Happy New Year

December 31st. We got up this morning just in time to celebrate the coming of the New Year - Manila time. It was 8:00 a.m. here in British Columbia, midnight there. It brings back memories of last year, watching those amazing fireworks from the windows of our 30th floor apartment - a scene I will never forget (New Years Eve in Manila).

Manila New Year 2011 fireworks - taken from my window last year

We've been back in Canada for 6 months now and it has been a wonderful new adventure. I've spent quite a bit of time on the west coast but have never lived here before so it's all an exploration. I've also never lived in a small town before, so that's all new too. The rhythm of life is different now that Howard has also retired. I retired four years ago when we moved to Asia but it’s quite a change now that the Monday to Friday thing is no longer in play. The other big difference from my life in Asia is that I decided to take a year-long break from airports - staying in one place feels very restful.

Now it’s playtime. Our garden is a blank slate so we’re preparing for power shopping in the garden centers this spring. I built a beautiful cedar greenhouse to grow fuchsias and seeds and my daily puttering is a dream come true. The Bunkie in the backyard serves double duty as both guest house and studio, where I spend time on my projects, including the construction of a miniature theater. Howard bought a sailboat, a Nonsuch 26, which he’s had his eye on for a long time, so exploring the coast is in our future when spring comes. He's loving retirement (what's not to love?) and among his own projects is brewing beer. Our cottage home is now host to The Fuchsia Ranch, The Pot House and The BrewHouse. What can I say, life is good.

The DreamGreenHouse, decorated for Christmas

Someone asked me a few months ago if I missed Asia. "No", I replied, as the truth was at the time I was so busy settling in to my new life and dealing with all the trades working on the house that I barely thought of it. Then one day I cooked Kao Soi*, a Lao dish, and the aroma brought it all back in a huge, overpowering flood of memories. The power of scent. Yes indeed, I miss Asia. I subscribe through my newsreader to a site called Lao Voices to sort of keep in touch with my favourite country, and when I hear news of the recent horrible typhoon in the Philippines it brings back vivid memories of that country as well, and makes me terribly sad to imagine what those people are going through. I also miss my friends although half of them have also left Manila for other lands.

Perhaps one day we'll return to Laos once my self-imposed grounding has ended, but meanwhile this geography which is now home is fascinating to me and there is much to explore.

This year was the first time in years we have had Christmas at home (other years we were in Victoria, Laos, Viet Nam and Mangenguey Island in the Philippines) and I had great fun decorating the house and dusting off the old favourite recipes. Number 1 Son Steve came out from Ottawa to spend it with us, a huge present.


In the new year I will likely get on with creating a new platform for my tales and photos, leaving this blog behind for reasons described earlier. I will of course, post the new link here. I have expectations of great joy and creativity for 2012 and wish both my readers a very happy new year.

*Kao Soi

10 dried chili, stemmed, seeded, soaked and minced

Onion and 5 garlic cloves, chopped really finely

A couple of tablespoons fermented black bean paste

Pound of ground beef

Wide rice noodles

Beef broth

Baby bok choy or spinach

Chopped cilantro and green onion

Brown the onion, add garlic, chili and black bean paste. Add beef and brown. Cook rice noodles and bok choy, divide into bowls, add a little broth (this is not a soup so just a bit). Add a dollop (technical term) of the beef mixture, sprinkle with cilantro and green onion. 

Serve and dream of Laos.

Where Does Santa Go After Delivering the Presents?

FISHING!

Santa and his Dog spotted (by us) fishing in Cameron Lake, afternoon of December 25, 2011

Dipping a Toe Back in the Waters

I often say that I have no memory, but that can’t be true.  I don’t know to what extent a poor memory is deliberate, as there are certain memory lanes that I just refuse to walk down, while at the same time there are places I only live in memory and dreams. I have never had any way of structuring memories as I don’t write letters or many emails and don’t keep a journal. That was so, until recently, when I found a beautiful way to capture the immediate past.

A few months before we moved to Manila, for what was to be a 4 year stay, I started writing the blog East West and Upside Down. At the time, I didn’t really pay much attention to blogs, but a couple of twenty-somethings in my office suggested I start a blog as a way to keep in touch. So I did, and it’s been great.

From the start I saw the blog as a way of writing letters to people, of staying in touch, albeit pretty one-sided. It was never meant to be for a big audience of strangers. Way back in the day, when we first moved overseas to Jamaica, I wrote lots and lots of letters - and also kept copies of them, which served me as a journal of sorts. No intertube in those days. How much more efficient it is now, I thought, to put my tales and photos and cartoons and eye candy in one place, online, accessible to whoever wants to check in with what I’m doing. But the blog turned out to be much more than that. It turned out to be a personal place of memory, a place for me to go and reminisce and smile and more often than not laugh out loud. Clearly I was writing for myself, a most appreciative audience.

Then one day last month it was gone. Vanished. My entire Google account became disabled and my blogs were gone - inaccessible. I had no access to my stuff and couldn’t get a response from Google despite sending numerous emails. Turns out there is no there there. When Google says “Contact us” on a page, what it really means is contact our automated system, which will send some kind of automatic reply - or not. Being locked out was devastating and the thought of losing those 4 years of captured Asian memories in particular was incredibly painful. It felt like a virtual house fire where a room has been demolished, the one that held the very personal albums. Although the blogs were open in theory to the world, they could not be found with search engines, and so remained a place where my friends and sometimes friends of friends would read my “letters to them”. Writing them became a great source of entertainment for me and I’d sometimes go back and reread different stories, which would bring back all kinds of memories. It was also a way for me to sort through the hundreds of pictures I took on my travels to find the ones that told the story.

Google owns Blogger as well as Picasa, which is where all my uploaded images that get inserted in the blog are stored. It also owns YouTube. When the account was disabled everything was gone, including my newsreader, Feedly, which is fed through Google Reader, like everything else it seems. During the time I was trying to get my account reinstated I saw from the forums that this seems to happen a lot for one reason or another and that when it does, everyone becomes frantic - you can hear the howls of despair leaping off the screen. During the time without my account, without access to my own work, despair was a pretty good description of how I felt, especially as the days passed and it started to look like I may have lost it forever. 

The desire to write and take pictures and play with eye candy and jokes has not left me, nor the wish to preserve memories, but for now, I’m very reluctant to plunge back in with my previous “host”. I’ve been looking at other options but haven't yet found the energy to start all over again.

I seem to have lost my blogging mojo.

Meet Dennis

Fashion Statement, or Who's the Doofus in the Fuzzy Slippers?

Recently the city of Vancouver had the dubious distinction of being named one of the world's 3 worst-dressed cities, by someone or other. The reason? Lululemon - the yoga attire company, native to Vancouver and sold internationally. The reasoning behind this is that Vancouver women are unstylish because they are all running around in casual workout clothes. They used to call them "sweatpants".

Now I'm not even going to list the other 9 top (or more to the point, bottom) 10 cities, because the whole thing is bogus, however Ottawa is on it as well, in 8th place, and that does give me pause. I'm sorry but I can't disagree.

I've mentioned before that ever since I got here in mid-summer, I've been cold. Four years in Asia have served to re-set my internal thermostat, and of course as we enter the fall months heading to winter, as the temperature outside drops, I'm suffering greatly. A few weeks ago, I decided that my Thai silk dressing gowns and extensive flip flop wardrobe regretfully had to be retired and I headed out in search of warm clothes. My first purchase was a pair of Garneau lamb's wool slippers. I then found the biggest, softest, warmest, gaudiest robe imaginable. The sight of me in this enormous fuchsia robe and fuzzy slippers is outrageous and if one day I ever venture outside to take the garbage to the curb dressed this way I hope someone shoots me. But I wear the slippers inside on these cold slate floors and the difference is amazing. In the mornings when I toddle into the kitchen in fuzzy robe and slippers to flip the switch on the coffee maker and turn on the fireplace, I'm warm, even when the air temperature in the room is 15C as it was this morning (no central heating in this cottage house). Warm, but looking completely ridiculous.

It gets worse. One day I went off to pilates wearing, yes, my Lululemon gear, with a jacket thrown on top. On the way home I decided to stop at the grocery store. I was very conscious of the fact that I was committing a serious fashion crime and couldn't wait to get out of there. If that's not bad enough, later that week I dashed out to the store and once there was horrified to look down at my feet to find I was wearing my rubber gardening boots out in public. These are actually called "Muck Boots", which says it all. I had finally crossed the Rubicon, the point of no return.

I was raised in Montreal where women dressed to the nines to go out to the movie theater, where one practically puts on makeup to get out of bed in the morning. Old habits die hard. In my fuzzy slippers and down vest I wail "I'm a Montreal girl - this is painful!"

"Not anymore you're not", comes the reply.

True enough. Time for an attitude adjustment. British Columbia women aren't unfashionable. They are warm and comfortable. So bring on the Merrill pants, merino wool tops, vests, socks and fuzzy slippers.

But if and when I do venture to the curb looking like Big Bird in fuchsia I still want you to shoot me.

Happy Birthday to Me

Last year when I turned xx, I thought it was the most ridiculous age to be. How did this happen? I ask myself. Oh "age is just a number" people say to which I have always replied, "Bullshit".

However, perhaps they have a point and if so, it doesn't matter what age you say you are, right? Besides which, I have a lot of experience telling lies about my age. When I was young I lied older, when I was older I lied younger, and eventually when asked I didn't lie, just said it's none of your f*&#ing business.

At one point I realized that The Boys were causing me problems in this regard, so I decided that they were not going to get older either. For awhile they were "21" and "22" and I decided they should stay that way. When birthdays came by I would cheerily wish them "Happy 21st birthday" (again and again). They would reply with rolling eyes, "Oh Mom". Then one day I was on a flight home to Manila from Bangkok and was sitting beside a Filipino lawyer who was in his cups and very chatty. "Do you have any children?" he asked. "How old are they?" "21 and 22", I replied with a straight face (as by this point I was actually believing it). "Oh", he observed, "You must have started late!"

Ouch. Busted.

So I am giving up freezing The Boys in time. Go ahead, get older, go nuts, guys. However on this, ahem, happy day, I have decided that getting older is not for me. Today is the day I am officially starting to go in reverse - backward in age. So Happy xx Birthday to me.

Dreamhouse Part Deux

The new GreenHouse is finished. After several weeks (see The New Dreamhouse) of foundation digging, concrete pouring, kit delivery and construction, all the carpenters, electricians and plumbers have now left me in peace with my new toy, the most beautiful GreenHouse in the world.

Cedar Built Greenhouse kit delivered

A giant jigsaw puzzle

Brother Carpenters Sean and Mark

Electrical and plumbing installed

The wood is Western Red Cedar and the scent is out of this world. Snug and dry inside, especially when it's raining as in these last two pictures, it is a place of bliss. I've started to bring in the fuchsias (as well as some of the more tender herbs and lettuces) to prepare them for the winter. The heater is on order and I'll keep it heated probably between 10C-15C (50F-60F).

Next on the building agenda is the creation of an arbor along the side of the house on the GreenHouse side which will be the outside staging area for the fuchsias in the summer. Plus removal of the concrete patios and pathways to be replaced with something else - to be decided - pavers, flagstone? and digging out the planting beds. Landscaping in the front will include removal of a tree and trimming/removal of some hedges. A couple of gates, some fence extension and repair, and a carport. We're doing our very best to support the local trades.

Oh, and look what happened one night. The fairies moved into the big cedar at the front of the house.

An Island Feast

Sometime after we landed here in the summer, I noticed something pretty swell. The food was amazing.

I mentioned this to my Nail Gal one day and got a completely blank look in response. She was, no doubt, mentally reviewing the very limited selection of restaurants in town, trying to figure out what on earth I was referring to. No, I wasn't referring to the restaurant food, I'm talking about the home cooking food.

Back in Manila I was pretty frustrated over the quality of produce (mangoes notwithstanding). It wasn't very fresh. The problem, I think, was distribution. Trucks and jeepneys carrying produce from farms to market in the city traveled quite a distance in the heat, in unairconditioned trucks and jeepneys, and it took quite a beating. It was often hard to find things, and you had to look carefully and what there was, often was a big disappointment. By the time it got to store shelves, it had already lost a lot, and went bad very quickly. Outdoor markets weren't much better, as it was so hot.

Here on Vancouver Island where I live now, FRESH is the name of the game.

Every Saturday morning in Qualicum Beach there is a great farmer's market in town. Local fruit and vegetable growers, as well as organic meat and poultry producers display and sell the freshest, most delicious stuff - some items picked that very morning. It's as much a social event as it is a market. There is a town square feel to the morning, as townspeople (and their dogs) wander around, meeting up with the neighbours and chatting. Musicians play. Every week there will be something different on display as the cycle of food production unfolds through the season. Varieties that I've never tasted before are available and it soon becomes apparent how much the flavour is compromised when the produce is bred for traveling long distances to market. I once bought cherry tomatoes that blew me away - a totally different flavour from the supermarket ones I'd had before - a completely different beast. Over time I've gotten to know some of the vendors and heard their stories. It's a new treat to actually know the people who grow your food. For sure, they select the very best for display and sale at their stands.

The meat and poultry - all organic and free range, is another eye opener. Here's a story about FRESH. One Saturday morning I was at the stall of one of the guys I buy meat from, waiting my turn, and listening to the conversation the couple beside me was having with the vendor. He brings his chicken and pork to market in a big freezer, and the male half of the couple was saying that he would prefer fresh, not frozen. The vendor replied, "Well on Wednesday we butcher the pigs, Thursday we make the sausages, and Friday we butcher the chickens. You are welcome to come out to the farm and pick up the fresh meat on those days, just give us a call".

A new definition of "fresh".

If you miss the Saturday market, during the week you can drive down the road five minutes to the farm shops some of the producers have and buy "picked that morning" produce. Also five minutes down the road is the French Creek marina, which is for the most part a working fishing boat marina where the daily catch is offloaded to the seafood building and packed into trucks to take it away for distribution to points across Canada and beyond. There, they have a small retail shop where we have bought salmon, halibut, scallops, oysters, clams, mussels, shrimps and other fish I haven't tried yet. Fresh out of the drink. Normally I don't eat raw oysters, but I made an exception and it was awesome.

Also nearby is The Little Qualicum Cheeseworks that makes fantastic cheeses. A little further down the road there are wineries and cideries and fruit farms. Sometimes someone has wild chanterelle mushrooms for sale at the market. In August and September the blackberries are everywhere along the roads and I kept containers in the car, to stop and pick berries under the sunshine (some even made it home to the kitchen). Here in the backyard The Pot House is not just limited to ornamentals. Growing in pots outside the back door we have arugula, kale, mesclun, rosemary, thyme, basil, cilantro and lettuce. Sean and Mark, the Brother Carpenters, are erecting the greenhouse right now so no doubt over the winter the edibles will share space with the fuchsias.

A few years ago a Vancouver couple decided to spend a year eating local, everything was produced within a 100 mile radius of their home. They wrote a book about it, The 100 Mile Diet, a good read. Well these past few months, it seems we've been eating The 10 Mile Diet.

I've never eaten so well before.

Changing Seasons & Some Kind of Segue

Last weekend was Thanksgiving and here in coastal British Columbia the leaves have just started to color within the last week or so. It's been quite a few years since I have seen the seasons change like this and it's just one more layer upon the layers of natural eye candy all around us. I'm out walking every day around my house - in the forest, on the beach, along the trails. The fresh air is amazing, as are the smells of forest and ocean. They say, that breathing forest air is good for you - it reduces stress, blood pressure, blood sugar - something about the chemicals given off with the breathing of the trees that affects human beings. If we want to drive to walk, there are provincial parks, riverside trails, fish hatchery land, mountain trails, rainforest walks, public access to beaches all up the coast. Every time you turn around there is another huge park. The entire Vancouver Island seems to be just one big park, with little pockets of people here and there.

As it turns out, I'm not wrong in that observation. More than 14% of the land in British Columbia is protected in nearly a thousand parks. Some are for the hardcore hikers, campers, climbers and such but what I really like about the park system is how many are so accessible to everyone and so well maintained. Lots and lots of relatively easy trails so everyone, young and old, (and me) can experience in some way, this temperate rainforest here on the coast - elsewhere in BC there are mountains and deserts and everything in between). As for the little pockets of people in a huge geography that's true too. There's only 4 1/2 million people living in the entire province, a quarter of the number of people who lived in Manila, my home for the past 4 years. Surreal. The scale of things is so completely different from southeast Asia.

Watch out for this, my friends, for therein lies the rub. Having (enjoying) no people and huge land and resources is the complete opposite of what our friends on the other side of the Pacific have, which is NO land accompanied by large and growing populations. As their middle class explodes, China needs more and more and more resources to fuel the beast.

Already sucking up their southeast Asian neighbor's resources, it is only natural that they would cast an eye at us. And as it turns out, many on this side of the pond have no problem bellying up to the trough.

They want to build an oil tanker port on the northwest coast of British Columbia and run a pipeline through the mountains to the oil fields of Alberta.

The Enbridge corporation, the oils sands players, the politicians, the bankers and the Chinese who are quite literally invested, want to build this pipeline so that oil tankers will navigate their way up the narrow fiords and channels in these pristine and sensitive areas to slurp up the oil through the pipenipple, then turn around and go back through these channels, up the Hecate Strait with all its weather extremes and history, eventually to the ocean and onwards to China, to regurgitate into their portside pipes. Turn around go back again. 14 huge oil tankers a day, these people are proposing to run.

This through an area where fishing boats have been the major boat traffic since all time. To the north was where the sinking of the huge oil tanker Exxon Valdez happened. In the very same waters where they want to run these new oil tankers, the BC Ferry, Queen of the North, sank in the middle of a cold night in March, 2006, when it struck land with 101 people aboard. 99 of them were rescued by the people living in the nearby Gitga'at community of Hartley Bay who went out in any boat they could get their hands on, but 2 people, a man and a woman, are, as they say, unaccounted for and presumably rest 1400 feet below with the vessel.

Proposed oil tanker port between Queen Charlottes (Haida Gwaii) and northern BC.

Source National Geographic

I first heard of the proposal to build the oil tanker port and the pipeline half a dozen years ago when I visited Haida Gwaii, or the Queen Charlotte Islands as it was known then. (The name was officially changed recently to reflect the people, the Haida, who were the original inhabitants pre-white guy. These islands way up on the very north west coast of British Columbia and just south of Alaska is the home of the Haida people. The Haida are, of course, hugely concerned about this project. They have lived there for 8000 years, give or take, and they, more than anyone, know the Hecate Strait. There is no fucking way they want those oil tankers going around their islands day in day out, year after year. In that geography, some say, disaster is only a matter of time.

The thing that gives me hope about all this is that the Haida and other aboriginal tribes, as well as many other West Coasters, know a thing or two about protest and about stopping industry in its tracks. Their early history stopping Queen Charlotte clear cutting and protecting Meares Island in Tofino (not only stopping industry but enabling beautiful, pristine areas to be protected for all time) and other David and Goliath scenarios has taught a lot of people a lot of things about being effective. More drama ahead.

Check out the article in August 2011 National Geographic, Pipeline Through Paradise, Great website, it has an article explaining the whole issue, plus a fantastic article about the Spirit Bears whose home this area also is, as well as lots of pictures of what this land looks like, this land and sea that they want to change so dramatically. There is also a link to an article about the Exxon Valdez oil spill when 11 million gallons of crude spilled into Prince William Sound in Alaska. That huge environmental disaster has impacts on the life on that land to this day.

Meanwhile, the Queen of the North, resting on the bottom of a channel in the area in question, leaks diesel.

By the way, a little name dropping if I may. I was in the local bike store in town to pick up my new bike. A guy was talking to the owner about custom designing a new bike. Turns out this guy is a photographer for National Geographic and has just moved to our area. I'm impressed, those photographers are the best of the best (to say nothing of covered bridges).  Now I'm looking at these AMAZING shots of the Spirit Bear in the Great Bear Rain Forest article in the August issue and look at that, there's the new neighbor's work, Paul Nicklen. Click on his website, his photos are beyond amazing.

National Geographic - Paul Nicklen

Hugging Trees

Our next door neighbour's property-soon to be transformed

On one side of our house is a 1 1/2 acre lot, bigger than most on the road, with a single house on it, some huge trees at the back, a wide expanse of lawn and a long driveway, edged with shrubs and perennials. A few years ago when we were in town on one of our "home leaves" from Asia I noticed a For Sale sign in front and called the agent to find out about it. It ended up being on and off the market for a long time.

The first evening we were at the new house back in July, our neighbour came over to talk to us. It turned out that they had just moved in the week before. He's a very energetic and enthusiastic type of guy and he proceeded to tell us all about his plans for the property. He was so excited! He was going to move the house 40 feet to the left, closer to our property. He was going to remove 3 huge Douglas Firs that he said were a hazard to the house in its soon-to-be new position (or more to the point, in the way). Then he was going to regrade the land (higher) right beside our property and build two new houses. Oh, by the way, he's a house builder by profession.

He kept looking at me as he was telling us all this, and it appeared that he was looking for some sign of approval. I don't think he saw that on my face (no kidding!), but he was having trouble reading my reaction. The reason for that was probably because I was well and truly gob-smacked. Stunned. Speechless. Later, as I thought about what he said, the shock subsided and I started to get, shall we saw, concerned. Just when you think you've found a peaceful spot on a peaceful road in a peaceful neighbourhood near a crackerjack forest, surprise! You're beside an impending subdivision! Oh joy. Construction for the next year!

Now these past couple of months with all the construction and trades through our house have been a bit unnerving. I can't stand the disorder, the mess, the noise, the people around. A renovator I am not. Now the action has shifted outside to the greenhouse, so it's still getting to me. Later there will be some fencework, stone patio work and walkways and a carport and gates. Plus all the digging of the flower beds. If that's not bad enough, now I also have to look forward to the next door noise of man and machine, the blowing in of dust and dirt all of which I remember well from when we moved into the last house in Ottawa in a brand new subdivision. Plus the fact that what was a park-like side yard will be no more.

Well, let the games begin. The day before yesterday, as the plumbers arrived in my own backyard to  rough in the water supply for the greenhouse, a huge backhoe like object rumbled its way up the neighbour's driveway and went into action.

All day long the sound of chain saws and machines told the tale of the tree murder taking place next door. The backhoe would dig by the roots and then push the tree over, which would land with a huge crack and crash. Sounded like screaming trees, to my overactive imagination. Very unsettling. The smell of cedar was so strong - imagine the smell of the living room at Christmas with a more or less freshly cut Christmas tree, this was what the air all around the neighbourhood smelled like. Later in the day, after work was over for the day and all was finally quiet, I watched dozens and dozens of seagulls that had flown inland from the beach circling around the tree graveyard.

The next day it continued. More loud cracking sounds as more trees came down. The machine was picking up huge trunks and tossing them around like toothpicks, which was fascinating to watch. They didn't just remove the 3 Douglas firs, they took down every single tree in that little woods on the property - 18 big ones. But a funny thing started to happen to my outlook. Where once there was very dense woods behind that edge of our backyard, now much more light is coming through. We can see more of the sky. Not only that, but I can imagine how once the leaves are off the other deciduous trees in the adjacent back neighbour's lot this winter, there will be far more light coming through to the greenhouse, a good thing especially when the sun is so low in the sky.

What is it they say about silver linings?

The neighbour's (former) trees behind our house

Timberrr!

A mess of our own

Stacking toothpicks