Yes, today is the last day in my attempt to write my 50,000 words in the National Novel Writing Month contest. Craig Welsh has won, I tip my hat to him. I remember now why I hated deadlines during my university days. Every time I was faced with a deadline, I promptly became the king of procrastination. Admittedly, the results of my procrastination over the years has probably resulted in more lasting works than any of my essays. This site that you are on is a classic example of university procrastination. I have learned languages, programs, read a myriad of books, volunteered at any number of organizations, redesigned newspapers, played video games and caught up on movies, all in the name of procrastination.

Let’s see, my failure at NanoWriMo has resulted in feeding at least 35 people so far this month, volunteer work, half way through Final Fantasy X (yes admittedly buying a PS2 on the first day of NaNoWriMo was a bad idea) and finished Wayne Johnston’s latest “The Custodian of Paradise”. That doesn’t include at least two or three weeks where I worked well over 60 hours at work and managed to get drunk and party. So yes, a busy month predicated mostly by procrastinating on writing 50,000 words by November 30. Oddly now that I’ve reached my deadline, I suddenly want to see if I can finish the damn thing.

This shouldn’t surprise any of my former professors.

I used to be the master of turning my papers in late. So much so that during my last years I believe several of them had “the deadline” and then another “Dups deadline”. I always made sure I knew when they had to hand in the marks. Strangely (and probably thankfully) though this aversion to deadlines has not extended to my work life.

So what’s the best way to get me to write lots and get it done on time? Don’t ever tell me that it’s due for a given date. Or better yet, give me a date that is way before when it’s actually due. For NaNoWriMo, that meant giving me a deadline around November 1. Admittedly that would mean moving NaNoWriMo to, oh, October.

Craig seems to think that I am some sort of weather jinx. If what I say in this blog comes true (at least in the weather sense) then despite my earlier crowing about how much cold I can withstand, I would like to officially call upon the north winds to leave us the hell be. Maybe you could bring some warm weather from Hawaii (and some hula girls while you’re at it please). It’s not that I hate the cold weather. On the contrary, it’s rather invigorating. Sadly though, this extremely brutal cold snap (reaching at least -29 Celsius tonight with extreme windchills) is affecting those less fortunate.

Despite the dangers of driving on the barely ploughed roads, most of us namby-pambies walk a few yards to our cars, sit in the quiet cold warming them up, drive to work, park (sometimes underground) and go into warm buildings. Rinse and repeat. If like me, you enjoy the cold, it’s because we choose to go outside. For the myriad of people who have rushed into Alberta on the recent black gold rush with little money and no home, they are not outside by choice. Already three people have died with the extreme cold to blame. I suspect tonight might have some others succumbing to the cold if it were not for some dedicated people (not me).

Tonight I decided to try and do some small part towards the battle. Maybe it was a slight sense of guilt that my writing about the warm weather did actually bring this about (for a Buddhist I probably have more Catholic guilt than the Pope — I was even given the board game “Sorry” one year for Christmas). Tonight I dropped into the Edmonton Emergency Relief Centre and volunteered some time sorting clothes for dispersal later tonight. If you are reading this and live in Edmonton and have a few hours to spare, please, drop down and give them a hand. I was one of two volunteers tonight going through a literal mountain of clothing donations.

The manager at the centre, Richard, had a pretty amazing story to tell. He was himself a homeless person some years ago and started helping at the centre until finally they decided to hire him, as he says “When I wouldn’t leave!” In a draughty building downtown (10255-104th Street) there are several rooms and floors packed to the brim with various donations ranging from furniture to clothes. I can truly appreciate the saying “one person’s junk is another’s treasure.” I sifted through useful scarves, mitts, toques and expensive jackets to seventies pimp jackets and bunny shaped toques. According to Richard the donations have been coming in fast and heavy, but still the needs of the homeless, whose numbers have soared this year with high rental prices and an overcrowded city, continue to rise. He has so far handed out 360 jackets. We loaded another truck with hundreds of jackets and warm winter wear for tonight.

If you happen upon a homeless person with an expensive new jacket, don’t be surprised. Don’t walk away in a huff expecting some sort of fraud. A lot of clothes going through there by the generousity of the Edmonton populace were new and expensive. In one case Richard even asked me not to take tags off so that someone would know that this was new and would feel good about it.

I hope that no one I know will ever have to be out homeless on the streets. But we all know the fickle nature of our world. Those small ghosts of what could have been might have led any of us to be out and about, and heck, still might in the future. On a cold night like tonight, there’s very little that I could choose to complain about. My life is far from perfect, but my cat and I will be nuzzled in a warm bed.

What was I thinking? Of course the gods would punish me for having ever put keystroke to screen when I pointed out the warmth of the Winter season in Edmonton. I actually had to wear warm clothes today. We’ve had a couple days of -15 Celsius and below. Tomorrow morning apparently I shall awake to a brisk -27 Celsius (including windchill).

Temperature is just one thing to deal with tomorrow. The other, probably more annoying, thing will be the roads. If anyone is considering moving from the east coast to Edmonton, be prepared for some of the worst winter driving conditions for a big city in Canada. For a city of close to a million people, apparently we have one snow plough. I suspect that there is one street in Edmonton which is amazingly clean. This snow plough probably wanders up and down this one street making sure that it is bare, dry and clean.

The streets are covered in snow and since they don’t salt here, the roads are terrible. The City of Edmonton is facing the same labour crunch as everywhere else in Alberta. There are just not enough snow plough drivers in Edmonton to deal with the snow. So tomorrow morning when I get up, I shall have a fantastic commute to work. Since I’ll be driving skating rinks, I might as well consider dressing my car up in a tutu.

My friend Jaap Tuinman (now in California) once told me about his experience of Winter driving in Vancouver. Since Vancouver rarely received any snowfall, when he saw the little flakes falling serenely from the sky, he immediately would call work and take the day off. He would then run to the nearest coffee shop, sit down, check the paper and watch the cars slip slide out of control through the window. Hopefully tomorrow won’t be like that as I’ll be one of the people in the cars… grumble.

Mike Mannion messaged me about www.ragsn.org wondering if we could put some kind of Geotagging thing together for all the RAGSN photos. Geotagging is the idea of tagging each photo to a geographic location and then mapping them in, say, a Google Map. It is a very cool idea and frankly I was skeptical that there was a module created for the Gallery 2.0 software that I use on ragsn.org. Well, blow me down, some enterprising person has created such a module.

For your viewing pleasure you may now go view Google maps of RAGSN travels… Be warned, very few photos are tagged yet,and the module is rather buggy (I had to install it 6 times)… but a good start, very neat.

On the topic of RAGSN, photos and flag travels, if you are reading this and are a friend of mine from Newfoundland and/or you know the RAGSN folks, please note that the site is for all RAGSN members  to post photos. Simply sign up for an account and I will add you. If it gets out of hand, you all can buy me lots of beer to pay for my bandwidth and space

As for the flag, well, I have to ship it to Singapore to Keli this week. She’ll be off to the Himalayas for Christmas… can you tell I’m jealous?

I know that there are quite a few people who visit this site from countries other than Canada. Some are even from places where the temperatures at this time of year are likely quite warm. I’d like to assure you gentle readers that here, in the so-called frozen North, it is presently quite mild, almost balmy. This morning I walked out for my normal commute and was pleasantly surprised to realize that I had indeed worn too many clothes. At three degrees Celsius, I was positively boiling. This, is t-shirt weather.

No, please, don’t click away. I’m not mad. Seriously!

For those who have no idea where I live, Edmonton, Alberta is the most northern city in North America with a population of a million people. During this time of year, the sun rises by 8:30am and sets quite promptly after a light day of work at about 4:30. We haven’t even hit the shortest day of the year. This is where the sun comes to take a vacation. Where Craig and Cathy live, in Nunavut? Well, that’s where the sun flees to warmer climes during winter.  You’re right, there is snow on the ground and my cat is most unimpressed with this wet, white stuff that he has to clean from his bare paws every time he steps outside. Poor snookums. Typically during a prairie winter (and as you get further north), the temperatures will drop to negative thirty below, not even counting wind chill.

As I explained it to my dear mother living in Sri Lanka: imagine placing your hand into the freezer. Now, leave it in there for about three hours and that will likely be the feeling you will get within five minutes of exposing your skin to the elements during such a time.

Had I not experienced such temperatures where sometimes the water particles in still air freezes, I would always have been hard pressed to explain why the Native Peoples ever settled this god forsaken area of the world. The reality is that you get used to it. Whereas you people in tropical countries get a chill thinking about an evening temperature of something below 25 Celsius, my normal temperature in the apartment is set to a quite bearable twenty Celsius. Anything more and I’ll start sweating. When I see the temperature rise to fifteen, that’s shorts weather (I know, I know, you’re thinking about getting some flannel underwear). When it hits just shy of ten degrees, good lord, I wouldn’t be caught in anything other than a t-shirt and a light jacket.

I wouldn’t even dream of wearing anything too warm till just above freezing.

So, yes, it’s been quite mild in Edmonton. We hit a balmy three degrees today. We even hit seven degrees on Sunday. I went for a run clad in a t-shirt. It’s almost like a wacky version of an Indian Summer.

Have you ever sat back and wondered about “what could have been”? Think back on your life and try to find those points at which random chance, luck, providence, or if you believe in such things, the fates, gods, spirits, fairies or gremlins made you decide to take one road instead of another. And because of that weird and, hopefully, wonderful decision your life changed irreversibly. I think we all have such points and generally speaking, we can probably pinpoint them to the second.

Corey, Donna and I spent some time this evening musing over how our lives have been shaped by such chance occurrences. Now, I’m not talking about decisions that you sat and pondered for hours. I’m talking about those split second random things that simply “happened”.

For instance, in October 1997 after having completed my master’s degree at Memorial I had sought to find employment and stay in Canada. At the time I had a girlfriend I didn’t want to leave, and generally speaking, had fallen head over heels in love with Newfoundland. No jobs seemed forthcoming for this foreign student and I had booked a one-way ticket to Sri Lanka with a stop-over in London. My grand plan by that point was to drop in at the School of Oriental and African Studies and perhaps, after a vacation in Sri Lanka, begin studies for a PhD in African studies.

I was to leave that weekend, my bags were packed and my farewell dinner was all planned. On my final Friday afternoon in Canada, I dropped into the Student Union to say good bye to everyone when the then Dean of Arts, Dr. Terry Murphy, phoned and asked if could possibly meet a certain Vince Walsh with the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site Project who was looking for a Graphic Artist. Vince, for whatever bizarre reason, met me and instantly hired me. I cancelled my ticket, and that night’s farewell dinner at the Taj Mahal turned into another non-farewell dinner for Dups.

That single surreal point led me to cancel my academic plans and resulted in me calling Canada home. I had come mere hours away from that midnight flight to London.

Craig pointed out how he met his wife Cathy on his blog the other day. It is a similar story of chance, despite his agonizing decisions later on (come on, we’re guys, we barely have our heads screwed on straight). I sometimes wonder what would have happened had Vince and I missed each other, if Terry had waited an extra day, or had I simply said no and boarded that flight nine years ago. Is there perhaps a ghost of what could have been floating in the ether out there? How many random decisions have I made in my life whose consequences have led me to being alive? Was there a day I turned left on a street and avoided having a piano fall on me? Will I ever know?

I’d like to think that in a universe of infiniteness, there is an alternate reality where that PhD graduate in African studies is blogging at this very moment on how strange it would have been had he stayed in Newfoundland.

People wonder why people consider me crazy. I point you to Exhibit A, a conversation with the “newly-having-decided-when-the-wedding-shall-be” Ted Martin (congrats Ted and Sarah)

Ted:  hello? 
Dups:  HELLO 
Dups:  I AM SHOUTING COS YOU ARE FAR AWAY 
Dups:  ALSO I HAVE MY CAPSLOCK ON 
Ted:  excellent MSN is working again 
Ted:  thank you for being my (rather loud test subject) 
Dups:  YOU ARE MOST WELCOME 
Ted:  lol 
Dups:  AHEM…. sorry losing my voice 
Dups:  can you hear me now? 
Ted:  yes thank you kindly, alas I must go back to my term paper on the influence of technology on teaching practices in the classroom 
Dups:  Yes put in your paper that technology has failed us in the classroom 
Dups:  In the fifties they said we would replace the ruler with the electric chair for unruly students 
Dups:  Damn them but they have not followed through 
Dups:  Damn them 
Ted:  lol 
Ted:  where are these electric chairs being used? 
Dups:  This moment of insanity briought you by the number 1000110011100111 and 100111010010010011111 
Ted:  I would like to interview their designer 
Ted:  lol 
Ted:  stop it hurts and how quick can you translate that to decimal in you head 
Dups:  I am not human 
Dups:  I have replaced Dups with a much smarter version 
Dups:  sadly he still looks like a putz 
Ted:  Dups 2.0 the upgrade or the still buggy Dups 1.9 
Dups:  More like Dups Vista with missing drivers 
Ted:  ouch don’t forget the inability to upgrade you hardware. or should I say microsoft randomly deciding you need to buy a new OS 
Dups:  Great, I guess the next time I go into the hospital, Bill Gates will be there with a saw in his hand and a credit card reader in the other “Pay for the upgrade, and we will give you a new arm and reboot you”    

 

I can’t believe that it’s been almost six years since I bought my first manual camera: a trusty Pentax K1000 from the mid seventies. My friend Peter Galgay had advised me to buy that particular camera if I truly wanted to learn photography. Many years later, I’ve graduated to more professional cameras and have over 1500 photos scattered around this site. However, that Pentax K1000 is still one of the best cameras I’ve ever had the pleasure of using.

Unfortunately, when I first started this site more than a decade ago, I had very little space or resources to upload photos in anything but a very small size. The photos weren’t that great, but I was making them that much worse by displaying it in that state. So starting this week I’m “refreshing” those photos: I’m uploading newer larger versions which are more in line with the photos that I upload these days.

This week: Driving the Alaska Highway. In the summer of 2003, I decided to head down the Alaska Highway and be somewhere new for my third Canada Day since getting my citizenship in Ottawa. Unfortunately, I only had five days and I couldn’t convince anyone I knew to come with me. So armed with an extra canister of petrol and my Pentax K1000 off I went to drive all the way to Haines, Alaska.

I drove back again through interior BC during one of the worst rainstorms to hit the region. The rain was literally tearing holes in the Stewart-Cassair Highway as I sped through in manic fashion. I would likely not have taken the insane chances that I took had anyone else been in the car with me. At some points I overtook logging trucks at corners because stopping on that road, with that rain, at that speed seemed like a bad idea. Then there was driving at high speed through fog hoping to skim the giant holes that were suddenly appearing in the road. I was a wreck at the end of that highway and car was caked in mud. So check out the more serene parts of the journey.

When I was in university at Memorial in Newfoundland, my friends and I all gathered en masse at one of the gardens and just screamed. It was quite therapeutic. I wonder what my neighbours would think tonight if I let a long anguished, agonized and frustrated scream escape my lips.

I think I’ve mentioned that my heritage is Sri Lankan. I dare not say that I am Sri Lankan as I’m sure there are many people out there who would take offense by my claiming to be from a country that I only visited every few years, heck I no longer even hold Sri Lankan citizenship. My parents and brothers currently live there along with most of my extended family. However, due to mine and my father’s love of history, I am steeped so deep in Sri Lankan lore that it would not surprise me if I knew more about the country of my birth than many Sri Lankans. To be honest, being born in a country and not living there makes you very sensitive to your heritage. It also makes you very sensitive to its problems.

Sri Lanka has a small problem called a civil war. I’m not sure how “civil” it is. I’m pretty sure that if you put combatants from both sides against each other at an amusement park for fun, the two sides would be at each others throats over who ate the most cotton candy.

My heritage is Sinhalese. The other major group in Sri Lanka are the Tamils. I look like a Tamil. I am dark of skin and very different from the “pure” Sinhalese who were supposedly quite fair originally (bless intermarriage over a couple thousand years). The Sinhalese are mainly Buddhists who believe in a heavy dose of the Hindu gods. Tamils are mostly Hindu. They share the same Hindu gods and indeed they go to the same major temples. The food is pretty much the same. The only major difference is language. I guess, I shouldn’t be surprised. It is pretty much the same problem that exists here in Canada between French-speaking Quebec and, well, the rest of Canada. Ultimately it reminds me a bit of the old Star Trek (Original Series) episode where there was a civil war between two races whose only difference was different checker pattern of colours on their face.

I could go into the thousands of years of war between these two peoples. I could explain the whole situation of the colonizing practices of “Divide and Rule” used by the British. I could tell you about the stupidity of the Sinhalese “upper classes” when they came into power. I could tell you about the atrocities committed by both Tamils and Sinhalese over the last 30 years. What would I gain in spitting out history lesson after history lesson? After all, both sides warp and use history to meet their own ends, to justify killing, to justify their differences.

In today’s news, the Sri Lankan government is apparently forcing children into war. This isn’t even what upsets me so much. To be honest, it doesn’t surprise me. The Tamil Tigers did it, I’m sure the Sri Lankan government does it. It is sad.

What makes me so upset is scanning the comments on the BBC News website about this article. A quick scan shows that Sri Lankans from all sorts of countries cannot find a way to reconcile their differences even living so far from the country of their birth. I am sure that there are Sri Lankan communities in Canada where the two sides are completely divided.

Cynical I may be, but I really believe that this war, this almost visceral hatred, has become endemic to the country and in the minds of its people. Sri Lankans (including my family) spend a lot of time navel gazing and thinking about honour and how every slight against them is a heinous crime repayable only by getting angry, upset and revenge. Rarely is there talking and dialogue and attempts to understand. If the number of stupid, asinine fights within the extended family I grew up in is any indication, I imagine that this war in what was once an island called Paradise will continue for many decades to come.

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, the late great science fiction writer proposed in Foundation and Earth that humanity would only truly come together when there was an outside force that would threaten them (I’m summarizing a lot here). In Sri Lanka, even an outside catastrophe such as the South Asian Tsunami of 2004 could not quell the warring factions. Two years on the poor and the destitute (and there are a lot of them in Sri Lanka) are again to be displaced, armed and finally killed.

Yes, some days I just want to scream.

Tomorrow is the eleventh day of the eleventh month. On the eleventh hour the bells will toll to announce the armistice signed at the end of the first World War of the past century. This was the day and time chosen for us to remember our war dead. In commemoration we traditionally wear red poppies on our lapels inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields. My red poppy adorns my car, year round.

In Edmonton right now there is a group selling white poppies as opposed to the red poppies. The white poppies are meant to represent peace. People selling the poppies, at least in Edmonton are focusing on the idea that Canada should not be at war in Afghanistan.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I am against war. I do not believe that as we move towards a better society through technology and education, we need to solve our problems through violence. In a perfect world I would never have to turn the television on to see scenes of war anywhere around the world. My friends know this; I believe in peace, not war.

However, I live in an imperfect world, and no matter how much technology we wield, or how much poetry we write and erudite we sound, humanity has a long way to go. No matter what I would like my society to move towards, there are other societies in the world which believe in a different ideology than I do and sometimes we need to be there in force. That is sad. And yet, no matter your religion, colour, economic situation or political ideology, I do not believe there is a single person in this world who feels no remorse or shock at having a loved one die in the line of fire.

It is hard for me to turn tomorrow and chastise our troops or our government. I may not believe in war, though I do understand why we are in Afghanistan (I understand, not necessarily support or believe). I may not agree with any number of governments and the reasons why they are at war, but tomorrow is not the time to focus on why and what and where. For me, tomorrow is a day to remember and commemorate the men and women throughout time, in all battles, whose belief in the protection of their homes and ideology or as part of their job allowed themselves to be placed into the line of skin shredding, mind-numbing artillery. We elected those governments who sent them to war, their blood is ultimately on our hands as well.

As Atticus Finch recounts in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird:

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

So for those Canadian men and women who have died in battle or in supporting our troops, I remember and pay tribute to your courage and your sacrifice. You believed in an ideal and donned weapons to defend us. I wish that you hadn’t had to. I wish that you had lived to a ripe old age with your children and grandchildren. I wish that you could see what your work has reaped and will continue to reap into the future. I wish, most of all, that your children and family will see a world filled with peace. That is my Remembrance Day.

Tomorrow I will not be wearing a white poppy, but a red poppy. However, as the pro-peace person that I am, I leave you with a quote from Gandhi:

“It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.”