Of eagles and friendship - Hornby Island

It's Thursday afternoon, day 4 of my retreat on Hornby Island. I came over to get a break from the bustle of Vancouver and Victoria and to spend some time alone, writing, reading and hiking. Hornby is one of the smaller gulf islands, tucked between Vancouver Island and the mainland, with a resident population of about 800. I have a feeling the people maybe slightly outnumbered by bald and golden eagles. There are almost as many of them as common gulls. They still leave me awestruck though.

Despite my best intentions, I've been writing far less than I had hoped. Today is the first sunny, warm day since I've been here and I spent the first few days weathering the rain and wind in my highly capable and comfortable van. I've needed the rest and solitude I think. For the first time in weeks my morning nausea has finally abated and I feel so truly and completely relaxed. The campsite I'm at is basic but has a beautiful view of the harbour. I've been waking to birdsong and not much else.

Ian has came over yesterday morning and it's been wonderful to reconnect properly with him. So incredible really that after a gap of almost 10 years, we've been able to pick up right where we left off. The time we've had together has been full of good conversation, laughter, and comfortable silences. It's also proved that my van can be a comfortable home for two. Good friendships that can weather the ravages of time and distance and still retain their lustre are rare and I am grateful to have rediscovered a few of them in the past week.

Slightly terrified

So I'm back on the island now. With my plan changes, I was now able to go to Sara's bachelorette party, with was a wonderful positive to come out of it all. A great night was had by all at a chalet on Mt Washington and despite the hangovers, I thoroughly enjoyed the inter-generational partying.

So now the plan is a little more nebulous. I'll spend tomorrow morning kitting out Clauss before heading up island again, this time with Hornby Island being my destination. I'm not entirely sure why I've chosen Hornby, but I feel like I need to spend a good few days in solitude and Hornby is a good enough place as any for this. I've gotten as far as booking a campsite but that's about it. The openness of it both excites me and terrifies me a little. How dependent on the company of others we become. I'm quietly afraid my own company won't be nearly enough to keep me going, but then I suppose that's part of the reason I'm taking this trip.

In search of coffee

So I finally managed to catch up with Lesley. I'd been terribly negligent by not calling her for almost a week after arriving in Vancouver. In my defense, I had been thinking I'd be in Los Angeles this weekend but when those plans fell through, I planned a dinner with Lesley. Lesley's been mostly staying with her boyfriend (an Australian of course) at his place in Yaletown so she suggested we meet there. Trekking back out to my brother's place in Coquitlam late at night after a few drinks would have been a bit tricky so I was invited to stay. Dinner was great. Good food and even better company at Yaletown Brewery. It was great to catch up with Lesley after so long and we had a good night. But the trip home through downtown in the early morning was just bliss.

With Lesley leaving early for work, I left the apartment a bit before 8am to beautiful sun glancing off the glass buildings. I love seeing a city when It's just waking up and because Vancouver's downtown has a mix of high rises and open public spaces, the sunlight actually made it to street level. I walked up Granville, stepping over puddles made the veritable army of street cleaners, pressure-hosing off the detritus left on the sidewalks from the night's homeless and clubbers.

After a late night, I was terribly keen for a good coffee and as much as I tried, couldn't find anything other than the ubiquitous and far below par Starbucks. Seriously. Have they actually licensed the entire downtown area? Aside from the occasional Blenz, the Canadian-own but barely better chain, there just don't seem to be any independent coffee shops left. I just don't remember it being this bad.

So coffee-less, I sat on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, across from UBC Place and watched the city go by for a while. Vancouver really does seem to be a young, active and very casual city. Men and women in suits are the exception, not the norm, in the downtown mid-week landscape. It gives the city a much more friendly feel. It takes away it's teeth.

And the Skytrain transfer at Commercial has a great free-trade coffee cart.

Changed plans and purgatory

My planned trip to Los Angeles to spend a week with my father and defrost a little hit a rather major snag today. Suffice to say, if I had held to my principles and not let shiny-ness and cultural brainwashing tempt me to the other side, I would have saved myself one motherload of anxiety, a wasted day, a 2-zone Translink pass and $75. A long story (to be told over drinks with a few close friends) short, I'm not now, nor will I ever be in the conceivable future, in Los Angeles.

Today's experience has left me with an even greater respect for my own instincts and a stronger desire to follow them more faithfully. But some good has come from the gloom. Now that I'm not going away, I'll be free to go to Sara's bachelorette party this Saturday (that's a Hen's night for my Aussie readers). I can't say more here as I've been sworn to secrecy but I'm really glad I can be there after all.

Aside from that, I'm a little at loose ends till the wedding festivities get underway on the 23rd. I enjoyed being on the island so much last weekend that I'm thinking about packing up Clauss and heading to Hornby Island (a small island off the coast of the main Vancouver Island, pop. 900, former hippie commune). There's some great beaches and hikes there and a meditation centre I can head to for a bit of zen. I need some zen right about now.

Strange to think I'm little over 1 week into my 4 month adventure. It feels like I've been here for an age already.

Island girl

Returning back from 2 days on the island in Victoria, I felt the tension and unease that I'd been carrying with me the past week in Vancouver slip away. I'd gone over to have a too-brief visit with Sara and Donal and to buy the van that will be my home-on-my-back for the summer. The van bought and tucked away in Sara's carport, I heading back on the ferry. The island is so much more home to me than Vancouver is. As an expat in Australia, I generally answer Vancouver to the questions of Where in Canada are you from? This has always been more out of convenience as few people have a clue where the Comox Valley is. This trip back has reinforced just how far off that statement really is. Vancouver isn't where I'm from. The Island really is. It's a different place with a different feel and energy to it. Victoria is a small city, by city standards, with only 400,000 or so people. It doesn't have the overwhelming feeling that Vancouver has, despite Vancouver being a very warm and welcoming city, as far as big cities go. I'm really looking forward to house-sitting for Sara and Donal in Victoria while they go on their honeymoon. I quite like the idea of slipping unnoticed into a local's life as I potter about for a week getting my newly purchased van kitted out for my coming adventures.

So I sat on deck on the ferry ride back to the mainland, watching the sometimes ramshackle, but increasingly beautiful cabins, balanced precariously on the coasts of fir-clad islands and peninsulas slip past. The evening sun was shining down and starting to dip low over craggy rocks and trees that came down steep hillsides to dip their toes in the pacific ocean. A few dolphins cut above the waterline and the tall dorsal fin of an orca whale broke the surface once along the way, much to the delight of those lucky enough to be looking in the right direction. Even the bob and sway of the big BC Ferry felt so familiar and comforting. I was calm, relaxed, happy and at peace as we docked in the Tssawassen harbour, the sun finally dropping below the shipping cranes that stood like giant blue herons along the shoreline. Oh I am very much an island girl.

Auckland - April 24th

It'll be fairly common that I write an entry and post it a few days later, free WiFi being what it is. This is the first such post.

So my journey has officially begun. I left Brisbane this afternoon and this evening find myself in Auckland, New Zealand for a long-weekend layover en route to Vancouver. My hotel, despite being fully booked, is completely empty as I write this at 9:30pm. It would appear that most of the guests are at the Korn concert happening up the road. No doubt I'll be woken later by the returning metalheads. I know, I know. If there's one thing I need to do on this trip, it's relax my need to have everything 'just so'. Shake off the OCD a little.

So, observations on Auckland. It's not very big, very hilly, and very very Asian. Walking back from the Japanese noodle bar where I had my dinner, I think I only saw one or two westerners. I sat for a while first at a lovely coffee house cum bar outside the theatre on Queen St watching the world pass me by. What struck me actually was the resemblance to Vancouver in people's dress, style, and mannerisms. Lots of touques, lots of parkas, and lots and lots of black. Nice. A group sat next to me and proceeded to put eyeliner on one of the guys. One of the others was wearing a pork-pie hat. From the sounds of their overheard conversations, they were going to the theatre later.

An auspicious start to my trip: I'm in room number 42. Maybe this means that on this trip I'll find the answer to life, the universe, everything. Now wouldn't that be nice.

On climbing trees

I've been using a metaphor lately that goes something like this.  When we are children, we are more than willing to scramble up the tallest trees without thought of our own safety or whether or not the tree will hold us.  We just want to climb.  As we get older, we become aware that climbing trees can result, in a small number of cases, in broken bones, concussions, and at the very least torn clothing.  We stop being able to climb trees at all.

I'm afraid I may not be able to climb this particular tree I've put in front of myself.  I leave for my 5 months of traveling in 2 days.  I've farewelled friends, tied up financial loose ends, and with difficulty said goodbye to a new love.  And now I'm terrified of the injuries I might receive on the climb.  It would be so much easier and safer to stay here on the oh-so-familiar ground.

New Learning Commons at Bond University

I went down for a lunch with a few past co-workers today and was absolutely blown away by the new space they're just finishing.  I was involved in putting together some of the architect's brief but this is way beyond what I'd expected.  It's a conversion of what was a really horrid, cold and echo-y void.

New beginnings, old ways

A journey of self-discovery is supposed to be grand.  Full of romantic ideals of what it means to rediscover one's lost self.  It involves mystics and spiritual teachers and time spent in reverent meditation.  It involves sacrifice.  This is what my mind presents to me when I plan in any detail my own journey, which I am now less than one month away from starting.  And what I have planned feels like cheating.  I won't be spending 3 months in silent meditation at a Vipassani ashram.  After long years of working so hard at being someone else, I don't have the energy left in me to build schools in Papua New Guinea.  While I've started re-learning my mostly forgotten high-school French, I lack the passion for and devotion to the language to park myself in a home-stay in Burgundy to properly unpick it's layers.

Instead, my journey of self-discovery means going home.  It means re-accustoming myself to an accent that is my own, but that now sounds foreign to me.  It means spending long hours driving in countryside that I hope will strike a balance of familiarity and newness.  And most importantly, it means unearthing my own roots in the hope that my lost self is tangled amongst them.

In the spirit of returning to roots, I'm reviving this old blog, albeit having given it a slight face-lift.  It will be nice to have something familiar on this unfamiliar journey.

On TripleJ...

No posts for far too long, but for anyone who hasn't given up entirely on checking this blog (or has it in their feeds), check out my on-a-whim contribution to a discussion on cosmetic surgery that took place today on TripleJ's Hack. For my non-aussie friends, TripleJ is Australia's national youth radio network and Hack is a current affairs show.

The stream can be found here for the next week and the podcast will turn up here in the next few days. My call is around the 27:45 mark.

Great blog by a couple living in far north Canada

gone north

Some thoughts on leadership

I'm beginning to establish my management ethos. Over the past 2 years, I've gradually taken on more and more management-type responsibilities and to help me cope with it all, I've looked to some of the managers I've worked for and worked with for indirect advice on what makes a person a successful manager, to put it broadly. I've conciously observed these people in their day-to-day activites, how they make decisions, how they manage people, how they deal with politics. I've been trying to pick out traits that fit with the type of manager I want to be. One common trait that I have found is possessed by all the people I would define as "good" managers is that they are leaders as well. All the organisational behaiviour texts I've read and lectures I've been to were right! Genuine leadership is a trait required for effective management. This fits very well with my belief that organisations should be democratic, rather than autocratic.

A manager has been appointed based on defined criteria and usually by those further up the chain, whereas a leader has been informally nominated againt intangible criteria by the people they are leading. By the people they are leading. This really does appeal to my sense of democracy and fairness. It is so easy to feel the unfairness of organisational rank and rule as you see incompetant people appointed again and again to management positions while the true leaders are passed over. The concept of leadership over management appeals to me even further when I start to think about the traits and benefits I see as being part of leadership.

Leaders are popular. They have to be well-liked in order to be promoted by the people around them. They are trustworthy, consistant, honest, and fair. If they aren't, the people who considered them a leader will fall away for lack of trust. I am really attracted to those particular four qualities, both in the people around me and in myself. I know from past (and current) experience that I don't work well with people who act in opposition to these traits. I don't work well with unethical people.

Leaders can motivate people. your manager can come to you and tell you that you are going to have to work on a particularly big and difficult project, that it will involve a lot of work in areas you're not really confident in, and that you will have to work particulary hard in order to meet a deadline. Sounds like fun huh? If that same manager happens to be a leader that you trust and are inspired by, that same project becomes an opportunity to work with innovative technology on a really high-profile project, and expand your knowledge into a new area. You also trust that you will be recognised for your hard work once the project is finished. See how that works? That is what I see as leadership. And that is the type of manager I hope I am becoming.

Sitting on my balcony, blogging

Sitting on my balcony with my iBook, wandering the net, I am grateful to one man who was able to give me what no other man has been able to... a wireless broadband home network.

They caught him!

Despite the perceptions some people may have of the Queensland Police, dealing with them over my break in has given me new appreciation for the work they do. Yeah, getting pulled over for running through an orange light just as it turns red sucks, but when you are a victim of crime and not committing one, they really do have your back covered.

After my frantic call to 000 to report my break-in (Note: 000 is not to be used to report break-ins, no matter how completely freaked out and utterly panicked to the point of loosing all capacity to use a phonebook you may be), there were two very friendly and sympathetic sargents at my house within an hour. A crime-scene investigator followed a little while later to dust for prints and look for hair and such. No, she wasn't wearing a cleavage-bearing top and sunglasses inside, but she was very professional and friendly.

So I got a call to my mobile on Good Friday from a constible to tell me that William, a 28 year old heroin addict had confessed to my break-in as well as three others in the area. It was not his first time doing break-ins and he had been caught before and charged under the drug crimes act which meant he had to go through a rehabillitation program rather than serve jail time. Obviously it didn't work too well and the constible told me he will most likely face significant jail time for this one. I will need to give a statement at some point in the next few months and may have to testify in court, something I am all too willing to do. I want to see the face of the man that came into my home while I slept.

As for the goods he stole, they were traded for heroin and I am writing this from my brand-new iBook, with a new digital camera beside me, and a new iPod is on its way. So William, those things you stole have been easily replaced and you will be punished for harming my peace of mind.

The system seems to work.

An open letter to the person(s) who burgled me early Monday morning

You forced open a window and entered my home while I slept. You stole things from me that I had worked hard to be acquire, and things I didn't realise could be stolen. You stole my peace of mind. My confidence in my independence as a person and as a woman. You stole the pleasure I get from sitting on my back porch late at night watching fruitbats fly over. I don't feel safe doing this now. I startle at possums moving the branched outside my windows. I sleep with my valuables stashed around me. I don't sleep. I wake yelling from nightmares where you are standing over me as I sleep and I chase after you and yell 'You!' 'You!'. I don't understand all of how I know feel, but I know you did this when you made my home unsafe.

What gives you the right to effect a person in this way? To change a person's life in this way? To hurt a person in this way? What gives you the right? Because you didn't have the same opportunities I have had? Because you don't have people around you who would make sure you never had to resort to this, no matter how bad things got? Is it because you are just too ignorant and insensitive to understand that what you did was wrong and impacted upon an innocent person? You know, if you had approached me for help, honestly and with good will, chances are I would have helped you in some way willingly and without the need to this violation. I help people. That's how I am. I have to believe that people are fundamentally good and kind and just, otherwise I become depressed. You have given me reason to doubt this belief and to doubt the goodness of people. This is a cruel, cruel thing to do to me.

I have insurance. I have backups of files. The physical things you stole will be sold to allow you to feed your habit/ego/children and will be easily replaced. The most valuable thing you stole from me doesn't have street value and will take years to replace.

Understand that the world is balanced. When you give yourself in kindness, at some point you will receive kindness in return. When you take with such malice, you will receive in kind. Understand this, and understand the effect your actions have.