best. canada day package. ever.

That there is Ji, throwing the horns out to his Auntie Ashley, Uncle Turner and Baby Sloane. He's rockin' out because Ash, Turner and Sloane RULE!

Y'know how last week I was whining because nobody sent us any Canada Day loot, and I was missing all my family and friends and felt all sad and neglected? Well I was wrong. We do have people in our lives who know exactly what we wish we had here in Bangkok -- and not only that, they went to the trouble of collecting stuff we'd like, packing it up into a big delicious envelope, and they paid twenty six bucks just to send it to us. Right on, man.

To digress from revealing the actual contents of this marvellous package for just a moment, allow me to tell you a little bit about how important care packages are to folks like us who live far far away from hearth, home, and friends...

I have had the great fortune to be the recipient of many truly fine care packages. For me, it started when I moved away from Calgary when I was three. While my Dad had worked construction and Mum went to university and waitressed, my Gramma had taken care of me. But then we moved to Toronto, and I don't think Gramma has ever really gotten being over sad about my departure. On the bad side, I didn't get to see my Gramma as much as I had. But on the (very) good side, I got some fantastic packages in the mail over the years. One year I got a barbie cake in the mail - a dome-shaped cake decorated like a fancy party dress, with a Barbie tucked inside the middle 'wearing' the cake. Yum! I also got annual birthday cash via Canada Post, and somehow my Gramma's nefariously triple-folded envelopes always managed to transport the money directly to me without any tampering from the mailman or post office drones.

My favourite, though, was a giant box that I got in my second year of university. I was living the socially enticing but financially depressing life of a typical academic. It was kind of fun having a house and being all responsible and stuff, but it also sometimes sucked having no support staff around. What a thrill, then, to get a call from the Greyhound bus station telling me that there was a box waiting for me, sent all the way from Balzac. I went to pick up the box, and let me tell you: it was a doozy. Maybe 3' x 3' x 1'. I took it home, hefted it onto the upstairs-kitchen table, and broke it open.

Gramma's packages always began with cards, letters, and photos. These would be placed on the top of all the goodies, so that you saw them first thing when you opened up the package. Gramma's 1940s schoolteacher penmanship was absolutely perfect, and she wrote long story-letters, often filled with carefully culled photos and news clippings. She'd have a theme ('20th birthdays', say, or 'family members who served in the military') and all the stories, pictures, and articles would fit into the theme. Then, underneath the letters were all the treats. In this particular behemoth, I got kitchen supplies, belgian chocolates, clothes, rubber gloves, a robin's egg, a calendar, two dozen farm-fresh (chicken) eggs, and to top it all off: 10 perfect garden-grown carrots. Wow.

My Gramma sent similar packages to us in Vietnam, Laos, and even Malaysia. We've also gotten fantastic goodies on a WEEKLY basis from my Mum. And, getting back to the begining of this whole story, we've gotten some wicked awesome packages from Ash. In a land where an imported UK copy of Vanity Fair costs ten bucks US, how lucky were we to recieve a month's worth of reading material in the mail?

First, I caught up on my Canadiana with the Globe, the National Post, and a funky Calgary magazine called Swerve:

Then, even better, I got to read articles that had been written by SOMEONE I KNOW. I bragged to Ji about how I was all in with the in crowd back at home, and he was like a cultural dung beetle as far as I was concerned and that I had rubbed shoulders with the very hoi polloi of the Canadian literary establishment, and he'd better just go back to reading Robert Munsch books, because that was as close as he'd be able to come to the glory that I had been able to experience. And he was all, 'oh yeah, you think you're so great, but my friend's mom works on Bob the Builder'. And then I was, like, 'yah, so you may know people in TV, but that's like, the empty soul of the world. I know people who are building the spirit of the day, man.' And he was all 'whatever' and went to his room and slammed the door. And so you know who won that round, don't you.

Here's me gloating about knowing Turner (and, by the way, there was a Kathryn Nykolychuk who also wrote an article in this magazine, and she has GOT to be a grandkid or grandneice of the Nykolychuk side of my family, shurely?):

Turner's such a good writer. He comes up with these complex and fascinating ideas, but writes in such a way that you kind of feel like he's hanging out on the couch, just chatting with you.

Buuuut don't think that the gifts stopped there! No sir. We also got a packet of marigold seeds to plant, a mixed CD of the latest and greatest Canadian tunes, and some, uh geez these are hard to explain but maybe you Canadians know what I'm talking about, these 'gel gems'? They're these sort of semi-flat, semi-see through gelatinous things that you can stick on your window as a decoration. Anyways, we got a pack and they are super duper, and they are in the shape of maple leafs. And they are multi-coloured so they look like autumn maple leafs. The only thing that was missing was a 2-4 of Canadian. And maybe that got nicked by the motorcycle postie here.

To conclude, a couple of photos from our last visit to the Turner-Bristowes, wherein our intrepid friends and family trekked through the dark and windy back alleys of Ramsay with a brand new baby in the middle of the night so that we could deliver ourselves up at Ash's brother's door as if we were a rootin' tootin' care package ourselves. To everyone who sends goodies in the mail: CHEERS!

[Balzac&Calgary-08-July-2005]