There and back Part Two

The countdown is on - I'm going home again. This will be my second return to the "homeland" in the six months that I have been in the tropics. I leave on July 2nd and due to the wonders of time zones originally proposed by mathematician Quirico Filopanti in his book Miranda! of 1858, I leave Bali at Midnight on July 2 and arrived at Winnipeg after some 24 hours in the air and another 10 or so hours waiting in airports at 12:30pm July 3, Wpg time. I will return on yet a different route since I arrived here - Dili to Bali, where I have about 8 hours to go to the spa, have a nice dinner prior to returning to the airport for my 11:55 flight to Tokyo. From there another 13 hours to Chicago and back track to Winnipeg shortly thereafter. To bad I don't skydive or double for James Bond as our flight path to Chicago goes right over Winnipeg and I could save myself a few hours by floating down to my former home.

As a result this has been an excruciatingly slow week as I countdown to my departure on Thursday. This will be briefly interrupted on Wednesday evening with a Canada Day party hosted by us (Manitoba Hydro International) one day prior to my departure at a local beach side restaurant. Ironically it was organized primarily by our Russian friend Alisa, who like all free thinking people should, enjoys the company of us old Canadian guys. Figure this one out - a Canada Party hosted by Canadians with a Russian, with Thai food on the menu in the southern hemisphere some 12,000kms away from home. Neat. The next day I'm at the airport at noon for the long (but short?) journey home. I should have timed my departure better though - our American friends that we invited to our party were going to reciprocate the favor and invite us all to the July 4th celebrations they will be having on the following Saturday.

Before I go home one local story that I must share which perhaps is more about my own naivety than the story itself. As I usually do on Sunday morning I went for a walk along the beach - as I was doing so I noticed in a yard some guys holding what to me looked like sticks, I think 'how nice they must be playing cricket'. The next moment I was terrified as some of them streamed out to the beach close to me and what I thought were sticks turned to be machetes. Great - the malye guy gets gutted on the beach. As that terror was festering in my mind the other guys from the yard also stream out from the yard chasing a poor pig who was doing its best to avoid being breakfast. I don't know the fate of this poor soul as I kept on walking, not because I still feared for my life but I did not want to witness the eminent demise of the pig. Life is hard core here and there is little or no separation between life and dinner. As I have mentioned previously, the road into my complex is an open field where cattle and water buffalo graze, once I was driving out and noticed that one these beasts was lying in pieces with its blood soaking the ground. Again being the kind of guy that 'hunts' his meat at Safeway or Costco I looked straight ahead and didn't look back. Thankfully most of the mess was cleaned up upon my return later in the day. Its times like these I tell myself I should be a vegetarian. Just to drive this point home I was driving home the other day and noticed in the boot of a taxi a pig with its feet bound on a stick upside down feet up. I thought the poor thing was dead - nope - hitting a pothole the poor thing squirmed struggling in what ever way he could. Fate was not looking up for this guy.

That said in one week I can temporarily go back to normal and hunt meat in a supermarket once again - which I will avail myself frequently when I'm home. That and a myriad of other services I don't have in Dili - using a credit card, organized, reasonable traffic on real roads, different restaurants and mostly enjoying the company of family and close friends. As I detailed in a previous blog it was hard work being home trying to visit all I needed to visit, run the errands that need to be run and so on. Now that is summer (or so I think anyway) I will not have to re-acclimatize myself to the cold and I get to ride my bike. My bike has been my salvation for the last 25 years - riding to work and my selfish recreational pursuit. This is the first summer in a long time that I will not spend my usual 5 - 7 days of the week on my bike. I was supposed to bring a bike out here but logistically it didn't work out - and because of my expensive bike at home I wasn't going to commit it to this environment, nor could I settle with a dead weight hunk of iron that are sold locally. So I'm looking forward to spending most of my short days at home straddling my best friend.

The other thing I have to do is get a new passport. Although my current one isn't expired until Feb/10, because I won't be coming home until Christmas after this trip, and the fact that alot of countries will not recognize passports that are within six months of expiration (what good is the expiry date then???) it must be done. I need the thick version of the passport as I am almost out of pages with my current one. Indonesia is a major problem there - using at least 2 pages every time you pass thru the country which we do often as it is one of only three places we can escape to from Dili (Singapore and Darwin are the other two). I did contact the Canadian embassy in Jakarta about renewing it and what they thought was simple was in reality anything but. I would have to surrender my current passport to them via a very expensive courier service (I have heard that a letter via courier from here to Canada will cost you $100US) at which time they issue me a temporary passport to get out of here and hopefully pick up the new one when home. I don't want to travel through three countries to get home (Indonesia/Japan/USA) and show them a "temporary" passport - a redflag that will undoubtedly end in my getting violated by some narsassisitic ego maniac with rubber gloves on. Nothing good can come of that. Hence I will show up on Monday morning, paperwork in hand at the passport office and beg them to expedite this renewal prior to leaving the country again in only 12 days. It will cost me more but much more simple than the alternative.

Now just to add to this mad rush to Thursday - I got sick one Sunday - don't know what the cause was exactly but enough to give me a rough night chasing to the toilet not knowing weather to sit or kneel. As I have been told - it isn't a matter of if you get the runs here, but when. So while the fear of a temporary passport is no longer relevant now I have to contend with the diligent Japanese who I am told scrutinize all incoming planes for swine flu - so either I get better in a couple of days or fake it good in order to continue my journey back home.

I'm on my way home again to see all those I hold dear

Confusing my thoughts as what is my home less and less clear