The Import of Sport

And so, in the final hours of my time in Port Elizabeth, this is what we find.

My last visit to South Africa was thematically inseparable from the global sporting spectacle that was attracting the attention of billions of humanoids and psychic cephalopods worldwide.  This time around, there is no World Cup to dominate and occupy conversations, newspaper column-inches, online photo galleries, twitter feeds, and waking nightmares.  That being said, it find it odd how various sports seem to form a metronomic foundation of my life on the road around the southern tip of Africa.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

While everyone else here has to work and toil and do all of those sorts of things that people do to make ends meet, I’ve been drifting through the African scenescape like some sort of diaphanous transient.  It’s very easy to lose track to the days of the week when the only real milestones are the previous and the next flights.  That’s where UEFA comes in.  I just need to think back to the last match that I watched, since all UEFA competitions are broadcast everywhere, and I can navigate my way through the murky temporal waters that way.  Only one German team has qualified for the Champions’ League Final?  It must be Wednesday.  Barcelona just been humiliated for the second time on the trot?  Thursday.  Fernando Torres scored a goal last night?  Friday.

I am Ozymandias, King of (the Sport of) Kings

Horse racing form books are filled with a nigh-hieroglyphic set of condensed information.  It took me a while to reckon up what all of the numbers, letters, and symbols represent, and what meaning they hold in relation to one another.  Eventually, these little discrete crumbs of data form elaborate mosaics of pixelated reference points, like a Magic Eye picture.  Adjusting your perspective so that those virtual pixels can be seen in the context of a larger graphic narrative gives a series of patterns and trends that can be used to predict the outcome of each race.

Twenty-to-one odds?  No big deal.

So I’ve got a working hypothesis that allowed me to pick the winners of two races from three.  I didn’t even try with one because the data set was scrawny and the field was inordinately skewed upon first inspection.  So I made a bit of money, and earned dark, vile stares from everyone in the bookie’s parlour.  There were an awful lot of aging and bitter blokes hiding behind ramparts of cigarette butts and conjuring permutations of inordinate proportions that might possibly turn six rand into ten.  I just pick the winners and take the money.

I’ll be just like Buddy Holly

I always liked cricket a bit.  The fifth Doctor wore a cricket get-up most of the time.  Of course, he also had that celery thing going, presumably so that he’d be prepared for any Bloody Marys that came his way down the pub.  That being said, I rarely had the time or the patience to watch a five-day test match in its entirety, or even keep track of the proceedings using whatever media coverage was available.  I essentially knew the rules, watched a few extended lengths of the stuff when at John’s pub in Blantyre, and could even drop the odd name, like Brian Lara or Shane Warne.

Then I discovered the wonder and the glory that is T20 cricket.  My oath.  It’s gripping stuff.  It’s like concentrated cricket highlights pumped full of electric juju and fired from an orbital ion cannon.  If anyone knows what that drug-rehab recreational activity known as baseball is, this is like telling each team that they get 120 pitches at the other team, and that one team’s batting order goes through before the other does.  No alternating innings or any of that rubbish.  Every thrown ball counts for something, and no movement is extraneous. 

Just this week, a lad named Chris Gayle shattered a cricket record that now seems likely to remain shattered for any time in the foreseeable future.  He smashed 100 runs out of 30 balls thrown at him.  The baseball equivalent would be mind-liquifying.  American stattos get all moist when they think about batters with a season average of 0.400 or over.  Well, imagine if the average wasn’t per at-bat, but per pitch, and then imagine someone that belts the ball out of the park 70% of the time, and you might start to understand.

The big T20 cricket league is (unsurprisingly) in India, and it’s a big production.  There are terribly fit cheerleaders, a stadium DJ spinning tunes, fireworks, mega-jumbotron graphic displays, internationally-renowned commentators, several different hats analogous to the Tour de France peloton, television advertising timeouts, fanatical stadium-packing crowds, and bonkers corporate sponsorships.  To my amazement, it works.  NFL games are a bunch of potty-breaks and naptimes interrupted by the odd 2-yard run play.  People at baseball games long for the seventh-inning stretch to break the monotony of watching pitchers throw to first base idly between conferences on the mound.   NBA fans have long ago forgotten what “travelling” is, and are so jaded that slam dunks receive as much attention as the colour of the popcorn vendors’ socks.

Cricket manages to incorporate the chess-like strategies and machinations of the NFL with the pop of an unexpected superstar highlight-reel bit of action, as well as some beautifully orchestrated teamwork and coordination.  It just took me a while to find a format of cricket that really brings all of those elements to the fore and distills them to their essence.

I would recommend that all sports fans check out some of the action here:  http://www.iplt20.com/

I’ve been fortunate to see matches every afternoon for the past week, and they’re always entertaining, particularly for a neutral.  If this sport ever makes it big in North America, I’ve got dibs on being the hipster who liked it before it was cool.

More news as it becomes available.

Cheers and good night England and the colonies.

—mARKUS

Last Days of PE

The Wagers of Sin

So Cousin Joey finally took us to the Boardwalk Casino, and this is what we find:

The net result of four hours of studious effort resulted in a transformation of a couple of R100 notes into a stack of R20 notes.  No big bonanzas for me, since I’m rather fiscally conservative about such things.  Since I’ve been gone, apparently the casino has built a monstrous great five-star hotel where the parking lot used to be.  The mind boggles when considering how Joni Mitchell could rewrite “Big Yellow Taxi” to accommodate such a development.  Oh, and the slot machine that brought so much joy three years ago has apparently been binned, obviously in retribution for enabling a Canadian to purchase and sneak a classified piece of technology out of the country.

The day started off far less auspiciously.   Joey had an appointment with his automotive specialists to deal with the tyres on his Mazda, so after an enormous breakfast, he dropped myself and the two elder Chans off at the nearby shopping centre, Zsa Zsa Gaborishly named Greenacres.

I found myself lending my uncle R200 to buy a pair of short pants.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Consequently, I needed to find an ATM so that I could buy some more cash for myself.  After spending some time in the food court, waiting in line behind a Gogo (elderly, matronly Xhosa) for a bit, I walked up to the machine to discover that she’d set the language to Afrikaans.  I found that odd, since there were numerous other language options available.  Quick history lesson:  whereas East London was always predominantly English-speaking during the Apartheid era, Port Elizabeth has always been a bastion of Afrikaans.  English has been gaining headway as a lingua franca, but Afrikaans is still very deeply ingrained.

As I walked away from the terminal and toward my father and uncle, I noticed that my father’s face was fixed in an unusually perplexed expression.  Turning to look behind me, I noticed that an elderly fellow, stringy grey hair and beard cascading about his head, had given up the ghost.   It may sound like an odd way to phrase it, but a human being had suddenly turned into a limp conglomeration of tissues.  Any animus had gone.  A young man was hefting the late gentleman out of his chair, while three women gathered around to give assistance.  The man’s eyes were closed, his jaw was slack and his mouth hollow and agape.  As the body was lifted from the chair, the flesh drooped and sagged from the bone.

The paramedics confirmed what was painfully obvious.  There was nothing to revive or stabilize.  They cordoned off the area with black, collapsible panels, and wrapped the body in foil before putting it on a stretcher and taking it away.

I was tempted to ask that the entire area be sealed and cordoned off, since anyone in that food court could have poisoned his eggs, and that one of the people in the room could be the killer.  But that would have been in awful taste.  Ironically, it may just have been the greasy, fast-food taste of his last meal that did the old lad in.

In any event, Cousin Joey drove up to the mall in a motorcar scene that could have been stolen from “Wind in the Willows.”  His forehead is just barely visible over the steering wheel.  Somehow, I keep getting the impression that he could whup my ass at basketball despite all intuitive knowledge about height advantage available.  He’s also a bespectacled accountant, and some of the stories from his youth paint a portrait of a typical shy nerd who has since blossomed into a life-of-the-party, how-d’ye-do man about town.  Personality goes a long way.

As we drove back to the house for lunch/second breakfast, I noticed a Hyundai Atos and wondered idly if that car had been the inspiration for the Doctor Who episodes “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky.”

As a quick aside, the only person in the past six months to tell me that I’ve lost weight has been my cousin Florrie.  I suspect that she’s just trying to find an excuse to feed me more of her wonderful but overwhelmingly plentiful culinary concoctions.  The practical upshot is that, when in Port Elizabeth, one eats like a hobbit in the more advanced stages of malnutrition.

Speaking of which, it’s almost time for tea.

Cheers everyone, and good night England and the colonies.

—mARKUS

Port Elizabeth, Approximately

Hunter’s Village

So it’s been three days in a happy little suburb in Port Elizabeth, and this is what we find:

I still haven’t gone down to the Boardwalk Casino with Cousin Joey.  This is not a case of extraordinary willpower or a sudden puritanical urge to avoid all sorts of diabolical temptation.  In fact, I don’t seem to recall any biblical references that prohibit gambling.  Judeo-Christian scholars amongst you may correct me, but wasn’t there a parable wherein three servants were given some talents, and the servant that saved and did not risk his wealth was slapped down very roughly?  Matthew 25…

24     Then he which had received the one talent, came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25     And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth:  lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26     His lord answered, and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
27     Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
28     Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29     For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he hath.
30     And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Not that I want to start a biblical debate, but I want to play the “Young Frankenstein” slot machine again, and I reckon that a person can use the Bible to justify anything, if you find the right citation.

Economics

For those of you interested, I've tried to keep track of what things cost over here.  Although there is nothing mind-bogglingly astonishing, it gives you an idea of the commercial spending power of a travelling Canadian. Very roughly, these are the exchange rates...

1 Canadian Dollar = 8 South African Rand 

1 South African Rand (ZAR) = 11 Canadian cents

Here are some quick snapshots of prices:

• Pack of 20 cigarettes =  R30
• Lamb loin chops = R100 per kilogram
• Case of 24 bottles of lager = R140
• DVD Player = R200
• Top-loading clothes washer/dryer = R1700

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Those of you that don’t own a copy, I would suggest that you purchase a copy of the Alberta Biology 20 SNAP study guide from Castle Rock Research.  A lot of blood, sweat, tears, and toil went into the creation of that book, and I would venture to say that a lot of professional pride hinges on its contents, particularly some of Richard Yeoman’s illustrations.

One of the more interesting chapters of the book dealt with hypereutrophication and hypoxia in freshwater and estuary bodies.  The central case study was situated in Hartbeespoort, South Africa, and having been to the spot, I can say that the problem is not solved. Point of interest, the first "t" in the name is pronounced as its own syllable, so the place name sounds like "Har-te-BEES-port."

Basically, all of the fish died and the entire lake became filled with bright green scum.  Turns out that if you’ve got a bunch of agricultural land and you fertilize the snot out of it, a lot of the phosphates gather in the water table.  If you dam off a whackload of little tributaries to make a lake, you give a spot for all of these nutrients to pool.  There’s an explosion in the population of algae and cyanobacteria, and they choke the life out of anything else in the lake.  After decades of studying and attempting various types of remediation, the lake isn’t quite as nasty as it once was.  I’m still not going to go swimming in it, though.

That’s all for this morning.

Until next time, good night England and the colonies,

—mARKUS

The Eastern Cape, Part II

The Windy City

Well, Port Elizabeth is certainly more accommodating than it was in 2010.  For one, we’re not here in the dead of winter, merely autumn.  Thus it is that I can type in the A.M. without being uncontrollably wracked with shivering fits, swaddled in blankets, and crouched near a 60-watt desklamp bulb for warmth.

We’re also being housed and fed by my uncle Joey Gin, a man with either the sagacity or the foolhardiness to have married my grandmother’s niece.  We’ll soon find out how his domestic Wi-Fi works, so that my uncle Melvin can use his magic Apple iPod to initiate videoconferences with the family back in Ontario.  We all get our own bedrooms, and aunt Florrie cooks food on an industrial scale, so a greater amount of exercise is going to be necessary if we are to avoid bloating into distended caricatures of ourselves.  My weight loss program begins today… with a trip to the barber.  I reckon that I’m lugging around a bonus kilo of wiry and unruly follicular growth that would be better used with some resin to reinforce a canoe.

The big family dinner last night upon arrival at the airport involved about a dozen people that I recognizes, and a couple dozen others that I don’t.  Since no-one else seems willing or able to do it, it looks as though I’ll have to draw the diagram of the inordinately complex and convoluted family tree that interconnects these disparate individuals.  Through conversations over the past couple of weeks, I’ve discovered the sources of much tension, conflict, anguish, suffering, and angst.  One of the big ones, and perhaps the nexus of most of the genealogical madness, is my great-uncle Hugh, who died just over a year ago.  The last time I met him, he was a charming, battle-scarred, ex-swashbuckling pirate with tales of high adventure, inordinate risks, and heroic derring-do.

At some point, I’ll have to distill Hugh’s story into a country and western song, since, as Harry Chapin would have noted, there are important themes of motherhood and trucks woven through it.  First, I’ll just jot down the details as I’ve assembled them thus far, and we’ll fret about a C₇-G_min lyrical structure later.

The Ballad of Uncle Hugh

At first glance, uncle Hugh looked a mess.  A large portion of the left side of his face was missing, and the outlines were scarred and jagged.  He was missing a thumb and two fingers, shuffled about with a painful and pronounced limp, and hoarsely rasped out breath after breath.  Strangely enough, his eyes still twinkled, and his mouth continually twisted into a mischievous grin.

He had been collecting accounts from business clients back in the day.  There were several things wrong with this entire activity.  First, walking around with a brown paper bag and collecting accounts receivables in cash is just poor accounting practice.  Second, to do so on a regular basis whilst open to observation and scrutiny from all and sundry seems a bit unwise.  Finally, to wander around alone and on foot on a regular route through neighbourhoods of questionable safety and security seems downright suicidal.

And so it was.

Faced with five assailants, one armed with a shotgun, one with an AK-47, and one with a pistol, Hugh responded to demands to hand over the cash with a combination of braggadocio and machismo.  No one knows what his exact words were, but they were something to the effect of “Go fuck yourselves.”

Luckily, the brigands were a little on the incompetent side.   Not really expecting any resistance, and thrown off guard by Hugh’s cavalier sneer, the one with the shotgun swung the barrel up and let go with both barrels.  Since he wasn’t holding it properly, the gun bucked and twisted in his hands.  One barrel of shot flew harmlessly over Hugh’s left shoulder.  The other cloud of pellets struck him between that shoulder and his clavicle.

The pistol went off ineffectively and missed with the first shot.  The second shot caught Hugh in the left calf muscle.  Meanwhile, the AK-47 belched out a stream of 7.62mm bullets that blasted through Hugh’s outstretched hand (which was quite possibly flashing the middle finger at the time), and into his cranium, blowing through his left cheek, shattering bones and blinding him in one eye.  He wore his eyepatch for a reason other than pirate caché.

Hugh survived by leaping off to one side and rolling under a truck.  Somehow (and this bit I don’t get) the thieves made off with some R12,000 out of the R50,000 that Hugh was carrying before police and other authorities came swarming onto the scene.  Whether Hugh fought for each bill individually from his prone position, or the paper bag burst in some strange manner, we don’t know.  And likely never will, since Hugh’s demise.

In any event, Hugh was (according to most stories) forced into an arranged marriage in his youth with a girl named Daisy.  Hugh was never happy with the marriage and was often away from his family as a travelling salesman.  He and Daisy had a difficult and strained relationship, and yet they managed to have five children together.  Or as together as they wanted to be.  Unsubstantiated tales are told of Daisy’s possible post-partum depression, and a total deterioration of her union with Hugh.

In his travels, Hugh found companionship apart from his wife, and managed to start a second family.  The fruits of that liaison were two boys, who have apparently gone on to become successful professionals.  Meanwhile, Daisy pushed for and eventually received a divorce.  As soon as the marriage was dissolved, Daisy remarried and bore another daughter.

Meanwhile, Hugh had built a fuel supply company, based on petrol and paraffin distribution throughout South Africa.  When he brought his son Neville into the business in the 2000s, profits soared and growth was never better.  Roughly seven different factors were responsible for the downfall of this enterprise, but as always, Hugh seemed to emerge from all of the shananigans with something to show for them, even if everyone else involved was impoverished and diminished.

When Hugh died recently, his children and grandchildren gathered to pay their respects and thought long and hard about what the man had meant to them.  Then came the reading of the will, and none of the previously mentioned children or descendants were named as beneficiaries.  Of any sort.

The old pirate had found a selfish way of using his assets in such a way that he alone of his family would reap the benefits.  But that is a story for another day.

In other parts of the news…

Meanwhile, I’ve just gotten a haircut from down the street from the sleepy suburb of Port Elizabeth in which I’m staying.  And with apologies to any gay or queer readers, it really doesn’t matter how much a gay man pretties himself up, prances about, or does things with a mincing feminine affectation… as soon as he starts speaking Afrikaans, the fairy tale is over.   You just can’t have a Y chromosome and speak floral, delicate Afrikaans.  It doesn’t work.  It’s a rough, snarling, guttural language best spoken when gutting warthogs or torturing prisoners.  Thank heavens my hairstylist was multilingual, or I would have been fearful for my well-being.

I’ve got to run and do other things before Bayern München emulate their countrymen and boot another storied Spanish team from the Champions’ League, setting up an all-Deutsch final for the first time.

So until then, it’s cheers from me.

Good night England and the colonies,

—mARKUS

The Eastern Cape, Part I

Buffalo City

So after leaving Joburg behind without a whiff of regret, what we find is this.

It seems a bit odd to say that my first impression upon setting foot on the tarmac of the East London airport was that the weather finally seemed to be warming up.  It wasn’t cold up on the plateau in the north, but the warm, moist coastal air with just a hint of a sea breeze was a welcome feeling.  After leaving the terminal building, it really started to steam.  Much as it had in Toronto, London, and Joburg, our arrival had been preceded by cold, damp, and other symptoms of meteorological misery.  Each place has hitherto rebounded from such unhappiness, but none with quite as much zest as East London.  The searing sun punched through a cloudless powder sky, blasting the temperature into the +30°C range.

It was also a refreshing change to see my Uncle Reuben again.  His sense of humour is a whole different tangent apart from the rest of my father’s side of the family, and it’s nice to hear some irony, sarcasm, and litotes once in a while.  Keeps the metaphorical literary juices flowing.

Of course, this is the part of the journey where a lot of the pieces are intended to fall into place.  Thus far, there have been rumours, hints, subtexts, and clues about a series of familial condundra that underpin the actual reason for this whirlwind tour of South Africa.  There have been deaths in the family, wills, title deeds, and murmurs of dread legal battles.  Joburg only entailed meeting Uncle Sid, my grandfather’s younger brother, who through an overlap of generations common in societies where families strove for double-digits of children to have a solid household workforce, is actually younger than my uncle Melvin, despite being my great-uncle.

Sid talks like Mathazar.  It’s not really a factor until your mind makes the connection.  It’s like reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry.  Until you sing one of her poems to “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” it all sounds quite deep and meaningful.  As soon as you hear that tune and read her words, every single poem that she’s ever written becomes trivialized.  Subject to floccinaucinihilipilification, one might say.  Hey.  I finally used that word appropriately in a sentence.   I give myself bonus points.

In any event, Sid is a bit of an eccentric fellow, but given the context of my family, that’s eminently forgivable.  His driving skills are a bit terrifyingly unorthodox, and his analyses of South Africa’s socio-political landscape should probably not be mentioned in polite company.  They should certainly not be mentioned in impolite and unruly company.

Now that we’re in East London, we get to hear all of the various other sides of the stories that Sid spun over many long hours of coffee shop refills.  Joy.  This just seems like a preamble to a frenzied series of diplomatic negotiations and mediations.  Having an inordinate number of far-flung relatives that spin stories and bandy them about like some kind of transatlantic gossip telephone game just lends itself to artificially-created crises and conflicts.

In the meantime, East London meant one specifically important thing to me:  laundry.  Considering that I’ve only got my computer bag and a single carry on for luggage, the continually diminishing amount of clean socks and/or underwear acts like a countdown doomsday clock.  And we were pretty nigh close on midnight, dear readers.  Damn nigh.

But before we could reach the shelter and clothing-purifying sanctity of Villa Radloff on Browning Street, we first had to take my father and uncle on a tour of old memory lane.  Considering that my uncle Mel hasn’t set foot in South Africa since 1963, a few things may have changed from his perspective.

The first thing that I noticed is that every block had some sort of family name associated with it.  Every time the car hit an intersection, my aunt Jenny or uncle Reub would gesticulate toward some structure or other and indicate that it used to belong to, house, or was frequented by some family or other.  That family would invariably have moved away, sold the place, left it to some ungrateful children that wrecked it, or cursed the place from the afterlife after the entire family line was extinguished by a particularly virulent strain of tooth decay.

But a stranger pattern began to emerge.  These were shops.  On every corner.  Every family owned a shop.  Or two.  Or three.  It was like Napoleon’s “nation of shopkeepers” remark come to fruition.  With this sort of density, the only way that all of these shops could have been profitable would have been for a swarm of consumers desperate for tomato sauce, pilchards, and mangos to descend on these sleepy areas on a regular basis.  The only other economic model would involve some an odd ouroboros-like series of transactions in which all of the shopkeepers bought one another’s stock in turn.  Surely you can’t have a community in which everyone owns a cornershop.   Or perhaps you can.  And I’m looking at it.

In any event, it’s great to be back by the sea.  The salty hint in the air is refreshing, and the powder-silt-fine sand feels almost like a liquid between one’s toes.  There are also animals frolicking about in these environs that I don’t recall from my last visit here.  For example, there’s this little fellow that I spotted from one of the beach boardwalks:

I wondered what this sort of sand rat might be until I realized that I was taking a zoomed-in photo.  Zooming out, it is readily apparent that there is an explanation of exactly what this little duffer is, and all of its various characteristics. 

Interesting point:  phylogenetically, these little beach bunnies are closer relatives of elephants than they are of any fuzzy rodents.

Aside from driving around and looking at the shops that everyone used to own, monkeying around at the beach, and dropping into Hemingway’s to do some shopping and casino-dwelling (thanks to Platinum VIP Ted Radloff), the other port of call to note near East London is the old farm, which my great-grandfather owned, and was the seat of the family in this part of South Africa for a while.  This means that my grandfather, two of his brothers (including uncle Sid), and three of his sisters grew up there.

The place was a bit more desolate back in the 1920s, with more dirt and scrub than trees and grass, but time and care have made the place a lot more habitable since great-grandfather first started to scratch out a living on dry and poorly moisturized soil.  There is one thing that tips me off that this dirt farm undoubtedly belonged to my family or some of their friends.

Unsurprisingly, my great-grandfather built a shop on the corner.

Until next time, good night, England and the colonies.

Cheers,

—mARKUS

Where are those Meerkat Things?

Greetings, gentle readers.

After a couple of journeys into the bush, what we find is this:

Apparently, there is some sort of numerical preoccupation within African zoological circles involving the number five.  The elephant, rhino, hippo, lion, and leopard apparently make up “The Big Five.”  Apparently, some sort of Musk Ox can be substituted for the rhino in some circles, but I find myself diametrically opposed to those circles.  Leaving that tangent, there are “The Feline Five,” numbering the lion, panther, leopard, cheetah, and ocelot.  According to bush guide Lizzy, there are also “The Ugly Five.”  She didn’t list them, but she did say that the blue wildebeest was a prime example.

In keeping with that spirit, I’ll nominate my “Fascinating Five,” which would be my list of African creatures with cool back stories.  Anyone who heard me babble about this sort of thing before can attest that I dig on zebra mussels, stone martens, tarantula hawks, etc.  This lot may not be quite as super-dynamic as others, but I’ve got pictures of these ones and they’ve got charming back stories.

The European Bee-eater

Like Homer Simpson, this organism loves doughnuts.

I don’t know if this wee fella is a European bird that eats bees or an African bird that feeds exclusively on European bees.  I have the same problem with Dutch Elm disease.  Apparently, this brightly-plumed bird knows no fear of humans and eats ravenously.  This is an obnoxious and extroverted animal with a cry that resembles fingernails on the chalkboard of your soul.

The Maribou Stork

No one likes him, and he doesn't care.

Described by guide Godfrey as a species that “does some cleaning-up,” this is a good example of nature’s loathing of a vacuum.  Apparently the trees in this particular valley are too low-slung to make vultures comfortable, so some other avian needed to fill that niche.  Niches love avians.  When there is no other scavenger about to pick bones clean as they bleach in the sun, the Maribou will step up to the plate.  They also do an Easter impression every morning and evening, spreading their wings to perform some thermal solar collection.  They also find safety in branches poking out of shallow lakes.  They also don’t know that they’re Jersey-ugly and that’s the real reason no-one likes them.  Poor things.

The Baboon

Those dam-dirty apes.

The troop that I saw was composed of rather ingenious little bounders.  To protect the troop, the females, the weak, the sick, and the young spend each night on top of the concrete dam near the middle of the reserve.   The bigger males stand guard at each end of the dam, preventing any sort of threat from reaching the troop by land.  Besides that, they are apparently prime pickings for leopards, and their continued existence in the land of stealth ghost cats bespeaks enormous improvisational skills.

The Giraffe

As I alluded in a previous blog, giraffes have exactly the same number of neck vertebra as humans.  Or dogs.  Or platypi.  Or any mammal, regardless of venomousness or egg-laying predilections.  It’s another piece of that wondrous and fabulous tapestry of evolutionary biology that furnishes the exotic palace of scientific and rational endeavour.

The Hippo

OK, so the hippo is a part of the big Five, but then, two of the Big Five are also members of the Feline Five, so cross-pollination is permitted.  The most homicidally murderous creature in Africa (with the exception of insects like the mosquito, tse-tse fly, or other vectors for fatal bacteria and parasites), the hippo has been dodging attention for generations while racking up huge kill numbers of people.  Great White Sharks?  Minnows compared to these behemoths.  Snakes?  Kill a remarkably small number of people.  

Hippos trample people, smash their canoes, absent-mindedly amputate limbs, and are generally unrepentant about the whole deal.

Off to East London now.  More thoughts on things on the Eastern Cape when I land.

Good night England and the Colonies.

—mARKUS

Jet-Lag and Sleep-Dep

Greetings, gentle readers.
After a fitful night's rest at what was until recently a Holiday Inn in Johannesburg and a pursuant two and a half hour's trek northward toward desert, wilderness, and general bush territory, what we find is this:
Apparently, following up a marathon series of flights and activities across the globe with a series of early mornings and late nights is a poor idea.  When the driver arrived to convey the three of us north to Pilanesberg, I was muddled enough to think that we were going to do some kind of trendy yoga somewhere, and that the driver had introduced himself as "End-Row."  I thought it was some sort of cute sports nickname.
Well, the driver's name is actually Andrew, and the most famous yoga performed in Pilanesberg was probably some sort of breath-control and wriggling contortion exercise performed by the many miners lost in countless cave-ins in the subterranean platinum mines that dot the landscape.

The less-glamourous side of Sun City.

Pilanesberg and Rustenburg are smack in the middle of some of the richest platinum deposits on Earth.  Historically, whenever there is valuable stuff in an inherently dangerous place, a vast economic discrepancy manifests.  Poor, hungry folk end up scampering around in perilous danger, and slobberingly rich owners earn fantastic profits on their investments.
Pilanesberg is the fourth-largest national park in South Africa, and Rustenberg is the home of the only private venue of the 2010 World Cup.  It's therefore appropriate that, immediately adjacent to this conflict between ecological conservation and resource exploitation on a Norilsk-scale is Sun City, the Las Vegas of the southern hemisphere, and a poster city for decadent excess.  But I can save my rants about unionization, xenophobia, and the Royal Bafokeng for a later time.
Anyone who has worked with me at Castle Rock should recognize the name Hartbeespoort.  I wrote a series of science and biology items on hypereutrophication.  I expounded upon the causes, symptoms, and stages of eutrophication.  Now I've actually seen the bright green scum that fills the lake.  My pictures thus far don't do it justice, so I'll revisit this topic after I've got better photographic evidence.
Anyway, made it to Bakubung Bush Lodge along a number of roads that have been equipped with toll-collecting equipment that hasn't yet been activated (and won't be if people will heed the example of southern Ontario and avoid privatizing roads) and past motorists that were very courteous and communicative.
In South Africa, if you're driving a slower vehicle, or are uncomfortable travelling as quickly as the speed limit suggests, you pull to the left margin of the road and activate your hazard lights to let people behind you know that they can pass you.  Those that pass blink their four-way lights in return to thank you for your magnanimity.  And in this simple way, road rage is made a distant and alien concept.  Everyone expresses respect and acknowledges the graciousness of their fellow motorists, rather than gunning them down.
Finally, I spent the waning hours of the day in a bush vehicle, chasing the "Big 5" animals of South Africa and trying to capture them photographically.  I'll probably publish a full album of this stuff, but I'll try and hit you with a couple of tasters.

The original source of the Vuvuzela, the B-flat kudu.

If you look really closely, you can see a rising full moon.

Like all mammals, these things have seven vertebrae.  Yes, evolution is a cute thing.

Our accommodations here are spartan, but tolerable.  The weather is quite agreeable from a Canadian point of view, but chilly and inhospitable according to the native population.  As I head off to bed, daunted by the 0430h early morning alarm that is to rouse me and send me back into the bush for some more safari fun, I'll let you have a look at the meagre surroundings that cushion me to sleep.

Until next time, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Back to Africa... Again

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

What we find is this:  cruising eleven kilometres above the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa in the dead of night, our tired and weary travellers snatch fitfully at hints of sleep.  It’s been almost 48 hours of travel with only a six-hour nap in Mississauga to interrupt the cascade of customs checks and the uncomfortable cattle-car confines of coach class.

Right.  Well, apart from the fact that I was unaware of the limitations of Microsoft Office Starter, and their subsequent impact on the functionality of Microsoft Word, the trip thus far has been relatively uneventful and mercifully free of international incident.

The plane that carried us away from Edmonton on the morning of Saturday 20 April fled an oncoming snow front, and thus we surfed on the crest of a prodigious tailwind that dropped us at Lester B. Pearson International airport a full half-hour earlier than expected.  In a cascade of meteorological dominoes, our arrival had also displaced an unseasonal snowstorm from the Greater Toronto Area.  Good news all around on the weather front.

Saturday night came about rather quickly, since we’d zipped three time zones away from the setting sun.  After an odd dinner of rice and something that resembled meat from T & T Supermarket, we settled into some hard family anecdotes, rumours, gossip, and general familial catching-up.  Much to my dismay, “T & T” does not stand for “Trinidad and Tobago” in this instance.  Not sure what it stands for, but if it must have something to do with the permeating smell of slightly-gone-off-fish and the oddly gelatinous rubbery pink substance that they supplied instead of beef.

Sunday morning, I managed to finally meet up with Richard Barter after four-plus years of cyber-correspondence.  His Man City team contrived to lose to Tottenham in a cross-London derby that essentially handed the Premier League throne to Manchester United.  Not to be outdone, Liverpool then managed to draw a game in an amazing amount of injury-time whilst our star striker decided to do his best re-enactment of a Donner Party dinner service, to the dismay of hapless but tasty defender Branislav Ivanovic.  Luis Suarez is probably headed for a lengthy suspension and some bath salts rehab, both of which will significantly diminish Liverpool’s dwindling odds of qualifying for… pretty much anything.  So much for a shot at the LDV Vans Intertoto Continental Breakfast Championships.

Then there was the newest member of the fellowship.  My father and I are old veterans at dealing with the sort of neurotic paranoia that has characterized international airport security checks and customs inspections since some jackanapes stuffed some fertilizer in his sneakers in a pre-boarding lounge.  Bringing in a n00b is an awkward proposition.  Personally, I try to avoid packing anything that involves liquids, gels, pastes, colloids, solutions, precipitates, isotopes, compounds, elements, or anything with mass, momentum, density, or charge.

Quick summary:  while my father and I breeze effortlessly through every X-ray monitor, Geiger counter, metal detector, 3D MRI scan, and full-body cavity search, dear Uncle Mel got more scrutiny than a frog at a snake symposium.  My father attributes it to the fact that Mel is toting around an odd-coloured backpack, and that backpackers are routinely profiled as homicidal lunatics by the authorities.  I reckon that Mel just packed the wrong stuff – prescription medication, a nail-clipper, clothing, etc.

The answer is probably somewhere in-between.  I reckon that Mel hasn’t used his luggage in 20 years, and stored the bags in some sort of asbestos-ridden phosphate plant owned and operated by the IRA in direct contravention of the nuclear microproliferation treaty.  The team at Heathrow swabbed that backpack more than the deck of the HMS Beagle.  My father and I have learned to stand patiently after the security areas and make bland conversations that absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Al-Qaeda.

We paid some extortionate amount for a couple of lads to hold our bags at Heathrow and ran into the City to spend some of the 11 hour layover.  As we toured around the old stomping grounds, we checked out parts of Hyde Park, Mayfair, and the Kendal part of Marble Arch W2.

Even after death, these animals march into peril.

I’m inserting photos of the latest iteration of the Duke of Kendal, as well as what my camera says is a 3D image of the Animals in War memorial,

and the gilded American Eagle of Freedom squatting obnoxiously atop the anachronistically-designed and heavily-fortified American Embassy.

The American Spread-Eagle, eager to deposit steaming piles of justice and virtue all over Grosvenor Square.

And thus our story takes us high above the dark continent at its darkest.  The 11-hour flight to Joburg has at least let me catch up on my movie-watching.  Here are my quick and dirty reviews of all of the inflight films that I’ve seen thus far.

Hotel Transylvania:  Better than expected family fare with an all-star voice cast, and just enough intelligent jokes to carry it past the usual kiddie-potty-humour (e.g., witches hoovering farts with bellows, Bigfoot clogging the toilets, etc.).  Predictable with few challenges, there are enough charming bits to make it tolerable.  2 Jellybeans.

Wreck-It Ralph:  Another family-style animation film.  Again, some extraordinary voice talents without which the film would fail entirely as an artistic endeavour.  The plot is nothing fabulous, but as an old video game aficionado, I enjoyed many of the in-jokes.  The music (based on MIDI algorithms, for the most part) is amusing, and the visuals are a fabulous span between 8-bit Nintendo and hyper-realistic “Gears of War”-esque graphics.  Check out the song "Sugar Rush" to get an idea of the retro-caché value of this film.  Found the sugary-sweet “don’t dislike people because they are different” thematic message to be particularly cliché and trite, and that’s what left the worst taste in my figurative mouth.  2.5 Jellybeans.

Django Unchained:  Obviously Quentin Tarantino is well-versed in his Douglas Sirk, since he appears hell-bent on exaggerating everything in his films beyond melodrama to thoroughly muddy the waters between intent and content.  For example, the sociopathic and linguistically talented German character (and the actor who portrays him) return from “Inglourious Basterds,” but this time, he is mercilessly hunting and executing slave-folk instead of Jews, so he’s a good guy.  Samuel L. Jackson is possibly the best bit of the film as a cross between a classic Uncle Tom and Salacious Crumb.  Silly film, but most likely adored by fans of torture porn and Blaxploitation.  2 Jellybeans.

Cloud Atlas:  Self-indulgent rubbish that exists to provide a bit of fun and variety for some jaded Hollywood falling stars.  Good thing that there was some preachy and paternalist content, or else luminaries like Susan Sarandon would never have graced the thing.  1 Jellybean.

Life of Pi:  If a film’s measure of success is how much you wish to slap the lead character, or the amount that the film can beat the audience with faux spiritualist, regurgitated Kahlil Gibran platitudes, then this effort is a home run.  My criteria are different.  I think that watching this film on a plane gives it a single Jellybean, because the strength of this film lies in the colour, imagery, and depth of the graphics, and a dinky wee 9” screen does no justice to these assets.  The “I ripped off Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children” scriptwriting and wafer-thin plot do nothing to further the bland, polemic agenda of basically saying that all religions are one and that all God’s children are equally fluffy and cute.

SkyFall:  OK.  So some people wanted to go back to the purist days of 007 as written by Ian Fleming.  No underwater Lotus Esprits or laser-equipped space shuttles.  Just spy stuff.  I get it.  So does everyone else, after the film abandons any attempt to conceal its self-consciousness.  From Q’s “Were you expecting an exploding pen?  We don’t do that anymore,” to three different characters commenting on a spy’s equipment of consisting of nothing more than a gun and a radio, to the Crocodile Dundee-emulating declaration that the protagonists must go to where they are on familiar territory.  I was waiting for Ralph Fiennes to suddenly declare that the future of espionage lies in the past, and that Bond should pick up a hoe and begin subsistence farming to get into the mind of an anthrax attack from the point of view of the bacterium.  Nice action sequences and some very gruff and grumbly delivery from a bleak and unkempt Daniel Craig.  Shoehorning a new Moneypenny into the film to replace Samantha Bond was particularly unnecessary.  A very generous 3 Jellybeans.

Must run.  Have a safari in the morning.  Will try and keep people informed with all of the news as it happens, relevant or not.

Cheers and good night, England and the Colonies.

—mARKUS

Snowman-Sanctioned Same-Sex Nuptials Verboten

In the volatile, post-election atmosphere of the American experience, it should be remembered that there is still one thing that is profoundly American.  The Klan may hate the Westboro Church because of a lack of respect for veterans, and the Hell's Angels may hate both of the aforementioned groups for their respective bigotries, but amidst all of the hatred, there is one thing that all Americans can follow single-mindedly and without critical thought:  the prohibition of same-sex snowmen marriages.
Sure, the imaginations of children can lead them to believe that a snowman can act as some sort of religious authority figure.  These children's fantasies might be wistfully delusional enough to deny that the frosty figure will sexually abuse them, but they can be horrifically harmful in other ways.  Even if the frozen precipitation construct could be imagined as Parson Brown, it must also be remembered that Parson Brown would never condone marriage between two people of the same gender.  An imaginary Parson Brown might agree to marry two children of an age one-third of the legal age of consent, but if they are of the same gender, the conventions of ideal American society dictate that said Parson be salted and reduced to a grainy puddle at the first opportunity.
On the other hand, the god-given second constitutional amendment guarantees that underage children should have unfettered access to semi and fully automatic combat assault weapons so that they can blow the steaming viscera out of anyone that calls them a wimp on Twitter.
Sic Semper Americanus.

Gadzooks! Discussion!

Greetings, gentle readers.
When posed the question of the cause of Canada's seeming dearth of innovation and scientific creativity, particularly in the field of entrepreneurship, Dr. Peter Hackett made some very poignant, yet very mildly-targeted remarks.  I expounded on one of them, and was helped along in the exploration of the topic by several individuals.  Shayne Tymkow, James Kropfreiter, and Fritz Kropfreiter, take a bow.  The point changed from education failing to nurture so much as to instruct, to big business as the barons of industry and commerce controlling the economic welfare of society, to governments increasingly dependent on worker-drone mentalities in order to maintain power, and finally to society at large for failing to create a socialist nirvana where the proletariat control the means of production.
I followed that up with this contribution:

I'm reminded of the Monty Python "Church Police" sketch, where the officers of the church/peace petition to find the murderer through the use of prayer...
"O Lord, we beseech thee—tell us: who croaked Leicester?"
(at which point, a large Gilliam-esque hand descends from the heavens and points to Eric Idle. A voice booms:)
"The one in the bracers, he done it!"
(Idle is seized by the detective-parsons before admitting:)
"It's a fair cop, but society's to blame."
"Right," comes the rejoinder, "We'll be charging him too."
In short, I think it a bit of a cop-out to lay the blame on the nebulous invisible limbs of "society" at large.  Sometimes, economic adversity can act as a stimulus for innovation, as people look for ways to use creativity as a means of escaping seemingly deterministic economic strata.
As evidence, I offer this:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/12/1205_sb_necessity/1.htm
I think there's something more existential going on, and our society has done nothing to arrest its progress - we're reaching Hegel's "End of History." No one wants to be the progenitor of his or her own values any more.  The thymos, or superego, or whatever you want to call the part of the human existence that strives to achieve beyond precedent, is in serious decline, and as much as that process is being encouraged by big business, government spending, curricular design, and identikit educators, the ultimate responsibility is an individual one.
Not to just act as a mouthpiece for Fukuyama and Bloom, et aliter, but isn't North America a wallowing sty of political and philosophical apathy?  Doesn't the political right historically grow in power and stature when people cease to critically analyse and act upon conclusions drawn?
James is probably right.  No one cares any more.  Voter apathy has never been more pronounced.  As long as our material needs and creature comforts are provided, we can lead lives of quiet desperation and never worry about the greater good or the examined life.  The more anxious of us will take up some spurious cause and use that as a rationalization for intellectual torpor.  Stop global warming, save the muskrat, end third-world debt, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fur is murder, meat is murder, KFC is murder, murder of a murderer may or may not be murder, feed the children, feed the fur-wearing murderers to the children, blah, blah, blah.  People can champion these little short-term, third-rate, first-world indulgences until they choke.
Bottom line - we're not achieving, creating, or innovating because we've got comfortable little cages.  It's not the fault of our captors.  We just built a very cozy jail, and we don't want to get out.
Just my tuppence-worth.
—mARKUS

Ad Infinitum, Ad Nauseam

Greetings, gentle readers.
One of the great men whom I have the honour of knowing was just interviewed by my old university chum, Todd Babiuk.  Dr. Peter Hackett was asked to explain the culture of innovation in Canada, or lack thereof.  The interview can be found here:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Canada+failing+create+culture+innovation/4095349/story.html
The interview followed hard upon an interview Dr. Hackett did with the Canadian Science Policy Centre, and can be viewed on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNhW0ErMXNA
Here's my response (for those of you who haven't heard me blather this already):
I will try and compose a more comprehensive response soon, but my knee-jerk reaction at the moment seems to rest with a couple of comments that seem nested in the middle of the interview.  There is an issue with gauging the amount of successful innovation in a society or culture by using a monetary scale.  That strikes me as a topic for lively discussion, but skirts what I consider to be the point: how does one foster a culture of innovation, risk-taking, creativity, etc.?
Seems almost corollary to Aristotle's challenge to define "the good life."  I reckon that Peter touched on some areas of the solution—most saliently, how NOT to do so.  "Streaming", "tracking", and all those other educational buzzwords sound great when designing pedagogical approaches to conditioning and developing the human mind for achievement, but are symptomatic of the character from H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" who proclaims that the only way to defeat the Martians is to go underground, and teach children SCIENCE,
and not (if memory serves correctly) "poems and all that rubbish."
Students have been increasingly treated as a commodity, rather than potential creators of their own values.  Schools have become less concerned with a liberal arts education, and more preoccupied with training toward an economically-specific skill-based objective.
I reckon that the answer to many of these questions—why does Canada have such a low rate of PhD. graduates?  Why is entrepreneurialism not viewed as a significant or even viable contributor to a nation's well-being?
The answer may be rooted in the failure of our educational system to foster critical thinking, epistemological discussion, the love of learning, and an ongoing inquiry into the human condition as preconditions for understanding technical and scientific principles.
Why get a PhD., when a technical certificate will get you the job in fibre-optics that you want?  If students feel compelled to learn more, understand more, APPLY more, then they will push the envelope to extend the body of knowledge that defines their disciplines.
I reckon that we've thought too much about what kids learn, but not how or why, and that's the fundamental basis of my analysis.  At least for the time being.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Geek Rock

Greetings, Gentle Readers.
At long last, I've decided to offer some more lyrics/poetry to the multiverse via the wonder and power of the interweb.  I wrote two poems almost a year ago now, with the full and express intent of rendering them as song. I've since noodled around with a few guitar chords, asked a few musically-inclined friends if they had any ideas, and thus far, not a note has been set down and no track has been recorded.  It could be because my words are crap, and that I'm a fair wordsmith, but a fundamentally mediocre poet.  The final word can only be issued by you, my long-suffering and eternally patient audience.  But first, the story.
Last year, the brilliant and unjustly maligned Lloyd Barker, taking time out from sweating incessantly over his Forge of Physics, was informed that he had defaulted on his university student loans, and that the collection agency was now after all of his assets in some sort of Rumplestiltskin-esque settling of debts.  Things looked grim, and Lloyd was sizing up his options, of which there were terrifyingly few.  Enter our boss, the Director of Science, who offered to settle Lloyd's debts out of his own pocket.  Oh, all right, out of his own credit card.  Point being, Lloyd was saved, everything was back on an even keel, and the camaraderie amongst our team reached an all-time high.  Lloyd is still dutifully repaying the redoubtable Richard Klinger for his magnanimity, but I personally felt that there ought to be some greater reward — some form of recognition that exceeds mere repayment or acknowledgment.
And so I wrote a bunch of geek-rock lyrics.  Just last week, I was introduced to "Beautiful Small Machines," Bree Sharp's most recent musical project.  A video collection on YouTube can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfx4UH659kQ&a=4oVf-d_DwKCv3jykLQhRb6G5vSn-jFJg&list=ML
and their home page (complete with Facebook/MySpace/iLike/etc. links) is found here:
http://www.beautifulsmallmachines.com/
I'd always rather liked her folk-rock style, but suddenly we find her amidst a bewildering swirl of synthesized electronica, and her lyrics are filled with echoes of the concept of geek-rock that I was trying to tap all those months ago.  I sent a message to her MySpace page, but I haven't heard back.  And so I decided to throw my work open to the four winds.  Whosoever can make these words into something that a radio station will play, or some varsity music store will stock will have my thanks, and may consider themselves free of any obligation to credit me in any way.  I just want the word to get out that Richard Klinger is a true mensch who ought to be celebrated for being an awfully nice and self-sacrificing individual.  Obviously, it would be great if Don DiLego and Bree Sharp sunk their collective metaphorical artistic fangs into it, but if anyone can create a recording with a hint of a melody and a bit of craft, then be my guest.
Here goes:

Richard, Richard

Richard, Richard Klinger
A man of science and distinction
Has more power in his little finger
Than the coefficient of friction
Stay around, let’s tarry and linger
Within the realm of his jurisdiction

CHORUS:
Richard, Richard Klinger saved the day
Dissociation constant — he’s got your pKa
Richard, Richard Klinger is the way
More awesome than thorium’s nuclear decay


Richard, Richard Klinger:
Caustic in any melée—
Refines bauxite
With hydroxide
Rewards you with aluminium pay*

CHORUS

Richard, Richard Klinger
A master of jousts, champion of duels
Kinetic energy of a stinger
That measures several gigajoules
Puts your troubles through the wringer
Lathes your worries with his tools

CHORUS

FADE

— m. cHAN


*In a nod to Bree Sharp, I would add a background vocal track asserting "aluminum!" I had actually considered that before (see next lyric), but she beat me to the punch in the song "Superconducter."

The Director

He’ll analyze yer
     fertilizer
     when the time is ripe

He’s no miser
     has a geyser
     for a phenotype

CHORUS:
The convection with direction
Puts the lady folk in heat
Their collection gets correction
If their apparatus is incomplete

He’s torrential
got potential
has great mgd (VEC-ARROW!)**

His differential
is intentional
and his body diagrams are free.

INSTRUMENTAL

CHORUS

No interference
gets his clearance
got supersonic scrutiny

Planck’s constant
gets despondent
when his wavelength finds your frequency

CHORUS

FADE

— m. cHAN


**Blogger doesn't render MathML very well. Actually, not at all. And the MathType that MS Word uses is even less effective. You may notice that the physics expression for vertical work against gravity requires a vector arrow over the acceleration value of "g," because it represents a vector quantity. The ASCIIMath code entity that expresses this character augmentation is an arrow named "vec."

In any event, it's late, and I've got lots of work to do yet. As always, comments and criticisms are invited. In a new and uninteresting twist, I would welcome a digitized music recording better.

For now, good night England and the colonies.

Cheers,

—mARKUS

iPhones are eVil

Greetings, gentle readers.
And so, after much ado about many things, Jules and I made it to Minden, Ontario.  Her parents, in addition to being thoroughly wonderful people, also have the stamina of blood-doped racehorses.  I didn't subject my own parents to the sort of extensive slideshows of South Africa that I unleashed on these poor people.  Into the wee hours of every night, twenty-three to the dozen, ground littered with the hind legs of donkeys, tiring the sun with minutiae until it falls out of the sky, I banged on about the most uninteresting things about Africa imaginable, and still these kind people feigned interest.  Astonishing.
The grounds in Minden were also amazing.  The lot opened onto the river, which flows rapidly and warmly (24°C) past the canoe and motorboat moored at the dock.
The verdant landscape and fantastic wildlife were not the main event, however.  As the family reunion began to take shape, it became obvious that the people were going to be the curiosities and spectacles.
Cousin Dave, for example, might be considered to be a disaster-profiteer.  Incidentally, the shuffles in family-relations are simplified for clarity.  If I show the slightest interest in genealogy, I suspect that my family will ambush me and expect me to deconstruct the entire patrilineal side of my genetic heritage.
The family member that I really appreciated was Cousin Norm.   Not only did he take control of the barbeque (to my enormous relief), but he did so with authority and ability.  The fact that he was smoking cigarettes over cooking meat was a bit odd, but the man knew his business, and I was not willing to tell him off.  He's also mastered more martial arts than I know languages, so I wasn't about to get uppity.
It wasn't until later in the evening that I got to play Cousin Norm at chess.  If anyone has ever played me at chess, you'll know what I do.  I don't lose, but I want to see what you do to try and win. Cousin Norm had a fantastic go with his queen before he accepted the draw.  Julie's father was astonished.  Wins are over-rated.
In any event, the weekend was a wonderful cascade of events that was ruined by two things: first, Lloyd was fired from Castle Rock.  That rocked things in a number of ways.  Jules and I weren't sure of the level of investiture we had in that decision, and how much we could have helped.  The second thing was the way in which Ontario deals with toll-based roads. We had a rental car, which is apparently not allowed on toll-roads.  No one actually spent the time to tell us this, and this led to a horrible route through ghastly roadways that led us back to Hamilton in just enough time to run to the plane before it started taxiing for takeoff. All of the good things that I had built up about the province were thrown out of the window.  By the end of it, I was glad to be rid of the place.  I still miss the people, though.  Oh, and the ice cream.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

Up at 0430h on Friday morning to catch the shuttle bus to the airport.  After hauling the multi-ton suitcase of doom up Bellamy Hill and arriving (we thought) with a few minutes to spare, we discover that I’ve left my mobile phone charging on my computer.  Since Jules was convinced that we need the GPS functionality of the thing, I sprinted back down the hill to go retrieve it.  No sooner had I successfully grabbed the thing, hastily stuffed it into my jacket, and made it down the lifts and out the front door, the thing rang.  Sure enough, it’s Jules.  The news?  The shuttle bus came early.  Julie’s message for me?  Hurry up.  By the time I made it back to the Hotel MacDonald, I managed to sprint across the intersection at which the shuttlebus (containing Julie) was waiting for the lights to change.  I hopped on board and proceeded to shed enough perspiration to fill the snorkels of every man, woman, and child in Belize. 

Tired, exhausted, and dehydrated, we finally got to the airport with enough time to check the gravitic anomaly that is the suitcase of woe onto the flight, grab a bit of breakfast, and board the plane in a leisurely fashion.  Now, I’ve done a lot of flying recently, and my general conclusion is that North American airlines have been duelling over profits for quite some time, so they’ve cut out all of the frills, like free meals and headsets, and things like elbow room.  That was the case for United as well as Air Canada.  This flight was WestJet, so I was willing to try and keep an optimistic perspective.  Maybe this airline would be different.  It isn’t. 

Packed like sardines to the point where I thought my knees were going numb from being pressed into the seat in front of me, we were informed that if you wanted food, or headsets, or oxygen masks, you had to pay for them.  The bright point was the pre-takeoff announcements.  I’ve heard dozens of these over the past few months, so I must confess to being a bit jaded.  They went something like this:

“Allo, my name is Domenic, and if you don’t like my French accent, then tough, because we’re both stuck with it.  I’d like to introduce you to your flight crew today.  Behind the bulletproof steel door that only we can open is the captain, Charles.  Sitting next to him, holding his hand and sometimes stroking his hair, is the co-pilot, Michel.  In the middle of the aisle, you can see my new girlfriend – we just met yesterday – is the unforgettable... erm [aside: what was her name again?]  Oh, yes, Melanie.  And standing next to me at the front of the cabin is the handsome and very single Claude.  He is taking numbers, so ladies, get them ready.”

“And now, it’s showtime as we start our safety presentation.  In the event that the cabin [muffled whisper] decompresses, oxygen masks [muffled whisper, slightly more urgent] will descend from the [whisper: “Later!”] compartments above your heads [whisper: “I’m doing a safety presentation!”]  For your entertainment on this flight, we have two bathrooms, one at the front, and one at the rear of the craft.  There are six exits, which... erm... that flight attendant in the centre of the aisle is pointing at: two at the front, two over the wings in the middle, and two at the rear.  Please try and locate the exit nearest you in case you need to use it.”

And so, despite the discomfort and the relatively inhumane living conditions, the little bit of levity went a long way towards preventing my cynicism and general grumpiness from spiralling out of control, much as it did on my last flight into Los Angeles.  That, and the fact that we don’t have to deal with American customs.  That’s worth a gold star in anyone’s book.

The flight was relatively uneventful, aside from the girl sitting next to me asking for a blanket and pillow.  If “sitting” could be used to describe being shoehorned into a space unfit for a battery-farm chicken.  Turns out that the plane was sold out of such amenities.  I offered my scarf, marketing it as something that “acts as BOTH a pillow and a blanket.”  She politely declined.  I played a little “Heroes of Hellas” until Domenic returned to the airwaves.

“’Ello ladies and gentlemen.  We are landing 20 minutes earlier than scheduled, which is clearly because of me, so let’s hear it.  Clap, clap?  [pause for applause]  You are about to hear one of those phrases that is like a song in my heart:  we are now beginning our final descent into Hamilton International Airport.  For those of you continuing on to Moncton, this is your plane, and we will be happy to escort you on to your final destination.  If you do decide to disembark, remember to take your boarding pass and piece of ID with you, and remember that we will only make one boarding call, so if you don’t remember those things, have fun in Hamilton.  For those of you leaving us, your luggage will be on the carousels in the arrivals lounge within the next 48 hours.  On behalf of myself and only myself, I would like to thank you for flying WestJet, and hope that you’ll be with us again soon.”

Interesting that Domenic, as near as I could tell, never made much attempt to put any zest in the French translations of his announcements.  I got one half-hearted attempt at a joke, I think, but the rest sounded pretty routine, particularly since I’ve heard the same announcements en Français innumerable times on both sides of the Atlantic over the past two months.

The John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport is basically a barn.  With a baggage carousel in it.  At the opposite end of the barn are the two car rental kiosks.  After collecting the outrageously heavy bag and loading it onto a creaking and complaining luggage caddy, we collected this rather stout and sturdy-looking red Dodge Avenger.  I’m used to renting econo-boxes, so this was a bit of a paradigm-shift for me.

Looking around, I noticed that all the vehicles were somewhat squat and blocky.  Trucks, jeeps, SUVs, sedans, station wagons, sports cars... all rather square and heavy.  I suppose that since Hamilton is a bit of a steel-town, it’s not surprising that they like their vehicles made with a maximum amount of reinforcement and substance.

And so, armed with a printed Google Map and our functional but inelegant vehicle, we headed off north for Minden.  A few minutes in, we realized a few things.  The Greater Toronto Area has a smeg-load of radio-stations.  There were roughly 3 within each MHz of FM range.  And after a quick surf, we soon realized that none of them were playing Journey.  Obviously the Boston (TM) Premium Audio system was going to waste.  Unfortunately, I had also forgotten my happy satchel of computer and audio-visual patch cords, so I couldn’t hook my netbook, iPhone, or MP3 player up to the car stereo.  Thankfully, there was a logical midpoint between Hamilton and Minden.

Newmarket is a quiet, sleepy suburb very reminiscent of Sherwood Park.  There are plenty of green spaces and forests, and there are gentle hills and valleys crinkling the topography of the town.  They also had a ripping Radio Shack (now The Source) located conveniently close to a Greek place that does fabulous chicken kebabs.  A happy lunch, and we were off to Cottage Country, Journey in tow.

A cottage in Cottage Country apparently doesn’t mean what I thought it meant when I was growing up.  A cottage now is a sprawling four- or five-bedroom, multi-story dwelling, each one with its own independent water, sewage, electrical, communications, and natural gas systems.  The country is lovely.  Trees grow in abundance along the river and lakeshores, as well in copses.  The herbs and shrubs are numerous, the air is sweet, and the insects are belligerent and tenacious.  The water in the dam-controlled rivers is warm and refreshing, and the sundowner times are pleasant and pacific.

But the next day, the placid environment was about to be overrun by members of the Dunn family.

And that is another story.

Goodnight England and the colonies.

—mARKUS