Home Thoughts From Abroad

When you only have three weeks of summer holiday, including flying time to and from Asia, you have to try and pack everything in. Steve flying out at the end of the week meant driving down to Toronto to see friends and family there. First on the list was Jane, the mother of two of Steve’s neices, and a dear personal friend. As always she was most gracious and hospitable.

We intended just to get lunch together, but it ended up much more than that. There was a very nice lunch, for which Jane paid, and then a tour of the newly renovated Art Gallery of Ontario. Jane was the perfect guide, as in her capacity as art coordinator for the city of Toronto, she had first-hand knowledge of not only the art on display, but the artists and circumstances behind each acquisition.

The building itself is a work of art, effortlessly encorporating old and new (unlike the ridiculous new entrance to the ROM, which looks like it has been attached with a sledgehammer) and we particularly liked the front gallery and the new winding staircases. We found the information on the Grange House and garden, which started the AGO, most interesting.

Ken Thompson’s personal collection was a little on the side of obsessive. His enormous collection of diptychs and other iconography of Christ’s crucifixion seemed more carnally ritualistic than reverential, and Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents did not strike us as being worth either the hype or the money. More impressive was Bernini’s Corpus, a scuplture as beautiful and evocative as Michaelangelo’s Pieta with a luminosity that was both compelling and haunting. That and the numerous galleries we did not have time to explore will draw us back.

Nic had to take Abi for her shots, and Jon was working, so we got to take Ben for a walk in the park. They live in quite a pretty little town, with its own school, built in the 1880s, a playground with all the latest equipment, including a toy backhoe (Pam’s favourite) and a brand new library. Between the school and the library is a pond and a park, just perfect for taking a stroll with our grandson.

The ducks were not interested in the buns we bought, but no matter, as there was much more to explore. Jon and Nicole’s neighbourhood has some lovely old houses, and Pam and I fantasized about buying one and moving in around the corner from Ben and Abi so we could see them everyday. Probably not smart to torture ourselves with such thoughts.

On our way home we ran in to Nic and Abi coming out to find us. Pam entertained the kids by playing ‘Kick’ in the backyard, before settling in to lunch on the deck. Abi at just fifteen months has amazing coordination and could carry and throw the ball while she was running, although the effort would invariably knock her over. We captured some darling video which we may upload to youtube when we get a minute. Gosh it was nice to do what others may sometimes take for granted. Lunch on the deck with our family in the warm summer air was all that we have waited all year to enjoy.

Before we went overseas Pam’s family all got together at the Four Seasons in London for a farewell breakfast. We called it that, anyway. By the time we broke up it was closer to lunch than breakfast. No one wanted to leave and everyone had a good natter. We continued the tradition last year when we were home with similar results. Everyone came, no one wanted to leave.

This year was no different, although we are all a little older and most of us us are either retired on working on our post retirement careers. Conversation comes easy when you haven’t seen each other for a year and there was a lot to catch up on. The recession has hit us all hard, some harder than others, and the subject of work was predominent, at least among the menfolk.

The ladies chatted about kids and grandkids, and the problems of sick and aging in-laws. We showed around the book that we had printed of our first year’s weblog, much to the interest of all. We probably could have sold a few copies, if we had them, and then we took a few more pictures for the archives. Missing was Pam’s youngest brother Joe, who was in Abu Dhabi selling irrigation systems.

Breakfast was great, and again lasted well into lunch. It is a great way to get caught up on everyone’s lives. If you wanted to get further caught up by buying our book, go to Blurb.com and click on Buy a Book. When the search box comes up just type in the title of our book, Home Thoughts From Abroad. Make a comment on this post, and you get to appear in print next year!

We can hardly believe it, but this was the third prom we have attended in Malaysia. We got to the first one shortly after we arrived and before I even started teaching. That one was held at the Palace of a Thousand Horses, and still ranks as the best we have seen. This year’s affair, like last year’s, was held at the Sheraton just up the street from where we live (a handy reference point for lost and confused cab drivers we have had).

This might well be the last one, as it was not well attended. Muslims generally avoid these things – although there are some exceptions – and since they make up the bulk of the student body, it is hard to draw a crowd. But Chinese and Indian students love an opportunity to dress up, and they were determined to have as much fun and make as much noise as possible. The food was good and in typical Asian fashion the teachers had first crack at the buffet, so the selection was excellent.

One of our teachers, Craig Woodcock, organized the music. He has worked all year on putting together a jazz band of teachers and students, and they played and did a decent job. The student bands were a little less successful, but by then it was time to take a little stroll to to the hotel lobby and let the kids make some noise. Not the final chance to see the kids before the end of the term, but just about, so I did get my picture taken a few times! My favourite pic appears first.

I have lost track of the number of cell phones we are accountable for, but yesterday we picked up another one. It will be our London based home number until Pam goes back to Malaysia at the end of July, so if you want to get ahold of us, make a note of the number. It is 519.639.2262. We will be moving around a lot so a land line number is not going to help you much.

I not sure what I found more irritating in the whole purchasing business. Was it the sweet innocence of someone behind the counter – Mandi, I think her name was – explaining to me that this was where the SIM card goes, or was it the total misunderstanding of what the rest of the world outside Canada considers essential and non-negotiable service. We have as many SIM cards as I have glasses. We can cross the border into Thailand and pick up a SIM card for our Malaysian phone that will give us service and about two weeks worth of calling for 50 Thai Batt, or around about two bucks Canadian.

For that I can call anywhere in a country of 63 million people without incurring “long distance” changes. When I leave Thailand I pop back in my Malaysian SIM and I’m back on local calls ANYWHERE in Malaysia. I use my cell phone constantly. I have to clean out my message and call caches every couple of days because they are full. For this I pay 10 bucks a month. When Pam is in Singapore or Cambodia or Nepal we text each other four or five times a day and I have never been able to use up my ten bucks worth of airtime in a month.

But it is not just the silly nonsense of the phone system in Canada or its exhorbitant costs or the draconian restictions on its use that irritates me. It is the unwarranted assurance that ‘this is the best system in the world and you are lucky to have it.’  The reality is that we are so far behind the rest of the world in our telecommunications networks that it is unlikely now that we will ever be able to catch up. I think Cambodia’s cell phone network is now ahead of Canada’s.

Now that I have that off my chest I feel much better, thank you. I’m sure many of you – all of you who have travelled outside of North America, in fact – know exactly what I am talking about and share my dismay at what Canadians put up with. We are a patient lot, by and large, and this is a great national characteristic for it makes us very accepting. It also, unfortunately, leaves us with a phone network that no Asian nation would tolerate for a minute.

I am not a fan of buying new cars. Better to wait a year and let the first year huge depreciation drop kick in and pick up a good gently used vehicle that is one or two years old. You get more value for your money. That’s what Liz, Pam and I did today. We ended up with a Hyundai Accent, which is a very popular little vehicle for good reason: it is well built and relatively inexpensive.

Of course in my usual thorough-to-the-point-of-redundancy manner we had to look at everything in its class before we settled on the obvious. There are some interesting choices out there. For just a little more money the Honda Fit is a nice car. Nissan also makes a car in the same class, the Versa, which is both roomy and peppy. Toyota has the Yaris, which has a nicely styled exterior. But the interior doesn’t work. The legroom is cramped and the dash is positioned much too high with an annoying center console for the speedometer that obscures your vision even more.

Chevy’s entry in this category, the Aveo, is disappointing. You’d like to like it: the price is good and it comes with a good warrantee, but it has odd features. The driver’s seat for example is perched ridiculously high so that even a short driver is scrapping their head on the roof. And it is built in Korea by Daewoo, which has an even worse record of manufacturing errors than GM itself. Not a good choice at any price. We didn’t even bother to look at Ford or Chrysler, which says something about the confidence of the driving public in these products.

I read recently that a good stock investment right now is either Samsung or Hyundai. Both make good products with an expanding worldwide market. As I say, I’d like to have bought a North American car. But I’m not sure that any of them can compete in a global economy. So who is going to honour that outstanding warrantee when your company goes out of business?