Of Bards and Bari-hunks

Sorry about that cranky blog post the other day.  (Well, not that sorry, maybe, because if I can’t rant in my very own blog, where the hell can I rant?)

I’ve decided that I have to keep writing, despite how awkward it is.  Maybe I`ll get used to the inelegant manner in which I have to type with this brace on my wrist, maybe I won`t;  all I know is, I am much happier at the end of a day in which I`ve managed to write something.  So I`ve gotta keep doing it ... and here I am again.

And I think I have an alternative plan for the rest of my time off – I’ll keep you posted once I’ve worked out the details.  I’m getting tired of sleeping on the couch in Toronto, and I really need to hit the road again.  The broken-wrist thing isn’t going to be fixed any time soon (I called my doctor’s office again, and it could be weeks or months before I get an appointment with the orthopaedic specialist), so I`ve pretty much decided I have to just plunge on anyway and work around it, or I’m going to expire of boredom some time soon.

Oh, it hasn`t been all bad.   This year off isn’t just about travel – it’s also about having time and space to find myself (er, again, as I think that was also my reason for decamping to Europe after university – but I think I lost myself somewhere over the last few years), and about experiencing more of life than just work.  It’s also about seeing more of friends, about writing in all shapes and forms, about enjoying art and literature and music and theatre and poetry, and all of those other things that I’d let fall by the wayside in my 18 hours a day in the office.

The first couple of weeks back at home were pretty cool, actually; it was heavenly to stay in one place and not have to pack up everything I own every few days.  And walking around outside with just a wallet (no passport or other assorted valuables strapped to my body) feels like decadence, especially when I don’t have to worry about my bag getting slashed or a knife held to my throat on a busy city street.  (The latter thing didn’t happen to me – but it did to a friend of mine, who’s still in South America despite that!  Think he’s moved on to Colombia now.)

And I decided to stay around for a few weeks quite deliberately, so that I could take in some incredible theatre that I didn’t want to miss.  Top of the list was Christopher Plummer in Stratford’s production of The Tempest – the divine Mr. Plummer is well worth sticking around for!  He can still deliver the Bard’s lines like no one else, in that magnificent voice that has not appreciably diminished with age.   

Bea and Marjory, two delightful octogenarians who had seats near me for the performance, told me they’d been to Stratford since the festival started to see everything Christopher Plummer had ever been in there – starting with his Hamlet in 1957.  (Bea, in fact, has been to Stratford every year since 1953, back in the days when the Festival was still held in a tent.)  They also told me, with unrestrained glee in their voices, that they planned to go to Foster’s Inn for dinner after the show, since they’d heard Mr. Plummer would be going there – as Bea told me, “They don’t think you’re a stalker if you’re 85, they just think you’re kind of cute.”

I hope they found him.  Every actor should have such charming groupies.   Particularly the elegant Mr. Plummer, who is still quite a dish at the age of 81.

I also went to check out a couple of musicals – Evita and Kiss Me, Kate – and more of the Bard in A Winter’s Tale and As You Like It.  The last two starred my own Stratford crush Ben Carlson, but as I hadn’t obtained any insider gossip on where he might go for dinner, I didn’t manage to actually meet the man.  Next time I’ll have to hang out by the stage door, I guess.  (Er, Ben, if you’re reading this, I swear I’m not a crazy stalker chick, I just think you’re a very fine actor.  Really.)

So that’s the Bard.  The bari-hunk was on stage in Toronto, in a brilliant production of South Pacific – Jason Howard, a Welsh-born baritone now based in Toronto, gave a bravura performance as Emile de Becque.  As defined by UrbanDictionary.com, a bari-hunk is “A handsome or pretty baritone. Especially, but not exclusively, one who removes his shirt for the sake of opera”.  Jason’s shirt stayed firmly in place, but I think he met the other requirements.

The Toronto Star likened his voice to “aural equivalent of a finely polished piece of mahogany”, and, purple prose or not, they weren’t off the mark.  One heck of an enchanted evening, indeed ... if you haven’t already guessed, I have a weakness for musicals (the cheesier the better), and when they’re also got something important to say (as South Pacific comments on racism and the tragedy of war), it’s a bonus. 

(I’m still singing the songs.  I might have to go see Rock of Ages next, just to install a new soundtrack in my head!)

But it’s about time I got the heck outta town again.  Probably won’t be backpacking around India with a broken wrist, but there are plenty of places in the world I’d love to see that are a little easier to get around.  Stay tuned!

Snap, Crackle, Pop ...

(.... went my wrist one day.)

I'm bored.  This is not how I'd planned to spend my year off.  You may have wondered what the hell I'm up to, since you've probably figured out I haven't left Toronto yet:  I'm just hanging around with no apparent purpose to my days, other than waiting to find out what I need to do about my broken wrist.  It's one of those teeny tiny bones between my arm and my hand, so it wasn't immediately obvious when I broke it.

But, yes, it's actually broken.  I found that out for sure last week.  So now I'm waiting around to find out what I need to do next to make it all better, instead of hopping in a plane again to jet off to London and then India.

I think I did it in Peru, hiking up to the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu, since I had a particularly un-graceful fall down some steep steps built for people 8 feet tall (not the 5'6" kind that I am).  It kind of hurt a bit then, but it didn't really swell up or anything so I didn't think much of it.  Plus, well, I was in Peru, and heading on to Ecuador next, and didn't really feel like trusting myself to either health-care system.

Came back to Toronto for a few days in July and it felt fine, so I didn't worry about it.  Headed out to Newfoundland to wander around for a while, and the wrist started to hurt again after af few days of putting tents up and down and various other camping-related activities.  Came back to Ontario, it still kind of hurt and got much worse after writing like a demon for the 3-Day novel competition (really fun, I'll tell you about it in another post -- www.3daynovel.com) so I finally made a doctor's appointment.

Well, it took a couple of weeks to actually see the doctor, but got an X-Ray immediately and found out a couple of days later that it's broken, much to the surprise of my doctor (as well as me).  So I've been walking around with my arm wrapped up in a brace while I wait for the promised referrral to an orthopedic surgeon.  It's been almost a week and I haven't heard, so I'm going to nag my doc's office again tomorrow.  I just want to get an answer on what happens next, so I can start planning accordingly.

In the meantime, here I sit in limbo.  I was having fun in Toronto for a while, catching up with friends and checking out some theatre and wandering around wherever the whim took me that day.  But I'm tired of sleeping on the couch, and I'm trying to figure out how to make my money last, so I don't feel like going out spending gobs of it while just killing time here.  And, most importantly, it's almost October, and I'm conscious that that means I only have 3 months left on my original timeline to be off work (possibly being extended for another 3 months -- I'll keep you posted).  So I'd rather be using my time to do some of the stuff I'd originally planned!

*sigh*

I am not good at waiting.  I have no patience to speak of, even when not a stressed-out workaholic at the office 18 hours a day.  I'd probably still lack patience after spending a year meditating while doing yoga in an ashram in India. 

So I sometimes have trouble entertaining myself, particularly since unwilling to spend large amounts of money -- if anyone has brilliant ideas for free stuff I can do, let me know (I am sick of crap North American television, so don't even bother to mention that). Some of the things I usually do for fun are difficult, Writing is much more awkward with the brace on my arm -- I can't do it longhand, since it's my left wrist that's broken (I'm a southpaw, in case you didn't already know), and even typing is very awkward (hence the lack of blog postings lately).  I can't go to kickboxing, since I can't punch anything with my left hand (that's my good hand, so what's the point?).

Best case, probably, I have to have a cast for a few weeks; I'm thinking that makes India a bit too challenging, so would probably switch plans and go to Ireland and Scotland instead.   Worst case ... I have to have surgery or have the bone re-broken since the bone has probably already started to heal but might not be doing it correctly.  In that case, not sure I'd be going very far at all.

Arrrggghhhh.  Just give me an answer one way or another, and I'll figure out some way to entertain myself.  It's the waiting around I can't stand.

How to Speak Newfoundlandish

If you thought it was enough to speak English and French to travel around Canada, think again.  There's an island outpost, way off the East Coast, where they speak an entirely different language.  It's related to English, to be sure, but at times it sounds not very much like it at all.

I'm talking about Newfoundland.  You'll have read my last post, dear reader, about the whys and wherefores of my love of this particular corner of Canada (if you haven't read the post, go back and read it, and try to stay up to date in future!).  Part of its charm is the Newfy dialect, with its own unique pronunciations and words and sayings.  There are whole dictionaries devoted to the translation between Newfy and English, I kid you not.

What makes it so unique, you ask?  Read on and find out.

Consider the origins first.  Newfoundland is one of the earliest-settled parts of North America, and because of the isolation of most of the outport villages, speech patterns were largely preserved from the earliest arrivals on down.  Linguists have been known to visit the province just to study their speech – if you want to know what an Irish or Scottish or Cornish person sounded like a few hundred years ago, there`s probably a remote corner of Newfoundland where they still speak that way, just as their ancestors did when they first crossed the Atlantic.

And it`s an island, to boot.  Island people tend (if I may generalize) to take pride in their “differentness”, in anything that makes them unlike the rest of the world.  And until air travel became affordable and commonplace, Newfoundland was a difficult enough place to get to that the outside world probably left them largely alone.

Whatever the reasons, it’s entertainment in itself just to walk the streets of a Newfie village and listen to people talk.  On my recent trip, we sometimes found ourselves asking each other, “What did they say?  Did you understand that?”  It’s that different.

Not so much in St. John’s – the “townie” accent is still noticeably different than a central Canadian (even my friend Janette’s, after 20 years in Ontario, particularly after she’s had a few glasses of Scotch).  But it’s in the smaller places and the more remote parts of the province that “Newfoundlandish” really comes into its own.

Here’s your primer – 10 steps to sounding like a Newfie. Well, the outport version anyway -  also known as “baymen”, regardless of gender.  Distinguished from “townies”, who are from St. John’s (If you want to sound like a “townie”, I’ll introduce you to Janette).

  

1. The letter "H":   Drop your “aitches” from the words that start with one, also pronounced “haitches” depending on which bit of the province you’re in.  (I think it used to be a Catholic/Protestant thing.)  And throw in an aitch/haitch (“H”) on words beginning with vowels.  Easiest to observe in the northwestern tip of Newfoundland, where our guide at L’Anse-aux-Meadows spoke of “hicebergs” and “harrows” and “hiron” as he regaled us with Viking tales.

2.  "Ing" versus "In' ":  Drop the “g” from any words ending with “ing”.  “Going” becomes “goin’ ”, “drinking” becomes “drinkin’ ”.

3.  Lose the "th":  “Th” is always pronounced “t” or “d”.  For example, “They go to the pub for drinks” becomes “Dey goes to de pub fer drinkin’ ”.  Which leads me to the next rule ...

4.  Verbs:  Conjugate your verbs differently.  “To go” is not “I go, you go, he/she goes, we go, they go”, it is:  “I goes, you goes, he/she goes, we goes, they goes”.  Past tense often uses this version of present tense:  for example, instead of “So I said to him ...”, you’d say “So I says to ‘im ...”.

5.  Terms of address:  If you’re referring to a man, call him “buddy dere” (“buddy what’s-his-name” for extra points) or “feller-me-lad”.  If speaking to a man or a woman, call them “my love” or “my darling”, regardless of how well you know them.  (Don’t worry, they won’t think you’re hitting on them.)  If speaking to a man, you may also call him “boy” (pronounced “bye”) or “me son” (“my son” – does not denote parenthood).  A woman may also be “me ducky”.

6.  Vowels:  Stretch out your vowels.  “Jesus” becomes more like “Jaysus”, “St. John’s” is pronounced more like “St. Jaaaaahhhn’s”, and “I” becomes sort of a cross between “Oi” and “Aye”.   This also applies to people’s names; for example, it is “Jaaarge” not “George”.  Unless ....

7.  (Vowels, part 2) ... you’re saying the word “boy”, pronounced “bye” or “b’y”.  The vowel gets shortened, not drawn out.  Throw (“t’row”) in a few random “b’y” ’s at the end of your sentences and you’ll sound like a native.

8.  Speaking your mind:  If you want to swear, use a religious reference – “Jaysus, Mary ‘n’ Joseph”, or “Lord t’undering Jaysus”.  (They’re the Anglo equivalent of les Quebecois in this.)

9.  Speed:  Speak quickly and animatedly.  If “mainlanders” (people not from Newfoundland) can’t understand you, look at them pityingly and say, “You must be from away, eh?”  (“Away” denotes anywhere else.)

10.  Words and phrases:  Learn the vocabulary.  Some of my favourites:  “airsome” to denote “windy”, “where ya to?” instead of “where are you?”,  “tuckamore” for scrubby brush, and “all mops and brooms” for out-of-control hair (mine, usually).  And "some" or "right" instead of "very"; for example, you might say "What a beautiful view" in Ontarian, but in Newfoundlandish, you'd say something like "She's some pretty, b'y".

That’ll get you started, at least, although true mastery of the language -- enough to disguise the fact that you're "from away" -- may take years.  If going to the Rock, you may also wish to acquire a Newfoundland-to-English dictionary, to help you out.

Good luck and fair wedder (weather) to ya!


P.S. Forgot to add one important note:  how to prounounce the name of the island itself.  It is not "New-FOUND-land", as you may occasionally hear mainlanders referring to it.  Most correctly, it is "Newfun-LAND", although "NEWF-un-land" may also be permissable.

Blackflies and Buchaneers: a Visit to the "Holy Land"

(Yes, I know it's been a while.  If you've been checking here and not finding anything new, thanks for your patience!  And thanks for continuing to read -- good to know that there's someone out there in cyberspace.)

Hands up if you've ever been to Newfoundland.  Anyone?  Anyone at all? 

Okay, I'm betting there's a couple of Canadian hands in the air (in addition to my relatives), out of all those reading this, but that most of the Canucks have never been.  And of the foreigners, well, most of them are probably saying, "Newfoundland?  Where's that?"

Well, if you are one of those whose hands remain stubbornly down, then you’ve missed out.  I truly, madly, deeply adore Newfoundland, and it may just have to move higher on my “Places I Could Live Someday” list (see earlier post for the complete list).   I spent a while there this summer with my sister and brother-in-law, wandering around the province, and it really is one of the most beautiful spots on earth.  With some of the friendliest people you will meet anywhere – well, except for their tendency to scoff at Ontario.  (As I heard some of them say, in all seriousness:  “Living in Ontario?  Well, that’s not really living.”)

Part of the trip was nostalgia – my sisters and I spent our summers travelling the continent with our parents, and made it to Newfoundland many times.  (My father, in case you don`t know, is a genuine Newfy born-and-bred, hailing from the little town of Buchans in the middle of nowhere.  Literally – it`s at the end of a highway that doesn`t really go anywhere else, except to a couple of even smaller towns.)

But, although I’ve been there many times, the last time was probably 25 years ago.  And we travelled a little differently this time – still camping, as we did in childhood, but in tents instead of a trailer.  And safely ensconced in a comfy rental car, instead of riding un-seatbelted in the back of a station wagon.  (Hey, it was the 1970’s – no one worried about things like that.)

Some of it was all about family history: the lovely Codroy Valley in the southwest corner of the province, where my MacLellan grandfather was born, right near the ferry port of Port-aux-Basques; the former mining town of Buchans, where my dad was born in the days before Newfoundland was Canadian (the "Buchaneers" in the title isn't a typo -- that's what Buchans people call themselves); and the tiny Bellevue Beach, where my paternal grandmother’s family (the Hefferans, formerly Heffords) hail from.   Oh, and a stop in New Victoria, which isn’t in Newfoundland at all but on Cape Breton Island (yes, I’m part Newfy AND part Caper, possibly the two most-mocked breeds of Canadians – completely undeserved mockery, I hasten to add).

Some of the trip was exploring new territory – such as the gorgeous and otherworldly Gros Morne National Park, replete with moose and mountains and fjords to rival Scandinavia, and some of the oldest rock in the world.  (They don’t call Newfoundland “The Rock” for nothing.)  And, of course, visiting the oldest European settlement – the Vikings made it here 500 years before Columbus hit the West Indies, and you can still see the remains of their settlement at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in the far northwestern tip – and the oldest known burial site in the Americas, which, from about 7000 BC, predates the Incas and the Mayans further south by thousands of years.  The countless appealing little outpost villages are also worth a visit (although you may occasionally need a translator to understand the locals -- Newfy English is a different language altogther, once you get outside St. John`s).

Some of it was enjoying Newfy culture – the Cow Head Theatre Festival in Gros Morne (where we saw “Ed and Ed’s B&B” a locally-written comedy that could only come from Newfoundland); the gorgeous Norseman restaurant up near L’Anse-aux-Meadows, where you can enjoy gourmet cuisine with fresh local ingredients (the partridgeberry pie was to die for, as was the Newfoundland martini); or sampling local wines along the way (forget grapes – wines get much more creative here, being made from every variety of local berry you can imagine, and even rhubarb).  And the place names alone provide hours of entertainment – anyone up for a visit to Goobies, or Heart’s Content, or Dildo?

Oh, and I can’t forget the music – our personal soundtrack as we drove involved a lot of Great Big Sea and other Celtic music (I think Steve – my brother-in-law -- was very tired of fiddle music by the end of the trip, but he mostly got overruled).  And we heard some astonishingly talented musicians in St. John’s (yes, more fiddles) at some of the pubs on George Street – and if Patrick Moran, fiddler and singer extraordinaire (not to mention oh, so cute and with an adorable accent), ever makes it to Toronto, he’d better look me up.

We even had a little bit of Europe thrown into the mix, as we took a day trip to St. Pierre just off the south coast of the Burin Peninsula.  It’s the last remaining outpost of the once-mighty French empire in North America, and remains stubbornly French to this day.  My only problem visiting there was language – oh, I can speak enough French to get by, but every time I went to speak, I kept saying things in Spanish instead.  (Apparently that’s now become my default foreign language – my brain knew it wasn’t supposed to be using English, but it now goes to Spanish next instead of French.)

I went for many reasons, and I think I loved it all.  Even the two foggy, rainy days we had – yes, only two, which is remarkable for Newfoundland and Labrador – as the province just as hauntingly lovely in that weather (much the same way that Ireland and Scotland are).  Oh, wait, there is one thing I didn't enjoy -- those pesky, nearly-invisible little blackflies that will stealthily bite huge chunks out of your skin and leave you itching for days afterwards.  (Mosquitoes don't even begin to compare.)

I even think I could quite happily move to St. John`s.  It`s attractive and quirky and lively, and although it`s not a big place -- maybe 100,000 people -- it`s the only biggish city in the province (with Corner Brook a distant second at about 20,000) so it has just about everything I think I could want.  (The cute Newfy fiddlers in George Street pubs are a bonus.)

So, even with the blackflies, you need to go:  that’s the bottom line.  If you’ve already been ... well, then you know what I’m talking about.  And any time you want to go back and need a travelling companion, just let me know.  And if you haven’t been already, you’re missing out on somewhere very magical.  So book that plane or train, or hit the road in your car, and get yourself out east already.  You won`t regret it.

Oh ... and if you happen to run into Patrick in St. John`s, tell him I said “Hi”.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Do you ever wonder who you are and where you came from?  I don't mean, literally, where you were born or what your name is ... but, over the centuries, who are all those people that made up your family tree and where in the world were they?  How did all those individuals eventually result in the making of YOU?

Okay, that might be a slightly narcissistic way to thinking about genealogy.  But I've been fascinated by this train of thought lately, probably spurred on by my recent trip to Newfoundland.  (For those of you who may not know, I'm half-Newfy -- my father being born there, in a small mining village at the end of the highway, 9 years before Newfoundland was even part of the country.)   My mother's family's history is closer to home, rooted in and around Phelpston, Ontario (population 200 or so) for at least a few generations.

I can go back a little way, but I run out of factual information pretty quickly.  I can make an educated guess that the Irish parts of my family probably end up over here because of the potato famine.  For at least one part, it's true; one of my mother's cousins has done a lot of research about the O'Neill connections (my maternal grandmother's family), and the first one left Tyrone in northern Ireland in about 1840, around the time of the famine.  Beyond that, I remember none of the details.  (Note to self:  call said cousin and copy information.)

And family legend has it that the first MacLellans to reach Canada fled Scotland to avoid prosecution for stealing sheep (I like to think it was an act of political protest against the Highland clearances by English landlords); whether or not this is true, I like the story.  I met an Australian guy, also a MacLellan, in Oban, Scotland (where the MacLellans are from), and, to the best of our combined knowledge, our ancestors left the area about the same time.  (So we figured that HIS great-great-whatever-grandfather got caught stealing said sheep and shipped off to the penal colony, while mine got successfully away.)

And if you go WAY back into Irish history, the O'Neills were Irish royalty once, as the High Kings of Tara.  (So if history hadn't intervened, I could've been an aristocrat.  But Ireland's been conquered by outsiders many times since then -- not least by the Vikings, who brought some of their Irish slaves to their settlement in Newfoundland.)

But as for facts, this is as much as I've got:

Going, backwards, first there's:    ME.  Oldest child of 3 sisters (trust me, it explains much about me that I'm the first-born.)

People responsible:   Rosemary King and Ron MacLellan

Before that:  Gerald King & Mary O'Neill; John (Jack) MacLellan and Lucy Hefferan

Before THAT:  somebody King (another Gerald? can't remember) and Catherine Lamey; somebody O'Neill and Ellen Rose LeClair -- mother's side.  On Dad's side:  John MacLellan and Mary Ann Noseworthy; somebody Hefferan (great-grandfather) and somebody Nolan (great-grandmother).

Before THAT:  ????? No idea.  Except that an O'Neill ancestor hailed from the north of Ireland, and that my paternal grandmother's family used to be Hefford -- a Protestant Irish name -- before an ancestor changed it to Hefferan when he married a Catholic girl.

See?  Already out of facts and I've gone back less than 150 years.  (But you can see, at least, that there's a good reason I'm a redhead; at least three-quarters of my genes are Irish and Scottish.)

I want to know more.  I have to figure out how to find this out.

But for now, it's been very cool getting in touch with the family history that I DO know ... visiting the town where my father was born (which looks surprisingly prosperous, considering the mine closed almost 30 years ago), visiting my paternal grandfather's homeland in the Codroy valley in western Newfoundland, finding the cemetary (see picture to right) where his parents are buried on Cape Breton Island, and cruising around the small coastal town of Bellevue where my paternal grandmother's family hailed from.

I'm thinking I'll do more of this in coming months.  Take some time in September, maybe, to go back to Ireland and Scotland, ancestral homes of various branches of my family.  Embrace my Celtic roots and learn to play the fiddle, or try out a bit of Gaelic (Irish or Scots variety) ... with a shot or two of whiskey to help loosen my tongue.

10 Things I Hate About Travel

(Apparently I'm procrastinating about finishing my blog posts about recent trip to Newfoundland and various other points east.  I promise I'll finish soon.  I absolutely, utterly adore Newfoundland and you really need to hear about it -- too many people I know have never been there or, in the case of the "furriners", have never even heard of it.)

In the meantime, I have a little ranting to get off my chest.  I love travelling, mostly, but there's a few things that irk me about it.

10.  Shoes:  the pretty shoes just aren't practical for backpacking. They take up too much space and weigh too much for the once or twice I might actually wear them in a trip of many months, so the Jimmy Choos have to stay at home. Tevas and hiking boots just don't give me the same thrill.

9.  High-maintenance chicks:  seriously, do you REALLY need to travel with a blow-dryer, curling iron and full array of cosmetics to the wilds of Bolivia?  Fine if you're spending the week at an all-inclusive resort, but re-think it if you're backpacking.  Especially if you're going to bitch about how much your backpack weighs. (Note:  they ALWAYS do).

8.  Backpacker sluts (male variety):  no, I'm not necessarily going to sleep with you just because you're kind of cute and we had a couple of beers together.  I'm not uptight or frigid; maybe I just don't want to.  (You're not actually God's gift, sorry to break it to you!),  Oh, and if you DO get off with some other girl, please don't do it in the dorm room that we all share.  Thanks.

7.  Walking Wallet Syndrome:  yes, I probably have more money (despite being currently unemployed) than people in many parts of the world. No, that doesn't mean I want them to hit me up every two minutes with a guilt trip to get me to buy tacky crap. Occasionally I like to meet locals who have a genuine interest in why I'm there and who I am, not just people who think they can scam me out of my supposed riches.

6.  Buying Stuff:  I don't like shopping at the best of times (accumulating lots of material crap holds no thrill), but it bugs me most when I have to replace things I already own. Like my camera, that had the temerity to die about 3 days into my East Coast trip. So instead of my beautiful Panasonic Lumix that takes fabulous pictures and still fits in a pocket, I have a cheap-ish Sony that doesn't do half as well. Hoping that the Lumix is fix-able but waiting to find that out.

5.  Holier-than-thou backpackers:  I don't care if you've gone on foot across the Iraqi desert, that doesn't make you any more "authentic" than me as a traveller. There is no right or wrong way to do it; let everybody pick where and how they want to travel. Stop judging everybody else, get over yourself and just get on with your own trip.

4.  Flying:  hate it, hate it, hate it with a passion.  It's boring, uncomfortable and really, really bad for the environment.  I would never take anything but trains, buses (Argentine variety, please), and boats, except for the unfortunate fact that much of the world is too far away to make it practical. 

3.  Time/Money Paradox:  if you have enough money, you probably don't have enough time (because you're working for a living, or, like me, aren't currently working but have a deadline to go back). If you have enough time, you're probably broke because you're a student or unemployed or a career backpacker, and don't have enough money to do some of the cool expensive stuff like the Galapagos. You can't win.

2.  Saying Good-bye:  you get to meet a lot of great people while travelling, if you want to. That's great. The part that sucks is that you usually have to say good-bye again after a couple of days (at best) and may or may not bump into them again. Best case scenario is you might have some place to crash in a cool part of the world if you ever get there, but you probably won't get to just hang out and have coffee very often.


And the number one thing that I hate about travelling:

1.  Time: there's never enough of it to see everything I want to see. I had five months in South America and still had to skip bits in the countries I got to, and didn't even make it to some countries. Hell, I have an entire year off and it's not going to be enough to get everywhere I'd like.  

(But I'd run out of money one day so going back to work at some point is, sadly, necessary -- see also number 3.)

How to Lose Weight and Get Fit Without Really Trying

Live out of a backpack for a few months, walk everywhere (extra motivation in places where taxis are often dangerous) and eat a lot of rice and beans.  Seriously, it works ... I came back from almost 5 months in South America about 35 pounds lighter, many inches thinner and a hell of a lot more fit than I was when I'd left.

(I gained a pound or two back in Newfoundland, thanks to the vast quantity of fried food I consumed.  But it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared.)

Thank God.  I was tired of being "the fat chick", tired of looking in the mirror and thinking "But this isn't REALLY what I look like!".  I miss the days when I was effortlessly thin (lasted well into my 30's, but unfortunately did come to an end), but I am so, so happy to be back in thin-ish form.

And it was pretty much painless.  I wasn't thinking about losing weight, wasn't obsessing overly much about eating less or more healthily, or worrying about getting enough exercise ... it just kind of happened by virtue of the way I lived day to day, without me having to spend much time or effort trying to make it all happen.  It's a very nice side effect of travelling on a budget (so you mostly cook cheaply, which seems to mean healthier food, and walk instead of taking taxis or transit) in a place that's more challenging than North America or Europe (so you walk instead of taking a taxi, in those places where travellers might get robbed by taxi drivers). 

I love it.  I have no discipline when it comes to eating better; when I was at work and spending ridiculous amounts of time in the office, proper nutrition far too often went by the wayside.  I was sometimes disciplined about going to the gym or running (mostly for the stress relief), but there's only so far working out will take you if you're stuffing your face regularly with high-fat, high-calorie food and too much wine.  So radical intevention was required.

I'm not quite back to where I'd like to be (that requires about another 10 pounds and a lot more fitness to get me back to my black belt grading physique), but I feel so much better.  I love wearing a pair of jeans because I LIKE them, not just because they're the only pair that fit, and I've found all kinds of clothes in my closet that I'd forgotten about since I haven't been able to wear them in 5 years or so.  (Some of them I can't wear now, either, because they're now too big.  So Goodwill gets the benefit instead of me.)

And I love running again (even though it's frustrating to have to start all over again) -- finding out that I'm faster, without even training, makes me very happy.  Apparently it's easier without all the extra weight I was carrying.  (I still have some way to go, though, before I can hope to challenge the marathoning Steves I know.)

I'd forgotten, almost, what it's like to walk down the street and feel sexy.  But I have it again now ... well, with a bit of effort (not being one of those roll-out-of-bed-looking-hot natural beauties like Evangeline Lilly).

Problem is going to be not reverting to my old habits when I'm back to a regular working life.  It's easy enough when I don't have much stress (beyond where to go next, and worrying whether or not I'll have to rack up credit card debt by the end of the year), when I'm much more budget-conscious than I have to be when I have a paycheque (so I'm not eating out and making bad food choices, or splurging on the expensive wine).   Stick me back in an office for 18 hours a day and I might not do so well.

So ... duh ... maybe I don't go back to spending 18 hours a day in the office.  What a thought.   

P.S.  Oh, and my shoes still fit.  Thank God that never changes, no matter what I weigh.  Maybe that's why I like shoes so much.