Why do they call it a “job action” when nobody’s on the job?
If I haven’t made it apparent already, let me do so now: I am no great fan of my labour union, despite my being a (now card-carrying**) member.
Recently I have been trying to find answers to some pretty basic questions, such as “What are my rights during a strike?” vs “What are my obligations during a strike?” In other words, do I have any choices? But I haven’t even been able to discover the name of my union representative at work, and not for lack of trying.
So I went to the PSAC website and there I ran into this paragraph that leads the information they have posted about the present and impending state of labour unrest. (“CRA” is the Customs and Revenue Agency, the second group of PSAC members now in a legal strike position. Parks Canada employees were the first. Mine, apparently, is the largest. We are collectively – and cumbersomely – called the “Treasury Board Table 1 – Program and Administration Services” group.)
“Summer is about over and it's being overtaken by the strike season. The primary sport for this season is picketing and we're ready for it. Our CRA members have been limbering up with some rotational exercises while our Parks members are pitching management some strategic curves. You can keep your summer sports. Just call us the boys and girls of autumn.”
How can you possibly respect an official organization that takes a threatened nationwide work stoppage that will put some 150,000 of its “boys and girls” on short wages, and treats it as if it were a warm-up to another episode of Richard Simmons’ “Sweatin’ to the Oldies”?
In fact the more I read about my union, the more I believe they are devoting much of their energy trying to avoid circulating useful information. Even the titles of the documents prepared for each side’s position at the starting line are revealing. The Union’s is entitled “Bargaining Demands” and the Government’s, “Employer Proposals”. Sure sounds like the basis for a “Win / Win” outcome to me!
Recently, I accidentally happened to pass a poster on the way to my bank that advised that PSAC workers on strike will receive no strike pay unless you have a PSAC i.d. number. Despite the fact that a sizeable chunk of my gross pay every two weeks is deducted as “union dues”, a colleague recently told me that does not mean I am a member of the union. The deduction is because all employees receive the benefits and entitlements won by the union and so all employees pay to support the union. However, to become a PSAC member, he said, you have to pro-actively apply to join.
Fair enough, but it bothers me that I found that out only serendipitously. None of this information has ever been given to me by the union. By my union.
As I mentioned above, PSAC does have a website, However, when I finally scrolled several screens into it to try to find out how to join, I discovered, in fact, that the “How to Join” information they post has nothing whatsoever to do with individual membership. Its sole purpose is to appeal to local collectives of workers who are not yet unionized. PSAC, one reads, will be more than happy to help you “organize”.
At the “Reg corn roast”, dismally attended despite its being located amid four enormous towers of government offices, I cornered one of several people in orange vests labelled “NEGOTIATE NOW!” to ask how to get my PSAC i.d. She pointed to another orange-vested person who, she said, would know. She (the second orange vest) did indeed give me a name and phone number. Back in my own office, when I called I encountered a recording that announced the PSAC office “will be closed on July 7th” (this was September 13th). I’m not really optimistic that this latest phone number will lead me anywhere helpful.
However, I did pick up a lovely songbook at the Reg-roast. Now, at least, I can buttress my meagre “Solidarity Forever” repertoire with such toe-tappers as “So loosen up those purse strings” (to the tune of “Lili Marlene”); “Come and sit at the table to bargain” (to the tune of “Red River Valley”); “These parks are your parks” (a Parks Canada-specific ditty sung to the tune of, of course, “This Land is Your Land”); “We Want You, Reggie” (to the tune of Bye Bye Birdie’s “We Love You, Conrad”); and “What shall we do with a 2% offer?” (to the tune of “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”). Joan Baez it definitely ain’t.
** Disingenuousness-avoidance update 1: In the brief interim since I first put the preceding observations down, a few things have happened. In the absence of any contact from PSAC, I paid a personal visit to their office and a very helpful person there confirmed that, yes, I do have a number, but that nonetheless yes, I do indeed have to actively take one further step – applying – before being considered a member of the union. So I applied. Barely a day later, I was told by phone that my application has cleared its processing and my union card is en route to my home. Oddly enough, I then received, over a span of about two hours, three separate calls from three different PSAC people to tell me that my application had been processed and that I would receive my card in the mail very soon.
** Disingenuousness-avoidance update 2: Better and better. I have also just found out that, despite being a member of PSAC, my “local” is apparently something called the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CIEU). (No I don’t know why!) They have a much more informative website that admittedly still smacks of the “Isn’t this great sport, pip pip old toff?” mentality around its strike information, but at least they have strike information, including the most recent circumstances about the latest offers / counteroffers. But again, this information came to me from one of my co-workers who set out on his own to try to find more information. It did not come from PSAC.
(Oh, and if you’re wide awake at 3 am and bordering on the desolate in your search for something soporific, you might consider: http://www.ceiu-seic.ca/index.cfm?wtm_language=0 That’d be the cyber-home for my many new brothers and sisters.)
I have since also found an even more thorough information sheet provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for its members – who are also “Table 1”. CIDA’s labour organizers make it pretty clear where they stand with respect to those who might consider choosing to work through a strike, instead of joining the walkout:
“Strike-breakers – also known as scabs – are either people contracted by the employer to replace strikers, or members of PSAC who choose not to respect picket lines for personal reasons that seem worthwhile to them. In crossing a picket line, strike-breakers would expose themselves to consequences that would be immediately evident, such as losing the respect of colleagues.”
But then the iron fist is pulled from the velvet glove as the notice goes on to spell out consequences considerably more dire than simply losing respect, including “taking scabs to small-claims court to recover a significant proportion of the salary that they earned during strike days”.
What was it Bette Davis said in “All About Eve”? – Oh yes, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
- 0 -
Big Brother is watching me… recently I bought a greeting card in Chapters to use as a vehicle to carry some mailed photos and greetings to Hikana. While she had stayed with us, she had been quite taken with our three cats and they, in turn, had been very affectionate to her. So the card I bought was blank inside, but was fronted by a meltingly “Aw shucks” colour photo of two dozing kittens.
When I got to the cash register, the young woman behind the counter asked me if I had a Chapters Club card. I do, indeed, but I replied to her that I understood Chapters only offered the Club card discounts on books.
Her reply? “That’s right, but we like to keep track of your purchases and someday they might send you a coupon for something.”
So, being a Canadian, I happily handed my card over and received a receipt that included a printed notification that, owing to my purchase of a “Two Sleepy Kitties” greeting card, one had been deducted from the store’s inventory.
Now, the vast majority of my Chapters purchases tend to be weighted heavily towards books, non-fiction and military history specifically. And in light of the most recent addition to my tracked purchases, I’m thinking what fun it’s going to be when their inventory control does a compilation when next my coupon eligibility window opens up: “A Few Bloody Noses: The American War of Independence”; “Diaries of the Zulu War: There was Awful Slaughter”; “On Many a Bloody Field: Four Years in the Iron Brigade”; “Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor”; “The Hell They Called High Wood: The Somme 1916”; “Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa”; “War Machine: The Rationalization of Slaughter in the Modern Age”; “Defining the Horrific: Readings on Genocide and Holocaust in the 20th Century”; “Two Sleepy Kitties”…
ALARM! ALARM! Ah –OOOO – GAH! (“Hello... uh, sir? We think that someone might have stolen your Chapters Club card…”)
- 0 -
A self-edit.
In a not-so-long ago entry, I wrote: “So today, as I walked across the bridge dividing Ontario from Quebec…”
Rivers divide. Bridges link. Sorry about that.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Golf is just flog spelled backwards – 2
Some generalizations
When you get right down to it, golf is just about the worst sport on the face of the earth to try to watch live. (OK, maybe the annual Round the World Ocean Yacht Race from your front porch in Saskatoon, but golf is only barely ahead in terms of practicality.)
Think of it. A complete “game” of professional golf requires four days of competition on a field whose total dimensions are measured in thousands of yards and whose individual playing surfaces, often as not, are bounded by tall and visually impenetrable stands of trees. Its fans (so called everywhere except at the Augusta National, whose directors dictate that they be called “patrons” in a painful burst of pomposity at the course where the Masters is played each year, but I digress) are required to keep monumentally still when the competitors are actually engaged in playing their sport. Fans are allowed to release their shouts of support only after the ball has been struck and is either rolling or flying towards its target.
And thereby hangs a gripe of mine. There is, without exception at every tournament, indeed at almost every shot, a moronic yahoo among the fans whose sole mission in life is to be the first to scream “IN THE HOLE!!!” a nanosecond after the ball is struck. The influence the shout has on the ball’s line of travel is exactly none. Yet as surely as God made blue skies and green grass, this idiot will make himself heard. At least one such eruption on the 18th this year earned the source a shouted, “OK, who brought the American?” that, in turn, was followed by loud applause. (Nothing personal, DB, but it was funny.)
From the golf fan’s perspective, you really have two choices when it comes to watching your sport live. 1. You can stake out a single spot on the course past which the entire field will travel during the day’s play, or 2. You can follow your favourite through his round. (And oh alright, but it really goes without saying… 3. You can spend part of the day doing both.)
If you opt for 1, you get to watch player after player after player hit precisely the same shot. So if studying the power of the drive is your favourite shot, you hang around the tee on any hole longer than a par 3.
Iron play / approach shots? You make a rough guess about where you think most drives will be landing and stand beside the fairway at that point. (This choice offers the added adventure of a possible skull fracture as that small white missile occasionally comes soaring in somewhat off its intended line. But it’s a rare aberration at best, and unless the kindly pro offers you his autograph by way of half-hearted apology for your not getting out of the way fast enough, even the small risk far outweighs any benefit of the experience.)
If skill with a putter is what you most enjoy watching, then among the greenside throngs you try to find a line of sight that gives you a view of the whole green. And “throngs” there indeed will be, because putting seems to be what most fans like to watch.
Mitigating factors? If it’s a hot, sunny day and your chosen spot is unsheltered, you’d better have pre-armed yourself with a hat and enough sunscreen to grease the Titanic’s slipway at the Harland and Wolff shipyards. Meanwhile, you can choose between regularly hydrating yourself, and consequently being forced to abandon your spot several times in search of relief (and I don’t mean from a “Temporarily Immovable Impediment”), or remaining where you are for six or seven solid hours, gradually desiccating to such an hallucinatory level of dehydration that Lawrence of Arabia’s “Sun’s Anvil” scene looks like a beach movie by comparison. Needless to say, the purveyors of beverages in the concession tents just love these people. On a sunny day, after the round’s last player has passed an unsheltered observation point, the rush of parched fans staggering in looking for a drink of anything at any price (even water at $3.75 a bottled serving) gives new meaning to the word “stampede”.
On the other hand, you might elect to stay with your favourite, possibly even through all 18 holes of his round. But this is an even crazier method of following the game live.
First of all, the only people with direct paths of travel during a tournament are the players, their caddies and the occasional following TV camera crew. Everyone else has to wait for the shot to be struck. (For that matter, you have to wait for your favourite’s playing partners to hit their shots as well.) Then you race down the side of the fairway to where the ball landed; occasionally rushing across the fairway – but only at a designated crossing point and only when a steely-eyed course marshal says it’s OK. You wait for your hero to hit his approach shot, then speed ahead to the green, hopefully in time to watch him putt out.
(If a digression might be permitted… the use of “his” and “him” is not sexist in the context of describing a PGA – Professional Golfers’ Association – tour event. Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam’s one-time foray last year into a men’s event notwithstanding, professional competitive golf still rigorously maintains a separation between men’s and women’s tournaments.)
And you repeat this entire exercise up to 18 times – except for the short par-3 holes, which occasionally offer you a catch-your-breath opportunity to see the hole played from your favourite’s tee shot to his final putt, without your having to change position.
Mitigating factors? Because you have to crisscross several fairways at spots that always seem calculated to cause the greatest possible fan inconvenience, you can figure on having to walk and run a total distance that probably adds 50% to the designated length of the course. A course set to challenge players on the PGA tour now pretty well has to begin at a length of at least 7,000 yards – and that’s just the tee-to-green distance. Add the spaces from the green of one hole to the tee of the next, and a typical golf course walk – for a player – is about five miles.
For a fan, you can factor in at least another couple miles, at speeds ranging from a brisk walk to a short burst of running. And depending on the course, some of that can be uphill to a degree charitably called “steep”. (Glen Abbey, for example, has three holes located deep in a picturesque valley. When you undertake the climb from the green of the last of these – the 15th – to the 16th tee high above, if you’re not careful you can still trip over the pitons first pounded in by Sir Edmund Hillary and his faithful Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay.)
So unless you’ve trained as an Olympic marathoner, you will be pretty much exhausted by the time the player you’ve been chasing sinks his final putt on the 18th green.
Yet countless people do this. And obviously, the more popular the player, the larger the throng chasing him around the course. Trying to follow a marquee player the likes of Mike Weir in Canada, or Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh anywhere, is really absurd. On most holes, no matter where such a player winds up after his tee shot, most fans of average height will be able to see no more than the top of his hat and the upper arc of his swing. This is because “chasers” are always relegated to second choice places behind those who have earlier staked out the positions past which your favourite is now travelling.
At the 2003 Canadian Open in Ancaster, when Mike Weir teed off on the first hole of his final round, a mid-length par 4, the entire hole – from tee through fairway to green – was completely encircled by fans up to ten people deep! That’s thousands of people, just to watch the very first shot – and in some cases from over 300 yards away – in a round that eventually (and typically) required over four hours to complete.
Even as I write this down, I realize just how completely insane this must sound to people who aren’t golf fans.
But as I mentioned in my previous entry, following the game as an on-course spectator is considerably different from following it at home on television. But that certainly doesn’t make being at a golf tournament less enjoyable, just… different.
How different?
Well, consider that when Mike and Vijay putted out, with a tie score, after the first of their three playoff holes (a replay of the 18th hole), they next walked to the tee of the 17th hole – designated as the second playoff hole. Most of the crowd, however, took a chance and guessed (correctly as it happened) that 17 would also play as a tie and, just maybe, they would get to see the tournament actually finish right back here at the 18th green (a re-replay of which – still with me here? – was designated as playoff hole number 3). So there we remained.
People watching on TV at home got to see number 17 played with such close-up television clarity they could read the brand name on Mike Weir’s golf ball as he lined up his putt. Those of us left sitting in anticipation around the 18th green, hundreds of yards from where the two competitors were now playing, had to get our information by whatever creative means we could.
In my case, I was standing quite near the enclosed booth at #18 in which the greenside CTV cameras were set up. A sympathetic cameraman was monitoring the images being fed by one of his colleagues from the 17th hole. After every shot, he opened the door to his booth to shout the result to everyone within earshot… “Mike’s ball is in the fringe, about 30 feet from the cup; Vijay is on the green about 20 feet away.” (groans).
It sounds silly, but it’s all a necessary part of the “Wow! I really am here!” experience.
A lot like Woodstock, really – skilled players (golf instead of guitar)… a sea of fans ranging from the very knowledgeable to the “I’m only here for the celebrity watching”… all patiently waiting for their favourite superstars to appear on the “stage”… naked women frolicking in the pond.
(Oh? You mean you people watching at home didn’t see that last bit? Pity.)
Some generalizations
When you get right down to it, golf is just about the worst sport on the face of the earth to try to watch live. (OK, maybe the annual Round the World Ocean Yacht Race from your front porch in Saskatoon, but golf is only barely ahead in terms of practicality.)
Think of it. A complete “game” of professional golf requires four days of competition on a field whose total dimensions are measured in thousands of yards and whose individual playing surfaces, often as not, are bounded by tall and visually impenetrable stands of trees. Its fans (so called everywhere except at the Augusta National, whose directors dictate that they be called “patrons” in a painful burst of pomposity at the course where the Masters is played each year, but I digress) are required to keep monumentally still when the competitors are actually engaged in playing their sport. Fans are allowed to release their shouts of support only after the ball has been struck and is either rolling or flying towards its target.
And thereby hangs a gripe of mine. There is, without exception at every tournament, indeed at almost every shot, a moronic yahoo among the fans whose sole mission in life is to be the first to scream “IN THE HOLE!!!” a nanosecond after the ball is struck. The influence the shout has on the ball’s line of travel is exactly none. Yet as surely as God made blue skies and green grass, this idiot will make himself heard. At least one such eruption on the 18th this year earned the source a shouted, “OK, who brought the American?” that, in turn, was followed by loud applause. (Nothing personal, DB, but it was funny.)
From the golf fan’s perspective, you really have two choices when it comes to watching your sport live. 1. You can stake out a single spot on the course past which the entire field will travel during the day’s play, or 2. You can follow your favourite through his round. (And oh alright, but it really goes without saying… 3. You can spend part of the day doing both.)
If you opt for 1, you get to watch player after player after player hit precisely the same shot. So if studying the power of the drive is your favourite shot, you hang around the tee on any hole longer than a par 3.
Iron play / approach shots? You make a rough guess about where you think most drives will be landing and stand beside the fairway at that point. (This choice offers the added adventure of a possible skull fracture as that small white missile occasionally comes soaring in somewhat off its intended line. But it’s a rare aberration at best, and unless the kindly pro offers you his autograph by way of half-hearted apology for your not getting out of the way fast enough, even the small risk far outweighs any benefit of the experience.)
If skill with a putter is what you most enjoy watching, then among the greenside throngs you try to find a line of sight that gives you a view of the whole green. And “throngs” there indeed will be, because putting seems to be what most fans like to watch.
Mitigating factors? If it’s a hot, sunny day and your chosen spot is unsheltered, you’d better have pre-armed yourself with a hat and enough sunscreen to grease the Titanic’s slipway at the Harland and Wolff shipyards. Meanwhile, you can choose between regularly hydrating yourself, and consequently being forced to abandon your spot several times in search of relief (and I don’t mean from a “Temporarily Immovable Impediment”), or remaining where you are for six or seven solid hours, gradually desiccating to such an hallucinatory level of dehydration that Lawrence of Arabia’s “Sun’s Anvil” scene looks like a beach movie by comparison. Needless to say, the purveyors of beverages in the concession tents just love these people. On a sunny day, after the round’s last player has passed an unsheltered observation point, the rush of parched fans staggering in looking for a drink of anything at any price (even water at $3.75 a bottled serving) gives new meaning to the word “stampede”.
On the other hand, you might elect to stay with your favourite, possibly even through all 18 holes of his round. But this is an even crazier method of following the game live.
First of all, the only people with direct paths of travel during a tournament are the players, their caddies and the occasional following TV camera crew. Everyone else has to wait for the shot to be struck. (For that matter, you have to wait for your favourite’s playing partners to hit their shots as well.) Then you race down the side of the fairway to where the ball landed; occasionally rushing across the fairway – but only at a designated crossing point and only when a steely-eyed course marshal says it’s OK. You wait for your hero to hit his approach shot, then speed ahead to the green, hopefully in time to watch him putt out.
(If a digression might be permitted… the use of “his” and “him” is not sexist in the context of describing a PGA – Professional Golfers’ Association – tour event. Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam’s one-time foray last year into a men’s event notwithstanding, professional competitive golf still rigorously maintains a separation between men’s and women’s tournaments.)
And you repeat this entire exercise up to 18 times – except for the short par-3 holes, which occasionally offer you a catch-your-breath opportunity to see the hole played from your favourite’s tee shot to his final putt, without your having to change position.
Mitigating factors? Because you have to crisscross several fairways at spots that always seem calculated to cause the greatest possible fan inconvenience, you can figure on having to walk and run a total distance that probably adds 50% to the designated length of the course. A course set to challenge players on the PGA tour now pretty well has to begin at a length of at least 7,000 yards – and that’s just the tee-to-green distance. Add the spaces from the green of one hole to the tee of the next, and a typical golf course walk – for a player – is about five miles.
For a fan, you can factor in at least another couple miles, at speeds ranging from a brisk walk to a short burst of running. And depending on the course, some of that can be uphill to a degree charitably called “steep”. (Glen Abbey, for example, has three holes located deep in a picturesque valley. When you undertake the climb from the green of the last of these – the 15th – to the 16th tee high above, if you’re not careful you can still trip over the pitons first pounded in by Sir Edmund Hillary and his faithful Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay.)
So unless you’ve trained as an Olympic marathoner, you will be pretty much exhausted by the time the player you’ve been chasing sinks his final putt on the 18th green.
Yet countless people do this. And obviously, the more popular the player, the larger the throng chasing him around the course. Trying to follow a marquee player the likes of Mike Weir in Canada, or Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh anywhere, is really absurd. On most holes, no matter where such a player winds up after his tee shot, most fans of average height will be able to see no more than the top of his hat and the upper arc of his swing. This is because “chasers” are always relegated to second choice places behind those who have earlier staked out the positions past which your favourite is now travelling.
At the 2003 Canadian Open in Ancaster, when Mike Weir teed off on the first hole of his final round, a mid-length par 4, the entire hole – from tee through fairway to green – was completely encircled by fans up to ten people deep! That’s thousands of people, just to watch the very first shot – and in some cases from over 300 yards away – in a round that eventually (and typically) required over four hours to complete.
Even as I write this down, I realize just how completely insane this must sound to people who aren’t golf fans.
But as I mentioned in my previous entry, following the game as an on-course spectator is considerably different from following it at home on television. But that certainly doesn’t make being at a golf tournament less enjoyable, just… different.
How different?
Well, consider that when Mike and Vijay putted out, with a tie score, after the first of their three playoff holes (a replay of the 18th hole), they next walked to the tee of the 17th hole – designated as the second playoff hole. Most of the crowd, however, took a chance and guessed (correctly as it happened) that 17 would also play as a tie and, just maybe, they would get to see the tournament actually finish right back here at the 18th green (a re-replay of which – still with me here? – was designated as playoff hole number 3). So there we remained.
People watching on TV at home got to see number 17 played with such close-up television clarity they could read the brand name on Mike Weir’s golf ball as he lined up his putt. Those of us left sitting in anticipation around the 18th green, hundreds of yards from where the two competitors were now playing, had to get our information by whatever creative means we could.
In my case, I was standing quite near the enclosed booth at #18 in which the greenside CTV cameras were set up. A sympathetic cameraman was monitoring the images being fed by one of his colleagues from the 17th hole. After every shot, he opened the door to his booth to shout the result to everyone within earshot… “Mike’s ball is in the fringe, about 30 feet from the cup; Vijay is on the green about 20 feet away.” (groans).
It sounds silly, but it’s all a necessary part of the “Wow! I really am here!” experience.
A lot like Woodstock, really – skilled players (golf instead of guitar)… a sea of fans ranging from the very knowledgeable to the “I’m only here for the celebrity watching”… all patiently waiting for their favourite superstars to appear on the “stage”… naked women frolicking in the pond.
(Oh? You mean you people watching at home didn’t see that last bit? Pity.)
Monday, September 13, 2004
Golf is just flog spelled backwards - 1
(After returning with my brother-in-law Bob from the Bell Canadian Open 2004 at the Glen Abbey course, Oakville)
My father-in-law’s generosity had resulted in our having tickets whose perks included access to a canvas-topped patio called the Centennial Club. It overlooked the 18th green and was equipped with a bar and concession stand, plenty of tables and, most important of all, a vast space of blessed shade on what turned out to be two unseasonably hot, sunny days. They could quite accurately have called it The Oasis.
Some snapshots (because when you’re actually there, those are the only impressions you can glean):
Anyone holding claim even distantly to all or part of the label “golf fan” is already aware of the result, but if not: Canadian Mike Weir led through all four rounds until the very last hole when he finished tied with the world’s number 1, Vijay Singh. On the third hole of a “sudden death” playoff (although so far as can be determined, no one in fact was actually killed), Mike’s approach to the green hit very close to the pin. This particular Glen Abbey pin, however, was in its traditional Sunday position very close to the edge of a large pond into which, after one small bounce, went Mike’s ball, along with (if media reports are to be believed) an entire nation’s hopes for prosperity, world peace, a cure for AIDS and a resolution of global poverty.
- 0 -
At a major tournament, the pathways travelled by the pros are well fenced and, very early on, well staked out by autograph hunters of all ages. The more seasoned pros – and consequently the more popular and thus the players confronted with many more such requests – have their routines down pat. They stride purposefully along, grabbing one of the dozens of proffered hats, programs or souvenir pin flags, sign it as they walk, and then hand or toss it back vaguely in the direction from which it came.
Those new to the tour are usually more amenable to longer, stop ‘n’ chat sessions. I watched one of the younger pros, unfamiliar to almost everyone but family and close friends, pause when a boy no more than 8 or 9 years old held up a pennant festooned with scrawls and beseeched the pro – “Do I have you yet?” The pro and everyone within earshot just burst out laughing. After confirming that no, he had not yet signed this particular bit of canvas, he signed it, the boy’s hat and a golf ball for his new young (and no doubt future) loyal fan.
- 0 -
I can’t possibly imagine working with 50,000 people around me watching every single tiny move of everything I do, and applauding even the most mundane of actions. But that’s the “office” of a leading golf pro in mid-tournament.
- 0 -
Sweden’s Jesper Parnevik actually had a great tournament this year. And he’s a character. At home, his father, Bo, is acknowledged to be “Sweden’s most famous comic”. (Although in the land of Ingmar Bergman, that might be somewhat akin to being hailed as Bora Bora’s best hockey player.)
But Jesper is a bit of a clown himself on the golf course. His wardrobe is always a source of comment and on Sunday, “sporting sea-foam green pants with a lime-green shirt, white shoes and a white belt with a chrome buckle the size of a toaster” (you had to see it), he kept the stories alive. His trademark is his hat. He wears a standard baseball cap, but bends the front brim up at such a sharp angle that his canny sponsor actually imprints his company name on the underside of the visor, bringing it fully into view every time Jesper’s face appears on camera.
His very first tee shot on Sunday, however, was anything but funny. It actually soared so far off track that it was last seen – at least temporarily – bouncing off the canvas roof of one of the corporate tents set well back from the first fairway. After a search, he declared a lost ball – normally an event that draws a penalty stroke. But when the tent that everyone saw it hit was deemed to be a “temporarily immovable impediment”, he won a penalty-free drop and so on he played. (His ball, in fact, was actually found only much later. It had bounced into a distant sand trap next to an adjacent fairway. Had it been found there at the time, that’s the spot from which he would have had to play it.)
- 0 -
The show stealer on the final day was an utterly fearless great blue heron whose home territory obviously included the greenside pond at number 18. He wasn’t about to let the surrounding presence of tens of thousands of fans interfere with his routines. At one point, he strode leisurely to the edge of the green, and released an enormous stream of… well, bird poop. The resulting burst of laughter and applause (it had been a long wait between finishing groups of golfers, OK?) startled the bird to the point of causing him to flare his wings in alarm, but not so much that he took to the air. The overall visual effect was one of taking a bow for what turned out to be an especially prescient and accurate synopsis of nearly every Canadian’s perception of the Open’s eventual outcome.
- 0 -
And surely one of the most unusual snapshots I saw was in the Centennial Club’s canvas-covered patio lounge at the end of the tournament. The space was so packed, even the crowd along the railing overlooking the 18th green was pressed 10 people deep, the rearmost perched on chairs to give them a view over the heads of the foremost ranks. But one fellow, standing at the end of the patio space well back from the crowd at the rail and a long distance from the television screens at the patio bar, was focused intently – with binoculars – on those same TVs, while the very action being covered live by the television cameras was unfolding barely 200 yards to his left.
- 0 -
For the record, both Bob and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But we also were present for rounds 3 and 4 last year, and we agreed that last year’s Canadian Open course, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, was just plain cosier and friendlier to the fans.
Glen Abbey was designed as a stadium course for big tournaments, big hitters and huge mobs of fans. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when the tournament is the Canadian Open.
But at Glen Abbey this year, I was standing by the patio rail overlooking the green, and a question driven by several glasses of beer came over my shoulder – “What hole is that?” A few minutes later, half his next can of beer wound up on the back of my leg, my socks and my shoes. When Vijay was standing over the putt that would put him into the playoff with Mike, my bleary questioner had shifted his position and, with several equally well-informed colleagues, began a vigorous chant of “Miss! Miss! Miss!” loudly enough that a Halton Regional police officer, a few minutes later, came up to the patio and asked these fans to display the courtesy that golf fans are supposed to be noted for.
The bottom line is those people weren’t in Ancaster in 2003. Or if they were, they were fewer and much farther between. Ancaster’s course was designed for people who play golf well, using the full range of clubs in their bags and the full scope of their game skills. The necessarily smaller number of fans in 2003 seemed to be made up of a higher ratio of knowledgeable followers of the game, who like to watch good golf being played with skill and finesse, and who know it when they see it. On every shot in the 2003 Open, Ancaster challenged those who play well, and challenged them not just to hit the ball many yards farther than their opponents.
And yes, there is a difference.
But for all of that minor rant, I wouldn’t have missed 2004. It’s a different experience being there, and golf can occasionally be every bit as electrifying as a much faster game like hockey. Mike and Vijay provided the voltage this year. When Mike’s final approach shot was in the air on the third playoff hole, there wasn’t a breath of oxygen going into one single pair of the tens of thousands of lungs surrounding that green. Holding our breath? You wanna believe it!
And while the end result was not the one that Canadian golf fans were hoping for, the consolation is that the man who won had overtaken Tiger Woods just the week before to be declared the number one golfer in the world.
Finishing second to Vijay Singh after three playoff holes is nothing to be ashamed of.
(After returning with my brother-in-law Bob from the Bell Canadian Open 2004 at the Glen Abbey course, Oakville)
My father-in-law’s generosity had resulted in our having tickets whose perks included access to a canvas-topped patio called the Centennial Club. It overlooked the 18th green and was equipped with a bar and concession stand, plenty of tables and, most important of all, a vast space of blessed shade on what turned out to be two unseasonably hot, sunny days. They could quite accurately have called it The Oasis.
Some snapshots (because when you’re actually there, those are the only impressions you can glean):
Anyone holding claim even distantly to all or part of the label “golf fan” is already aware of the result, but if not: Canadian Mike Weir led through all four rounds until the very last hole when he finished tied with the world’s number 1, Vijay Singh. On the third hole of a “sudden death” playoff (although so far as can be determined, no one in fact was actually killed), Mike’s approach to the green hit very close to the pin. This particular Glen Abbey pin, however, was in its traditional Sunday position very close to the edge of a large pond into which, after one small bounce, went Mike’s ball, along with (if media reports are to be believed) an entire nation’s hopes for prosperity, world peace, a cure for AIDS and a resolution of global poverty.
- 0 -
At a major tournament, the pathways travelled by the pros are well fenced and, very early on, well staked out by autograph hunters of all ages. The more seasoned pros – and consequently the more popular and thus the players confronted with many more such requests – have their routines down pat. They stride purposefully along, grabbing one of the dozens of proffered hats, programs or souvenir pin flags, sign it as they walk, and then hand or toss it back vaguely in the direction from which it came.
Those new to the tour are usually more amenable to longer, stop ‘n’ chat sessions. I watched one of the younger pros, unfamiliar to almost everyone but family and close friends, pause when a boy no more than 8 or 9 years old held up a pennant festooned with scrawls and beseeched the pro – “Do I have you yet?” The pro and everyone within earshot just burst out laughing. After confirming that no, he had not yet signed this particular bit of canvas, he signed it, the boy’s hat and a golf ball for his new young (and no doubt future) loyal fan.
- 0 -
I can’t possibly imagine working with 50,000 people around me watching every single tiny move of everything I do, and applauding even the most mundane of actions. But that’s the “office” of a leading golf pro in mid-tournament.
- 0 -
Sweden’s Jesper Parnevik actually had a great tournament this year. And he’s a character. At home, his father, Bo, is acknowledged to be “Sweden’s most famous comic”. (Although in the land of Ingmar Bergman, that might be somewhat akin to being hailed as Bora Bora’s best hockey player.)
But Jesper is a bit of a clown himself on the golf course. His wardrobe is always a source of comment and on Sunday, “sporting sea-foam green pants with a lime-green shirt, white shoes and a white belt with a chrome buckle the size of a toaster” (you had to see it), he kept the stories alive. His trademark is his hat. He wears a standard baseball cap, but bends the front brim up at such a sharp angle that his canny sponsor actually imprints his company name on the underside of the visor, bringing it fully into view every time Jesper’s face appears on camera.
His very first tee shot on Sunday, however, was anything but funny. It actually soared so far off track that it was last seen – at least temporarily – bouncing off the canvas roof of one of the corporate tents set well back from the first fairway. After a search, he declared a lost ball – normally an event that draws a penalty stroke. But when the tent that everyone saw it hit was deemed to be a “temporarily immovable impediment”, he won a penalty-free drop and so on he played. (His ball, in fact, was actually found only much later. It had bounced into a distant sand trap next to an adjacent fairway. Had it been found there at the time, that’s the spot from which he would have had to play it.)
- 0 -
The show stealer on the final day was an utterly fearless great blue heron whose home territory obviously included the greenside pond at number 18. He wasn’t about to let the surrounding presence of tens of thousands of fans interfere with his routines. At one point, he strode leisurely to the edge of the green, and released an enormous stream of… well, bird poop. The resulting burst of laughter and applause (it had been a long wait between finishing groups of golfers, OK?) startled the bird to the point of causing him to flare his wings in alarm, but not so much that he took to the air. The overall visual effect was one of taking a bow for what turned out to be an especially prescient and accurate synopsis of nearly every Canadian’s perception of the Open’s eventual outcome.
- 0 -
And surely one of the most unusual snapshots I saw was in the Centennial Club’s canvas-covered patio lounge at the end of the tournament. The space was so packed, even the crowd along the railing overlooking the 18th green was pressed 10 people deep, the rearmost perched on chairs to give them a view over the heads of the foremost ranks. But one fellow, standing at the end of the patio space well back from the crowd at the rail and a long distance from the television screens at the patio bar, was focused intently – with binoculars – on those same TVs, while the very action being covered live by the television cameras was unfolding barely 200 yards to his left.
- 0 -
For the record, both Bob and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But we also were present for rounds 3 and 4 last year, and we agreed that last year’s Canadian Open course, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, was just plain cosier and friendlier to the fans.
Glen Abbey was designed as a stadium course for big tournaments, big hitters and huge mobs of fans. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when the tournament is the Canadian Open.
But at Glen Abbey this year, I was standing by the patio rail overlooking the green, and a question driven by several glasses of beer came over my shoulder – “What hole is that?” A few minutes later, half his next can of beer wound up on the back of my leg, my socks and my shoes. When Vijay was standing over the putt that would put him into the playoff with Mike, my bleary questioner had shifted his position and, with several equally well-informed colleagues, began a vigorous chant of “Miss! Miss! Miss!” loudly enough that a Halton Regional police officer, a few minutes later, came up to the patio and asked these fans to display the courtesy that golf fans are supposed to be noted for.
The bottom line is those people weren’t in Ancaster in 2003. Or if they were, they were fewer and much farther between. Ancaster’s course was designed for people who play golf well, using the full range of clubs in their bags and the full scope of their game skills. The necessarily smaller number of fans in 2003 seemed to be made up of a higher ratio of knowledgeable followers of the game, who like to watch good golf being played with skill and finesse, and who know it when they see it. On every shot in the 2003 Open, Ancaster challenged those who play well, and challenged them not just to hit the ball many yards farther than their opponents.
And yes, there is a difference.
But for all of that minor rant, I wouldn’t have missed 2004. It’s a different experience being there, and golf can occasionally be every bit as electrifying as a much faster game like hockey. Mike and Vijay provided the voltage this year. When Mike’s final approach shot was in the air on the third playoff hole, there wasn’t a breath of oxygen going into one single pair of the tens of thousands of lungs surrounding that green. Holding our breath? You wanna believe it!
And while the end result was not the one that Canadian golf fans were hoping for, the consolation is that the man who won had overtaken Tiger Woods just the week before to be declared the number one golfer in the world.
Finishing second to Vijay Singh after three playoff holes is nothing to be ashamed of.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Now that the stories of our recent wonderful encounter with the sublime (Hikana) are past, it’s time once again to turn to the ridiculous.
- - - - - - - - - -
Bits and Pieces
I’m way too Canadian. So I’ve decided that in future, if I’m standing in the aisle of a large hardware store and an employee is halfway through answering a question I’ve just asked, and he interrupts his answer to me because he chooses instead to respond to the jarring electronic buzz of the cellphone clipped to his belt, instead of waiting passively and patiently (and most Canadianly) for him to conclude his interruption, I am just going to turn and walk away.
If I’m feeling especially ticked, I may even throw, “You might remember next time that in this store, you are overhead; I am profit!” back over my departing shoulders. That way, even if he is responding to some misguided higher-ups’ dictum that a cellphone call should take precedence over an in-store customer, maybe he will carry the message back to those same higher-ups that they might want to rethink that policy.
Just because a means of communication is immediate doesn’t instill upon it automatic urgency. That’s my new motto – for today, anyway.
And likewise, if I – with purchase in hand – approach a cash register at which the cashier is chatting on the phone, and if an interval any longer than 15 seconds transpires between the time he or she sees me, and the end – or suspension – of the phone conversation in order to ring through my purchase, then at second #16 I will leave my product on the counter and walk out the door. Hopefully, it will be a large and expensive custom cut of meat, the loss of which sale will be compounded by the inconvenience of the need to (a) get it back swiftly into refrigeration at the meat counter, and (b) try to find another customer who wants the same large joint at the same price before its best-before date is reached.
- 0 -
Mail! We got mail!
Some might recall when, a few posts ago, I ended the saga of our delightful experience with Hikana’s cooking with a plaintive query, “So, does anyone have any ideas on what to do with five leftover bags of ‘foul-smelling’ ‘noxious weed’?” Well, friend Ian took all of about ten seconds to remind me that I live in a city with three universities (two secular and one theological) and a large community college. How long would it possibly take, he mused, to elicit a reply to a posted bulletin board notice in a post-secondary setting, offering bags of “noxious weed” for sale?
- 0 -
The media rumour mill is happily churning away with news that the public service union to which I belong, the powerfully-named Public Service Alliance of Canada (whose acronym yields the unfortunate image of the urinary equivalent of a colostomy bag – pee-sack) will soon be on a full-blown strike.
At the moment, both sides – the union being one and the Government of Canada being the other – are furiously posturing away in the press and over the airwaves. Because the present government is a minority, with at best a tenuous hold on power, and because they included “rein in public service spending” among their many campaign promises, the generally accepted belief among talking heads is that the Prime Minister pretty well has no choice but to appear tough and to ensure that the eventually agreed-upon settlement will at least make it appear like he’s fulfilling his campaign promise.
Add to this the fact that he also made lavishly expensive campaign promises to increase health care spending, and you have the basis for an especially cynical bit of speculation that the money to fulfill those commitments will come in part from the money saved by not having to pay over 100,000 striking public servants for a few days, possibly even weeks.
Rumour is all I have to go on, because absolutely nothing official in the way of communication has come to my desk. I am a public service tyro and actually have never experienced a direct encounter with a PSAC strike, except once as a snarly member of the general public whose access to my favourite morning coffee shop was denied because it was in an office tower populated almost entirely by government departments and, thus, blocked by a union picket line.
The prevailing view among my co-workers is that, unless declared an “essential service”, one should be on the line, rather than among those trying to cross it. In one conversation I was told bluntly (and by a manager) that one’s position during a strike is very closely monitored. If one challenges the union and elects to work, then at any time down the road when one might need union support – even years later – it simply will not be there.
The opposite possibility – that one day down the road one might need support from management in a challenge of some union-driven policy or decision – would yield no help whatsoever from management. This same manager informed me that management simply won’t confront a union that is capable of making its case by taking well over 100,000 people off the job to support it.
The fun starts Monday when the union is looking for a large show of employee support by holding a corn roast in the courtyard outside our building. As the promotional flyer gleefully announces, Reg Alcock, who heads the government’s bargaining unit (Treasury Board), is “in real hot water”. Get it? Get it? (It would have been funnier if Mr Alcock had been a retired “kernel”, but I guess you can’t have everything.)
So while I am willing to Google the lyrics to “Solidarity Forever” **, I will be damned if I will take part in any chant that begins, “Hey-Hey! Ho-Ho!”
I have my limits.
** (To the tune of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”):
Chorus: “Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong.
When the union's inspiration
through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater
anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker
than the feeble strength of one?
But the union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
They have taken untold millions
that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle
not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power;
gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
In our hands is placed a power
greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies,
magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world
from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
This labor anthem was written in 1915 by IWW songwriter and union organizer Ralph Chaplin using the music of Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic. These song lyrics are those sung by Joe Glazer, Educational Director of the United Rubber Workers, from the recording Songs of Work and Freedom, (Washington Records WR460)”
- 0 -
I have an exceedingly expensive umbrella I bought a few months ago. Its design is actually trademarked as the name, “Gustbuster”. (Googling that name will reveal some colourful variations of its trademarked features.) Essentially it’s a large golf umbrella made up of two rings of fabric. The large lower / outer ring is covered by a topping “cap”, and it’s the unsewn overlap between the two that makes it especially effective on a blustery day. Whenever a surge of air billows under the dome, instead of blowing the delicate ribbed structure inside out and bending it into a tribute to the sculpture of Joan Miró, the air spills out through the overlapping layers. And think of it! It only took humanity five millennia or so of official “civilization” to figure that out.
So today, as I walked across the bridge dividing Ontario from Quebec amid the blustery northern residue of Hurricane Frances, I observed several lesser rain shields being relentlessly yanked inside out by the hefty gusts of wind. I, meanwhile, strolled along, both hands gripping the post, revelling in the buffeting. My umbrella is a most manly dark olive and black (with a huge white, manly “Nike Golf” logo painted on it) and I felt positively riddled with testosterone as I rebuffed even the strongest of the wind’s efforts to invert my canopy.
More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!
Manly singing “Chim-Chim-Cheree”, and other themes from Mary Poppins, every step of the way.
- 0 -
Hikana update
At 7:30 am Thursday morning (8:30 pm Thursday evening in Kyoto), the phone rang at home. For the record (family and friends take note), I have a heart-skip whenever the phone rings at 7:30 am at home, because so rarely does it happen, if it’s not a wrong number it’s almost always bad, if not outright alarming, news. So tensing myself, I picked it up and said a tentative “Hello”. After a couple distant electronic clicks, I heard a hesitating “Hello… Mike?”
It was Hikana, and even without the benefit of a shared electronic translator, we were able to communicate that: (a) for our part we were delighted to hear from her and very glad she had made it home; (b) for her part, her return had been delayed because a typhoon had swept over Japan not far from home (Google News reveals that Typhoon Songda has just “buffeted”, “hammered” and “lashed” the country, leaving – so far – 31 dead in its wake, half of whom were crewmen on a single ship grounded and sunk by the storm.)
She actually apologized for not being able to reach us until now.
We already knew that her house is being renovated to convert the ground floor into a café / restaurant to be run by her father. She told us that she is now living with her grandfather until that work is done. (We know December 24th is the milestone date, but we have not yet been able to ascertain whether that is the date on which construction is scheduled to be done, or the date the restaurant will officially open.)
We also agreed to communicate by “paper letter” until she can re-enable her access to e-mail. At least that’s what I think we agreed to. She’s still a little uncertain on verb tenses. Certainly, we’ll write and if I understood her correctly, she has already sent a note to us.
- 0 -
Me update.
Friday after work I’m heading down to Oakville’s Glen Abbey golf course with my brother-in-law for the weekend to watch the likes of Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love aye-aye-aye (that’d be “the Third”) play the final two rounds of the Bell Canadian Open, courtesy of my father-in-law. (That is to say, “I’m watching” courtesy of my father-in-law, not “they’re playing” courtesy of my father-in-law.)
At least I assume I’ll be watching the final two rounds. Hurricane Frances’s northern effects seriously delayed Thursday’s opening round and, if she persists in drenching the Glen Abbey course, the worst case scenario will have them bumping all or part of the final round to Monday. (*cough* *cough* Oh, I feel a possible nasty weekend cold coming on. I might just have to phone in sick on Monday morning.)
I’ll add a report in my next update. (*cough*)
“Super-cali-fragilistic-expialidocious…”
- - - - - - - - - -
Bits and Pieces
I’m way too Canadian. So I’ve decided that in future, if I’m standing in the aisle of a large hardware store and an employee is halfway through answering a question I’ve just asked, and he interrupts his answer to me because he chooses instead to respond to the jarring electronic buzz of the cellphone clipped to his belt, instead of waiting passively and patiently (and most Canadianly) for him to conclude his interruption, I am just going to turn and walk away.
If I’m feeling especially ticked, I may even throw, “You might remember next time that in this store, you are overhead; I am profit!” back over my departing shoulders. That way, even if he is responding to some misguided higher-ups’ dictum that a cellphone call should take precedence over an in-store customer, maybe he will carry the message back to those same higher-ups that they might want to rethink that policy.
Just because a means of communication is immediate doesn’t instill upon it automatic urgency. That’s my new motto – for today, anyway.
And likewise, if I – with purchase in hand – approach a cash register at which the cashier is chatting on the phone, and if an interval any longer than 15 seconds transpires between the time he or she sees me, and the end – or suspension – of the phone conversation in order to ring through my purchase, then at second #16 I will leave my product on the counter and walk out the door. Hopefully, it will be a large and expensive custom cut of meat, the loss of which sale will be compounded by the inconvenience of the need to (a) get it back swiftly into refrigeration at the meat counter, and (b) try to find another customer who wants the same large joint at the same price before its best-before date is reached.
- 0 -
Mail! We got mail!
Some might recall when, a few posts ago, I ended the saga of our delightful experience with Hikana’s cooking with a plaintive query, “So, does anyone have any ideas on what to do with five leftover bags of ‘foul-smelling’ ‘noxious weed’?” Well, friend Ian took all of about ten seconds to remind me that I live in a city with three universities (two secular and one theological) and a large community college. How long would it possibly take, he mused, to elicit a reply to a posted bulletin board notice in a post-secondary setting, offering bags of “noxious weed” for sale?
- 0 -
The media rumour mill is happily churning away with news that the public service union to which I belong, the powerfully-named Public Service Alliance of Canada (whose acronym yields the unfortunate image of the urinary equivalent of a colostomy bag – pee-sack) will soon be on a full-blown strike.
At the moment, both sides – the union being one and the Government of Canada being the other – are furiously posturing away in the press and over the airwaves. Because the present government is a minority, with at best a tenuous hold on power, and because they included “rein in public service spending” among their many campaign promises, the generally accepted belief among talking heads is that the Prime Minister pretty well has no choice but to appear tough and to ensure that the eventually agreed-upon settlement will at least make it appear like he’s fulfilling his campaign promise.
Add to this the fact that he also made lavishly expensive campaign promises to increase health care spending, and you have the basis for an especially cynical bit of speculation that the money to fulfill those commitments will come in part from the money saved by not having to pay over 100,000 striking public servants for a few days, possibly even weeks.
Rumour is all I have to go on, because absolutely nothing official in the way of communication has come to my desk. I am a public service tyro and actually have never experienced a direct encounter with a PSAC strike, except once as a snarly member of the general public whose access to my favourite morning coffee shop was denied because it was in an office tower populated almost entirely by government departments and, thus, blocked by a union picket line.
The prevailing view among my co-workers is that, unless declared an “essential service”, one should be on the line, rather than among those trying to cross it. In one conversation I was told bluntly (and by a manager) that one’s position during a strike is very closely monitored. If one challenges the union and elects to work, then at any time down the road when one might need union support – even years later – it simply will not be there.
The opposite possibility – that one day down the road one might need support from management in a challenge of some union-driven policy or decision – would yield no help whatsoever from management. This same manager informed me that management simply won’t confront a union that is capable of making its case by taking well over 100,000 people off the job to support it.
The fun starts Monday when the union is looking for a large show of employee support by holding a corn roast in the courtyard outside our building. As the promotional flyer gleefully announces, Reg Alcock, who heads the government’s bargaining unit (Treasury Board), is “in real hot water”. Get it? Get it? (It would have been funnier if Mr Alcock had been a retired “kernel”, but I guess you can’t have everything.)
So while I am willing to Google the lyrics to “Solidarity Forever” **, I will be damned if I will take part in any chant that begins, “Hey-Hey! Ho-Ho!”
I have my limits.
** (To the tune of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”):
Chorus: “Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong.
When the union's inspiration
through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater
anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker
than the feeble strength of one?
But the union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
They have taken untold millions
that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle
not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power;
gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
In our hands is placed a power
greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies,
magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world
from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong.
(Chorus)
This labor anthem was written in 1915 by IWW songwriter and union organizer Ralph Chaplin using the music of Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic. These song lyrics are those sung by Joe Glazer, Educational Director of the United Rubber Workers, from the recording Songs of Work and Freedom, (Washington Records WR460)”
- 0 -
I have an exceedingly expensive umbrella I bought a few months ago. Its design is actually trademarked as the name, “Gustbuster”. (Googling that name will reveal some colourful variations of its trademarked features.) Essentially it’s a large golf umbrella made up of two rings of fabric. The large lower / outer ring is covered by a topping “cap”, and it’s the unsewn overlap between the two that makes it especially effective on a blustery day. Whenever a surge of air billows under the dome, instead of blowing the delicate ribbed structure inside out and bending it into a tribute to the sculpture of Joan Miró, the air spills out through the overlapping layers. And think of it! It only took humanity five millennia or so of official “civilization” to figure that out.
So today, as I walked across the bridge dividing Ontario from Quebec amid the blustery northern residue of Hurricane Frances, I observed several lesser rain shields being relentlessly yanked inside out by the hefty gusts of wind. I, meanwhile, strolled along, both hands gripping the post, revelling in the buffeting. My umbrella is a most manly dark olive and black (with a huge white, manly “Nike Golf” logo painted on it) and I felt positively riddled with testosterone as I rebuffed even the strongest of the wind’s efforts to invert my canopy.
More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!
Manly singing “Chim-Chim-Cheree”, and other themes from Mary Poppins, every step of the way.
- 0 -
Hikana update
At 7:30 am Thursday morning (8:30 pm Thursday evening in Kyoto), the phone rang at home. For the record (family and friends take note), I have a heart-skip whenever the phone rings at 7:30 am at home, because so rarely does it happen, if it’s not a wrong number it’s almost always bad, if not outright alarming, news. So tensing myself, I picked it up and said a tentative “Hello”. After a couple distant electronic clicks, I heard a hesitating “Hello… Mike?”
It was Hikana, and even without the benefit of a shared electronic translator, we were able to communicate that: (a) for our part we were delighted to hear from her and very glad she had made it home; (b) for her part, her return had been delayed because a typhoon had swept over Japan not far from home (Google News reveals that Typhoon Songda has just “buffeted”, “hammered” and “lashed” the country, leaving – so far – 31 dead in its wake, half of whom were crewmen on a single ship grounded and sunk by the storm.)
She actually apologized for not being able to reach us until now.
We already knew that her house is being renovated to convert the ground floor into a café / restaurant to be run by her father. She told us that she is now living with her grandfather until that work is done. (We know December 24th is the milestone date, but we have not yet been able to ascertain whether that is the date on which construction is scheduled to be done, or the date the restaurant will officially open.)
We also agreed to communicate by “paper letter” until she can re-enable her access to e-mail. At least that’s what I think we agreed to. She’s still a little uncertain on verb tenses. Certainly, we’ll write and if I understood her correctly, she has already sent a note to us.
- 0 -
Me update.
Friday after work I’m heading down to Oakville’s Glen Abbey golf course with my brother-in-law for the weekend to watch the likes of Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love aye-aye-aye (that’d be “the Third”) play the final two rounds of the Bell Canadian Open, courtesy of my father-in-law. (That is to say, “I’m watching” courtesy of my father-in-law, not “they’re playing” courtesy of my father-in-law.)
At least I assume I’ll be watching the final two rounds. Hurricane Frances’s northern effects seriously delayed Thursday’s opening round and, if she persists in drenching the Glen Abbey course, the worst case scenario will have them bumping all or part of the final round to Monday. (*cough* *cough* Oh, I feel a possible nasty weekend cold coming on. I might just have to phone in sick on Monday morning.)
I’ll add a report in my next update. (*cough*)
“Super-cali-fragilistic-expialidocious…”
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
The Wright Brothers, I recall reading last year in one of the many articles produced about them on the 100th anniversary of their success at Kitty Hawk, made a key breakthrough after spending literally hundreds of hours studying seagulls in flight. The breakthrough? They noted that gulls bent their wings and banked their bodies when they turned. Until that discovery, aircraft designers had been trying to engineer aircraft that fought both those natural tendencies, making a long stream of rigid and clumsy craft that flew only inasmuch as “dropping like a stone” can be construed as “flight”. When Wilbur and Orville designed a flexing “bendability” into their wings, and added banking (tilting while turning) to the Wright Flyer’s capabilities, they brought powered flight successfully into the world.
Thomas Edison, I read somewhere, tried and rejected over 1000 substances as the basis for the filament in his electric lightbulb before finally succeeding with tungsten.
My point is that, for all the innovative brilliance in this world, sometimes the spark that ignites the fire of discovery is created by the most mundane of observations and by repeatedly demanding yet another answer to the endless “What if…” questions.
All of which, I now realize, is way too pompous an analogy to use to introduce my latest discovery. So forget it. Just start reading here. (But you say you’ve already read… Oh, sorry. My goof.)
Here is my discovery: The English in Hikana’s parents’ messages is possibly not their English at all. As a result of a simple idea and an equally simple experiment, I now think that it’s probably the product of a wash and rinse through the online Babelfish translator.
And here’s why I think so.
This is the text of a pretty simple message I sent to Hikana’s parents after she and her classmates had safely departed Ottawa early Saturday morning. This is exactly as sent, and in its entirety:
“Hello Yoshinori and Kaneko and family... Hikana is now in Toronto (400 kilometres from Ottawa). She will watch a baseball game. She will also visit Niagara Falls – near Toronto. Tonight, she and the Ritsumeikan students will stay in hotels in Toronto. She will return home very soon. She was very happy to visit Ottawa. We were very happy to be her host family in Canada. We hope you and Hikana will continue to send us letters and pictures by e-mail. Congratulations on your new restaurant. Good luck!”
After I zinged that brief string of simple sentences though Babelfish, and had it rendered using “English to Japanese”, I next blocked the Japanese version and, just for interest’s sake, ran it back through Babelfish, using the “Japanese to English” option.
Here’s what I got back:
“Today Yoshinori and funds and the family... as for Hikana Toronto (400 kilometers from Ottawa) now it is. She looks at the tournament of the baseball. In addition as for her -- Toronto being soon... you visit Niagara (five untranslated Japanese characters appeared here). Tonight, her and the Ritsumeikan student is restricted to the Toronto hotel. She returns to the house very eventually. She visiting Ottawa, was very happy. We were very happy in her host family of Canada. We you and Hikana desire the fact that it continues to send the letter and image in us with E-mail. The celebration of the restaurant where you are new. Good luck!”
I was struck by the odd combination of really strained syntax and the repeated rendition of the almost, but just not quite, right word. And it seems quite similar to the style in the messages that Hikana’s parents sent to us here in Ottawa.
Two things occur to me: 1. Thank goodness I didn’t just merrily send a Babelfish Japanese version of my message to them. (“Hi folks, your daughter is being held prisoner in a hotel in Toronto. With good behaviour, she’ll be out soon”); 2. Their computer illiteracy (or so Hikana told us) notwithstanding, if it happens that they in their turn – or someone intending courtesy on their behalf – ran my previous messages through Babelfish, what must they be thinking of their daughter’s experiences here in Canada?
Please hurry home, Hikana. And please tell your dad and mom, and all the other folks throwing rocks at the Canadian consulate in Kyoto that what they think we said is not what we actually said at all.
Oh, and as an added footnote, I did sign all three of our family members’ names to the message. Babelfish refused to translate my wife and daughter’s names and simply left them as is, but it thoughtfully rendered me (Mike) as “Microphone”, which my aforementioned wife and daughter immediately adopted as my new name – after they were done with their howls of laughter.
PS…
In a recent entry. I wondered about the use of the word “taiga” in one of their messages. Earlier today, I was closely reading Hikana’s pre-trip personal data sheet to find a home mailing address and, Bingo! She has a sister, and she has a brother – his name is Taiga.
Disclaimer: The mental lightbulb that clicked on when I saw this probably owes nothing to Mr Edison, and everything to the late Mr Douglas Adams, in whose “increasingly misnamed five-part trilogy”, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the universally translating Babelfish appears (It is indeed a fish. And you stick it in your ear.)
Thomas Edison, I read somewhere, tried and rejected over 1000 substances as the basis for the filament in his electric lightbulb before finally succeeding with tungsten.
My point is that, for all the innovative brilliance in this world, sometimes the spark that ignites the fire of discovery is created by the most mundane of observations and by repeatedly demanding yet another answer to the endless “What if…” questions.
All of which, I now realize, is way too pompous an analogy to use to introduce my latest discovery. So forget it. Just start reading here. (But you say you’ve already read… Oh, sorry. My goof.)
Here is my discovery: The English in Hikana’s parents’ messages is possibly not their English at all. As a result of a simple idea and an equally simple experiment, I now think that it’s probably the product of a wash and rinse through the online Babelfish translator.
And here’s why I think so.
This is the text of a pretty simple message I sent to Hikana’s parents after she and her classmates had safely departed Ottawa early Saturday morning. This is exactly as sent, and in its entirety:
“Hello Yoshinori and Kaneko and family... Hikana is now in Toronto (400 kilometres from Ottawa). She will watch a baseball game. She will also visit Niagara Falls – near Toronto. Tonight, she and the Ritsumeikan students will stay in hotels in Toronto. She will return home very soon. She was very happy to visit Ottawa. We were very happy to be her host family in Canada. We hope you and Hikana will continue to send us letters and pictures by e-mail. Congratulations on your new restaurant. Good luck!”
After I zinged that brief string of simple sentences though Babelfish, and had it rendered using “English to Japanese”, I next blocked the Japanese version and, just for interest’s sake, ran it back through Babelfish, using the “Japanese to English” option.
Here’s what I got back:
“Today Yoshinori and funds and the family... as for Hikana Toronto (400 kilometers from Ottawa) now it is. She looks at the tournament of the baseball. In addition as for her -- Toronto being soon... you visit Niagara (five untranslated Japanese characters appeared here). Tonight, her and the Ritsumeikan student is restricted to the Toronto hotel. She returns to the house very eventually. She visiting Ottawa, was very happy. We were very happy in her host family of Canada. We you and Hikana desire the fact that it continues to send the letter and image in us with E-mail. The celebration of the restaurant where you are new. Good luck!”
I was struck by the odd combination of really strained syntax and the repeated rendition of the almost, but just not quite, right word. And it seems quite similar to the style in the messages that Hikana’s parents sent to us here in Ottawa.
Two things occur to me: 1. Thank goodness I didn’t just merrily send a Babelfish Japanese version of my message to them. (“Hi folks, your daughter is being held prisoner in a hotel in Toronto. With good behaviour, she’ll be out soon”); 2. Their computer illiteracy (or so Hikana told us) notwithstanding, if it happens that they in their turn – or someone intending courtesy on their behalf – ran my previous messages through Babelfish, what must they be thinking of their daughter’s experiences here in Canada?
Please hurry home, Hikana. And please tell your dad and mom, and all the other folks throwing rocks at the Canadian consulate in Kyoto that what they think we said is not what we actually said at all.
Oh, and as an added footnote, I did sign all three of our family members’ names to the message. Babelfish refused to translate my wife and daughter’s names and simply left them as is, but it thoughtfully rendered me (Mike) as “Microphone”, which my aforementioned wife and daughter immediately adopted as my new name – after they were done with their howls of laughter.
PS…
In a recent entry. I wondered about the use of the word “taiga” in one of their messages. Earlier today, I was closely reading Hikana’s pre-trip personal data sheet to find a home mailing address and, Bingo! She has a sister, and she has a brother – his name is Taiga.
Disclaimer: The mental lightbulb that clicked on when I saw this probably owes nothing to Mr Edison, and everything to the late Mr Douglas Adams, in whose “increasingly misnamed five-part trilogy”, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the universally translating Babelfish appears (It is indeed a fish. And you stick it in your ear.)
Saturday, September 04, 2004
(Probably not the last footnote about Hikana and her friends.) File this under Too Good Not To Share.
One of the last student events before the farewell ceremony is a fundraising carwash. The photos and story of the Canada 2 group's experience are already on the school's website, but the captions are entirely in Japanese.
So with the advice and guidance of my 13-year old daughter, I captured the introduction to the photos and ran it through an Internet translator called Babelfish, which gave me this in English:
<> カナタコース became after a little. Already coming to Canada, it is 14th day! It was accustomed to also the life of the homestay which is insecure completely. It reaching the point where also communication comes off, now it is pleasant enormously, is. With activity of the school, everyday the variety be able to experience the fact that it is different, it is quick truly for the ♪ time which passes every day when it is complete very to pass is. And Canada in any case is デカイ. Also the road being wide rather, you were surprised. Also the sky chaos it is wide and, green rub it is the っ ちゃ clean. The Canadian person is kind enormously and, Canada is highest. Today, car washing was done with everyone. Present morning however it was rather cold, became hot in the noon. It was the blue sky which the present sky is not cloud one! As for purpose of car washing, the pupil of カナタJapan (the foreign country) is to gather the subsidy in order to study abroad. It divides into two groups, the car washes with the nearby gasoline station, gathers contribution in place of price. It made during morning, "Car Wash" Showing the poster, it called and was packed, it washed the car which is comprehended with everyone, * everyone it was pleasant, doing Car Wash with utmost effort, it increased! ! * The っ て where アンジェラ in everyone, applies the bubble of the water and the detergent with the hose and sows, considerably it was serious! The person whom the clothes do and the び had become the ょ getting wet it was. The び to do, while becoming the ょ getting wet, enjoying, you think that it did Car Wash, * the ♪ ♪ Car Wash which because it persevered, 326 dollars can gather car washing with everyone it was pleasant! ! The host family distantly it is the separation in 1 day after. Good bye, also the party persevering with everyone, we would like to try to become pleasant, is! カナタhighest & * *
All the best, Ritsumeikan students, and congratulations on raising $326 -- a fantastic result from a carwash!
From your many new friends in the land of sky chaos, green rub, hose and sows. We are delighted the picture you take home is that the Canadian person is "kind enormously".
"Considerably it was serious." But it was a heck of a lot of fun!
One of the last student events before the farewell ceremony is a fundraising carwash. The photos and story of the Canada 2 group's experience are already on the school's website, but the captions are entirely in Japanese.
So with the advice and guidance of my 13-year old daughter, I captured the introduction to the photos and ran it through an Internet translator called Babelfish, which gave me this in English:
<> カナタコース became after a little. Already coming to Canada, it is 14th day! It was accustomed to also the life of the homestay which is insecure completely. It reaching the point where also communication comes off, now it is pleasant enormously, is. With activity of the school, everyday the variety be able to experience the fact that it is different, it is quick truly for the ♪ time which passes every day when it is complete very to pass is. And Canada in any case is デカイ. Also the road being wide rather, you were surprised. Also the sky chaos it is wide and, green rub it is the っ ちゃ clean. The Canadian person is kind enormously and, Canada is highest. Today, car washing was done with everyone. Present morning however it was rather cold, became hot in the noon. It was the blue sky which the present sky is not cloud one! As for purpose of car washing, the pupil of カナタJapan (the foreign country) is to gather the subsidy in order to study abroad. It divides into two groups, the car washes with the nearby gasoline station, gathers contribution in place of price. It made during morning, "Car Wash" Showing the poster, it called and was packed, it washed the car which is comprehended with everyone, * everyone it was pleasant, doing Car Wash with utmost effort, it increased! ! * The っ て where アンジェラ in everyone, applies the bubble of the water and the detergent with the hose and sows, considerably it was serious! The person whom the clothes do and the び had become the ょ getting wet it was. The び to do, while becoming the ょ getting wet, enjoying, you think that it did Car Wash, * the ♪ ♪ Car Wash which because it persevered, 326 dollars can gather car washing with everyone it was pleasant! ! The host family distantly it is the separation in 1 day after. Good bye, also the party persevering with everyone, we would like to try to become pleasant, is! カナタhighest & * *
All the best, Ritsumeikan students, and congratulations on raising $326 -- a fantastic result from a carwash!
From your many new friends in the land of sky chaos, green rub, hose and sows. We are delighted the picture you take home is that the Canadian person is "kind enormously".
"Considerably it was serious." But it was a heck of a lot of fun!
Friday, September 03, 2004
Snapshots
We will bid adieu to Hikana this (Saturday) morning at 7:30 in the same suburban high school parking lot we picked her up at 1:30 am -- and has it already been two weeks ago?
I don’t know what she will carry home as the “highlight” memory of her all-too-brief stay in Canada. There were, after all, vast tracts of time spent in the company of friends and classmates on several great excursions aimed at providing a wide feel for life in Canada. So “Free time with host family” might fall a few items down her Top Ten list. (However I, for one, wondered at the wisdom at trooping the whole lot of them off to Fulton’s Farm, a local maple sugar bush, in late August. Granted, it would certainly be a great way to learn the intricacies of English conditional verb tenses: “And over here you see the sap lines where the sap would normally be running from the trees to the sugar shack if this were to have been a Spring month when the sap might have been running, but it’s not, so it isn’t, but it will – in April. Any questions?”)
But for me, the best day we had was a Sunday afternoon trip to a local wildlife park in Montebello, Quebec called Parc-Omega. (They have a website: www.parc-omega.com . It’s worth a click just to see the signature image on their front page.) It’s a concept that probably even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) might tolerate. After all, unlike a traditional zoo and cages, the animals largely roam free on a huge acreage of both open and heavily forested parkland and the “captives” are we the visitors, who remain in our cars throughout much of the visit.
For Hikana, the day was made all the richer by adding her good friend, Nanako, to the activity. We set off, daughter Katie and I occupying the front seat, and our guests side by side in the back. We had already declared at the outset that, for them, it was a “No-English vacation”, thus providing Katie with the eavesdropping opportunity to pick out as much Japanese vocabulary as possible from the happy banter spilling over her shoulder throughout much of the drive.
An extra, and unexpected, highlight had been created by Nanako’s host, Kaye, who suggested we cross the river from Ontario to Quebec by way of the Cumberland Ferry. This we did and it proved to be not only a swift, smooth crossing that added yet another mode of transportation to our guests’ (and Katie’s) Canadian travel experiences, it also eliminated the multi-exit highway confusion I have always experienced getting from Ottawa, across the river by bridge to Gatineau (formerly Hull) and through several interchanges en route to the eastbound north river shore road to Montebello.
We had tried to explain to Hikana and Nanako that large animals would come to the car, and that was why we were packing 15 pounds of carrots. But I don’t think either of them fully understood, or quite foresaw, just how “to” the car a full-grown elk would actually come in search of a snack.
Even after we entered the park gate, and they saw off in the distance a pair of female elk approaching a car in front of us, neither was obviously prepared for what happened next. Like Katie and me in the front seat, Hikana and Nanako had rolled down their back windows. As we came to the first roadblock (a full-grown female elk standing smack in the middle of the road), we rolled gently to a stop. The next thing our guests knew, an animal whose head is larger than a full-grown domestic cat had jammed it (her head) into their laps, searching furiously for the carrots she could clearly smell that each was holding, in a concerted effort to yank the treat away.
The girls weren’t totally paralyzed. But they were clutching each other and screaming with that carnival-like “This is the scariest ride I’ve ever been on!” combination of laughing and shrieking that quite startled me with its intensity.
I gently nudged the accelerator and the elk reluctantly withdrew her head from the car, but not before she’d managed to get a sure-toothed grip on the carrot in Hikana’s hand. In seconds, both of our guests were calmed down enough to understand that it was OK to raise their windows to the point where only an elk nose could gain admission to the car – much more to their satisfaction, and much less to their fright. (They also discovered that the advantage to treating a full-grown mature bull elk, rather than a cow, to a carrot is that the typical car window doesn’t even come close to allowing admission by a head topped with a rack of antlers five feet across.)
It didn’t take long, however, as Katie and I happily continued to host elk faces, petting them as they tugged at the carrots, for both Hikana and Nanako to get into the routine, even calling to them and greeting them as we approached.
(At one point, Katie was snapping souvenir close-up photos, including an abstract close-up we now possess of an elk’s hair-covered neck. I think she must have been bumped by an incoming elk’s nose because she moved her hands to protect the camera. The elk, its decoy move successful, immediately managed to push its head all the way down to the floor of the car and we watched in shock as, in about a second (!), she snaffled more than half a bag of carrots, snatching them up from the floor and back out the window.
After we absorbed that nifty little theft, I started rolling the car forward once again. The last view I had of the elk was in the car’s rearview mirror as, her head shaking like a shark in a feeding frenzy, she shredded the bag sufficiently to send its three pounds or so of remaining carrots all over the road. I think Hikana and Nanako both must have felt some sympathy for Katie because, right up until their own carrot inventories were exhausted, they’d regularly offer another one forward to Katie each time another vagabond ruminant approached.)
Parc-Omega is also home to fallow deer, wild boar, raccoons, timber wolves, arctic wolves, black bears, Canada geese, ducks, coyotes, bison – which outside of an elephant is probably the biggest land animal I’ve ever seen. Those things are huge! (I know, I know: “Inside of an elephant, it’s too dark to see!” Nyuk nyuk nyuk. Nod to Groucho. But I digress.) – and beaver. Because the day was grey and cool, we saw them all, except the beaver who stayed resolutely enlodged. (The carnivores also roam in Parc-Omega, but on more tightly controlled acreage behind some fairly healthy fencing that, Jurassic Park-style, maintains a separation between them and our slowly meandering cars.)
Another of the park visit’s many highlights this day was a magnificent performance by a visiting falconer – and her charges – from a Birds of Prey park in southern Ontario. For half an hour, we were treated to displays of the hunting techniques of the likes of a peregrine falcon, barn owl, red-tailed hawk and bald eagle. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to gently sink our hands through the thick plumage of the moon-faced barn owl, which was quite amenable to being stroked gently by strangers.
- 0 -
Much to my surprise, Hollywood B movies are right about one thing. A Japanese visitor to an English-speaking environment really does say, “Ah so!” – a lot. It’s said in precisely the same way I would say, “Oh, I see.” Sometimes the “Ah” portion was drawn out as Hikana would mentally assimilate an explanation, with “so” punctuating the realization and understanding. (“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh – so!”)
- 0 -
Some curious customs officer in Japan is going to have to determine whether a package of Kellogg’s individual cereal box servings (Yes, the “Kel-Bol-Pak” is still alive and well.) of Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies should be quarantined or not before Hikana will be permitted to open each of its vacuum-packed servings and unleash the aromas into the atmosphere surrounding Kameoka City. She bought the package to take home to her mother. Hopefully, both it and the can of President’s Choice “The Great Canadian Coffee” we gave her will be permitted entry into Japan.
- 0 -
For some still unknown-to-us reason (not for lack of asking! But the reply was always a smile and a shrug.), Hikana and her classmates flash the peace sign in almost every single photo taken of them. In some cases, it varies slightly so as to be made by the index and baby fingers (which I tried to explain was actually the non-verbal “cheer” by fans of the University of Texas Longhorns football team – “Hook ‘em Horns!”). But mostly it’s the old 60s flower-child “Peace” gesture. Hikana and Nanako even have photos of each other with an about-to-be-bitten hot dog held right to their mouths with one hand, while the other is flashing the peace sign.
Personally, I suspect a school contest, with points awarded for the most creatively photographed environment in which the gesture is visible. We have a lovely photo of both Hikana and Nanako happily flashing the peace sign while lounging on the lush verdure that is the Chateau Montebello Hotel’s front lawn. We tried to persuade Hikana to identify it as “my host family house” when she returns home, and to point to an upper floor window in the venerable four-storey log castle as “my room”. She certainly got the joke but I suspect her obvious integrity will prevail.
- 0 -
Remember your own school trips? If they were anything like mine, it was an annual event – usually made up of the one or maybe two graduating classes in the school, usually something for which you’d “volunteered” to stand behind a table during several of maybe 25 bake sales held over the course of the year (and every last one of which left you inevitably with six Chinette plates of some well-meaning nutrition-focused parents’ infliction of oatmeal date squares containing enough fibre to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry) – and the destination, often as not, was a city elsewhere in Canada, maybe even in the same province.
Well, here is a link to Hikana’s school and the online album of their end-of-year trips for 2004:
http://www.ujc.ritsumei.ac.jp/ujc/topics/2004/august/school_trip/
(Hikana is part of “Canada 2”. Sadly, she had to serve as referee for most of Team Sports Day, because early in the day she received an evil-looking bruise and a cut across her right wrist when she was whacked with a lacrosse stick.)
The site opens to a stream of destination bars down the left side, each clickable to a brief album of photos (note the frequency with which the peace sign appears) and a stream of captions in characters that will probably cause your computer to explode. I’ll save you the trouble if your computer says, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!” or something equivalent in Gates-ese. The destinations include England, France, Germany, America, Australia, China, and two separate Canada groups. And that’s just for this year!
I read on one of the school’s English language information sites that Uji City’s Ritsumeikan – which Hikana told us enrolls about 3,000 students – is considered “elite”. With at least seven trips abroad annually for some 500 students in all, the photo evidence of the quality of its overseas trips -- and for that matter of the school itself -- would sure seem to bear out this description.
Certainly as a guest and, no doubt, new friend and future pen-pal, Hikana is as elite as they come.
We three are going to miss her.
We will bid adieu to Hikana this (Saturday) morning at 7:30 in the same suburban high school parking lot we picked her up at 1:30 am -- and has it already been two weeks ago?
I don’t know what she will carry home as the “highlight” memory of her all-too-brief stay in Canada. There were, after all, vast tracts of time spent in the company of friends and classmates on several great excursions aimed at providing a wide feel for life in Canada. So “Free time with host family” might fall a few items down her Top Ten list. (However I, for one, wondered at the wisdom at trooping the whole lot of them off to Fulton’s Farm, a local maple sugar bush, in late August. Granted, it would certainly be a great way to learn the intricacies of English conditional verb tenses: “And over here you see the sap lines where the sap would normally be running from the trees to the sugar shack if this were to have been a Spring month when the sap might have been running, but it’s not, so it isn’t, but it will – in April. Any questions?”)
But for me, the best day we had was a Sunday afternoon trip to a local wildlife park in Montebello, Quebec called Parc-Omega. (They have a website: www.parc-omega.com . It’s worth a click just to see the signature image on their front page.) It’s a concept that probably even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) might tolerate. After all, unlike a traditional zoo and cages, the animals largely roam free on a huge acreage of both open and heavily forested parkland and the “captives” are we the visitors, who remain in our cars throughout much of the visit.
For Hikana, the day was made all the richer by adding her good friend, Nanako, to the activity. We set off, daughter Katie and I occupying the front seat, and our guests side by side in the back. We had already declared at the outset that, for them, it was a “No-English vacation”, thus providing Katie with the eavesdropping opportunity to pick out as much Japanese vocabulary as possible from the happy banter spilling over her shoulder throughout much of the drive.
An extra, and unexpected, highlight had been created by Nanako’s host, Kaye, who suggested we cross the river from Ontario to Quebec by way of the Cumberland Ferry. This we did and it proved to be not only a swift, smooth crossing that added yet another mode of transportation to our guests’ (and Katie’s) Canadian travel experiences, it also eliminated the multi-exit highway confusion I have always experienced getting from Ottawa, across the river by bridge to Gatineau (formerly Hull) and through several interchanges en route to the eastbound north river shore road to Montebello.
We had tried to explain to Hikana and Nanako that large animals would come to the car, and that was why we were packing 15 pounds of carrots. But I don’t think either of them fully understood, or quite foresaw, just how “to” the car a full-grown elk would actually come in search of a snack.
Even after we entered the park gate, and they saw off in the distance a pair of female elk approaching a car in front of us, neither was obviously prepared for what happened next. Like Katie and me in the front seat, Hikana and Nanako had rolled down their back windows. As we came to the first roadblock (a full-grown female elk standing smack in the middle of the road), we rolled gently to a stop. The next thing our guests knew, an animal whose head is larger than a full-grown domestic cat had jammed it (her head) into their laps, searching furiously for the carrots she could clearly smell that each was holding, in a concerted effort to yank the treat away.
The girls weren’t totally paralyzed. But they were clutching each other and screaming with that carnival-like “This is the scariest ride I’ve ever been on!” combination of laughing and shrieking that quite startled me with its intensity.
I gently nudged the accelerator and the elk reluctantly withdrew her head from the car, but not before she’d managed to get a sure-toothed grip on the carrot in Hikana’s hand. In seconds, both of our guests were calmed down enough to understand that it was OK to raise their windows to the point where only an elk nose could gain admission to the car – much more to their satisfaction, and much less to their fright. (They also discovered that the advantage to treating a full-grown mature bull elk, rather than a cow, to a carrot is that the typical car window doesn’t even come close to allowing admission by a head topped with a rack of antlers five feet across.)
It didn’t take long, however, as Katie and I happily continued to host elk faces, petting them as they tugged at the carrots, for both Hikana and Nanako to get into the routine, even calling to them and greeting them as we approached.
(At one point, Katie was snapping souvenir close-up photos, including an abstract close-up we now possess of an elk’s hair-covered neck. I think she must have been bumped by an incoming elk’s nose because she moved her hands to protect the camera. The elk, its decoy move successful, immediately managed to push its head all the way down to the floor of the car and we watched in shock as, in about a second (!), she snaffled more than half a bag of carrots, snatching them up from the floor and back out the window.
After we absorbed that nifty little theft, I started rolling the car forward once again. The last view I had of the elk was in the car’s rearview mirror as, her head shaking like a shark in a feeding frenzy, she shredded the bag sufficiently to send its three pounds or so of remaining carrots all over the road. I think Hikana and Nanako both must have felt some sympathy for Katie because, right up until their own carrot inventories were exhausted, they’d regularly offer another one forward to Katie each time another vagabond ruminant approached.)
Parc-Omega is also home to fallow deer, wild boar, raccoons, timber wolves, arctic wolves, black bears, Canada geese, ducks, coyotes, bison – which outside of an elephant is probably the biggest land animal I’ve ever seen. Those things are huge! (I know, I know: “Inside of an elephant, it’s too dark to see!” Nyuk nyuk nyuk. Nod to Groucho. But I digress.) – and beaver. Because the day was grey and cool, we saw them all, except the beaver who stayed resolutely enlodged. (The carnivores also roam in Parc-Omega, but on more tightly controlled acreage behind some fairly healthy fencing that, Jurassic Park-style, maintains a separation between them and our slowly meandering cars.)
Another of the park visit’s many highlights this day was a magnificent performance by a visiting falconer – and her charges – from a Birds of Prey park in southern Ontario. For half an hour, we were treated to displays of the hunting techniques of the likes of a peregrine falcon, barn owl, red-tailed hawk and bald eagle. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to gently sink our hands through the thick plumage of the moon-faced barn owl, which was quite amenable to being stroked gently by strangers.
- 0 -
Much to my surprise, Hollywood B movies are right about one thing. A Japanese visitor to an English-speaking environment really does say, “Ah so!” – a lot. It’s said in precisely the same way I would say, “Oh, I see.” Sometimes the “Ah” portion was drawn out as Hikana would mentally assimilate an explanation, with “so” punctuating the realization and understanding. (“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh – so!”)
- 0 -
Some curious customs officer in Japan is going to have to determine whether a package of Kellogg’s individual cereal box servings (Yes, the “Kel-Bol-Pak” is still alive and well.) of Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies should be quarantined or not before Hikana will be permitted to open each of its vacuum-packed servings and unleash the aromas into the atmosphere surrounding Kameoka City. She bought the package to take home to her mother. Hopefully, both it and the can of President’s Choice “The Great Canadian Coffee” we gave her will be permitted entry into Japan.
- 0 -
For some still unknown-to-us reason (not for lack of asking! But the reply was always a smile and a shrug.), Hikana and her classmates flash the peace sign in almost every single photo taken of them. In some cases, it varies slightly so as to be made by the index and baby fingers (which I tried to explain was actually the non-verbal “cheer” by fans of the University of Texas Longhorns football team – “Hook ‘em Horns!”). But mostly it’s the old 60s flower-child “Peace” gesture. Hikana and Nanako even have photos of each other with an about-to-be-bitten hot dog held right to their mouths with one hand, while the other is flashing the peace sign.
Personally, I suspect a school contest, with points awarded for the most creatively photographed environment in which the gesture is visible. We have a lovely photo of both Hikana and Nanako happily flashing the peace sign while lounging on the lush verdure that is the Chateau Montebello Hotel’s front lawn. We tried to persuade Hikana to identify it as “my host family house” when she returns home, and to point to an upper floor window in the venerable four-storey log castle as “my room”. She certainly got the joke but I suspect her obvious integrity will prevail.
- 0 -
Remember your own school trips? If they were anything like mine, it was an annual event – usually made up of the one or maybe two graduating classes in the school, usually something for which you’d “volunteered” to stand behind a table during several of maybe 25 bake sales held over the course of the year (and every last one of which left you inevitably with six Chinette plates of some well-meaning nutrition-focused parents’ infliction of oatmeal date squares containing enough fibre to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry) – and the destination, often as not, was a city elsewhere in Canada, maybe even in the same province.
Well, here is a link to Hikana’s school and the online album of their end-of-year trips for 2004:
http://www.ujc.ritsumei.ac.jp/ujc/topics/2004/august/school_trip/
(Hikana is part of “Canada 2”. Sadly, she had to serve as referee for most of Team Sports Day, because early in the day she received an evil-looking bruise and a cut across her right wrist when she was whacked with a lacrosse stick.)
The site opens to a stream of destination bars down the left side, each clickable to a brief album of photos (note the frequency with which the peace sign appears) and a stream of captions in characters that will probably cause your computer to explode. I’ll save you the trouble if your computer says, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!” or something equivalent in Gates-ese. The destinations include England, France, Germany, America, Australia, China, and two separate Canada groups. And that’s just for this year!
I read on one of the school’s English language information sites that Uji City’s Ritsumeikan – which Hikana told us enrolls about 3,000 students – is considered “elite”. With at least seven trips abroad annually for some 500 students in all, the photo evidence of the quality of its overseas trips -- and for that matter of the school itself -- would sure seem to bear out this description.
Certainly as a guest and, no doubt, new friend and future pen-pal, Hikana is as elite as they come.
We three are going to miss her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)