Saskatchewan Plates

I’m killing time in the boarding lounge in Calgary after the fastest consecutive security screens I’ve ever had. My good fortune with the TSA has given me two hours to jot down some of the post-holiday trip reflections. For the most part, it’s nothing I haven’t felt or likely posted somewhere in the archives of this blog, but I appreciate the therapeutic benefits of keying it out.

I remember when I left for Waterloo back in 2003. People asked me “When are you coming back?” Depending on the person, I would often soften the response but the answer in my head was “Never”. After seven years though, I’d be lying if I said I was as resolute as I was back then. Every single one of my trips home rattles my resolve just a little bit more. Others that left have plans to return home or already have in some cases. As Jer points out in our occasional video chats, we had (and still have) a very good thing going in Saskatoon.

The usual disclaimers apply: Returning permanently wouldn’t be the same as the concentrated hang outs that happen over my short trips and not everyone would be as willing or interested in my forced intermingling. But it’s certainly an intoxicating thought.

On the runway this morning as my flight was taxiing for take off, the pilot momentarily pressed on the throttle only to immediately pull back. In tandem, I could hear some airplane instrument chime from my first row seat in response to their action. As it did, my heart skipped a beat at the thought of a mechanical failure marooning me in Saskatoon for one more night. Alas, no encores of last night’s trip to O’Shea’s were in store (thanks to everyone that made it out!), but it does serve to illustrate my attachment.

I’ve given a fair amount of thought to the idea over the last few days, but unfortunately no conclusions were reached despite the suitable timing for a new set of resolutions. I know there’s a set of things I want (nay need!) in my life that I currently don’t have and it’s not hard to identify the things that would need to be sacrificed in order to avail myself of them, for lack of a less sterile word. It’s a tradeoff I’ve rarely made before and it’s got me to where I am today, but certainly at some cost. Now that I’m halfway through my twenties and a quarter century into life, I’m giving a lot more thought as to whether the on-going cost is too high.

I’ve been blessed with incredible fortune, family, and friends over the last year and decade, and I’m thoroughly excited about what these new ones will hold.

Happy New Year!

This track caught my ear on the ol’ satellite radio as we were making the rounds last night:

Digitalism – Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix)

Also, this is the first attempt at hacking the youtube embed into a music player. I’m hoping that Facebook notes auto-import will pick it up properly.

Another relatively uneventful holiday season has come and gone. I’m halfway back to San Francisco on the coldest of all the days in Saskatoon (-40 C, -58 with the windchill). Calgary is already significantly warmer (-6). Google reports the bay area at 13 with a sun icon. The cute girl on the plan coming in was right: My longing for snow lasted nowhere near the length of the trip.

2009 comes with no real revelations. I’m still not 100% with my current situation, but I’m resolved to make the best of it. I’m starting to look at this less like a career and more as another leg in the education. That makes this much more of an experiment – a learning experience. I expect to be much more confident about my direction one year from now. I also expect to eat these words. In the meantime, I have a two hour flight and a forty minute, top-down welcome back.

Work tomorrow.

I have a bit of a problem with people introducing me as “This is my son/friend/pool-boy Sean. He works for Google.” My problem is that this statement instantly sets a person’s opinion of me. This isn’t limited to complete strangers, but life-long friends, even cousins react when they are told. “Wow you must be a genius” (I spelt genius wrong the first time so evidently not), “You’re going to be rich some day”, “I’m totally going to mooch off you”.

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a silly problem so don’t bother calling me out on it, I know. I just hate this assumption that somehow I’ve been raised above my old place in society purely based on the company I work for (or rather, will be).

All this is moot though as I know there is no way to stop it. So my problem now becomes, do I continue to fight it or do I play into it? And if I play into it, at what point does this become a self-absorbed reality rather than a joke? I guess that’s my big concern with the whole thing. I don’t want to be treated any different than all of my family and friends, I want to be like them. I am like them! After all these years of trying to fit in, I didn’t think I could so easily end up on the outside looking once again.

/End pissy overreaction

Apologies for the delay – School work’s kicking my ass. Let’s open with a picture:

(Note: Picture is actually from Day 0, but it’s too awesome to let slip by. I especially enjoy the widescreen frame.)

Day 2 corresponds to the Thursday. By this point, most people had started to get into the flow of the vacation, but I was still a day behind everyone else and hadn’t even spent any time on the beach (you know what I mean). The day before, Alex had lead Tina, Christoph, and Sam into the neighbouring town of Sosua on a bit of an adventure. We heard stories of great eats and interesting locations, Pedro McMurphy’s specifically. Mark and Jeanette had crafted plans to take the resort shuttle at 10:30 am the night before, so I jumped at the chance.

Our hotel room didn’t have an alarm clock, in fact, it didn’t have a clock of any sort. I don’t actually figure out the wake up calls until Saturday either. Needless to say, when I rolled out of bed Thursday, I had no idea how close to 10:30 I was, but when I wandered up to the breakfast table and saw the group headed into town just packing up I realized how close I was. It turns out, not close enough though. The 10:30 shuttle was all filed up with Matlock-viewers who get up at the crack of dawn to line up. Next shuttle: 1:30pm, time to hit up the beach.

And beach we did. I got my first burn (that couldn’t hold a candle to some of the ones others ended up with), tackled the waves, attempted to boogy board, and returned to burning. In fact, I was enjoying my first on purpose introduction to the beach so much that I thought I had missed the second attempt at Sosua.

I showered and hopped on the shuttle. As far as I can recall, the group consisted of Myself, Mark, Jeanette, Jasial, Farbod, Nadine, Sam and Dave. I’m sure there was more, but off hand, it’s been almost three weeks now.

The shuttle dropped us off at a rather unique little bar headed by an old English (Australian?) gent and his daughter. Unexpected first impression of Sosua to say the least. The gent, pointed us in two opposite directions, one down tourist alley to the Sosua Beach – the most ____ beach in _____, the other to the local grocery store and the ATM within.

Note for prospective tourists: The locals don’t have to barter for everything they buy. They, like you and I, go to the grocery store and pay the price on the tag. Here’s the fun part: The price they pay for things, liquor especially, is much better than the ones in the tourist trap shops.

Second note: When in said grocery store, watch out for Josef. Mark and Jaisal immediately wandered off to the grocery store as soon as we disembarked from the shuttle. I followed a minute behind, intent on getting a bottle of water to carry with for the day. Once inside, Mark and Jaisal introduced me to this fine, upstanding, english-speaking, local they met named Josef. Josef insisted on showing us around and for a while, it was pretty cool to have someone to help with the translation while Mark, Farbod, and Dave got their barter on, but something was sketchy.

I first thought something was up when we were walking back towards the beach and we met some older tourists from Germany. Josef immediately dropped into German and had them laughing in no time. My concern was confirmed by the owner of the first shop we stopped at on our way down to the beach when he told Mark that Josef was “loco”. We wandered directly down to the beach and took some pictures while we devised a way to get rid of Josef. Our plan was to split up, with Jaisal, Farbod, Mark and I taking Josef on a profitless walk down Sosua beach while the others continued shopping. Even after stalling on the beach for 15 minutes and contemplating scattering in all directions, Mark finally convinced Josef we were no longer in need of his services by paying him off.

We couldn’t figure out what his game was, whether he was getting a cut from shop owners, or what. Anyway, if you visit the Sosua grocery store, tell anyone who asks that you don’t need any help.

We wandered in an out of shops. Mark bought irresponsible volumes of Vanilla extract. Jaisal, got his picture taken with a local dressed up as some sort of Witch Doctor and then refused to pay him for his services. Eventually we made it back to our drop-off point where I picked up Larimar earrings as requested, and a “Barley” with Sam, which we delightfully carried on to the bus with us and back to the resort. The resort only served “Presidente” beer, which I was tiring off already. The Brahama that I picked up while in town were definitely preferred.

And this is where time has made things hazy. I’m confident though, we ate dinner at some point. Others had started attending the a-la-carte restaurants at the resort which required reservations made multiple days in advance. Tina and I hadn’t quite got our shit together in that aspect so we ate at Jimmy’s Buffet once again.

After dinner, we once again crowded around the tables at El Coco. Lyle, was the mark to beat, and everyone had their own opinion on who would take the third night’s crown. Mark, having aquired 151 in town, had secretly been feeding it to Dave on the beach. Dave by the time I turned in, had acquired a brand new FOB accent, which the ladies loved. My night ended early, still not 100% from the first night. Others nights continued.

Commenters step in here. I’m told everyone wandered to the Disco at this point. People were kissed or cussed out, dutch guys were photographed, cameras were lost, etc. etc. Someone do us the honours and fill in the blanks.

As far as who took the crown for the third night, I do believe that remains a point of contention. Several people were feeling pretty sore when Day 3 rolled around.

… to talk about myself.

Up until six hours ago, I was set to head to San Francisco come September. I was considering the Kirkland, Washington option, but after talking to someone from the office, I wasn’t that excited. I scrapped the plan and assumed San Fran was meant to be.

At 7pm, I got an email from my main girl on the inside. She says, Seattle downtown office is now fair game (in fact I’d be one of the first). She later adds, so is Zurich.

I don’t even know where to begin thinking this through.

Other things that need public discussion: Where shall I spend May 17th to June 22nd? I will be in Waterloo for May 16th and Saskatoon for June 23rd, but how do I split up the in between time? Do I rush back to SK for May long, or do I stick it out in Southern Ontario? Voice your opinions.

Day 2 of Dominican Republic to follow as soon as I remember all the goofy shit that went down.

Let me say outright that I’m really not the best person to be recollecting the events of this day. I’m hoping people who actually did things will chime in on the comments in Facebook or on the blog. Now where did I end off? Ah yes… I was just heading to bed.

I have no idea what time I actually woke up, but I’m guessing somewhere around 10. Mark and Jeannette apparently discovered me on the beach at around 9, but I was unresponsive. I slept until four, working very hard to keep it together.

This is where other people would tell you about all the exciting things they did. My understanding it was a lot of the beach, as well as the first encounters with Jimmy Buffet, the buffet serving breakfast, lunch, dinner on a daily basis. They had an omelette bar. Yep.

While the sun was still in the sky, I crawled out of bed and wandered over to the beach to see who I could catch up with. I was greeted by Lyle and Deryk with a round of “There he is”s. We sat, chatted about what I had missed (see above) and watched the first sunset. As dinner time approached, Deryk and Adam were heading off for a jog and I wandered back to my room to change.

Cue first story!

Adam and Deryk decided to go for a jog out along the main road that runs past the resort. For reference, the jog was less than a half a km in total, and lasted all of 15 minutes. As the boys were jogging somewhere near the mid-point, a local Dominican woman pulled her scooter to the side of the road and started yelling “Hey Canadians!” She approached them, arms wide to hug them. And hug she did. Assuming the transaction was complete, the boys turned to leave, but not before the woman gave Deryk the ol’ reach around and latched onto his boys. Deryk jumped back and told her to quit it. But when he turned to leave again, she went for the gold one more time.

After pushing her away and making sure she wasn’t following, the boys took off again. Later they realized that she had managed to swipe Deryk’s hotel key and camera. Please give generously to the “Buy Deryk a new Canon” fund.

Heading home, not even ten minutes later, the boys realized there were several rather large dogs running towards, barking and bearing teeth. Adam and Deryk took off, but the dogs were gaining hard, until they ran into a fence. Looking back, Adam said “It’s sure a good thing that fence was there,” at which point irony shined down and blessed the dogs with the ability to dig underneath the fence and continue the pursuit. At this point though, the owner had emerged from the house and yelled at the boys to stop running, which caused the dogs to stop pursuing as well. I’m happy to report Deryk and Adam made it back to the report in one piece to tell their story at dinner time. Which is my cue to stop narrating someone else’s story and continue my own.

I met others at the Jimmy Buffet for a random assortment of Sushi, fried goodies, and DIY pasta. Long story short, stomach wasn’t quite up to task and I ended up back in bed with a gravol and Jon Stewart on Larry King Live. CNN was the only english channel our hotel room got. I know soooo much about Barak Obama right now. I was back on my feet by 10, and headed to (what will become very expected as you read future days) El Coco to meet up with the rest of the crew.

And crew we were. Some other group tried to start a game of flip cup but just couldn’t hit critical mass. Talk around table was who was going to be the night’s “Sean”. Jaisal was well on his way, as was Chill (who was largely to blame for my condition the night before). I was drinking water and lots of it. I turned in early, hoping to see a reasonable amount of the day on Thursday.

Others stayed. Specifically Lyle and Alex, who were on the unenviable quest to close down a 24 hour bar. Before I left, Lyle was working a most impressive game on a couple of the cute members of the McMaster group we had met the night before. As luck would have it, they were interrupted by four magnificent bags of douche from Edmonton singing “Alberta bound” as only a herd of retarded camels could replicate. The girls took off. Needless to say, Lyle wasn’t pleased. In fact, Alex had to do some diplomatic self-deprecation to prevent fisticuffs.

The night pressed on, leaving only Alex with a few other girls, Lyle, a few dutch guys (who reportedly had the camera rolling), and a group of newfies. Lyle, far gone by this point, went over to the office-esque water cooler to hydrate before heading home. For whatever reason, the water didn’t immediately come out of the tap. Lyle flipped-the-fuck-out.

He slapped the water jug off the top of the cooler before kicking over the base. The Newfies quickly tackled him and hauled him out of the bar kicking and screaming. Alex, noticing what was going on, said a polite “good night” to his female crowd and went to rescue Lyle.

With the help of the resort security, Alex attempted Lyle home, with the newfies following behind heckling, beers in hand. Lyle was still being extra-uncooperative to the point where the security guard left and threatened to call the real Dominican cops, an idea that Alex had to bribe off his mind. At one (or more – hard to say) points, Alex ended up dropping Lyle on the ground, which would result in “Oooooooooooos” from the drunk newfies in tow.

Eventually, Alex made it to the correct room where Deryk helped prep Lyle for bed. Lyle, not convinced to put in the effort to walk on his own was putting similar effort into standing in his room. To help, Alex leaned Lyle against the wall. But when he turned away, Lyle promptly tipped over, smoking his head against another wall on the way down. Once in bed, Alex took off. Almost immediately after which, Lyle puked. Deryk, being the kind of roommate that doesn’t want to smell that for the rest of the night, took his blankets and threw them on the front porch and went back to bed, assuming all was done. It wasn’t quite.

About 8 am the next day, Lyle got up and, still thinking he was in the washroom, took two steps toward the door and took a piss right where the toilet would have been.

I had be thoroughly one-upped.

Let’s get this show on the road shall we? I’m going to try to tackle this by assigning each day it’s own post, but the days in the middle start to get hazy and blur together which makes categorically labelling the redonkulous events a difficult task. The pictures that correspond to the trip are in the pipe, they should show up on Flickr/Facebook in the next week or two as people catch up with their homework and sleep.

Realization: This post got out of hand. If you get bored, read the bottom, there’s a punch line.

Let’s start at the first day, of which only 1 and a half hours take place on the resort, so I’m labelling it day 0. Right out of the gate you could tell that things were going to get out of hand. Tina and I packed up our things in the back of my car, drove over to Jaisal’s and caught a cab to Adam’s where the entire crew of 22 people would be disembarking from. The first thing asked me (at 9 am) was “Lynchy, can I get you a beer?”

We met with Adam and others where drinking had also commenced. There was champagne and more typically, rum in tupperware. We loaded up the big passenger vans taking us into the Toronto airport for our flight and headed to the bank to satisfy any last minute American dollar needs. The bank happened to be next to the Liquor Board store, several beers and two mickeys were picked up for the hour trip to the airport. By the time we boarded the plan, several members of the group had what I would call a good buzz on. We were in the air.

And then we were landed, and through customs, and on our bus clipping by shaddy looking establishments in the town of Sosua as we headed to our resort. We also saw a baseball stadium which is their hockey down in the DR.

As our bus pulled up to the front of Breezes Dominican Republic someone pointed out the window and shouted, “Oh my God, there’s Alex!” Alex had decided last minute that he wanted to come on the trip and booked himself a separate flight down with the intention of crashing our resort or staying in a hostel if it all fell apart. Alex had made it to our resort just fine, but the security guard standing next to him was about to send him packing because he didn’t have any form of reservation. We arrived just in time for Alex to point us out as his Amigos.

We all lined up to check in and receive keys for our units, but drinks had already begun making their way from the lobby bar to the thirsty hands of our group. Keys in hand, we scattered to our respective units. Tina and I lucked out being right on the beach, and my first act after putting my suitcase down was to go get a little sand between my toes. My second was to change into something a little lighter. My third was to head to the 24 hour beach bar. The “El Coco” would end up being our first home during the trip.

Slowly other pairs began to trickle into the bar, additional tables were added, and single drink orders got larger, and started to be delivered on trays. At one point we were approached by Kylie and Josh, a couple from Thunder Bay that would end up being a welcome addition to our rag tag group. Their request for the night? Flip cup.

Epic Flip cup in fact. At one point we had approximately 15 people per side. We even had our own 16 year old beer bitch fetching us trays of El Presidente (the beer down here). People from other groups started to join in. We had the “McMaster Girls”, and a few guys from Guelph and Laurier, as well as Princess Penelope the tough looking gay guy with the handlebar mustache.

Interesting note – There were many Canadians at our resort, but the majority of the young groups during the trip were from Southern Ontario. Makes for a very unique trip.

After Flip cup slowed down, we moved on to shots. Someone asked the bar tender “Osvaldo” (who would end up being one of the most memorable locals of the trip) to mix a couple of his favourite shot. It was called the Coco Cabana and you could tell when Osvaldo mixed it because it was a slightly darker shade of green. It was also delicious. Soon there were ten of us by the bar doing a round while another ten were ordering replacements.

After a quite a few drinks though, we were not satisfied with how little drunk everyone seemed to be. Suspecting something sinister was going on with watered down drinks, I made the call that would end up being the TSN turning point of the night. 151 shots por favor.

At this point, it starts to become difficult to keep up with the train of events. People start calling it a night. Kylie and Josh get engaged to avoid getting hit on by the locals. I become their best man. Alex pisses me off. I hurl a chair at him (but miss). Callum has a conversation with the bartender that goes something like this:

Osvaldo: “I like your watch”
Callum: “You do? Here, it’s yours!”

The night continues to degrade and I pass out.

My dream is pretty vivid. Lying out on a beach chair, I can see the bright blue sky and deep blue water ahead of me beyond my sandles. The warm sun beats down on my face and my chest and there’s a slight breeze between the roar of the waves. This dream goes on for quite sometime until it clicks. I’m not dreaming, I’m completely awake. I just woke up on the beach and I have no idea how I got here. It’s not even early, there are other folks on the beach, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that I’ve been passed out on a beach chair for much of the morning.

I pick up my hat which I evidently placed on the chair next to mine and wander home. We were off to a good start.

Specifically how much I miss it.

This is compounded by the fact that I can’t “hope” to be back there soon, because it’s completely my decision to go to Google in San Francisco instead. Don’t get me wrong, San Fran was a cool city, but when I watched “A View to a Kill” over the holidays, I didn’t get the same feeling seeing the bay sky line. Watching JPod, or Intelligence, or Battlestar Galactic all give me goose bumps when they pan past that familiar corner that’s always three blocks away from where I used to live.

So rather than fighting it, I’ve put a deadline on my absence. I’m giving myself two years to sort my shit out and move back to Vancouver. I’m in an internal conflict over whether that begins when I start at Google in September or whether it starts now (so I can continue to use my moving back to Vancouver before the Olympics tagline, which is pretty buzzy). Nonetheless 2010 is the date. Maybe I can coax Google into opening an office there, lest I go job hunting again. Hell, maybe Kensh and I can finally tackle one of those great ideas other people seem to run off with.

I have signed on the Blue, Red, Yellow, and Green dotted line. Sometime next summer or fall, I will be moving back down to California to work for Google.

I’m sure you’re all happy to hear that the continual job search updates will be going the way 40 oz malt beverages. It was a tough decision when it came down to it. So many of my friends are headed to Seattle to work for Microsoft or Amazon, but I found that I’d have a much bigger opportunity to have an impact at Google. There’s a lot of travel opportunity too. Visiting Tim in Zurich is not unrealistic.

Now comes a tougher decision: Do I move back to San Francisco or do I see what living in the valley is like? Skipping the commute would be wonderful. Skipping the plentiful city sights and sounds wouldn’t.

Another toughy: What do I do with my summer? Do I follow the middle class tradition of wandering through Europe finding myself? It seems like there’s better things to do with 4 months of free time and no responsibility whatsoever. Japan? Ireland? Halifax to Vancouver? St. John’s to Dawson City? I think I’m leaning towards seeing as much of Canada as I can before I become part of its brain-drain statistic.

If next term moves as fast as this one did, I’ll be making that decision very very quickly.

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