have a Hallowe'en party because people might come with guns, like a bad guy with guns. If someone dressed up as batman, like violent batman, it would be not so good. The elementary doesn't want the violence. And so I think it would be better if they did have a party, but I can't change that."

Seung Yi is super-cute these days. This morning she was toddling around saying "Shooto" when she wanted more prosciutto. When Thaba and I were having a little chat, she sat in the kitchen and drew all over her shirt and face with yellow highlighter. It was very funny until she got in trouble. Seung Yi really enjoys washing dishes, tidying up, finding my long hairs on the floor, and watching the dog in the alley play ball.

"Puppy! Ball puppy! No eat ball Puppy! NO EAT!!"

The only sad news is that the big adventure trip to Rishikesh has been cancelled due to the recent bombings in Delhi. The parallel sad news is that Thaba told me to pack clothes for colder weather (Rishikesh) and I assumed she meant that Delhi would also be chilly. So I packed turtlenecks, and socks, and long pants, and a fleece. It's 30 degrees. Everyday. Or higher. Now, at this point, many would say: "But Emma, are you not a flight attendant? Do you not check the weather before you leave on a trip?" And the answer is no. I arrived in Chile with shorts, during their winter. Capri pants in Edmonton during a snow-storm. Winter coat in Miami...the list goes on. So now I'm in Delhi stealing all of Thaba's clothes (to be fair, many of which were formerly mine) and rolling my eyes at the stupid fleece and 3 pairs of closed-toes shoes.

Thus ends my first blog post. Emma.

[Delhi-15-October-2008]