today I’ve started using the WordPress Image Uploader to upload and manipulate images.  Up until now I’ve resisted doing so due to some innate need to control everything by hand (re: resizing the images into thumbnails by hand, using SFTP to get them uploaded onto my server and then linking to them using HTML).  Well, no longer!  So far the Image Uploader seems to make things much easier, and there’s also a handy WordPress Image Gallery that you can use to display sets of images.

enough about WordPress features… here are some pictures from our recent travels around France and England.

the other week we went to the Zoo de Champrepus, a zoo near our house here in La Manche (Basse-Normandie).  For a small zoo it was actually quite good; there was hardly anybody there, so we had a nice private tour of the grounds and managed to get up close and personal with some of the residents.

The arch at the Zoo de Champrepus

the highlight of the trip to the zoo was a visit into the lemur grounds within the Madagascar exhibit. You could walk right up to the lemurs and hang out with them, and they wouldn’t run away or otherwise react to your presence. The lemurs were funny; they would wander around the grounds when it was cloudy, but as soon as the sun would come up they’d prop themselves up to bask their bellies in it.

A sunbathing lemur at the Zoo de Champrepus

meanwhile, here is a fellow making fresh crèpes for us at a weekend carnival that took place in the town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët near where we live. The most interesting thing about the carnival (to me at least) was how carnies from all over France came to set up their booths, rides and attractions inside the town. The side streets of Saint-Hilaire were overflowing with trailers and camper vans full of the workers running the festivities and their families. I know that my stalwart crew tends to move around quite a bit, but in comparison to these people we’re downright sedentary.

Making crèpes at the carnival in Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët

a few weeks ago we took a trip to England to stay with some friends of ours (the family of a high school friend from Toronto) who are living in the town of Reading. While we were there the families toured London and went to LEGOLAND in Windsor. It was a great trip; I’m sure it was refreshing for the kids to get to hear people other than their parents speaking in English to them!

one fun aspect of the trip was taking our car on the ferry from the port at Ouistreham (near the city of Caen) to Portsmouth in England. Even more fun was the trip back, where we got a cabin for our family of four on the ferry. The kids loved it… plus I got to take a nap.

Leaving the port of Ouistreham

while in England we traveled to the city of Bath to see the ancient Roman baths. It was fascinating to me to see structures so ancient, and to imagine what life must have been like back in the old (like, REALLY old) days. Callum, for one, really digs that sort of stuff.

The Roman bath in Bath, England

on our way back from Reading to Portsmouth to catch the ferry back to France we paid a visit to Stonehenge (yes, I did just link to that). After visiting the Roman baths (old) it was interesting to visit Stonehenge (even older). Architecture has really come a long way in the past few thousand years.

while visiting the ‘henge I conveniently forgot my phone in my car and was unable to take a picture of it. So when we got back to the car I snagged my phone, ran back through the tunnel under the road that leads to the site, and snapped a quick photo of the path leading up to it. It’s not much, but hey, it’s better than nothing. Maybe.

The path leading to Stonehenge

and as a parting shot here’s a picture of the best pub in Paris, where my friend and co-worker Ian and I visited during a business trip to Paris… the Great Canadian Pub!

The Great Canadian Pub in Paris

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the big news from our family is that, as of earlier this month, we have moved from Paris to a small stone house near the town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët in La Manche, Basse-Normandie (department 50). The differences between our old lifestyle and our new lifestyle are staggering… while in Paris things were quite busy, with lots of cars and scooters and people, here in the countryside it is extremely quiet and we’re surrounded by cows. Here’s a picture of the place where we’re staying (click for larger):

the property on which our house stands contains a river that serves as the border of the French regions of Normandy and Brittany, in the northwestern part of France. Our kids are enrolled in a Catholic private school in the nearby town, and so far they seem to be doing quite well there – their French has definitely improved since we arrived in Europe in January. It’s been great to have experienced Paris, with its trains and crowds and bustling lifestyle, and then to make the switch to this area, which is one of the most peaceful I’ve encountered. We really like it here so far.

last weekend we went to Le Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of Normandy that features a walled town and an ancient abbey. We had a great visit there – it was certainly one of the most interesting places I’ve ever visited! Afterward we went to a nearby beach, where the kids played and collected shells. Here are some pictures of the place (click for larger):

our other big news is that we now have a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie) puppy named Lilou, who we bought from a reputable “éleveur” in the Franche-Comté region in the east of France. She is still quite young (now only three months) and full of energy, but already we’ve been teaching her tricks (sit, down, stay, and come) and she’s been catching on quickly. Shelties come in three colors: sable, blue merle, and tri-color; Lilou is of the tri-color variety. The kids have learned a lot from being “puppy owners” – they take her for walks, teach her tricks, and basically carry her around the house wherever they go. Here is a picture of her at eight weeks of age:

finally, this afternoon I took the kids to the nearby metropolis (relative to where we live, at least) of Avranches to buy some running shoes and fall jackets at the Décathlon. While we were there we visited a jardinerie (garden center) and found out that they stocked something the kids have been obsessing over lately through books and websites – carnivorous plants! We bought two different types of pitcher plant (Nepenthes) and a Venus Flytrap (Dionaea Muscipula). When they caught sight of the display in the store their faces lit up like light bulbs. Here are the kids in the back of the car with their new plants:

I’ll admit that the pictures I’ve posted here on my blog I’ve stolen directly from my Twitpic page, which I’ve been sharing pictures through via my Twitter page. If you’re a Twitter user, follow me if you care to – I’ll be adding more pictures from France as soon as I take them!

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positives and negatives

I tend to try to keep my blog positive – people generally don’t want to read about peoples’ complaints or personal problems, my own included. But sometimes something happens in your life that is not positive, yet impacts you in such a profound way that it needs to be shared. This month I experienced such an event. And though it was certainly a negative event, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have some unexpected positive outcomes.

the beginning

during the second week of April, a day or two after I got back from my trip to Malaysia I got a bit of “traveler’s sickness”. I figured this was just one of those things… it’s not unusual to get these sorts of bugs no matter how careful you are with drinking the water during trips overseas, and it’s happened to me before. Regardless, I took a trip to the doctor and got some antibiotics to take care of it.

problem is, they didn’t take care of it… it got worse.

the descent

the building where I stayed at l’hôpital Avicenne

I went back to the doctor a few days later after I’d used up the antibiotics. This time I had fevers, and there was blood involved. I got a stronger antibiotic and he also sent me to the Emergency Ward at a local hospital – l’hôpital Avicenne – where they have a center that specializes in infectious and tropical diseases. Duly I went, where during the evening they did a series of blood tests (including Malaria, which came back negative). Otherwise they didn’t do much, other than send me home very early (2AM) in the morning with some ordinances to take some more tests at a laboratory near my house to investigate for bacteria, viruses, parasites and the like. It would take the lab three days to get the results back. And during those three days I continued to get much worse.

by the time the lab got my test results back I was very sick; feverish all day with highs of over 103 degrees during the evenings, lots of pain, and other stuff I won’t bother to describe here (though I already mentioned the blood). When I went to the doctor this time he called up the hospital and reserved a room at the center for infectious and tropical diseases (rather than just sending me to the Emergency Ward which hadn’t worked out). The center managed to find me a room, so I took a bag full of stuff with me to the hospital and checked in.

my room at the hospital (actually one of three I stayed in; they moved me around a bit)

after a few lab tests the hospital determined that I was very sick. Their best guess is that I had contracted typhoid fever while I was in Malaysia. But the worst part was that I had hepatitis. Mind you, this was not the sort of hepatitis that you contract (I was vaccinated against those – I was also pretty sure I was vaccinated against typhoid by the way). While people commonly associate hepatitis with contracted forms of the diseases, hepatitis in its most basic sense means the inflammation of the liver. On April 22nd the doctors discovered that my liver had inflamed very rapidly over the course of three or four days, to a point where it would likely fail were it to grow any further, which would probably kill me. They stopped all anti-inflammatory drugs (or in fact any treatment that would have to be processed by the liver), started icing down my fevers, and waited to see what would happen.

Though this was the critical moment I should mention that it was not the sort of critical moment that you might see on TV, with lots of beeping machines, doctors hanging around with defibrillator paddles at the ready, and the like… it was all quite peaceful.

On facing death

after the fact, the hospital sent several psychologists and religious figures to my room to talk to me. The senior psychologist spoke with me at length about what I’d gone through, and how I’d felt during the days of April 22nd and afterward. No matter what I told her to the contrary, she would tell me, “it sounds like you were scared of dying.” I think it’s the standard question that psychologists ask when patients are facing death.

the thing is, I wasn’t scared of dying. Perhaps today if you told me I was going to die I’d be scared; I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t feel scared because I was so sick and feverish. Maybe my mind was calm because of the drugs. But at that point, I was okay with dying.

I haven’t lived a perfect life. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and have committed my share of sins. But I’ve spent a lot of my life fighting for what I have wanted. I’ve spent a lot of my life telling my kids how much I love them. I’ve dedicated myself to learning about other people and their languages and cultures, and to accepting who people are for what they are, no matter their races, backgrounds, religious beliefs, genders or sexual orientations. And I’ve endeavored to share my love and understanding for language and culture with my family, my friends, and in fact with the world at large. I’ve stood up for what I believe in.

I was of course disappointed that I might not be able to watch my kids grow up or spend my golden years with Yvonne; that I might die in my 30s with so much of my life left unlived. I felt terrible that they might lose me as a father and a husband, as I felt I still had so much left to give to and share with them. I was sad that I might not get to hang out at our lake house in Ontario with my family, my parents, my sister’s family and my wife’s family. I knew I’d miss the tremendous friends I’ve made from the many different walks of life I’ve lived, and the great times we’ve spent together. I was sad that I’d never finished my book – not because I was disappointed that I never became a well-recognized published author, but simply because I would have liked to have left something behind for my kids to read when they got a bit older; something that was a part of me.

on the other hand, I’ve always wanted to buy a BMW 3 series coupe (and maybe one day I will) – but I wasn’t disappointed that I’d never owned one. I wasn’t disappointed that I’d never made myself millions of dollars with which to buy a huge mansion in the suburbs with expensive furniture and a fancy media room. None of these sorts of things mattered to me while I was lying in the hospital bed. Out of everything in life, I realized, stuff is the least important.

in the middle of the night of the 22nd or 23rd, while I was feverish and up the whole night tossing and turning with waking nightmares from the delirium and stiff-necked from lying on bulky bags of ice, I got out my iPhone and wrote my parents a letter. In it I thanked them for the things they’d done for me while I was growing up – for raising me in a safe and happy environment, for never giving up on me, for the vacations we took, for sending me to some great schools, and for making sure I learned how to swim. For supporting me when I made huge mistakes, and for giving me second chances. For things that, in my head, I was thankful every day – things they did for me that served as turning points in my life and pushed me forward, where without their help I might have fallen behind – but for which I might never have actually taken the time to thank them for. I realized while I was writing it that I shouldn’t have waited until I was facing death to write them this letter. This is something that I should have done a long time ago.

considering the circumstances behind it, my mom told me it was perhaps the most wonderful, most terrible letter she’d ever read.

I called my parents from the hospital every night after that, just before going to sleep. Sometimes I was too weak to talk, so I’d just listen.

the turning point

my liver did not continue to grow. In fact, it gradually started to shrink, and to heal itself. So the threat of death was over. It changed me in a lot of ways, many of which I’m experiencing now. I have a second chance at life, and now I better understand what is most important to me. I know how I want to feel about myself when I face death again.

the doctors believe that the hepatitis was caused as a result of the typhoid (this does happen in some cases of the disease) and was exacerbated by some of the drugs I was taking before arriving at the hospital the second time – Azithromycin and Ibuprofen to be exact, both of which can cause hepatitis. The combination of these factors caused serious liver inflammation in a short period of time. The doctors never said, but Yvonne and I guess that if I hadn’t been admitted into the hospital when I was, and had continued to take the Azithromycin and several Ibuprofen a day (while still remaining under the maximum recommended dosage of the drug), things might have ended up differently for me.

complications

breakfast of champions… café au lait, bread and jam, biscuits, and the morning’s dose of drugs

so my liver was getting better, but this did not mean that things were rosy for the rest of my body. The doctors started treating me with three different types of very strong antibiotics to blast away the typhoid. The problem they faced was that because I’d started taking antibiotics before they did blood tests, the true illness I had was masked. They were never able to figure out 100% if I had typhoid. There were many symptoms that I was lacking, and other symptoms that existed that were not generally a part of typhoid. If it was typhoid, it seemed like an odd variant. To this day they’re still not sure what it was.

the main problem now was that, due to an immune system issue in my body that I didn’t know that I had (and that was probably lying dormant until now), my innards, for lack of a better term, started failing. My entire colon was infected and hemorrhaging, and I was still feverish and sick, even after the very strong antibiotics.

I couldn’t eat, and I lost a lot of weight – 25 to 30 pounds. I was subjected to test after test to figure out what was going on with me – X-rays, scans, ultrasounds, MRIs, a colonoscopy, a fibroscopy and another scopy that I forget exactly what it was. Once again the doctors came up with what they thought I might have and started treating it, but as with the typhoid, even today they’re still not sure what is going on with me. It might affect me for the rest of my life, or it might disappear. Chances point heavily to the former, but even so the odds are good that I’ll be able to live a normal life with whatever it is.

for the next couple of weeks while I underwent all these tests they hooked me up to a long series of colorful IVs to provide me with food, calories, nutrients, vitamins, antibiotics, painkillers and the things I needed to recover. I had blood tests to check my liver and blood levels almost every day. I am guessing that, considering all the injections and blood pullings I’ve had over 50 needles in my arms (and some in my stomach) since the second week of April. I was very weak during this time… I could only walk for short distances, and couldn’t speak in long sentences without taking breaths in between words. But I began to recover.

the ever-present IVs leaking fluids into my veins

maybe not for the squeamish – my left arm after lots of injections… (click for larger)

… and my right arm (click for larger)

gradually the fever started to subside and they began to treat me with cortisone to fortify my insides. By the end of the third week I was feeling much better – not perfect, and still fatigued, but able to eat, to walk around a bit, and to joke around with the nurses. A few days before I’d been in the hospital for four full weeks they released me with a long series of drugs to take every day, and an ordinance to have a nurse visit me at my house every day for the next three weeks to give me daily injections. That was yesterday, and here I am at home today.

life in the hospital

considering I was in the hospital for nearly four weeks, I have a lot of stories to tell. I won’t tell them all of course – this post is long enough already! – but here are some highlights of the lessons I’ve learned, and some pictures from my “vacation”:

do not piss off the nurses, even if you’re pretty sure that you’re right and they’re wrong. They’re the ones who stick needles in you.

no matter how generally unenjoyable hospital life may be, there is something unbeatable about being woken up to breakfast in bed, every single day.

the view from my room. Guess it could have been more pastoral…

if you’re going to spend any time at a hospital, pack a Kindle (with 3G) and a portable DVD player. I read five or six books while in the hospital, and watched several seasons of various TV series boxed sets that I bought at Carrefour. That being said…

if you’re in the hospital and generally feeling like garbage, don’t watch House, a show where, in general terms, someone arrives at the hospital with a nosebleed, and before they can be cured House and his crew subject them to a series of treatments that bring them to the brink of death, with seizures and cardiac arrests, before the mysterious cure can finally be found.

the machine that goes “beep!” for many frequent and inane reasons

when three doctors, including the department head, come into your room at the same time, that’s probably a bad sign.

if you’re in the hospital and your spouse is in the house with no car, you can use a taxi as a parcel service.

the calorie-rich drink they had me drink every night to help put my weight back on. Ironic considering those times in the near past when I’ve endeavored to maintain or lose weight…

if you want to convince a loved one not to smoke, show them a very sick person wailing for a cigarette, thrashing around on their bed trying to pull out their IVs and diodes to escape the Emergency Ward to smoke one. One of the saddest things I’ve seen.

try not to get hospitalized in a country where they don’t speak your native language, even if you think you’re pretty fluent. At times it’s like you’re lying there while a bunch of Charlie Brown’s Teachers decide your fate.

me being excellent in the elevator with some tubes

when they inject something into your vein before a scan and say “this will make your whole body hot”, what they aren’t telling you is that it will also make you throw up and soil your pants. They let you find out that part for yourself.

when you lose 25-30 pounds in a short period of time they will feed you food through an IV. And here all these years I’ve been using my mouth like a dummy.

in conclusion…

a couple of days after my liver had taken a turn for the better I decided to go for a walk. I was very weak and knew I wouldn’t be able to make it that far but I wanted to see the sun, so I dragged myself outside.

my walk took me around the building, where on a grassy area beside a side road an old French man was sitting in a plastic chair, watching the cars go by. In his defense, where the hospital is situated, there’s really not much else to see… mostly lots of concrete and exhaust pipes and old buildings.

when I walked up onto the grass I must have looked quite a sight: pale, exhausted and unshowered, jaundiced, skinnier than I’ve been since my early years of high school, with a scruffy two-week-old beard and both arms blue and yellow from all the injections I’d been subjected to, dragging my IV stand beside me while multiple IV bags swung above my head.

I went and stood beside the old man. He largely ignored me, but that didn’t stop me from speaking to him.

“One day, I’m going to die,” I told him. “But not today.”

I started crying. I think he thought I was nuts.

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for the past week I’ve been staying in Penang in Malaysia, working for a client located here on the island. I’ve never been to Penang before and have had an excellent time working here and exploring the city, which is a fascinating and very diverse place. So far I’ve learned a lot about the country and its culture and have experienced some new and interesting things.

when I arrived in Penang by way of Kuala Lumpur on Sunday morning I was exhausted. However, instead of taking a nap, I went out into the city with some contacts, both of whom turned out to be extremely nice and a lot of fun to tour around with. We went to the Penang Botanic Gardens for a walk (with monkeys!) and then to a beach to watch the sunset. Afterward we had dinner and toured the local night market – I love Asian night markets!

this evening we stopped by a street-side fruit vendor and I got to try durian, a local fruit that smells so bad that they won’t let people bring it into hotels or office towers lest they upset others in the building. It smelled pretty terrible… but I persevered and tried some, and found that it actually tastes quite good. It was very sweet, and somewhat pasty, and gooey between my fingers. I also tried some rambutan, otherwise known as “hair fruit” due to the bright red hairs that grow on its shell. It was also good; it looked and tasted rather like lychee.

here are some pictures from my stay here:

a monkey, with a baby monkey, at the Penang Botanic Gardens. The gardens were full of these monkeys scampering around and climbing all over everything.

a picture from inside the Botanic Gardens. There’s a monitor lizard in the picture, but you probably can’t find it… or can you?

sunset from the beach in Penang.

sundown. Yeah I know, I wasn’t holding my camera perfectly straight… oops.

a single flower embedded in the wall at the Botanic Gardens.

you’re darn right I bought a whole bunch of Malaysian sauces to bring back on the plane with me!

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spring has arrived in Paris, and the flowers are in bloom. I don’t recall having been to Paris in the spring before, and it’s pretty spectacular… it’s almost as if the beauty of the flowering trees here is kept a hushed secret throughout the winter, and then suddenly, when the weather turns for the better, colors start to explode all around you as you walk down the street.

one particularly dismal street in the winter turned out to have tall, flowering cherry trees planted every several feet along the sidewalks on the way from our neighborhood to the local grocery store. As of late these trees have been showering the ground with petals of pink; traveling along it is a bit like walking on a mottled pink carpet, while pink confetti floats to the ground all around you. Meanwhile, off to the sides, trees and shrubs in our neighbors’ yards have started to bloom. It takes a long time to walk anywhere with Amelia (who is 5) as she continually wants to stop and admire or smell all the different flowers. Of course I let her take as much time as she likes.

on the way to the market today Yvonne took the following picture, which I’m thinking is of a Magnolia tree, though I could of course be wrong. Note that this wasn’t taken in a plantation or in a public garden; it’s someone’s tree sitting outside their house. I liked the picture so much that I am posting it here, and if you click on it you’ll get a BIG version of it that you can use as wallpaper, if you choose.

happy spring!

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today marks the day that we’ve officially been living in Paris for a month, so it’s about time for a brief update with some pictures. It’s been great so far – we’ve been having fun experiencing the language and culture, not to mention the cheese.

we spent our first two weeks in a two-bedroom apartment in Versailles, home (of course) of the Palace of Versailles, a pretty fascinating place full of interesting history. While we were in Versailles we searched for a full-time place; we ended up finding a four-bedroom house (somewhat of a rarity in Paris and its suburbs) in one of Paris’ eastern neighborhoods. We’ve furnished it, albeit somewhat sparsely, mostly with furniture from IKEA. What can I say – that place is crazy and very crowded (even on a Sunday evening) but if you’re looking for decent build-it-yourself furniture with names you can’t pronounce, IKEA is your go-to destination.

so that’s it for the update (I did promise it would be brief). Up next, a few pictures from our adventures.

here are some Eiffel Tower pictures (clicking on them makes them bigger of course)… a picture of the tower from below (as taken by Yvonne) and pictures of Callum and Amelia, on the tower, with their mini Eiffel Tower figurines.

a picture of the Disneyland Paris castle – it is pink!

the dragon lurking beneath the Disneyland Paris castle (don’t be scared – it’s not real).

here’s a picture of Callum and Mia and the unhappiest card guy in Alice in Wonderland. I’ll let you figure out why. Mind you, he certainly looks happy…

the gang (minus me) on the teacups. Yvonne made that face for the camera’s benefit – they really weren’t spinning that quickly!

finally, here’s a picture of Callum with his LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 robot and some other stuff he created with his kit. He’s really taken to building and programming robots – Santa really hit the mark last year with this gift.

that’s it for now (though that’s quite a bit, by my standards anyway). We’re currently at home watching Looney Tunes on our new TV – if ever there was a show that was tailor-made for Callum, this would be it. He can’t stop giggling!

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This evening I took a quick trip to the Carrefour, the local grocery store here in our (temporary) neighborhood in Versailles. While there I bought three things: a chocolate bar (with caramel), a box of Jaffa Cakes, and a small bottle of Chimay Blue. Okay, I’ll admit it… I was feeling rather snackish.

I got into a checkout line with my items and prepared to wait. In Paris, from what I’ve seen at least, long checkout lines are the norm… whenever the lines seem to dwindle down to what to my North American senses seems to be a reasonably sized queue, they start closing lanes (I’ve been at the tail end of two lanes that they’ve closed in this manner). Ahead of me was an elderly French lady, probably in her late 70s or early 80s, and ahead of her, a lady about my age or a little older, with a fussing baby. The elderly lady’s items consisted of vegetables, fruits, more fruits, more vegetables, two types of baguette, and some Omega 3 butter-like spread. I’m not usually self-conscious about what I buy at a grocery store, but compared to what this lady was buying (healthy and good for you stuff) my beer and chocolate seemed like a pretty poor showing.

At any rate, when the elderly lady saw how few items I was buying, she quickly told me to go ahead of her in line. Mind you, this is an elderly lady telling a young(-ish) man to step ahead of her in line… normally it should be the reverse! Of course I refused, but the lady insisted quite strongly I go ahead of her, and it seemed to me that it would make her very happy if I did so, and so I did.

When the lady with the fussing baby ahead of me was finished checking out, before she left, she turned around and thanked the elderly lady (who was now behind me – stay focused here) for letting her step ahead of her in line. That’s right, I was the second person this elderly lady had let in front of her. The elderly lady responded with “it’s no problem… I have kids too.” (for those interested in the French language, the French way to say “it’s no problem” is “il n’y a pas de quoi”.) And before I started checking out, the elderly lady started chatting merrily with the lady behind the cash register, and of course as soon as they both heard my accent (which happens as soon as I open my mouth to say just about anything in French), they started chatting with me too, asking me where I was from and what I was doing in France.

There’s a lesson here that I can’t quite put my finger on, but from what I could see this elderly lady was pleased to be able to let us youngsters (comparatively anyway) speed our way through life, while she herself took the time to do nice things for other people and to enjoy her time wherever she happened to be, even if that place happened to be the checkout line at a crowded grocery store. It’s a lesson that some of us (myself included) could probably stand to learn earlier in our lives, while we still have decades ahead of us to take advantage of the joys it can bring us.

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I spent my last two weeks in Toronto, completing some training for my new position at Varicent. I had a swell time – the training was great, and I have plenty of friends in Toronto that I grew up with, and I managed to see a good many of them during my two weeks in the city. I had Korean food (twice!), Japanese food, Chinese food, and Indian food… plus my former college roommate Chris and I hung out for an evening at Sneaky Dee’s, one of my favorite haunts. But no, I did not have any Tim Hortons.

Toronto is, in fact, cold during the winter – when I arrived in the city on January 10th it was about 3 degrees Fahrenheit (and when I left the city this past Saturday, it was even colder than that). Interestingly enough, however, if you live downtown, there are days when you will not need to venture outside of buildings at all during the day. I stayed at a hotel that connected to the North York Centre subway station, while my workplace connected (in a roundabout way) to the York Mills subway station; to get to work from the hotel I could travel the entire route without stepping outside at all. Much of Toronto is this way – in the downtown core there are miles and miles of indoor shopping plazas that link together many of the major buildings within the city, and other such plazas but subway stops away.

On my way back to Charleston, during the trip from my hotel in North York to Toronto’s Pearson Airport, I got to talking with my cab driver. He seemed a very chipper fellow, especially considering it was very early in the morning (I have this thing about getting to airports waaaaay in advance of my flights… I’m risk averse when it comes to getting stuck in airports). I asked him where he was from and what had brought him to Canada, and he had an interesting story to tell.

He turned out to be Ethiopian; his mother hailed from one tribe in Ethiopia and his father from another. Because of some unfortunate politics involving these two tribes this fellow ended up fleeing his country and moving to the United States (Virginia) with the rest of his family.

Unfortunately, due to visa restrictions placed upon his family, this fellow was unable to stay in the United States and was forced to leave his family behind (basically, when his other family members arrived in Virginia, they used up their family’s ‘quota’). As a last resort he came to Canada, about which he knew very little; he took a one-way bus trip to Buffalo in New York and met with a church group kindly enough to take him in and help him with crossing the border. When he finally did arrive in Toronto he had $300 in his pocket and nowhere to stay; fortunately some members of the same church group living in Toronto took him in and helped him get settled.

Fast forward a few years – this fellow now has a wife and two kids and is the happiest cab driver I’ve met. He talks about how wonderful Canada is, how lucky he is to be here, and how he never knew what freedom meant until he came here, to a place where people can be who they are and be accepted for it. He also talked about how people often come into his cab grouchy and complaining about work – unfair deadlines and the like – saying, “well, you’re a cab driver; you wouldn’t know what real stress is”. On the contrary, I’m sure many of the people complaining in this fellow’s cab don’t know what real stress is – being unwelcome in your own homeland simply because of your ancestry, and having to flee to a foreign land with $300 in cash in your pocket and an unknown future.

It certainly put things into perspective. We are very fortunate to live in countries like the United States and Canada, where we’re generally free to be who we are without repercussion (admittedly not always, but we’re working on it). I personally find that I am not often thankful enough for the amazing things that I have been given; in many ways I am who I am and have succeeded in building a career and raising a family simply because I was born in a free country. It is easy to compare your own life to those of celebrities or to those who have struck it extremely rich in one way or another and to forget that just across the pond there are people who live every day hungry and fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families.

I feel that it is our duty to take what we’ve been given and make the most of it, and to do what we can to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. And when foreigners arrive on our shores seeking asylum, we should remember that, for the most part, they’re not here to live off welfare or to somehow make the lives of those already established here unpleasant or more difficult… they’re here to start their lives anew, as free men and women, to work very hard for their livings, and to raise their families in peace… just like our own ancestors hoped to do when they arrived on the shores of North America generations ago.

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exciting news – we’re moving back to France!

I’m going to be working for Varicent, a software company based in my native Canada, but I’ll be working from France and managing projects in Europe as well as in the Asia/Pacific region. My last day as a program manager at Blackbaud is this Friday – it is certainly a bittersweet moment to leave the company, as I have had a great time working there, and have made many amazing friends at the company and here in Charleston.

the reasons for our moving back to France are probably self-explanatory for any who know us – we loved living in France the last time we were there; several years ago I completed a Masters of Science at Groupe ESC Clermont in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne. And it wasn’t just for the cheese (though I do so love the cheese) – as a Canadian, not to mention a Canadian born in Quebec, the French language is very important to me, and one of the alpha reasons for our wanting to move abroad is to get the kids – now 7, 5 and 3 – into a French school where they can undergo complete immersion and become fluent in the language. Some friends of ours decided to do a similar thing a few years ago, and their kids are now completely fluent in the language and loving attending a local school in Provence. Yvonne also plans to perfect her French, and my own could certainly use some improvement.

the when and the where of the relocation are a bit up in the air at this point – we’re currently thinking Paris, Lyon or Lille by the end of the month, but a lot depends on the logistics of my new job, for which I will be undertaking new employee orientation in Toronto starting next Monday. Whatever the case, it’s very exciting and a bit scary, but we’re really looking forward to the challenge of it all!

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as I mentioned in my last post, we spent Christmas in Johnson City, Tennessee, with Yvonne’s older brother Robert and his roommate Gerry. One of the best parts about spending Christmas there was that we got to experience the great snowpocalypse of 2010, or whatever they’ve been calling it up north… in Johnson City we received but a few inches of the stuff. Regardless, it was pretty fun! Here are some pictures from the long weekend:

the snow is starting to fall, and Lachlan is thinking, “the sky is falling!”

me being excellent, as always.

a snow-covered street, and a snow-covered family truckster.

Mia making snow angels. You can tell by her expression that she is really enjoying it.

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