Journey to the Destination, Part II

During my Maritimes vacation, it finally dawned on me that my dad is old. As in seniors care home old.

As recently as 5 years ago, my Dad was active, talkative, bossy, ignorant, and had a fiery temper. I remember how he used to argue vehemently with my mom, with my sister, and even at me sometimes.  He isn't a selfish person because he worked very hard to provide for his family, and sacrificed his career so that my sister and I could have a brighter future. However, I would not describe him as a very self-aware person either, because that is the underlying reason to explain why he got into arguments with all his family members.  But he is who he is, and I didn't get a choice on who my father would be.
As recently as last year, we went on a family trip to Las Vegas, and he was more than able to keep up with us when we toured Las Vegas and also the Grand Canyon.

But then earlier this year something happened to him.  He was walking in his home when he fell down for no reason.  The next time it happened, he fainted.  My mom rushed him to Emergency at the hospital.  The doctor later told us that he had a mild stroke.  It was quite the surprise to me because he was healthy and showed no prior warning signs.
Luckily, there were no complications and he recovered full use of all limbs.

When I was a young lad, I never had a father who would throw the ball around with me, take me to see hockey games, or even explain to me the ways of the world. But even this twinge of resentment that lingered around in the depths of my mind has disappeared as I watched my dad during this vacation.  It was on this vacation to the Maritimes that I noticed that he is walking noticeably slower now, and talking slightly slower, more subdued nowadays. And more significantly, he no longer shows the fire of his character.
My role now, as it always has been, and always ever shall be, is to play the filial son.

The Glorious Hospitality of Quebec City in a Nutshell

One of the stops in the Maritimes bus tour was Quebec City.  We arrived at the Old Quebec section of the city, behind the wall.  The tour guide gave us 2 hours to walk around the various cobblestone streets and visit all the attractions.  We arrived at the old Quebec section later in the afternoon as we had just finished the whale watching tour.  Naturally, we arrived hungry, so we went to the tourist information centre and asked for directions to the nearest McDonalds.   While eating at the McDonalds, my daughter told us something mildly interesting about the Quebecois locals.  She noticed an old tourist couple walking by and one of them dropped a toonie.  Shortly afterwards, she noticed a young person pick up the toonie and walking off instead of returning it back to the old couple.

We arrived at the Notre Dame de Quebec Basilica Cathedral.  It was nice, and reminded me of Christ Church Cathedral back at my hometown, only a super sized Catholic version.  After walking around inside, we went outside and looked for someone to help us take a family photo, as I didn't particularly enjoy using the selfie stick today.  We saw this middle aged, obese person who seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere.  Nonetheless, I ask this person to help us take a photograph.  Unfortunately, this representative of all that Quebec City has to offer, muttered something to us in Quebecois french, dismissed us without even offering to help, and the continued on past us.  I kept looking at this person turned the corner, and confirmed the person was not busy trying to catch a bus.
This was the first time ever I have been turned down for assistance with taking a photo, what hospitality !

We were walking around and before we knew it it was time to go back to the tour bus.  However my daughter wanted to go the washroom.  Due to some miscommunication, we wound up looking for a washroom for her, which caused us to be late getting back to the bus. The tour guide admonished us for being a mere 5 minutes late getting back to the bus.  The reason being that some city official was threatening to give her a traffic ticket for parking the bus too long in a no parking zone.  So let me get this straight: their city hall could not be bothered to increase their tourism revenues by changing their bylaw to be more accommodating of tour buses to park in designated zones..... Really ?  

That is just awesome, I can't wait for my next vacation to Quebec to experience even more of their warm hospitality!

Journey to the Destination, Part I

I went on a 9 day bus tour of the Maritimes with my extended family.  Sitting on the bus to get to various destinations sucked. But I saw various attractions that helped me to learn a little more about Canadian culture along the way.

The Canadian war museum - located in Ottawa, there are various artifacts and galleries and tanks on display describing Canada's role in the 2 world wars and other wars.  The more interesting exhibition was the one describing Gladiators and Roman soldiers from the ancient Roman Empire.

Hopewell Rock (Bay of Fundy) - This was a beautiful scenic beach that we visited during low tide.  We explored some of the various rock caverns that this park is famous for.

Peggy's Cove - This was a panoramic, post-card like attraction, with the mini-lighthouse and attractive rocky shoreline.  The tour guide for some reason kept promoting this spot and encouraging us to spend some tourist dollars buying various trinkets, which we obliged.

The Atlantic maritime museum - I think the main reason this was chosen as part of the tour was because they had a gallery on display which contained artifacts from the Titanic, some of which were used in the actual movie.  The Titanic was apparently very popular with the Hong Kong people.  There was also a boat that we could board to see what life was like living aboard a boat.

Anne of Green Gables Park - another piece of Canadian culture that we visited.

Magnetic Hill - the bus driver demonstrated the effects of magnetic hill by driving "down" the hill and then putting it into neutral so that we can see the bus slide back "up" the hill.  Magnetic hill is actually an optical illusion where the human eye is tricked into seeing the hill as "downard" when it is actually upward due to no horizon available to use as reference.

Whale Watching (Riviere du Loup) - First time whale watching, and the St Lawrence seaway near Riviere du Loup was a great location.  I was able to see fin whales and minke whales, as well as a bunch of grey seals.

Chinese Buffet dinners - not surprisingly, the buffet dinners more or less served the same kind of westernized Chinese food - chow mein, fried rice, California Rolls, sweet & sour pork, spring rolls, stir fried veggies.  The maritime provinces are not known for their Chinese food unfortunately.  For the ones that tour bus took us to, I think the only reason they even exist is because of the bus tours "feeding" them.  I asked the tour guide, and she told me that there are on average 5 to 6 buses such as the one we were on driving asian tourists out to these destinations 2x per week.  Each bus has a seating capacity of 52 people, so assuming a buffet dinner costs around $15, that works out to $7800 per week of business for these hole in the wall restaurants.  Not too shabby.

lobster dinner - this was the first time I have ever eaten a whole lobster as the main course of the meal.  The whole lobster was steamed and partially cracked to make it easier to access the meat, and came with a baked potato, half a corn on the cob and some rice.  The lobster was not overcooked and tasted great, although the service was disappointing.  I don't think they had any system to deal with a large group such as the tour group I was with.

My son was more interested in swimming, and he got to try out the swimming pools at the Delta Fredericton, Delta Prince Edward (Charlottetown), the Prince George Hotel (Halifax), and Le Gouverneur (Montreal).

Guest Post

Sat.July 25/15

This is the wife and I'm writing to express how I feel today.  For the past 2 weeks, my tension in my lower and upper has settled down a bit, however there is tension building up at the back of my throat.  I hope that it's just anxiety unexpectedly happening without my control.  My husband thinks it is, but sometimes I think it might be something else.  It's so uncomfortable having this feeling and it is creating internal stress within me sometimes.  I try not to think about it and go on with my daily routine, but it's so strong that it's hard not think about it.  I even notice my heart beat within this tension.  I'm hoping the medicine is going to treat it and will go away so I can have my  healthy natural sleep back.

Because I Love Her

My daughter will turn 12 next month.   She is still scared of the dark. I asked her why she is scared. She doesn't know why. 
I got a little frustrated when she told me this. I mean, she is almost a teenager, what teenager is scared of the dark in this day and age when kids grow up so fast?
But then I am reminded again that she is not like other 11.5 year old girls.
She told me that she  also wants to stay up late too. I tell her that you can't have it both ways. And I had no interest in watching whatever kiddy show that she wanted to watch.  So I explained to her in detail how to turn on the lights near where she wants to sit or watch TV, and then to turn on the next set of lights when she is ready to go upstairs to bed.   We walked through a couple times how to turn on and off the right set of lights so that she is never in the dark.
So now when I go upstairs, she is learning to stay up later and later all by herself downstairs.

Day 67: The Long and Winding Road

My wife has been taking 150 mg Zoloft, 150 mg 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) and some naturopathic medication intended to improve the adrenal glands.  She was taking 0.5 mg Respiridone, but she decided not to continue with that, since she would hear a dull static ringing inside her head when she took Respiridone.
With some weekly massage and acupuncture thrown in for good measure, her condition has steadily improved, and she has recently started to fall asleep consistently without the use of zoplicone albeit she is getting only about 4.5 - 5hrs of sleep.  Consistently meaning that she has been off zoplicone for 3 days now and counting after steadily reducing the dosage of zoplicone in the prior weeks.  She still complains about waking up too early and not getting enough sleep, and that combined with her general mood tells me that she is not out of the woods yet.
She keeps asking me the same questions, such as whether she has a thyroid problem, whether she has throat cancer, whether she will make it, why can't she sleep naturally like other normal human beings, does she have TMJ, whether she has a cortisol imbalance, why isn't she seeing an endocrinologist about her problem, why does she have thsi persistent tension in her neck when she does not have any stressful thoughts, when can she start weaning off her meds, how do I know how much sleep she has been getting, why does she feel like she's not improving, do I even care about her condition, etc.
I initially tried recording a couple answers on my smartphone so that I could just play it back to her whenever she asks those same questions.  But then after she wrecked her own Nexus 5, I had to give her my Nexus 5.  When I gave her my old phone, I initially tried to add her as a secondary account, so that there would be 2 accounts on the Nexus 5, my account (primary) and her account (secondary).  Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that secondary accounts cannot receive any text messages, and the administrator (primary account) has to specifically provide access to the secondary account to make phone calls.  And to top it all off, there is no way to make the secondary account an administrator, so the only way was to factory reset the phone.  Factory resetting my old Nexus 5 (her new phone) also meant wiping out the pre-recorded answers that I had made.  Now I am too lazy to record new pre-recorded answers, partly also because I don't really like how I sound in the audio.

But nonetheless, I feel like a tape recorder just regurgitating the same canned answers over and over again every time she asks the same questions over and over again.  It's become almost a challenge of how robotic and monotonous I can sound without sounding like "holy crap, are you frickin' kidding me, you just asked me the same god forsaken question a couple hours ago!!!"

I am the secretary for my wife, and she approves of this post.

The Budding Alcoholic

When I was very small (around 7 or 8 years old), when my parents held a hotpot, sometimes they would buy Baby Duck sparkling wine.  In hindsight, I think it was my mom who would pick up the bottle of Baby Duck. I didn't realize it at the time, but my mom has a stronger taste for alcohol than my dad.  She was not an alcoholic, but she did enjoy red wine on special occasions, and also sometimes would sip a glass as she claimed that it helped her to fall asleep.
Anyways, during these special occasion hotpots, I would ask my mom for a small glass of the Baby Duck so that I could look like an adult.  I never really enjoyed drinking wine, because like all alcoholic beverages, there is a bitter aftertaste.  But I slurped it up nonetheless at every hotpot, because I felt it was a privilege to do so.
So we were eating at a restaurant recently, and out of the blue, my son asks about tasting a glass of wine.  WTF, where did this come from?
I asked him why did he suddenly become curious about wine.  He said that he saw me drinking it before, and wanted to try some himself.  We don't drink alcohol at home.  I don't buy beer nor wine to consume at home.  We have kept a few bottles of wine as gifts from friends.  So I really don't know when or how he even remembers the previous time that I drank red wine, as I don't remember it myself.
Anyways, my son asked to try a sip of the wine that we had at home.  I told him that unfortunately, once you open the bottle, you have to consume the whole thing or it starts to lose its original flavour and begin to taste more sour after a couple of days.  Man, the look of disappointment on his face just makes me cave in.  I hate that.
I told him I would give him a sip of wine the next time we went out to eat.