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9  impressions of Phuket

11/21/2019

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After 26 hours in three airplanes and one night in a Hong Kong hotel, we finally arrived in Thailand!
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Having only a week, we elected to spend our time in Phuket, mainly in Ban Karon (a more spacious and slightly less seedy version of Patong), with a few day trips to other parts of the big island.

These impressions are therefore limited to that context.

1. The Food is Awesome!

Anyone who knew I was going to Thailand advised me to “eat all the food”, and they were right! From street pad Thai to sticky rice and mango to banana pancakes and rolled ice cream and even authentic Russian cuisine... the food is fresh and just generally amazing!!!

On arrival our first night, we wandered out into the street not too far from our AirBnB to discover a lineup of street vendors selling various skewers for BBQ as well as a variety of pad Thai. We selected several of the former and two of the latter (a chicken and a vegetarian) to take back to our apartment.
Subsequent days in town and near the beach revealed additional tasty food selections, including fresh fruit smoothies in every flavour imaginable, waffles made to order, and sticky rice with fresh cut mango.

The best part was how affordable everything was: Most items cost less than 120 baht (the equivalent of about $5 CAD or less), and without taxes and tip added on (tipping is not really customary in many parts of Asia), our money went far!


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2. The Wiring is Lava

One thing I noticed almost immediately upon arrival and often after that was the number of wires hanging in the street. It was as though everyone had just added whatever they needed to the thick, electrical jumble.
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Surely there is some kind of safety guideline for electrical wiring there, but it just seemed to the casual observer like a fire or some other sort of electrical disaster waiting to happen!

3. Body Care Options Are Ubiquitous

Everyone who goes to Thailand talks about the cheap prices for awesome massages... unfortunately, many of these seem to be linked to “happy ending”.

But many places are legit, and offer a wide range of delightful body services at very reasonable prices. You can even get them right on the beach, which I did, three times, with the lady below. No attempts at a happy ending, thank goodness, but I was happy at the end!
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While in Phuket, I enjoyed two oil massages, some foot reflexology, and a Thai massage. On our final night in town, Alex joined me at a little spot tucked into a side street for a face massage and back and shoulder work. Unlike the fancy spas here in Toronto, most places there just have a row of hard mattresses with a curtain between each one (and no curtains at all at the beach). It’s not super private, but seems to be the norm.

The Thai massage in particular was fantastic, and if the prices were like that here at home, I’d get one every week or more, no question!


4. Laundry Service Rocks

Our Airbnb didn’t include a washing machine, and since we’d packed pretty light, by Day 3 we urgently needed to wash a load! Luckily for us, there was a place right around the corner (and indeed, they are pretty much everywhere), where you could drop off your clothes to be laundered, ironed and folded.

The charge per kilo was about the equivalent of what we spend on the machines in our laundry room at home, only we didn’t actually have to do the work, just drop it off any pick it up all clean and nicely folded!

Laundry service is definitely worthwhile (and necessary if traveling light and you sweat like a pig... as I do!) if you are visiting Phuket.


5. Thai Language and Google

The language in Thailand is super cool... and very different from English. The alphasyllabary of the Thai script contains 44 consonant symbols and 15 vowel symbols, and the language is mostly (though not exclusively) monosyllabic. There is also considerable use of gender endings when speaking, so for example the way I say “hello” and “thank you” would differ slightly from the way one of my sons would.

This vacation was my first trip to Asia, and unlike when traveling to other destinations, I hadn’t really done my homework beforehand in that I knew essentially no words in Thai. But I soon learned to say hello and thank you with the appropriate gendered language (as an aside, apparently most ladyboys - or “kathoeys” as they are known in Thai — use the female gender when speaking; I asked a local!)


Also, Google translate is alive and well! As well as a few Chinese, and the odd Brit or North American, the place seems to be crawling with Russians, and it is not uncommon to see “interesting” translations of Thai into Russian, English and Cantonese in many restaurant and on store signs, etc.


6. The Islands are Plentiful and Beautiful

Some of my friends who who visited Thailand before for longer periods of time advised visiting at least some of the smaller islands, of which there are many, surrounding Phuket and Thailand generally. They have been made famous from the filming of James Bond movies as well as “The Beach”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (we did not see Leo while there).

Since we only had a week, we opted for a day excursion to Koh Phi Phi, a string of small islands about a two-and-a-half-hour boat ride way from the pier. This adventure served to be an incredible day of diving and snorkelling, and we marvelled at the nature both above and below the water (only got photos of the former, though)!


I imagine that a week spent on one of the smaller islands would provide a considerably more authentic flavour, in some cases, than the crowded tourist beaches of Phuket.

Perhaps one day....


7. Elephants

While Tats wanted to do some diving, my main interest in Thailand stemmed from a desire to visit the elephants, and learn more about these magnificent creatures.

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I’ll write a separate blog post on our magical day at the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary, but for now, suffice it to say that there are many opportunities to spend time with the elephants on they island of Phuket, and one should research very carefully to ensure one is not supporting the many abusive/fake “elephant experience” tourist traps that continue to exist under the guise of “sanctuary”.


8. Burmese presence (Myanmar)

I noticed in Ban Karon that some of the locals were wearing a sort of face cream in large circles - mostly women, but also some men were wearing this, and I wondered about it.

As I learned during our visit the elephant sanctuary, they are Burmese (as they refer to themselves, rather than saying from Myanmar) - apparently this people group constitutes Thailand’s largest migrant population. And the creamy paste on the face is actually called “thanakha”, and is both cosmetic and practical: Made from ground bark and a little water, it cools the skin and provides protection from sunburn as well as being an effective anti-fungal.


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An interesting aside: Several of the Mahouds at the elephant sanctuaries are Burmese, and have to learn Thai for their jobs - the retired elephants don’t understand Burmese!


9. Traffic is insanity

In order to get to the beach (or anywhere, really) from our AirBnB, we had to cross a main road. Traffic lights are few to none, and scooters and busses whiz by on the sidewalk-less streets. Congestion in Thailand, which has the unfortunate notoriety of having the world’s deadliest roads, is infamously bad, and Phuket is no exception!

On the days when we had arranged outings and excursions by car (van), we learned to anticipate long delays as a result of traffic. These delays were made more unpleasant by the often sharply winding and hilly roads, which caused me personally a fair bit of car-sickness.

With so many beautiful sites to see, traffic was really one of the most annoying features of our time in Thailand, and all things considered, I guess we shouldn’t complain about something so insignificant. But I do wonder how people who live here full-time manage!


In Conclusion

During our week in Phuket, we enjoyed many exciting adventures and also had a chance to swim in the ocean and relax at the beach.
The time we spent seemed just right, though I do wish we had had a chance to visit Phuket Town and maybe see a fishing village on the other side of the island. We did not get to Bangkok or any other part of Thailand, and I know our visit to Phuket gave us just a small glimpse of this country’s beauty, history and culture.
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Early Morning on the Jordan Road

11/10/2019

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Our night in Hong Kong was never intended to be the focus of our 10-day vacation... Headed for Thailand to do some snorkelling/diving and visit an elephant sanctuary, we were looking for a quick place on route to stop over for one or two nights, mainly to recover from the foreseeably long flights through multiple time zones before settling in at our intended destination for a week.

I knew little to nothing about Hong Kong, and was admittedly ill-prepared for this leg of the adventure. Other than exchanging some Canadian dollars for local currency and looking up a bus route from the airport to our Airbnb before we left Toronto, I’m ashamed to say I knew virtually nothing about this part of the world.

I have been (mostly) pleasantly and embarrassingly surprised throughout our little stopover.
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The city offers a fascinating contemporary urban architecture against a backdrop of millennia-old geography, infused with a curious combination of ancient and modern cultural quirks. The view from Victoria Peak at night is unbeatable, and the wide variety of food, entertainment and available tourist accommodations is laudable.

But what really interests me is the “real“ life in a city, not what the tourists come to see, but what happens “behind the scenes”, as an almost invisible yet ubiquitous part of the fabric of a place.

As it turns out, I had the opportunity to catch a small glimpse of this on our second morning here.

Still horrifically jetlagged after our arrival from North America the previous morning, I awoke multiple times throughout the night, and eager not to wake my sleeping travel companions, I quietly dressed myself and snuck out of the apartment around 5 AM.

The streets near our Airbnb at the intersection of Nathan and Jordan Roads downtown were quiet, but nowhere near deserted.
In the distance, the golden arches beckoned, as they do now in virtually every city of every country around the world.

Eager for some free Wi-Fi and curious how their breakfast items compare to those in Canada, I wandered inside.
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It’s quiet, but already filling up with early morning meal seekers. Several folks sit sipping their coffees and nibbling on globally recognizable fast food breakfast items at a large central table, their faces buried in their mobile devices.

But a second, shocking “sub-population” makes up the periphery of the restaurant: Every bench of every table booth is filled with what appears to be sleeping street people!
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A quick Internet search reveals that the 25 or so homeless folks I count at this McDonald’s are — sadly — not an anomaly. With increasing rent prices, the increase in homelessness has also soared, and a study published in March 2018 indicates that the number of homeless spending the night in 24 hour McDonald’s restaurants has doubled in the past three years!

I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to be a visitor here, and how lucky, irrespective of where “home“ is, to have found a path in life that has afforded me a steady income with regular access to food and a decent apartment, as well as the ability to travel. I’m also intrigued by the reaction of the food-purchasing locals. No one seems to bat an eyelash at their less fortunate neighbours, many of whom are still fast asleep on their benches when I leave an hour later, heads resting on backpacks presumably containing all their worldly possessions. (I consider that in Toronto, where both the climate and the mindsets towards such public integrations seem to be much colder, such sleepers would surely have been evicted from their temporary posts rather than left to find a few hours of relatively safe and peaceful escape from the elements.)

Hong Kong is similar to and yet significantly different from how I imagined it.

As I stumble out from my early morning of blogging at the familiar restaurant-come-homeless shelter and back into the street to wander “home” with the sun finally rising in the distance, my mind turns to our afternoon at Kowloon Park yesterday.

Filled with greenery, Asian “kitsch” and some impressive accessibility features for the visually impaired, this urban park tells the city’s story from a different angle.
And as I return to the older building where we’re staying for the night, I realize again how lucky I am, this time with timing: About 20 police officers are milling about with face masks and hard helmets, commuting with one another by radio. I can’t understand what they’re saying of course, but as more of them pull on their masks, I infer they’re preparing for yet another protest, and I’m grateful to have arrived safely back at my Airbnb before that erupted!

How glad I am that we had the opportunity to spend a day in this bustling metropolis. Like all travel, this experience is one that expands the mind and provides opportunity for reflection, both on life‘s big problems, and ones personal contributions to either the problem or possible solutions.
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The Great Thailand Adventure, Part 1: In Transit

11/10/2019

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I had forgotten how hard long haul travel can be (well, for those of us pions who can’t afford first class, anyway).


Full Disclaimer: This blog post is full of whining and complaining about what a former colleague of mine would call “FWP” or “first world problems”!! I so get that I am super lucky to have the ability to travel as I do, both in terms of having the luxury and privilege of being employed in a job that offers annual paid vacation time and also in terms of having the means to pay for accommodations and standby travel; even though it’s cheaper than how some people travel, I fully recognize that most people don’t get to travel like this at all. That said, within the context of said travel, I am going to get my complain on. So if y’all can’t handle it, you should stop reading now and go back to consuming whatever more worthy online crap you were consuming before the internetz rabbit hole led you here.


So my partner is a pilot with an airline in Canada. And even though it’s a small regional airline, it’s one that has some awesome reciprocal agreements with partner airlines, which means we (her partner and kids) can all travel much cheaper than market value, and she even more cheaply (and in some cases even free).


But it’s standby. That means not confirmed. As in, you could be waiting a gazillion years before a seat comes up on a flight you want/need to get where you’re trying to go. And the more people you’re traveling with, the less likely it is you will get your first choice. Especially when traveling with a partner airline, because there’s a whole ranking system, and if you’re the family of a person working for an airline other than the one you’re trying to travel on, you’re basically at the bottom of the list. A third (or fourth or fifth) class citizen, as it were.


Below an illustration of how this played out recently. We were lucky in that it’s a fairly seamless example, but hard travel nonetheless.


Three of us had decided to use our 10 days of vacation time (and in the case of our kid who was joining us, his 7 skipped days of school) to try and get to Thailand. Unless we wanted to pay upwards of $1000 a person for a guaranteed seat, we had to figure out which partner airlines (that have the agreement with my bae’s airline) fly from Toronto to somewhere in Thailand, or to a place that has other qualifying flights to Thailand.


We quickly established that we’d likely have to go through Hong Kong, staying a night or two in an AirBnB there before trying our luck with a flight to Phuket, where we had rented an apartment for a week and arranged for some diving and snorkelling.


There were a few options, the “easiest” of which was a non-stop Cathay Pacific flight from YYZ to HKG. It leaves in the afternoon on Friday, and arrives in Hong Kong sometime on Saturday evening.


The only problem is that it was oversold, and already had three people (who were not us) on the standby list. So we decided not to risk it.


Flying standby successfully depends largely on one’s ability to predict the likelihood of finding an empty seat on any given flight. Knowledge is power. But knowing the loads means requiring access to inside information not usually available to those outside of airline staff. Out of this necessity, and thanks to the power of modern technology, an online network of inter-airline collegiality exists in a way that most people outside of the aviation industry cannot possibly imagine. Even if you don’t directly know someone who works for the airline you want to fly with and can check the loads for you on their internal systems, chances are you know someone who used to fly with someone who flew with a friend of someone who works for that airline. And if not, there’s always the apps and the facebook groups, the ones where you plug in your desperate plea, and some bored keener with inside information will give you the best available intel at that time.


So my partner obsessively googled and texted.


The next best options where all out of Newark, which conveniently is a destination her airline frequents. Lots of available connecting flights to Hong Kong there.


Alas, not a lot of space to get from Toronto *to* Newark.


So back to researching.


We finally decided to fly United to San Francisco, and try our luck with a connecting flight departing 45 minutes later to Hong Kong. If we were successful in getting on both flights, it would mean 22 hours of flying through multiple time zones over the subsequent 24 hours, but it looked like our best option, meaning that we were more likely to be doing 22 hours of flying than 40+ hours of sitting around an airport! The loads for the first leg were looking VERY good, and the second leg (assuming we could make it from one plane to the next in time) seemed to have just enough seats for us, based on the latest intel from an airline colleague.


With some free pens and chocolate, and a little sweet talking to the United CSRs in YYZ, we landed ourselves some adjacent seats on the first flight, and spent the next 6 hours strategizing (with support from an eager flight attendant) how we would manage our assorted carry-on luggage for the run from one terminal to the next, in order to attempt our luck with the connecting flight. It was an uncomfortable 6 hours, but the adrenaline from our first foray into international standby travel was flowing, and so the pain that lay ahead did not really sink in until much later.


The standby gods were smiling on us as we raced from one terminal to the next in San Francisco, arriving just in time to board the connecting flight to Hong Kong — we’d all three of us successfully obtained seats on this flight, too.


Middle seats.


And the flight that lay ahead was 16 hours. The longest I’d ever been on a plane in one stretch.


As I squeezed into my allotted 18 square inches, the burden of long haul travel sunk in. I had not slept more than about 20 minutes on the preceding flight, largely because my sweet but largish teenager kept leaning against me in his own pursuit of the elusive unconscious. And now I was squeezed in between two strangers, both of whom seemed to have little concept of physical boundaries, as I soon discovered. Encroaching elbows, arms and legs turned from mildly annoying in the first several hours to claustrophobia-inducing through the middle third of the flight.


After sobbing through “The Art of Riding in the Rain” (I digress, but you gotta see this movie! So sweet!! I’d read the book some years back, and they did a really nice job with the film version) and attempting for a few hours to sleep upright in my narrower-than-I-remember economy class seat, and failing to do so, despite my comfy memory foam pillow, eye patch and noise canceling headphones, I decided to go for a walk and find my partner.


I soon found her, luxuriously stretched out and fast asleep, in the middle of aisle 40, a few rows back on the other side of the plane.


Granted, hers was also a middle seat. But whereas I was sentenced to 16 hours between two man-spreaders in a standard, narrow row of squishy seats in in inadequate armrests, my skinny little girlfriend who can sleep in any position anyway had been assigned to an exit row, the one right next to the lavs, so that she had BAGS of room. Moreover, her seat was ensconced on either side with a solid half wall that firmly delineated her space from that of her neighbours’, hence protecting her from wandering lower limbs.


I considered waking her up and demanding a seat exchange for the remainder of the flight, but I figured it was better for one of us to get a decent night’s sleep than for neither of us to. (My motives were partly selfish: I knew that she would be better equipped to deal with my inevitable meltdown at some point later in the journey if she had slept a while at least.)


So instead I rummaged through her bag for a cheese sandwich I knew she had packed for me earlier, left her a hastily-scribbled note begging her to come find me when she woke up, and ventured to the back of the cabin, where one of the flight attendants indulged with me a cup of hot tea and surprised me with the fact that she was in her 53rd year of working as an FA with United!!! I was very impressed, and stayed a while to shoot the breeze with her and her colleagues, learning a little more about the secret lives of cabin crew on long haul flights such as these. She was gorgeous, by the way. Bright eyes, beautiful white hair and an engaging smile. I can only imagine the adventures she’s had over the years.


My tea and chat finished, I returned to my partner’s row to see if she might be awake now, so that I could have some reprieve from my cramped quarters for a while. Alas, she was slumped forward in her seat, legs splayed out in front of her, with her hood drawn low over hear eyes to block out the light. And still asleep. Blast it!


So I decided to make a quick pit stop on the way back to the man spreaders.


But there is no “quick” on an aircraft of this size. Despite having three lavs right there in the immediate vicinity, all three were occupied, and remained so for the next ten minutes or so. What the temporary inhabitants where doing in there for that long, I don’t even want to imagine, but suffice it to say that by the time one of the tiny stalls finally became available, my bathroom visit of boredom had become one of necessity, and I actually had to pee!!


Sleeping beauty was still, well, sleeping, so I returned to my row, climbed over the lightly snoring man spreader in seat C, and crawled back into my 18 inches. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the last 8 hours had begun to produce a body and mouth odour from my neighbours that was less than desirable. Convinced I would never sleep again, I resigned myself to writing down my adventures thus far, my typing abilities more than marginally hindered by my tight quarters.


Only 8 hours to go.
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A Morning at Argyle Shore

8/25/2019

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It seems that after a full three months on the island, fate has seen fit to give me one additional “bonus” day here on PEI. (While it’s true that there are wonderful travel benefits that come from being the spouse of an airline pilot, those benefits come with a cost: Confirmed uncertainty!)

After trying twice on standby, I still couldn’t get on a flight back to Toronto. The next possibility being another 12 hours away, I decided to make the best of it, and explore one of my favourite beaches on the south shore, at Argyle provincial park.
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Since I was turned away (again!) at YYG around 6:30 AM, and the park does not open until 9 AM, I made a brief stop at Victoria by the Sea, and then went to the parking lot at nearby Bonshaw provincial park for a nap in the car.


When I awoke, it was 9:30, and after a brief chat with my family to update them about the situation and lament the fact that I would essentially have no time between my arrival in Toronto and my return back to work, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and headed over to Argyle Shores, where I arrived approximately two hours before low tide.
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I always forget what a splendid beach this is when the tide is out; my only other visit this summer was at nearly high tide, when only a narrow ribbon of rocky shore remains walkable.

But now, now endless red sandy beaches were my Oyster!


Very few people had arrived by the time I got there, but the beach was nevertheless busy: Assorted seagulls stomped around determinedly through narrow pools, picking at various tasty bits that the tide had washed in, transparent little shrimp or crayfish scampered around and large schools of tiny fish flitted every which way. Shellfish scuttled about looking for a safe spot to ride out the next few hours; I chanced upon a giant crab racing across one such shallow pool.
Argyle Shores provide an ideal opportunity to experience PEI’s signature red soil; at low tide, rocky shore meets a seemingly endless expense of red sandy beach, and once you’ve made your way down the rickety old wooden staircase, you can walk out quite far, wading between the emerging sandbars.
One of the most beautiful things to behold when flying over the island is its undulating shoreline with the most mesmerizing textures of subtly blending land and water. Here at Argyle shore, you can immerse yourself in it on the ground! While the gradients are incredibly difficult to truly capture effectively with a phone camera (even a good one!) it’s nevertheless a quintessential spot for a few Instagram-worthy shots.
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I first discovered this beach some years ago on my own, with our previous dog, a beagle with short stubby speckled legs who danced along happily behind me along the red shoreline, pausing frequently to sniff here and there. At that time I was amazed by the rich diversity of rock formations, various molluscs and barnacles and other sea creatures, and of course endless red sand.
The next year I wanted to show my boys; alas, I had not looked up the tides, and when we arrived, there was little evidence of the diversity I had described to them. We had to wait another year to (re)discover Argyle Shores.

This time, having both tide and time on my side, I walked further than I ever had before, and came to a little estuary.
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I followed it all the way to the end and saw two beautiful great blue herons.

They wouldn’t let me get close enough to take a photo, but I stuck my toes in the rapidly moving water to assure myself that it was considerably colder than the gently lapping waters of the wide ocean behind it!
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After plopping myself down on a sandbar for a while to feel the warm sun on my back and listen to the sound of the water and the birds mixed with the excited cries of children in the background (with the approach of low tide, more people were slowly starting to make their way to this still semi-secluded spot), I began my slow meander back to the staircase up to the parking lot.
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If you’ve never been to Argyle shore and are planning a visit to the island, I highly recommend visiting this incredible spot. It’s not so much a swimming beach as a walking beach, but it’s a beautiful tribute to this red Island, and well worth the half hour drive out of town. The park itself includes picnic tables (including some covered ones in case of rain), washrooms and showers, and is the perfect spot to spend a morning or an afternoon, after you’ve walked the red sands, rocky shore and tide pools.

While I am still sad about the delay in being reunited with my family today, I am grateful for the unexpected opportunity for one more visit to this beautiful beach!
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Sleeping Around on PEI

8/23/2019

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Some people who knew I was spending the summer on Prince Edward Island were surprised to hear that I spent part of my three months here living in a tent!

Although it’s true I co-own a house, it is typically in use by my co-owner for part of the summer, and we also sometimes rent it out to help pay for the various expenses that come with owning a home and country property. This year in particular, we had several folks stay, as we had to replace the roof last winter (not a cheap endeavour!)
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So, I did get about three weeks in a comfy bed in my room in the house, while spouse and kids were visiting. But at other times, I slept in an assortment of other places!

Last year, I spent a week in a tiny tent behind my music cabin; this year I got a lucky and generous upgrade (thanks to my neighbour whose property I was managing) to a 7 m canvas bell tent! Here I slept for most of June (COLD at the beginning; required warm dog and five blankets!!) and the first half of July.
Sleeping in a bell tent was an interesting experience, and one that certainly brought me closer to nature. I went to sleep each night to the sound of crickets chirping, and awoke each morning to the sound of birds singing and — depending on the month — lobster boats heading out of the bay in the distance.

Sneakers enjoyed it, too, and eagerly ran to the tent’s entrance each night, waiting for me to unzip the door so that she could bound inside for our night of snuggling down under the covers!
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Sleeping so far from a flush toilet also meant creative waste management solutions (being in the over 40 club and a birth mother to twins, there is not a chance in hell that I can make it through an 8-hour night without at least one washroom visit, lol!!)

At first I got ambitious and — after much research in the tiny home and off-grid community — installed a compost bin and commissioned a local guy to build us an outdoor composting toilet, which I kept well stocked from a nearby source of sawdust. I even worked in an outdoor shower with a rain barrel and down spout set up behind the music cabin... but honestly, most nights in the tent I ended up using a chamber pot. #lazy. LOL!!

That said, I did enjoy daytime “business” at the back of the property, with the outhouse door open, gazing into the forest.
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After some weeks in my house, it was back to the tent for me... and eventually, I moved to the music cabin, as the time came to prepare for my departure from the island and return home to Toronto. Here I experimented with sleeping in a hammock, which has provided many deliciously luxurious afternoon naps, but did not work out so well for a full night’s sleep as it turned out.
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In addition to these nighttime adventures, I slept around in the day, too! This included the OG hammock over at my place, under the deck, as well as a new rope hammock at Rick’s, and a cushioned swing inside the dog run.
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Each sleeping partner had its benefits and drawbacks, but overall, I’d say that sleeping around on PEI this summer was a relatively safe and fun experience. Though I am looking forward to getting back to my own bed in Toronto, largely because it often includes a cute pilot (when she’s not away on a layover)!!!
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PractiCe Makes Perfect

8/4/2019

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I’ve been lucky enough over the past several weeks to find myself with enough time to devote daily sessions to practising not only my drums, but also rediscovering the xylophone (which I hauled with me to PEI, finally, and set up in my new music cabin here), and attending to the trombone, which I started playing last year, in order to be able to complement Alex (French Horn) and Simon (Trumpet).

As my practising has become more consistent, I have noticed a distinct pattern: Spending sufficient time on warm up exercises each and every time I practise, and playing for at least 20 minutes total, have both led to a noticeable improvement in my playing. I know I’m improving with the trombone, because I am now able to hit notes I could not reach a few weeks ago (this afternoon I finally played high F for the first time!!), and also because my teacher recently told me that my tone was “really coming along”. :-)

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When working through Stick Control exercises at the kit, my double sticking feels much smoother than it did a month ago. A benefit derived from drumming regularly (at least three times a week now) and for a minimum duration of 20 minutes each time.

My xylophone skills are slowly but surely returning to the levels I was attaining in Grade 13 (yes I am that old!!) when I played Flight of the Bumble Bee for an exam. I know this because I have been working on Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor (First Movement), and am inching my way closer to my desired speed on the metronome, with considerable accuracy. Both my speed and accuracy are also improving with the Gallop Solo, which I still have memorized from some 30 years ago, and which I have also been practising, for fun!

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Working in a focused fashion on “boring” warm up exercises for all three of my instruments, and repeating sections to perfect accuracy, speed or tone, is (re)teaching me valuable skills which I hope to transfer to my professional life once I return to work later this month and leave my music cabin behind for another year.

For more discussion on the benefits of different approaches to practising, check out this article (with link to other articles) I found online.
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Engineering Opportunities for Girls in Aviation

7/22/2019

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It was a grey, overcast morning. But COPA Flight 57 in Charlottetown, PEI was determined to host a successful COPA for Kids event, and so off to the airport I went, just as determined to make Canadian Aviation Pride’s maritime event debut a success as well!

Canadian Aviation Pride, or CAP for short, is a national organization of LGBTQ+ aviators engaged in not-for-profit work to unite, celebrate and promote diversity in the industry. We count flight attendants, air traffic controllers, aviation engineers and other aviators amongst our ranks, though the vast majority of our members are pilots. Most of our Board members are located in Vancouver or Toronto, and as a result, most of our events happen in these two cities, with more recent branching out to Montreal and a few western cities.

Being able to participate in an event in Eastern Canada was a really exciting opportunity for us, and I was pleased to represent CAP as the board donated 100 of our signature rainbow airplane necklaces and a bunch of other swag to hand out to the kids.
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People sometimes ask why we volunteer at events like this, setting up a booth or table, and spending the day chatting with folks, some of whom can become mildly unpleasant or downright hostile when they discover we are a “gay” organization. The main reasons include promoting aviation as a fun and inclusive industry, so that young people, many of whom tend to be more open-minded than their elders, can see opportunities in an industry that sometimes has a reputation for homophobia, sexism and/or racism.

A big factor for us is to be models of what well-adjusted, “successful” professionals who happen to be queer might look like. This helps both LGBTQ+ youth to see themselves reflected in an exciting industry that we want them to consider, and their families, who may not yet know or may still be adjusting to the fact their their child is queer. It provides a standard for straight families to see what a gay person in aviation might look and sound like beyond a flamboyant pride parade. It also helps to normalize an often still stigmatized identity for queer families, those with two moms or two dads, etc. Lastly, it allows us to be open and visible for aviators who identify internally as LGBTQ+ but are not (yet) out themselves. We can be brave for others who are still gathering the courage to bring their whole selves to their work or hobbies.

As a queer woman, I have additional motives as well.

In Canada (and indeed throughout most of the world), flight decks comprise only about 6% women. While there are some exceptions (most notably, Porter Airlines in Toronto), most airlines are still holding steady at 6%, and this figure has been extremely slow to reach. So, I want to promote not only LGBTQ+ inclusion in aviation, but more specifically, WOMEN in aviation, queer or otherwise!

PEI is a particularly challenging environment for this work. The local flight club is made up almost exclusively of men, with wives and girlfriends being included only for things like administrative and other “helper” tasks. (The registration desk at this event was staffed entirely by women!)
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And, critical as their organizational help was, I can’t help but struggle with the image this projects to the girls in attendance at such an event: All the pilots are men, and the women stay indoors and work at the desk.

The boys and their families also subconsciously adopt this image. Aviation is for boys and men.

So, as I chatted with the kids and their parents who visited our colourful booth, I made sure to talk about the fact that I, too, am a licensed pilot, and that my partner, a woman, works as a pilot for a commercial airline. This was an important message for the girls to hear, as well as their brothers, and their parents!
I was pleased to see that COPA had adopted a woman-aware approach as well, including a female aviator at the top of their banner. But I was shocked at how few girls were signed up to fly. The overwhelming majority of kids registered for a free flight were boys, and ALL the volunteer pilots were men.

Happily, as the grey skies cleared up, I got to help on the ramp, directing groups of kids to the planes for their free fam flight. This meant that I had a direct hand in working with each pilot to arrange who sat where.

You can be sure that I made certain that for every group I had with a girl in it, the girl got the right seat, up front, at the controls!!!
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With 50 percent of the population still being grossly underrepresented in the cockpit and elsewhere in aviation, I feel like it’s my personal duty as a person of some periphery influence in the industry to not only expose girls to aviation, but to also engineer opportunities to make that exposure as meaningful as possible!

I’m happy to have had the opportunity to represent CAP in Prince Edward Island this summer. And while I am grateful to Flight 57 for including us, and for all the volunteer pilots who came out to ignite a passion for flying in the kids whose parents registered, I am also hopeful that as a result of meeting an actual email pilot and being able to spend 20 minutes at the controls of an airplane in flight, future years will include some female volunteer pilots on this still very traditional little island.
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The Grumpy Professor’s Artist and Mathematician Nature Retreat

7/20/2019

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My neighbour’s property is a little piece of heaven. His nearly 3-acre field bordered by forest/tree line on two sides lies across the road from my 1.74 acres on PEI’s north shore, a short walk from the harbour that is home to shallow waters and a gorgeous view towards the massive, parabolic dune of Greenwhich National Park.

A big big role for me this summer, apart from directly taking care of meal prep and tidying for said neighbour, has been to develop and manage his property.

The Grumpy Professor, as he’s referred to around these parts, is fairly open to ideas, mainly because he doesn’t really care all that much about the property, and is primarily interested in allowing the dog space to romp!

This has allowed me some freedom in my aforementioned development and management.

As I’ve been learning more about historical and current differences in how Indigenous Canadians and Canadians of Settler/Colonial descent view the concept of land “ownership”/use, I’ve been thinking a lot about whose land it all is, really, anyway. As a result, I have been finding opportunities to share “my” property and the one “owned” by our neighbour with others in ways that blends business and philosophy.

We have opened up both our properties to folks who want to camp here, either in their vehicles, their own tent, or one or more tents or small, rustic cabins we have set up on site.
This influx of guests has also allowed my neighbour to get out of his shell a little, and meet some interesting people of varying ages, from a wide range of backgrounds.

As the GP is a huge introvert, and really can live up to his nickname of “Grumpy Professor”, I worded any ads quite carefully to disseminate both the rustic, simple nature of the lodgings (priced accordingly) and the sometimes problematic nature of one of the hosts.

Such calls bring to bear either fellow introverts or mathematicians (the GP is a retired math professor), or folks intrigued by and interested in what we have to offer. Consequently, over the past 6 weeks, we have enjoyed learning about civil war re-enactments from a lone traveler who stayed — bundled in multiple sleeping bags — in Rick’s stargazing cabin in early May, we have delighted in reading the poems on the road of two gals traveling across Canada in their camper van, we have learned to play poker with two young American campers who also hauled wood for us and watered some trees in exchange for the use of our parks pass and wood of their own campfire, and we have enjoyed several communal meals with one or several groups of visitors.

We’ve also had a number of visitors who have just kept to themselves, parked on “our” land for the night on their way to Souris or some other place.
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Observing a red fox meander across the front yard in the morning, or watching a great blue heron fly overhead to the nearby marsh in the afternoon serve as reminders that we share this land with a host of wildlife (beyond the horrid mosquitos... and even the dragonflies — who will eat their share of these small beasts — are starting to appear amidst the wildflowers).

Neither the rabbits in the back forest nor the robin whose nest (complete with three eggs!) is tucked in under the roof of the solar shelter near the front of Rick’s property pay any rent.

The struggle to reconcile what it means to “own” land vs to share it continues inside of me. On the one hand, who am I (or who is Rick) to decide who gets to use the property and when, and how much they should pay us for this privilege? On the other hand, having a well and outdoor shower installed costs money, as does the electricity to pay for the hot water bill. The composting toilet was not free to build and deliver to the back of the property, nor was the fire pit we had built, over which many of the people who stay cook some of their meals.
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And so we ask for a nominal fee from those who stay, and invite cash tips or work exchange from those who feel compelled or are able to contribute more.

A lot of the proceeds (and then some!) are used to pay for the many trees Rick has been planting on his property. He is determined to contribute what he can to the betterment of the environment.
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The two groups currently staying on Rick’s property have really jelled, and we are enjoying the opportunity to break bread together as we hear about their day’s adventures on this island that we call home for the summer. As an added bonus, my mother’s friend is here for a visit, and one of my boys has finally arrived!
It’s so lovely to have everyone together.

I relish my privacy and am very grateful for the privilege of home and land ownership. But I believe that the concept of “ownership” is problematic from an ethical perspective, and there are elements of this summer’s communal living experience that I wish I could enjoy year-round.
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Spring on PEI

7/17/2019

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A cold, wet July evening compels me to recall the not-so-distant spring here on PEI, one that I had the great privilege this year of watching unfold.

While I’ve visited the island in May before, it’s typically been only for a few days until my weeks-long return in the middle of summer, and so in the past, I’ve played more the tourist than an islander, with the opportunity of more leisurely watching the season unfold.

This year, however, that was different, and I got to witness the slow, steady evolution of cold, grey skies and red, freshly ploughed fields to blue, sunny (mostly) days and lush green potato (or wheat, or other crops) fields. I got to see hues of purple and shades of green I’d not seen before, as the lupin and other early summer flora slowly blossomed, reigned for a few weeks, and then began to fade and make space for other island wildflowers.

The colour transformation has been magical. A few photos follow, in no particular order.
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Playing with Time

7/10/2019

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You might wonder what Vera’s been up to this summer...


When my three months of working remotely while helping our neighbour set up his property on PEI turned into three months of unpaid leave while helping my neighbour, blah, blah, blah, I thought, “This is great; I’m going to have so much TIME!!!”
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All too aware of how easily time can slip away, I set about making myself a strict schedule that would include a healthy balance of writing/blogging, studying (aviation, French and other reading), music practice and yoga, along with my agreed-to responsibilities of cooking and generally looking after my elderly neighbour, and taking care of his AirBnB guests. I had also built in some time to connect regularly with my kids, who were not coming out to PEI until later in the summer, and with whom I planned to read the Count of Monte Cristo via video conference twice a week. My colour-coded schedule was looking pretty balanced; I was impressed!


Within a month of my arrival, however, I became acutely aware that I may have failed to consider some of the challenges of country living and setting up a new build.
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My twice-a-week writing time had failed to materialize, and even six weeks after driving across the bridge, I had done yoga a grand total of once!!

My daily to-do list looked more like this:

  • Chase contractors
  • Water trees
  • Water grass seed
  • Stress about why grass seed isn’t growing
  • Chase contractors some more
  • Drive to Canadian Tire, buy up some home shit
  • Give up on grass seed and call seven places looking for sod
  • Gasp at outrageous sod prices; drive to nursery and buy more grass seed (the fast growing blend)
  • Buy sod after all
  • Call grass cutters for help laying sod (it’s HEAVY!!!)
  • Realize I don’t have enough sod, and fill in the gaps with newly purchased, fast-growing (haha) grass seed
  • Water sod and seed
  • Water trees some more
  • Chase contractors again
  • Download full season of Switched at Birth
  • Drive to Canadian Tire, buy up some more household crap
  • Cook supper
  • Update AirBnB listings and respond to potential guests who have clearly not read through the entire listing
  • Binge watch five episodes of Switched at Birth until 2 am while shivering under four blankets with warm dog body in tent
  • Get up with the sunrise, marvel at sunrise, make breakfast for old man and Airbnb guests
  • Deal with plumber after Airbnb guests’ kids shove 3/4 roll of toilet paper down the crapper

And that doesn’t include all the bickering with the elderly neighbour I’m supposed to be helping (turns out he’s not only old and cranky, but also super slow and indecisive, so that minor things I had not even built into the schedule, like “would you like soup, or pasta, for lunch?” turn into 20 minute debates requiring examination from all sides). Choosing meals, restaurants, where and how to walk, and what goes into which recycling bin all takes a lot longer and has to be done more frequently than I expected.

Also, we ended up buying a manual push mower, so I added about 4-5 hours a week of manual grass cutting I had not planned for, as I am now cutting the back 1/4 acre of my neighbour’s property, which is good exercise but takes a lot longer and has to be done more frequently than I expected.

And then there is the dog... one of the main goals while out here has been to train our dog-aggressive rescue mutt. We are working with a highly regarded trainer, and it’s going well, but all the exercises and homework take a lot longer and have to be done more frequently than I expected.

You get the idea.

So needless to say, my brilliant schedule has not come to fruition. Instead, I’ve been blessed with an opportunity to learn about flexibility and boundaries.

A few of the unforeseen opportunities that have arisen: A week in, I got my criminal record check (in 24 hours; unheard of in the GTA!!) and was able to volunteer in a local school for a week. It was the first time I’d been in a classroom in two years.... AND the first time I’d been in a classroom where I was not in the cultural minority. It felt very strange to be surrounded by children who looked and sounded like me. But it was fun, and I appreciated learning what a classroom experience can be like in a rural school, since the vast majority of my own teaching career was fostered in urban and suburban settings.

I also got to participate in the inaugural lighthouse beach bonfire, to celebrate the lighting of the recently restored local lighthouse lamp!

And I have been volunteering at the local library (developing and facilitating a course on how to use instagram to connect with friends and family and promote your small business).

Finally, I have availed myself of the opportunity to take a few Argentinian tango lessons in town. Milonga!
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Now that the dust has settled a bit, I’m learning to set boundaries by saying no to a few things in order to make space for the things I had hoped to achieve. As a result, my musical pursuits are going better: I’ve been playing my drums 3-5 times a week, I’ve had a few lessons with a trombonist in town and am actually practising more than five minutes a day, and recently, I began working on reclaiming and further developing my xylophone skills. (The xylophone was one of the larger items we stuffed into the van when we drove out here, and it’s now living in my music cabin along with my drums and an old trombone at the back of my neighbour’s property.)

The yoga plan has NOT yet come to fruition. But, I plan to attend a weekly beach yoga class at the lighthouse starting Tuesday night.
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Reading the 1944 version of Stick and Rudder is helping me refamiliarize myself with flight theory and remember, too, how angry I get every time I read an aviation text; regardless of when it was written, it seems that the 21st Century has not yet hit the aviation publishing world, as everything is still about “he” when referring to pilots.

Very annoying and distracting. But at least I’m finally reading.
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Duolingo tells me that I am on a three-day streak with French... and I plan to up my 5 minutes a day to 15. Soon. :)

Sitting out front of the music cabin, writing this blog post, I finally have time to consciously enjoy the beauty around me. I’ve been doing a bit of that mornings in the tent, when the bird and the sunshine wake me up around 5 a.m. and I lie around dozing for another few hours listening to the sounds of the breeze in the leaves, the twittering of the birds, the roll of the waves in the distance... but gazing out at the fields of lupin is a little more of what I had been hoping to do, and it’s nice to finally do so!
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Soon my kids and partner are coming. I hope to have enough systems and routines in place by then and I can take some actual “time off“, and really just enjoy the island for a few weeks!!!

I’m amazed... shocked, really, by how quickly a gift of three months can evaporate.
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    About Vera...

    Vera and her sons, Christmas 2010
    After writing for several teacher and multiple birth publications, including ETFO's Voice Magazine, Multiple Moments, and the Bulletwin, Vera turned her written attention to prolific blogging for some years, including BiB,  "Learn to Fly with Vera!"  and SMARTbansho .  Homeschooling 4 was her travel blog in Argentina.  She now spends more time on her Instagram (@schalgzeug_usw)  than her blog (pictures are worth a thousand words?!) Contact Vera by clicking the photo above.
    DISCLAIMER
    The views expressed on this blog are the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the perspectives of her family members or the position of her employer on the the issues she blogs about.  These posts are intended to share resources, document family life, and encourage critical thought on a variety of subjects.  They are not intended to cause harm to any individual or member of any group. By reading this blog and viewing this site, you agree to not hold Vera liable for any harm done by views expressed in this blog.
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Vera C. Teschow, OCT, M.Ed., MOT
Toronto, ON & St Peter's Harbour, PE
www.verateschow.ca 2021
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