Friday’s Photo of the Week (Halloween Edition)

In honour of Halloween and… I’m not sure how many Photo’s of the Week I’m adding two things. The first is a subtitle so I can differentiate the various weekly photos. The other is a theme. Instead of costumes I present…

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Beeker vs. Supa Saffa

Street clothed super battle - Supa Saffa uppercuts Beeker Von Evil.

This stems from July 2009, Conrad and I took a field trip to KBS studios with Wonderland. Easily one of the best field trips I’ve ever been on; as a teacher or a student.

Near the end of the tour, the guides ushered us into a bluescreen room, alas the students went first and they all sat there while on the bluescreen various images flashed and shifted behind them. Perhaps they were mesmerized by the technology or seeing themselves on TV.

Beeker beheaded.

Once Conrad and I hit the screen things changed. The quiet room erupted in laughter as we put on an impromptu superhero battle unfolded amongst the Seoul skyline.
Supa Saffa (Conrad) cheated because how is it fair to have super strength and flight?
With a move that Sub-Zero wishes his frozen uppercut could accomplish, Supa Saffa decollated the dastardly Beeker and carried his noggin back Hall of Biltong.

Twas an epic battle, and I would have got away with it too… if not for those wily Wonderland kids!

Behind the blue screen magic. Conrad 'flies'.

Toddler Television

This is not an atypical conversation with my brother.

“HELLO.”
“Hey bro, what’s up?”
“YOUBUSYTOMORROW?”
“No, why?”
“WELL…”
“Just spill it.”
“CANYOULOOKAFTERNOLAN?”
“I suppose.”
“‘KAYTHANKS.HE’LLBETHEREBY7AM.”
“He’ll have to wake me then.”

I woke up at 7, and Nolan arrived around 7:15.
Coffee played a major role in my survival.
It was a miserable, blustery grey day with the rain varying between misting and drizzling down. Nolan is an outdoor kid, he loves nothing more than being outside doing stuff. On this day, all he wanted to do was help me take the recycling to the end of the driveway and get the mail.

The rest of the day he happily played on one cushion on the couch. He had a plastic forklift and dump truck, a crate, a barrel and bunch of pipes. These toys were originally his fathers and must be 33 years old. Each time he would hoist up the crate or barrel or pipes with the forklift and then deposit them into the back of the dump truck. If he missed, he would pick the item back up, put it on the forks of the fork lift and try again, if that failed, he would put the part onto the dump truck by hand. Did this over, and over, and over again.

Looking after him is easy. He can play by himself happily. He likes having me around to get him food; grapes, raisins, or fishy crackers. Occasionally I’m pressed into driving one of the vehicles or creating voices. Nolan does all the lifting of materials however; he’s the foreman, I’m the labourer.

It is a dynamic that works perfectly well for me.

While he played I had Treehouse on in the background on television. Nolan likes TV when he wakes up from his nap, otherwise he’s pretty indifferent to it. Unless Thomas & Friends comes on, within the first two notes of the theme song, he gleefully shouts “Thomas!” and all things stop for that quarter hour.

Nolan played in his own world and I couldn’t help but notice just how horrible so much of children’s programming has devolved into. When I grew up, there were four children’s shows easily accessible to me; Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood, Mr. Dress-up and Sesame Street.
I never knew how good kids had it back then.
The current crop of shows vary between pretty good to abysmal. Even better, when my brother and I weren’t watching TV, we were reading books or playing with tractors or climbing trees or throwing rocks in the river or working in the fields with my grandpa (okay, only Ian was out in the fields, but that was his choice).

What bothered me the most were back to back shows that had the main characters acting like petulant brats but receiving accolades from teachers and adults. The first is called Angelina Ballerina, about an anthropomorphic mouse who dances. She has a friend who wants to run a marathon (don’t overthink this, a mouse running a marathon – it’s kids’ TV) and she morphs into a verbally abusive dictator. Her friend is not allowed to dance with her, nor can he play checkers as he needs to train for the race which he now must win. She sets up balloons and arranges a cheering squad and gets the whole town out to support him.

All he wanted to do was run a marathon. No fanfare. No fuss.

When Angelina realizes her mistake she talks to her ballet teacher who tells her, “you did nothing wrong.”
Other than everything she has done to undermine and spoil her friend’s hobby and goal. It was a bad episode made worse when the teacher enables and encourages the spoiled princess of a rat. Instead of explaining how to support a friend without walking all over them, the moral seems to be… ‘as long as you’re the centre of attention, it’s all right to do what you want.’

This moral repeated itself in the next show Olivia. About an anthropomorphic pig. The class puts on a play and Olivia is NOT the Main Fairy, nor is she the Tiny Fairy, she is Cow #2. An important part to be sure!

Instead of doing the best Cow #2 moo she can do, Olivia disrupts the rehearsals and mugs onstage. During the actual performance, Olivia feeds the lead her line and I’m thinking, okay, this works, she’s learned how to be a supportive friend.
Only… no…
When she says her ‘moo’, she has a friend drop a counterweight and Olivia ‘jumps over the moon’ flying about the room and upstage everyone. Her teacher smiles and her parents laugh along with the rest of the audience.

Again… really?
These are the lessons to be learned from children’s programming? Be selfish and demand the spotlight. Be a bratty, spoiled, petulant, whinging, holy terror… so no one forgets who the star of the show is.

Today’s post has been brought to you by the letters W, T and F and the number 2.

Grandma’s Daycare: Field Trip

My parents are currently wrapping up a Mediterranean cruise, but before they left they took their grandchildren to a pumpkin patch for the little ones to enjoy all the fun n’ thrills contained in a muddy field. Nolan, naturally, would likely still happily be there if we’d left him behind. The place we went to on a brisk, sunny Friday afternoon in early October was the Laity Pumpkin Patch. One of the first patches in the Lower Mainland.

The Laity’s are a long-time farming family, Laity Street takes its name from them, as their farm was (and still is) at the end of the street and that was how people used to get to their place. They can trace their residence in Maple Ridge through at least four, perhaps as many as six, generations. Interestingly enough, their lucrative October gourd business occurred by accident. Over 20 years ago some pumpkin seeds were mixed in through their compost which just happened to be spread over their personal vegetable patch. October rolls around and the pumpkins have grown large and full and in copious amounts. So many pumpkins that the family could have carved entire legions of ghouls, ghosts n’ creepy crawlers and still had seeds left over. One of the teenaged boys asked his mom if she minded if he sold some of them to friends or gave them away.

Mrs. Laity knows a good idea when she hears one, that year they modestly sold the bulk of their orange pumpkins to be carved into Jack o’ Lanterns, but kept enough pumpkins AND the seeds to repeat the process next year and expand upon it.

It’s been an unmitigated success.
Now schools and daycares from around the Lower Mainland travel to the Laity Pumpkin Patch to pick some pumpkins and wander through the rustic compound Mrs. Laity and her team have developed.

Mom, being Mom and having known Mrs. Laity for nearly 30 years, packed up her three youngest grandchildren and went to the patch in the morning. I sluggishly followed along. Mom’s sister-in-law (my aunt) and niece (my cousin) met us there with their 2 year old boy.

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Only, they were running late and Mom never bothered to actually check the hours of the pumpkin patch. Every AM it is dedicated to schools and groups. Sagely, only a fraction of the fields are open during the morning and it is less free-roaming gourd-for-all and more guided tour.
On the fly, Grandma’s Daycare is born, when Mom and Mrs. Laity realize Mom’s predicament. She ushered into the big red barn filled with animals.
Nolan immediately gravitates towards the birdcage. Aisling bounce all over the place, checking out all the animals and Kylianne likes the goats and sheep.
Oddly, before Macgregor joins us, we briefly have a temporary Asian child in attendance at Grandma’s Daycare. She, like Mom, didn’t realize it was groups only before lunch, only unlike Mom she can’t call in a favour.

Unlike our usual visits the Laity farm, after five minutes we are instructed to move to the next half of the barn because this is, actually, on a timer. Which makes sense considering the number of stations that have been set up and the number of groups that rotate through this pastoral patch over the course of a day. The second half of the barn brings about the first set of tears as Kylianne sticks her finger through the chickenwire to try to pet a large rooster. The rooster notices a wiggling pink thing and figures… “wormsnack”! Kylianne jerks her finger back as tears roll down her cheeks and suddenly “I hate that rooster, it can never visit mine room ever”!

Up next, is an outdoor interactive playset. There are tractors (Nolan, “TRAC-TOR”!), and trains which Macgregor streaks to, as well as various coops and barnyard animals. Children can feed the horses and llamas and pigs as well milk the cows, there are also some informational displays which the toddlers ignore. Things are fine, the girls flit from animal to animal, naming them, petting them, milking them; while the boys glom on a tractor and a train and are perfectly content until it’s time to move to the next station. Double sets of tears from the boys.

Nolan loves the next station once he wipes the tears from his eyes. Tractor Ride!
It’s a simple oval, for someone like Nolan this is ‘warm ups’ but for a lot of suburban and urban kids this is a novel mode of transportation in a bucolic locale. The two minute loop shows the Golden Ears (on good days) and when the Golden Ears Mountains are out and in the sunshine, they are a magnificent view indeed.

Once off the tractor (far too short a ride for Nolan), there are some bigger animals, most notably an emu, which Kylianne wisely opts not to try and pet. If the rooster peck hurt, an emu bash would…
exactly. Good call Kylianne!

The kids enjoy cookies and juice in a teepee, a good time for the kids to relax after about thirty minutes of stuff and before the next part of the tour. And for the teachers, child keepers and grandparents a chance to relax and regroup.

With the adults momentarily relaxed and the kids recharged on sugar, its time for the magical woods. In the woods are some cartoon characters that are more recognizable to the kids than to me. What I find more interesting is how over the 20-0dd years since the pumpkin patch began the artwork has improved. The initial ones are still there, fewer and few each year, and they sport a certain amateur charm. The newer ones are either three dimensional or professionally done and look excellent.

In the small wooded area the kids find cartoons, dinosaurs, wild animals, a pioneer town, fairies amongst ferns and a bridge of dragons.

After the woods, there is a corn maze to explore. Mom might still be there if she were on her own. One good thing about going to the pumpkin patch early, fewer visitors means few people as made their own trails through the maze out of frustration or hooliganism. We meet one team leader who is alone, she’s completely lost her students. Excellent. I only lost an aunt, a cousin and her kid!
I love corn mazes, they’re counter intuitive. Logic suggests one way, but often time going against instincts leads to more success and a quicker route.

After that it was time to pan for gold!
(Not real gold, this is a business after all!)
The kids didn’t grasp the concept entirely but they enjoyed playing with the wet sand in the water troughs. Kids + sand + water = wet fun.

Finally, time to pick some pumpkins on the other side of some massive sunflowers. I suspect those are Russian for some reason.
It’s funny, in the picture above (in the slideshow) the one depicting the pumpkins in the field is very different than every other picture I’ve taken with the same view. The hordes haven’t trampled the greenery down into the earth and the rains haven’t pounded the dirt into mud. Here there are orange pumpkins peeking out from under green vines and leaves. In a couple of weeks, it will look like a barren brown mudscape with orange balls mired in the muck. I really enjoyed the writhing lines of green.

The kids aren’t overly interested in picking their own pumpkins, so we gather them up and usher them towards the vehicles to return to Grandma’s Daycare for lunch.

A couple of final things worth noting.
Nolan is incapable of not getting dirty. He attracts dirt and mud like… well… like his father did at that age or someone at Boryeon Mudfest.
Aisling more interested in the ladybug she found, than in pumpkins.
The picture of Nolan and Aisling in the pumpkin patch, Nolan is about to fall over as Aisling rushes to show me the ladybug. Nolan would NOT let go of that pumpkin and took (yet another) tumble into the mud.

I coral Nolan and Aisling out in the parking lot, the pair find a car and start wiping a door clear of mud, the car just happens to belong to the woman on the entry gate. She yells at the pair of them to get away from her car! They don’t understand. Mom makes a joke of it that falls on humourless ears. I ignore her and allow the duo to indulge a few more swipes of the door before marshalling them to the mini-van for the short ride back to Grandma’s Daycare.

Fan Un-Appreciation, Volunteer Appreciation

“That’ll be $100.”

“Do you have any cheaper seats?”

“Just the $100 ones are left.”

I laugh and walk away.
No way. On a whim I decided the day of the match to go catch the final game of the Vancouver Whitecaps debut season in the MLS.  I am not about to pay $100 to see a bunch of underachieving, over rated ‘soccer’ players lose (which they did) again, (which they did 18 times this season, managing a shameful six wins) for that price.

How, exactly, is that appreciating the fans who have supported this train wreck of a season? At that price I should be at least be on the bench or permitted a throw-in, lord knows I couldn’t do any worse than the product the Whitecaps put on the field this in year.
In their first season…
in a very average league.

The owners can call it Major League Soccer if they wish, but any real fan knows the best in the world are not playing in North America. This is the major league for the never-got-theres, the retirees-from-overseas and the not-there-yets. Any player with real skill will end up in Europe, unless they are acutely homesick. This is not The Premiership, La Liga or Serie A, it’s might be Scottish Second division, on a good day.
The way the Whitecaps have underperformed throughout the season, if I wanted to see competitive football, I’d be better off going to a local field and watching some Metro Men’s teams play.

I find it inexcusable and inexplicable for this team to have the audacity to demand $100 for a single seat. It is their first year in MLS and they’ve managed to accumulate six wins – eighteen losses and ten draws for a paltry 28 points and last in the entire league.
How do they plan to build their brand when it is cheaper to go to CFL football game where there is a chance that the BC Lions will actually win?
When the highlight of the final match is a chant between the Southsiders (loyal to the core fans) and another section, I realize I’m thankful the Whitecaps are doing their utmost to alienate casual fans into finding other, more worthy investments of their disposable income.

The Whitecaps have just completed their first dismal season in MLS. They do not have the 40 year love affair with the city the Vancouver Canucks have forged over time. From being perennial whipping boys to being legitimate contenders for Lord Stanley’s Cup.  Nor do they sport the 57 year continuous reign of the BC Lions of the CFL.

Yet, I suspect the Whitecaps will endure, in spite of their horrible record and laughable hyperbole (“Seattle made the playoffs their first year, why not us?” – pre-season oversell) and delusional marketing and pricing – mostly because Vancouver is an international melting pot and the number of first and second generation families from foreign lands where football is king suggests that the fans will show up.
There just happens to be a very good chance that those fans will root for the other teams unless the Whitecaps get their heads out of the sand at Second Beach and realize that they currently are the red-headed stepchild of the Vancouver sporting scene and the lustre will soon rub off if they continue to overprice and underperform.

I must confess, I had a great time at the other game I attended.
I’m positive that the players don’t miss changing in tents before and after games, but for me, the Vancouver Whitecaps should be affordable entertainment with the North Shore mountains as the backdrop of an outdoor pitch, not cooped up in the occasionally opened confines of BC Place stadium.

I do hope all the fans appreciated the new look BC Place Stadium, since the team on the field was the same as it showed all season.

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Out of negative things, positive spins

I fell asleep on the couch and awoke to the phone ringing. My brother asks me if I would mind volunteering the next day for a Pumpkin Cross bike race. He didn’t pressure me but they were short on volunteers and I could dress up if I wanted to as it had a Halloween theme.

I thought it over for a few moments before agreeing to go and help out where I could.
Sunday dawned sunny and bright in stark contrast to the grey gloom of yesterday (which I think was nature’s way of disapproving of how the Whitecaps run their ‘fan appreciation’). Having about 12 hours to sort a costume, if I so chose, I ended up digging through my closet to discover attire I purchased during my university days, a 70s polyester cacophony of mauve dress shirt, lime green trousers with a matching mauve n’ green translucent scarf. Plus gumboots since I’d be standing in a horse pasture for over four hours.

My job ended up being amazingly easy, but also necessary.

Now, I need to explain cyclocross racing briefly. It’s a mix of cross country and road bike racing, and a lot of fun. Essentially riders follow a course for a set length of time. The winner is the one who finishes first. There are various challenges to the ride, including being forced to unclip from their bikes and run around certain obstacles.
That’s pretty much it.

What makes the Pumpkin Cross so much fun is that in addition to having heaps of riders negotiating narrow corners and tight turns, many of them were dressed up for the costume portion of the event. It’s not every day where the results official wears a halo, the official lap counter and bell ringer (me!) is in his disco 70s polyester perfection, and the MCs are the forth Bee Gees brother and a clown (my brother – he was dressed as a clown, he wasn’t a clown).

Plus a slew of riders rode in costume. Gene Simmons and Angus Young battled it out on the course and in the costume contest, Woody from Toy Story tried to outride a horse n’ jockey, giraffes battled nurses, knights challenged devils and rastafarians and skeletons while riding along dikes, past rivers and through the Spooky Forest.
I mean, it isn’t every day Batman wins a cyclocross race on his Batcycle, although Adam West never pedalled anything that hard in his life, except maybe his breakout (of Batman’s cowl) role as Captain Rick Wright in the Last Precinct.
Or a small spider can attack me with hugs and laughter (my niece) as I dutifully ignore my volunteer duties to play with her for a few minutes, before she and her clown-father had to go into the youth cyclocross race.
Or where I can watch reigning world champion, Catharine Pendrel, carve up the course… while dressed as a butterfly. Narrowly defeating her local rival.

The organizers, Local Ride, were fortunate in that the weather invited a great day on the course, and while there weren’t a lot of spectators, the cost was free and there calibre of riding world class… as well as costume class. The riders enjoyed themselves it seemed to me, well, as much as they could after riding for 45 minutes to an hour.

Oh, and as a volunteer, I received two cups of coffee AND a smokie for FREE! (From Nona’s rather busy Snack Shack.)

The Whitecaps should take note on how to show appreciation.

I’m rather glad the soccer game priced itself out of reason and reach for me, since otherwise I might have missed the opportunity to ring the last lap bell and have my clown of brother ask for the number of laps left by grabbing the mic and calling out for ‘Disco Byron’.

Is there a morale to this story?
I suppose there is, a few of them really, but I think they should be fairly evident already.
(Unless you work for the Whitecaps’ marketing department.)

Ride on you beautiful world class butterflies.
(Even up amongst your own cactii cross.)

Scribbling out of the Doldrums

I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, which I suspect happens with most writers… other than perhaps Stephen King who never seems to suffer writer’s block (when he does he writes a story with a writer with writer’s block)… suffer from, from time to time. Mine lasted a few weeks I’d say. The ironic thing about being a writer stuck in a rut, I hate not writing, yet I didn’t have the focus or motivation to sit down and write. ‘Tis a vicious circle.
I believe part of the troubles a writer can suffer is that sometimes creating a dark stories and evil characters and vile situations, and that takes a toll on the psyche.
At least it does mine.

I was adrift and working through some things to get myself in a better mental place and that required me taking some time off. I needed walk away and clear my head and deal with some other issues that were niggling at my confidence and mindset. Don’t worry it was nothing major, just an accumulation of small things.
It was necessary.

During this time, I’ve been a bit of a ghost. My nieces and nephew have been absent the last week, as my folks found a too-good-to-pass-up cruise through the Mediterranean for two weeks. And my brothers and sisters-in-law are wise enough not trust me alone with their children. I’m a fantastic uncle, but I almost need someone to supervise my supervision. They know I’m the good bad uncle.

While in the doldrums of struggling through a few things, two things helped get the wind back in my sails (or ink back in my pen… or uh, fingertips back on the keyboard). The first is the recent creative explosion and adventure that my friend Chris is revelling in over at Aussie on the Road. The top benefit for him being his paid vacation due to his blogging skills getting noticed – and him being about a galaxy better than I am at networking.
(My networking skills are non-existent). I’m chuffed for him because more people need to read his travelogues and visit more places, and he needs to be paid to go further afield.

The other inspiration is an odder one, but I want to share it with my readers because inspiration can come from unexpected sources. I used to be a big professional wrestling fan but my fandom wavered in recent years – really wavered for a lot of years to be honest – I was directed towards a certain wrestler, his matches, and his podcast.
The wrestler is Colt Cabana, and his story shows how often times people learn more from setbacks than from successes. Colt made it to the top of the wrestling world, for about a cup of coffee. He signed with the WWE, went through development and received the call up to the main roster where… creative had nothing for him. Ever.
(Creative = the writers who script the shows, angles and gimmicks of a wrestling TV show.)

The company released him without giving him a shot to succeed or fail, for many people this would have been disastrous and I suspect it wasn’t the happiest of times in the cabana. Colt could have gone into a downward spiral, instead he took stock and while financially I’m sure his current status isn’t as elevated as it would have been had he stayed in the WWE; it seems to me that on every other facet of life being released from the company led to an improvement for him.
He returned to independent wrestling to find a goodly amount of success and demand, then he looked around and started his own podcast called the Art of Wrestling (it is wrestling based, but it is more generally about life, also, Listener Discretion is advised due to Coarse Language and Funny Fucking Stories) because no one was doing a podcast like that – about wrestling with a wrestler as a host. He’s done stand up comedy. Toured Japan to much aplomb and does his own youtube show. As well as getting to catch up with friends around the wrestling world. (And if a person only listens to one of the podcasts, Domino (Nigeria) is the one to tune in to).

All these things, combined with personal introspection helped out. On Wednesday I went to talk to my bank about starting a new account, the first bank shoved a pamphlet in my hands, pointed what they offered, then took the pamphlet back. Needless to say I wasn’t inspired to invest my money there. The next bank I ended up in a half hour conversation that touched briefly about banking and my various options, and then about life, and travel and the important things in life.
I haven’t invested the money yet, but it is an easy decision to where I’m going to store some excess funds.

I want to write again, the stories I mentioned just over a week ago, but I also feel some fictionalized stories stirring that are starting to make murmurs about being scribbled down and shared with some trusted friends. My travel blogging will continue, and that will be for the general public, but there is a far cry from writing “…and then I got drunk with the chief of the village” (which it did) and coming up with the reason for while and how a certain batch of characters ended up adrift on a barge with an angry goat and three bushels of coffee beans.

Long post short… it’s time to get writing and travelling again.

Friday’s Photo of the Week (Photoalbums)

I miss last week’s photo post and no one seemed to notice. Fie upon you all!~
(I’ll explain why in a forthcoming post.)

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I love technology, digital camera in particular, although I suppose a camera can now be a

Photo albums from West Africa, Western Europe and the UK and Ireland.

phone, tablet or pretty much any gizmo from a 70s era Bond film, in addition to an actual camera. I think they are mostly great, watching people on vacation have their cameras on repeat-a-shoot and viewing a holiday through a viewfinder is no way to travel. But I enjoy the fact that if a shot doesn’t work or is ruined a quick delete n’ repeat can save a memory.

That’s cool.

What truly sucks about digital cameras now, is that photo albums are a thing of the past.
I look back at my albums from the UK and Ireland, West Africa and Western Europe and they conjure up memories and I can point out certain things that caught my eye.

Digital cameras supply the perfect shot, it’s just a shame that those pictures rarely make it into a frame.

Korean Fusion Cuisine

Maple Ridge doesn’t boast the greatest roster of diversity when it comes to dining options. Things are improving, although since I last went to the Vietnamese Pho shop – it has closed down. For years, take-out pizza and Chinese places dominated the landscape.

Imagine my surprise when my brother informed me of a Korean place not too far from where I’m staying. A quick Google search later and not only is the place in existence, its the best Korean restaurant in Maple Ridge. (It is also the only place serving up Korean fare in Maple Ridge as well.) I attempted to coerce my parents into taking me there for my birthday dinner, but alas, it closes on Monday.

Tuesday found my parents and I back at 대나무 (Daenamoo – which means Bamboo) for dinner. I wasn’t too worried about the success of the meal, after all, Mom and Dad’s week in Korea forced them to sample some Hangul fare. I give my Dad a hard time about a lot of things, including his preferred limited dining selection, but in Korea he jumped in with fork waving (he doesn’t do well with chopsticks) and tried everything I put in front of him.

Mom and Dad at the entrance to Daenamoo.

The outside of the place is fairly standard, I must give the owners credit for including the name in English as well as Korean. I worked out the name in Korean before I spied that fact it was written in English too. I fear for Daenamoo because this space is a restaurant graveyard. Over the years countless eateries have opened here and inevitably closed. I hope Daenamoo proves the exception, as diversity is never a bad idea, especially when it is Korean diversity! I’m also glad we went when we did, since South Korea taught me, ‘if you see a store that seems interesting, go now, because next week it could be something entirely different.‘
Daenamoo is a massive restaurant. A quick count suggests it can sit 80 people at capacity. This Tuesday it was no where near capacity, but at least it there were four full booths, and only one of them was a Korean couple. Way too big a space for the Korean customers in Maple Ridge, but I admire the moxy, foolhardy as it shall prove.

The decor is simply yet tasteful, the ceiling is the typical corrugated box-store metal, but oversized paper lamps hang from the ceiling, white paper with Hangul writing upon it.
Two immediate drawbacks to me, there is no ‘on floor’ seating – which I accept since that is not a Western approved style, and I’d really hoped that there would be ‘in table’ BBQ galbi options. I love grilling raw meat at my table to my preference, but again, this is likely a Canadian Food Safety requirement.
The booths are comfortable and decidedly private, as eavesdropping proved impossible. Not that I attempting it, but in Korea your conversation is shared with your neighbours and their’s with you. Admittedly I didn’t comprehend a lot of what was said while in Korea but I could hear the Hangul.

I use my broken, infantile Korean to talk to our server and she beams at my Korean speak. It turns out Daenamoo opened a few months back, and the clientele predominantly Caucasian. Maple Ridge isn’t exactly ethnically diverse but I did think and hope they may have carved out a better section of the Asian population.

Seafood pancake amidst complimentary side dishes.

The menus arrive and after glancing over it I pretty much do as I did in South Korea, I order for Mom and Dad. For the starter I opted for 해산물  파전 (a seafood pancake) or 만두 (mandu – dumplings). Dad agreed with great hesitation. He’s not a fan of seafood generally.
The first ‘ah bliss’ moment came when they offered complimentary water or green tea, we opted for the tea. Daenamoo followed that up with 반찬 (panchan – sidedishes)! I love, Love, LOVE this about traditional Korean restaurants. We ordered our meals and then, without any prompting, we received some kimchi, cooked potatoes, shredded white radish (maybe), and cucumber slices in soy sauce.

Then the seafood pancake arrived and all of Dad’s worries disappeared. Honestly, this pacheon was as good as any Korean version I’ve tasted in two years. Mom and Dad devoured the pancake with a bits of shrimp throughout it. Dad’s delighted, delicious surprise was evident from the outset and Mom, well she’s always game for new foods and she’d later say she’d order the exact same meal again.

Bibimbap doused with gochujang. 맛있어요 !

For the main course, I ordered us all  돌솥 비빔밥 (Dolsot Bibimbap – Stone Bowl Mixed Rice), having it in a stone bowl cost an extra $1.50 but is so worth the pittance extra. It makes the meal far superior to eating it out a plastic bowl. Alas, the restaurant did not have any Korean steel chopsticks, and I had to settle for disposable wooden ones. Bibim means ‘to stir’ in Korean and bap means ‘rice’. Literally a stone bowl stirred rice dish, filling with beef, all sorts of vegetables and occasionally an egg on top. (No egg this time). Daenamoo places 고추장 (gochujang – red pepper sauce) at the table, a liberal dose of that later and my bibimbap required devouring, Mom added a splash, Dad ate his rice pepper sauce free.

And it was FANTASTIC! I’d been jonesing for some quality Korean food, imagine my surprise and delight at finding a spot not 15 minutes from my parents’ home.
All told, I think dinner for three, shared appetizer and excellent main course came to under $35. Now, I could have asked about soju, but we didn’t need that on this night. By Korean standards this would seem an expensive meal but through a North American lens this was a filling, fun, damn fine deal of a meal.

Tomorrow, I’m going back for seconds.

One year, Two weeks, One day

That’s how long I’ve been keeping this blog. I’ve done writing on and off for years, but in past year I started putting more of my scribblings out there for people to read and peruse.
For the most part it’s been a rewarding experience. I’ve come in contact with some people I wouldn’t have otherwise, and for one brief 24 hour period was a darling of WordPress, when  I was Freshly Pressed due to nearly being caught in the cross-fire between North and South Korea and their enduring border ceasefire.

Not so very long ago I filled out a ‘Blog at a Glance‘ and I see no point in redoing it. There are seven links there, from most popular to most overlooked. I haven’t glanced at it in a while, but I’ll just made a few further comments upon my blog after the year which was.

For the most part it was a very good year, I travelled a fair amount; living in South Korea, visiting Singapore and Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau as well as showing my parents around South Korea for a week (a blog series that is just begging to be finished but has been stuck in limbo along with my writing motivation). I’m shaking off that lethargy and trying to write when I want to, as well as when I don’t. That’s the trick, something Jamie reminded me at my 20th Grad Reunion when he said, “writing is like working out, not that I’ve been to a gym, but it required repetition and training”. (Fear not Jaime, I’m adverse to gyms as well). And he’s correct, and my writing skills have grown flabby lately, so it’s time to work through those chunky love handles around my knuckles. Hence back to back days with blog posts.

Year in Review
In the past year (and 2 weeks and a day) I’ve blogged 151 times. That’s an average of one blog post every 2 1/2 days. Go me! Clearly I had some sweet zones to counteract my current malaise.
That number is a bit inflated, since roughly 50 of those posts have been Friday Photo’s of the Week. That concept developed over the course of the year, going from me slapping up a picture with a few words, to becoming a short piece of micro-fiction. I aim to top the Friday series at 100 words, just a snapshot (or shots) telling a succinct story. A snippet from the week, or some point in my life I want to highlight.
The most recent addition is the slideshow feature, which I both like and dislike. I like the scrolling images, but I miss captioning each individual photo. The pictures decide if I use the slideshow function or not. Some are grouped and a sequence and need no explanation, others beg for a few bonus words.

Disappointments
The big one being that I should be writing more frequently, with longer posts. I have a goal here, believe it or not, and I’m not there yet, but I feel I am progressing my writing and my style. Things look good if I can keep this focus and dedication and set up my write-up regime, and stick with it.
This parallels my least successful blog post, about jogging. I should still be jogging, or at least working out. The slight paunch I’ve developed informs me I need to increase my write-up and work-out sessions.
The most disappointing  post therefore is about me jogging.
I need to start that again, although winter is coming. (George RR Martin reference, sweet~!)

Unexpected Success
People are pervs. Men mostly. This comes as no shock to my female readers I’m sure. My most enduring and popular and searched for blog is Texas Two-Steppin‘ in Busan. The number of searches that land on my site stemming from ‘juicy girls’, ‘Texas Street’, ‘filipinas’ and ‘baikal’ rewards me with views and depresses me with the fact that I should maybe add a Sleaze Filter to go along with the Spam Filter.
I suspect those viewers don’t enjoy my post about Texas Street too much.

New Additions
I’ve signed up for Twitter. I don’t know how long I’ll be on it, but currently, after 25 minutes I have 0 followers! And made one tweet. Search for Byron JD Kerr or ByronBackpacks. Mostly I intend to use it to herald new blog postings.

Future Posts
I’ve got a few options when it comes to future posts; I’ll continue to talk about my delightfully dysfunctional family, completing the long-stalled Parents in South Korea remains a priority, I’ve also got the following places I can blog about since this is a travel-first sort of place; Mongolia, Vietnam and Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Wales (if I can find the travel diaries I took years ago) as well as West Africa.

If there is any particular place you’d like to read about, let me know and I’ll see what I can scritch.

Thanks to all the 8500 viewers that stopped by in the past 380 days.

Here’s to the next dark alley or winding path that my life takes me on.

20 Years On

Last Saturday I celebrated the twentieth reunion of the Garibaldi Class of 1991.
I very nearly didn’t go.
I missed the tenth due to living in Scotland for over a year. I only managed to attend this one due to some issues getting things sorted for my next overseas teaching gig. Issues that will soon be resolved but that, combined with some browbeating from my best friend while I was in elementary school led to me realizing I should and would attend the reunion.

I’m glad I did.

What unfolded was a  relatively low key but lively affair. Somewhere between 30 and 40 Rebels from 91 found their way to the Buffalo Club Grill. I don’t know what the ten year was like, but I suspect it differed greatly from the twenty year. At this point in our lives, we’re all well beyond the foolishness and fallacies of youth, any lingering issues from high school drama is well and truly in the past.

Instead what I discovered was a bunch of people comfortable in their own skins, who had made mistakes and enjoyed successes and worked upon improving ourselves and grown to accept our limitations.

What struck me most however, wasn’t who was there, but who opted not to attend. Not the ones living in far away places, but the ones who never left Maple Ridge but couldn’t muster the effort to catch up despite not seeing some people in a decade or two. Some of them, I understand their reasoning, “If I wanted to see them, I’d see them. I’m not a social person.” That’s a person’s prerogative. I suspect most of those locals-who-never-left skipped the reunion because they don’t have stories to tell, they aren’t comfortable in the people they’ve become since high school.

Most everyone there had gone away and were back, or nearby. I found myself spending the majority of the night with Gordon (Saskatchewan, Illinois and now Kelowna), Michael (France to Oliver), Olaf (New Westminster – but also Ord, Nebraska (or similar) on business) and Jamie (just back after 15 years or more in Toronto).
These were friends in high school and remain friends even though I haven’t seen some of them in 20 years.

Gordon is now a Doctor at UBC – Okanagan, he studied how the brain makes muscles move. Or something. His smarts shone through, now he’s married, lives on a cliff overlooking a lake and when not researching or teaching, he rides bikes at ridiculous speeds, or spends time raising his two daughters. He’s also still as funny as I remember and was in fact, the person I first ever played Dungeons and Dragons with, so I suppose I owe and his sister (the DM) a fairly big doff of my helmet.

Olaf became exactly the man I expected him to be, only about a half foot taller than he had any right to climb towards. I played soccer with him for years, and while he never had the best skill, no one showed more heart. Now he looks like a middle manager, slightly schlubby but as genuine and funny as I remember from twenty years back. He works in… I don’t know… it has to do with geography, geometrics, geology or the Geo Prizm. He looks at land for big gas and lives in New West. He’s married now and seems very happy and set in his life and I’m pleased for him.

Michael lives in Oliver, where I infamously stumbled into the vineyard that his wife is wine master at. He spent a lot of time in France, where he met his wife, has a couple of kids, and used to lead biking tours throughout Southwestern Europe. He missed the first day of wine crushing season to attend the dinner. Incidentally when I heard he was going, that pretty much sealed it for me to attend.

Finally, Jamie, who spent ages working in the bars and restaurants of Toronto, finally returned to Vancouver recently to attend the Vancouver Film School’s Screen writing program. If the stories he spun on Saturday night are anything to go on, he won’t suffer from a lack of ideas for movies and scenes. In Grade 8, out in the woodshop for homeroom (since Grade 8s are NOT highly valued in high school) I found myself with a bunch of strangers, grouped by last name… and I wondered how I ended up sharing a locker with a guy with a last name that began with an R. (Allegedly the ‘H’ remains silent.)

There were others there, the odd couple of Derek and Dawn (who I used to take long bus rides back home with our memorable curmudgeon of a bus driver Mel). Sarah who sold my brother his house. Calista who still finds Mrs. Vanier’s mispronunciation of my name from Grade 8 hi-freekin’-larious. Dean who somewhere along the way of being a mechanic seems on the verge of becoming an inventor.

Special thanks to Danielle, Heather and Sarah for organizing the rabble of Rebels into a semblance of adults, reminiscing about old times and filling in large blanks in our histories.

The night ended, as it must when in Maple Ridge, in the twisted timewarp of douchebags, cougars and cretins at Shooters. Where when the ugly lights came on at 2am, most of us weren’t quite ready to call it a night. Some brave souls headed off to a couple’s house, while others mulled around outside. Watching two lunkheads trying to man-up in the parking lot with each other, to the amusement of all.

I’ll say this for Gordon, Olaf and Michael; it takes three true friends who will laugh at my borderline racist joke (Garibaldi was redneck white in the late 80s, early 90s and Michael our Asian minority). As I said something akin to, “but Michael, your family was the Asian flavour of Maple Ridge back then.” The three of them bit their lips hard… as the other Asian customer from Shooters walked past me from behind my back.

Then they burst into laughter and I joined along with them.

It takes good friends to laugh at your funny, borderline joke.
It takes true friends to let you tell the same damn joke so they can laugh in your face…
naturally, I joined along with them in laughing at myself.

Funny is funny.
And 20 years on, we’re all comfortable in our skins.

(PS: I think I staggered home just shy of 4AM… and wouldn’t trade it for the world.)

Friday’s Photo of the Week (Squirrel Stump Tail)

It’s been a frustrating and busy week… but still… has to be a better week than this lil guy had a few months ago.

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Suddenly scampering across the back lawn and skittering up trees happened to be a squirrel short about half a tail. I suppose this is either a heroic or tragic tale. Some predator nearly enjoyed a squirrel snack, but only ended up with a furry few inches.

The rodent itself seems to be on the mend, as the stump scabbed over and is no longer blaringly white. The arboreal abomination continues to scamper about the yard with no lingering effects and a great story to tell.

Its no Bob, but not bad for a (not-so) bushy tailed rat.