Koreans

Today I met my new Korean friend, Lusia Choi, at the Rec. Centre.  She’s a very strong swimmer.  She lapped me many times before I finally dove under the buoys, out of the laps lane and into the open area where I could do my ‘aqualates’, unchallenged. I invented this when Jim and I were swimming at the condo.  Because my arms are so weak now, I can only swim a bit and then I work my flabby abs and arms in a combination of moves that makes me think of Pilates in water.  When I saw Lusia leaving, I joined her in the sauna, my favorite part of any visit to the Rec. Centre.  As I had walked there, we left in her car and drove to a Starbucks for our first session of Korean/English.  Lusia, like my last year’s friend, Misoon, drives a Mercedes.  Understandably, Koreans do not want to drive Japanese cars, but I haven’t yet figured out why they are so keen on, let alone how they can afford, Mercedes.  Misoon and her husband owned a car wash; they had owned a gas station before that, and Lusia and her husband also own a gas station.  Oh well, it’s none of my business, and I have enough to learn about the Korean language to keep me occupied without concerning myself with the question of whether or not owning car washes and gas stations is a way to get rich quickly.  It seems as if I will probably be tutoring her 2 children as well, which will bring my total to 5.  We are still working out a schedule that suits us all.  At $20.00 an hour, I certainly won’t get rich, but neither will I be bored, and I like the Koreans I’m meeting.  Wait until Jay finds out that Lusia has a 33 year old neice who has lived and worked in Canada for about a year but is now back in Seoul and would probably like to meet him and have a Korean/English exchange with him, similar to mine with her.  She mentioned it today, but I didn’t hold out too much hope that anything would come of it.  I laughed when I thought of a way to compare English Canadians and Koreans.  From reading books like David Copperfield, we have the understated attitude of, “Barkis is willin’,” while my limited experience with Koreans has led me to generalize that, ‘Koreans is keen.’  They are formal and polite when you meet them, but if they get an idea into their heads, they will pursue it.  And they know what they can do and have accomplished.  Even John, the little boy in grade 5 that I tutor, informed me in one of our first lessons that the Koreans have replaced the Scots as the premier ship builders in the world.  I actually spoke a bit of Korean with Lusia today and think we will enjoy our Wednesday meetings.

The second espresso machine works, and I have enjoyed many cappuccino mornings.  I haven’t been skiing again, but I’ve walked a lot.  There’s still no snow in town and the weather is perfect for fast walks, so I’m not tempted to ski, but downhill opens at Silver Star tomorrow, so I’m going to go on Friday.  I’ll probably cross country ski though because I only have one pair of downhill skis and it sounds as if there’s not quite enough snow yet to cover all the rocks on the downhill slopes.    

One of the older crosses in the Vernon Cemetery, where my dad's sister is buried.  It simply says that he was electrocuted in 1913

This boy died when the Okanagan Hotel burned in 1909

These men also died when the Okanagan Hotel burned in 1909.  I wonder if the reason why there are no women listed is that they didn't even have 'ladies and escorts' drinking areas in those days.

A view from the walk along the old Grey Canal.

The bleak good old days

Subject:  Trolley Buses

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Click on the red dot Port Arthur, Fort William.   I recognized quite a few buildings that are no longer around.

This one will bring back memories for us who rode the buses on a daily basis. Note the buildings and cars from the era. 

Hi there, noticed on the TV news recently that the local city transit is thinking of taking the two local restored trolley buses out of their garage and storing them outside (protected in some fashion from the elements). Found this site: www.trolleybuses.net that has a collection of photos of the local buses of PA & FW in various locales throughout the two former cities. Loved to see the old buildings and the cars in the background.

Hi Marg,

How are you?  Where are you?  Thanks for sending me the video about the trolley buses in Fort William.  What a kick to scroll through them and see the old place.  It all looked so stark.  It reminded me of pictures you see about cities and towns in the old East Germany.  I had forgotten that we lived in that bleak place and time.  Our whole life seems to be so much more decorative now.  

I went cross-country skiing 2 days ago.  It was great, but about a day later I had an ache in the groin which I still feel a bit today.  I felt so full of energy when I was on the trail, congratulating myself on the good shape I was in, but each activity strains a new spot in an old body.  I hadn't known that the motto of Fort William was: 'a posse ad esse'.  I looked it up and discovered it more or less means: from possibility to reality.  I guess you could apply that to us.  Now we are in the stage of grim reality.

Thanks for keeping us all in touch.

Jan

New Tricks

It’s 1:00pm Monday, November 19, 2012, and it’s been raining steadily since early last night.  It’s warm, about 9c., but dreary.  I hope the cedars are happy.  When I talked with Jay last night it was raining there too.  The weather in Incheon isn’t too much different from that in Vernon at the moment, but we have snow in the hills. 

Yesterday I had a great cross-country ski with Mo.  We had talked about it on Saturday night but neither one of us was really keen on going by Sunday morning.  We didn’t even phone each other until after 9, and if it hadn’t been for the other, neither would have gone, but together we did go.  When I saw the snow getting thicker on the spruce trees as we approached Silver Star, I felt mildly excited, but as soon as I got out of the warm car in the parking lot, I wanted to get back in.  It felt cold, it was grey, I’d never cross-countried here before, and we had no idea where the trails were.  Why were we here?  But neither of us said a word.  We shouldered our skis and started to walk to the centre of the village.  There, we encountered about 5 of the people who form the heart of the Vernon Outdoors Club, just as I did last year when I went up alone for the first day of skiing.  I pushed myself harder last year; I had to if I wanted to make a life in Vernon.  Now that I have established myself a bit, I am tempted to settle into my default position, which can be pretty sedentary.  The encounter with these VOC keeners did what it always does, gave us a needed boost.  We saddled up and had a wonderful ski.  The snow was perfect.  It never got really sunny, but the clouds cleared a bit, the air was bracing and within 2 minutes I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.  We went to Paradise Cabin and back, only about 10k, but it felt great.  I had put on the right wax.  We had something to eat in the village and even did a bit of shopping up there.  As usual when I shop with a friend, I got more excited than I do alone and bought a pretty splashy top for the Christmas season and winter in general, not a bad day considering the little hope I had for it when I got up.

Today it was the necessity of domestic chores that got me up.  I stripped the bed and started a white wash.  Then I approached the espresso machine that I had finally bought on Saturday, after having wanted one since I moved to Vernon over 2 years ago.  I’ve always been short tempered with appliances and all purchases that require the reading of manuals to operate.  I usually run my eyes over the instructions, picking up the essentials, rush to get the thing operational and hope I haven’t done something irredeemably wrong.  If it doesn’t work right away, I feel like throwing it out and going back to whatever relic from the Ark I was using before I bought it.  Now that I’m old and retired, I am trying to take advantage of the fact that although I don’t have a lot of time left on the planet, I do daily have more of it in which to fiddle with things calmly.  It’s not easy to jettison the conditioned reflexes of a lifetime, but if Jim’s example of slowly learning to let go of the petty stresses of life and gracefully accept the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’ didn’t teach me a lesson in patience, I really am incorrigible.  The mere unpacking of the Breville box taxed my new resolve.  Each of the many individual bits was bubble wrapped, taped and fitted into a specially molded space in a thick piece of white Styrofoam.  It was a masterpiece of waste, the non-recyclable foam, the packers’ time and mine.  But it was admirable how each piece fit so perfectly.  The designing and making of these packaging systems for shipping goods from China to the rest of the world must require entire departments and employ thousands.  I now had all the parts in front of me, the manual open and was ready to begin.  I read carefully for once.  I ground the newly purchased espresso beans as directed and tamped them into the filter using the cunningly sculpted end of the measuring spoon, heated the unit, filled the water reservoir,   plugged the machine in, waited for the orange light to go out to indicate that all was ready, turned the dial to the little cup that indicates the espresso position and waited.  There was a grumbling noise but no water flowed out.  None ever did and after many patient minutes and reworkings I gave up.  Still calm and this after no coffee and noting that it was almost 10:00am., I repacked everything.  I had a whole plastic bag full of molded pieces of Styrofoam that I couldn’t begin to put around the right parts.  After a bowl of cereal and a press-café made with my trusty old Canadian Tire Bodum knock off, I gathered everything up and went to London Drugs to return it.  The woman at the customer service desk was even calmer than I was.  She asked only a few questions about my efforts to make it work, but even these tested my resolve to remain in control of my temper.  However, I passed, and she told me to go get another.  My patience was rewarded because she didn’t write a note on my bill to the effect that I had returned the first, so I can, if necessary, return this one too.  What she doesn’t know is that last year I returned 2 push lawnmowers to Canadian Tire before I finally got one that I could use.  The new box is sitting on the kitchen counter.  I’m not going to tackle it until tomorrow.   

Remembrance Day

It’s four o’clock on Sunday, November 11, 2012; the sun’s going down on what was a mostly grey day.  I talked on the phone yesterday with mom and dad about the fact that if we wanted to watch the Remembrance Day Service live on CBC television, we would have to be up at 7:30 am this morning.  Mom, although this must have been the case ever since they moved to BC more than 30 years ago, seemed to take it as another unanticipated arrow from outrageous fortune’s quiver, aimed specifically at her.  She just couldn’t believe it was happening and couldn’t imagine getting up in time.  She was in a low ‘lorn’ mood, brought on by living so long either with or in dread of pain.  Her only other gear is full tilt enthusiasm, and she soon shifted to that when I mentioned I had made the Christmas cake and already given it the first sprinkling of brandy.  She and dad have always liked sweets, but lately they love them, in spite of the fact that mom always used to say, “You can’t love an inanimate object, Jan.”

I was awake around 7:30, so I turned on the tv and watched the ceremony in Ottawa as I prepared for the day.  I actually sat down just before eleven for the Last Post, gun salute, Lament, Rouse and fly past.  It was very moving; I thought of both dad and Jim, especially when the lone piper played.  After breakfast, I dressed warmly and walked to the Westbild Centre in Vernon where the service here was being held inside.  As I was unsure of where the place was and walking quickly because of the cold, I ended up blocks past my destination by the time I went into a gas station to ask where it was.  A young man who was filling up his car asked me if I wanted a ride there, but as I was still early, I thanked him and walked back.  At first the whole scene was a bit depressing, a hockey arena.  But there were lots of people there, a good band, a pipe band, and aside from a boring clergyman who was MC and a couple of awkward speakers, it was a moving ceremony.  There were many wreaths laid by people in a variety of uniforms.  Among them, the most exotic were the representative from the Knights of Columbus and the two Knights Templar.  When the latter were announced as they went to lay their wreath, I was stunned.  I had been watching them and wondering who they were.  There was nothing as extravagant as they were at the War Memorial in Ottawa.  Knights Templar!  The last time I had heard of them was in a documentary on the Knowledge Network a long time ago.  I associated them with the Crusades and the Island of Malta.  What were they doing in Vernon, BC.  I looked them up when I got home, and the Knights Templar have a Sovereign Great Priory of Canada branch here, Preceptory #72, Okanagan, Vernon.  I found it on Google maps.  It’s about six blocks from where I live, near the Phoenix Steak House, so I guess that it wasn’t just one bird that rose from the fire.  And judging by the hats these fellows were wearing, that bird is lucky if it has any feathers left at all.

On Saturday night I went with Mo and John to see the new Bond movie, ‘Skyfall’.  I hadn’t even thought about going, but I’m very glad that John suggested it and was able to get tickets on line.  It was sold out and well worth seeing.  I didn’t see ‘Dr No’ in 1962, but it eventually was the fist James Bond movie I ever saw.  I fell in love with Sean Connery.  Daniel Craig is grittier but equally attractive, and this time there is the added spice of Javier Bardem as the evil Raoul Silva.  They’re both good actors, and the make up work done on Javier Bardem is shocking, especially in one scene.  The opening action scene was even better than in ‘Casino Royal’ and ‘Quantum Solace’.  It was followed by a mix of the new, troubled, rugged, beer-drinking Bond and the classic, suave, shaken-not-stirred 007.   I can see why it’s making billions; the trailers we saw before it, and they were numerous as the theatre had a huge captive audience to pitch to, looked pretty unappealing to me.  Bond hits a wide market.

The only other news is that I’m having a crisis with my hair.  I put in an auburn shade of the non- permanent color that I often use, not realizing that I had had real dyed streaks put into my hair before going east in August.  Well, the dyed parts turned bright cellophane red and the rest stayed mousy brown and grey.  What a mess.  I thought of rubbing the left over walnut casings that I had used with such success on the floor into my hair, but Mo suggested what I had also thought of; it might go green like Anne Shirley’s.  Anyway, a day later I did try it on a strand, which didn’t go green, and then on the whole head.  I boiled the walnut leftovers with a bit of vinegar, and when this brew cooled, I held my head over the sink and poured it on.  What a mess of bits of walnut husk everywhere, and to little effect.  It took me ages to rinse it all out.  Then Mo let me try a dark dye/rinse that she uses.  It dulled the red a bit more.  I hope I’ve slaked my thirst for experimentation.  I’m going to stay as I am for a while.  At least I no longer look like a Christmas hamper at a rural bazaar.  I can live with this color, and as I’m living alone, I don’t have to worry about Jim telling me I look like a cashier at the IGA as he did after one of my earlier hair experiments. 

I awoke at 7:30 this morning, Monday, to a layer of snow on the ground that justified getting out and shoveling.  It was so quiet and warm that I went beyond my civic responsibility of the front sidewalk and cleaned off the car and parking area too.  It continued snowing, but because the parts I had shoveled were bare, the new stuff didn’t stick and now it has stopped and they’re still clear.  The temperature is supposed to rise to 4 today, so it is an easy adjustment to winter so far.

A Knight of Columbus and two Knights Templar at the Vernon Remembrance Day Service

An Oregon Grape with snow on it

Jay, Ginhee, May and Minhee at the latter's birthday lunch

Nov. 6, 2012 Finally, it's election night.

CBC radio has been bombarded this week by complaints, tweeted, e-mailed and phoned in about stores and advertisers pushing Christmas sales before the candles have been blown out in the Halloween Pumpkins.  One retailer was persuaded to turn off the carols until mid November.  I haven’t been too aware of it in Vernon, but I did see candy canes for sale at the corner store when I bought the ‘Globe’ on Sat.  I actually appreciated the nudge because I was putting off the annual baking of fruitcake and that finally made me accept the inevitable.  After an idle hour or so with coffee and the ‘Globe’ at The Bean Scene, I walked home, got into the car and drove to the Bulk Barn to buy the nuts and fruits for it.  I always take the Joy of Cooking that my mother gave me at my wedding shower when I go to buy the ingredients.  The woman at the cash saw it in all its stained and duct tapped glory and commented.  It turned out that I got it the year she was born.  Yikes!  And I’ve been making this dark fruit cake since about ten years after I got the book.  You’d think I’d have memorized the quantities, but I haven’t.  I alter them a bit each year and really have only to remember that I need one pound of nuts and seven of fruit, 15 eggs and a pound of butter.  Next year I won’t take it.  It’s too old to leave the house, and if I don’t remember what I need to make a cake that I’ve been baking for about 25 years, I’m too old to leave home too.

The other excitement last week was picking walnuts at Bert and Peggie’s.  I went on Friday afternoon and picked a big white pail full.  It was a warm day, and I enjoyed it as usual.  Bert picked the last of his beets, potatoes, and carrots and gave me a bag full, so it was a day of harvesting.  Jules and Carol and Peggie’s mom joined us for dinner.  The nuts are spread out on newspaper on the basement floor, drying.  I also brought home a small bag of the mushy dark coating that covers the nuts and that we try to get off before putting them in the pail.  I had heard that the dye in them is a wonderful stain for the kind of wood floors I have.  It’s true.  After being moved into and out of by 3 groups of people the wood floors in the house had some chips and scratches on them.  I have now rubbed these with walnut mush, and they are no longer visible.  Writing of floors reminds me that the back yard looks the best that it has all year, covered in a golden carpet of freshly fallen leaves.  

I will be in the library tutoring my Korean students from 4 to about 8 this afternoon and then home to turn on the tv and find out who won the US election.  I hope that there are no big problems, that we are finally liberated from the endless exposure to ads., anger and outright lies and that Obama wins.  Dick and Ellen have been on my mind lately because I thought they might be in the Chicago area prior to leaving for Mexico on the first of November.  I wondered if the winds from Hurricane Sandy would have altered their flight plans, but when I went on the blog this afternoon I saw that it had been picked up in Mexico this week, so I guess they made it there safely and will be watching the election results tonight from wonderful, warm PV.  Adios amigos. 

Yesterday's bike ride to Lavington

An Oregon Grape bedecked with maple leaves