The West Commences: Life laughs on

When I first heard, “Get a life,” I think it was uttered by a professional golfer to a heckler in the crowd. It was perfect for the situation, “what of’t was thought but ne’er so well expressed”. But like all apt expressions, it has been overused, and now when I hear it I usually find it banal. In the last almost 2 years, I have been trying to ‘get a life’, and it’s not an easy thing to do. The temptation to curl up and read or watch one of the many episodes of Poirot, MI5 or Masterpiece Theatre that I have on the PVR is sometimes overwhelming. And I often give in to it. But I knew that might happen because I had succumbed to it for much of my first year away from Thunder Bay at Queen’s University. There too I had to mold a new me and at first it was a much fatter and more depressed one. It took almost three months of strict dieting and hard studying to pull through,x and I was determined not to let the leaving of family and friends in Wakefield usher in another bout of overeating and underdoing. Consequently, I searched the pages of Vernon’s newspaper and accepted all invitations to do anything. And now 2012 is beginning, and although I find some days to be long, I’m learning to enjoy the fact that I can manage my own time and that the activities I am involved in are challenging. I don’t know how good I’ll be at helping handicapped people ski. The students and volunteers meet tomorrow at the Anglican Church across from my house for a potluck, so I soon will. And if I ever learn Korean, it will be a miracle. Perhaps while I’m at the potluck I should offer a prayer. But Mi-Sun and I have fun together; last week a woman who had been sitting near us at Tim’s came over as she left and commented on how she had enjoyed listening to us struggling with English and Korean and laughing. I’m meeting some admirable people and learning to be less knee jerk judgmental. Or at least, if I jump to some humorous conclusion about someone based on very little exposure to them, I try to accept it for its entertainment value but be less ready to voice it in public or believe it myself. At least, I hope that’s the case. If I do get a new life, one of the old tendencies I’m going to have to rein in is the one that has me running off at the mouth.

I went to a movie again this week with Mo and John, Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’. Unfortunately we saw it at the good old Town, and it was not in 3D. Consequently, it was a little flat. The story was touching but by turns overdone and boring. It was so full of cogs, wheels and mechanical devices that it seemed more like a Spielburg film. I think that if it had been in 3D; however, I would have appreciated more the fact that it was a worthy homage to one of the original movie directors, Georges Melies (about whom I had only heard from Jim). Most of the critics I have read seem to think it was. The complex works of the train station clocks and one scene of a train accident would have been pretty spectacular in 3D.

I talked again to someone who works for Expedia in Cairo this week. This time it was a woman, and she knew Fadi, the man who helped me the last time. It appears that I had better not hold my breath waiting for my itinerary to show up on line. Something is amiss in that system, but she assured me that all is well for my trip to Korea in May.

Before I get complacent about life in Vernon and cease to notice what surrounds me, I have taken some photos of the city this week. Many of the walls of public buildings have good murals painted on them. Here are three that are in one small area near City Hall.