Every time it gets hot I think of global warming and that we are all doomed!  It’s crazy.  I know that.  But I feel that way anyway.  Talk about Henny Penny and Chicken Little.  The thing is I don’t feel that way if we get an unseasonable cold snap.  I complain a bit if the pipes freeze but, I don’t feel an imminent threat to life on earth.  Me and my species are safe in the cold.  Somehow.  But, sheesh!  If it gets over 80 I start to worry.  Over 90 and I am sure we’re destined for the ash heap and, if it ever hits 100, I am sure to panic.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

I was up here one summer building about eight years ago.  I was alone.  Sal was in town earning a living and I was up here hurting myself in an effort at establishing a base from which our further building efforts would eventually evolve.  I happened to pick a hot spell for this work stint and, of course, I got really hot while I was working.  And I started to panic.

When in panic, call Sal. 

“Sal!  It’s me, Dave.  I think we made a huge mistake.  Our building site must be in some kind of freakish micro-climate thingy where the heat just builds and builds until anything living here just explodes!  I am dying!  I am gonna blow up!  It is so hot!  We gotta sell……….move further north………..change our plans…….aaaaaargh!!!!!”

“Oh, shut up, you silly fool!   It is really hot down here, too.  We are just having a heat spell.  It’s hot everywhere.  Relax.  Are you drinking plenty of water?”

“Water?  Well, unh…………….no.  Not really.  No.”

When I work (which I try to minimize) I tend to get a bit focused and, in the beginning, I didn’t take breaks or stop for tea.  I’d just go til I dropped.  (Which, as a rule, wasn’t all that long and so progress was slow.)

But when I was ‘on’, I was pretty good.  I just wasn’t ‘on’ that much.  One of the worst work-habits I had was not drinking water when I should have.  And Sal knew that.  I didn’t.  It is hard to get a handle on such things when you are half-mad by way of the noon-day sun and Welsh/British genes.

“Drink some water, you big goof!  Ya gotta keep your electrolytes…..blah, blah, blah……….” I faded out on the words she was using but I got the gist of it.  Blah, blah, blah meant ‘drink water!’  So I did.

But I don’t think she told me to do it more than once.  So, by the end of the day, I was pretty crazy.  I thought I was gonna die.  I knew that I had to cool off so I threw myself in the ocean.  OMYGAWD!  I knew then I was really gonna die!

I took a body with a median temperature of 110 degrees F and immersed it in a body of water that stays within one or two degrees of 50 degrees F all year long.  Glass would have shattered.  Some of my systems shut down completely.  Others shriveled to nothing.  I was imploding with cold!

It was hell!

And now I was naked to boot.  I managed to get a bit more than half-way out of the water, thankful that my heart was still pumping, when I heard voices behind me.  Kayakers.  A gaggle of kayakers were just rounding the point and the first one was looking directly at me and what used to be a modest but distinguishing feature.  I discreetly re-immersed myself in the killer cold and smiled wanly as the 14 or so kayakers slowly (ever so slowly) paddled by commenting on how beautiful everything was.  I should have re-exposed myself.

So let that be a warning to you!  Climate change can be hell!

…….seems Canada’s banks were not so squeaky clean after all.  According to the book, Thieves of Bay Street (by Bruce Livesy) our banks were caught like the Americans and Europeans in the sub-prime mortgage debacle as well.  Further, they needed ‘bailing out’ just like City Group, Fannie May and AIG.

The Canadian government provided something like 125 BILLLION in ‘cover-up’ money to the investment arms of our BIG FIVE banks.  And CIBC and RBC have been sued for even more by American investors for their part in pushing bad securities on pension funds and the like.  CIBC, in particular, has been ‘duped’ quite a lot over the past decade or so.  Seems they previously backed ENRON for years and have been sued over that, as well.

CIBC did OK on the great Global Crossing fraud (another great hole for pension funds that, until lately, was one of the largest business failures (read: scams) in history.  CIBC pumped and dumped with the best of them and ended up in the black that time (black what?  It stinks to high heaven so you figure it out).

Which reminds of that rat-in-a-suit Conrad Black but that is another rant for some other time.

The point: our banker boys are not as pure as the driven snow like we have been led to believe.  And the Canadian taxpayer has recently had to take up the collection plate on their behalf.  We are covering their losses and it is showing up in spades.

But we don’t hear about it.  They keep us in the dark and lie to us.  We think our financial system is rock solid and yet we hear that Flaherty is ‘tightening belts’ and ‘cutting back’ and we wonder why.  We see Harper flogging tar and raw logs like a used car dealer and we wonder why.  We have sorry, second world facilities and almost third world infrastructure and we wonder why.

Well, now you know why we ‘feel’ that things aren’t quite right.  ‘Cause they are not.  They – the Canadian Establishment –  lost a lot of taxpayers’ money.

Don’t worry.  I am not going to write about finance.  I don’t know enough.  What I do know is this: good, big Canadian (and other country’s) businesses have been ‘vampired’ by their respective financial institutions.  RIM, Nortel and the names go on……..bled dry by ‘our guys’.  And it ain’t stopping anytime soon.  The new really bad guy on the block is the banker, the financial advisor and the hedge fund manager.

No, there is nothing good to write about on that subject.  So, I’ll write about guests instead.  I like those people.  They seem to have a good heart, a decent mind and a love of nature and friendship.

It is like we all live in different worlds than that of Wall Street, Bay Street and Sussex Drive, don’t you think?  

Our visitors left today.  A family of friends from China – by way of Britain and Canada.  They live in Hong Kong now but were educated in Britain and Canada and began their family in Ottawa.  E still works internationally.  They have an interesting story – but it is theirs and I won’t tell it.  Suffice to say that, like so many modern families that have moved and worked away from home, they have become almost ‘international citizens’.  No place feels like home.  And all places feel like home when they are there. One of the kids is now studying in the States……and he comes with some attendant ‘Americanisms’ as a result.  Pretty interesting stuff.

It is also a pretty good argument for the value of working, living and traveling abroad – at least for part of one’s life.  Travel broadens the mind and opens the heart.  They are comfortable wherever they go.  Worldly.  Competent at an international level.  Sincere, honest people.  They are a real delight to have as guests.

I used to be.

In fact, I used to be a great guest.  I was so pleased at having the experience, receiving the hospitality and sharing the lifestyle being offered that I made sure that I was present when needed, absent when not wanted and polite and considerate at all times.  I was a great guest.  Today?  Not so much……………

It is not that I am bad.  I am still good.  Go ahead, invite me over.  I’ll be good, I promise.  But the thing is I am no longer entranced by foreignness.  I am not enthralled by ‘the difference’.  I don’t need the experience.  I, too, have become somewhat ‘international’ but I am more inclined to be local these days instead.

Becoming worldly is a good thing but it has a downside.  I have grown accustomed to the differences, actually and, I am a bit more blasé.  NOT unappreciative – just a bit of ‘been there, done that’.  I don’t like that about myself but I have to tell the truth about it.  I am not as keen to travel anymore……………..!!!

There!  I’ve said it.  I’m free!  I have let it out.  Whew!

Such an epiphany is shocking to me.  It really is.  Somehow I have shifted from a traveling man to a stick-on-the-rock (not enough topsoil to be a stick-in-the-mud).  I just like it here way more than I ever thought I’d ever like anywhere else. ‘Course, I may still have to go somewhere sometime but at least I can grouse openly about it now.

For the longest time I used to love going somewhere but, over the last decade I’d say, the poles have shifted.  I am now a bona fide homebody.  I like my own bed!  So, sue me.

“You must come to see us in Hong Kong!” they say politely as they prepare to leave.  And they mean it, too.  I am sure they would be happy to be visited in a year or so.

“Nah!  Love you dearly but I don’t think I’ll ever be in Hong Kong again.  You know……planes, airports, traffic…….I mean…you guys are great and I want to see you again but, like maybe if you go to Africa or something, ya know……?  Been to Hong Kong.  Hey!  Why not go to Mozambique!  That’s different! We’ll meet you there.”

Of course, I am not really that rude.  It is just my sense of humour, really.  But all humour has to have an element of truth to work and I do mean it a bit………..at least the ‘loving them dearly’ part.

The trouble is that my sense of humour is regarded as a bit weird at the best of times and it often goes unappreciated when it has to leap cultural gaps.  “Oh, yes, well……….of course………..if we ever go to Mozambique we’ll let you know……”

And, with a puzzled look on their faces they give us a hug goodbye and head off down the logging road that, when coming in, was a major adventure-challenge in itself.  They may be pretty international and flexible.  They may have open minds and a high tolerance for differences but visiting the Rock with Dave and Sal has pushed the boundaries a smidge.

‘And what was it with that Mozambique thing………..?’

Went to Victoria for a couple of days.  Saw Sal’s parents.  Came back.  It’s about four hours of straight driving or eight in total to and from Campbell River and, of course, a couple or three more hours from our house to Campbell River need to be added to get the full sense of it.  Loading, packing, boats, hiking, logging roads, ferry line-ups.  I used to drive eight hours in a normal day and squeeze in a mediation session.  It is not like that anymore.  One long day to Victoria and we are done.

“Tired, sweetie?”

“Not too bad.  But I would be just as happy never to leave the island again.  I wonder if we can just hire people to do all that needs to be done and, like, you know……………we stay there…………..never leave?”

Such a sentiment is not (probably) healthy but the city (Victoria) is hardly appealing.  We parked on the street downtown and had breakfast with our son and daughter-in-law for $80.00!!  Street parking was $7.50!  Had I gone nuts and had another cup of Chai latte, we could have been a hundred dollars lighter.  For breakfast!  The weirdest part?  We had to line up for forty minutes before getting in!!  Yeah……the little, jammed, inelegant greasy spoon, the Blue Fox, is that popular!  Good thing we didn’t have tea and toast at the Empress!

The really weirdest part?  Somehow that seems to be the norm………….

But that sort of madness is not why I am writing.  I just had to get that off my chest.  Sorry.  No, the reason I am writing is that I also went down to see a boat.  I was sure I was gonna buy it.  It was a 22 foot rowboat and I was thinking that rowing might be good for me.  But when I saw it, I realized that it would be fine for rowing but NOT for all the work I had to do around here.  I had to pass.  The exercise was not a wasted one, tho.  I met G.

G – the seller of the boat – is my age and has been ‘in computers’ for over forty years.  That is a long time in that industry.  He was first employed by IBM and worked on mainframes.  Now he is a consultant.  G has a BIG picture view of where it is all headed.

“So, G?  In a sentence or two, where is all this headed?  The computers, the CCTV, the social networking, our growing dependence on the net……………?  What do you see in the future?”

“Well, being off the grid is good.  Very good.  Within a frighteningly short time people will have chips embedded in them.  Soon it will start at birth.  We’ll be wired in from birth on everything we do, everywhere we go, everyone we see and talk to.  It will happen before I die and it will happen to your kids and their kids.  It is already happening. I am moving off the grid, too.”

“You are kidding!  Not that bad!  Surely not?”

“That is only the half of it.  But all you need to know is that they already know virtually everything you do.  You have very few secrets.  They have satellite access to everything.  They really can read over your shoulder.  And they do!  In England they practically have the whole country covered in CCTV.  And the US is more sophisticated than England.  Pretty soon the most valuable thing you will have (and you won’t have it!) is privacy.  They are taking that away.”

“That sounds beyond Orwell.  Are you exaggerating to make the point?”

“Not in the least.  In fact, I am sparing you some of the stuff.  If you talk on the phone, use your computer, use a credit card and or have a smartphone, you are tracked already.  They track for a reason.  And the reason is not benign nor benevolent.  You are feeding the beast!”.

I have heard this kind of thing before.  I used to call it paranoid ranting.  And yet I believed it to some small extent even at the time.  Hell, I have met some student data miners from China already who described their careers in similar ways!  I know that the essence of what he said was true.

Plus I have had dozens of people I would normally consider not-too-crazy-but-perhaps-a-little-paranoid and who were not in the business and who really didn’t know enough to be informed of such things warn of this state of affairs for years.  But this guy was a bona fide, deeply-involved, active, senior worker in the industry with an extensive resumé and he was matter-of-fact and definitive.

The message: we are doomed!  Sorta.

Oddly, he was not too concerned.  “Look, it is inevitable.  It will happen and it is already happening.  What can you do?  You got off the grid and I will go that route, too.  But it won’t be enough.  They will still know way too much about us.  The only real benefit of getting off the grid, is that we are not the low-hanging fruit.  Should they ever get so crazy as to interfere more than they already are, it is easier to interfere with those conveniently gathered in masses.  We off-the-gridders will be the strays.  Somehow that feels better.  I don’t know if it is better, tho.  We’ll see.

As we were coming home and expressing our desire to return here, Sal added…………“Ya know, if I had to do it again, I’d move out further.  Maybe up a more northerly inlet. More remote.  Somewhere mid-coast maybe.  And I wouldn’t buy anything, I’d just squat illegally.  Don’t wannna hafta ‘register’ anywhere.  Or anything.  And maybe build a bigger food shed……….waddya think……….get some guns………….learn to hunt…………..am I talkin’ crazy, here?  Is it too late go further out……?”

Nothing like a weekend in the city to gain some perspective, eh?

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.