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Happy Canada Day!

Last year I wanted to have a Canada Day party but I ended up in hospital. This year I wanted to have a Canada Day party but we all ended up in quarantine. Next year? Fingers, toes and eyes crossed!

There’s a Canadian-owned restaurant in Buenos Aires called 416 — when she first told me about it, an English friend wondered how I knew immediately the owner was Canadian! Anyway, they make a delicious tourtière, and I’m having some tonight — a little piece of Canada for my solitary celebration!

Here’s a joke someone sent me months ago, and I put it away carefully so that I would remember to post it here today. I hope you enjoy it — whether you are Canadian or not!

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Heaven

A photographer on vacation was inside a church in Orlando taking photographs, when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read ‘$10,000 per call’.

Intrigued, he asked a priest who was passing by what the telephone was used for. The priest replied that it was a direct line to Heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God.

He thanked the priest and went along his way.

Next stop was in Atlanta. There, at a very large cathedral, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it. He wondered if this was the same kind of telephone he saw in Orlando and he asked a nearby nun what its purpose was. She told him that it was a direct line to Heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God.

‘O.K., thank you,’ he said.

He then traveled to Indianapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston and New York. In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same ‘$10,000 per call’ sign under it.

Upon leaving Vermont, the man decided to travel up to Canada to see if Canadians had the same phone.

He arrived in Canada, and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it read ’40 cents per call.’

The American was surprised, so he asked the priest about the sign. ‘Father, I’ve traveled all over America and I’ve seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I’m told that it is a direct line to Heaven, but in the US the price was$10,000 per call.

Why is it so cheap here?’

The priest smiled and answered, ‘You’re in Canada now, son … it’s a local call.’

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Are Your Eyes Feeling the Result of All This Extra Screen Time?

In the past few days I’ve noticed my eyes feeling tired, and even sometimes watering. It made me realize I’m probably straining them with all the extra screen time during lockdown.

My work is always done online, but in normal times I am out a lot in the evenings socializing with friends at restaurants or the movies. Now, my entertainment is also mostly online — I even read on my Kindle — which subjects my poor eyes to several more hours of screen time every day.

So now I’m consciously looking for activities that don’t put me in front of a screen. Thinking of taking up knitting again as well as going back to painting and sketching. I think my eyes will be the better for it — and maybe even my brain!

Have you noticed you’re spending much more time in front of a screen (large or small) these days? Might be worth giving your eyes a rest too. Just saying.

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If you’re so smart

Every Friday I meet on Zoom with four writing colleagues, where we do two creative writing exercises, one fiction and one non-fiction. Someone provides a prompt and then we have just ten minutes to write the piece.

Not having anything to post today, I thought I’d share what I wrote last Friday. It’s the non-fiction one, and the prompt was, “If you’re so smart, why don’t you fix everything?” Here’s my ten-minute (unedited) effort.

Usually when someone says this to you, it’s because you’ve just had a disagreement, or you’ve been speaking bluntly about a topic that’s subject to many opinions. And usually they don’t really think you’re smart at all.

There’s also a certain defensiveness about the tone. I’ve seen this around corporate boardroom tables, usually after a heated argument about why we’re not even close to meeting the goals set out in the strategic plan.

I’ve heard it when a group of friends or colleagues are in deep, often alcohol driven discussion of some complex subject — like how to find world peace.

The fact is, most of us have opinions about most things, and we can get quite heated about expressing them. But for the most part we realize we can’t fix everything — even if we are smart.

I for one wouldn’t like to be running any country right now, but I have opinions about decisions I see being made, even though I don’t have access to the information behind those decisions. And most people I know are the same.

So the challenge is not valid. Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I can fix everything. And just because I can’t fix everything doesn’t mean I’m not smart.

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Is ‘Tolerance’ the Best Word?

I’ve just been watching, yet again, some of the antiracist protests going on around the world, triggered by the killing of George Floyd. Countless other black people have been killed by white police over the years, usually followed by outrage and cries for “doing better” — remember Rodney King’s heartfelt plea, “Can’t we all just get along?” Sadly, nothing changed.

But somehow this feels different. Perhaps it’s the magnitude of the protests worldwide. Most thinking people realize racism is not just an American problem, but a universal problem. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada can’t claim the moral high ground because there is systemic racism there too. Australians are protesting their own treatment of Aboriginals.

It seems we are all being forced to hold up the mirror to our own societies, our own selves, and I pray that this time it will actually result in the change we all say we want. I pray that I will personally recognize and take any opportunities to be part of the solution when they come along.

But I’ve been wondering about a word that is much used in discussion of race: tolerance. Racial tolerance is held up as an ideal to strive for, but is it really? The word tolerance comes from the verb to tolerate, which implies acceptance against one’s will. The Webster Dictionary defines tolerate as to put up with.

Surely, when it comes to living on the same planet as many varieties of the human race, we can do better than put up with each other. What about understanding? What about friendship? What about integration? What about equality?

What about humanity?

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Well this Zoom party was a first!

On Tuesday I took part in a Zoom call to celebrate the 60th birthday of my friend Ali, who lives in England.

I think I’ve said this before, but I’ve been to more birthday parties over Zoom in the past few weeks than I normally go in real time, so why was this one different?

Because we danced!! It might have been a bit to do with the fact that while it was only 3 pm here, it was 7 pm in England — and I think Ali and her friends had been partying for a while! They were socially distancing, but it was lovely to see them all in Ali’s lovely garden.

Anyway, when the suggestion about dancing came up, we did some kind of chair dancing, but eventually I picked up my computer and did a salsa around the room!

We’re either getting more and more creative during the pandemic — or more and more desperate!

 

 

 

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A Taste of Normal Life!

When my friend Venetia moved to the barrio of Palermo a couple of months ago, her plan was to be traveling in Europe for most of the Argentine winter months of June, July and August, and she asked me to keep a suitcase full of winter clothes for her. Well, guess what — no travel this winter! And fall is definitely with us, so she felt the need of her warm clothes.

She suggested she would walk over from Palermo (about a 45 minute walk) with her shopping buggy, and I would bring downstairs some of the things she needed. I was fine with that, but suggested an addition.

When she arrived, we walked across the street to the cafe, picked up coffee and pastries and brought them back to my building, where we sat and enjoyed them on the bench in the lobby. It was lovely to see each other in person, and to be doing something so normal after all this time. We agreed we’d do it again next week, but this time I’ll walk over towards Palermo.

It did feel strange to say goodbye without a hug, but that’s still verboten!

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Another New Zoom Experience

It occurred to me the other day that I wish I had shares in Zoom! This service has made living in lockdown around the world a lot easier to deal with, and I’ve been at more virtual birthday and other celebrations over Zoom that I usually do in person. Sunday morning brought yet another one.

The church I belong to in Toronto always has a coffee hour after the Sunday morning service — which I’m bound to admit I don’t often attend as I’m usually ready to get home for lunch by then. However, they decided to try a virtual coffee hour and were kind enough to invite me. It was great!

It was lovely to see all these people I haven’t seen for about a year and a half (yes, that’s how long it’s been since I moved here!), and they gave me a warm welcome. There were also other people who have moved away from Toronto, so it was a bit of a grand reunion. Some folks were a bit unsure about the technology, but our lovely administrator, Sharon, guided them through the process.

She also did something I hadn’t tried yet. We were quite a large group, and after some general chatting time, Sharon put us into breakout groups so that we could have a chance to chat more easily in smaller groups. That added a lot to the experience.

It was so successful that they plan to do more, so what with coffee hour in the morning and family quiz in the evening, I’m not getting a break from Zoom even on Sundays!

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The Creative Power of Boredom

I wonder how many of us are fighting boredom in these days of lockdown? I have to say I have lots to do and am kept busy most times, and boredom isn’t a huge problem. Except sometimes!

The other day I was browsing around BBC World News. It’s one of the two sources I rely on for sensible reporting (the other being Aljazeera), but I’ve also found they have lots of feature stories and videos. One I found last week was about how embracing boredom can lead to all sorts of creativity. Embracing is my word here, but I think it expresses the essence of the article.

Think about it — what do you do when you start to feel bored? Most of us immediately look for something to relieve the boredom! It might be reading (as it usually is for me), watching Netflix, playing a game, watching television, engaging in a hobby, going for a walk — the list is endless. But the point of all of these is to get rid of the feeling of boredom, which we don’t like.

But what if you didn’t do that? What if you acknowledged the boredom and simply sat down and experienced it for a while. Your brain won’t go into a coma. It will continue to work and take you places you might not expect, and that’s where the creativity comes in.

Look what these writers’ boredom gave us

The writer of this piece cited two examples. Apparently Margaret Attwood watches birds. I don’t mean she’s a birder; she simply stares at birds flying around in the sky. Pretty mindless, right? Yes, and that’s the point. It’s boring, but she finds that boredom often leads to her most creative moments.

You may know the story of J. K. Rowling’s fateful train journey from Manchester to London. The train came to a stop in the middle of nowhere, and the delay lasted four hours. Not having a book to read, she sat staring out at the green fields, bored out of her mind. Ah, but her mind didn’t go to sleep. She talks of having a sudden image in her mind of a boy with dark tousled hair and glasses, and by the time the train arrived in London she had mapped out the 30,000 foot concept for the whole Harry Potter series. As the writer points out, if she had had her iPad and Netflix, Harry Potter might never have come into being!

During these Covid-19 days, we’ve all laughed and marveled at the creative, funny, moving or just plain strange videos people have created while stuck at home day after day in a state of crushing boredom. Coincidence? Maybe not.

My experiment

So I decided to test this out and see what happened. I’m not very good at doing nothing as a rule, but this time I decided to just be. Was I bored? Oh yes! I was dying to make a cup of tea or wander around in YouTube land, but I persevered in embracing the boredom. I’m not sure how long it lasted really, or how the ideas formed, but I came out of it with two writing ideas.

The first was inspired by a window in the building opposite mine. It was open, and a brightly coloured curtain was billowing outside. I wondered who lived there and what they were doing. In the end, I imagined a ghostly figure in the window. In fact, it was a ghost, and normally only the people who live in the apartment could see it. What if there was a way for the viewer to communicate with them and let them know he could see it too? That could be the seed of an idea for a short story. What if it was written from the point of view of the ghost? Hmmm.

In my other scenario, for some reason Eddie Greenspan had popped into my mind out of nowhere, and I started thinking of trial lawyers. What if a trial lawyer had a superpower? What if she could tell when someone was lying because a jagged aura appeared over their heads? That could be interesting, but would it really be useful? Well it would be if she could then read their minds! Maybe she doesn’t read minds as a matter of course, but only when someone lies to her — and only for the rest of that particular conversation. So if she can engage the witness on the stand long enough, she can learn what they are thinking, but as soon as the conversation ends she loses the power. I think that has the makings of a great story.

Neither of these is something I’m particularly interested in writing myself, but they sure are creative! And the came to me when I felt bored, embraced the feeling and went with whatever came along.

My new LinkedIn headline is “Why waste a good lockdown? Get your book written now!” My new attitude is, “Why waste good boredom? Embrace it and see what happens!”

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The Final Tramites

Last July when I was in hospital, I had several conversations with visiting friends about the protocols around death and dying here in Argentina. Would we know what to do if a friend died here? Had we all told our friends what we wanted?

Turned out none of us had a clue!

So I approached the President of Buenos Aires International Newcomers (BAIN), an expat organization I’m active in, to see if they would run an event to educate us on these important matters. It was going to be an actual event held in my apartment (with wine to offset the tristeza of the subject matter!), but by the time we got our act together the lockdown had kicked in, and we decided to do it virtually. I trust everyone supplied their own wine!

Last Friday was the night, and I am so glad we did it. We asked members to help us find an expert who could address us, and my friend Vivi suggested her cousin Laura, a family lawyer well versed in Argentine succession law. Laura brought her colleague Alejandro, and they did a very informative presentation. Cliff, one of our members who runs an import/export company, explained the ins and outs (and costs) of transporting human remains. There were lots of questions, which speaks for the level of interest in the subject.

Wondering about the title of this post? Well tramites is a word that describes bureaucratic processes here in Argentina, particularly with the government. The word implies long waits and complicated paperwork. We surmised (rightly) that this process would certainly involve tramites, and I can say now that that is certainly true. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said that Paris is an expensive place to die. I think Buenos Aires is a complicated one!

But now we have no excuse for not being prepared. Of course, like everyone else, I hope it won’t be needed for a long time, but I am working on it.