I wrote a blog last week, but I didn’t post it.
It felt forced… contrived…
I didn’t post it because I felt… nonplussed by it.
No… I felt annoyed by it…
No.
It was a pretentious piece of crap.
It wasn’t untrue or inaccurate, yet it wasn’t really… well, it wasn’t much of anything at all, really. It was what I would call “writing for the sake of writing”, or more specifically writing because of the expectation to write. It touched on politics (poorly), it touched on elements of the trip south… but really it just touched on my gag reflex.
I’ll toss some of it in at the end of this blog as a bit of a travelogue.
This week I actually have something to comment on.
One of the challenges I feel faced with during this exchange is the recognition that I represent something more than myself by being here, and consequently I am constantly aware of the unspoken expectation that I actively interact in my environment based on that. Moreover, I am constantly reminded that I have so much to see here, so many places to go and things to do, and that an opportunity like this will only come around once… I feel pulled in a hundred directions, and I won’t deny that despite a two-week break from work, I’m feeling a little frazzled.
I am an ambassador. As such, I feel an obligation to document this experience, and to represent both Canada and the teachers of Alberta to the best of my ability in both a professional and personal manner. By and large, this has been easy for me. I love my country, and I am honoured to be able to represent it (in a small way). I would like to believe that people here (students and adults alike) are more interested and aware of Canada because of me. That said, knowing that the first question I had to field with my year 10 and 11 classes was “Is it true that pot is legal in Canada?” makes me question a number of things.
Let me begin by stating that I think the decision to legalize marijuana in Canada was a good decision. I say this not because of a personal desire to use the drug, but because I believe a law which prohibits using something a large percentage of people are already using is neither realistic nor cost-effective. By choosing to legalize pot, the government has demarginalized a significant percentage of the population while simultaneously opening up a potential gold-mine of social taxation. Wisely managed, this could pave the way for health-care and senior-support funding on a scale we haven’t event considered. If every dollar of (well-managed) taxes from pot went directly to funding old-age support programs, the elderly in Canada would have a different future than they would otherwise.
That said… It saddens me that the thing we, as a nation, are best known for (among Australian youth, at any rate) is that we have legalized a drug (and hockey… in which none of our teams made it past the first round of the playoffs). Admittedly it opened up a great discussion with some of my year 11 students about drugs, addiction, and the impact of substance abuse on families, but I wonder why our societies still struggle with this.
So, as an ambassador, I have to try to explain the decisions and policies of Canada to a group of people who have only a vague grasp of where Canada is (if are sitting there in smug condemnation after that statement, I challenge you to tell me the names of all of the states and territories in Australia and who the last Prime Minister of Australia was). On the other hand, I am also expected to see as much of this country as I can.
That is almost as exhausting as teaching itself.
So, Australia is big. Really big.
I know that Canada is bigger, but that doesn’t take away from just how big Australia is.
We travelled from Muswellbrook to Melbourne on our two week vacation. We wanted to visit Tasmania (which is an island a few hundred kilometres south of Melbourne, if you didn’t know), but it wasn’t in the cards. That said, getting to Melbourne was like driving from Calgary to Vancouver. We took 4 days getting there, spent five days there, and then raced back.
Two weeks is not enough to see anything.
No, we didn’t see the penguins on Phillips Island (though we wish we had), but we saw some of the street art that makes Melbourne so famous.
No, we didn’t see the Twelve Apostles (though we hopped onto the Great Coast Road and saw a lighthouse on the south coast that was in a television series here…)
No, we didn’t make it to Tasmania, but we had a close encounter with a kangaroo in a campground in NSW…
No, we didn’t see everything. That’s like saying, “Oh, you plan to get to Port Renfrew from Calgary? Make sure you visit the museum in Drumheller, the lodge at Jasper, spend some time in Banff Park and Lake Louise, visit Frank’s Slide… oh, and be sure to hit Whistler and Prince George on the way.”
And that was just going south.
Now we are facing questions about July.
Don’t get me wrong… I want to see as much of Australia as I can while we are here, but sometimes you just need a break.
We are thinking about Queensland in July, but part of me wants to just hide out here.
We haven’t been constantly “on-the-go”, but the time we’ve been in one place has been challenging enough as it is. Between work (for me) and school (for the girls), there is so little time left. The short breaks that make up life here every term leave us yearning for more time.
We probably won’t see Uluru. We probably won’t make it to Lightning Ridge or Coober Pedy. Canberra, Perth, Adelaide, and Darwin will most likely will remain unexplored… but I actually know where they are, now. I’ve seen Sydney, Newcastle, and Melbourne, visited Lake Illawara, Port Stephens, Eden, and Scone… For the first time, Australia is more than just a place on a map. It’s a world unto itself, and we’ve had a glimpse.
We won’t reach every dream, but it isn’t the achieving of a dream that makes dreaming so special. In striving to reach our dreams, we extend ourselves beyond what we ever dreamed we could do… that, more than anything, is really what makes dreaming so important. Only by dreaming do we really find the capacity within ourselves to stretch ourselves to unknown limits. Dreams, not reality, are what define us.
Now, for anyone who wants to waste few minutes… the blog I didn’t post:
Sometimes I wonder why I haven’t focussed more on writing novels in the last few years. I mean, it’s been almost three years since “The Sword and Satchel” was published, and longer for the others. I have an almost half-finished manuscript of “Obliteration: A Will O’Donnel Novel” (which I just looked at and actually shivered at the ending I’d left it at, which should tell you all something about what I am planning…), but still I don’t act.
I suppose a lot of the reason behind my limited productivity is simple lack of time.
Time…
I need more of it.
I learned just how true that is this break.
Two weeks is not nearly enough time.
I came to Australia with these grandiose plans of seeing the entire continent. I mean, I knew it was big, but I also knew it was smaller than Canada, and I’ve seen…
…
…well, a fraction of Canada…
…
…which should give you an idea of the feasibility of seeing ALL of Australia (in a lifetime, let alone a single year).
The plan was to go to Tasmania.
We didn’t make it.
We made it to Melbourne. The cost of the ferry to Tasmania was prohibitive. I could get into a rant about how capitalism undermines the capacity of general society (and specifically for parents/teachers) to experience the entirety of cultural opportunities because of the concept of supply and demand catering to the wealthy, but I won’t bother as it won’t change a damn thing in our messed up world; suffice it to say that what should have cost $100 (during regular season) would have run close to $1000 around Easter… which is the only time we had to visit Tasmania, so we stayed in Melbourne and spent 5 days exploring a city.
I can’t comment on Tasmania, but I can say that I would happily spend more time in Melbourne.
I have lived in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and on the outskirts of Tokyo… I have visited cities on five of the seven continents, including Moscow, Tangier, Paris, London, Stockholm, New Orleans, Barcelona, Mexico City, Cairo, Quebec, and Sydney… but at present Melbourne is not only my favourite city in Australia so far – it is currently my favourite city in general.
Why? You know, I can’t actually put a finger on it. There are just so many things to like about Melbourne. I could get into the ease of getting around (which is unlike Sydney), or the cultural aspects (like the street art/graffiti so common in the various lanes), but that wouldn’t be complete or fair… it’s more of a feeling. Some cities resonate with me and some don’t. Melbourne is a place I would consider living in… and that’s saying a lot.
It was a long trip, though.
It’s not an easy thing, travelling around a country. There just isn’t enough time to see everything. Yes, we got to Melbourne, but there was so much we didn’t see… so many places…
It took four days to get down, and by the time we reached Melbourne (by car) we needed a break. We spent five days there. Coming back took two days, and we were pushing hard. We could have spent so much more time in all of the places we drove through, between kids puking in the back seat (we forgot to give them Gravol on the last day), cops pulling us over (random breath tests… I’ve had four now), and the awareness of impending school (unit planning is more intense here), the break was somehow not as restful as I might have wished.
I still have the weekend, though.
I wonder what the world would look like if people paid less attention to the daily grind and more attention to the experiential aspect of who we are. How different would our society be if we had four-day weekends and three-day work-weeks? In four days, people might actually have a chance to connect with the natural world, to spend time in an area and learn what the people there value… instead we are stuck getting snippets on the two days we are given. Even if it was three day weekends and four day weeks, would we not get a chance to see more of our world, and by that become more invested in improving it?
Why are we stuck on a system that was constructed for us in a past which no longer really pertains to the world we have? More and more I hear companies questioning what they could do to improve productivity and employee satisfaction… yet the obvious answer of providing employees with more family time, more nature-based time, more away time never really gets considered… why? Is the 9-5 M-F schedule really so beneficial? Yes, it makes the share-holders happy… but…
…But this isn’t really the time or place for a foray into theoretical socio-economics.
I still have the weekend.
I wish I had more time.
Can you believe it’s almost May? That means that this exchange is rapidly approaching the half-way margin. We are a third of the way done…
Australia is a place that demands more time than we have. In that respect, it is very much like Canada. Both are beyond the scope of a single lifetime. We may get glimpses, but nothing more.
It felt forced… contrived…
I didn’t post it because I felt… nonplussed by it.
No… I felt annoyed by it…
No.
It was a pretentious piece of crap.
It wasn’t untrue or inaccurate, yet it wasn’t really… well, it wasn’t much of anything at all, really. It was what I would call “writing for the sake of writing”, or more specifically writing because of the expectation to write. It touched on politics (poorly), it touched on elements of the trip south… but really it just touched on my gag reflex.
I’ll toss some of it in at the end of this blog as a bit of a travelogue.
This week I actually have something to comment on.
One of the challenges I feel faced with during this exchange is the recognition that I represent something more than myself by being here, and consequently I am constantly aware of the unspoken expectation that I actively interact in my environment based on that. Moreover, I am constantly reminded that I have so much to see here, so many places to go and things to do, and that an opportunity like this will only come around once… I feel pulled in a hundred directions, and I won’t deny that despite a two-week break from work, I’m feeling a little frazzled.
I am an ambassador. As such, I feel an obligation to document this experience, and to represent both Canada and the teachers of Alberta to the best of my ability in both a professional and personal manner. By and large, this has been easy for me. I love my country, and I am honoured to be able to represent it (in a small way). I would like to believe that people here (students and adults alike) are more interested and aware of Canada because of me. That said, knowing that the first question I had to field with my year 10 and 11 classes was “Is it true that pot is legal in Canada?” makes me question a number of things.
Let me begin by stating that I think the decision to legalize marijuana in Canada was a good decision. I say this not because of a personal desire to use the drug, but because I believe a law which prohibits using something a large percentage of people are already using is neither realistic nor cost-effective. By choosing to legalize pot, the government has demarginalized a significant percentage of the population while simultaneously opening up a potential gold-mine of social taxation. Wisely managed, this could pave the way for health-care and senior-support funding on a scale we haven’t event considered. If every dollar of (well-managed) taxes from pot went directly to funding old-age support programs, the elderly in Canada would have a different future than they would otherwise.
That said… It saddens me that the thing we, as a nation, are best known for (among Australian youth, at any rate) is that we have legalized a drug (and hockey… in which none of our teams made it past the first round of the playoffs). Admittedly it opened up a great discussion with some of my year 11 students about drugs, addiction, and the impact of substance abuse on families, but I wonder why our societies still struggle with this.
So, as an ambassador, I have to try to explain the decisions and policies of Canada to a group of people who have only a vague grasp of where Canada is (if are sitting there in smug condemnation after that statement, I challenge you to tell me the names of all of the states and territories in Australia and who the last Prime Minister of Australia was). On the other hand, I am also expected to see as much of this country as I can.
That is almost as exhausting as teaching itself.
So, Australia is big. Really big.
I know that Canada is bigger, but that doesn’t take away from just how big Australia is.
We travelled from Muswellbrook to Melbourne on our two week vacation. We wanted to visit Tasmania (which is an island a few hundred kilometres south of Melbourne, if you didn’t know), but it wasn’t in the cards. That said, getting to Melbourne was like driving from Calgary to Vancouver. We took 4 days getting there, spent five days there, and then raced back.
Two weeks is not enough to see anything.
No, we didn’t see the penguins on Phillips Island (though we wish we had), but we saw some of the street art that makes Melbourne so famous.
No, we didn’t see the Twelve Apostles (though we hopped onto the Great Coast Road and saw a lighthouse on the south coast that was in a television series here…)
No, we didn’t make it to Tasmania, but we had a close encounter with a kangaroo in a campground in NSW…
No, we didn’t see everything. That’s like saying, “Oh, you plan to get to Port Renfrew from Calgary? Make sure you visit the museum in Drumheller, the lodge at Jasper, spend some time in Banff Park and Lake Louise, visit Frank’s Slide… oh, and be sure to hit Whistler and Prince George on the way.”
And that was just going south.
Now we are facing questions about July.
Don’t get me wrong… I want to see as much of Australia as I can while we are here, but sometimes you just need a break.
We are thinking about Queensland in July, but part of me wants to just hide out here.
We haven’t been constantly “on-the-go”, but the time we’ve been in one place has been challenging enough as it is. Between work (for me) and school (for the girls), there is so little time left. The short breaks that make up life here every term leave us yearning for more time.
We probably won’t see Uluru. We probably won’t make it to Lightning Ridge or Coober Pedy. Canberra, Perth, Adelaide, and Darwin will most likely will remain unexplored… but I actually know where they are, now. I’ve seen Sydney, Newcastle, and Melbourne, visited Lake Illawara, Port Stephens, Eden, and Scone… For the first time, Australia is more than just a place on a map. It’s a world unto itself, and we’ve had a glimpse.
We won’t reach every dream, but it isn’t the achieving of a dream that makes dreaming so special. In striving to reach our dreams, we extend ourselves beyond what we ever dreamed we could do… that, more than anything, is really what makes dreaming so important. Only by dreaming do we really find the capacity within ourselves to stretch ourselves to unknown limits. Dreams, not reality, are what define us.
Now, for anyone who wants to waste few minutes… the blog I didn’t post:
Sometimes I wonder why I haven’t focussed more on writing novels in the last few years. I mean, it’s been almost three years since “The Sword and Satchel” was published, and longer for the others. I have an almost half-finished manuscript of “Obliteration: A Will O’Donnel Novel” (which I just looked at and actually shivered at the ending I’d left it at, which should tell you all something about what I am planning…), but still I don’t act.
I suppose a lot of the reason behind my limited productivity is simple lack of time.
Time…
I need more of it.
I learned just how true that is this break.
Two weeks is not nearly enough time.
I came to Australia with these grandiose plans of seeing the entire continent. I mean, I knew it was big, but I also knew it was smaller than Canada, and I’ve seen…
…
…well, a fraction of Canada…
…
…which should give you an idea of the feasibility of seeing ALL of Australia (in a lifetime, let alone a single year).
The plan was to go to Tasmania.
We didn’t make it.
We made it to Melbourne. The cost of the ferry to Tasmania was prohibitive. I could get into a rant about how capitalism undermines the capacity of general society (and specifically for parents/teachers) to experience the entirety of cultural opportunities because of the concept of supply and demand catering to the wealthy, but I won’t bother as it won’t change a damn thing in our messed up world; suffice it to say that what should have cost $100 (during regular season) would have run close to $1000 around Easter… which is the only time we had to visit Tasmania, so we stayed in Melbourne and spent 5 days exploring a city.
I can’t comment on Tasmania, but I can say that I would happily spend more time in Melbourne.
I have lived in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and on the outskirts of Tokyo… I have visited cities on five of the seven continents, including Moscow, Tangier, Paris, London, Stockholm, New Orleans, Barcelona, Mexico City, Cairo, Quebec, and Sydney… but at present Melbourne is not only my favourite city in Australia so far – it is currently my favourite city in general.
Why? You know, I can’t actually put a finger on it. There are just so many things to like about Melbourne. I could get into the ease of getting around (which is unlike Sydney), or the cultural aspects (like the street art/graffiti so common in the various lanes), but that wouldn’t be complete or fair… it’s more of a feeling. Some cities resonate with me and some don’t. Melbourne is a place I would consider living in… and that’s saying a lot.
It was a long trip, though.
It’s not an easy thing, travelling around a country. There just isn’t enough time to see everything. Yes, we got to Melbourne, but there was so much we didn’t see… so many places…
It took four days to get down, and by the time we reached Melbourne (by car) we needed a break. We spent five days there. Coming back took two days, and we were pushing hard. We could have spent so much more time in all of the places we drove through, between kids puking in the back seat (we forgot to give them Gravol on the last day), cops pulling us over (random breath tests… I’ve had four now), and the awareness of impending school (unit planning is more intense here), the break was somehow not as restful as I might have wished.
I still have the weekend, though.
I wonder what the world would look like if people paid less attention to the daily grind and more attention to the experiential aspect of who we are. How different would our society be if we had four-day weekends and three-day work-weeks? In four days, people might actually have a chance to connect with the natural world, to spend time in an area and learn what the people there value… instead we are stuck getting snippets on the two days we are given. Even if it was three day weekends and four day weeks, would we not get a chance to see more of our world, and by that become more invested in improving it?
Why are we stuck on a system that was constructed for us in a past which no longer really pertains to the world we have? More and more I hear companies questioning what they could do to improve productivity and employee satisfaction… yet the obvious answer of providing employees with more family time, more nature-based time, more away time never really gets considered… why? Is the 9-5 M-F schedule really so beneficial? Yes, it makes the share-holders happy… but…
…But this isn’t really the time or place for a foray into theoretical socio-economics.
I still have the weekend.
I wish I had more time.
Can you believe it’s almost May? That means that this exchange is rapidly approaching the half-way margin. We are a third of the way done…
Australia is a place that demands more time than we have. In that respect, it is very much like Canada. Both are beyond the scope of a single lifetime. We may get glimpses, but nothing more.