My office window is in the corner of the room.  I have a window facing Northwest and an adjacent window (just the actual structural corner post) separating them) facing Northeast.  I look out onto the ‘green’ out back.  It is like a window on the local wildlife at times.

Several times a year, a little quorum of Quails comes pecking by.  Little heads bobbing with hangy blob-things on top.  Pretty cute.  And there are all the usual avian buddies flying by as well.  But the funniest of them all is the Raven.

Of course.

Not Jack and Liz.   I am talking about Fletch the tenth-or-so.  Fletch being short for fledgling.  Fletch came by the window yesterday and looked in.  He pecked the glass a bit.  Then pecked the frames a bit.  Then he looked up and down and all around (practically turning himself upside down on his feet).  Finally, he pressed his head with the one beady, black eye tight against the window and peered in.  And there I was – peering out at him.  We were inches apart.

I tried to move slowly in an attempt at making an attempt to get the camera.  I was thinking I just may be able to get a close-up through the window.  But, no luck.  Every time I moved, he flew off.

So I just went back to work and forgot about him.

Twice he came back, tho.  And each time he peered in, he was quite obviously studying me.  I was fascinated with his behaviour.  He was in learning mode and what better thing to study than the big oaf who feeds him now and then?

‘Course, when a raven is in learning mode, things get messed up around here.  The young ‘un also flipped up the back-door welcome mat, pecked a few holes in the deck furniture cushions and generally invaded, investigated and violated all he could find worth engaging with.  This guy is very curious black.

His behaviour – tho a bit ‘cheeky’ even for a raven – is not unusual.  The squirrel sets the trespass standards and he is practically a habitual criminal in the petty crime division.  He’ll go anywhere.  I have ‘caught’ him in the food shed, all over the workshop area, and we have seen him in every window.  He also breaks in to all the birdfeeders regardless of the squirrel-proofing Sally attempts.  The squirrel is a vandal of the first order.  A really bad guy.  We are going to buy a squirt gun next time we go shopping.  A bird feeder like Sal can only take so much!

But he is not without charm.  I like the window peeping-Tom thing.  I guess it is because of the glare coming off the glass but he can’t see in unless he is very close to the glass.  So, he walks along the outside rail, jumps over to the window sill and, cupping his hands to shield out the light, he presses his little face against the window pane.  Just like a human might.

And there he sits – watching me.  His little face pressed semi-flat against the pane.  He twitches and jumps when I move but he doesn’t leave.  For him, it is like a drive-in movie.  He is watching Godzilla-at-work.

Although, to be fair, one can hardly call it work, eh?  I mean; just consider the company I keep.  My workmates may be cheeky, messy and with bad work habits but they are a lot of fun to work with.

PS………….another whale show a little later on in the day.  Half a dozen.  Heading north.  Also another tour-boat show.  All the safety-clad tourists jammed on a boat watching the whales while a-sweltering in the heat.  Hate to admit it but we feel kinda smug up on our cool deck.  Sick, eh?

A friend wrote to say that she enjoys my blog because it is so real.  She ‘feels’ what I am going through.  Every day.

I wish it were so.  I am not that honest.  I leave stuff out.  I ‘often clean up my act’ – somewhat.  Sorry.

Today I wrote a long piece on Fish Farms.  Had some radical elements in it.  It would have been read as blasphemy, I am sure.  I asked Sal.  She said, “Well, it is good but I am pretty sure that half the readers will hate you and the other half will think you mad!  You may wish to hold off on that one.”

“Yeah.  You are right.  I kinda knew that.  Maybe ravens and dogs, eh?  Damn.”

But, after reading my friend’s comments, I feel as if I am letting her down if I don’t publish it.  So, you may think me mad but………here goes:

Fish farms are industry and, like all industry, they renovate, refurbish, modernize and improve their operations, systems and equipment.  Or, try to, anyway.  There is not enough real innovation going on in my estimation.  I want them to be a NOT-so-negative impact on the environment.  But they are trying.

Maybe they should try something new?

Sadly, their evolutionary steps so far are not good enough.  Not only are they not solving the operational by-effects of pollution, disease and sea-lice, they are not doing so well in the marketplace either.  Fish farm Capitalism-as-it-is-currently-done is not working for them. At least not in BC.

Having said that, you have to give credit where credit is due.  And, if Marine Harvest was the standard by which every company inter-acted with the community, then there would be a lot less animosity directed at ‘big business’ overall.  Marine Harvest – for all their faults – at least employ nice guys who are clearly trying their best.  The staff is polite, considerate and responsive.  I like them.  As people.

The farming process?  Well, not so much.

But they do listen.  They do talk.  They do their best with what they have (as per instructions from head office) and they are generous to the community.  If they could lick the sea-lice and infectious disease problems, they would be loved.  I’d form a fan club.

Even better: BC would benefit from a healthy fish farming industry.  Key word: healthy – in every respect.

But the disease-thing and the sea lice-thing are big issues for us who live out here not far from such farms.  I am sure the dillemma I see is similar to that of a vegan who lives next door to a really great guy who runs a humane, organic butcher shop.  Hate the sin, love the sinner.  That is where I find myself.  Liking the bad guys.

To be fair, the bad guys, as I said, are not such bad guys.  And I am sure that they don’t want disease anymore than the wild salmon advocates do.  After all, their bottom line suffers when they have to trash a million fish due to an infection.  And I can’t see that suffering sea lice infestations do their fish any good, either.  In fact, they have treatment protocols employing chemicals to deal with it.  They know sea lice is a problem.  A problem amongst problems.  They just haven’t solved them!

But..whachagonnado?  Business is hard.  To fix the problems they need the cashflow.  To get the cashflow, they need to sell the fish they have.  And the way those fish are currently farmed generates the problems.  Literally – a catch 22.

Whachagonnado?

Well, I think there is an answer.  And it lies partly with government.  But mostly it lies with the community.  It is us.  Instead of thinking of these people as the enemy, we have to partner with them.  We have to invest.  We have to own part of it.  We have to work there.  Basically, we have to ‘help’ them do the right thing.

And on a much bigger scale than it is done now.

Capitalism is all very good for innovation and motivation but, generally speaking, there is no chromosone included in that monster for morality and the common good.  Capitalism only supports capital.  It is that simple.  So, to inject community values into a company, the community has to inject itself (by way of capital and labour) into the company.

The way to clean up Capitalism is to marry it.

As you might guess, I am inclined GREEN.  And I am not alone.  Most everyone I know has a green streak.  But Green doesn’t get votes primarily because Green doesn’t seem to get business.  If I ran Green, I would do so from a community-company-partnership basis.  NOT 3Ps!  Not just goofy talk!  Real ownership.  Real investing.  Real money.  Real people.  Merge the values and the ambitions of both the company and the community into something more sustainable and healthy.

If I ran Green, I might stop complaining about them and ask the fish farm industry to help make a sustainable community work.  Geez….such an idea might work with timber and mining, too.  What a concept, eh?

Over the last few years I have developed a small niche in the service-provider world.  It’s odd.  I am like a quasi-legal consultant.  And I like it.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not a lawyer (way too healthy and moral for that!) but I was a mediator and arbitrator for over fifteen years.  That kinda helps.

You see, lawyers (presumably) know the law.  Mostly they know the law in the area in which they practise.  So, they are specialists.  They may not KNOW the law so much as they know SOME laws.  Even more to the point is that the law is a dynamic discipline.  It changes.  The original law is written and then the judges and the cases presented practically rewrite the original law with precedents or ‘acceptable’ interpretations of the basic law.  A lawyer has to know the actual law as well as keep up with the latest variants and interpretations the court hands down.  In effect, good lawyers are like ‘trendwatchers’ as much as anything.

But that is not my point.  Not really.  The point is: somehow the profession has managed to claim all sorts of other skills that are not necessarily part of their originally-trained-for skill set and, to be frank, many critical ones are clearly not compatible or even present in the lawyer claiming to have them.  Negotiation is, perhaps, the major one.

Again, don’t get me wrong;  some lawyers may be great negotiators but there is nothing in the practice of law that necessarily equates to skill in negotiation save for one thing – brandishing the threat of litigation.  Lawyers tend (generally) to see things in terms of ‘right or wrong’, black and white.  “What does the law say?”  Cross ’em (or just disagree) and they threaten to sue you.  They will argue ‘points’ of fact and law at the very least.  Argue, not negotiate.  In effect it is like a boxer inviting a non-boxer into the ring.  Very little in the way of real negotiation will ever take place.

Mediators, on the other hand, tend to see things in shades of grey.  And, when you see shades of grey, you tend to see more solutions.  And different ways of getting to resolution.  Mediators have to be creative and flexible.  Even arbitrators (those who ‘judge’ who is right and who is wrong) have been trained to find evidence rather than legal precedent.  In fact, in arbitration, precedent does not apply.  Law does.  But not precedent.  So we have to know the basic law but not the history of it as it has played out.  That, too, allows for more flexibility in the work.

However, there is very little work out here.  There are very few people and they tend, as a rule, NOT to sue or get sued.  Go figure?  But every once in awhile, there is a quasi-legal issue shared that needs some input.  A couple of years back it was a refused insurance claim that needed to be re-presented to the insurer.  The original lawyer had argued and threatened and gotten nowhere.  In that particular case, a different approach worked much better.  Basically it was a matter of style.  And it worked.

Another was just knowing enough to get past the initial ‘low-ball’ of an ICBC claim.

And so it goes……..some weird kind of dispute that requires something ‘other’ than a confrontational legal posture.  There is no professional name for it……not really……….call it negotiated settlement consultancy and you might be close.  I have occasionally referred to it as negotiation-for-hire.   But each case is so much different than the last that I can’t honestly describe the function in a couple of words except to say that is definitely not lawyer-like.

Weird, eh?  Go to the forest and find a new profession……………

Bloody prions, eh?  Who woulda thunk it – it may be the proteins that will get you in the end!  If cancer, heart disease and road rage doesn’t!

Mad Cow disease, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig…….seems all these diseases have rampant protein molecules cluttering up the brains of the afflicted.  The clutter is called (don’t you just love scientists?) plaques and tangles. (some guy got his doctorate naming those!  Some other genius came up with Chronic Wasting Disease – CWD -to describe, well, chronic wasting in the stricken animals!)

The real mystery is why? “Why do scientists get paid the big bucks for studying the obvious?”  No – some mysteries will never get resolved.  No, the question is why do proteins clutter up our brains?

Seems we have protein molecules floating around naturally.  Then sometimes they go nuts and we, in turn, go nuttier.   They proliferate and we degenerate.  Protein molecules acting like a virus, growing and taking over.  Like a parasitic disease. ‘Cept they are not!

“Dave, what has this all to do with living off the grid?”

Not much.  I just like to read.  Something I get to do much more now.  Almost as much as I want.  It’s nice.  I like that.  But I must admit that I am a bit inclined to non-fiction and the bleak, coming-disaster genres of pop economics, global politics, climate change and just about any major threat  – so long as it is well-written and cataclysmic.  I want BIG BANG stuff.

And that, it seems, is not at all uncommon amongst us off-the-gridders.  It is just a small step from disaster awareness to survival paranoia and independent militia groups.  I am looking at getting some camouflage.

Jay Ingram writes very well about a dark and minuscule threat of proteins in Fatal Flaws and I enjoyed it.  Sick, eh?  The major interest for me?  More and more people are succumbing to proliferating proteins.  It may the END of DAYS!!   Whooooooh. 

Well, I am being a bit facetious.  The truth is a friend of mine seems to have it and I wanted to do a bit of research.  You know….in case I could help?  Sadly, Jay Ingram describes the problem of the disease very well but, further, offers no clue whatsoever as to the solution.  He even suggests that the scientists may be part of the problem! 

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Strategic Vision (about global politics) is next.  I chose that because I need to lighten up a bit.  It is about the end of the American Empire and life as we know it.

I kinda like disaster movies, too.  You know, when 100-foot tsunamis wash over Los Angeles……..that sort of thing.  I think of it all as vicariously cathartic.  Major-change imagery without the mess.  Armchair Armageddon.

Sal reads different books.

I just can’t get into chick-lit.  Ya know?  I think it is the scale.  Too small.  Too personal.  Too close-to-the-bone.  I like people.  I like puppies.  I like poverty and hardship and suffering in the ghettos as much as the next book club.  It’s just that it is always on such a small scale.  This poor Pakistani family being maltreated in England, that Muslim family being persecuted in Alabama, a family coping with multiple tragedies during a civil war…..what’s not to like?  But it is just too personal and too real for me.  I prefer my disasters on such a massive scale that they ‘don’t really count’.  It’s a form of denial.  Makes for a more interesting read.

Education or entertainment?  All I really know is that, once again, it is all about me and other sick puppies.

One of our guys out here is the quintessential loner.  A gunslinger without a gun.  A hermit but with friends.  Jimmy Stewart-like (Clint Eastwood without the seething anger).  Healthy, nice, gregarious in his own quiet, tall-drink-of-water kind of way, he maintains a mostly peripheral role in the community.  Not in.  Not out.    Sometimes you see him.  Most times you don’t.  And he is a bachelor.  If there is a gathering of more than three people, D is not usually there.

Which is fine.  I am getting a bit more that way myself.

Sometimes I am not so sure if the ‘separation’ is because of a desire to be alone and independent or whether it is because most people are ‘so bloody irritating’ and his tolerance for fools is so low that it is simply an expression of self and/or public safety.  He can be, at times, somewhat quick to rile.

Having said that, his rile-response is always just to leave and stay away again for a few weeks.  Jimmy Stewart-ish.

But some things draw him in.  He likes young people.  He likes people from other countries.

These past two years he has volunteered to take the students for an outing.  He comes by, picks up the kids and says ‘goodbye’ to us from the boat.  That is about the only time we play a part in this – waving goodbye from the beach.  We don’t even know the schedule or the duration of the activity he has planned.  Always a smidge unsettling for the teacher.  But not me.  I take a nap.

This year they went beach exploring, visiting other locals and he even threw in a bit of fishing (successfully!).  Plus they got to drive his boat!  The kids were thrilled.  They talked about him most of that night.

Of course it not so remarkable………kids, adults, strangers, cultures……all very interesting for both parties.  But the part for me that is so special is that a real hint of friendship develops in that short time.  It probably won’t go anywhere.  How can it?  But it doesn’t have to.  They may forget him but, for sure, it will take a long, long time for that to happen.  He made a difference to them.

He also made a difference to us – I needed the nap!

The kids left today.  Headed south by way of a small shuttle bus (Island Link).  They will meet another friend in Victoria and tour around for awhile soaking up urban Canada.  But already they are thinking, ‘seen one city, seen ’em all’.  They would rather stay.  They like the dogs.  They like the whales.  And, for some strange reason, they like building tables.  Go figure.

But we can’t host them anymore.  No more energy.  They were excellent guests and a lot of fun but, I guess, I am just getting old.  It is tiring.  And, after a week, it is almost as exhausting as it is fun.  Poor ol’ Sal……………she does the most and is almost ‘out on her feet’.

We’ll bounce back in a few days.  We always do.  And we have so much to do in the summer we have to bounce back!  This is the busy season, after all.  Time to get things built, fix the things we break and take in the somewhat regular influx of guests that choose the summer to visit.

It’s like Grand Central……………..

June 29th and the weather is like November.  Rained all day yesterday.  The students didn’t like that.  Neither did we.  Progress on the table stopped.  Kayaking was put on hold and most of the day was spent ‘in studies’.

Yeah.  It is summer and these students (tops in their school) are doing extra studies!

Ms Wong is a great teacher.  Caring.  Creative.  Interesting.  She motivates her students and she jams more data per brain cell into them than any teacher I know.  But she is also a bit of a slave-driver.  She is a great teacher – in China.  For Chinese.  In Surrey, BC, they’d have hung and quartered her within a month!

Guess which students will be the physicists and doctors, the accountants and the pharmacists?  Guess which ones will be the criminals, the artists, the entrepreneurs and the fork-lift drivers?

You never really know.  May as well try to guess which ones will be happier? 

These kids are always re-hashing their day in English and putting it all down in a journal.  Which, I suppose, is good.  But they are still hashing and working at 11:00 pm!  And they start right after they washed up the dishes after dinner.  Worse, on a rainy day, they get double lessons.  By our standards, they work too hard.

“Thank you, Lord, for not making me a Chinese student”.

They are smart kids.  Hard workers, too.  And they learn quickly.  Plus, they are as earnest as hell and very nice people  But, oddly, they don’t seem to know very much.  I know they are bright but they know nothing of Chinese history, for instance.  Even less of the world.  Last year none knew where Spain was on a map!

I suppose this is to be expected in a still-communist-totalitarian regime that blocks much of the internet and controls the media.  And with huge emphasis on ‘professionalism’.  Still, you’d think they would know about Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai.  They don’t even know about Mao Zedong!

I won’t bore you with a litany of all that they don’t know – even when compared to a North American couch potato-lout who dropped out of high school and is fully engaged only in video-games.  They are still students, after all.  But, I confess that it seems like they have lived in a bubble.  To me, anyway.

The other day I was going to mention prostates and sperm and reproduction, genes, chromosomes, DNA and the like (using dogs and ravens as the subjects).  You know, ‘basic building block’ stuff?  But the mention of the word ‘penis’ shocked them.  Ms Wong repeated the word in Cantonese with her head slightly bowed and her voice in a bit of a whisper and everyone covered their faces but still managed to blush past their hands.  Seems ‘body’ discussions are absolutely ‘off-limits’ for even discussions on health.

Which, of course, gave me the incentive to delve even deeper into the hot, pulsating passion of the topic.  Oooohhh!

But Sal quickly put a stop to that!

No wonder there are 1.6 billion Chinese people!  Somebody has to tell them how it all works!

There truly is a great deal good about deep Chinese society.  They put huge emphasis on ‘getting along’, being harmonious, working-in-groups, respecting hierarchies and obeying all the rules and regulations.  Without question.  They don’t even have to work at it.  They just do it!  They are gentle and polite and respectful of elders (even those of us deemed half-mad) and they are completely committed to ‘doing the right thing’.  I love the culture even though I could never fully participate.  I just couldn’t.  I’d speak up and go to jail.

But they make great guests.  And even better friends!

We like them.  And I think they like us.  Pretty sure, actually.  They see us as eccentric at the very least.  Maybe crazy.  We are independent in the extreme and very, very brave.  We are funny and outrageous, naughty and even rude at times.  We are barbarians in some ways, enlightened in others and confusing most of the time. We are old, weird, interesting whackos who, for some inexplicable reason, their school thinks they should experience.

So, they do.

And it is good for both of us.

Sal and I collapse every night into bed.  Tís the season.  Guests can be exhausting.  They are worth it, tho.  Of course.  All our guests are worth it.  Love ém.  Wouldn’t have it any other way.  But they are also somewhat tiring.  They work us too hard!

Both of us are pretty active as a rule and we are almost always busy doing stuff even when we are alone.   Hell, just getting around the property is a mini-mountaineering task every day.  I can get tired just walking around.  And I am always carrying heavy things when I go up and down the stairs and the cliffsides.  It is the way of things.  So, being tired at the end of the day is normal and good.  No problem.

But when guests come, they – naturally –  want to ‘experience everything!‘ and that is usually at a quicker, more demanding pace of challenge and exertion than we would normally give to ourselves.  Even tho we are active, we are active at the pace of 60-year-olds.  Our guests are usually younger and want to double even that, their normal, more-youthful-already pace!  There is not-a-fair-peer-group–pressure-thing going on here.

I was on the verge of playing soccer with them yesterday!

Glad I didn’t, tho.  I can’t afford another bust-through-the-backstop incident (like last summer), the subject target of which acted as one of the goals.  It can happen. Getting going is not so hard.  Stopping…….?

Even being the quasi-English teachers to the Chinese students tends to be an effort at times. 

But not always.

Today Sal takes them to yoga and then kayaking.  At breakfast, Chong asked if we could also squeeze in ‘chopping wood’.  Chong’s English is poor and it took a while for him to get the question out.  But, when I understood what he was asking, I agreed to do it while the BBQ was on at the end of the day.  I was about to continue with some more information about finishing the table we had undertaken to build when Chong interrupted me, “I am sorry, David.  But I have another question…………”

“Sorry.  Go ahead…………”

He looked me earnestly in the eye and said slowly and clearly, “How many chucks can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

OK…….maybe you had to be there…………..

There are only five students at our local school.  They will go to a half-time teacher next year as a result.  Such is life out here on the periphery of modern non-urban society.  Things shut down.  The young people go to the city.

But this year, they had a full schedule and that included a Sports Day.  And Sports Day was today.  “What kind of Sports Day can you have with only five students?”

Well, that is the beauty of the place.  When it came time to play soccer there were around twenty or more students on the field.  Three of them came from China.  Five or more were ‘older’ high school age kids who came to play with the younger kids and, of course, there were several young adults.  Plus some visiting kids.  And two dogs.

In addition, there were probably ten or so mature adults with smaller children looking on.  What’s a Sports Day without an audience? Sports Day 2012 was a rousing success!

On our way to the Sports Day/market/community-day Wednesday – practically everything happens on a Wednesday up here – I asked one of the kids to take the wheel of the boat.  OMYGAWD!  Driving a boat was like, awesome!  And, of course, the teacher also wanted in.  Ms Wong took a turn at the wheel after the kids.  And we zoomed around for a few minutes with kids and teacher shrieking with delight.

Funny, eh?  People in Hong Kong don’t usually ever drive anything.  Instead, they are driven (in every sense of the word).  Driving a boat is like being at the helm of Capt. Picard’s Enterprise for them.  And they went boldly.  And they shrieked.  We would have jumped to Warp speed if we had more than a Honda 50.

Last year Ms Wong was so impressed by Sally zooming about in boats and driving the car and taking charge, she decided to learn to drive a car.  In Hong Kong!  She bought a Toyota and has been taking lessons ever since.  Still too afraid to ‘merge’ with traffic, she is more than somewhat limited in her range.  How can you NOT merge in Hong Kong?  But her courage is increasing.  Soon, she expects to be able to leave her neighbourhood.  Maybe.  Took her a few months to leave the parking garage.

After today she was wondering if she should buy a boat!

You can’t make this stuff up!

We are half way though making our table.  It is a simple project but, of course, there is a language barrier and the natural chaos that ensues from four people working on one table.  It is kinda crazy.  But it is also fun and, even better, it is the reason the Chinese students are here.

No, NOT to learn table-making (I am in no position to teach any kind of real carpentry) but they are here to exercise gweilo-thinking and especially independent thinking.  Having to ‘work it out for yourself’ is very uncommon in Chinese society.  Usually there is a teacher and the teacher shows you the way.  It is a recipe.  Always a recipe.  It is very rigid.  All they have to do is learn by rote and they pass the test.  Memory?  Yes.  Understanding?  Not so much.  Table-making with Dave is a course of a different colour.

No one knows what the hell is going on!

“So, we are going to make a table.  What size table should it be?”

The question is met with three blank stares.  I repeat the question.  And we all wait while the wheels in their little heads try to come up to speed.  Size suggestions are hesitatingly offered up.  Each refused by the crazy-as-a-hoot-owl teacher.  Confusion reigns.  I smile.  They look perplexed.  Finally one kid says, “What are you going to use the table for?”

“YES!!  That is the right question……….well, let us think about use.  Let’s talk about use.  What kind of questions come up for that?”  And so it goes.

By the time we were half-way through making the table frame, I reached for the tape measure to mark a piece of wood.  I couldn’t find it.  Two of the kids had  already thought about it, referred to the sketch, found the wood and done it.

Yes, you read that right……….they had done it!  That means using the chop saw! With, of course, previous instruction and coaching.  They were very careful and very good when learning how to use it.  Their Chinese teacher, however, was having a heart attack.  I explained to her that a scar is the best way to remember an adventure.  She looked horrified.  But they went unscathed.  So far, anyway.  The table isn’t done yet.  Plenty of time for a little blood-letting still.

This ‘just do it’ attitude is very, very different from the way they usually behave.  Especially at school.  This time they anticipated!  This time they took the initiative!  “So, you think I am gonna need two pieces this long, eh?  What makes you think that?” And they explain pointing to the sketch.  And I say, “Right!”

“Now, did you measure correctly?  Can I cut the wood without checking it?  Are you sure?”

“Yes!  We are sure.  Cut the wood!”  And so I did.

And it was good.

At this particular juncture, they all feel as if they are well on their way to becoming accomplished carpenters……..if only the tools weren’t so heavy! 

Some female Chinese students are so slight that, try as they might, they cannot hold the drill level.  Screwing in a screw is virtually impossible.  They just don’t have the ‘heft’ that such tasks require.  Having said that, they keep trying even if it is nigh on impossible.  It is both admirable and pathetic at the same time…….sadly, sometimes size matters!

I have a prediction: when China develops their own domestic markets further, they will develop a line of tools that are half-size.

OK.  Nostradamus, I am not!  But I am fast becoming a renown teacher of Chaos theory.

Oh, man!  So much to catch up on.  Been down a week and a half. May even still be down!  Don’t know.  Half the site reports ‘clean’ and other half still verboten.  Reader wrote to report that ‘all is good on the west coast front!’.  We’ll see.

Firstly – the Chinese have invaded!  Every year we receive a group or two of Chinese students from my friend, Dennis.  He is their ‘sponsor’ and the ‘cheese’ of the school he supports in Hong Kong.  The place where my daughter and her fiancé are now teaching.  Where Sal and I have taught in years past.  Last year, Ms Wong came with the students and she liked it so much that she chose to come again.  Ms Wong likes kayaking and chopping wood. I am sure that she likes listening to music and taking long quiet walks on the beach, too.  But it is the chopping of wood that she can’t resist.  She’s a machine!

This year we have Serena, Helen, Chung and Ms Wong.  All three students are from mainland China.  They all grew up in several small villages and they learned to speak in their local dialect.  When they went to primary school, they had to learn Cantonese (as different from their mother dialect as southern Appalachian is from English-as-it-is-spoke on Haida Gwaii).  And, when they went to middle school, they had to learn English and Putinawah (or Mandarin which is not similar at all to Cantonese).  By the time these kids are reading Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff, they have had four separate languages to master.

Admittedly, they are masters of only one (and I have no idea which one it might be) and are unfettered manglers of English.  We are often challenged to ‘get’ what they mean.  Last night at dinner, Helen remarked that she loved all the smiles.  We all did.  So we dutifully smiled at her.  And so she did so to us, too.  But, after a pause, it seemed to her that we didn’t get it so she told us again that she loved the smiles.  And, feeling admired and praised for our beauty, Sally and I smiled some more.  And Helen politely smiled again in return.  And we looked at each other (as if the other was mad!).  Finally, Helen sniffed the air and said, “I love the smiles!”

“You mean SMELLS!” said Ms Wong.  And so we all laughed.

I am also teaching them to do some carpentry.  We are building a simple outdoor table.  But, of course, even a simple table requires thought, planning, measuring and imagining the product in your head so that you can first virtually build it without cutting the wood.  As we go through each step, they are impressed with the complexity.  “Oh this is so much mess!”

“Excuse me?!”

“So much mess!”

While it is true that I tend to work in a disorganized manner and mess is an inevitable outcome for me, at the time I was thinking that everything was quite orderly.  In fact, I was pretending hard to be organized so that they might learn good work habits.  So, I pursued it.  Seems Helen had no idea that so much MATH was involved in carpentry and so she was remarking on all the mess…..er…..math.

And, so it goes as we get to know each other.  It is kinda fun.

But the best part of yesterday was the whales.  Yep!  A large pod (12+) came up and cavorted about our front yard for over half an hour.  Tails flapping, body rolls, snorts, half-leaps (Orcas are pretty big.  They leap high as often as I do) and a lot of, well, cavorting.  Whale gamboling.  Playing around.  It was great and the kids were thrilled.  Later in the day, the whales came back for a brief encore (politely introduced by Fiddich who heard them coming and ran to tell us – otherwise they might have gotten away while we were all inside making dinner).  Whales are impressive but dogs trained to be whale-lookouts is no small sight for them either!

Yeah, east meets west and the fun is just beginning…………..