July looks like it may be a record breaker this year.  Virtually no rain at all.  When we are out of the cool breeze we enjoy on our deck, the temperature can climb pretty quickly.  It can get pretty hot for us – pushing 30C.

Our guests sometimes don sweaters.  A blessing and a curse.

Seems 30C with a cool breeze is considered ‘very cool’ in Hong Kong.  This global warming thing may work out just fine for the Chinese.  For me?  Not so much.

I am warm.  Naturally.  T-shirt in 12C (56F), shirt-with sleeves at 6C (44F) and a light jacket – maybe at 4C (40F).  It has to be freezing and raining before I feel the cold very much at all.  I am a bit warm at 60 degrees and too hot at 72.  After 80 degrees F I am in a torpid stupor.  Global cooling would be preferable.  A mini ice age might be a bit much.  Maybe, maybe not.

It is partly an outdoors thing.  Sal used to feel the so-called cold at 72 degreesF.  Now she feels warm at that temperature.  Her comfort zone has dropped maybe by 6 or so degrees simply by living more and more outside.

The dogs have managed to cope pretty well.  They get shorn now and then and so that helps them deal with the heat but their main way of adjustment is to go swimming.  Well, they ‘dip’, actually.  Several times a day, you’ll see the dogs go down to the beach and just half submerge for a few seconds and then come back.  They have come to know temperature control by body placement.  They follow the sun when it is chilly and they follow the shade when it is warm.  And they submerge when it is really hot.

I think there is a primal instinct to seek a protected placement for one’s house.  It is natural.  I tend to have a similar instinct but, for me, the protection comes from a cool breeze.  I am seeking cool rather than warm.  As a consequence, we have our house out and exposed on a prominatory and it seems to work better for me than being tucked away.  We get the warmth of the sun but it is tempered by the breeze.  And, of course, anyone seeking greater warmth can tuck in the lee of the house.  I guess what I am saying is this: we seem to be ideally placed.

More by accident than conscious choice.

Choosing a cabin site is much more important than just the view or some of the more obvious considerations.  The constant breeze means virtually no bugs, for instance.  And I’m good with that.  I really should analyze how the site ‘works’ for us because there are all sorts of issues that have only arisen in our consciousness after having lived here for years.  The garden placement, the solar panel placement, the shadows of the trees and where they fall…all of this comes into play and into consciousness – over time.  It is quite fascinating really.  I am still learning about where we live and I am only talking about our site.

And just when I thought I was getting a handle on it, they are going to change the climate.

I am living the Chinese blessing and curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’.

Two new guests today.  S&W.  They, too, were former students who met when here five years ago and subsequently fell in love and married.  So, they came back.  Second honey-moon-ish sorta thing.   It’s kinda romantic, really.

They are here now with four ‘current’ students and the five years of age and life difference is quite marked.  It is so odd to see your own life pass by watching the same process in others.  Especially those who you don’t see for a few years.  Think Dorian Gray.  Or, rather Dorian Wong in this case.

Everyone is off for a big hike up a small mountain but I am exempt.  One of the few privileges extended to those old and heavy.  I claim the exemption privilege, anyway.  I’ll clean up the house and be ‘good’ instead.

I am not so sure how much longer I can keep up this pleasant, polite, considerate and, of course, charming facade.  I am not really as nice in real life as I try to be when we have guests.  And, after a few days, the charade wears thin.  Drinking scotch and mumbling to myself as I amble around the house in my not-quite-closed-enough housecoat is the first sign of a dark side.  Second sign is when Sal starts locking me in our room.

I don’t think I can confess to much more.  I could be reported.  Suffice to say, people start looking sideways at me and scurrying out of the way.  But, it’s OK.  The bulk of them leave tomorrow.

Two more come the next day.

I hope they bring more scotch.

We have ten guests today.  We’ll eventually get down to six over the next few days.  Then, by the end of month we’ll be guest free til August begins…..the next day.  And then………?

………………I’ll probably be incarcerated (or under observation) by then so August should be easy for me.  Sal on the other hand, will have guests and visits to the detention centre to deal with.

Summer isn’t so easy for Sal.

Girls/women (they are over 19, after all) got up early this morning, hiked to the beach and had some raw oysters for breakfast.  On the spot dining.

I dunno…………..?

This is the kinda thing that makes their visit so interesting.  Yesterday afternoon, I taught them to chop wood.  They loved it!  First request: “Can you give us more wood to chop?”  So, today I will get another log.  Bigger this time.

Bear in mind that the splitting maul weighs ten percent of their individual body weight.  Just lifting it is a strain.  And swinging it is enough to send them reeling off in all directions.  It usually takes a few minutes of concentrated focus just to get the maul landing anywhere near the target round and the first ‘hit’ invariably just bounces inneffectively off leaving the wood completely unharmed.  Bystanders, on the other hand, have to dance around to keep out of the way!  Average elapsed time to splitting a small piece of wood specially chosen for ease of destruction is 30 to 40 minutes.  Six small 6-inch rounds provided entertainment for several hours.

Who needs TV?

Weather is great.  Young people are having fun.  The days are racing by.  And Sal and I are exhausted!  There is no substitute for youth, of course, and we are not expected to keep up but our guests are used to napping at the oddest of times.  And so they keep recharging!!

Because each one of them commutes for at least an hour every day on the subway alone, they have learned to ‘kip’ out and snatch moments of rest in an otherwise incredibly busy Hong Kong lifestyle.  It does not sound like they are used to sleeping for eight hours at a time, instead snatching one, two and four hours stretches more commonly.

Out here they go like mad for a few hours, conk out for one and then go like mad again.  Just watching is tiring for me.  Leading them in various activities is a major challenge and only handled by sharing the chores.  Yesterday a neighbour came by and took them sightseeing by boat for a few hours.  The day before another took them for two hours of yoga.  And we have my daughter and her fiancé as well.

It is barely enough!

Mind you, that is more a statement about us than them.  We are slowing down some, living easier, out of the madding crowd.  We are half-speed compared to ten years ago.  Maybe slower.  And I have written of that before.  But usually I am comparing our pace with that of our previous one – when we were working and raising a family in the city.  But their’s is a pace several times faster than our busiest of times.  Hong Kong makes the Canadian pace of life look like a vacation.

Different generations, different cultures, different everything…………..our only real commonality is a wonderful curiousity of each other.  And it is enough to keep us all royally entertained.            

‘Member that last post?  That Cantonese word for serendipity?

OK….so Sal and I are in the town ten days or so ago doing some shopping.  We are in the grocery store and Sal is looking at Bok Choy trying to figure out what is good and what is not so good.  An Asian woman was standing next to her (about our age) and Sal asked for her recommendation.  Seems she was from Edmonton and on vacation on the island next door to us.  She was with her husband who was pretty ill.  We didn’t have much to say to that but it was clear that ‘ill’ meant soon-departing.  Maybe.  That is what it felt like.  I gave her our address.  “Hey, if you are bored give us a call and we’ll pick you up, give you a boat ride and it might be a nice outing for you.”

A bit of an odd response to a casual chat about Bok Choy with a stranger, don’t you think? 

And today, they did!  They called!  So I picked them up, brought them over and introduced them to the kids.  Everyone had lunch, talked a mile a minute (much of it in Cantonese) and a few hours later, I dropped them back on the other side.  It had, indeed, been a nice outing.  And the husband explained that he may indeed be soon departing.  Lots of bad stuff going on healthwise for him.

It was sad but somehow still a pleasant day.

Before they left, they said something that sounded like, ‘Yow Yoon’.  I think it might be spelled ‘yau yuen’.  We all looked at them!!  That was the name of the tea we had.  That was the word that meant serendipity or fate or destiny or fortuitous meeting or something.  That was the word that we had all discussed the day before.  That was the word that prompted yesterdays blog!

And, most weirdly, little butterfly, we had given that spontaneous invitation ten days before!

I dunno….maybe you had to be there.  But it felt like a circle closing, a point being made, some sort of weird thing just happened.  Fate was playing a small joke.  And, funnily enough, everyone got the joke.  We all laughed as if we understood what had just happened.  We hadn’t.  But it kinda felt like we did.

Yau Yuen, eh?  Go figure.

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There is a word in Cantonese that means, well, something like serendipity….but more personal and somehow less of an accident.  Capricious but more friendly and relationship based.  Kinda.  There is no word in English that adequately says the same thing.  Or so we are told by the students we have visiting. 

We learned that while poring over pouring the various Chinese teas we served in their first afternoon with us.  One of the teas was so named.  Untranslatable.  But it came up in conversation anyway. 

We have four female early twenty-something students who collectively weigh almost what I do and haven’t a clue as to what they are experiencing out here.  The forest was a surprise.  The trees were a surprise.  The boat was a surprise.  They are in a state of gobsmack. 

And, because of that state of awe, they are a lot of fun.

It seems we are almost serendipitously bonding as friends.  And, it seems, there is a word and a symbol for that.

Today they went kayaking for the first time.  In water that was clean (seen for the first time) and saw wildlife in the ocean (for the first time) after sleeping in til 11:00 AM (which I am almost positive was the first time) and after watching the night sky complete with a canopy full of stars (never seen before due to the excess ambient lightscape of Hong Kong) while being accompanied by two dogs (each of which weighed as much as the kids).  Two slept in the boathouse.  Two slept in a tent on the new back deck.

Day one: They were enthralled.  And then they slept like the dead.

We have a ham radio tower on which is perched our poorly performing wind turbine.  The tower is 45 feet high and Sally was the one who first climbed it to place the turbine atop. The girls were amazed to hear that Sally had done that.  So Sally said, “Wanna go up?  We’ll send you up.  You can do it!”

The girls eyes almost popped out of their heads but they are game little chicks and they all said ‘yes’.  Theoretically and legally they are consenting adults.  So Sal rigged a block at the top for a safety line and we harnessed them in and let them climb.  You could see their little legs and arms shaking.  “Y’alright?” we called.  “I am fine”, each one said.  And they all climbed to the top, had their pictures taken (natch) and came down to cheers.  It is like an Asian Outward Bound-thing out here.  And they are loving it.

We are giving them an experience.  Probably of no relevance to anyone.  Don’t ask me to explain this.  I can’t.  It’s weird.  But we think it is a good thing.  There may even be a word for it.  I have no idea. 

Maybe in Cantonese?

Saw a wolf yesterday.  Cool.  And he saw me.  We were just ten feet apart.

But I was in my car…..

I was on the other island driving over to the regional airport to pick up guests arriving on the 2:00 flight.  I was off the logging road but just a mile or so onto the pavement on the road heading for the ferry.  No houses for miles.  No side roads, either.  I came around a corner and there was what seemed like a big dog loping down the middle of the road.  I slowed a bit.  He moved to the side but kept moving.  Didn’t turn to look, just kept loping.

As I got closer I recall thinking, “Whoa, he’s a big one!”  I was thinking that this old boy was lost or at least ranging pretty far from home.  And I may have been right…..

But he wasn’t old.  Not at all.  Big, black with golden highlights in his ruff, he sported the long legs and big feet of a significantly wolf-looking dog.  I’d guess he was pushing 200 pounds.  Definitely over 175.

I drew abreast, slowly moving.  He slowed.  We looked at each other.  No fear.  No surprise.  No concerns whatsover.  I am talking about him.  I was quite glad I was in the car.  It was not a wolf-like dog, it was a fully mature, strong, healthy wolf walking on the road like he owned it.  And, for all intents and purposes, he did!

As we were moving at the same pace – which I am sure seemed weird to him –  he made a decision and stopped.  I took it as a hint for me to ‘Keep moving, buddy!  Keep your eyes on the road!’  So, I did.  But I saw him in the rearview mirror head across the road and up into the forest after I had passed.  I guess he figured he had already exposed himself too much.  He was gone in a flash.

It was noon-ish.  It was a paved road (albeit a pretty remote one) and he was out in the open covering territory efficiently.  He was very much in control.  This was not a scurrying animal.  This was a guy who thought he owned the road!

Very neat.

So, there you are in a cabin in the woods.  It is late and you are just about to fall asleep.  You hear a noise and perk up!  It is a scratching, gnawing, skitchety noise coming from inside the wall and after listening closely for a few minutes, you know what it is.  It’s a mouse!!

And all Hell breaks loose! People scramble from their beds clutching modesty around them and start to panic.  “Mice!!  Head for the big house!  Aaaarggghhh!”

And then there is the stampede up the steps to the house where the front door opens with rapid screaming of the details of the vermin invasion.  The shocking, calamitous news is quickly transmitted to the sleepy, comfortable, warm, older folks who – probably because they have no grasp of the dangers involved – just don’t seem to get what all the fuss is about.

Now, bear in mind that this is the country and there are, in fact, a few mice around. Now and then. They are ‘country mice’ or field mice.  The kind of mice Disney auditions for their movies.  Maybe one, maybe a family lodge in a wall.  Sometimes.  Your average country mouse is two inches long, furtive, out-of-sight and easily frightened.

But not as easily as some of the guests!

We’ll deal with the mice today.  No big deal.  They don’t put up much of a fight.  A little intimidation goes a long way.  Poison closes any lingering resistance rather neatly.  We will be little-mouse free in a day or two.  The big chicken-mice will still be frightened but after a bit of Post Traumatic Stress counselling, they’ll be fine.

Nature is raw.  Dangerous.  Brutal.  And savage in the extreme at times.  Well, disturbing at the very least.  And people have to do what people have to do.  Even if that means running to mom.  Shrieking and hiding from mice is a natural response and nothing to be ashamed of.  There is nothing wrong with that.  No one should feel embarrassed.

But you might want to cut down on the cheese intake a bit.  Or pack some heat.  There is no negotiating with mice.  Face it, dudes, this is the wilderness. 

Three walls up.  Lookin’ good!  But I am downing tools for the next three weeks.  Probably…mostly….maybe.

Daughter and her bethroed are here.  We are all getting ready for an influx of more summer guests.  Some from China.  Some from BC.  Some from Ontario and Quebec.  Makin’ food.  Temporary beds.  Tents.  It is like Able company on a mission, here.  Logistics up the ying yang.  Calendar booked for the foreseeable future.

“Geez, Dave, do you like that kind of thing?”

No.  Not really.  But waddya gonna do?  People plan to travel in the better weather and that time is now.  And some are coming here.  A lot of the people around here are surprised at their seasonal popularity but it is quite reasonable, really.  Just the traveling-in-the-daylight makes it all so much easier.  And it is a beautiful part of the world.  We will be inundated.

Fortunately, I like the people.  It is the logistical madness that daunts my enthusiasm.

You see, life out here still has to carry on as well.  We have some civic duties to perform, house and garden to keep up, projects at the half-done stage and, of course, all the things that you don’t even think about that seem to pop up every day.

(I keep thinking of maybe slipping away and taking a holiday.  Maybe.)

Sal wouldn’t authorize that!  As it is, she is worked off her feet.  My jobs are mostly to fill in where she needs me.  And the more people there are the more she needs me.  I am usually pretty busy catching the second half of the chore she just started so that a guest can be attended to.  Or fetching something because it easier to get it than describe how to get it.  Or do it because it easier to do than explain.  That kind of thing.

I have never really had a conventional lifestyle.  Everything has been a bit off the grid in a cultural, home, family-life kind of way.  Even work, when I think about it.  But the cul de sac was pretty conventional and this place in the summer is kinda ‘Norman Rockwell-ish’, too.  We don’t do inner-tubes behind boats on the lake but there is a lot of stuff that would seem familiar to the camping, summertime crowd.  We do summer in a manner that Norm Rockwell would not only approve but likely sketch and maybe paint.  We look normal in the summer.

It’s weird.

But, I have to close now.  Sal is calling.  Needs help with something.  And she knows where I am!      

It used to be that once we had started a job, we would work like hell to finish it.  It seemed like a good work ethic.  As we got older and stupider, of course, we would have to work longer and longer to get the job done because we were getting slower and slower in the doing.  But that is what we’d do – we’d work longer.

And that was just when we lived in the cul de sac.

Of course, all hell broke loose in the labour sector when we started this off-the-grid living project.  We had to learn how to do construction and at such a late age.  And we jumped in at the deep end.  Ooooh….that meant working even harder and longer!

When we began a-building we would ‘get at it’ and go like mad til we couldn’t go any longer.  I remember many evenings falling asleep after dinner at 7:30pm.  Again, that seemed like a good work ethic and the way to get all the jobs done.  But that grew old.  And it grew older than I was growing old and I was approaching ‘old’ pretty quickly.  We started to build this place when I was 55 and I am still at it ten years later.

After the first year, I was pretty much ‘toast’ and Sal remarked that I was just wandering around near the end of that first season in a daze.

“I would just point you in the direction of the next job and tell you what it was and you would just go do it until I stopped you for a glass of water or something.  It was like you were on some kind of dumb auto-pilot or something.”

And so, slowly but surely, we learned how to work differently.  We had to.  Now we work til we are tired and then we quit.  It makes no difference if the job is done, half done or not yet even much started.  The time of day is not a factor.  I start when I want and I quit when I want. 

“I’ll get to it when I get to it.” 

At first there was a little lost pride, a smidge less macho on display.  I was not doing the manly thing so much as the reasonable (read: comfortable) thing.  But that feeling was mostly due to the ol’ Energizer Bunny (aka, Sally).  She still went at things like a dynamo even tho I had slowed to a crawl.  She simply set the bar too high for me to match.  So, I would stop and rest before she did.  I would quit for the day while she carried on.  I would pour wine and sit on the deck and watch her while she ‘finished up’.

Surprisingly, the guilt over that quickly evaporated.  If there ever was any…?

This year, the ol’ Bunny is following suit.  Now, when I want to quit, we both head for the chairs.  I am still first to sit, tho.  Sal still has a streak of ‘finish what you start’ but even that now has limits.  She’ll finish up if finishing up is an extra ten or fifteen minutes.  If it is half an hour or more, it is a job for tomorrow.

Strangely, this pacing is a skill of sorts.  We have neighbours who still go at it til they drop and they are the same age as us.  They push and they push and they do get more done.  On any one day.  And it is good.  I kind of envy their reserves of energy.  But, really?  Not a helluva lot more gets done overall  It is not like I am building a shed and they are building high rises.  And none of us are making wages or working to a schedule!  We are still similar in our outputs – I am just a bit slower.  Takes a few extra days.  OK, weeks.

In the giant scheme of things, does it matter?

Blasphemy.  That kind of thinking (putting it off) was blasphemy when we were younger.  Now I see it as wisdom.  Like stopping to smell the roses?

I guess we are just getting smarter then, eh?

I was gonna build the studio walls of 2x4s but local millers don’t do 2×4.  They are of the 2×6 school of construction and, for the most part I agree with that.  But, you know, a 16′ wall for a shed to house tools in a temperate climate could easily be done from 2x4s.  Plus it is so much lighter and easier to work with.  Especially on a small space like a suspended deck.  They make those Home Depot 2×4’s out of recycled Styrofoam and woodchips, I think.  They are so light.  Feels like you can spin a HD stud like a baton.

I kinda wanted 2 x 4’s.

But I didn’t fuss.  Some of the local guys are pretty skint and need to sell lumber and, to be fair, their stuff is so much better than standard product at building yards.  Your basic dimensional lumber at any yard is junk compared to the worst of the local product which would be your spruce or Hemlock.  Even the Hemlock is far superior to anything mass marketed.  A locally made fir 2×6 is often so strong and dense you can’t screw a deck screw through it using an 18Volt Milwaukee drill. And forget trying to nail through it with cheap Chinese-made nails.  They’ll fold up on ya.

More than once I have resorted to pre-drilling a nail hole.

But, like I said, foam-boards were not bought and local lumber was.  So, to lighten things I was gonna go to 2 foot centres on the walls.  I’ve built everything so far to 16″ centres but, like I said, this is a workshop.  For tools.  Two foot centres with local fir studs is still stronger by far than store-bought foamboards on 16″ centres.

But….. the best laid plans of doofuses, eh?    

Truth be told, I don’t work from plans.  Should.  But don’t.  I kinda like to wing it, ya know?  That is one of the reasons Sal wants to call it a studio.  Somehow ‘wingin’ it’ fits with the artistic temperament of an artist and a studio rather than the precision of a skilled builder and his workshop.  She has a point.

But, really, what kind of doofus needs a plan to build a 16 foot wall?

Well, now….that’d be me….. 

You see, I bought 3 x 5 windows.  And 3 x 5 windows in the middle of a 16 foot wall naturally align with 16″ centres for the studs and, should you try to lighten up with 24″ centres, you end up adding ‘cripples’ and spacers and extra blocking to make it work.  Ironically, using 24″centres requires almost as much wood and a helluva lot more cutting.  Better to go with conventional 16″ centres.  So, I built the little shed wall and it is like an US-engineered wall for holding the Mexicans at bay!  It weighs a ton!

The Wall

‘Course then you clad it.  Almost four sheets of 1/2″ ply.  And then paper and siding and interior finishing later on and I doubt that an AK47 could get through that wall in most places.

And I have three more to build.

The point is that this shed will endure.  If not from good engineering or skill, then from pure bloody mass!  I am building the linebacker of sheds.

Perhaps a little planning might come in handy sometime.  Someday.  I dunno………….feels so restricting, ya know?  I am an artiste, after all.  Still, making a bunker instead of a shed is the result in this case.  So, I am gonna have to re-think this artistic approach some.  I guess.  But I am into it now.  Fort Studio is underway.