Why?

Strategically self-induced nausea in response to smoking, gloom at the most wonderful time of the year, and adding insult to injury: why?

Yesterday, on Christmas Day in the morning, I took the metro and bus to get to and from the church where I was singing. Christmas is "supposed" to be a happy day, and while I know not everyone has an easy time at Christmas, it was surprise to see so many long faces on the bus and metro. Whence happiness?

Today, I went to the pharmacy to fill a prescription. While I was waiting, the pharmacist was helping the client ahead of me. She handed him his pills, and asked if he knew how they worked, and then she explained: these pills would help him quit smoking because smoking would henceforth make him dizzy and nauseated. The full course of this treatment runs for 12 weeks - yup, 12 weeks of nasty revulsion. I gained a new sympathy for smokers if quitting is so hard that sometimes self-inflicted nausea is the best way to go.

In other news, a friend of mine spent the summer cycling from BC (where he currently/most recently lived) to Newfoundland (where he spent part of his childhood). He extended his stay, spending a few weeks in Newfoundland visiting family, planning what to do next, and fixing up an old VW camper van. In late November he started to drive back to BC in his new (old) van. Alas, he wiped out in a snowstorm in the US midwest, totalled the van, and was stuck for almost a week waiting for news from his insurance company. When they finally made up their mind (yes, the van was indeed totalled), he flew home to Vancouver, just in time to catch the start of some of the nasty weather that's been the recent delight of North American travellers. Oh yes, then he got home to Vancouver and a few days later, his father in Newfoundland died.

Why, why, why? There's the Hungarian joke from Soviet times that everything that is not prohibited is compulsory. Or as the physicists (or is it the statisticians) say, if it isn't impossible, then it's going to happen somewhere at some point in the universe. So "why" isn't always a fruitful question to ask. I guess that leaves the next best alternative as "what will we do in consequence", or maybe more concisely, "how, not why".

Voting: from blues to bliss

Today, I voted in Quebec's provincial election today. A day of depressing thoughts was transformed, after voting, into a smug sense of satisfaction and gratitude.

Elections usually make me depressed. It's not the voting part; it's that elections remind us about the politicans whom I find so distasteful that I generally prefer to ignore them. Here in the province of Quebec, our government is 2 years into its mandate. Our premier decided he didn't like leading a minority government and that now was a good time to call an election to try for a majority government. How wonderful! We're about to head into difficult economic times, and our leadership apparently has no better idea on how to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars than an utterly unnecessary election. Yet out of a sense of duty, off I went to vote.

Often something happens on election day, and this time was no exception. Sometimes it happens before marking my ballot, sometimes after, but once again my election epiphany came. Voting is such a privilege. I can't swing a cat without hitting someone for whom voting is or was a matter of life and death. Why did my grandparents flee their country in the middle of the night? What about my fellow volunteer mentioned in my previous post?

Maybe I don't like my politicians, but it sure is a nice feeling that every few years I have a chance to let them know what I think about them. And when I cast my vote, no matter how I vote, I won't get blacklisted or imprisoned. My politicians - those whom I often so dislike - want me to vote, even if it's not for them.

(Thoughts on frigid winter-cycling today are on my other blog.)

Would I have had the strength to do that?

I volunteer with the Red Cross, and today attended an annual colloquium on our activities. One volunteer told about volunteering in conflict zones in Afghanistan and throughout Africa. This prompted another volunteer to tell some stories from his home country, and I am still reeling.

He explained that he had heard about several prisoners that had been tossed in prison, beaten, and kept without medical aid. The prison guards would not let anyone in to help them. He set up a protest in front of the prison with placards that said "Down with the president!" and was promptly thrown inside. His father was a high-ranking officer in the local police service, so he was confident that he would get out. Indeed, he was released soon thereafter, but not until he had spoken with a few prisoners and catalogued on what pretext they were there and what their injuries were. Once he was released, he worked with Amnesty International in order to get Red Cross staff into the prison to treat them.

He did something like that a second time, and then his father had a serious talk with him. With his youthful optimism and confidence, he hadn't realised that his actions might put his father in prison too.

The world has seen so many wars, conflicts, genocides, and massacres, and the response is "Never again." We know that we cannot be complicit. But what would I have done in his shoes?

Christmas baking: an expression of thankfulness

Today my friend G. and I baked fruitcake together, as we do most years. Eating good fruitcake makes me feel very lucky. Making it with a dear friend is even better.

We set our dried fruit (raisins assorted, currants, dates, figs, dried cherries) to soak in rum in advance, then make our dark fruitcake with generous amounts of butter, brown sugar, eggs, and spices. Now it shall age, but first comes a bath of more spirits.

I think it is a travesty that fruitcake has become so despised by so many. I imagine a time when food was scarce, when spices brought from afar were a special luxury, when eggs weren't abundant year-round, and when sugar was a special treat, and when distillation was a special sort of alchemy - and suddenly fruitcake comes to encapsulate something special, luxurious, and wonderful.

Who would have guessed? (and welcome!)

Welcome to my new blog for general musings. (My other blog, Cyclophilia, chronicles my cycling adventures.)

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When I was a wee lad, one each of my older brothers and sisters were on the local swimteam and swam competitively as pre-teens and teens. My mother was rather involved in the operation of the swimt-eam as a volunteer. Consequently, I spent a lot of time being towed along to/from the pool, and many weekends revolved around going to some swim-meet that E. and S. were swimming in, often with a long drive to and from another town or city. (Or so it seems in hindsight.)

As for me, I didn't get very far into swimming. I took swimming lessons but wasn't interested in the competitive aspect. I forgot how to swim, but took it up in my mid-20s. In adulthood, E. and S. have dropped swimming for different reasons, but I joined a masters-level gay swimming club, A Contre Courant. (The word "masters" means non-professional adults who aim to improve, practice regularly with coaches, and may or may not participate in competitions. I swim recreationally.)

Today I volunteered in our swim-team's annual swim-meet. As a child, going to swim-meets was somewhat tedious, but as a time-keeper, the day passed very quickly.

So what is the "Who would have guessed" part? As a child, I probably never even noticed the score of other volunteers and officials, let alone guessed that one day I might be swimming or helping with the operation of a swim-meet. There is a lot to be said about the infinite possibilities of childhood, but what I love best about adulthood is the possibility to do (not just think) many of the things we might always have wanted to do - or never even thought about.