Ninja on a jetski!

wednesday afternoon

Yo yo yo... Here at school waiting for my 5 o'clock rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast. I'm running lights, and have finally figured out how to program the light board, very exciting because I have been forcing the kids and the lighting technician to do that for me for the past couple of months. Self empowerment is a good thing, right?

Busy day today, but luckily it started off with Seung Yi not being a complete s--- in the morning. She has been a disaster lately, but today she was ready in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Laree is good, got in trouble last night for snacking on chips and hiding them in Ji's room - think she was mad at Iaimon cause Iaimon fed her before we got home. Ji is doing well - he is on a diet of getting better at basic mathematics. At our school they do a yearly standard test to see how the kids are doing compared to students in the US. Ji scored in the 99th percentile for basically everything except punctuation and spelling and simple math computation. Reading, writing, math problem solving and understanding, all 99th percentile. Basic math computation 24th percentile!!!! Slack ass. So: math diet! The good news is that he has Phet to work with him and Phet LIKES math, which is a big bonus compared to me. All the kids are also working on learning how to play Chinese Chess (yes, in China they just call it chess, Seung Yi) and are continuing on with their football games. Laree actually got her foot on the ball at the last match, but Seung Yi has yet to actually kick a ball during a game. Ji's team is not doing well in the standings, but he personally has done great this season and is an aggressive little defensive player.

We had a nice celebration for Chinese New Year on Sunday - took out Iaimon and her 2 friends and the 11-year-old son of one of the friends, and Malai, and went for Korean food at the great Gung Palace in Green Park. It's family-run and full of guests all the time and has a very cheerful atmosphere and is not that expensive. We stuffed ourselves with 2 plates of grilled beef, 1 huge platter of 3-layer pork, a fried fish with sweet sauce, 2 huge bowls of bim bim bap, all the introductory kim chi fixings, and whole bunch of beer, and some fruit to finish things off. I was a little "tired" on Monday morning, but I think the massive meat intake helped to balance out the beer.

In other exciting news, I went to the Canadian Embassy - heh heh, the "High" commission, not embassy - yesterday. I'm supposed to travel to Doha, Qatar, on Feb 9th, but my passport doesn't have 6 months validity to I had to apply for a new one. I was really scrambling around the day before. First, we took photos on Sunday at the mall, but they turned out to be the wrong size. So John took them in to the photo shop to get the correct size, but they made our heads too big. In the meantime I filled in the kids forms (they need passports, too) but the pdfs didn't save so I had to re-do all the forms. Then we had to go get more pictures taken so the heads would be the right size, and I went to buy a little gift for the kids' lovely doctor, Dr. Gupta, because I had to get her to be our guarantor because we haven't known any other doctors or lawyers or what-have-yous for 2 years here other than her, and then I had to go out to her clinic at 8pm to see her, and then the receptionist thought I was waiting to see her husband, the diabetes doctor, because I didn't have any kids with me and so she let another person (with a kid) go ahead of me and they took, like 40 minutes with the doctor, and I finally got home at 9pm. Then yesterday had to sneak out (not really) after a class and run over the the embassy and got to enjoy their super bomb-proof waiting room and viewing capsule. Phew!

Tomorrow we've got a day off for Republic Day, but I'll be at school for the big show rehearsal most of the day...

Hear from Toronto that Mum has gotten our furnace fixed - thanks, Mum! Hope all is well with everyone else!

[Delhi-25-January-2012]

from the mixed-up files of ji hong randall sayo

Found Ji's old notebook from last year in the cabinet and thought I'd share some choice entries with you. I think the teachers made them start writing it after recess because the kids were battling at their break or something. Anyways, good reading!

8/9/10

Well Here comes another year, been hear long enufe to understand conflict, new kids might be righting all about (fine by me) it but really it's not going to make a Difrence.

8/10/10

at reces we played tag around the slide. As ushuawal mathew was realy fussy about exsactly HOW many pepole played and stopt playing but he came back eventuly (normel).

8/11/01

I found the best spot on the slide was sitting rigt on top of it. Heres why: easy to doge atagc if theer is any chance at all and it's realy easy to tag somone. the only real danger is climders and peapole want to get you back.

8/23/10 [Ed Note: not quite sure how Ji's dating system works; see previous entry]

Today at lunch I started the booger touch and as we speek my fingers are crosed protecting me from Manas who carries the horor to ESL this minute! The way it started was Mathew tickeld me in the lunnc room wich made me spew snot on to my hand and nose! I dicided to have a litel fun and chase them and later ivolve into a carier and give the chase rules (I evutuly pasd it down to evan).

8/24/10

Today all was ell, we played four sqare in short nothing hapinde (I'm totally going to destroy Joanathan and mathew by the way). I teamed up with Joanathan forever (so did almoust everyone else). Listin I'll put it down flat, I've got NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT!

8/30/10

Today i got realy mad at Mathew for cheeting and started to play with other peapole and other that that nothing much but let me tell you playing with fifth graders is way more fun than playing with mathew.

31 Aug 2010 [Date stamped in ink]

Today I got a call rihgt as I was playing four sqare (I still don't know who called). Nothing else realy happend thou I did let the asistant teache in on how lunch is better than reces.

9/15/10

today we biult the longest canals ever! To bad we had block them up because we weren't alowd to.

9/10/10

Today I dug a super long cannal with a spoon all by my self.

9/27/10

These anoying fourth graders were gogging the slide today and were all like "oh we're the boss" and clogged it up so we couldn't play tag.

Teachers note: Think about how you can make a plan to fix this problem.

On the next page, pencil drawing showing an x-ray of the slide after Ji did his "plan" on it, in which all the 4th graders are getting hit inside the slide, and are shouting "Gah!" "Akk!" "Eek!" "Oh no no no no...NO!" "Aaah!" and at the end of the slide a dead fourth grader has fallen out, and is labelled: "Result".

9/30/10

Today I made up a new kind of four square called dubble dubble. Here's the rules: 4 everything king can say airballs or no airballs, king can say normel, Header, or wenier, in normel you can only hold the ball for four seconds but you can throw the ball and cach it if you want to avoid running out of time, in wienyr you can do everything the same except youcan only use your wenie.

10/7/10

Today I played on the tire swing the first recess. I got so dizzy that you can give it to luck I didn't puke on my art project.

[Ed Note: I think we've all been in that situation, haven't we?]

10/20/10

ROCK ON! you call playing tag old fasion? I love it every day more peaple come from all over the playground to play our now Playground-famous tag game and those who come almoust always stay.

11/15/10

I discovered something new to do at recess: I found some rocks that you can use to make colored powder.

11/18/10

I spent the recess diging in the new sand pile. There are holes all over it now.

11/18/10

I found it hard to work as a teem but I thought it was realy fun when you had to be resorsful like in the bridge making or flipping over the carpet. I learned from watching another teem that sometimes you need to use teem work.

12/1/10

I was sopposed to have time-out but Miss Saburwall wasn't there so I spent the recess running away.

12/2/10

I spent the recess running away from O. and her horsey girlfriend shes after me for a reason no one knows. She won't leave me be!!! I'm going to raise an armie aganst her she will soon meet her DOOM!

This recess I spent running from, hiding from, and fighting with O. and her gang. But she better wach out 'cause I'm building a bulky armie of boys and w'll soon out number them. But realy I'm not sure I need them. I was doing fine even as her club started to grow but now with extra help I'm going to chase her off the playground she'll beg for mercy Ha-ha-ha! I've already outsmarted her and out manuvered her now it's time to outnumber her! I call it the uncivil war!

12/6/10

I was sooooooo tiiiiiiirrreddd that I didn't chase O. and instead slept on a rock and now that I have it all set up to sleep this recess will be a great big ZZZZZ...

1/4/11

Happy New Year!!! hey I got home real early yesterday so don't mind if the pencil goes off like thisss O.K.? good now today at recess I played tag today (I did take short rests behind rocks) we were reading this book called ruby holler and I was realy disapointed I missed the ending.

1/5/11

Today I played tag but the main event was while we were in line Mrs. Saburwall brougt over a chest (and when I say chest I mean smaller carbon coppie of the triditionell metal and wood piaret bootie) full of cookies!

February 8, 2011 [Script now is cursive, suddenly]

I'm having trouble getting stuff done for two reasons: 1: I talk alot with my friends. 2: I kind of work at a slow pace. I realy far behind on hand writing mostly because I wasn't writing fast enogh and I was sick. But as for my map it was probablly mostly because I was talking alot.

March 7, 2011

I spent most of resses digging tunnels in a HUGE pile of sand that appeared out of Nowhere.

March 16, 2011

I've made a forumulla for face paint (I might want to try making normall paint soon at recess. I'd also like to talk about the show were doing, Where the Wild Things Are, I think I'm fairly important witch is nice to think.

March 18, 2011

I can't believe the play is over! It was so fast! As for new gossip I'm reading this great book called "The Amber spy glass".

March 29, 2011

We're doing a unit on writing persuasive writing me and my partner chose two topics and can you guess what we wrote about? Soccer? Pah! Caffetirie food? Puh-lees! We got past the level of kid intrest and beyond to the level of super-adult super-serious hyper-important-zone or at least we must have to think of these titels: "No Capital Punishment" and "Homosexualaty Is Not A Crime". See what I mean??! the auther of "To Kill a moking bird" would be Jealouse!!!

[Ji Hong-21-January-2012]

fire burning, fire burning...in the community center?

Ok, don't worry, it wasn't a big one. But while Phet was on the treadmill a couple of days ago, an electrical fire started up in the community center from the fuse box. He's got his earphones on, and all of a sudden all the badminton guys are shouting at him to go out the window because sparks and flames are shooting out and covering the entrance door. THEN, the next day Phet goes to work and he's sitting at his desk and suddenly someone goes by shouting, "Fire!" and he goes to investigate and there is an electrical fire that started from the heater IN HIS OLD OFFICE. His ex-assistant grabbed a potted plant and smashed it all over the fire and then his other colleague came in with a fire extinguisher and sprayed it all over. Phet came home and was like, "Maybe we should get a fire alarm...and an extinguisher...what do you think?" I'm like, "YES."

And this after one of our students suffered serious electrical burns at a hotel from an un-fenced electricized thing of awfulness.

India: where we could use a little sampling of electrical safety and security!

[Delhi-20-January-2012]

rain in delhi in january? preposterous!

So, for the second day in the past two weeks: rain! Very unusual for our climate, which is normally incredibly dry at this time of year. It's been a funny January; very cold for a week, then two days ago it warmed up so we didn't feel cold in the morning - still cool, but not cold, and then this rain. Kind of good, though, as it's kept the sky fresh and clean when there is alot of smoke going up from warming-people-up fires.

I am really, really sleepy this evening. It's 8:07 pm and my eyeballs are rolling back into my head. Not sure why since I went to bed last night at about 9:15...maybe it's because today was my rilly busy day. Three classes back to back, running around to check on my yearbook photographers at lunch, had to go see the cashier to deposit money from our big sleepover, had to write a bunch of emails, went to pick up Seung Yi, had our first ISTA meeting and watched Despicable Me in the theatre (we are going to get the kids to be minions and then do a bunch of silly stuff and film it while we travel to Bejing. Watch out for stories about our squid gun! Also had the tailor drop in to measure kids for their minion overalls, and then spent an hour setting lights for the faculty musical. Got home at 6:30 done in and had a nice dinner of egg sandwiches and fancy salad. Ji immediately sussed out my inspiration, "Oh, so you're trying to replicate Auntie Cathie's salad recipie, aren't you?" Sadly no bacon here... Mind you, the lack of bacon is also probably good for our hearts and bellies. Sorry, in reality there is bacon available in Delhi, it's just not yummy bacon. It is - if you can imagine - too salty.

The girls are doing well - Laree is talking stuff and nonsense as always, and Seung Yi is a sassy little sass-o-matic. This morning by the time she finally freaking walked out the door Phet and I were at DefCon a billion and were like "JUST DON'T TALK." It's this endless teenagery backtalk with that girl, or yawningly endless ignoring. I think I need to start drinking laudanum to deal with it all. Anyone know a good source?

Speaking of drugs, I'm onto season two of The Wire. I think I kind of love McNulty. Has anyone else noticed how he says his letter Ds closer to his teeth than the front palate of his mouth? It's very adorable. Also, his twinkly-eyed smile. And speaking of The Wire, methinks it is time for my nightly hit. Stand back while I open the vial and fire things up...

[Delhi-17-January-2012]

wherein I meet a Korean pop superstar

So, check this out: today my Vice Principal calls me up and tells me that one of our students has a brother who just won the Korean version of American Idol for acting and he's willing to come in to talk to my drama class - do we want to meet him? Hells yes! So, delightfully, he came and joined us and told us about the process he went through in order to beat 20 000 other actors who auditioned for the show. TWENTY THOUSAND, yes, that is correct. And he had a pretty fascinating back story, too: brain tumor when he was a kid, major surgery, 3 additional surgeries to fix his eyes, and even now - even now! - he has to train himself to look like he's seeing properly on camera when in fact his eyes don't actually focus together properly (though they look like they do). If you want to check him out, go to youtube and you can watch: his impression of Heath Ledger's Joker; his dramatic and emotional monologue; his 8-year-old-kid scene followed by his drunken police officer beating on a gangster scene; or his very cute Hyundai car commercial that he was cast for after winning the show.

[Meeting Famous People-16-January-2012]

sunday morning / sunday evening

Just got off Skype with Mum and Dad, nice to see them and talk to them after a week of radio silence. Heard that Doris is back at home after just a few days in the hospital (which is kind of good, since she wants to be at home, and kind of bad, because she probably shouldn't be at home. The nieghbours are getting food to her, but she is terribly frail. We were there the day Mum took her in to the hospital - she hadn't gone for nearly a WEEK after getting a compound spine fracture! Ai ai ai, these older folks are HARD CORE. Also heard that my Grampa's brother, blue-eyed Stan, is surprisingly not well. He was on a bus to Vegas, had a small fall, got taken to the doctor by his wife, and he has all kinds of cancer! Have to say, though, for a tough old Niedzwiecki, that's probably about the ratio of pain and suffering to medical care that he would prefer to receive, which is to say: zero to zero.

Around here, things are good. We finally got over our jetlag, at very long last. The kids had a good week at school; SY was loving seeing her friends and teachers, and Ji seemed pretty happy also. He had his buddies over one night, think I mentioned that. Phet is trucking along at work, wearing his excellent variety of cashmere sweaters, Fabindia shirts, and all his new MEC swag. Yesterday, I was at school ALL NIGHT LONG for our annual sleepover in the theatre. For a few years the highschoolers did drama workshops for our kids, and now it has morphed into dance workshops, which I think work better because the kids are up and running (ha - or dancing) really quickly in that time span, and it's good and active for a Friday night when they are both hepped up on end-of-the-week goofballs, but also kind of tired from all their classes. Before the sleepover, Patricia hosted one of her famous Friday Happy (Several) Hours. I caffeinated myself with Diet Coke and Ji and I stuffed ourselves with delcicious appetizers so we wouldn't be hungry in the evening. At 6, I went over to the theatre to get ready with Briar, and her lovely high school students came to set up as well. They were a truly delightful bunch - and can you imagine being a HS kid and GIVING UP your Friday night to hang out with middle schoolers? We're talking service to humanity types, here.

The kids came to the theatre at 7 with all their sleeping bags, and then rotated through half hour workshops and then breaks till about 9. I lucked into getting put on audio duty, and got to chill out up in the booth while the HS kids ran their modern dance workshop. Meanwhile, over in the dance studio we had a guest teacher running a fun Bollywood piece, and our other high schoolers did a hip hop routine. I asked Ji if he wanted to come to the sleepover, and he did, so he joined up with one of the groups and he did a great job dancing - so cute! In the evening we ate a bunch of junk food and then settled down to watch Step Up 3 in our pajamas. Great fun as a dance movie, super catchy music - we used Chromeo's "Fancy Footwork" in After Juliet last year, and Briar used "I Won't Dance" in her Baggage show. It was an awful film in terms of plot and so forth, but whatevah... good moves, good message. We made the kids settle down awhile after 11 and luckily I only had to do one cranky-voiced "now, girls..." before they mostly went to sleep. They started stirring again at 7 am, at which point I got up and put some music on the sound system, washed my face, and went to make Briar and I some instant coffee in the staff room. After the kids all got up and ate leftover cake, we had them rehearse their dances, and then came together as a huge group of 50 to do them all together - it looked great! Then, off to eggs and toast in the canteen, and said farewell to the kids and went home to shower before going BACK to school to set lights for our upcoming staff musical, Beauty and the Beast.

I think I'm starting to get the knack a little better for lights after doing my workshop at RADA over the summer. I'm more confident in moving the lights and more articulate in asking the lighting technician to do what I want him to do. Our theatre is sort of weird in that most of our lights are permanently placed and rarely moved, so instead of changing lights for each show, we kind of stick with what's there. We had some challenges last year because our stage changed but our lights didn't, so it was getting really hard to light certain areas effectively. Also, our light board seemed to not be working properly with our LEDs. To fix these problems, first I asked to get some new lights put in at the sides in front of the stage, which has helped. Then, we got a new light board and some training from the board dudes, and now our programming is working properly. On Saturday, I had 2 tech kids and 3 moving-around-bodies kids and we were able to move the lights to suit our set, we got some coloured gels on key lights, and then we were able to at least get basic settings for our 3 main places - the village, the creepy forest, and the castle. Hopefully on Tuesday we'll get in and finish up the rough work, test it out at rehearsal on Wednesday, and then fine-tune on the weekend. Overall, it's a nice time to be doing this work as I don't have a show underway, and I am just pleasantly, normally busy and not run off my skull with rehearals.

Now, it's Sunday night - Phet is cooking a beef tenderloin and Malai's coming by for dinner. We had a lazy morning at home, tidying a little and watching some Futurama. My fiesta of watching The Wire continue unabated - now at about episode 9 (still season one, mind you). Had a nice chat with Mum and Dad on skype this morning and am thrilled that Dad will be coming in March - yay, Dad! Still waiting to hear from my baby neice, who is up in Mulmur living the sweet life of multiple couches and in-house grandparents and snowy views on all sides.

This afternoon we went out to the mall at Vasant Kunj to pick up some clothes for the kids - Ji had recently outgrown basically ALL of his pants, and we are still waiting for SY's wardrobe to arrive with the missing bag...I'm hoping that I've skewed karma and now that I've bought her 7 new outfits, the bag will miraculously show up. We started out at the mall with a mega feast at the food court - Delhi style snack food (puris with chick peas, fried paratha with chicken curry, giant hollow ball of deep fried yummy crunchy exterior filled with potatoes and yogurt and coriander sauce and tamarind sauce and other goodies) plus some naan and chicken tikka, and a "chinese" thali with noodles and spicy chicken. Phew! We were stuffed by the end of the meal - that's the problem with going to eat when you're ravenous - you end up ordering way too much! Then we dropped by Mothercare and got a bunch of stuff on sale for SY, and then stopped by Pantaloons (a department store here - great name, eh?) and found a pair of jeans for Ji and then went to my favourite cheapo store, Big Bazaar, and picked up 5 more pairs of pants for Ji and one pair of sporty Addidas-type pants for SY. Then the kids had a gelato and we headed home.

The weather here is drop-dead gorgeous at the moment: clear blue skies, sunshine, cool in the evening and warm and pleasant during the day. Kind of like October in Hanoi or a really nice June in Toronto, or maybe August in Calgary. Wish youse were all here!

Coming up this week: more work! More time with my really very nice new students! Football! Dinners! Shopping! Ah, life.

[Delhi-15-January-2012]

the wire

We got the full, all-seasons compilation of The Wire last year, must've been from Dad. Or maybe Adam? Either way, we love you both even if we are ungrateful gift-giver-forgetters. On the way back to Delhi I picked up the latest copy of Rolling Stone and then the other day I read about an actress from The Wire while I was brushing my teeth. The person they did a story on is someone who grew up in Baltimore, who was convicted of killing another girl when she was 15, who has been in and out of the drug trade even after being in the show. Well, that sounded pretty interesting and all, but the thing that made me actually want to watch an episode was that they mentioned a couple of times in the article how she had a super heavy Baltimore accent, that the accent crushes down vowels so that they are all held very close in the mouth. Now that made me want to watch The Wire, I'm not kidding. Plus I was also trying to evade the deathly error of going to bed too early due to jetlag...and it is really difficult not to fall prey to napping if you don't have a TV, especially when it's winter time. Why? Let's see... um, would you like to WORK when you're excrutiatingly tired? Nope. Can you read a book? Probably not, sucker. How about cook dinner or clean the house? Yah, right. Say, it's cold out right? So, actually, you're probably all wrapped up in blankets. You don't have the heater on, so the room is really cold, and you're warm and cozy, and you're trying NOT to sleep when your eyes are so wrung out and red that you look like you are remarkably high, well that's a great strategy, right? Zzzzzzzzzz...zzz...zzz.z...zz... No, the only thing that will help is television. You don't have to talk or focus or interact with anyone, you can do it while you are in bed, you don't have to move, and YET - AND YET: your brain will stay awake.

So, I ended up popping in the first DVD for The Wire and really enjoyed it. I'm now on episode 6. My favourite scene was in the last episode, when McNulty and his partner solved a murder scene in the course of five minutes of film using only the F-word, or the M-F-word, or the F-ity, F-, F-, F combo. It was INSPIRED scriptwriting, acting, and filming. I wish I'd been the director who came up with that. Overall, the show is simple and good. I guess everyone else already knows about it because it has been out for ages, but I'd never really heard of it. Or, I'd heard of it, but I sort of collapsed it with that Kiefer Sutherland show in my mind. It's one of those nice HBO shows that really let actors sink into the characters and let the stories rollingly, slowly develop over the course of several seasons. McNulty's terrific - must google him and find out what else he's been in. His new boss has an amazing snappy my-jaws-are-pulled-together-by-tight-rubber-bands and also I'm-simmeringly-angry-all-the-time kind of way of talking. I like Keema, though I was pretty surprised when she joined in and beat up Bootie after he punched a cop in the face. Deangelo Barksdale is pretty awesome with his subtle tiny-movements-on-his-face acting style. Freamon, the quietly-polishing-furniture, old-schooley detective is great. It's all pretty engaging - but I still haven't gotten to meet Snoop with her incredible Baltimore accent yet. I guess I will have to carry on and watch ALL THE OTHER FIVE SEASONS. Feel sorry for my kids and husband, y'all.

[Delhi-12-January-2012... ooooh, check that out, it's 12/1/2012...looks cool!]

no pics, why dreamweaver, why?

After all my hard work at work the other day, not doing work and writing on here instead, and after taking nice photos of my class to show you, there is nothing coming up online for the photos! How annoying. I've tried 4 different ideas on how to fix this, but nothing works. So I will be forced to ask my husband for help. Phet, you've been warned.

[Delhi-12-January-2012]

work!

Currently sitting at my desk back at work - and no, I don't have a class right now, so you can't send my boss an annonymous email and get me fired for slacking off. Today's my easier day, two classes instead of three, so I've got a few minutes to write in between running around and doing stuff (yes, that is my official job description) and teaching (which is also often running around and doing stuff).

It is a gorgeous winter day here in Delhi. The sun is shining like crazy, and after the rain on the night we got in, the air has been nice and clear. It's cool for Delhi (cold enough outside even in the sun to want at least a light sweater, cold enough at night to have 3 blankies and to use my son as a hot water bottle) and apparently there was a heap of snow up in Shimla over the weekend. We have almost gotten back on track from our jetlag - last night was the first night I pretty much almost slept through, though I did fall droolingly hard asleep at 9 pm on the dot. Seung Yi had football practice after school yesterday, and she successfully managed to wake up after napping in the car on the way home and then played like a maniac in the evening with Laree, setting up a "dance studeo" and playing ukelele and drums while wearing a blonde mega wig and a Chinese suit while Laree sang into the sparkle mic from Uncle Jake, wearing the purple wig. Good times! Ji had two buddies, Jeffrey and Tony (ho ho ho, they have Korean names that sound like Ji's, but Ji is the only one who uses a non-English name! What a hoot!) over to play and they are very huge kids and they reminded me Ji is slowly turning into a teenager! Ai ai ai. They stayed to eat biryani and got lured into trying the really spicy chilli peppers Iaimon had in the fridge and then their faces turned red and one of them almost cried. Niiiice family to visit, us.

Thought I'd share my view here at my desk with you today:

Note my awesome double monitor and my most excellent long wooden desk. You can also see, Mum, the paper garland you bought - it's hanging along the wire at the top of the room. If I turn to my right I can see all my desks and my costume closet at the back of the room and my nice blue paint:

As my swivel chair turns even further right, you can see my double decker costume hanging racks (designed by ME) and some play posters:

And here's my plant supply, my giant robot, my anchor, and hiding at the back you can see my ship's wheel, and behind that is a wee metal elephant from Zambia that my colleague brought back for me after the summer. Lastly, my cool secret office that is full of all the drama and makeup supplies and books and other goodies:

[Delhi-10-January-2012]

flights back to delhi

Currently 5pm-ish here in Delhi - yes, Delhi! Home again, home again. I'm hanging out in the living room, and from where I'm sitting, the funniest thing is SY's whiteboard 'n markers drawing of the (each letter backwards): DEVIL. It's the cute triangley headed devil from Futurama, holding a perfect trident, looking all adorable. Way to go, Seung Yi. I just woke up an hour ago from a good and luckily not too delirious nap. Everyone else is currently out at the park trying to stay awake. The weather here is strangely Vancouveresque. When we got in it was raining (in January! in Delhi!) and today it was about 13', overcast, sort of humid and chilly, but of course compared to Toronto everything is very green. And the rain has cleared the air up, which is good. I always used to be a secret fan of the smell of Delhi's smoky air, but this fall we had such heavy air pollution, I'm starting to not be such a fan after all. Apparently and sadly we now have more pollution than Beijing.

The flights back to Delhi were ok, and the timings were great. Unlike here, where we have to always leave at 3 am and then it takes daaaaays to recover from traveling, coming out of Toronto the flight leaves at a very manageable 6pm, then a couple of hours in Brussels when it is midnight-feeling, and then you get on the second flight and arrive in Delhi at Delhi-midnight. All very conducive to a faster recovery. We flew Jet, and they are ok (and well-priced). The first flight, though, seemed super warm to me and that made it seem kind of claustrophobic (sp?). I had watched almost every single movie on the system, and ended up watching the ones that I had left behind for being too glum (North Country, which was actually quite good, if predictable) and too old (Marley & Me, which just made me - no offence Anne and Robin - think that dog ownership is generally a poor idea...man, I don't know if dog trainers were up in arms about that film, but I have to say I didn't find it cute that Marley was so unmanageable and that they only gave him one try at obedience school, I thought he was horrible! I'm already not too fond of regular, nice dogs, let alone massively huge and untrained behemoths... could have something to do with the latter-day dogs on my uncle's farm, though Lady and Sally were sweethearts).

In Brussels, we bought our usual pork sausage snack balls and laid ourselves flat on a 4-seater. We boarded pretty quickly, and I ended up having good results when I got cranky about getting Ji seated near SY and I. They had put us not just apart, but in two different sections so that I couldn't even see him, and he had already been apart from us on the first flight. Could it have something to do with the fact that they don't allow web check in for people with kids??? Anyways, I made a fuss and held my ground, and in the end the flight attendant got us seated across from each other at the back of the plane. Then, the really good news is that a Mom switched *3* seats for my seat and SY's seat because she wanted to let her kid sit by the window, so we ended up with a sprawling 3 seater, which has been unheard of for us travelling to and from Delhi in ages - the flights are just always booked solid. And in the meantime, Ji already had one extra seat as well, so those two conked out comfortably for almost the whole flight, and I got a blessed 4 hours of sleep. I checked out the new Footloose when I woke up - not bad in some ways (cuteness, decent acting, sweet redneck sidekick for Ren), but bad in others (JULIANNE HOUGH! Yech! She is like an exact replica of Jennifer Aniston, the way her eyelashes go upwards and her eyebrows lift when she's "acting". And also? She's way too freaking skinny - looks ok in jeans, but then in her (incredibly ugly and cheap looking) prom dress, she looks like a skinned rat with 80s hair; oh, and also, I HATED the weird blocky grey vest they put Ren in for his big speech scene).

We got through customs super easily in Delhi, but then had the big setback to the trip: one bag didn't make it to Delhi. Of course it was the one with all of SY's clothes and her baby doll in it and my school books. Grr... Well, let's hope Jet finds it. I had pretty much had it with them - they were nice enough, but not managing the missing bag reports very well, and it took about an hour just to make sure the bag wasn't there (they kept making me wait when that was clear to me already) and then they had to go get missing back report sheets because they didn't have any (!) and yadda yadda and while all this annoying boringness was going on, Seung Yi and Ji swapped sitting spots of a baggage cart and it tipped over and squashed Seung Yi's wee little hand! I was so scared she might've broken her arm, but aside from some swelling and sad bruising, it is ok and she can flex, but she looks sooo sad testing it! So, bad end to a good trip.

Hope the new year is treating everyone well!

[On The Road-7-January-2012]

sneeze, cough, shiver, repeat

Bleh, have now spent both the first and last thirds of my holiday being sick. What a drag. Not stuck in London? Great! Still stuck in misery? Bad! It's been a weird one this time - aches and fever on New Year's Eve, quiet tired day on the 1st, then snuffles and cough on the 2nd, and wretched fever and queasiness back on the 3rd, and now perhaps winding down ever so slightly on the 4th - and HAVE TO FLY tomorrow! Yargh.

Good news: managed to get myself and the kids in to the dentist yesterday and we are all looking very sparkly-shiny in the tooth department.

Truly excellent news: Leah got off her leg braces yesterday! She had to wear them because her hips were out of joint (not her nose) after being in breech position. In some ways, the brace was handy because it made her feel very solid and tough, well and of course it was extremely handy because it fixed her legs, but in other ways it was a pain - hard to diaper around, hard to put back on, hard to give her a bath, lots of worries in case things weren't getting fixed by the brace. But now: brace free! Best of all, Leah can now wear fancy dresses, tights, shoes, and all kinds of other adorable acoutrements that were previously verboten. Cuteness alert rising to level BABY POLAR BEAR!

[Toronto-4-January-2012]

the cheese review

There are lots of year end reviews in the papers and online, as we finish up with 2011 (good year, in lots of ways, as far as I was concerned) and begin 2012 (hopefully gooder!). I thought I'd add in my thoughts on an important concern of mine, namely: cheese. I love cheese. I've been asked by my kids what my favourite meal is, and also what foods I could live on forever if I had to, and I have narrowed it down to bread and cheese. It would be great if I could get butter, too, but there are plenty of buttery cheeses that would do in a pinch. As for the bread, I would prefer it to be of great and wonderous variety - everything from challah, to pumpernickle, to sourdough, to baguettes, to anything wheaty and nutty and grainy, and everything in between. But now! Onto the cheese review!

Best Standard Cheese

Cheddar, duh. Cut into those little cubes on an inexpensive cheese and veg tray, who can resist cheddar? Or grilled between slices of wonder bread to a gluey, perfect consistency matched by the crispy-chewy fried bread, yum. A nice, ancient and crumbly variety beside Uncle Pat's apple pie. Works just fine with a sandwich, or on an English style ploughman's lunch platter. I will admit it: I even like single-package string cheeses with cartoon characters on the outside.

Best Grown Up Cheese

Manchego. It's got a classy looking exterior, with the charcoal grey ashy bit pressed in with the mold to create attractively decorative lines on the outside. Inside, it's like parmesan's creamier more sociable cousin. We only eat it when Tara buys it, which is lucky, because I find it very hard indeed to stop eating manchego once I've started. And I was only introduced to it a few years ago (by Tara of course) which is also good for the same reason. Stands up nicely in a salad, works well alongside other appetizers, doesn't compete for attention, but makes me keep strolling by the cheese tray to casually slice off another bite of excellence.

Best In Show

Riopelle. We grew up eating a good variety of brie and other creamy cheeses. I like a nice brie, but sometimes it's hard to remember which one is particularly good, and occasionally you run into a brie that is not pleasing at all. I do love a kilo or twelve of St. Andre, but that's basically a plain old butterfat kind of love. If it were socially acceptable for me to eat sticks of butter, I'd probably do that, but since I can't at least there's St. Andre. But Riopelle is truly in a class of its own. It is actually officially called "Le Riopelle de L'Isle" and was named for the famous Quebecois painter, Jean Paul Riopelle who agreed, just before he died, to have the cheese named after him and to have one of his artworks grace the label for the cheese. Riopelle is made on an island near the town of Montmagny, where our dear friend Alex grew up. Also awesome: it was Alex who introduced us to this cheese. For a long time, we had to wait to get it from her. I remember being quite decidedly pregnant with Seung Yi (must've been 8 months or so, because I was back in Toronto) and we were waiting at the Ethiopian restaurant on Queen West to have dinner, but it took about an hour and a half for our injera to be ready, and I was just about to keel over in a big pregnant heap from lack of food, when Alex showed up with a big chunk of triple cream Riopelle. It was unbelievably delcicious. Riopelle looks like a very tall brie - about 2 1/2, 3 inches high, it has a nice soft exterior, and then the cheese inside is intriguingly slightly creamier on the top and the bottom, and a tiny bit drier in the middle. It has a taste that is both intensely buttery but also a little bit nicely sharp in spots. If you get it straight out of the fridge, the dry sharpness sometimes prevails, and if you've left it out to soften for awhile you get an increased creaminess. Truly a cheese for all seasons!

Honourable Mentions

Havarti. Reliable ol' Havarti. Rich, easy to buy in sandwich slices, tasty and filling. Good with some hearty wintery soup - on the side, with some bread - not in the soup, silly.

Cream cheese. Uh, hello - cheese cake? My favourite dessert of all time? Yes, this is Thaba calling. I love you. I would like to have you on my plate every single day. What's that, cheesecake? My Dad won't bake you daily? You mean he only bakes you, like, every 3 months or so? Fine, then, I will eat your non-sweetened base on bagels for breakfast until I can see you again, mon amour.

Chevre. You see, I grew up with goats. Everyday I'd go out to the barn with my Grampa and he's milk the goats and sometimes he'd squirt the milk at me instead of into the tin pail. I even had my "own" goat, Snowball. When Grampa sold Snowball for a hundred bucks, he bought me a Canada Savings Bond with the money. So, me and goats go way back... we're, like, homies. But you know how that goes: you don't always want to eat cheese that smells like your homies. For a long time I was not a fan of chevre. I'd be like, yes great that is the smell of goat encapsulated in what looks to be like a tasty cheese, yech. But then - ah how wonderful the human ability to start to like stuff that you once hated is - I suddenly started to think chevre smelled great. I can remember exactly the moment when it happened: I was in Paris, with Phet (and maybe with Emma and maybe with Mum) and we stopped at a creperie near the Gare du Nord. It might have been by accident that I ordered the crepe stuffed with chevre, but it was a happy accident. Standing there in the freezing winter weather, surrounded by beautiful old grey Parisian buildings, eating a fresh-off-the-crepe-pan crepe - well, right then I decided chevre was yummy, and I haven't looked back since.

Oh, honey, no

Swiss cheese. I loathe swiss cheese. I can't explain it. I just hate it. It tastes wrong. Blagh!

Velveeta. Not actually cheese.

[Toronto-2-January-2012]

happy n-n-n-new year

Had Dad's famous Lamb Of Three Provenances last night for new year's dinner and then headed over to Anne and Robin's. Enjoyed some Frangelico (yes, I have a hobo's prediliction for sweet liquors - very much enjoy myself some Dubonnet, red vermouth, port, ice wine and the like. Do NOT like creamy sweet drinks like Bailey's or Kahlua, just in case you are wondering) while everyone else had champage. Tara was in fine form, Erin's hair is getting to be very long indeed, their friend Brian looked very charming in green checks and had acres of time to chat with the kids, Emma, Mum, Dad, and Leah showed up, and then we had our second annual Ten O'Clock New Year's Eve. The basic deal is that you just pick a random time at which you are starting to feel tired or when the kids need to go home and - ta dah! It's New Year's! Then you have a countdown, and no one feels guilty going home after that. Phet and I were both feeling kind of just slightly unwell and on the verge of actually not well, and Em was pretty much ready for bed after a long day with Leah. As we were leaving, Ji invited himself to sleep over, and Anne was happy with that, so in the end our 10 year old son kept the party going and represented us at the actual countdown. Apparently he was up past 2 and got everyone to watch his favourite youtube videos, like 'Rustin Biever' and 'How to be Ninja'.... haven't heard from Anne about how all this went down, but I guess better than the drink Ji made for Brian. That curdled. Yergh - please, someone, buy that kid a mixology book so he can do us proud whipping up manhattans and martinis, not toxic sludge.

When we got back to aunts' I was feeling really achey and not so good, and it turned into an actual fevery shakes deal, chattering teeth and uncontrollable shivering and all. H-h-h-h-happy new year. I woke up twice more with the shivers, but just kept dropping tylenol down the hatch, and it seems to have done the trick. I have a little cough, but otherwise have felt just tired and not full on sick today, luckily. I am trying to sleep and laze around as much as possible so that I will be well enough tomorrow to see Leah, my wonderful neice. Wish me luck!

[Toronto-1-January-2012]

shame

Thought it would be funny to go see a double bill of Shame and Carnage, but couldn't manage and only got to see Shame. Dang. Phet and I checked it out at the Scotiabank theatre at John and Richmond yesterday. Overall opinon? Ok, Michael Fassbender is willing to show everything in a mainstream film. Yes, he pees on camera and much much more. Sounds audacious, and it is... in some ways. The basic story is that he's a sex addict who is walking a very fine line trying to manage a superficially capable exterior personality with a very unweildy interior personality that deals with the challenges of life (ennui, ineffectuality, inability to naviagate close relationships, possibly crazy and damaging upbringing) with seemingly-thrilling-yet-actually-empty casual and paid-for sex. So far so good, right? Yeah, I know - I had you at Michael Fassbender and naked in the same sentence. Then there's the added complication of his messed-up sister, Carey Mulligan, coming to crash on his couch. Now, my theory is that if you stuck with the story and focused on the addiction side and his shame at being unable, at heart, to control himself - which he clearly thinks is important; his apartment could be featured in American Psycho Designer Monthly - it would have been a cutting-deep kind of movie. However, Steve McQueen murks things up unnecessarily in a few ways:

- we never really buy the shame MF is supposedly feeling.

- if the real point of the movie is to explore sex addiction, it seems almost contradictory to show so much very lovely skin and make the whole thing seem so attractive... I know that sounds weird, but what I mean is that the audience should get some kind of a freaked-out-by-the-compulsivity, shame-by-proxy kind of a feeling, but I don't think they do.

- there are some really bizarre bits that aren't meant to be bizarre, like when MF's skanky, skeevy, philandering boss finds all kinds of (not that bad) bad stuff on MF's hard drive, and acts all grossed out and is like, 'oh, do you think your intern left that on here?' - when the character they've built up as the boss would clearly have said either, 'hey bro, pass that on to me' or 'yo dude, don't surf the sexy stuff at work'. The director also seemed to think that he was really showing MF hit ROCK BOTTOM when he (in one - rather long - night): got together too speedily with his proto-girlfriend; got together energetically with a call-in friend; tried to get together with a woman at a bar but got punched in the head by her boyfriend outside instead; got together with a gentleman at a bath house; and then called in a couple more ladies du nuit for a final chasing-the-dragon sad-rictus-face finale. Ok, yeah, that's alot - but c'mon, it's not ROCK BOTTOM. They were all perfectly lovely looking, everyone was being basically nice (except the face-punching boyfriend), I dunno it was like the audience was expected to be like BATH HOUSE??? DOUBLE DATE SOUFFLE??? OMG! There is nowhere further down than that in our limited imaginations!

- and then there was the whole brother sister thing which was pretty well played but had this unnecessary creepy sexual overtone...now, of course, maybe one of the secret points of the movie (we don't know for sure, so this is not a spoiler) is that they were abused as kids, or had some very disturbing past family life, but it still just rang wrong notes, like the director wanted to elicit a particular response from the audience, but it just ended up being confusing and distracting from their real emotional connection and also from their battling. In the first scene they are in together, MF comes home and hears a record on and can tell someone is in his shower. He immediately decides it must be an intruder (yeah, cause you know intruders usually like to put on mellow jazz records before they STEAL ALL YOUR STUFF AND POOP ON YOUR FLOOR) and picks up a baseball bat and goes screaming into the bathroom, and then the rest of the scene plays out with Carey Mulligan (yes, his sister) stark naked. Hm. There are 3 other scenes with the same kind of weird vibe. Like, couldn't MF just get to be a messed up sex addict who has a crazy sister without there having to be sexual overtones to their relatioship too? In the end, I think even that could have been interesting if it was handled the right way, but in this film it wasn't, it was just kind of like - wha?

Anyways, as you can tell, the good news is that the movie made me think! And it was well worth watching for the nice, quiet, allowed-to-be-drawn-out scenes with minimal dialogue. Although I have to say I HATED it that they kept overlaying 'meaningful' classical music overtop of every nice, long, quiet scene. At home alone peeing? CLASSICAL MUSIC! Conflicted about your psycho sister and going for a jog? CLASSICAL MUSIC! Heterosexual but visiting the bath house just for kicks? DRAMATIC CLASSICAL MUSIC! Ok, ok, ok... could we just get a little bloody variety in the soundtrack, huh? Give Irvine Welsh a ring, I bet he could hook you up with a shame-full playlist.

[Toronto-30-December-2011]

sherlock holmes, part the second

Went to see the second Sherlock Holmes movie with Jake, Dad, Ji and Phet this afternoon. Good fun! Guy Ritchie gives it a go with some cool slow-it-down, speed-it-up battle shots (loved the exploding black dirt against the white winter trees). Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are delightful; Lane Price (yes, I know that's not his real name...on a side note OH PLEASE COULD MAD MEN COME BACK AND SOON? Lane Price...with his sassy Playboy bunny girlfriend, cane-beating-inflicting ruthless British father, and his enviable getting-to-go-on-a-mega-bender-with-Don-Draper luck...how I miss him...) is good as Moriarity. The story was a little confusing but it wasn't really the point at all, of course. It's really about the Holmes and Watson chemistry. I don't really get why there needs to be a threat to world peace every time - might be more fun to just have some local crime get solved, but whatever...it's a good excuse to put these two together onscreen and to enjoy some snappy 3 piece wool suits which are always worth the price of admission.

[Toronto-27-December-2011]

why yes, I did have an excellent christmas

What made Christmas great this year, you ask? Well thanks for asking, let me tell you!

1. Jake and Emma were both a) in town; b) able to come to not only christmas eve dinner, but also christmas morning stocking-enjoying and present opening, AND christmas dinner. What a treat! Next year Em will be back on call at work so we have to enjoy every moment of her luxuriant mat leave. As for Jake, must say that this was the one bright side to the divorce!

2. Leah! She was so unbearable cute and adorable for the whole day. She and Emma walked over in the freezing cold at 8 am, and then she was just little ball of christmas pudding for there on afterward. In the morning she had this long and happy wakeful period, then later when I was changing her she was smiling like crazy and kind of laughing, making these "ha!" (like, literally 'ha', not like a laugh) sounds. Her little sausage roll leggies are the squnchiest things ever. And then she often just sits straight upright and opens her eyes real big and observes what's going on. Or, observes the curtains. You know, whichever is more interesting. She's this super zen little being. And perfect!

3. ...oh, okay, and the rest of the family! Mum and Dad cooking, cleaning, and prepping like mad and being remarkably calm. Mum even let us try the chocolate mousse at tea time instead of having to wait until after dinner!!! Nice! Also got to see Pat, Cathie and Nick, Jodi and Brad and their friend Chris, and Brad's lovely Mom Cheryl, John, Katy and Tim, all Phet's aunts, Pheuy and Betsy and Jenny, and Anne and Sally dropped by, and Tara gave us a call, and so did Sing and -- just so wonderful to see everyone. We spend a lot of days with no family around except for ourselves, and while we've kind of made peace with that, we really do miss being around our crazy families and we are so happy we get to be here on our holidays.

4. FOOD.

5. Allow me to expand on that - Christmas Eve dinner was brilliant, as always, but I would like to offer special acknowledgement for Dad's restraint in the amount he cooked this year. Not only did he have fewer leftovers, he was also able to cut the fish course entirely. Well done, Dad! (Of course, that did leave the menu down to 46 types of appetizers including 7 varieties of kolbasa, pierogies with onions in butter and mushrooms in cream, sauerkraut and sausage bigos / choucrout garni, sour cherry soup, nutty kutya (say, did you know kutya also means 'dog' in Hungarian? Sounds so cute, it would be a great name for a puppy!), and then dessert with homemade shortbread cookies, chocolate mousse and marshmallow peanut butter bars.) For breakfast on Christmas we had not only the traditional crepes with smoked salmon or leftover chocolate mousse, but Jake also whipped up some truly amazing waffles. Yummy! Yesterday's Christmas dinner did NOT disappoint - Uncle Pat had a massive and beautifully browned turkey with all - and I mean all - the fixings. Mm, mm!

6. Presents! We all got terrific presents this year. Every one of them was just, I don't know, really nice and exactly something that we would like. I got a new watch that is beautiful, new earrings that I love, a long-wished-for cashmere sweater, and a sack full of fancy new makeup! The kids got a huge array of well-chosen gifts - new books, building blocks, DVDs, cute hats, their very own tool boxes with their names on them, science and crafts kits, just a massive haul. Thanks!!!

7. Cold but no snow, thus allowing for maximum enjoyment of Toronto walking, and reducing my fear of driving through blizzards.

[Toronto-26-December-2011]

young adult

Went to see Young Adult with Phet yesterday. Verdict is: very well acted by Charlize Theron; lovely restraint in the not-using-unnecessary-soundtrack-audio and allowing moments to just be quiet and thoughtful, especially the opening sequence; effective use of the Pizza Hut / KFC / Taco Bell at a strip mall and two different cheesy bars of the fake-pub variety as settings (refreshing, rather than the usual beautiful NYC restaurants kind of thing); not entirely sure that I liked the ending, but basically good and well worth watching. Coming up in our pop culture holiday: Singalong Sound of Music at the TIFF theatre on the 30th. Join us!

[Toronto-24-December-2011]

coldness

It is a beautiful, freezing Toronto winter morning. The sky is crisp light blue, the sun is on an angle, as usual, and there is crystalline frost all over the roof of my car. Just went into the kitchen at aunts' house to get a mug and the floor is fah-reezing. Phet took my socks (yes, we only have one pair, please sir may we have some more) to go buy his regular coffee and Jamaican patty for breakfast and so my feet are bare. Very artistically, the clothes dryer vent is puffing white wafts of steam past my window, and I'm glad that I'm now wrapped up in the big flannel duvet that aunt made. Winter is not so bad if there's a blue sky and no slush on the ground - and if you can stay warm. On a grey, slushy, feet-wet, hands-cold kind of day - no thanks. We had most excellent walks downtown yesterday - first up Yonge from Queen to Bloor, and then across Bloor and Danforth over to Mum and Dad's at Greenwood. We crossed the viaduct at 4:30 and the light was so extremely clear and pastel-tinted. Thickets of brown trees and brown ground and grey shadows in the ravine, pale icy blue sky, peach and pink touching the edges of the apartment buildings on the opposite side of the Don Valley along Broadview. It was cold - the kind of cold where it is possible to still carry on outdoors-doings, but you have to be well-bundled up to feel comfortable. I can't comprehend people who go out without hats and mitts, but even weirder are people who have most of the required winter items - hat, scarf, warm jacket, etc - but then FAIL to wear one elemental component, like mittens. So they look kind of warm-ish, but then have a sort of suffering face and one extremity that looks like it is about to fall off and become food for the next windigo that happens by. Anyways, I was happy with my newly invented winter ensemble: I bought a MEC rainjacket and a grey fuzzy-necked and fuzzy-wristed but not fuzzy-lined jacket this summer, and on their own they are great for spring and fall, but then the other day I put them on together and ta-da, they are perfect for winter. They have the exact same cut and the combined power of warmness and wind cutting-ness are amazing. With my wear-your-indian-churridar-leggings-under-your-jeans plan going on for my legs, my double jacket on the top, and my mega scarf wrapped around my face, I was basically impervious to the cold. Yes, yes, I AM accepting pats on the back - feel free to give me one in person the next time you see me.

[Toronto-24-December-2011]

two days till christmas

Currently 8:13 pm on Dec 23, here in the basement at Phet's aunts' house. Seung Yi is going wild playing with a resistance stretch exercize thingy from the dollar store, Ji is reading new comic books, Jenny's playing with her new iPad keyboard that we gave her. I'm tired and sleepy but finally not delirious in the evenings - have to say this round of jet lag was really tiresome with this rotten cold. The cold has sort of run its course but I'm still waking up with sandpaper throat and end the evening coughing. Happily, though, I got to hold Perfect Leah today!!!!!!!! She is as gorgeous as can be, just a little alert jellybean of a baby - cute perfectly chubby cheeks - not too chubby, just the right amount of chub - these big watchful (still) blue eyes, and she's starting to move her hands thoughtfully, so they kind of reach out and touch things just a little bit on purpose now. She has Adam's long fingers, and they are lovely and delicate, and when she's nursing the curl around super cutely. She has very strong neck muscles and seems to hold up and move her head easily. She's very attentive and aware and seems to just take everything in slowly and carefully. Love her!

We had a great afternoon - went and watched (thanks, Mum!) the play version of Mary Poppins at the Princess of Wales theatre. The kids loved the show - Seung Yi very intent on absolutely everything, and especially interested in the 'notes' of the music and the special effects for flying. The sets were fascinating and inventive, the parts of the story that stuck closely to the original story in the movie were good, the new parts were kind of jarring and seemed unnecessary (did they REALLY need to create an evil nanny who made the kids sip brimstone and treacle, and who had to be magically sucked away into a green-glowing cage below the basement by Mary Poppins??), Step In Time done with tap shoes was great, Jane Banks was absolutely awful in every way (sounded mean and nasty, had a spectacularly bad "British" accent, the flying effects were pretty awesome (Bert literally danced up the side of the stage, across the ceiling, and down the other side), and the audience was tickled by the whole show. Always good to see shows and get inspired, much appreciated Mum!

Here's what Seung Yi has to say about the show:

'Hm, hm, hm hm hm. It's hard to decide. I liked - I mean - my favourite character is Mary Poppins because she is the main character and most people like the main characters best. Usually. I was right that there were strings hanging down for the people. I really liked the show but there was not lots of parts of it that was in the movie. But why? Alot were missing. When Mary Poppins holds the bird, and when the nanny says "Shut up, you're making the master a headache", oh and also when they went to his house and he was laughing, the guy couldn't stop laughing and they had a party up there with a table and tea. I liked - I can't choose which scene was my favourite. Hm. When Mary - when they sing the song "When Mary holds your hand you feel so grand your heart starts beating like a big brass bart!" I think they said that. Oh yeah, big brass band. And "It's a jolly holiday with Mary, Mary makes the sun shine bright!" and they didn't do the one where they jumped into the drawing of Bert's. "When the day is grey and ordinary, Mary makes the sun shine bright!"

[Toronto-23-December-2011]

girl with the dragon tattoo

Ha - started writing 'Grill with the dragon tattoo' - now that's a movie I'd like to see! Went to catch the show last night with not only Phet, but also Jake, and Katy and Cathie and Dad - what a treat. We all met up at the Starbucks next to the Scotiabank theatre at John St and we were sitting having a coffee and who should show up but JODI! Then, off to see the feel-bad movie of the season.

I was confused at first: I thought that the film was being re-made so it could be set in the States. But no, apparently not. It's still set in Sweden...but this time it features American and British actors with slightly "Swedish" accents that come and go. It also looks very similar to the first film. Like, ok, the office room of Lisbeth's evil new guardian: same kind of wood panelling in both films. Why?? If you're going to do a re-make, shouldn't it be more REmade? On the other hand, Fincher has put together a pretty great film. It's just not that different from the Swedish one.

Incidentally, HATED the bizarre tar-and-CGI intro to the film - what was up with that?? Did like Rooney Mara, loved Daniel Craig, appreciated the fact that Robin Wright has kept her face looking basically normal and looks like a gorgeous humanoid and not a freaky alien, enjoyed seeing Captain Von Trapp play Henrik Vanger, thought Martin was well played, really wished as I did with the original movie that they had time to really give some time to the relationship between Lisbeth and her employer, and could not watch the disturbing scenes at all or look at the gruesome computer photographs of the unsolved murders.

Finished the film feeling the same way I did after reading the first book: give me more!

[Toronto-23-December-2011]

looking for good pirate music? search no more!

One of the plays I directed last year had a piratical theme, and of course for the shows I put together playlists for before and afterwards to entertain the audience. I've been meaning to put this list up for ages - best of the best piratey music, enjoy! (You can save these if you right click on them and click on 'save link as').

Talk Like A Pirate Day
Captain Kidd
The Last Saskatchewan Pirate This song is *THE* greatest!
Whiskey In The Jar
Seven Deadly Sins
A Drop of Nelson's Blood Absolutely fantastic drinking and carousing song.
Scurvy!
A Pirate's Life Is Peaceful (Till someone cuts you up)
What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor
The Mariner's Revenge Song
Barrett's Privateers
Pirate Joke Song This is now the only joke I can tell properly. Thanks, Ben Folds!
Pirate Jenny Nina Simone and one kick-ass pirate wench

...and just for kicks, the brilliant sound clip from the Beasties that Seung Yi loves to quote:

"Why professor, what's another word for pirate treasure?" "Why I think it's booty! Booty! Booty!"

seung yi and laree as princess lisa and prince david

The girls wanted me to film their pretend royal wedding a few weeks ago:

"Our pretend wedding!"

[Delhi-21-December-2011]

happy 40th anniversary, Mom & Dad

Last night we had a low key and cheerful dinner in honour of Mum and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary on December 15th. Originally, there had been plans afoot to have a bigger fiesta, but it was a challenge to plan for the Christmas season - we weren't getting in until after the actual date, many friends have holiday plans on the weekends, and times had just been a little crazy around the Niedzwiecki household for a couple of months. So, in the end, the decision was made to have a small dinner now and a big party in the summer. Will let you know the when and where!

Dinner was very pleasant - we met up at Tommasso's restaurant on Eastern near Broadview. From what I've heard from Dad it used to mostly be a cafe catering to hungry men looking for Italian lunches near the TTC, post office, and film studio buildings down on Eastern. They've now expanded and have a pretty well-sized two-section restaurant along with a shop. The warehouse-y type of building it is located in was (famously) painted by Phet back in, oh, '96 when he got back from Carolina and worked in Toronto casting faux stone and doing home renovations. The food was pretty standard, but it was great to be able to all fit at one big table, and have the place mostly to ourselves. It was nice and calm and quiet so we didn't have to shout to hear each other; the wait staff were pleasant and attentive and brought us multiple salt shakes so Mum, Em, Jake, Cathie and I could each have our own; and there was no problem with Seung Yi scooting around and tickling people or with Em walking Leah around while she - Em, that is - nibbled on lamb chops. Kind of like a borrowed dining room at someone's house, and we didn't have to do any of the cleanup, so AWESOME.

Great, of course, to see Pat and Cathie - he regaled us with tales from Rome, and has a new-city strategy I highly approve of and follow myself: found a good restaurant where the staff are welcoming? Eat there every night! John and Kate were with us as well - John with a car stuffed with truffles (of the underground variety), awaiting his magical cooking expertise. Jake showed up only a tiny bit late (good job, Jake!) looking handsome as ever with shiny new red and yellow laces in his winter boots. Lovely to sit at the table and enjoy the whole family, and many warm congratulations to Mum and Dad on reaching this milestone!

[Toronto-21-December-2011]

42% power remaining!

...and I have no adapter for my power cord, oh no. Must type quickly.

Yesterday we woke up at 3 am, slept for about an hour between 7 and 8 am, and then got up for the day. I'm still in a fog at the moment and I can't really remember how, but we got up to Mum and Dad's during the day. Let's see, ok, Dad must have picked us up. Yes, he did because I remember him asking if I wanted to drive. Then we bought a Christmas tree at Queen and Greenwood, from the place across from Queen Margherita Pizza (yummy but expensive) and the streetcar yards (not yummy...but very clickety clackety all night long). I was kind of cold so I sacked out and stayed in the car while Dad, Phet and the kids picked out the tree. Up at Mum's we had a nice time putzing around - Dad's got great new Ikea bookshelves in his room, thanks Jake; the new bathroom has very silently closing drawers; there are many exciting new novels on Dad's desk - I was tempted by the new Jack Reacher (oh, and FYI: Tom Cruise is NO Jack Reacher. Give me a break. What a loser. Seriously: in every novel Reacher is described first and foremost as being huge. Every book: "Reacher's 6-foot-4 frame was packed with muscle...he could never find pants that fit him properly because he was so very large and massive..." NOT Tom Cruise.) but ended up going for what has got to be the best combination EVER: PD James + Jane Austen + Murder Mystery = purpose-written to make Thaba Niedzwiecki buy this book. Will let you know how good it is but so far the first 30 pages have been very satisfying.

In the late afternoon, we dropped Seung Yi and Mum off to meet up with Jake to go see the Nutcracker, thanks Mum and Jake! SY had spent a loooong time up at Gramma's showing us all her many new outfits: first up, the truly extraordinary princess dress from Cathie that makes her look like a (cute, not weird) 5-year-old beauty queen. It is to die for: something like 6 layers of skirt, so it poufs out, and then a pearl-beaded bodice and off-the-shoulder rosette demi-sleeves. SY then had to get out her pearl necklace, and then her shiny new silver sparkle shoes to go with the dress. Then she remembered her new football cleats, and raced off to get those on. She came back wearing her shirt, the pearl necklace, her underwear, her shinguards, and her cleats - and her orange and purple striped knee socks. Adorableness! She went outside and had to put on all her outdoor clothes, and then when she came back in she got on her ballet-going costume: the most gorgeous dress with a black velvet bodice and a white skirt with black velvet polka dots - from Gramma, naturally, and Leah has a matching one!! Death by cuteness, I tell you. This morning she told me that ballet was great. She liked the sugar plum fairy the best, the other little girls were all dressed up in party dresses too, there was another girl in the same dress as her, the dancing bears were cool, and the under-the-bed hiding place contraption was notably well-designed.

While the balletomanes luxuriated in their show, I forced myself to stay awake so I could take Dad and Phet to go see The Guard up at Canada Square. I had accidentally started watching the movie - which I had never heard of - while I was on Emirates flying to Dubai. It was so well-written I actually found myself laughing out loud on the flight. The combination of dry humour, philosophical musings by international drug traffickers, the fluent f-word Irishese, and a brilliant performance by the main actor was remarkable. And I knew that I would get a kick out of watching Dad and Phet laugh. It was a little sassy for Ji - actually, I think the two ladies in front of us were giving me dirty looks for bringing a kid to a show that had a bunch of murders and swearing and a scene with a police seargent (dang, how to spell that?) hooking up with two ladies from an escort agency - but in my defence it was really well written, and Ji and I had just had a long winter's chat that very morning about escort agencies after he read the Now Magazine I handed him at Bonjour Brioche while we were waiting for our quiche and jambon fumee, so it was kind of timely. Anyways, Dad and Phet did indeed laugh, and I recommend that you get out to see The Guard, or rent it, or download it for free as soon as you can. Oh, and Canada Square is a retro kick indeed. Totally has not been touched since we were in high school. Has a very mellowed out feel compared to today's wildly retina-destroying theatre lobbies.

On our way back home we stopped for burgers at South Street Burgers at Laird - very nice set up. Tasty buns, nice meat, and a host of delicious toppings. Phet had blue cheese and Ji had guacamole - very good. The fries were not entirely up to par, but the burgers were worth the drive to the Calgary-style mall with its potemkiny storefronts.

Today I was totally wrung out from coughing and lack of sleep - my cold is coming to an end but not very nicely. I've had this annoying hacky cough and (for me, anyways, since I never get them) bad headaches. I hate that when I'm sick and I finally sleep, and when I wake up I'm like, yes! I must be better now! ...and I STILL have a headache. I got up at 3 again - yechh - and eventually Ji and Phet got up too and we tried to watch TV but there was only garbage morning news shows on and every channel we actually wanted to watch cost money to open. TV is so dumb! After SY got up, we had baths and then I keeled back into bed until lunchtime when we went for sushi with Mum and Emma.

I am very bitter at my cold also because I can't snuggle Perfect Leah. She is so incredibly cute and amazing and perfect, and - dang it - healthy. Her little head fuzz is getting so long! Her eyes are so focusy! Her skin has not even one tiny blemish! She smiles! But I can't snuggle her. It sucks. Emma looks amazing, and she is such a good Mom. I know she doesn't necessarily sleep so well all the time, but she is just doing great and she is very calm and so good with Leah. And she still has the time and energy to make my kids kill themselves laughing. Yay Auntie Emma / Mommie Emma!

Currently back at aunts', in bed, staying warm on this grey afternoon. Tomorrow we are off to see Santa with the kids in their matching costumes, and I think there is some cookie baking afoot, and then dinner in honour of Mum and Dad's FORTIETH anniversary! Whoot whoot!

[Toronto-20-December-2011]

holiday post quest

It's boring to read posts about not posting, so I'll keep the intro short: after many months of dormancy due to long months of updating problems, I'm challenging myself to post daily over the holidays so that I get back into the habit of regular posts. I was looking back at an old one about Ji's crazy science inventions when he was 4 years old because this morning he was drawing a wild diagram of a solar death ray, and I'm like - hey Ji, check it out, this is exactly the kind of thing you were drawing six years ago, only now you can write your own captions! He had a laugh and a half reading the old post. I've been kicking myself to post for awhile now, so while I have both the impetus and the time on hand, I'm gonna do it!

We just arrived in Toronto for the holidays yesterday. Seung Yi had gone ahead with Mum at the begining of December, so it was just me and Phet and Ji. Man, it just gets easier and easier to travel with these kids of ours. After many years of hard work entertaining wee ones, making sure we had every single baby need met (diapers... butt cream... bottles... wipes... clean water... sixteen changes of clothing) it has been such a treat to mature into a family that can basically travel with just their passports. Of course, we did spend last year suffering through the annulis travellus horribilis, during which we were - oh joy! - stuck in London for a week with no luggage in the winter, among many other delightful travel mishaps, so there was that too. I don't want to say too much and tempt the travel gods, but I would like to thank them for their recent kindnesses. And to mention that we have suffered greatly for them in the past, and please we would not like to do so again in the future.

The flights were fine, but Ji and I were wrecking through the tail ends of miserable colds, so we weren't feeling very good and we didn't sleep well on the planes. He was off Mon-Thurs for the last week of school with fevers and coughing, and I took off Wednesday with the same kind of thing and slept quite literally all day long. On the night of the flights I was super stuffed up, headachey, and had a very irritating niggly dry cough. So instead of sleeping, I watched a bunch of shows, but Jet Airways hadn't changed the films since our flights in October to go back and see Perfect Leah, so they were kind of a yawn. I watched Food Inc and it made me sadly not want to eat mass-produced burgers... I watched Monte Carlo and enjoyed seeing the hot French dude fall for Selena Gomez' totally ridiculous British accent... I watched the Usual Suspects for the second time - Phet and I still totally mock Dad for asking, "So who was Kaiser Shoze?" at the end of the movie when we saw it together - and enjoyed Kevin Spacey. He is so ridiculously interesting to watch, he's like on another plane of acting existence. I also watched 6 episodes of Modern Family - pretty entertaining show. I hadn't really seen it before but the writing is good fun. My favourite line was when Mitchell got stuck inside the Princess castle treehouse thingy he had not-very-handy-manily built for his daughter, and then he's like, "Who's the bitch now, bitches??" to his Dad and boyfriend with his head poking out through the castle window. Heh heh... must find a good opportunity to use that line DAILY over the holidays! Uh, and I watched an episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine that was terrible, and one of - oh dang, what's that show with Darlene's old boyfriend... ah yes, the Big Bang Theory - terrible times two! It got one laugh out of me, though, when one guys said to the other something like, "you were being such a bossy dictator!", and his other friend said he shouldn't say such mean stuff, and he was like, "yeah, that's why I added the 'tater' on the end." Geddit? Clearly, all this demonstrates about me is that I have VERY LOW standards for comedy. Sassy swearing jokes? HA HA HA. Yet another reason why I can empathize so well with my 13-year-old students: we have the same sense of humour!

Getting into Toronto was easy but we all felt a little like we'd been crushed in revolving door time machines. I could barely talk to Mum when she picked us up, I was so delirious. It was minus five here - yechhh, and today it has been very overcast. Feels like snow is on the way. I had better go get my excellent boots back from Emma - they were my most favourite thing I bought last winter. We were stuck in London and had no warm clothes and we were SO COLD and the night before we had had to wait 3 HOURS for a taxi from the airport, in SLUSH and with NO COATS (cause I'm an idiot and I packed them into our luggage, which I will NEVER DO AGAIN) and then the next day we had to go and buy new winter clothes, and so we went to Primark and bought basically the whole store and it was so amazing to be finally warm and then we went walking through this market section and found a shoeshop and I got these boots that have fake fur on the inside and the go all the way up to my knees, and snuggle my entire bottom half of my leg in warmth and they are SO EXCELLENT you have no idea.

We are also hoping to see Perfect Leah this afternoon - yet another reason for ongoing lack of posting guilt has been that I haven't even EVER put up a photo of my brilliant neice, and that must change TODAY. Will get photos. Will post.

More later!

[Toronto-18-Dec-2011]

kathmandu whoo hoo

So, I went to Kathmandu for a long weekend a couple of weeks ago. Before and after the trip I I kept humming lyrics from some song about Kathmandu...I'd be like...Kathmandu...K K K Kathmandu...but then the song kept turning from that song into Back in the USSR. So: K K K kathmandu...you don't know how lucky you are...back in the...uh...Kathmandu? Ok, fine so I just googled the lyrics and of course it is BOB SEGER who sang the infamous song about Kathmandu - tho' of course he spelled it Katmandu. Go play it on youtube while you read my post. Be forewarned that the accompanying video is the ultimately lamest video representation of the song possible. But the song sounds great!

Why Kathmandu? Well, last year we went to Bangkok for Patricia's 40th birthday and had an excellent time. That was the trip that ended up being a big fiesta of 10 really loud ladies, Phet and Phet's Dad. Lots of feasting and shopping and drinking and dancing and wild late night taxi rides and malls and foot massages and buffet breakfasts and pork leg and egg, y'know, just a typical trip to Bangkok (I HAVE GOT TO GO AGAIN SOON!). We had come up with the idea for that trip when we were at the South African embassy's pre-World Cup party, and were stuffing ourselves with grilled meat and fine SA wines and dancing to the excellent SA band under a glittery haze of the lightest rain and were like LET'S CELEBRATE YOUR 40th IN STYLE! At the end of last school year, I figured out that it would be my friend Briar's 50th birthday in August, and thus was born a new reason to go away for fun lady times. Once again we rallied together a very loud and effervescent group for the event, booked our tickets way back in the spring, and then were all set to hit the road come August.

It was a little dicey getting away from school - all of us are ridiculously embedded in our work (much, usually, to our delight) and so heading off all of a sudden seemed very challenging. What about our marking? Our prep time? (And those pesky families?) Still and all we managed to make it to our van on time and took off for the airport. It was a couple of days into some major strikes and anti-corruption protests in Delhi, and we were worried about the traffic, but it turned out to be no worry at all.

[And now, for a short digression: so, there have been MAJOR efforts to draw attention to the anti-corruption cause here in India, highlighted by the recent hunger strike by political leader Mr. Anna Hazare. Which is good in my books, this is a huge issue and is an excellent point for people to rally behind. Case in point: Iaimon has recently applied to have her passport renewed, as it is now 10 years old. She's not planning to travel, but it's good to have the passport just in case and also as a backup for of ID. Ok, fine. So, she has had to go to the main office (very close to the high courts where there was a major bomb blast that killed something like 13 people last week - very scary!) something like 6 times to get her application and Laree's application settled. Every time there was some new form or piece of something missing that she had to go and get a bring back (this included 3 trips to the notary to finally get the correctly-worded document stating that Laree's Dad is not involved with her upbringing at all). So after all of this, she is also visited by this policeman while we're gone in July, and he says she needs various other things, yadda yadda, and she has to give him some money, and fine, she gives him 300 rupees, which he sniffs at. Then, more recently he's come by another THREE times demanding various other paperwork (her bank account statements, her phone bills, Phet's house lease agreement, Phet's business card, etc etc) and has - get this! - refused to give his name or station number!! - and Iaimon has had to give him 1000 rupees and he keeps bugging her about things like she should pay for his petrol and we should go visit his son in Canada (!!) and so on and so on. 1000 rupees, just for the record is a full TENTH of Iaimon's monthly salary!! Insanity. So keep up the protests, anti-corruption, folks. I'm right behind you.]

Now back to the Delhi airport: so, we all check in and go through customs (very funny - YOU try travelling with a group of TEN bossy Moms who are frequent international travellers. It's like, "Has everybody got their passports?" "Boarding passes?" "Who wants cashews?" "I've got mints!" "Don't forget to take a piece of gum!" The absolute best moment was when a bunch of us went through the gate security right before boarding the plane, talking very loudly and North Americanly and the gate ticket-taker actually SHUSHED us!!! Shockingness. On the plane I sat next to my friend who was knitting some gorgeous grey-blue socks and Briar and we chatted and chatted and chatted and the scarfed down some excellent chicken biryani - we flew the cheapo SpiceJet, so we had to pay for the meal, but it was only 200 rupees (about 4 bucks) and included a drink, yogurt, rotis, AND a Kit Kat bar along with the biryani.

I was sort of surprised by the airport in Katmandu. It was quite small, all brick, quite pleasant but sort of late 70s era-ish, kind of like the size of the old Vientiane airport with the yellow signs from the old Bangkok airport. The arrivals lounge was sort of crappy-ish but not really so terrible, kind of like the old Delhi airport. Definitely a more provincial vibe than I had thought. We found our tourguide, and spurned the dudes who had put our bags on the top of our van - we'd thought they were organized by our tourguide, but they were just opportunistic bag throwers, who were probably pretty surprised by such a huge group North American ladies who were definitely unwilling to give them US DOLLARS for lifting their bags. Someone gave them a very reasonable few rupees, and we were all motioning, "Like, we could've lifted these ourselves, look how strong we are, now go away!" They're like, wow, not quite fresh off the boat, are these ladies.

The ride into "town" was interesting. Kathmandu looks quite similar to a more provincial town in India, still pretty grimy and rickety, particularly the streets, but of course lots more Nepalese folks on the street! The overall vibe seemed to be pretty relaxed (at least a little moreso than Delhi) but busy, and the overall aesthetic was crazy Asia with a very minimum level of central planning. Our guesthouse ("Kathmandu Guest House", where the Beatles once stayed!) was lovely - right smack-dab in the middle of the backpacker area, which was fun - and it had a gorgeous central set of gardens and lovely trees including a few epic pomelo trees, which I'd never seen growing live before. It was definitely not the Shangri-La on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Bangkok, but it was a super location and the rooms were absolutely serviceable.

In the evening we met up for beverages and sacks o' snacks in the garden and chatted and chatted and chatted (perhaps you are begining to notice a theme here?). After several hours of snacks and chats and drinks, we headed across the street (absolutely literally, directly across the street) for some excellent Italian food. We were all ravenous and ordered way to much bacon and spinach pizza and then couldn't finish our gorgonzola and arugula ravioli. Heh heh, go to Nepal for the bacon!! On our way out, I was sacked and headed home, but our friends managed to close down THREE CLUBS (maybe not so surprising given that there are very, very early closing times in Kathmandu and the police enforce them rigorously, so that although they closed the three clubs they were safe at home in bed by midnight...really quite a great accomplishment all together!)

In the morning we feasted on a nice buffet breakfast, and then headed off on separate group adventures. Patricia and I and our lovely sock-knitting friend Adele went wandering through the nearby streets on a Lonely Planet walking tour led by Patricia. Our friends split into two groups: one went shopping, and the other went driving and sightseeing and shopping. Our walking tour was lovely. The area near the guesthouse was very busy, but full of not only tourists but also PLENTY of regular folks going about their business. The guidebook was nice because it pointed out some cool temples and holy spots along our way - we saw some incredible places, like a shrine to the tooth god covered in coins, an 800-year old Ganesh statue, extraordinarily beautifully carved wooden temples, and when we went into one temple complex, we were followed by a roving band of musicians, who played TRUMPETS and ANTLERS as they circled the temple and spun prayer wheels. We wandered through the dentistry street, had a coke, continued on to a main confluence where a tobacco seller let us use her phone to call a friend of Patricia's, and then headed to the main area of town where there is an old and epic palace complex that is a UNESCO designated heritage site. We had to buy tickets to enter the area (despite everyone else just walking along the street - pah!) but it was worth it and the palaces were beautiful. We wandered down some side streets and ended up having some refreshments at a place called something like Beer and Nuts. We had milky "iced" tea and poorly flavoured momo dumplings, and CHATTED some more.

We had arranged to go visit Patricia's friend who had recently moved to Kathmandu, so we hopped into a taxi and went up hill and down dale to find her house. The instructions were, by necessity, of the "go past the police station, look for the small pine forest, turn left and then keep your eyes open for the green gate" variety. We finally found the house and spent a delightful afternoon hanging out with her friends and their gorgeous 1-year-old daughter. I got hit by some cold-ish allergy-ish attack, and was just like SNEEZE BLOW the whole time, which was a bummer, but it was still really cool to see their house and to get the feel for what regular life (for a foreigner, of course) would be like in Nepal. The house was right at the side of a ridge, and overlooked a stream, and had an amazing garden and football-sized field, and an amazing rooftop terrace, and was just lovely. P's friend's husband had just gotten back from Europe and he served four HUGE chunks of truly extraordinary cheese with a side of chunky, grainy, fresh-cooked bread. Yum!

That evening we went out for the birthday celebration proper and had dinner at a delightful French restaurant called Chez Caroline. We were the very loud and noisy North American ladies who were all wearing feather boas and party hats, and who spent an inordinate amount of time tooting on those party blowers. Whee! All of us but the one vegetarian ordered MEAT with a capital M, and I think there were 8 steaks on the table when we were all served. The steak - BEEF! - was soooo delicious and was served with a side of blue cheese sauce and some fries. Me and Beef = BFFs.

The next morning Patricia's lovely friend picked us up and drove us to see a very beautiful temple complex with a massive central stupa (low towerish type of thing) called Pathan. It was really quite hot and sharply sunny - that kind of mountainy hotness where when it is hot it is really HOT, so I was a little whew-ed out, but it was absolutely worthwhile going to see. We had a great coffee on a rooftop cafe seated next to a crazy (like, actually talking-to-herself-crazy Scandinavian lady) and chatted and chatted. After we got back to our guesthouse, I did some serious shopping - dress for SY, lots of knock off DVDs for the kids, the cutest felt bags with little felt finger puppets in heart-shaped pockets on the front for the girls, felt vines for my classroom, a jacket, um a huge whack of calendars to give away as party favours for SY and Laree's party, and maybe some white rabbit candies. We hauled away just after lunch and got back to Delhi in the evening. Another great trip, but one that begged the question: WHERE DO WE GO NEXT YEAR?

Enjoy a small photo gallery of Kathmandu 2011 here.

[On The Road-10-September-2011]

Home Stretch!

It's May 4th, just about another 23 days left in our school year, but about eight billion things for me to finish before I am actually done. Almost all of the things-that-need-to-be-done are good things, but they are things, nonetheless, and THEY MUST BE DONE. I've got my mental checklists of 62 things per day, and I just keep on trucking though and doing 'em. Let's see what was on my list for today, ok?

1. Wake up. This was somewhat more difficult than usual because we turned on the air con for the first time last night. This meant that the windows needed to be closed, which in turn meant that the sound of the birds was muffled, and which also meant that the hum of the air con also added to the aural numbity of the atmosphere, all of which meant that I woke up later (but cooler!) than usual.

2. Get ready for school. Ok, Seung Yi is sort of sick, so I let her sleep in, but had to get Ji up and had to spend SEVERAL minutes of my quiet tea-drinking time talking to him and Laree. Laree has had ridiculously hard homework since she started KG (we're talking, like, 3 pages of writing practice EVERY NIGHT) but she was on the ball this morning and had everything done. After my conversation with the kids I had to shower (yawn) and get dressed. Since we just got our shirts for our upcoming show, I had to put together an outfit around this grey, v-neck tshirt...anyways, our theme for the show is black, silver and gold, so I wore the shirt tucked in (!!) with grey pin-striped pants and a silver belt. Phet made fun of me for looking super 80s.

3. Go to school. Ok, this one's easy: John does all the work. Interestingly enough, once we got to school there were about 6 rifle-armed guards at our school gate, guess they've been put on since the Bin Laden assassination.

4. Deal with stuff before class starts. First, had to run to the theatre to get the glitter eyeliner because I needed to get John to go buy more. On the way there, had to take money from a bunch of kids who wanted to pay for their tshirts. Talked to the tech dude in the theatre to make sure we were good to go for the day. Took the eyeliner to John. Went up to my class. Checked emails. Answered emails. Got stuff ready for my first class. Took more money from kids for their shirts. Cleaned up my room. Went to first class.

5. Had classes! First up was drama. We did a warm up and then the first act of a slightly shortened version of Romeo and Juliet. Then, since our play goes up TOMORROW, I had a couple of the actors run their scene to test our sightlines and the lighting. At the end of class I had to run off early to get to...

6. Assembly! We had our play promo today, and since my Principal encouraged me to have the kids come up, live, rather than do a video, I did just that. She's pretty smart, I'd say, because it was much easier to set up and seemed to go just as well. I tried to set up a little of Q & A plus a very short part of one scene just to give the kids an idea of what the play is all about (basically: In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo was actually in love with a girl called Rosaline for the entire first act...in the play we're doing, After Juliet, Rosaline is dealing with her anger and grief after R & J die, and Romeo's old buddy, Benvolio, is trying to get her to like him instead, and all the Capulets and Montagues are still at loggerheads).

7. Oops, forgot: before assembly I got a cup of tea.

8. Then, I had a blessed free period. I went and talked to the theatre tech guy again, picked up a box of leftover tshirts, also talked to the theatre manager about all the plans for the show, then went and wrote and answered more emails, planned for Robotics class, and got everything in order for the rehearsal that afternoon.

9. Lunch. My usual rice and veg and raita, but with the special bonus of Wednesday's famous chicken curry. Plus tea. Chatted with the tech admin head, the music teacher, and a lovely ESL colleague. Ate outside - we had a funny drop in temperature from 44 down to about 34, so it seemed like a good idea.

10. Back-to-back classes in the afternoon. First, Robotics. I had the kids work on a computer project ("Which pop culture robot would be if you could be any pop culture robot?" - 1 page essay, 3 power point slides, plus video clip) which was great because it gave me the chance to multi-task and finish up half of the editing work I needed to do on yearbook. Oh, did I mention today was also my final yearbook deadline day?

11. The next class was yearbook. Yay! I rampaged the kids through their last few pages so we could meet our deadline, and also coordinated kids making posters for the play tomorrow (we're selling DVDs and these super cool awesome bags made out of our recycled play banners from our fall show, "It's a Pirate's Life for Me!") and had another kid working on a video, and then there were 4 of my kids working on the final deadline of our school's literary journal, and I had to finally make sure all our pages were printed and the tech helper could deliver them to the gate along with a DVD, and then I had to send 3 kids down to get play tickets so that I could...

12. Set up kids to sell play tickets after school and then I had...

13. Play rehearsal! This was a lovely rehearsal. I've got 14 kids in the cast, 12 in dance crew, about 12 choir kids, and something like 20 musicians, 12 makeup artists, 4 tech crew, 2 stage managers, and all the attendant adults, but today I had just 3 actors. It was such a treat. I love ending up with many kids onstage, but it was so nice to just get to work with things on a small scale; having the main actors try to melt into being more naturalistic, getting rid of a part of a scene that we didn't like and had never worked, rehearsing our awesome sword fight - got real swords this time (ok, well fencing swords, but they make a very concvincing cha-ching when the kids attack each other), and then finishing off with our final scene, in which the two main characters, Rosaline and Benvolio, end up having to (awwwww!) hold hands with each other. I think we've almost got things the way I want them. Yay!

14. After the kids left, I cleaned up and checked in with our amazing student prop manager who was tidying up backstage.

15. Had to go pick up Ji Hong at Patricia's, where he was playing with Evan.

16. Four friends were over playing bridge at Patricia's! So, I chatted for awhile with Mike and Elena, and then played two hands of bridge! First time, in, like, 16 years. Good fun. Made me think of the time when I was in grade seven and took a night school bridge class at Danforth. Weird!

17. Finally, had to get off campus at 7:30 after a long, good gossip with P and another friend. Dropped friend off at the Bulgarian embassy housing compound and headed hom.

18. Said hello to the kids at home, ate a slice of pizza, had a shower, said hi to Phet, had some tea, put on Robots for the kids, and sat down to write a quick update here.

19. WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL COME NEXT!!!

[Delhi-4-May-2011]

Rafting on the Ganges

Thought I'd reminisce a little about the trip up to Rishikesh last week, but first: some griping about Dreamweaver, and some quotes from Seung Yi. So, Dreamweaver. As you may already know, it drives me crazy and yet I don't have the energy to try to move over to any other program so I continue to deal with the stupid things that happen with Dreamweaver. Last week I was trying to shovel myself out of the two year pile-up of posts on this front page and I was mostly successful with that task. However, this weird thing happened: Dreamweaver just doesn't seem to like some of my files, especially somewhat recent video and images. For example, I wanted to put my ninja-on-a-jetski logo up at the top, there --> So I found my logo, saved it as a jpeg, and then inserted it into the file. Nope, nothing. It can see the file outside of Dreamweaver, but not in it. I just gave up last week, but then I was experimenting again tonight. It turns out that if I take some old image file that is already working in Dreamweaver, and I paste in the ninja logo and save it with the old name, it will come up alright. However, if I rename the file so that it actually has the correct name, the image suddenly is broken and won't show up. WHY DO I HAVE TO USE A PROGRAM THAT MAKES NO SENSE?

Ok,in non-rant news, a few quotes from Seung Yi, all from today:

This morning, I'm sitting at the computer, checking on email before I head off to work (yes, I am working for the break - this is me we're talking about, after all. I'm getting my next big yearbook deadline finished up and I'm editing this video about me learning how to dance that is my contribution to this upcoming faculty performance thingy at school - all good fun, today worked on this bit that is a most excellent copy of "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifinakis" - will post the whole thing here if Dreamweaver ever accepts new files again) and Seung Yi runs up to me in her normal summer pajama suit of nothing but underwear.

SY: "Mom! Smell my butt! Ha ha ha, too late, I farted already!"

She's such a delicate young lady, that girl. And later this evening, after watching Anne of Green Gables (we're up to the part where Anne takes a short ride with Gilbert in his buggy and they are just about to finally become friends -- and MAYBE MORE!!! -- when Marilla decides that Anne is too young to be out a-wagonning with young fellas and puts a stop to her even peeping at Gil) Seung Yi came all droopy into the kitchen.

SY: "Mom! I am so thirsty! I am so thirsty, my EARS are thirsty!"

Heh heh heh.

So, about that rafting trip...

We left on Monday morning last week. The trip had been postponed from October due to insane monsoons that had left all the camps completely water logged, and the tiger park destination for the grade sixes completely inaccessible and water-ringed, like an island. An unreachable island. So, I was happy to be going, but it did feel like an odd time to be taking the trip. Usually we go as an early-in-the-year get-to-know-everyone group-bonding kind of deal. At this point, the kids are pretty settled in their friendships, and of course we're quite familiar with all of the students, so it was more of a chill-and-relax and get to know some of the not-so-well-known-to-me kids better sort of trip.

We met at school at 4:45 am - I was 15 minutes late because, well, I just had a bunch of stuff to finish packing, and it is literally impossible for me to leave the house without having breakfast and tea. But luckily I squeaked in under the tardy radar and hopped on my assigned bus. We headed out to the railway station in the dark. And this is a sad statement on my lack of travel in the region, but it was just the third time I'd been to the train station in Delhi - the other two times also being for WOW. Lameness! Ah, how I fondly recall all those trips up to Sapa (and how I less fondly recall our unsuccessful train trip to central Viet Nam, trying to cross the border over to Pakse...). So, quick wait at the train station, and then onto the pleasant Shatabdi Express train to Haridwar. I sat with Patricia and chatted for a chunk of time, then read my book next to a kid for awhile, and by then we were almost in Haridwar. I had chosen excellently well with my reading material - third and fourth books in the four-book series that began with Ender's Game. Read Ender's Game and it's sequel back in the fall, and then had read two side-related books in the winter, and had saved up the final two, Xenocide and Children of the Mind, for the spring. Seriously delicious and dense and eventful and epic sci fi. Multiple sentient species! Intergalactic moral dillemas! Talking trees! Piggies and buggers and Japanese philosophers, oh my!

In Haridwar, we jumped onto buses that drove us out past Rishikesh and onwards to the camps on the banks of the Ganges. We had a quick tea stop at our camp, Himalayan River Runners, and then went off hiking to a nearby village. The hike was surprisingly lovely, though I think I got a dehydration headache...very easy and no uphill bits, wandered through terraced potato fields, fields of wildflowers, past nicely animally-smelling little barns, and ended up splashing around in a little river tributary for almost an hour. One super funny student picked up a skipping rock and started talking into it, thus inventing the istone. Heh. Back at camp we had a big, fat dinner, a campfire, and then tucked into our tents.

The next day was our leisurely rafting day. No major rapids, just long, relaxing paddles and swims along the river. Unfortunately, we had to take a 2 hour bus ride to get to the starting point for our rafting - unfortunately because the ride was super duper jouncy bouncy and I don't think I have ever had to pee so badly before ever ever ever in my life. It started an hour into the trip, suddenly I couldn't read anymore, I couldn't think about anything other than my paining bladder. I'll admit it: I have a super teeny tiny bladder. In my regular everyday life, aside from occasionally getting teased by Emma (who can last without breaking the seal for an inhuman amount of time), my handicap can pass unnoticed. I just go to the bathroom, like, every hour. It's so boring. On planes, I always have to sit in the aisle seat so I can get up all the time. Yawn. And when I know I'm going to have no bathroom access, I basically can't drink. Like, there was this time that Phet and I took a bus from Pakse up to Vientiane, and I think I was about 4 months pregnant, and I didn't drink anything the whole bus ride. Yeah. So, even though I had only had one teeny tiny cup of tea, suddenly I couldn't stand another moment on the bus. But then my urge to go pee was countered by my other stupid inherently annoying defect, which is not wanting anyone to notice me in certain circumstances. So I'm sitting there, with my bladder going OW OW OW and my brain going PAY NO ATTENTION WAIT TILL YOU GET TO THE RAFTING LAUNCH and I thought I might just die right then and there, when we suddenly rounded a treacherous turn in the road, passed a massive statue of Shiva, and our driver got word by walkie-talkie that one of the buses had gotten a flat tire, and we'd all have to stop. Thanks be to Lord Shiva!!! Not only did we get to stop, but we were actually right next to a road-side snack shop with a toilet round back, and despite the nastiness (like SERIOUSLY nasty! like, can't even describe it online nasty) of the toilet, it was the most relieving trip to the bathroom I had ever had. I literally could not stop telling my colleague how happy I was that we had stopped. She probably thinks (now, moreso than ever) I'm a complete freak - but it was true, I was SOOOO happy.

Anyways, in non-pee related notes, I spent the pre-rafting time trying to make sure all the kids had enough sunscreen on (I did reasonably well, but out of the 120 kids the next day there were still about 15 sets of sunburned knees), and then on the river I just had fun dip-dip and swinging my paddle. The water was super C-O-L-D cold, so I didn't swim the first day, but we did lots of water tossing with buckets. The group of kids in my camp was extraordinarily mellow, so everything just went smoothly and easily. Super low on the drama, everyone just taking it very, very easy. The only terribly exciting thing that happened on the trip (aside from hitting the awesome big rapids the next two days, of course, that is) was that we had a big sandstorm one night! Not like a desert sandstorm with no rain, but a river valley sandstorm with some rain, biiiig gusts of wind, and a lot of whipping sand and freaky flapping tent noises. I woke up in a major panic, with the wind whistling in a very scary way through my tent. We had been told that if there was a storm and it got bad that we'd have to get the kids and take shelter in the big kitchen tent, so for the next 3 hours I lay in my cot, listened to the wild wind and shifting, slithery sand whip around, and planned what steps I'd take if, indeed, we did have to rally the kids and get them to safety. Scary!

Other than that, the week was just full of pleasant happinesses: steep hikes, white sand, body surfing, kayaking, morning yoga (and get this - we'd start in the shade and just two minutes before we'd finish, the sun would break over the mountains and hit our bodies), cookies, smores, sing-a-longs, outdoor showers (so great to be shampooing in a forest, and able to see out to the beach and the Ganges), gossip, body painting, football, volleyball, cricket / baseball, and sand castle-building.

My job is a hard one, but, y'know, somebody's got to do it!

[On The Road-6-April-2011]

Spring break 2011

It's 10:52 – no, make that 10:53 – here in Golf Links. There is a miraculously cool breeze drifting along outside the door. It is unheard of to have non-freaking-hot weather in Delhi at this time of the year. Every time I step outside without breaking into a full sweat, every night I go to sleep without the air con on, I count my blessings.

Speaking of going to sleep, it was pretty exciting last night. Why, you ask? Well because INDIA WON THE WORLD CUP OF CRICKET (“The Cup That Counts!”), duh! I gave John the day off so he could watch the game, and while we didn't watch much of it, we did catch a little when we went out for dinner at Khan Market. Ji and I picked up groceries and had some Italian food at Amici, and it was pretty cool – all the staff, even the cooks and cleaners, were hanging out watching the game. Outside, every shop that had a TV in its window was surrounded by 20-25 people standing and watching said TV, entranced. While we were watching, things were not looking so hot for India, but apparently there was quite the come back (y'know, wickets and maidens and all that) and after something like a 9 hour game India beat Sri Lanka. It was great (really, honestly great!) I had just dozed off to sleep when I started hearing this massive and growing cheering coming from all around the house. Kind of far-off-ish, but just from everywhere, and that came and went and came and went and then the fireworks started going off, and then there was more cheering, and I was happy and half awake and it sort of felt like they were cheering IN my dreams.

Today we woke up at 8. Seung Yi popped her eyes open suddenly and said her usual “Dood morning!” Wonder when her adorable funky accent will disappear? So far she is still saying everything at the front of her tongue: ‘g's sound like ‘d's and ‘k's sound like ‘t's. So we still get confusing requests like, “Tan I have some more tate?” which must be interpreted as “Can I have some more cake?” or there is hell to pay. Seung Yi and I chilled out for awhile, chatting in bed (Phet's in Ottawa) and then finally got up to get some cereal for breakfast. The girls are on a strawberry cereal kick, and they will deign to eat the strawberry-flavoured local brand of cornflakes, but they really prefer the imported Special K Red Berries that costs almost ten bucks a (small) box. After breakfast, we did some puttering and cleaning. We recently had our walls repainted – this, after 7 months of trying to get the job done but being rejected time and again because one wall was still damp from the monsoon and kept sprouting mold no matter what – and the house is generally looking pretty good, aside from the usual kid mess and Delhi dust. Ji cleaned up a pile of blocks in his room, the girls tidied up the toys, and I put away a stack of dry cleaning. Last week we had to completely overhaul everything in Phet's closet because a stack of tshirts went mouldy (you see a continuing theme, yes?). He got rid of about half of his shirts (mostly cause he didn't need them, only a few were actually mouldy) and then Iaimon washed everything else aside from the dry cleany stuff. Mr. Singh's old Mom gave her hell for doing too many loads of laundry…it's always good to know there's someone keeping an eye on things, right?

For lunch, we went out to the mall. I had thought we'd go see this kids' movie, but it turned out to have only a Hindi soundtrack and Ji decided he'd rather just wander the mall than see the show. He got to be in charge of lunch ordering at the food court, and fed us well with a Subway sandwich, a non-veg (aka “Meat”) thali, a lassi, and a tray of momos (aka dumplings). Then we went to find the arts and crafts stall that I had been telling Ji I wouldn't stop at for about 2 years. He decided to paint his own plastic squeaky gecko, and Seung Yi chose to decorate a photo frame with shells. The shop assistants nearly drove me out of my tree trying to get us to stick the shells on in the exactly correct manner, but finally after about 7 times of me saying, “It's ok, thanks!” and smiling, they took a hint and let us proceed in our own way, with Seung Yi making lovely ‘pattrins' with a variety of shells.

When we got back home, Laree and Iaimon had returned from church, and the kids did a fashion show for me – we'd bought Ji 4 new pairs of shorts, so we started with those, but it expanded greatly from there. I cooked some couscous and veg for dinner, and in the evening the kids watched Mary Poppins for the 17 th time, and I cleared up this site. Then, it was time for Seung Yi to brush her teeth, and even though she had just had a snack (like, literally 3 minutes before) she set up a fuss about needing another snack, which I vetoed, and then she decided she was going into a big grump, refused to brush her teeth, got in trouble, had a big crying cry, threw herself down on the bed with unbrushed teeth and promptly fell asleep. I spent the exciting free time that followed checking out ridiculous stuff online (starting with the INSANE Rebecca Black video for ‘Friday' – OMG!!!! – and then watching her get interviewed on Good Morning America, and then watching – DOUBLE OMG – Stephen Colbert perform ‘Friday' accompanied by the Roots and an American Idol finalist and (I think) the Dallas Cowgirls. Ho ho ho.

Great start to the holidays!!!

[Delhi-3-April-2011]

rishikesh in springtime

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Rishikesh for my third - or is it fourth? - week without walls trip for school. I've packed my sack and sent it ahead with the school van so that tomorrow when we get on the train with our 120 kids I've got my hands free to shove them in like ipod-wearing sardines.

Great day today - gorgeous weather, though it is getting hotsie patotsie; tasty buffet lunch at the one good Japanese restaurant in town; a nap; started a new book; made dinner. Can you tell I feel like I'm on vacation? Yup, that's right, two weeks of no classes. Whee!

[On The Road-27-March-2011]

happy 30th birthday, emma!

It's Saturday, March 12, which means it is Emma's birthday! I wish I were in Toronto so I could fest her properly, but since I'm not and I can't, I will at least write a proper post for her. Last week, I had a rotten day and I was feeling really glum until the evening when Emma called and we talked for 38 minutes (I've got a phone that is super dysfunctional except for the fact it records the amount of time I talk for) and I was in a completely new mood when I got off the phone. I was suddenly really, really happy, and felt like myself again. And that, my friends, is what sisters are all about - or at least what my sister is all about. She is so awesome and funny and beautiful and wonderful, and she makes the people around her really thankful that they know her and get to enjoy her amazing Emmaness.

I remember that just before Em was born, I kept thinking how fantastic it would be to have a sibling. 'Wow,' I thought, 'I am finally going to have someone who will climb on the jungle gym at school with me!' I was more than a little surprised when it turned out that a baby sister was not - at least not instantaneously - a great climbing companion. In fact, it turned out that I had made a pretty serious miscalculation, and she wouldn't be much good at climbing until she was, oh, eight months old. At which point she began to eclipse tree-hanging monkeys of all varieties in their skill at swinging to and from stuff, and scaling scary, large things. It's interesting, when you hear our parents talking about Emma's infancy, they're always like, 'Oh, she never stopped crying. For two years.' And apparently, that's actually true. She was a super crying baby. But the weird thing is, I really don't remember that at all. Could be my parents sheilded me from the endless crying, could be I just ignored it, but I like to think that I just thought Emma was so great, and having a sibling was so great, that it just didn't bug me. I'd waited a long time, you know, for her.

I can't imagine having a better sister than Emma. She is unfailingly generous of her time and attention. She is brillaint, and best of all she is super funny. She goes out of her way to relish time with my kids and gives an intensity of focus to her attention to them that I wish I could emulate more often. When Ji is having trouble with Seung Yi or Laree, I frequently ask him, 'What would Auntie Emma do in this situation? How would she figure out how to solve this problem in a fun way that would make the girls do what she wanted, but that they would also enjoy?' (I also ask myself that question on a regular basis). I love the fact that Emma and Adam live 2 blocks away from Mum and Dad. I love that I've got annual invites to her in-laws home. I love that she goes for the family-entourage approach to life that I like so much too. (I mean, really, why complain about random strangers or weirdos on your bus tour you've never met before when you can complain about people you know really, really well? JK LOL MUM).

Although I harass Emma about her prodigious (ridiculous!) pantyhose collection, despite the fact that I probably make her crazy with my strict rules and regulations and need to be a psycho bossy older sister who decides everything, she still puts up with me. She is totally the greatest sister and I love, love, love her so much. I wish my house were beside hers (though that might drive Adam around the bend just a leeeeetle...maybe I could have the house that's between hers and Mum's just so he has a tiny bit of sanctuary), and I wish I could see her every day. I'm really proud of her (though I do miss her drunken escapades - hey Em, how bout that time, what was it, a couple of years ago, when you drank your socks off at a MOVIE and were delirious down on King Street? That was a gas!) and I know she is going to have a great time in her 30s. It's a pretty excellent age to be, Em!

Love love love you, T

[Toronto-12-March-2010]

the surreal life

I wish that Dreamweaver (the program I use for this site) typed faster. There's a weird lag on the typing that makes me make extra spelling mistakes. Annoying! But ever onwards, ever upwards...

It's day two of back to school, back to Delhi, back to work, back to this particular life of ours. I'm currently sitting in my lovely classroom, looking out at the trees as the sun sets. It's really cold in Delhi - like, actually cold when I step outside. And really cold at night. We don't get snow, but 8' inside and out is freezing. Luckily there's toasty heating at school and at home we have a couple of those oil heaters that look like radiators on wheels that we can move around to whichever room we're hanging out in.

It's always weird to shift to a different city, but it is especially weird for us to move not only between cities, but also between universes. For the first few days, life always seems very surreal. Here in Delhi we've got our small family life that includes Iaimon and Laree, our big house, our crazy neighbourhood. We've got our work lives on the go, me with my middle schoolers, colleagues, crazy after school committments, and long nights of planning while Phet's got his own sphere of office, Ottawa contacts, million dollar projects across the globe, his crazy travel agency, his four zillion emails per day. The kids run in their own circles at school and then hunker down with us in the evenings. And of course, we're in India. Crazy, dusty, beautiful Delhi. In all of the places we've lived overseas there's a finite history we've got with each city; our memory only stretches back a couple of years - or four at the most here in Delhi.

Then we go back to Toronto, like we did last week for six days, and we're suddenly jolted into another world. We've got our insane and wonderful families with histories (and jokes and grievances) that stretch back for generations. We're suddenly daughter / sister / son / nephew / neice / grand-daughter / what-have-you again. Since we aren't working (and we've never really had serious jobs in Toronto) we enter into a kind of high-school-ish netherworld where it feels like maybe we never graduated, and certainly we'd never find jobs with our paltry experience. We also move differently. I can drive the car! Or we kick it old school and take the streetcar - very high schooley! We can walk year-round! There's also a huge roster of excitement - friends to catch up with, cheese to eat, movies to watch, gossip to be shared.

The strange thing is that after a couple of days our life back in Delhi seems to disappear. And then, when we get back to Delhi (or wherever we've lived overseas, really) Toronto disappears.

It does make me think about my place in the universe, that's for sure. The here-and-now is really important to value - you know, like, the impact of my work is kind of ephemeral. But still important. And it also makes me appreciate the lasting nature of my relationships with my family. And I also think it is a huge bonus that Phet and I can share late-night jokes about all the worlds we've been in together. We can reference kids we knew in grade eight, all the way up to the people we now know, what, twenty three years later?

I'd probably go nuts if it weren't for him.

[Delhi-5-January-2010]

welcome to tarmackistan

The independent republic of Tarmackistan exists only as an experience.  Its borders reach across the globe, into the very air and ether surrounding the earth.  One enters Tarmackistan unknowingly, stays for an uncertain duration, and departs for no apparent reason.  Tarmackistan is the limbo of today.  Tarmackistan is the manifestation of bureaucratic impossibilities brought to life!

If you are on actual tarmack and you don't know if or when you will ever get off the tarmack, you're in Tarmackistan! If you are dealing with an authority figure who will not let you do something you want to do or need to do, but the authority figure has only absurd reasons why you cannot or may not do the thing you need or want to do, you're in Tarmackistan! If you feel helpless and ineffective and prevented from taking action by restraints beyond your control, you may be in Tarmackistan!

Phet coined the name Tarmackistan awhile ago, and we have been spending increasing amounts of time there, much to our mutual unhappiness. Last year on a school trip to KL, Patricia and I got stuck on an airplane for 8 hours on the tarmack in Delhi because of a fog delay, and then after we had to de-plane, I couldn't get out of the airport for an hour because I hadn't saved my (completely useless, one would have thought) boarding pass. But this Christmas holiday really took the cake. A lot of cake. Like, a girl-jumping-out-of-the-cake sized cake. A Guiness Book of World Records sized cake. A really, really, bit cake.

Here's the first bit of the story, from an email I started writing while in Tarmackistan. Hard to smuggle out, but somehow the authorities let it past their notoriously tight border controls...

LIVE FROM TARMACKISTAN

So, currently in row 37 seat D – yes, the middle seat – awaiting word from the “tower” about whether our flight from London to Toronto will take off today. Or Not. There has been a severe cold spell here in the UK which has rendered the airport unfunctional. There are about 94 sad, small babies with red chins (too much acidic drool running down out of their only recently-teethed mouths) trying to hold their s**t together scattered throughout the aircraft. The parents are maintaining – thus far – very zenlike stone-cold-endurance faces and continuing to pull out squished peas and mushy squash to feed the babies. Very luckily we're on a plane with individual movie screens so most of the passengers have been stupefied enough to sit here for a few hours. It's interesting to imagine how long one can manage to not freak out when stuck on a plane. I've had a couple of close calls during which my patience was pretty severely tested. Last year, coming home after Christmas holidays from Toronto, we were just about to land in Delhi when a fog warning forced our flight to circle for over an hour. Then, when the circling time proved insufficient, we were diverted to Mumbai. That was definitely THE worst tarmac experience ever. Delirium, thanks to basically 24 hours of no sleep PLUS my fear of being stuck in small spaces with many people PLUS absolutely knowing that if I went berserk and had to run out the escape hatch I would NOT BE AT WORK ON TIME (having way-too-tightly scheduled my holidays) all conspired together to make me JUST THIS CLOSE to losing it. What got me through? A really boring book. Can't recommend that strategy enough. I pulled out “The Duchess” – the book the similarly-titled movie starring Kiera Knightly was based on – and immersed myself in incredibly random and dull information about 17 th century British aristocracy. Surely there were exciting, debaucherous stories that could have been told about the same time and same people, but this was all like “…and then, she went to visit the Earl of Gloucester, and took her larger carriage and her youngest daughter yadda yadda yadda”. In lieu of being able to enjoy the flight, though, I'll take the time to write about the highlights of the visit to England – while I listen to some vintage Snoop. Whoot whoot.

Getting out of Delhi was remarkably smooth. We'd been worried about the fog, but somehow slid out before it kicked in full force. (Should be waiting for us on our return, of course, but we'll wait to deal with that when the time comes). When we got out of the airport, Wonderful Sister Emma was waiting for us at the exit gate. We zipped over the Enterprise car rental desk and our delightful assistant Danielle helped us get a car and upgraded us as well – to a BMW! (We later found out Mum thought that it was an English car manufactured by the British Motor Works – had a good mocking chuckle at that one! Chort chort chortle!). We caught the shuttle to the car park and were treated to The Funnest Car Rental Agency In The History Of Car Rental Agencies. There were the two very handsome south asian dudes at the check in, the big passel of wild and crazy Polish car cleaners outside in their parkas, and then two drop-dead beautiful African girls who were dancing and singing while they were working. We told one of the south asian dudes, “This place should have its own reality show” and he answered, “Yeah, and it would have to be x-rated!” Fun times in London!

The good times continued to roll as we got a taxi to take most of our HUGE AMOUNT of luggage and Mum followed him out to the house we had rented in Old Windsor. Turned out to be a lovely place – UPDATE from the flight deck: we are NOT leaving any time soon. Flight was scheduled for 12:00, we had to wait till 2:30 for the update, now they're keeping the airport closed until 4:00. -- and back to the house I rented – it was very nice, right on the banks of the Thames next to the Old Windsor Lock. Spacious and lots of light, décor was a little bit child-unfriendly (crystal decanters, spiky metal objets d'art, breakable Christmas ornaments, but otherwise just fine. We immediately did a very Niedzwiecki thing and went out GROCERY SHOPPING after having a beef feast at Burger King. Love the Burger King. Mmm, mm, good. The grocery store, Sainsbury's, was filled with delights. We stocked up on all kinds of good things and then headed home and crashed.

Next day, we got up fairly early in the dark, had breakfast, lounged about, and then drove to Bath. Turned out to be a reasonable drive – hour and a bit – and it was nice to get out and see the countryside, all tidy and well-organized as it is. When we got to Bath we found a carpark conveniently located near the high street and tossed on our winter gear and walked about. Stopped for coffee, tea, and scones with clotted cream at a coffee shop, and then went to the theatre to check on our tickets for Handel's Messiah – EXCELLENTNESS! The Ramones' “I Wanna Be Sedated” just came on. SO VERY TRUE. Every visit to Tarmackistan should come with a solid dose of opiates. – Now, Handel's Messiah…I didn't realize what we were getting into with that. I kind of thought it might be a slightly extenda-mix version of the Halleluia Chorus, but no, it was ever so much more than that. It was like a two and a half hour extended mix of all the less exciting bits than the Halleluia Chorus. There's a reason why that part is so famous, and the reason is that the rest DOESN'T MEASURE UP. I kid you not, there's actually a segment called “We Like Sheep”. Yes. We Like Sheep. – Oh dear, ANGRY BABY one aisle over. He has HAD IT. NOT ENJOYING BEING STUCK ON NON-MOVING mode of transportation…and meanwhile, Ji's so hot he's pulled of his shirt and he's sitting here looking like he's at the beach. WAAAAAH!!! WAAAAAAH!!!!! – so, the Messiah. The theatre was pretty, though I had thought that The Messiah by Candlelight would involve, like, 3000 chandeliers, but there were only four. The group singing and playing were an 18 th century-style orchestra. Lovely violins and cellos and harpsichord – WAAAAAH WAAAAH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH – but the singers were kind of too old school for me to enjoy. There was one guy who looked

***

SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION - We are now, at 11:45 pm IN RICHMOND - yes, that IS in LONDON - in a freaking HOTEL - after SEVEN HOURS ON THE TARMACK FOLLOWED BY THREE FREAKING HOURS IN LINE FOR A FREAKING TAXI, DURING WHICH TIME WE WERE WALKING THROUGH FREEZING FREAKING SLUSH AND I ALMOST GOT INTO A FIST FIGHT WITH AN EVIL AND STUPID AND UGLY AND OBNOXIOUS AND SKEEZY BLONDE MOM WHO BUDDED INTO THE LINEUP WITH HER STUPID FAMILY and Heathrow looked like Ellis Island circa 1846 ON A GOOD DAY WHEN NO ONE WAS DYING OF TUBERCULOSIS and there were eight billion people there, and the British system for plowing runways SUCKS!!!!!!!!

***

Ok, so here is the rest of story about the longest trip I've ever taken to Tarmackistan...

We spent seven hours on the runway, and were basically told nothing. The airplane was a hotbed of unhappy babies and overheated adults. When the flight attendants started passing out meals and bottles of wine at hour 6, we figured we were out of luck, and indeed we were. They didn't just let us go, though, they kept us for an extra hour so we could be met by a gate agent. So the whole plane de-boards and exits, and we are met by a gate agent who can tell us absolutely nothing. We are told we cannot get our luggage, it will be kept on the plane until the next day, and we should come back again for the same flight tomorrow. We go out to the exit area of the airport, and it is mayhem. There is a lineup of about 400 people ++ waiting to catch cabs, and it is freezing, and we have no winter clothes. Phet hit the "I will survive" point and stood in line for 2 hours without going inside to warm up while I hit the "I will cry" point because my shoes and socks got wet and cold and I went inside to wait, and eventually Mum and the kids joined me in there as well. We had to stand in line for THREE HOURS to get a cab, and when we were just about at the front of the line, this couple and their 2 kids tried to jump in front of us. I had this big argument with the Mom - who was a huge biatch - while the rest of our party stood by and pretended not to notice what was going on - which was probably just as well, because we eventually stopped shouting at each other, and she looked like a pub brawler who would've kicked my ass. When we finally got into a cab I was so happy I wanted to cry again. I took off my wet socks and shoes and Phet helped bring life back to my poor feet. We got to the Richmond Inn and checked into our room - small but warm that first night - ordered some pizza, had a steaming hot bath, and then went to bed.

The next morning we heard that the airport was still not functioning, but we went out to try to get our luggage and figure things out. Incredibly enough, and shockingly enough as far as we were concerned, they had completely SHUT the doors to the airport. We couldn't even step inside to ask a question or find our luggage or anything! We couldn't get into a coffee shop to warm up, and at that point we had been thinking we might actually get on our flight, but that was very obviously not going to happen. On top of it all, the airport authority was providing absolutely NO information. There were no helpful staffpeople, there were no notice boards, there were no assistance numbers to call, nothing. While we were discovering there was nothing we could do, Mum and Emma came in their cab with Emma's friend and her brother who were also trying to fly standby, and we hopped into their cab and they went to try and find out what they could about their own situation. We had our cab driver take us to the nearest Primark - the UK's answer to Walmart, but selling just clothes - and we sat and had a coffee at the nearby Subway while we waited for the Primark to open. Really felt how hard it must be for people stuck in truly helpless situations. We were freezing and sad and stuck, but we had a credit card and our family and the feeling that eventually things would work out.

At Primark, we spent the price of one winter coat at a regular shop (200 pounds) and got a parka, hats, mitts, and scarves for each of us, plus two winter outfits for Ji and Seung Yi and one for me. Sweet deal! Felt like I was on the refugee version of "What Not To Wear" during the shopping spree segment. After the mega-buy, we strolled the high street of Hounslow (very nice, multi-cultural, busy, pleasant) and I bought the greatest pair of boots from the local Punjabi bootseller - my feet were so very cold and unhappy, and I ended up buying furry-lined boots that come up to my knees! We also got boots for Phet and Ji and then went to find a cab to get back to Richmond.

We weren't quite sure what to do about all our flight problems, but we were feeling so warm and cozy with our new clothes that we decided to take a walk in Richmond to get some lunch. We had a super-delicious meal at the local Persian restaurant, and then continued on uphill to Richmond Park where the kids went toboganning! It was absolutely beautiful; sweeping view of the neighbourhood, all the trees laden with puffy snow, rosy-cheeked kids tearing down the hillsides, grey and icy Thames in the distance. Later on, we headed back to the hotel to our new and nicer room on the second floor, dried out our mitts on the radiator, and Emma and Mum came back with no good news either.

The next day we finally thought to call the world wide travel agency that had booked our original tickets so that we could re-book our flights. You might think that if your flight got cancelled that the airline would put you into priority sequencing for the next scheduled flight, but if you thought that, you would be thinking WRONG. It turns out that it was entirely up to us to re-book our flights, with absolutely no guarantee of getting anywhere by any particular time. Phet spent two and a half hours on the phone and by the end the agency had managed to get us flights - and paid tickets for Mum and Emma as well - routed through Zurich on Christmas Eve. When we got off the phone, well after midnight, we were exhausted but happy that at last we had a plan. The next day Mum and Emma took the kids toboganning while Phet and I went out to Heathrow - goody gumdrops - to try to get our luggage.

I was really scared there was going to be another thousand person scrum, and I had almost decided not to go even though we had made it to the local tube stop. I was really worried it was going to snow again, the trains and buses would shut down, we'd get stuck at the airport, there'd be no taxis, and we'd never get our luggage. Phet wisely convinced me to carry on with the plan, and we took the London Overground from Richmond to Feltham, and then caught the 385 bus out most of the way to Heathrown, and then the 555 to the airport, and then we walked through the underground walk way to get to the arrivals section to try to find our luggage. The luggage-finding was not nearly as awful as I had expected. They had tucked it all away in an unused baggage area, and then they'd have an airline staffperson come to meet you and take you to your bags. We found ours with only a little difficulty, and then got all 8 bags onto a couple of trollies (one of resolutions is to travel much more lightly in the future) and out to the cab area. We took an off licence cab driven by a crazyman, but we got back to the Inn without dying, and we were happy to putz around with all our stuff that evening.

The next day Phet and I took Ji to go see Tron at the local movie theatre. I fell asleep during the big denouement; found it surprisingly boring for such a majorly hyped show. Didn't believe in the emotional side of the story, and there was just all this endless and confusing explicating.

Then, just a couple of days before we were supposed to leave, Emma suggested we check on our flights. We did, and found out that we had LOST our bookings to Zurich! The travel agency had expected the Delhi office to "issue" the tickets (as opposed to just reserving them) and the Delhi office messed that up, and so we were left with NO way to get to Zurich! Mum and Emma's tickets were fine, but ours were gone. I was so upset I couldn't talk. Phet stayed on the phone, again for more than an hour, and by the end, through some miracle, they had booked us on a London-Toronto flight for the 24th, but this was after they suggested things like London-Rome-Toronto for 6000$ per person! Even after we managed to secure the booking, I couldn't relax. For the next two days, I had a massively anxious stomach, and every thirty seconds I'd be looking up at the sky praying that it wouldn't snow. We were really under pressure to get back to Toronto because Phet's Dad was there, and Phet had to take him from to Toronto back to Bangkok and get him onto the Pakse flight because he can't really navigate travel himself. If it had been just us, it wouldn't have been such a big deal. We could've gotten to Frankfurt at least and stayed there till Jan 1 and caught our return flight to Delhi. But in our situation, we really needed to get back to Toronto.

One evening we were lucky enough to get invited to the home of family friends Frank and Cheryl, and that was very relaxing. We ate a feast, drank lovely wine, and temporarily forgot about our worries. We were also treated to a sack of hand-delivered deli goods that Dad and Jake ordered online for us for lunch one day, and we also had the pleasure of meeting up with Phet's cousin Sandy, her husband Laurent, and their cute-as-can-be son Vincent on our last day in London. I was so terrified it would snow, I couldn't sleep on the 23rd. On the morning of the 24th, we went to the airport at 3:30 am to get in line for our 9:00 am flight. We were the first ones at the air canada counter, and we just sat there while the kids napped, and waited. At 6:15 there was a huge lineup and they finally opened the desks. We were incredibly scared when our check in agent looked very unhappy while dealing with our bookings, but he got everything sorted out, so maybe he was just a naturally unhappy and anxious looking person. We went through to the air canada lounge, which was nice enough, but I was still super paranoid something would go wrong. Our flight gate was finally announced and we went through to it, then got onto the airplane, had a little delay, and then were about to taxi down the runway. It wasn't until the wheels were actually up that I believed we'd really leave London.

More about the fun side of the trip, pre-Tarmackistan later.

[On the Road-29-December-2010]