I’ve had a steady stream of questions about how I’m doing and about the last month of my life. The fact that it has been a month since my grand upheaval went mostly unnoticed by me except for my monthly urge to go get a haircut. Sitting in the hair salon and having every whim of my hair follicles being tended to I realized the last time I was in this situation was the day before I left Edmonton, exactly a month ago. I brazenly told the hair dresser then that she had better make my hair stand out as her work was going to be on show in Montreal.

For those of you who ever decide to travel across Canada, and I know there are a couple of you… Here’s a few things I learned during my drive.

• Unless you have an overwhelming urge to see the countryside and the great Canadian vistas, fly. It’s much faster. I barely covered half of the country and it took me five days.
  
• Bring an iPod. Seriously. After the 200^th corn field flew by and the road in Saskatchewan barely curved in areas where no respectable radio station would be caught dead, I decided that Steve Jobs and the iPod would have to become patron saints of my religion.
• Praise the wonders of Talk Radio. No seriously. At some point in northern Ontario where the wheat fields of the Prairies had been replaced by endless rock and pine trees, music was not enough. You want to rant and rave, and there’s nothing more fun than shouting at the idiot on the radio who claims that he “is not a racist, just doesn’t want them people around here”.
• You can actually live on Tim Horton’s right through the trip. I managed it. I don’t think there were any adverse effects, do you?
• Prepare for madness. I formulated my own religion. Need I say more?

On the first day I wrote Exodus. My grand trip started (quite hung over) in Edmonton. Thankfully I made it to Vermillion, Alberta within a couple of hours where I was afforded the grand hospitality of Lori and Shane Crewe.

On the second day I described how the faithful wandered the desert in search of hills. On this day I headed for Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. You might note that I managed to completely bypass Saskatchewan. This is nothing against the wonderful people in Saskatchewan. They are lovely. Just… Saskatchewan… flat… boring… dusty, you get the picture? Sigh.

Riding Mountain National Park is actually incredibly beautiful, and I vowed to return as I watched the most beautiful sunset I had seen in a long time. The lightning strike that hit the park mere hours later probably had nothing to do with my attempts to create a new religion. Shocking, really. The tent was so soaked the next morning due to my hasty dismantling that for the first time in my camping career I had to seek a Laundromat to dry it.

On the third day I created the Gospel of Dups and found myself being attacked by demon-filled mosquitoes by the side of Sandbar Lake Provincial Park near Ignace, Ontario. This was after having spent much of the day driving through southern Manitoba and fearfully looking at gathering clouds wondering if the tornadoes of the previous two days would show up while I happened to be driving.

On the fourth day, I awoke and walked on more water. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was destined to never see the sunrise on the Canadian landscape during this journey. No tornadoes were to be seen, but just mere kilometres away from where I had bedded down, a massive and destructive windstorm had blown through. I was seriously beginning to wonder about my religion. On this day I drove across the seemingly endless landscape of northern Ontario and camped at Lake Superior Provincial Park. Many had warned me to avoid Thunder Bay and Kenora like plagues. Good citizens, I tell you I managed both.

On the fifth day, I sang the holy hymns of the Dups Gospel (they oddly resemble cheesy eighties music). I awoke to intense fog produced by the ever present, but rarely seen, Great Lakes. Initially I was supposed to arrive in Montreal on the sixth day, but lo and behold, the great prophet Googlezaphut had miscalculated the amount of time from Lake Superior to Algonquin. Instead fired up on the holy Caffeine I found myself zipping through Ottawa and into Montreal where Niall, Rebecca, Mike, Iwona and Derek waited with open arms and a bottle of heavenly Scotch.

On the sixth day, I rested.

Video clips from the trip, taken with my camera phone as the madness finally set in

• Foggy Lake Superior
• Boogy Oogy Boogy
• Take On Me
• Driving into Ottawa

What is this madness of Harry Potter? Like many of you, my Harry Potter experience spans almost a decade, and in my specific case five cities and an entire continent. I read the first book while on holiday visiting my friends Jaap and Charlotte Tuinman in Vancouver. The second and third books were quickly devoured in Kelowna, BC, as was the fourth which I picked up on release day (and carried around protectively to the bars as I was partying that night). The fifth I read in Edmonton and the sixth in the kitchen of Ann and Ted Martin’s house in St. John’s, NL during the week so many of my friends got married.

The seventh is now within sight.

In the intervening seven years, my life, the world and my friends have all changed. During this time I have read a cavalcade of fantastic books. New authors to classic fiction;  the topics have ranged from from epic battles, the violence of war, the loneliness of our frail beings, the despair inherent, the beauty of landscape, the determination of the human spirit and the joy of togetherness. From Ireland, Germany, Turkey, Czech Republic, Detroit, New York, Sri Lanka and Montreal to name a few places, from ancient times to the post-present future.

Does Harry Potter, our nascent boyhood magic wielding hero hold a candle to these works? Simply not possible dear Ms. Rowling, simply not possible.

And yet, I have managed to crawl out of bed at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning after a night on the town. I have crawled bleary eyed into the Montreal Metro and found a bookstore, cradled the book as if to protect it from the ravages of other potential suitors and escorted it home. What is the madness of Harry Potter?

In the intervening seven years since I read about an awkward boy wizard pitted against dark forces I have realized that the magic of Potter is not necessarily in the writing. The magic is in the two others sitting in the Metro reading; the magic is in the envious eyes that wander over my copy; the magic is in the strangers nodding at you knowingly as you walk out the store. In a world of fragmented media where it has become impossible for 80% of the globe to share in a single idea, hero, model, politic, religion or entertainer, Harry Potter is the exception. No corner of the world has been left untouched by this mass phenomenon. Between books and film, Harry has become part of the collective conscience of the majority of today’s human society.

The magic is that I am not alone in reading today and tomorrow. I will not be alone in poring over every word letting each syllable echo in the caverns of my mind as I seek to prolong the joy, the pain and the wonder. In a week, I will be able to call my friends, talk to strangers and be part of something that is bigger than me. Is such a collective hysteria a good thing? In most cases probably not. In the case of an orphan boy finding his way in the world with friends at his side, at a fantastical magical school, I think it shows that humanity has great promise at finding common ground.

That is the magic that I see.

You might have noticed that the site design has changed. Well, okay, mostly tweaked. I’ve put up a new theme for the site as I figured it was about time for a slight change. You might also notice that there are now Google ads on most of the pages. I’m not going to be shy in saying it’s to see if I can make enough money from Google’s Adsense to try and pay for the site and its bandwidth. I ran a small test over the past month or so with the ads at the bottom and since they generated more than zero dollars, I figured the new design should incorporate them from the start.

This design is also wider. I’ve taken the liberty of widening the layout. This design will just fit within a 1024×768 resolution. Those with 800×600 resolution are sadly going to have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically.

Thanks to Julian for his opinionated help

Commence with the beating. Commence with the laughter. Commence with your “I told you so’s” and your “what the hell is wrong with you’s”. I have officially sold out.

Just before I drove across Canada, I decided that my sanity would only be kept in one piece if and only if I had enough music to listen to. I took out my trusty SanDisk MP3 player which had served me during my two-month long trip on the Trans-Siberian. While the MP3 player had worked as advertised, with only 2 GB of memory, I had listened to every song too many times. On top of that, early into my trip I had discovered that the randomize function was based on so much non-randomness and could never remember where it had left off. No, I said to myself, I needed to get a bigger MP3 player.

I once complained that the iPod was a fad. Something akin to the cabbage patch kids of my childhood, now completely forgotten. Well, that fad hasn’t quite died. If anything it’s grown. Standing in the Best Buy aisles looking down at the myriad of MP3 players, I swallowed my pride and gingerly held a new black iPod. I twirled the dial, listened in and then examined the competition. Well, okay, so not much of a competition really, more like peasant usurpers to a throne.

Yes folks, I am now a proud owner of an iPod.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there.

Having sold my soul to Steve Jobs (well, the remainder of my soul, I think I gave most of it away to Chris Myrick as a birthday gift once), I decided that my path to hell had been paved with silver white apple trees. Yes folks, I am typing this blog entry on a MacBook Pro courtesy of my new work place.

The worst part about it all? I like it. I like the operating system. I even like how fast it was for me to set up. I like the fact that there is a certain “linux-ness” to the operating system. I like how I was able to have my first video chat within minutes of turning the damn thing on.

Am I suddenly going to be converting to all Mac-ness? Probably not. I like Windows XP as an interface as well, heck I’ve been weaned on it! I like Gnome on my Ubuntu system as well. However for ease of use and setup, the Mac OSX beats them all hands down. If I were asked to design an interface I would have given Apple a bunch of “wants”. I think such a list of “wants” probably created the interface that is prevalent in Windows, both XP and Vista, today. Instead, what Apple has done with both the iPod and OSX is to create an operating system that I “need”. While the difference in the use of the words “want” and “need” may appear slight, the result at the end of the day is huge.

Regardless, I finally have some “i” in my life!

iDups

Yesterday was Canada Day. Six years ago I became a Canadian citizen. Six years ago I was living in British Columbia and I travelled all the way to Ottawa, the nation’s capital so that I could be bestowed my citizenship on Canada Day. The occasion was recorded for posterity by Craig Welsh in a piece for CBC and as such, I guess I will never forget the specific details nor the role my friends played on that day. Regardless, I will also never forget my feelings on the day that I became a Canadian. I will always remember the satisfaction, the joy and the sense of belonging.

Six years later, I have kept the promise I made that day about spending Canada Day somewhere new in Canada (I have since amended that to be “if I am in Canada!”). I have spent the day observing my citizenship anniversary in places as far apart as the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Waterton Lakes National Park, Edmonton and now in my new home: Montreal (pictures to follow when I actually have a home ;).

It’s always a day of introspection for me about my life and what has happened, and I hope any reader will allow me to indulge in that introspection on this blog. Have my feelings for Canada and my place in the world changed since that fateful day when I swore allegiance to the Queen? In six years, I have finally come to accept the fact that no matter where I go, no matter who I become, I will always be Sri Lankan. The culture and stories that my parents instilled in me will always be there, I no longer disavow my heritage. However, in six years, I am more a Canadian in reality than the Canadian-want-to-be who espoused a Canadian-ness in an effort to show that he belonged more than he didn’t.

I love Canada. After six years, perhaps I can finally put that love of Canada into words. I love Canada the country and the land beneath my feet and fingers: A land of great diversity, great beauty, staggering landscapes and harsh forces. I love Canada and its people. We are a people of varied descent, cultures, ethnicities and languages spread amongst an environment which we fight with on a daily basis.

Canada has its problems, as does every country in the world. I would hope that as we grow as a country and reach 150 years, I will get to see my dream for this country realized. I would like to see a country which understands that a state is not about creating a nationalist group of individuals with an overriding set of beliefs, but instead the free country which embraces all cultures and ideas and allows them to flourish. And certainly, a state separated from religion just as the founding fathers of the United States originally sought to achieve. This all seems so much easier to write and imagine than actually achieve in reality. Like so many countries, we must overcome problems of history, of ethnicities divided, of languages suppressed, of poverty and injustice, and environmental disasters with power-hungry politicians.

But I love Canada for another reason. Unlike any other place I have so far been a part, I believe wholeheartedly in this country’s ability for rational, peaceful dialogue. Eventually we will get it right.

As one former Prime Minister proclaimed: Je suis Canadien.