Kerig's Korner

Thursday, July 24, 2003:

July 3, 2003 - Vancouver
A phalanx of red and white flanks GM Place. It’s six am. We file in, endure speechifiying from every local politico. Then it’s the live closed circuit broadcast from Prague. We’re there for the announcement of the 2010 Olympics. Korea wins the first vote, but Salzburg is eliminated. Some whispers. What if we lose?
Then comes to the announcement. And FIREWORKS! We scream right along with them. We did it! A tear leaks from my eye. But wait, we’re not Canadian. What the hell are we happy about? Rational thoughts are fleeting. The 20,000-strong crowd dances its way into the streets.
Why aren’t we Canadian? I wonder. The following day Bel picks up the papers (Her mom’s a Canuck and she could be too).
I could live in Vancouver. This is the highest praise I can give a place. I could live here. I could. And with the current political landscape in America I am reminded of Richard Linklater's words: "To withdraw in disgust is not the same as apathy." Piss up your neck Mr. Bush and your neocon brown shirts, we're going where freedom still reigns.

July 4th,
We spend it in Whistler. I ride monorail ziplines through the tree tops and later fully suspended mountain bikes. Later, we drive the convertible back down to Vancouver.
The awning on the Chun Che Mei Café in Chinatown reads “YUMMY.” Who can argue with that? The yellowed floor has a film of slick, the air is humid with chicken fat smear. Yummy indeed. I am torn between the honeymoon yin yang fried rice and the oh so happy dumplings. They are the only two dishes on the handwritten list on the wall in English and my Mandarin is a bit rusty.
I pantomime an order. The counter gal, round faced with hair pulled severely back like some tennis player in training, yells louder, in Chinese, to help me understand. I try and order spare ribs and she understands it to be a question as to where she’s from.
“China, no Philippine,” she says.
Okay, I say.
“Some call Ling Philippine,” she says louder, to help me understand. “They drunk. Anyone can know I’m no Philippine.”
She caresses the film on the floor with a broom of greasy bristles. She needs me to know she is better than “Philippine people.” No matter who you are, or think you are, you always want to know that there is someone less fortunate, beautiful, smart, etc. than you are.
I walk out with enough to feed six. I have no idea what the dishes are.
We sit and eat them on a promontory with a harbour view in the greenness of Stanley Park. Chinese food in this Canadian port on Independence Day. Here's to you, America, our home and native land. We clink spare ribs and Grace squeals in delight.

Bill // 2:25 PM

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Victoria
June 30
I’ve arrived at the other side. Victoria, British Columbia. Though I have no globe to consult to see if Victoria is literally on the opposing pole to Lebanon, I am quite sure that this British colonial outpost off the northwest coast of the Washington is the metaphoric polar opposite of Beirut. This is a city of gardens. Thick hedges grow ready-trimmed, squared-off corners. Color guards of tulips and roses and deafodils. The plants, like the people, are filled with good sense, a high estimation of order, a traditionist's use of color. A city of starch and high tea and double-decker buses. Small, evenly spaced waves cross the harbour. The sensible green-gray of school blackboards. Even the ocean is organized.
The Fairmont Empress Hotel is 476-room citadel of turrets and ivy covered walls and creaking floors. Crystal baubles hang from chandeliers. Turn-of-the-century grandeur. High tea is in a high-ceilinged room of low furniture of antique design. Black and white photos of Queen Elizabeth and Shirley Temple and Bob Hope in formal evening wear hang in casual reference to a storied past. Tourists in T-shirts, clutching plastic bags of souvenirs read the inscriptions. What will tomorrow’s memories look like? Puffy people in T-shirts trying to reinvent an invented past.
There is a bay window our room. I sit in the window, hgh above the harbour. Curved windows, gauzey curtains stirring in the light sea breeze off the inner harbor. A tall ship in the harbor. More self-referencing artifacts of an antiseptic past. Victoria is Canada’s retirement capital.
Inside, faded gold paint on thick walls, heavy floral print drapes, mahogany desk and brass lamps. A two room-suite with harbor view for $800 a night.
My body is still on Beirut time, adhering to the movements of the sun on the other side of the earth. My head is somewhere in between. I find little purchase in luxury. I know where I am in streets of rubble, hot dirty air, the glare of dirty strangers.
Miniature ferry boats ply the harbor like a flotilla out of a Tolkien. Two-person sea kayaks slide by on the still gray-green surface. Masts poke into the smudged sky. The tall ship looks like an oil painting from another time. Heavy brush strokes, sharp outlines. Brisk air, filled with clarity.
Red and white flags flutter atop high imperial structures, on the antenna of the Bentley in the circular drive, from the hot dog cart where a man in a beret sells smoke-house dogs in whole wheat buns. Civilised here at the Harbour. Civilised means extra vowels, the substitution of the soft “s” for the angular sharpness of the trouble making “z.” Tomorrow is Canada day.
I’m lulled by temporary luxury. My girls order room service while I’m out at a fam trip function.
Martini making contest. As the only former bartender in the lot, I’m a ringer. Assuming the role, I organize a choreography for our six person team. One to pour. Me to shake and do Cocktail spins with the shaker, others to strain and garnish and narrate. We win, on the condition that I can pull off the spin in the front of the room without dousing the crowd. I do. The medal is made of sugar, in the shape of an Olympic medal.
Back in the yellow light of our room, Bel is fairly unimpressed. Grace has ripped apart the Daily Globe and Mail. She sits like Shiva in the middle of the shreds, on a crisp king-sized bed.


Steve Follis, husband of Heather, one of the Tourism Victoria people, takes me surfing in the Jordan River. He's a kick-back guy who jerks to life when talk turns to hockey. We sit on rounded rocks by a still inlet and wait for the tide to change. Finally it does and a small peak forms. We squeak into wetsuits. Gloves and booties. Neoprene hoods. Small waves cold water. The short board is alien to me. Air inside the suit makes me float forever. We talk hockey and wait for waves. Then it’s terrorism and its connection to religion. Paddling with water ballons where I should have hands. I ride all of two waves in an hour and a half.
Walking back up the bluff to the car, through trees as wide around as tanks, I feel reborn. A confirmed ocean zealot. Must find ways to surf more.
Bill // 2:19 PM

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Saturday, July 05, 2003:

My wife has gypsy blood; she jumps at any excuse to travel. Like a gypsy, however, she does not worry about the sticky bits. She has a vast disdain for passports, papers, tickets and itineraries – anything that smacks of bureaucracy and rules. Which is, of course, one of the many reasons I love her. A free spirit in a world of shackles.
So it should’ve come as no surprise to me when, two hours before our plane and sitting at a picnic at her parent’s house, she shrugged off my query as to where her passport was.
“We’re going to Canada,” she says nonchalantly. “It’s not like it’s Beirut.” Though she makes a good point I’m concerned that her attitude’s a bit too chill. A lifetime of trips to her relatives’ homes north of the border has left her unimpressed with divisions as meaningless as the U.S. Canadian border.
And papers for Grace? I ask.
“Look at her face,” says Bel, “it’s pretty obvious she’s your daughter.”
It’s been my experience that common sense assumptions such as this one generally lead to friction with those people who follow rules and not necessarily common sense. So, I zoom home, tip the house upside down, but still can’t find Grace’s birth certificate. The gypsy finds her passport and I stick it in my handy dandy little passport holder. She smirks at my organization.
“It only took me twenty years to get used to the difference in the way her mother and I travel,” says John Morgan, Bel’s Dad, as he drives us to the airport. He drops us off and says goodbye, but I tell him to be ready for the phone call; there’s no way they’re going to let us on the plane without any documentation for our eight-month old.
The counter for Delta’s Sky West Vancouver flight is at the end of the world. Though my wife, the gypsy, has managed to pack a week’s worth of wardrobe and the baby’s many togs into our two carry-ons, we’re sweating down our backs by the time we get to the gate.
I watch the ticket agent check passports of the passengers in front of us and shake my head.
“I should’ve had your Dad wait at the curb,” I say.
“C’mon Mr. Negative,” says the gypsy.
And so we step up and I slap our passports down. I wait for him to ask for Grace’s papers. A birth certificate maybe. But he only makes googly faces at her as he gives us our boarding passes.
“You see Mr. Negative,” says the gypsy. “No problem.”


“And the papers for the infant?” asks the customs agent in Vancouver.
“We don’t have any,” I say.
“Yes we do,” insists my gypsy, laying insurance bills on the counter. The customs agent skims the bills… yep, the kid’s name is on them … yep, the kid has the same last name … nope, these aren’t good enough.
There’s only one way through this situation: play the fool and let the civil servant vent.
“We didn’t know,” I say, opening myself up.
“You didn’t know that Canada was a foreign country?”
I shrug and take it. It’s got to be a lousy job. She’s pent up, taunt skin, hair in a bin. She can vent on me and feel better for a while.
“You didn’t suspect that you needed some proof that the infant is yours?”
I’ll find a dog to kick later.
The gypsy explains to her that we looked for the birth certificate this morning, but couldn’t find it.
“This morning? You didn’t look until this morning?”
The gypsy shrugs and smiles. I fantasize going to the dog pound to kick a whole pack of curs.
“We’ll have the baby’s grandmother fax up a copy,” offers my gypsy.
“The infant’s grandmother has the birth certificate?!”
“No, we’ll send her to the place to get one.”
The line behind us is backing up. I can feel the stares on my neck. The customs agent turns on me again.
“You’d better, sir, or you won’t be able to leave the country with the infant.”
“Oh we’ll leave the country,” I say, as if it’s some veiled threat.
“Next,” she says.

Bill // 1:34 PM

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It’s called a fam trip. “Fam” is short for familiarity. “A fam trip is an all-expense-paid junket offered to journalists to introduce them to a particular area, resort, or country. It’s a bribe.
The swap involves five-star hotel accommodations for hungry poverty-line journalists and ink (in the case of newspapers or magazines), or air (as in the case of TV and radio) for the organization. It’s a fair enough tradeoff and can be a mutually beneficial. Some can even be fun.
Unless, that is, you’re familiar with the living habits, quirks, and idiosyncrasies of other journalists. For the fam also involves extended periods spent with other hacks, just like you. There are reasons that people chose to sit in small spaces and type stories. It’s not because they are socially gifted. You’re average journalist’s report card probably said, “doesn’t play well with others.” Now imagine 45 of these types on a tour bus and you’ll get some idea of one of the reasons many journalists avoid fam trips.
When you’re young, however, and just learning to be a journalist you dream of being invited on such trips. When you are older and have been a journalist for a while, you realize that to accept a fam trip is also to define yourself as second rate; since top publications (the New York Times, the major network news organizations, etc.) don’t allow their people to attend fam trips they tend toward herds of hacks.
None of this stops me. I live for travel and love to be pitched ideas (it not only gives me fodder for my pitches, but often helps me hone my own hustle) by people who seem to care, if only for a moment, about what I think.
That’s not to say I don’t go in for certain ego defenses. The reality that top journos don’t accept fams necessitates frequent claims from us hack journalists along the order of “I never attend fam trips” or “I make it a rule to never accept such flagrant bribes.” Since the journo in question is likely to be sidling up to the seafood buffet and indeed has accepted the bribe, he or she must follow the first statement with an exceptional disclaimer such as “I decided to take this one because I needed some frivolous time away from my real work of documenting man’s inhumanity toward man.” To this you, the other hack, must reply, something along the lines of, “Yeah, I told my editors that they’d just have to muddle through the next Pulitzer without me.”
Real juice comes from turning down opulent fams, then, at the last minute, deigning to grace the place with your presence. In which case, it’s essential to call this to the attention of the other journalists.
“I turned them down three times.”
“Yeah, me too, then they just insisted and I decided what the hell, I need some space anyway. Man these oysters are good.”
But those were not the reason I had to turn down the first overture from Tourism British Columbia. The fam was built around the announcement of the host of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Vancouver was a front runner. Though what little I’d seen of British Columbia may well have qualified it as one of my favorite places on earth, when the email invitation came, I wrote back and said that their fam trip was happening just three days after my return from Beirut. I took particular pleasure in including “Beirut”, as if that were just an ordinary thing for me and I was so world-weary and well traveled … if it’s a Monday in June this must be Beirut. Ah the games.
Anyway, I wrote back, thanking them for their gracious invitation, and saying that regretfully I’d have to pass. I couldn’t possibly take another week away from my young family.
“Bring them along,” came the reply.

Bill // 1:32 PM

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