I’m much too busy being completely lazy right now to do more than this. I did attempt to load some Quebec photos the other day, but the Internet died before I was done. I’m back in Vancouver and hanging out and having fun. Saw Cirque du Soleil with Dad and Colleen the other night, which was Amazing. Spent the last two days lounging by the side of a pool in the hot sunshine with fellow SALTS crew members, enjoying the break between trips. I’ll be moving back to Victoria in about 3 weeks, so an address update will come out then.
Category Archives: Life
Over the Next Year
I am officially registered for 2 classes at UVic starting in January. I guess that means I’ll be based in Victoria for the next year! I work for SALTS until the end of October, then it will be a job for me until classes begin, and hopefully I can keep it part time when I’m studying. Victoria friends, I’m back!
Back in Lotus Land
Sinking back into life in Vancouver, I’ve realized that post-Offshore I know a lot of people here. So many that I’m contemplating buying a day planner to keep track of my social life. Hopefully that will cause me less in the way of stress-related headaches. Not completely solving everything, but it would be a small step.
Part of Vancouver seems to be a certain randomness. I’d forgotten about it. Case in point:
New Westminster Skytrain Station, weekday night (can’t actually remember what day it was), around dinner time. Walking towards it with Jeff and Anna we keep seeing people with boxes of pizza – those ones you buy at the supermarket then go home and heat up yourself (“Its not delivery, its Delissio” type thing). Some people have one box, but some have three or four. Clearly something is going on. We turn the corner and see a full-on delivery truck (like the ones you hire to move house, big and boxy) with boxes upon boxes of pizza inside. Around the front at the stairs up to the station there are three people in bright red chef hats giving away pizzas. Drat, can’t eat pizza and am on the way out, not towards home.
Apparently it wasn’t a once-off thing either. It was happening again today at Burrard Station. Is this some crazy promo, or what is going on in Vancouver?!?
And just when I had been thinking of how earthy, organic, hippie, insert similar adjective here, Vancouver is, I saw this sign in the bus and decided to feel awkward and take a picture of it, because I could and because it [somewhat] proved my point. Minus the death by squishing thing. Apparently throwing your can in the garbage will cause you to be crushed by a falling grand piano. Because they fall from the sky spontaneously without prior warning. All the time. I’m glad I don’t drink out of cans very often.
Ummm, home?!?
So, I’m home. Back in Canada that is, and not living on a boat. Home is somewhat of a nebulous concept as half of my belongings are still currently in a storage locker and the other half are spread around the spare room at Dad’s, waiting for me to brave the chaos and organize/sort/get rid of things. Its a bit overwhelming. Currently, I’m in the den with the Internet avoiding chaos.
Post-offshore, I’ve discovered that I have friends in Vancouver (yes, newsflash, Gillian has friends) and I am rediscovering the joys of a social life. Being on a boat for a year does incur a certain amount of social-ness, however you’re pretty much always seeing everyone so the whole concept of making dates and going somewhere is fairly novel.
Update on the next little bit: In and out of Vancouver… Montreal end of June-beginning of July… possibly PG end of July and Edmonton beginning of August then back to the boat for the last two summer trips around the Island and working in Victoria for the fall. Its nice to have these things laid out for you, saves brain power.
Brain power is at a premium at the moment. I have been declining all food-related decisions other than “I like that” or “I don’t really enjoy eating that” and will continue to do so for another few weeks. I have been thinking about little other than food for the last year. I need a break. Its to the point that I am actually not interested in food. Oh, I eat. Otherwise I would be ravenously hungry all the time and then I’d have to make food decisions, then where would I be? I just don’t sit and think about all the wonderful food items I would like to enjoy and I have little in the way of cravings.
I’m contemplating adding to Flikr my favorite photos I’ve taken on Offshore (about 200) so all can see them. Thoughts? Will they be looked at or is that a massive waste of my time?
On the crossing…
Chuuk Lagoon
Raising the trisail
Lowering the Jib
Sara, Amanda, Susan, and Rachael doing crosswords
Images of crossing the equator
Karen is not impressed by some of the tasks pollywogs have to do
Katie enjoys throwing the slop at people
Kara would rather not have to eat the tobasco sauce Sarah is putting into her mouth
Sarah, aka, Davey Jones
Bec and Chase
Hooray for guanxi!
Today I went down to W Broadway to the Chinese Consulate to get visas for our crew because we need to get them before we arrive in Shanghai on the boat next February. I got there between 9:30 and 9:45; the embassy opened at 9am. The room for visa applications was already full of about 200 people, mostly sitting down on long benches like they have in train and bus waiting rooms. I was one of maybe 4 white people in the room and I felt like I was in China: all the signs were in Chinese, all I could hear spoken around me was Chinese, all the people were Chinese, I was taller than everyone, and it was very crowded. There was a sign at the entrance to the room saying “No numbers today.” Great, a free-for-all, Chinese style, of people trying to get visas (or so I thought). I surveyed the room for a few brief seconds before deciding to stand in one of the short lines at one of the two windows for visa applications, dreading wasting my entire day (of 5 very precious days off) at the Chinese Consulate. A very forceful white lady inserted herself in front of me: “What number are you?”
“The sign said no numbers today.”
“Oh, there are numbers alright, I’m 791 [or whatever it was].” She proceeded to enlighten me that they had already run out of numbers for the day – people started queueing at something like 6am in the alleyway. Well, I was not about to come back at 6am tomorrow morning, so I decided on trying my luck at today. Fortunately, the SALTS office had been in communication with someone at the consulate and had given me a letter, signed by our executive director, introducing me to them. I stayed in line, budged in front of people (in the Chinese way, of course) saying that I just had to speak with Ms. Whatever-her-name-was and saw no other way to do so. The best part was an elderly Chinese man, not in the queue, encouraging me to budge in.
I got up to a window and presented my letter (thankfully, I’d worn my Pacific Grace shirt today, one more identifier of me with SALTS) and said that my company had been in contact with someone at the embassy and I was here and didn’t know how else to speak with her. The lady at the window disappeared with my letter into the back for a few minutes. I spent those minutes hoping no one would discover I had no number and shoo me away. She reappeared and simply asked me if I had the completed form. I pulled all 15 applications out of my bag and pushed them under the window.
After a few minutes of explaining that, yes, I am not going to China until February and I know that is a long way away, however I will not be able to get the visa between now and then because I will be out of the country, she informed me that I had to change all of the visa applications to a multiple entry, 1 year visa. As long as it is the one that costs the amount of money for the company cheque I have on me, I don’t care what visa it is! I scooched to the side, unwilling to give up my place at the window in case I never got it back, and changed all 15 applications before shoving them under the window again. After stapling all the photos on to the applications, and removing all the paperclips, she smiled at me and said “You pick up on Friday, okay?”
“That will be just fine!”
Half an hour after I entered the Consulate, I was walking back down Broadway, laughing to myself for a good two blocks: guanxi is alive and well in Canada as well as in China and I am very glad I had that letter.
An end and a beginning
And just like that, the spring season of sailing is done. I’m sitting here, in Dad’s computer room, on a beautiful sunny Monday (why is it always gorgeous when I’m not on the boat??) visiting for the last time before we leave in something like 3 and a bit weeks. Fabulous ferry crossing today… I sat on the outer deck the whole way in my T-shirt, enjoying the sun. There wasn’t much wind, so I was hoping I’d catch a glimpse of the boats if they were sailing, but I think they’d long passed that area. So now the fears and apprehensions I had starting off the spring season have returned full-force as the magnitude of preparing for Offshore begins to hit me. It actually began to hit a few weeks ago, which partially explains my silence lately.
As the weather gets nicer, I’ve enjoyed wandering around Victoria on the weekends. I love living close to downtown so that I can just wander in when I feel like it, and I make a point of walking a lot on the weekend to make up for my week of no to little movement on the boat. The cherry blossoms have just finished, but there was a period of a few weeks when they were spectacular; especially in Chinatown where the cherry trees alternate with well-maintained evergreen trees making the street a feast of colour.
Reading and re-reading some Madeleine L’Engle has also been a highlight of the last few weeks. I love her ability, in her non-fiction work, to say what I want to say but can’t or say what I wish I’d thought of. It is always quite inspiring and thought-provoking. Attending Choral Evensong at the huge Gothic-inspired Cathedral has also been a joy. Last week, the service was celebrated by someone who had been an intern minister at our church in Belleville about 15 years ago. He pretty much looks just the same!
And then there is the A&E/BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice that I got from the library and watched again this weekend. It is always so depressing and uplifting at the same time, a thought which brings to mind something I read from Madeleine L’Engle (A Stone for a Pillow) on the ferry ride over here: the idea that things are both/and. Like one crew member’s comment to another “You are a genius, except when you are stupid”. Like the idea that I can love and admire someone who does something which seems to be so contrary or unworthy. Maybe one day, we will have a trinary system instead of a binary system: “yes/no” becomes “yes/no/neutral.” Jesus used this when he answered the question of paying tribute to Caesar by asking them to bring him a coin. I suppose this way prods us to move out of a comfortable rut of easy answers and blanket statements; blanket statements allow us to ignore the people and think only about the problem, something that the world does too much of as it is.
With more sleep, hopefully I’ll be in good shape after this week off. I’m finding I need to divide my time between reading the “good” things – the fun and inspiring books (like Madeleine L’Engle) and the ones which are beneficial for me to read for work (Care and Feeding of the Offshore Crew, for example), although I only brought the good stuff with me this week…
One trip left. One. Trip. Left. I’m sailing for the next three days and then it is a week off, and then shipyard for a few weeks. It is hard to believe that in a month I’ll be on the eve of leaving Victoria to sail around the Pacific for a year. Kind of overwhelming actually.
Updates…
I trashed my address book in Europe, so I bought a new one last week. Now, I’m soliciting addresses for it: if you think you ever might want me to write you (or even just know where you live!), either email me or write it in comments (which will be screened for this post – none will go up, they will just go to my inbox) so I can add it to the brand-spankin new book. If you’re unsure as to whether you want to give me your address, just think: postcards from Tahiti, Fiji, New Guinea, Japan… well, you probably won’t get all of those, but we can try for one!
UPDATE: Comment Moderation is now turned off again, so if you leave your address in comments, it will be displayed for the world to see. You can email me (address available on profile page if you don’t have it) your address from here on in.
gillian's island 