Friday, August 05, 2005
Word From Calgary (Goodbye to July)
"...And we're back..."
It's 11:50am here, on Friday the 5th of August 2005. It's 22oC and very sunny outside, wall-to-wall blue skies with a predicted maximum temp of 32oC today, to continue the same over the weekend. In other words, it's gorgeous weather, a proper bit of Canadian summer at last. The grass is turning brown in the heat, which is always a good sign.
Apologies to our loyal readers for the recent lapse in posts. July proved to be a long, strange and trying month, perhaps the most stressful since we arrived here. I ended up logging almost 20,000 air miles myself, with two closely-spaced trips back home, the first for my planned attendance at the Tripartite Colorectal Conference in Dublin and the second for my grandmother's unexpected funeral. In between, we were away in Jasper for 4 days with our visitors Denise and Roy, and only 4 days after we said goodbye to them at the airport, we were boarding the same homeward-bound flight ourselves. It's a funny old world, and smaller than it looks.
Our flights with Air Canada there and back were actually fairly painless: we each slept 5 hours + on our night-flight home, and our daytime flight back was fine, as we had lots to read. The movies were Batman (the old one with Jack Nicholson), Fever Pitch (the baseball-themed remake of the Arsenal-football-fan classic), and Million Dollar Baby (highly recommended, even on a second viewing when you can see the disaster coming and get an even greater appreciation of what a genius Clint Eastwood is). We also had Thursday's Guardian and the Economist, which both provided several hours reading. There's nothing like that in the Canadian media. The flights were made even easier by the fact that we managed to reserve bulkhead seats (extra legroom) on both legs. The one thing that we found slightly disappointing was that BMI now charges an extra fee if you want to choose a seat. So it you fancy a window or aisle, it'll cost you. What's next? Maybe pay-as-you-go toilets on the plane?
We got back from the airport at about 19:30 last night, feasted on flame-grilled Alberta AAA rib steak and caesar salad and managed to stay awake until about 22:30 (05:30 UK time). We slept through until almost 07:00, and both of us are feeling a bit groggy today. Dr P went to work but I don't have anything scheduled so I'm postponing my return until Monday. I've had so much jetlag these last few weeks, at both ends of the transatlantic trips that I'm not sure which time-zone I'm supposed to be in, but a few days R&R should see to that. We're heading out to Kananaskis tomorrow and will hopefully fit in some canoeing too.
The funeral and the period afterwards was a difficult time for the whole family, but we pulled through it with help from the wider family and good friends. There were between 100 and 150 people at the service, which shows you how many lives Granny touched - it was good to see the faces of family friends from the past. In the period after the funeral, we ended up swapping family stories about Granny and discovered that she was a keen dancer in her teenage years and had won prizes for dancing the Charleston in the 1930s! We found some old pictures showing how beautiful she was as a young woman. Given that she was born in 1919, I'm sure there are a lot of stories she never got around to telling us! I think we're all going to find it a bit strange finding a new balance in the family when such a vital, central member is gone, but I suppose that's what life is all about - picking up the pieces and moving on again.
It's been funny spending more than half of the last month back at home again. I hadn't anticipated how quickly a place which should be familiar to you can feel strange after you've been away for a while. Driving on the left again wasn't anything like as much of a problem as I had expected, and both Paula and I fell into the routine of driving a manual-shift car again very quickly. After having become used to Calgary in the last year, the look and feel of home seemed odd at first. We kept on catching ourselves saying "was it always like this?" A few obvious changes come to mind - the higher humidity at sea level enhances minor temperature differences, so when it's cold you really feel it, and when it's a wee bit hot it feels quite humid. There's so much vegetation (trees, bushes) at the side of the road compared to here, where the roads are much wider and flat. And the traffic in NI is much busier and more aggressive than here, with people speeding routinely, weaving from lane to lane and driving up your exhaust. We never used to notice these things at all, but after a year away from them, they seemed quite striking. It's a bit disturbing when things you know should be familiar become strange.
One positive side-effect of being home more than expected was that both of us were able to do a bit of research on the job front, and have informal contacts about possible positions. It seems both of us have fairly good prospects at home, and things will hopefully become clearer as time goes on. Watch this space...
So where do we go from here? Well, there are some overdue photos to be posted from our Jasper trip, and then the return of our much-delayed '101 Things Which are Different in Canada' series. Stay tuned...
J
It's 11:50am here, on Friday the 5th of August 2005. It's 22oC and very sunny outside, wall-to-wall blue skies with a predicted maximum temp of 32oC today, to continue the same over the weekend. In other words, it's gorgeous weather, a proper bit of Canadian summer at last. The grass is turning brown in the heat, which is always a good sign.
Apologies to our loyal readers for the recent lapse in posts. July proved to be a long, strange and trying month, perhaps the most stressful since we arrived here. I ended up logging almost 20,000 air miles myself, with two closely-spaced trips back home, the first for my planned attendance at the Tripartite Colorectal Conference in Dublin and the second for my grandmother's unexpected funeral. In between, we were away in Jasper for 4 days with our visitors Denise and Roy, and only 4 days after we said goodbye to them at the airport, we were boarding the same homeward-bound flight ourselves. It's a funny old world, and smaller than it looks.
Our flights with Air Canada there and back were actually fairly painless: we each slept 5 hours + on our night-flight home, and our daytime flight back was fine, as we had lots to read. The movies were Batman (the old one with Jack Nicholson), Fever Pitch (the baseball-themed remake of the Arsenal-football-fan classic), and Million Dollar Baby (highly recommended, even on a second viewing when you can see the disaster coming and get an even greater appreciation of what a genius Clint Eastwood is). We also had Thursday's Guardian and the Economist, which both provided several hours reading. There's nothing like that in the Canadian media. The flights were made even easier by the fact that we managed to reserve bulkhead seats (extra legroom) on both legs. The one thing that we found slightly disappointing was that BMI now charges an extra fee if you want to choose a seat. So it you fancy a window or aisle, it'll cost you. What's next? Maybe pay-as-you-go toilets on the plane?
We got back from the airport at about 19:30 last night, feasted on flame-grilled Alberta AAA rib steak and caesar salad and managed to stay awake until about 22:30 (05:30 UK time). We slept through until almost 07:00, and both of us are feeling a bit groggy today. Dr P went to work but I don't have anything scheduled so I'm postponing my return until Monday. I've had so much jetlag these last few weeks, at both ends of the transatlantic trips that I'm not sure which time-zone I'm supposed to be in, but a few days R&R should see to that. We're heading out to Kananaskis tomorrow and will hopefully fit in some canoeing too.
The funeral and the period afterwards was a difficult time for the whole family, but we pulled through it with help from the wider family and good friends. There were between 100 and 150 people at the service, which shows you how many lives Granny touched - it was good to see the faces of family friends from the past. In the period after the funeral, we ended up swapping family stories about Granny and discovered that she was a keen dancer in her teenage years and had won prizes for dancing the Charleston in the 1930s! We found some old pictures showing how beautiful she was as a young woman. Given that she was born in 1919, I'm sure there are a lot of stories she never got around to telling us! I think we're all going to find it a bit strange finding a new balance in the family when such a vital, central member is gone, but I suppose that's what life is all about - picking up the pieces and moving on again.
It's been funny spending more than half of the last month back at home again. I hadn't anticipated how quickly a place which should be familiar to you can feel strange after you've been away for a while. Driving on the left again wasn't anything like as much of a problem as I had expected, and both Paula and I fell into the routine of driving a manual-shift car again very quickly. After having become used to Calgary in the last year, the look and feel of home seemed odd at first. We kept on catching ourselves saying "was it always like this?" A few obvious changes come to mind - the higher humidity at sea level enhances minor temperature differences, so when it's cold you really feel it, and when it's a wee bit hot it feels quite humid. There's so much vegetation (trees, bushes) at the side of the road compared to here, where the roads are much wider and flat. And the traffic in NI is much busier and more aggressive than here, with people speeding routinely, weaving from lane to lane and driving up your exhaust. We never used to notice these things at all, but after a year away from them, they seemed quite striking. It's a bit disturbing when things you know should be familiar become strange.
One positive side-effect of being home more than expected was that both of us were able to do a bit of research on the job front, and have informal contacts about possible positions. It seems both of us have fairly good prospects at home, and things will hopefully become clearer as time goes on. Watch this space...
So where do we go from here? Well, there are some overdue photos to be posted from our Jasper trip, and then the return of our much-delayed '101 Things Which are Different in Canada' series. Stay tuned...
J
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