The Joy of the Commute

After London, I had a 6 hour layover in New Delhi before catching my flight to Amritsar, the location of the closest airport to my dad's hometown of Jalandhar in Punjab. In a way, it felt like a wasted because if the Delhi airport actually had trains running from there as well, I could have caught a train to Jalandhar and been there in the same space of time or even less, but what can you do? Oddly enough, the ticket I bought was the cheapest option, even taking into account the fact that I'm flying home from Pakistan! I decided to at least elevate my legs during my stop in Delhi, since my ankles were so swollen, as I mentioned in my last post.

My seat on the plane this time was pretty bad, second in the middle of 4 seats. Being in the middle any time in a flight isn't great, although I don't mind on short flights. It's just the long-haul ones that are really hard to handle. What made it worse is that the guy to my right took up all the arm space, the guy to my left took up leg space, and the woman in front of me reclined her chair all the way back, so I was pretty cramped most of the trip--and the Virgin Atlantic craft seems to have seats that recline more than I remember in other planes. The staff were not the best either. The flight attendant got distracted after the guy to my left asked for another drink, and she failed to collect my empty tray. I thought she would come back to where she left off, but she didn't, and it took 25 minutes before someone responded to my service call. It's the first time I've flown with Virgin, so it's a very poor first impression.

The main problem with flying to India is that you fly with Indians. They take up a lot of space, as mentioned above, without any thought or consideration of others, and depending on the situation, they can be smelly--refer back to my archived blog, when I get it up and running, about the old Punjabi lady who leaned on me all the way home from India and left her shoes off to reveal her smelly feet in knee-highs. Very unpleasant, especially after 14 hours of it! I didn't have any situation like that this time, at least, and of all things, there was a smell of rosewater in the plane! Of course, this is a generality about Indians; obviously not everyone is like that, but somehow, I always seem to get stuck next to the ones that think they own the plane, and it has always been a frustrating experience. I just hope my flights back to Canada are more pleasant!

Back on the road

I have the privilege of returning to South Asia again for a month, this time to spend 3 weeks in India and 1 in Pakistan. Two of the weeks I'm in India are business, but I decided to spend an additional week to visit with family, especially as I didn't have time to do so last time I travelled to India on business. I like having had the opportunity to see them this time. I was able to visit with additional family before even getting to India, though, as I had an 8 hour layover in London and wanted to head out to see my cousins who live there. I was only able to meet one of them as the other had some immediate tasks to attend to with workers coming to her house and what not, but at least I saw my one cousin and was able to meet his wife for the first time. It would have been great to hop on the tube and head over to her direction, but I spent so long going through customs that by the time I got out, caught a train and then a bus to get to my meeting point with my one cousin, we only really had a couple of hours to visit, so there wasn't enough time to go anywhere else.



(Street scene in London while standing at Earl's Court bus stop)

My flight to London was actually quite pleasant, despite being full. Though seated in the middle section and in the very last row, I at least got an aisle seat, and they also had enough space to recline the chair, so I did do that this time because I knew there was no one behind me I would annoy! I was able to sleep for most of the trip, especially as London flights from Edmonton are always night departures, and by the time I arrived in London, I felt well-rested and ready to hit the light fantastic--in contrast to my arrival in India, by which time my ankles had swollen, and I was exhausted! In any case, one of the funny things I saw on the plane was a guy who was knitting. You normally don't see anyone knitting generally, let alone a male. He looked like he was in his early 20s; he has a skill that most females today don't even have!

I had a great visit with my cousin. We went to this little restaurant somewhere around Notting Hill area, and just had a good visit for the few hours I was there. I had fish and chips, not so much because I was in England but because I wanted to eat something lighter than the rest of the menu could offer, and my cousin at his wife shared something called a pide, which I still can't really figure out what it is. It seemed to be something like a pizza, but I don't know how a pide differs from that.

I took the Heathrow Express from Paddington back to the airport, which was much faster than taking the tube. I didn't see much seating at first, so I asked this one guy if I could sit next to him, but it turned out he didn't speak English, so one of his buddies said I should go ahead and sit down. By the time we sorted that out, some other girl had already squeezed in front of me and sat next to the guy, so I just moved on. When I was getting off at my terminal, they were still on the train, getting off at another terminal obviously, and the guy who could speak English said goodbye to me, and then he waved, saying "From Russia with love." That just made me laugh. If there's one thing I can guarantee when I travel, I will always meet at least one funny person!

Photos from Cache Creek Ranch July 2011

Thankfully, one of my friends and faithful blog followers reminded me that he is not on Facebook, so I will post the link to my photo album. Facebook at least provides a way for photo albums to be shared publicly with people who aren't on Facebook, so hopefully this link will work.

Canadian Sights

As much as I love travelling around the world, I do enjoy staying close to home and enjoying local sights and scenery. One thing I've learned over the years, I'm a Prairie girl through and through. I can enjoy the mountains or a beautiful beach, and I've seen some really exotic things on this planet, but there is nothing I love more than my pastoral, prairie scenes. It's the most impressive for me when the canola fields are in full bloom, their bright yellow blossoms a bright contrast against blue summer skies or when grain fields are golden at harvest time, and their sway in gentle winds is to me as soothing as ocean waves. It's so life-giving, too, knowing how these fields feed us and other people in the world.

When I went out to my aunt's ranch over the Canada Day long weekend, I didn't get to see these things as it's too early in the year yet, but it was still a relaxing drive about 2 hours northeast of where I live. It's Ukrainian country out that way, so you see several Orthodox churches dotting the landscape along the way. I posted a few pictures on Facebook, which I think anyone who follows my blog is on anyway, so I direct you to the photos there.

My other purpose, aside from visiting family, was to go horseback riding at my aunt's place. I started riding before I could walk and would ride every summer when I'd go to my grandparents' farm as a child, but once I wasn't able to spend my whole summers there, combined with my grandparents' aging process not allowing them to break horses anymore, there was a long hiatus where I barely rode. My uncle up north has great horses, but he lives about a 7 hour drive from me, which isn't really convenient to just pop by on a weekend. In any case, it's so great to have my aunt and her horses closer so I can go more often. So far, this has only resulted in my being able to go out once a year in the last 3 years, but it's more than I was doing in the past. I love the smell of saddle leather and of the horses. Riding in and of itself is great fun for me, but it also reminds me of my grandpa a lot because he loved horses so much, and I remember going to horse sales and rodeos with him all the time during those summers when I was little.

I definitely didn't become the horsewoman I sometimes dreamed I might. This became especially apparent through the events of my last ride! It always takes me a bit to get used to the horse I'm on. I usually don't ride the same horse twice when I go, so I just have to figure out what to do with the horse I have, and then once that comfortable relationship is established, it's smooth-going from there on in. I think I felt a little overconfident with that relationship when I let my horse run up a steep hill, not an uncommon thing to do as horses do like to run up as it seems to make it a bit easier for them. I've gone up that hill before without difficulty, but I didn't maintain control of the horse this time and let her go too fast. Before I knew it, it became a slow-motion moment in which one of my feet came out of the stirrup, I lost balance and was trying to figure out how to re-gain control. The horse started getting a bit jumpy, however, and before I knew it, I proceeded to be launched into the air and ended up flat on my back. Thankfully, we were in a grassy field and not on a gravel road, and I was not kicked or stomped on by the horse, so it was a best-case scenario if you're ever going to be bucked off a horse. I woke up really stiff the next day, but by today, I was already able to cycle to the gym and do a light workout there, so my recovery is also not going too slowly. I think I should just concede to the fact that I'm not an expert and don't have sufficient time to become so!

Home

As the traveller, the wayfaring stranger that I am, I do often reflect on "home," what it is and what it means to come there. As readers, you may have wondered yourself, sometimes, where my home is or where I feel most at home. And I think the reason I reflect on the subject so much is because I haven't got a definitive answer for myself!

My original concept of home was a place that was familiar, a structure, be it a house or condo or what have you, a place where you felt safe, and somewhere that's a refuge. I had most of that growing up, all except for the refuge part as family issues often created certain difficulties, but for the most part, I thought the house where I grew up was a good place to be. I knew my way around. I knew my neighbours. And I liked them. The places I hung out and went to school were nearby. And it was indeed familiar as I lived there for 16 years of my life.

That house was sold a year after my parents separated and my brother moved to the US for school. My mom and I moved into a new place, and we had to make that our home. I had hoped it would become home, anyway. I painted a mural on my bedroom wall with the sense that this would be a permanent place to come back to. My mom and I lived there for a few years, seeing me through the majority of my undergraduate and graduate school life. But life changed again, and neither my mom or me was to remain in that place, and shortly after my mom remarried, she moved into a new house. That happened while I was living in Mexico, and while it saddened me in many ways, I had thought I would eventually make a life and a home in Mexico now that I was living on my own with the intention of staying there and never moving back to Canada.

Oh, how life changes. I lasted 2 years in Mexico but was unable to develop any community of stable and reliable friends (I did have good friends, but some were other Canadians that wouldn't be there with me forever, so they were reliable but just not stable to stay there). There were many reasons for this, which are not worth going into, but suffice it to say that what I was hoping to have happen to create the home I wanted--developing that network of friends, meeting and marrying someone and buying a home, having good work/life balance--did not happen, and I returned home to recuperate.

I thought I would only stay here for a couple of years before heading out to another country again or even to another city. But I've stayed in my home city since I returned from Mexico and have gone through a lot of instability here such as the inability to find employment I like well enough to stay at for a long period of time, and this has taken a bit of a financial toll on me, which makes it more difficult to leave again when I think about moving expenses. I think I'm digressing. In any case, during this time, my grandparents' yard was also sold to someone outside the family after Grandpa passed away (at least I think that's the chronology of events, if I remember right), and Grandma remained in the house for some years but eventually had to move into a home as her health deteriorated, and she wasn't able to look after herself anymore. This felt like a pretty big blow the first time this event seemed it would become a reality as the farm felt like the only home I had left in the world. It was the place I spent my childhood summers, a place of fun and where there were so many good memories and where happy memories of childhood seemed to outnumber the sad ones. But now it is gone.

When you see your homes disappear from your life, it's unsettling, literally. I feel unsettled because I feel like there's no real home for me, no place where I have the kinds of deep-rooted memories and the history that I had with these places.

I have also realised over time, as a result of these events, that part of the reason I struggle with this is that I dwell too much on the past, that I dislike change, and that I'm an "out of sight, out of mind" person that needs the visual cues to evoke memories of the past. Maybe that's why it's better I not have these things. Maybe I never would have moved forward. I have now no attachment to a place. Because I rent an apartment now, my memories here seem impermanent, like they don't want to sink into the walls to tell a story later one because they know it's not going to last, so there's no point in trying. (I love my apartment's location, though, as it's a couple of blocks from the house where I grew up, and I feel like the neighbourhood is my home.) I realised that this instability has made me thankful, in some ways, of being forced to have no attachment to a place and of having other things I have no attachment to, like traditions, because we didn't really have many of them growing up anyway. And so as it seemed like my whole life fell apart, I came to the understanding that all I really want is stability, something that doesn't change, or something that I can rely on. That's what my home will be. It might be a place. It might be a relationship. It might even be my faith. It will be a space that provides me with rest, to fully be myself without fear of judgment, a refuge from the world when it seems like it's raging against you.

What's home to you? I haven't found it yet, though I do enjoy my quiet solitude in my apartment sometimes, and I can only presume that my definition may once again change as life goes on, and I get a little older, and hopefully a little wiser.

Quick West Coast Trip

I ended up having to go to Southern California, Seattle, and Portland for work recently. It was a quick trip and somewhat packed, although I did have a couple of days where I only had evening events or I was travelling in the evening with no events during the day, so I was able to do a bit of sightseeing. My sightseeing in Balboa Park in San Diego was cut short by some rain, but later in the day the sun came out, so I made my way over to the original part of San Diego. There isn't much for me to say that my pictures don't, but the one thing I can say is that I was happy that my hotel in Seattle was right across from the Space Needle there since I didn't get a chance to see anything there due to lack of time. Below is a bit of an album I put together. I hadn't realised my camera's battery would already be dead, so I never bothered checking it before I went out in San Diego to see stuff, so all those photos are taken with my iPhone as well as the night photos of the Space Needle as I just arrived there that same day and wouldn't have been able to charge my battery yet.

Quick addition about photos

For some reason, my album completely mixed up the photos, and I can't figure out a way to put them in the right order, so I apologise if it gets confusing.

I also wanted to mention I didn't get good pictures from the ferry trip between Hong Kong and Macau because of the pollution, poor lighting, and dirty ferry windows. It's too bad because it was really pretty in many ways.