Does Fun Matter?

Denia, SPAIN
Dec.27, 2014 - Jan.3, 2015

Sometimes, the signs and label designs in other countries make me giggle.

What could this be:

Answer at bottom.

I began the first day of 2015 - and of the rest of my life - with the worst hangover I have had in years...  I did not drink loads either.  I blame the champagne (which was actually quite tasty).  I dragged my sorry carcass out of bed in the morning and took the long walk from our hotel into town slowly, looking for my credit card.  It had disappeared last night sometime after we found the little blues bar in which to warm up, once the street party and live music (and champagne) were done with.

Dinner with Colin's friends at the only restaurant left in town with room
for New Year's Eve - best Indian meal I'd had in ages

This is how they do it Spanish style.

I got to the bar, and it was closed.  Of course it was closed - it had probably just closed a few hours ago!  After paying 8,00 Euros for a tiny pile of egg with mushrooms, surrounded by teeny weeny toasts - but a fantastic cafe con leche - we rescued the car from the excellent parking job Colin had accomplished the night before.

It's not touching, honest

Not being good for much else besides walking and driving, we drove over the mountain to the town on the other side, Jevea.  Or Xevia.  Or Xabia.  Depending which sign you happened to catch (there are a few language variations in the area).  There, I actually did "likes long walks on the beach" - very good for relaxation.

Here is my beach study on "What Is Perspective" - is the photo below:
a) a landscape of majestic volcanoes among lakes, violently spewing volcanic steam, or
b) waves on rocks.

While I ambled amblingly over cratered rocks and big rounded pebbles, I saw the sign:  AAR IQ is global!

The Official IQ Logo - bottom sign!

The actual beginning of The Vacation occurred, in my mind, during my last trip to Cary, North Carolina in November - headquarters of Railinc, the IT arm of the AAR (American Association of Railroads) - to meet with the Inspection Quality (IQ) Task Force.  In English: meeting with my counterparts from other North American railroads.  We went out for a highly recommended local southern meal of fried green tomatoes, funny round cornmeal things, catfish, collard greens, creamy grits, chess pie, and a taste of sweet potato pie.  The first of many a culinary travel adventure indeed.

The IQ logo (bottom): the overcomable bump

I looked forward to these trips to "meet with the industry".  As representatives of the other major railroads in N.America, along with the AAR and their IT and R&D arms, we discussed, debated, circled, spaghettied and eventually progressed ideas into the beginnings of tangible systems, processes and outcomes.  This is not easy when you each represent different factions of work in a general area of expertise, different companies, and different entities.  But there is no question every person in the room, or on the many conference calls, wished to progress the overall idea of what we wanted to do, and brought to the table the best of their skills in order to do so.  That is probably what I miss the most.

Besides the calm day along the beach, Spain was about fun - days at the rocks with Colin's university friend Neil and wife Debbie, making meals and drinking wine in the mansion where Neil and Debbie were staying (after their original rental suffered sewer back-up)...  Fun, it let's the mind go.

Colin looking up at the neighbourhood rock shortly
before we got spattered with hail (!!)

Answer:

Sticker on front passenger seat visor in our rental car

So THAT's Why - Part IV

ENGLAND
Dec.25, 2015

Does History Matter?
Vegetables

Mommy, where do brussel sprouts come from?

I have to eat them every Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I honestly had no idea.

I am actually starting to enjoy them - I think it might be a maturity thing.

So THAT's Why - Part III

ENGLAND
Dec.27, 2015

Does History Matter?
Me

And what about my history?  I am the oldest child - this gives me "can't say no" tendencies as, being the first, the experts say I could apparently sense from very early on my parents' anxious expectations in raising and not messing up their perfect first child.  Once the second child comes, parents tend to be much more relaxed since they've already given up on not messing up the first.  The third is a mere toy for the family since there's no longer any expectation whatsoever that it won't get screwed up.  My perfection ended in grade one when a substitute teacher gave me homework.  I never got homework - I always finished my work in class.  I cried.

Fallen from grace, grade two became a year of subtle and active rebellion.  I kept a very messy desk, and I carved my art into its wooden top.  Esteban, wild, devious and Spanish, became my new best friend.  I practiced swearing in both English and Spanish, and spent many a lunch hour missing recess, sitting on the floor in the hallway writing lines with the bad kids.  I enjoyed that year.

My mother is from French heritage, her ancestors having left Normandy for Canada in the early 1600's.  At least 30,000 years before that, Neanderthals were in France, telling their own stories through drawings on cave walls.  This could corroborate Colin's theory that I am part Neanderthal, as recent studies have suggested Neanderthal genes are present in modern Homo Sapiens - in terms of red hair, the jury is still out on whether this is due to interbreeding, or independent mutations [1], but apparently they were quite good at maths and would have liked spreadsheets.  Red heads are are also notoriously sensitive (to thermal pain) [2] - Colin is English, so is probably just referring to my French side as "sensitive".

My father is from British heritage - a little bit of English, Scottish and Irish coming together after arriving in Canada and the USA over a hundred years ago.  His great grandparents ran the Green Man pub in Cambridge, and I thoroughly enjoy a good tasty ale over lager any day.

A Green Man Pub in London

I am neither predominantly left-brained nor right-brained, but somewhere in the middle.  This means I like to make graphs to explain things, but, they also have to look nice.  So what might take an engineer x hours to do, or an artist y hours to do, will take me (x + y) hours to do.

I grew up in a household where the kids did as they were told.  I am sure we each tried to balk that once, and have blocked the repercussions from memory as often happens to victims of horrible trauma.  We were taught to respect.  Everyone.

I am therefore a corporate office's best hamster, because even if I have to work 23.9 hours a day (to get it right AND to make it look good), I will get everything done that is asked of me and meet or exceed all expectation.  My first reaction is to assume that it comes from sound and well-thought-out authority.

I will have a perpetual to-do list which will be pages long; I will have 400 thoughts per minute flying through my head in an attempt to "keep on top of it all";  I will do all that I can to work nice with others, even those who think respect is optional within the corporate walls (intolerable assholes, to my sensitive nature).

And I will continue to convince myself "I will get caught up, it will get better once I finish this particular bit of work, once we start a new project, once we get some new help, once...".  Because of course yes, everything can be done as expected.

Artistic representation of work
(photo taken in the Peak District)

When I told my parents all of this (and that it's all their fault), my dad pointed out that I am in fact the oldest child of an oldest child.

So THAT's Why - PART II

Croft, ENGLAND
Dec.24-27, 2014

Does History Matter?
People I Know

Tuesday evening, I did not sit in congested traffic breathing in exhaust fumes, nor did I eat at almost 10pm after leaving work too late, nor did I fall into bed exhausted from the day's endless to-do list and demands and deadlines, unable to sleep because of the 400 thoughts per minute flying through my head, too tired even to have a non-conversation on the phone with Colin.

Instead, Tuesday evening we drove North out of London on the M1, with Colin's brother in his older-school Range Rover, heading to the tiny village of Croft in Leicester (ie. middle England) where their parents live, and where the Christmas turkey was getting dressed for the holidays.

If you want to try and understand humans and civilization, a museum is the place to go.  If you want to try and understand the people you know, spend time with them in the company of their family.

On the agenda for the visit of Colin-the-prodigal-son was sorting through and disposing of boxes of old photos, slides, school notebooks and university papers his parents had been storing since he left home.

(I had recently done the same with my old school and university notes.  They stack of binders and papers had moved with me from Edmonton to Calgary to Cranbrook to Golden back to Calgary, re-stacked at each place and not once cracked open.  At the beginning of November, all but the binders was ceremoniously burned with Colin's help and a bottle of wine, at a stone fire pit just outside of Banff.  It was both heartbreaking (it felt like I was burning a big piece of my brain) and liberating (of stuff)).

My education going up in flames - near Banff, AB

Paging through Colin's primary school drawings of elephants and lizards (Colin drew these!?), his mid-school science experiments (looking at some of the big words, I think he was perhaps like me, writing down the correct conclusions, sometimes not having a clue what the heck it actually meant), his A-Level assignments (he actually liked chemistry), and school pictures, this person - who has only a four-year history in my life plus a few pre-four-year anecdotes - became a human being!  He actually was a kid once, his teachers told him he had bad writing, he has cousins and pictures of family get-togethers, he went on climbing trips with friends...

I also saw the schools Colin went to, the farms his father managed, the country roads on which he rode his bike, then on which he drove, then on which he crashed in friends' cars.  At a young age, he was given farm responsibilities and tractors to drive - in my urban upbringing, we kids (female and male) were given household chores such as dishes, vacuuming, dusting and general tidying.

Colin and his dad on one of two hills that has not been eaten yet by the quarry

Now, back in the present, when it doesn't occur to Colin that a house doesn't clean itself, I will remember that that wasn't part of his repertoire while growing up and that as far as a young boy could see, the house was always just naturally clean (thanks mom).

Colin and the cactus he started from seed
in primary school

Each of Colin's family members is very different in terms of interests and what makes them tick.  Conversations at the dinner table revolve around those individual interests, layered and overlapping, occurring all at the same time, sometimes colliding at a common intersection before diverging again, one way with the person on your left and another with the person on your right.  As the youngest in his family, I can only imagine where Colin's voice fit in those growing-up years.

Now, back in the present, when Colin talks over me yet again, I will not jump up and down on my chair in muted exasperation.  If he goes on at great length about something that interests or excites him, I will not endure with thoughts of how I might cure his A.D.D.  Instead, I will be patient, and I will picture that little boy in one of those pictures, or think of the young man running off to pursue his own interests, and remember what it was like at the dinner table.

Michelle and Colin in the Peak District

So THAT's Why - Part I

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London, ENGLAND
Dec.21-23, 2014

Does History Matter?
Civilization

Monday morning, I did not wake up with an aching jaw from gritting my teeth through the night, nor with 400 thoughts per minute flying through my head (with not even the good thoughts sticking around long enough to be remembered), nor with damaging acid in my stomach in apprehension of inane battles I was likely to have at work during the day, the week, the month, for the rest of my career.

Instead, Monday morning Colin and I took the bus and the underground from Newington Green, where we were staying with his brother, into London, with the plan to spend 1-2 (in Colin's mind) / a few (in Michelle's mind) hours at the British Museum.

Main entrance to the British Museum in London

The museum is enormous.  One has to pick a section (or two) of interest on which to focus - trying to see the whole place in one visit would be hard on both mental and physical health.  We agreed to go to Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia refers to an area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, encompassing what is now the southern part of Turkey, the Eastern part of Syria, the centre of Iraq, and a tiny bit of Southwest Iran.  Civilization development thrived under the Mesopotamians over a period covering 6000-539 BC, at which point it was conquered and taken over by the Persians [1].

Mesopotamia

The blip on the timeline of the universe which is "civilization" began roughly around 10,000-9,000 BC.  This is when we began living in stationary communities rather than nomadic groups, and developing agriculture.

Walking through these museum relics, reading the explanations (alas, Colin would not let me read every single description for every single piece), a common theme emerged:  people doing the best that they could at the time with what they knew at the time.

On the one hand, the innocent grinding stone, used to grind wheat, barley and lentils into flour, allowed communities to have a somewhat more dependable source of food relative to the hunter-gatherers, and thus increase survival rates with decreased likelihood of starvation.  On the other hand, some argue that flour is a primary source of today's health and obesity problems in populations around the world.

Innocent grinding stone from about 9500-9000 BC

Only once our hunger was consistently satisfied could we begin to think about the finer things in life:  the Mesopotamians developed their own writing, mathematics, irrigation, metal, games, and jewelry.  It wasn't until around 3000 BC that writing came about, initially as characters carved into stone tablets, and nearly another thousand years before the Mesopotamians produced what is possibly the first great piece of literature.  The 'book' (of stone tablets), called "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (2100 BC), tells of the life and adventures of real-life king Gilgamesh, and at one point references a great flood which was sent by an angry god to destroy the world [2].  (The Christian Bible AND the Islamic Koran both contain a similar account of the great flood, both telling the story of Noah and the animals.)

In Ronald Wright's recent book "A Short History of Progress" (2004), he discusses the fall of different civilizations due to "progress traps" - land clearing on the surrounding hills and mountains of the Mesopotamia area for use in urban development, along with extensive irrigation among other things, eventually resulted in mass erosion and desertification of the area.  And a great flood as well?  On the one hand, urban development and the ability to write and keep records brought organization of manpower and public administration, allowing for large-scale developments such as irrigation.  On the other hand, here is a foreboding example of unmitigated environmental destruction leading to quite the disaster.

The creation of these agrarian urban developments meant easy non-moving targets for potential marauders and conquerers.  On the one hand, this gave rise to great walled and strategically organized cities.  On the other hand, defence, weapons and warfare has grown into an exorbitant billion dollar industry, taking money and focus from so many other possible outlets (such as public education and parks - which promote well-being, not pain, gruesomeness and death).

Even the Lewis Chessmen (perhaps traded by Norwegian sailors in the twelfth century with the Scotsman of Lewis Island, where the chessmen were found, for whiskey??) show looks of existential angst concerning the state of their chess kingdoms.

Lewis Chessmen - King and Queen

Seems to me all public leaders and politicians - local, national, global - would benefit from putting in regular time at museums, learning and relearning history, forcing them to acknowledge the long-term potential of their policies and decisions.

Lewis Chessmen, found on Lewis Island, Scotland circa 1200-1150 AD 

Rocks, Slaves and Dinosaur Tales

Bristol, ENGLAND
Dec. 18-20, 2014

When you look at a map of the UK, on the lower west coast of England you see a prominent inlet of water poking into the coast, above the prominent bit of land jutting out [MAP - Leg 1].  Near the end of this prominent inlet lies the city of Bristol.  What is it famous for?  Well, Colin went to university here, to study rocks; the city played a lesser known but significant part in global history; and rock and fossils abound.

I never knew why geology seemed so popular in England (it is its own subject in grade school).  Now I understand: Britain has the rocks of ages from most geological periods easily available in its land mass.  Bristol also has a great gorge for rock climbers right within the city (where else can you study and recreate so easily at the same time?).  And an architecturally fine-looking university to boot:

Colin reminiscing of uni days from the coffee shop across the street

The city itself is architecturally quite pretty I discovered during our daily "forced marches" (best way to cope with 7 hours' jet lag...  just keep moving).  Decent way to spend a day, wandering, learning stuff, having coffee, food, wine, beer when you feel like it.

exhibition cider at the Coronation Tap - served by the half
pint only, due to its tremendous strength...

If you want to avoid educational tangents about the "learning stuff" - the text is in another colour and can be avoided if not in the mood.

Architectural History
Bristol's architectural finery, I learned from Colin, is owing to the slave trade.  Slave trade?  In England?  Bristol is a port city, and as such, contributed ships which transported a large proportion of the estimated 3 million slaves across the atlantic [1] as part of the 'trade triangle' (from Europe, rum and goods to Africa to be traded for slaves (who, if you've read "The Book of Negros", or "Someone Knows My Name" as published in the USA, were often rounded up by other Africans for selling to the Europeans); to the Caribbean Islands and Southern States, where the slaves were traded for sugar and tabaco from European- and American-owned plantations; and back to Europe where the Europeans thrived on the plangation products and profits.  And not just individually, but through patronage to the city's public places too [2]).

You know you are in Europe when each day provides a dose of ABC's - Another Bloody Castle, Another Bloody Church, Another Bloody Cathedral... (groooooan).  I love them, walking around inside and out, trying to understand the ideas that move people to such monumental undertakings...

Bristol Cathedral

Moving on from religion to evolution, dinosaurs really did exist.  There are some fantastic Ichthyosaur skeletons (a dinosaur fish I'd never heard of - more corretly, a "marine reptile") in the main university 'hall', which you can walk into and visit for free (as is the case with many British museums).  Dinosaur-fossil-hunting became a prominent sport in Britain during the early part of the 1800's, perhaps (my own opinion) because of the Enlightenment and its urge for people to start thinking about what they saw around them in the Here and Now, and not just study knowledge and things of the past.

Bringing us full circle back to the rocks, the abundant fossils can be seen in the stones of the buildings and in the climbing walls of the gorge.

Oh, and for the music people out there, Bristol is the source of the soothing beats of Massive Attack and Portishead (plus Bananarama and the Eagles too).

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/12/bristols-streets-history-horror-slavery
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/england/bristol/article_1.shtml