Too many cooks

It’s been eight years since I purposely worked in a female dominated domain, and it’s truly a great mystery how I lasted two months (nearly to the day) in the same gender arrangement before giving my notice.

More than fed up with the forest industry, specifically in the role as a contractor, and seeking a, any really, change of employment, I was pleased to land in a lunch bistro committed to providing nutritious, quality lunches for my northern community that doesn’t know quiche from quinoa.     

That delight was short lived as I was reminded of the subtle politics, daily agony, personality wars and unnecessary competiveness that working alongside sisters from another mister holds.  Anti-women I am not.  Non-feminist, no way.  I love my girlfriends, mother, female cousins, aunts, I do! 

I acknowledge it’s entirely possible I have yet to develop the skill set required to navigate the frothy, temperamental waters of all-female coworkers.  Not surprisingly, the forest industry fostered my compassing, cultivated veg ID and deepened my soil typing rather than nurturing those softer people skills. 

While I claim a few new kitchen tips and tricks, my ultimate goal of taking a breather, a sabbatical from primary industry was accomplished.  Fewer hours and demands (physically and mentally), negligible stress and personal time factored in my gainful underemployment. 

Sure, I may use my new-found personal time tooling around on the internet, cleaning the bathroom or visiting girlfriends when really I’d like to be reading novels (non-fiction or otherwise) and walking puppies.  But that’s not the point.  Not since my retail days of high school have I had flexibility and freedom in my schedule, am not falling-over tired from faking another (!) good day in the rain or as truly committed to never asking, “to stay or to go?” in the context of food again. 

Yeah, we roast our pieces of pig, Hutterite turkeys, roast beasts in store, bake our own bread, make outstanding soup and spreads and daily attempt to bake up a storm for the Chetwynd masses.  Yes, I am deeply proud of serving and creating quality food. 

But I am ready and it is time (for me, not the sodding sandwich) to go. 

To Africa.  

On returning

“Welcome home!! Whatever that means these days,” reads an email from a childhood and dear friend who is similarly ailed with itchy feet. I smiled, resolved to ring her and was pleased that she gets it. It being that “home” is no longer a physical place and likely will never again be the geographic location of where we grew up. “Back to where I started” is my preferred phrase because it accommodates a degree of vagueness and openness to interpretation. It also solidifies the self-imposed limbo I live in.

Rarely in one place for more than four months (eight months if uni years are considered) for the last eight years, I am never completely anywhere. Both feet are often firmly planted elsewhere – one in where I just came from and the other in where I’m off to next. While this caters well to my anticipation for upcoming events and desire for reflection, a wake of disposable, temporary relationships inevitably follows as individuals I know turn into people I knew. In a constant struggle to create, never mind maintain previous social circles I repeatedly leave friends, lovers and family scattered about the globe in favour of reckless rushes into the unknown.

When I return to previously created communities I paradoxically expect and inwardly hope I’ll be walking in as I left. Warmly welcomed and easily integrated back in, I’m shocked when all has seemingly changed. Friends are in or have fallen out of serious relationships, working on producing a CD or house shopping, work supervisors retire, coworkers suffer incomprehensible romantic trials, lovers turn into someone else’s, uni houses are populated with other students and the price of beer has skyrocketed.

While grappling to grasp these new developments and comprehend friends likewise venturing out to far-flung ports and outposts themselves, little has mercifully changed too. My aunt still loyally recommends novels, a friend who has always wanted to be more than a friend is still keen, Bonnie Doon’s handsome Tuesday morning aquasize instructor from more than a year ago is still not only teaching but recognizes me, my sister continues to make irresponsible (but remarkably sexually safe) decisions and my mother is pumped at the prospect and actualization of my return – even if it’s just for awhile.

At either end of a travel or binge work contract, as I cycle caulk boots and ribbon for dive masks and quick-dry towels, I find myself begging for that one concession novelist Zadie Smith says we rarely get more of: time.

Time for another dog walk with Gough, who truly and unselfishly means it when he says, “anything for you.” Time for another crib game with Brenda. Time to explore another temple with just-met-yesterday friend Lindsay. Time to hungoverly linger on the pier with Dan as crab traps are pulled up. Time to crawl under Robyn doing back stretches next to a bomb shelter. Agreeing with Smith’s husband Nick that time is how we spend our love, it is the shelter of each other she writes of that truly is the greatest place to return to.

Abroad and where I started, it’s about connecting with people. Sure, I’m embedded in stunning scenery in both places, but it’s not the rolling hills in Laos I pine for, or the glacial lakes of northern B.C. that quietly and persistently beckon me back, or Scotland’s Highlands dotted with sheep, shaggy surfer-dude Highland cows and heather, or Bahamian hammerheads or even Alberta’s truly big sky that I leave and return for, it’s the people, local and otherwise, I shared places with that are the most memorable.

While my address book is swollen with new entries spanning the Norwegian couple that’s still maddeningly in love with each other who tipsily insisted on picking up my Tiger tab in Vietnam to the Serbian model who campily posed with a toothless Filipino man in traditional garb and later Empire hungoverly took up dull spears against him to Roz whose dress was either plastered up on her top or tempting the locals with shoulder sex for sharing an Angkor tuk tuk for two days and cheap drinks for slightly longer to a gorgeous NYC lawyer who brazenly chided our jungle guide for the “free night trek,” I’m soberingly and achingly reminded that in addition to people worth their weight in gold and pho, there’s d-bags all over the globe.

Calgary’s car jackers, Saigon’s midnight muggers, Kratie’s sexually bold moto-taxi drivers and disgusting Filipino construction workers, divemasters, shop keepers and general disrespectful male population take away from a pleasant vacation but more importantly point at greater underlying social and societal discrepancies from the Western and “other” worlds.

In Edmonton for the month before heading north for work, I am homesick for a place that isn’t my home and dearly miss motorbikes, kitchens carried on either end of sticks, livestock big and small and dodging pushcarts and sadistic bus drivers while meandering about the city.

This too is temporary as I’ll likely be back in SE Asia for the upcoming winter, but in the mean time, I am somewhat grudgingly settled (read: most of the contents of my bag are no longer in my bag) and I have the time to reflect, enjoy and appreciate my life for the adventure it is.

Clock Chain

My wristwatch is half a handcuff and constant reminder that I am actually, physically tied to the clock.

Constantly concerned about punctuality, I believe I might explode without it. When classmates are late for class, I disapprovingly glance at it. When I almost always arrive at an engagement before the arranged time, I smugly nod to it for its time-keeping abilities. Or on the off chance I'm running late, I shake it to will it to slow down.

Regardless of the faces I give to my watch, it reminds me I am always in time, if not on time. Not in the musical sense of in time, even though the second hand is kind of like a metronome for our lives. The minute and even hour hands could be metronomes. Would beats of minutes or hours composed of minutes be a more suitable backdrop for life's rhythms?

These created units reflect on the existing time Creation keeps without and independent of us. A moonrise's quiet and overlooked beauty reminds me of this.