This morning I am thinking about an email slideshow my sister Jeannie sent me yesterday called Old Winnipeg. It is snapshots of the city from the early 1900’s through to the 50’s.
There is an aerial photo of the 50's Red River Flood, the same one in which dad drove us over the Redwood Bridge in his Model A Ford, with the water halfway up the sides of the car. That's a very vivid memory. I remember the overpowering sense of awe and excitement that we were actually driving through the river to get downtown from our East Kildonan home.
There is also a shot of the Osborne Street Bridge from the opposite side of Assiniboine River from the Legislative Buildings. Up on the dome is the famous prairie Golden Boy holding a sheaf of wheat.
This brought back another very vivid memory of my youth.
At this time, I think I was living on my own in the rooming house on Balmoral Street but I can’t remember clearly. I could’ve been much younger. I don't remember why I was walking over the bridge.
It was winter and I had walked past the Legislative buildings and was heading across the Osborne Bridge on the right hand side.
I had begun making snowballs and was heaving them over the side of the bridge and down onto the ice far below when I spotted a shopping bag on the ice. I guess someone had thrown that over the side.
From where I stood it looked about the size of a postage stamp.
I can’t remember verbalizing anything but a feeling of invincibility came over me and I knew I could hit the bag.
I rolled and tamped down a perfect snowball and winding up, threw it with all my might over the side of the bridge and as far out as I could.
It spun out and away from me and slowly began arcing downward. There was the beautiful sensation of watching it descend as if in slow motion toward the surface of the river and then there was the incredibly satisfying smack as the ball hit the paper bag dead centre and exploded in a puff of white.
I knew better than to try it twice and diminish this glorious feeling of accuracy.
As I continued on my walk, I knew with a calm and peaceful certainty that there was nothing that I could not accomplish in life if my intent was pure.
* Note: Satori is a Japanese Zen Buddhist term for a moment of enlightenment.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
All Systems Go!
Yesterday was an all systems go day! It was one of those days where the timing is all right and everything just seems to work.
While preparing for my shift, I made a decision to stop at the clinic on the way to the office and get that blood test over with. The form has been tucked behind the mirror in my bathroom hallway, peeking out at me since last April when I agreed to return for more tests in a year.
The hematologist wanted me to return in 3 months but the tests were stressing me so much that I decided I would rather give myself a full year of freedom from stress. That year has passed in the blink of an eye!
The hematologist had written "end of April 2008" on it, which mean't if I didn't use it in the next few days I would have to make an appointment with her to get another one, should I opt to take the test.
I had discussed my options with my daughter Chaya when we went for her birthday dinner last Wednesday and although she said she would support whatever decision I made, her first reaction was that I should probably take the test.
I decided that I would not be honest with myself if I didn’t follow through on it. I told myself that if I got to the lab and there was a huge line up I would pass.
It was a toss up between St. Paul’s and the clinic across the street so I opted for the clinic as I had a bad experience last time at St. Paul’s and there was usually a line up at the lab.
When I got to the clinic there was only one person ahead of me, an elderly lady who had gone up in the elevator with me. While they were still processing her paperwork, an attendant called me to the desk and updated my profile.
I had not been to this lab since living in the Co-op 8 years ago and so everything had to be updated. However, they called me in first as the lady was still not done at the front desk. I could not beleive my good luck as I usually have to wait at least a half hour or more.
The lab technician, a man in his mid 30’s, was very good at his job and the test was painless and quick leaving no bruising, in sharp contrast to the one I had last year at St. Paul’s.
The hematologist's office is in the same building and so I walked over to make a follow up appointment but the receptionist told me to wait until next week when they got the results as an appointment might not be necessary. I held up crossed fingers and we both laughed.
Since I still had time before my shift, I walked over Sears to see if I could get a replacement for my belt which is one or two strands away from snapping. They were on sale and I got a new one for just under $11.
At work, my favorite desk was free and so I settled in for my shift and was immediately presented with a small royal blue shopping bag emblazoned with a gold Maui Coast Hotel logo, inside of which was a stuffed miniature humpback whale jumping through a lifebuoy which reads Maui Coast Hotel * Kihei. The hotel staff had come for a visit bearing these gifts for the call center agents.
Kihei was where Paul Reps spent his winters (he drew me a rough map of the area when he directed me to the Maui Zendo in Haiku in the late 70's) and it was where Karen and I went after getting married.
The shift was long as the call volume was low but at home, despite feeling tired I opted to try and re-install my antivirus program, the one I bought for $15 at London Drugs.
Yes, beleive it or not I am still wrestling with this problem which I thought I had solved and although a co-worker suggested a freeware program called AVAST (I tried to install that a couple of days back but my download was corrupted) I decided to give BitDefender one last go round.
This time the update while registering the software was about 1 MB more than last time but I completed it just before my connection timed out. Then I logged back in under another user name, to finalize my update and for the first time in a month my computer is fully protected.
Windows Security Center shows all those little green lights on, a fitting closure to a successful day.
With luck I will not have to do the computer update neutron dance again anytime soon!
While preparing for my shift, I made a decision to stop at the clinic on the way to the office and get that blood test over with. The form has been tucked behind the mirror in my bathroom hallway, peeking out at me since last April when I agreed to return for more tests in a year.
The hematologist wanted me to return in 3 months but the tests were stressing me so much that I decided I would rather give myself a full year of freedom from stress. That year has passed in the blink of an eye!
The hematologist had written "end of April 2008" on it, which mean't if I didn't use it in the next few days I would have to make an appointment with her to get another one, should I opt to take the test.
I had discussed my options with my daughter Chaya when we went for her birthday dinner last Wednesday and although she said she would support whatever decision I made, her first reaction was that I should probably take the test.
I decided that I would not be honest with myself if I didn’t follow through on it. I told myself that if I got to the lab and there was a huge line up I would pass.
It was a toss up between St. Paul’s and the clinic across the street so I opted for the clinic as I had a bad experience last time at St. Paul’s and there was usually a line up at the lab.
When I got to the clinic there was only one person ahead of me, an elderly lady who had gone up in the elevator with me. While they were still processing her paperwork, an attendant called me to the desk and updated my profile.
I had not been to this lab since living in the Co-op 8 years ago and so everything had to be updated. However, they called me in first as the lady was still not done at the front desk. I could not beleive my good luck as I usually have to wait at least a half hour or more.
The lab technician, a man in his mid 30’s, was very good at his job and the test was painless and quick leaving no bruising, in sharp contrast to the one I had last year at St. Paul’s.
The hematologist's office is in the same building and so I walked over to make a follow up appointment but the receptionist told me to wait until next week when they got the results as an appointment might not be necessary. I held up crossed fingers and we both laughed.
Since I still had time before my shift, I walked over Sears to see if I could get a replacement for my belt which is one or two strands away from snapping. They were on sale and I got a new one for just under $11.
At work, my favorite desk was free and so I settled in for my shift and was immediately presented with a small royal blue shopping bag emblazoned with a gold Maui Coast Hotel logo, inside of which was a stuffed miniature humpback whale jumping through a lifebuoy which reads Maui Coast Hotel * Kihei. The hotel staff had come for a visit bearing these gifts for the call center agents.
Kihei was where Paul Reps spent his winters (he drew me a rough map of the area when he directed me to the Maui Zendo in Haiku in the late 70's) and it was where Karen and I went after getting married.
The shift was long as the call volume was low but at home, despite feeling tired I opted to try and re-install my antivirus program, the one I bought for $15 at London Drugs.
Yes, beleive it or not I am still wrestling with this problem which I thought I had solved and although a co-worker suggested a freeware program called AVAST (I tried to install that a couple of days back but my download was corrupted) I decided to give BitDefender one last go round.
This time the update while registering the software was about 1 MB more than last time but I completed it just before my connection timed out. Then I logged back in under another user name, to finalize my update and for the first time in a month my computer is fully protected.
Windows Security Center shows all those little green lights on, a fitting closure to a successful day.
With luck I will not have to do the computer update neutron dance again anytime soon!
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
That Eureka Moment
It is Tuesday afternoon and I treated myself to a late sleep in.
When I returned from shift last night I went straight to the installation of my antivirus software which had failed numerous times in the past week.
This is a new set of woes with a new program, not the same ones from a couple of months back. Since then my computer has been unprotected and so I have avoided using the wireless connection.
Two weeks ago I saw that London Drugs had this program on sale for $14.99 and since my old program had expired I bought it.
After the first few days I was starting to regret it, thinking that maybe the low price was because the program didn’t install properly or that it was an attempt to dump product that was not popular.
I had shared my struggles with a few co-workers, one of whom kindly offered to help me install it. But I had already decided that this was my version of playing with toys, and that I was going to soldier through, not sweat the small stuff (as I had done on the last go-round) and achieve success on my terms.
There is nothing like that Eureka moment, when sometime you have been struggling with finally happens to fall into place.
This time, the evening before I had carefully prepared my laptop by doing a thorough cleanup of files, registry and the morning I left for work I defragmented the hard drive, an operation which took about an hour and a half.
After a busy day at work I came home, took off my work clothes, washed up and poured myself a glass of red wine. Then I took the antivirus program box out of my desk, set my laptop up and began the installation process. Once the disk is in the drive it is merely a matter of waiting and ticking the appropriate boxes.
While the initial install was completing I was thinking about my meeting at lunch with an older man from Japan. I had sat down with my bowl of soup and he was sitting nearby on a chair holding a backpack and he kept smiling in my direction and nodding.
When I began to eat, he started up a conversation in very broken English, asking me if I was from here. He used his hand to gesture to the floor, and it was almost as though he was asking if I lived at the Bistro where I was eating.
But his drift was easy to get, as it is when one meets a fellow traveler no matter what the language barrier and where there is no mis-intention. This has happened to me on so many journeys in my past. Deep things are discussed using limited means.
He told me he was from Okayama and had traveled up from San Diego via Amtrak and that he would be headed back to Japan at 5:30 the following morning. With everything he communicated there was a laugh and a child-like smile.
He told me he was 72 and that he had spent the last few days skiing at Whistler.
“You are a braver man that I am,” I countered and he laughed loudly.
He told me that when he was young he liked to “play karate” and I could see his training in his bearing and in his eyes. I guessed that was why at 72 he had the stamina and balance to go skiing, something I have never tried and cannot imagine myself doing.
The subject of our talk drifted from Zen Buddhism, to sports, to Shinto, to Aikido, to children (he has three of his own), to the size of his town (8000 house, bigger than a-Stanrey Park) he quipped in his cute accent.
He commented on my healthy meal, salad and soup and so I began to describe my first discovery of author George Oshawa who had cured himself of cancer by adopting the diet of the Buddhist monks in Japan. But I didn’t have to say much. He was already familiar with whole story.
His presence was very soothing and didn’t disturb me at my meal, which would normally be the case if someone was asking a lot of questions while I was trying to eat and then hurry back to work in time for my shift.
I had already told him that I was going back to work and so when I finished I stood to leave. He stood too and reached to shake my hand and so I bowed to him Japanese fashion and he returned the bow and then gave me the gentlest of handshakes, thanking me for talking to him.
When I left I had more energy than when I sat down and it came to me that this meeting was a real gift, something I had not had to go in search of.
Back at the ranch, after my initial software install I logged on to the internet via dial up as I don’t have a wireless portal in my apartment.
I have a an hour and a half window before the connection shuts down and my update completed fully with only 2 minutes to spare.
It was all systems go and a fulfilling Eureka moment for me.
And last night I slept like a baby.
When I returned from shift last night I went straight to the installation of my antivirus software which had failed numerous times in the past week.
This is a new set of woes with a new program, not the same ones from a couple of months back. Since then my computer has been unprotected and so I have avoided using the wireless connection.
Two weeks ago I saw that London Drugs had this program on sale for $14.99 and since my old program had expired I bought it.
After the first few days I was starting to regret it, thinking that maybe the low price was because the program didn’t install properly or that it was an attempt to dump product that was not popular.
I had shared my struggles with a few co-workers, one of whom kindly offered to help me install it. But I had already decided that this was my version of playing with toys, and that I was going to soldier through, not sweat the small stuff (as I had done on the last go-round) and achieve success on my terms.
There is nothing like that Eureka moment, when sometime you have been struggling with finally happens to fall into place.
This time, the evening before I had carefully prepared my laptop by doing a thorough cleanup of files, registry and the morning I left for work I defragmented the hard drive, an operation which took about an hour and a half.
After a busy day at work I came home, took off my work clothes, washed up and poured myself a glass of red wine. Then I took the antivirus program box out of my desk, set my laptop up and began the installation process. Once the disk is in the drive it is merely a matter of waiting and ticking the appropriate boxes.
While the initial install was completing I was thinking about my meeting at lunch with an older man from Japan. I had sat down with my bowl of soup and he was sitting nearby on a chair holding a backpack and he kept smiling in my direction and nodding.
When I began to eat, he started up a conversation in very broken English, asking me if I was from here. He used his hand to gesture to the floor, and it was almost as though he was asking if I lived at the Bistro where I was eating.
But his drift was easy to get, as it is when one meets a fellow traveler no matter what the language barrier and where there is no mis-intention. This has happened to me on so many journeys in my past. Deep things are discussed using limited means.
He told me he was from Okayama and had traveled up from San Diego via Amtrak and that he would be headed back to Japan at 5:30 the following morning. With everything he communicated there was a laugh and a child-like smile.
He told me he was 72 and that he had spent the last few days skiing at Whistler.
“You are a braver man that I am,” I countered and he laughed loudly.
He told me that when he was young he liked to “play karate” and I could see his training in his bearing and in his eyes. I guessed that was why at 72 he had the stamina and balance to go skiing, something I have never tried and cannot imagine myself doing.
The subject of our talk drifted from Zen Buddhism, to sports, to Shinto, to Aikido, to children (he has three of his own), to the size of his town (8000 house, bigger than a-Stanrey Park) he quipped in his cute accent.
He commented on my healthy meal, salad and soup and so I began to describe my first discovery of author George Oshawa who had cured himself of cancer by adopting the diet of the Buddhist monks in Japan. But I didn’t have to say much. He was already familiar with whole story.
His presence was very soothing and didn’t disturb me at my meal, which would normally be the case if someone was asking a lot of questions while I was trying to eat and then hurry back to work in time for my shift.
I had already told him that I was going back to work and so when I finished I stood to leave. He stood too and reached to shake my hand and so I bowed to him Japanese fashion and he returned the bow and then gave me the gentlest of handshakes, thanking me for talking to him.
When I left I had more energy than when I sat down and it came to me that this meeting was a real gift, something I had not had to go in search of.
Back at the ranch, after my initial software install I logged on to the internet via dial up as I don’t have a wireless portal in my apartment.
I have a an hour and a half window before the connection shuts down and my update completed fully with only 2 minutes to spare.
It was all systems go and a fulfilling Eureka moment for me.
And last night I slept like a baby.
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