I received the email because I was on a friend’s mailing list and she had sent out a plea to everyone to pray for someone’s very ill son.

I had been touched by the response from other people on the mailing list — people who promised to remember the sick young man in their prayers even though, in most cases, they did not know him.

Then came the email to St. Jude. If I had not known about the circumstances that brought it on, I would have thought the sender a stark raving madman. Rather than being touched, it has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. To email the saint of lost causes, is that some sick joke or what?

Is it another example of how the desperate allow themselves to be preyed on by superstition?

The “best” thing about the situation she is in right now is that she has a job working as a chambermaid at a holiday resort; so, she has some place to live and is not out on the street. Everything else about what has happened is sad.

It’s hard to take in the news with the knowledge that she made the choice to go down this road. Although it may be presumptuous of me to even think that she has “ruined” her future, but I can’t see where she can go with her life.

How did this come to pass?

(Written on Father’s Day, 2010 when news of an air crash at Buttonville Airport in Ontario was reported)

For an evening, we sit with people we have not seen for decades.  Of course, the intervening years have not been kind.  We have all grown old — whoever tells you that “you look exactly the same” is a liar.

What do we talk about when we haven’t seen each other for thirty, forty years?  We graduated, we went our separate ways.  We haven’t spoken to each other all this time; so, why do we think we will be able to find topics of common interest for this evening? 

We reminisce, but then, half the table do not remember the incident we are talking about? We have group photos taken; butwe can’t name everyone that’s in the picture anymore.

Then, the evening is over. We say goodbye to each other and promise to stay in touch. We know, though, that we won’t. It’s not worth the effort.

The next reunion is ten years off. We’ll just go back to our separate worlds until then.

All through our childhoods, our grandparents were hardly ever mentioned . In fact, only last week, it occurred to me that I did not know the names of my two grandmothers. In our home, there were four individual pictures, one for each of our grandparents; and these images — taken out of focus, faded with time — constitute all that I know of them. In the pictures, they all looked “ancient” — although the pictures would have been taken when they were much younger than I am now. None of them had a smile. They looked austere, distant, and totally unwilling to have their picture taken. It was impossible to feel any closeness to the persons in the four photographs, or to imagine that their blood also flowed in my veins.

All my ideas about what grandparents are like and what they do came from children’s books. In these, the grandparents are always wise and kind.  They are never sickly, cranky or complaining.  They do not indulge their grandchildren, rather, they teach them important life lessons through stories.  Their grandchildren, in turn, love and honour them.

It used to bother me very much when I was a child that I did not feel love for my grandparents.  It felt to me that I was missing something and it made me less “whole” as a person than those of my school friends who saw their grandparents and did things with them on a regular basis.

I don’t know about honour.  We, of course, “honoured” our grandparents by bowing before their pictures every year on Chinese New Year’s Day.  But that was a mere gesture.  I felt nothing in my heart when I bent before their pictures.  I just did not know enough about them to truly feel respect for them.

Now that my own grandchild is about to be born, I wonder what he will feel about me — his grandparent.  He will grow up in a different country and, with the miles between us, will our relationship also be distant?  Will I be a picture to him or will he get to know me?  Will we have time to cultivate our relationship or will distance, ill health or simply the lack of opportunity make that an impossible task?

The name wasn’t correctly spelled.  Was it Denys she meant?  Did he passed away, as in died, or did Jen mean that he had moved on, left their place of work.  It wasn’t always possible to tell when one was reading emails written by second language users.

My inquiry brought the answer that I did not want to hear. Denys had indeed died.  Suddenly, a brain aneurysm, in an instant, and several years ago ….

If he had lived, Denys would be 62 this year.  He died at the age of 54.  It’s been eight years now.

When I  mentioned to R that I was stunned by the news, the response was simply, “O, that’s a long time ago.”  I don’t think R misses Denys, though I find it hard to believe.

Denys was not easy to like.  He was irascible, at times remote and totally private.

I don’t think he was happy. He had friends, but that did not stop him from feeling lonely. Now, knowing what depression feels like, I believe he was probably a bit depressed. His brother told Jen that the family expected a lot more from him in life — after all, he went to university on a rugby scholarship. Promise unfulfilled — that’s what they think.

Others used to criticize him as being “lazy.” The fact was, Denys read more than anyone I have ever met at work. He was diligent in pursuing his interests in art. He learned Greek and I have no doubt that he could follow a casual conversation in Chinese, and that’s without taking classes. I believe it’s more his inability to fit into the mold that irked people. He was a square peg in a round hole.

He was the first person I knew that made a conscious decision to stop spending money on things that we now call “just stuff.” But he obviously had an appreciation for the finer things in life.

He loved his mother, his sister and his brother. And yet, after his death, his brother told Jen that the last ten, fifteen years of Denys’ life was a blank to his family, a period that they knew nothing about.

Denys once told me that when he retired, he was going to buy a house and live cheaply in Southeast Asia where the sun always shines. He did indeed get to do that, only for two years and then he was gone.

I am sad to lose a friend, one who had interests so similar to mine. I hope his two years in retirement were peaceful and he did get to lead, for a bit, the life he had planned for for so long.

Beach at Costa Morena

I think of an all-inclusive holiday as a kind of “lazy person’s vacation” — one’s intention is not to see the sights, or study the local history, or get a feel of how the locals live — it is to take a week off doing nothing.  Of course, one can go on excursions; but I must say that most of the excursions I’ve gone on over the years have been trips to places that were created specially for the tourist trade.  There’s nothing authentic, or even vaguely interesting about them.  These days, when I go on an all-inclusive holiday, I spend all my time at the resort.

Over the years, the reception of guests both at the point of check-in and during the stay has been made so efficient that there is little interaction necessary between hotel staff and guests.  Upon arrival at the airport, one is met by the “hotel’s representative” (who, together with the porters who tag and put one’s luggage in the bus, incidentally, do not work at the hotel; they stay at the airport and their job is to meet every group that arrives and put them on the bus).  One is given an envelope with the ID bracelet and the Guest Information Card inside.  One is instructed to put on the bracelet and fill out the Information Card during the ride to the hotel.  On arrival at the hotel, the Information Cards are collected and turned over to Reception.  Since all the luggage has been tagged with one’s room number, those will be unloaded and taken to the room by the bell staf.  All this leaves the tourist totally free of any responsibility — it is like, You have arrived at your destination and your mindless holiday starts now. If you should lose your way while looking for your room in the extensive grounds, there are always staff driving people-movers around on some errand who will gladly give you a ride.

The theme of efficiency and functionality extends to the rooms.   All the guest rooms are housed in two-storey  concrete blocks that require minimal maintenance.  The rooms themselves, from resort to resort, are almost identical — a bed, two wicker chairs, a wicker table, wicker bedside tables and that would be it.  The idea behind all this seems to be that no one will want to spend any length of time in their room other than for the night’s sleep, so, there’s really no point in equipping the rooms to real five-star standards.  This is not to say that the rooms are unpleasant in any way.  They lack character, that’s all, but they are easy to clean (for the staff) and, if some drunken guest should go berserk, any damaged furniture can be quickly replaced.  Despite the care that goes into the landscaping around the blocks, it is hard to shake off the impersonal feel.  Words like “tourist factory,” “battery cages” come readily to mind.

The hotel lobby is dominated by the bar.  The Reception and Housekeeping are off to one side — one hardly notices them since one does not need to have any dealings with them until checkout time.  The bar never, ever stops.  The buffets and the restaurants are only open during meal times, but the bar is humming every single minute.  To their credit, all the bar-tenders that I have come across in Cuba are knowledgeable, attentive and humorous, and they all make awesome cappuccinos.  There is nowhere else in the resort where you will be more willing to tip.

The heart of all the resorts is the pool.  I truly believe that at the resort we were at last, (Melia Las Dunas in Cayo Santa Maria) there was a chaise longue for every single guest that wanted one.  Of course, whether it was in the shade, or near the bar, or faced the direction that you wanted was another matter.  So, yes, people did get up before breakfast to stake their claim by putting their belongings on the chaise of their choice, though they might not want to go lie on it until late afternoon.  At this resort, the pool-cleaner was always on duty.  He was there setting up the cleaning hoses before breakfast.  He was there in the pool vacuuming all day or checking the water quality, and then, when the pool was closed and everyone was going off to dinner, he was there re-arranging the chaise longues and doing some more vacuuming.  He was probably the hardest-working employee on the entire resort; yet, surprisingly, I did not see anyone tipping him.

Ah, tipping — the life blood of the Cuban resort.  One sometimes gets the feeling tha t everything that is done for the guests is done with a tip in mind.  It starts with the bus-driver that takes one from the airport to the resort, and of course, one cannot overlook the local guide that accompanies the bus.  There is the gardener who waits to give a flower to the ladies and to say good morning to them, the waiters in the lobby who are very quick  to remove one’s half-drained glass and replace it with a fresh drink, the housekeeping staff who do not replace all the bath towels they remove from one’s room so that when one asks for and has the towel brought to the room, one is obligated to tip, the bank employee who points to the loose change left  behind by the last guest and states, “This is my tip,”  and, of course, there is the towel exchange guy who dispenses with all hints and uncertainty by putting a box marked “Tips” right on his counter.  It is not that I grudge the employees the tip.  In Cuba, everyone, irrespective of rank, makes only $25 (U.S.) a month.  It is only natural that they seek to supplement their meagre income with tips from the tourists.  What they do not seem to understand is, good and attentive service deserves to be rewarded, whereas basic level service is what the customer is entitled to and has paid for.  If the hotel is committed to providing fresh towels at the pool everyday, then there is no reason for the towel guy to expect a tip when a guest exchanges a used towel for a fresh one.

All this is not to say that we don’t enjoy our time at all-inclusive resorts; these are mere personal observations.  In fact, Cuba is one of those places where the sun always shines, the sea is always blue and the air always fragrant.  If you take the trouble to go to Havana, you will also see competent art work in public squares and public buildings and, of course, the unique colonial architecture in the old town.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat entered my consciousness in 1967 when news photos of Jacqueline Kennedy’s visit to the ruins were published in the local papers. I remember I marveled at the architecture that I saw in the pictures; they appeared ancient to me and I wondered about that great civilization that created them. I could not quite understand at the time why I had not heard much about Angkor Wat before.

When we finally decided to take a short trip to Cambodia in 2007, I found that instead of feeling the excitement of having a lifetime’s longing fulfilled, I was of two minds about actually taking the trip.

In the forty years since I first saw that picture of Jackie Kennedy standing in front of Angkor Wat, I have heard about The Killing Fields, I have met Cambodian expatriates who suffered unspeakable privations under the Khmer Rouge, I have seen pictures of the map of Cambodia composed of the skulls of those killed by Pol Pot’s genocidal regime, I have seen TV programs on child prostitution and sex tourism in Cambodia — in short, I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in Cambodia and I had some difficulty about spending money in a country where the government was still corrupt and where those who perpetrated horrendous crimes against their fellow countrymen were still walking free.

There were also the logistical problems. Flights to and from Siem Reap and Phnom Penh were limited in number; unless I was prepared to spend a couple of weeks there, it looked like I would have to fly in on Tuesday and leave on Friday. It did not feel like enough time for doing what I wanted to do in the two cities.

Siem Reap

Siem Reap would have no existence apart from the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. It appeared to me that the entire town as it stands now was built to accommodate the tourist trade. There was hotel after hotel after hotel all along the way from the airport to the city centre. When we arrived in Siem Reap, it was early evening and in the twilight, it seemed to me that there were chaotic crowds everywhere outside the hotels, milling around.

After check-in and a quick dinner, we decided we would stroll around the city centre to get “a feel of the place.” Some of the local stores were still open; many of these appeared to be video rental stores and there were several barber shops and some clothing stores. Business was certainly not brisk,; many of the stores did not have their interior lights on. There was little merchandise on display and almost no shoppers. Eventually, closer to the Le Meridien Angkor, we came across an entire block that was given over to stores that catered to tourists. There were the usual silver trinkets, wood carvings, and local silk. What was interesting about all these stores was that they all carried a range of books and videos on the history, social history of the Khmer Rouge and Khmer society, biographies of all of the Khmer Rouge leaders — probably every book that has ever been written about the rule of the Khmer Rouge — a collection that I had never seen before and have not seen again outside Cambodia. It suggested to me that, business opportunity aside,  there was a need among Cambodians to bring the story of those years of great suffering to the outside world.

It soon got dark and we decided to walk back to the hotel. It was then we noticed that the street lamps were not on and we were walking mostly in the dark. We did not feel unsafe as we kept to the main roads. The only inconvenience was after we turned off the main road to walk down the side street that led to our hotel, we realized that the sidewalks were all broken up so that we had to walk on the road. By the looks of it, the sidewalks had fallen into disrepair for a long time and it did not look like it would be re-paved any time soon.

Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

Much like what I had noticed outside the hotels we passed the evening before, there was much crowding at the entrance to Angkor Thom — the largest of the temple ruins. There were the usual vendors of souvenirs, bottled water and snacks; added to these, were several large groups of Korean and Chinese tourists blocking the walkway, as well as an elderly white couple  riding atop an elephant which everyone had to give way to.

My first feeling upon seeing the huge stone Giants guarding the causeway that leads to the main entrance of Angkor Thom was dismay. Although, I believe, all of the 54 Giants were still standing, the faces, arms and legs of many had been badly eroded. Where there used to be facial features, there was now only a blank. It was no longer possible to tell if they all had the same facial expression at one time or if they all had different faces and idiosyncrasies at the time they were carved. The naga, the huge stone serpent that the Giants were supposed to be holding was missing many sections, so that the Giants, instead of being linked by the naga, now stood as individual statues along the causeway.

Bayon, the “Hall of the Proper Conduct” where the gods gathered at the heart of Angkor Thom, must have been magnificent at its prime. Today, the stone floor was uneven, many of the stones having broken off or eroded. It was necessary to walk around it with great care, and there was really just one route a person could take to get from one side to the other. Despite the dilapidation and the fact that it was overrun by tourists who obviously had little respect for the place as a once holy site, it was clearly still a working, everyday shrine. In front of the the statue of Buddha right in the centre of Bayon, one found offerings of fresh incense sticks, candles, and flowers — gifts which could only have been put there by the local people who would not be distracted from performing their religious duties by the hordes of noisy tourists. That, to me, was a comforting thought.

Ta Prohm

If not for “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” I don’t know how many tourists would make the effort to visit Ta Prohm. Here, most of the buildings had collapsed and nature had resumed its dominance. It was a magnificent sight, nevertheless — the roots of one single banyan tree wrapping round an entire courtyard in a stranglehold, a roll of stone columns half fallen as if the collapse had only occurred yesterday. Everywhere I looked, I was reminded of P. B. Shelley’s poem Ozymandias,

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

John said that Ta Prohm reminded him of the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza and they made him wonder about what had happened to those once-mighty civilizations. My feelings, though, are different. At Chichen Itza, one does not feel as strongly the power of nature; some of the damage there, like the building that was blown up by a French archaeologist looking for hidden treasure, was inflicted by man. At Ta Prohm, one feels that nature has returned and reclaimed the lease. There is a lot of restoration going on in the temples in Siem Reap, but Ta Prohm is not a site that can be restored. Any attempt at cutting down the trees and removing the roots will cause the ruins to finally, totally collapse.

Of all of the temples, Angkor Wat was the best maintained. Restorations efforts on this site probably started back in 1960, if not before. Just like at Bayon, it is still used as a temple for worship by the locals. For them, Angkor Wat does not belong on a postcard or a travel video; it’s still very much a part of their lives. Much more than at Bayon, though, one saw the influence of the Hindu religion. The most famous bas relief, The Churning of the Sea of Milk, is a Hindu creation myth. Yet, today, it is used as a Buddhist temple and houses giant statues of Buddha. As we were leaving, the guide showed me where shrapnel from Khmer Rouge guns hit one of the stone steps. I have also read in various guide books that many of the temple ruins in the outlying areas have not yet been entirely cleared of landmines planted by the Khmer Rouge. It’s distressing to think that the revolutionary soldiers of the Khmer Rouge would risk the total destruction of the main cultural heritage of the country in their effort to crush their enemies.

Tonle Sap

We were taken by car through the countryside to Tonle Sap, which sits smack in the middle of the huge alluvial plain formed by the mighty Mekong. On the way, we saw houses built on stilts so that the lives of the people living in them would not be majorly affected by the annual flooding of the river. We saw stalls by the roadside where petrol was sold in two-litre plastic bottles because few people could afford to buy a lot of petrol at one go at a gas station. While there was poverty, it did not strike me that people were feeling abject. It might have something to do with the fact that they were still able to make a living fishing in the lake. On the lake itself, people lived as nomads on water. There were houseboats moored along the waterway where groups of women could be seen repairing fishnets, or doing what it was that fishermen usually did. There was even a floating school with a floating basketball court. As our boat moved farther out into the lake, vendors of soft drinks, bottled water and snacks in speedboats quickly surrounded our boat. Our guide muttered under his breath that it was best that we did not buy anything from anyone; it would just be too much trouble.

Both at Tonle Sap and on the grounds of the temples back in Siem Reap, it was evident that tourism had had no small impact on the lives of the locals. Rather than being in school on a school day, many young children were selling bottled water to tourists for $1 U. S. per bottle. In restaurants, most of the waiters were young teenagers who had learned enough basic English to take orders and answer simple questions from the patrons. I am sure that there is money to be made from the tourists, and any family in such an impoverished country would find the extra income a great help. I could not help feeling concern, though, about the future of these young people. Would they spend the rest of their lives selling bottled water to tourists because that’s how you make a quick buck? Would it not serve their country better if these young people could go to school and get a proper education which will prepare them for life for when tourists tire of visiting this part of the world?

Floating Village at Tonle Sap

Phnom Penh

My reason for going to Phnom Penh was to go to S-21 or Tuol Sleng, the Genocide Museum. After all that I had read and heard, I felt I could not go to Cambodia and bypass the place.

If Siem Reap appeared chaotic, then Phnom Penh was many more times more disorderly. There seemed to be a lot more commercial activity here compared to Siem Reap, which was clearly a provincial town. Along the main road that led from the airport into town, there were many new medium-sized office buildings. As it was close to dinner time, there was much hustle and bustle in the streets.

Our driver, who did not know a word of English, picked us up from the airport; our guide was nowhere in sight. I was surprised that just before we arrived at our hotel, the driver stopped the car, pointed to the great, big fortress that took up an entire block and said, “American Embassy.” I had no idea why he did that, maybe he thought we were Americans. It was hard to tell from his tone of voice if he was merely pointing out what he thought was a landmark, or that he was trying to communicate the sense of violation of having a military edifice that belonged to a foreign country right in the heart of his own capital city.

The next morning, our guide was waiting for us in the lobby. He was a real smooth operator. He told us that he was a civil servant, but he was working as a tour guide on the side. The tour lasted only half a day, and at the end of that, he blithely announced that he was going back to the office where he was sure he would find no work waiting for him.

Tuol Sleng, I was told, was not on the itinerary. If we wanted to go there, we would have to give up going to either the palace or the national museum. If was an easy choice. We decided against the palace.

Tucked behind the main road on one of the side streets, Tuol Sleng looked no different from any regular school building in any Southeast Asian country. (This torture centre was really a school and its dreaded director, Duch, who, upon the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, converted to Christianity and managed to escape retribution, was a schoolteacher.) The buildings had been cleaned up and whitewashed. It felt like there had been some attempt at “sanitizing” the experience, at imposing some form of order to a national experience that must have felt senseless, random and fearful at the time it happened and for years afterward. How else could this page of history be shared with the rest of the world? Inside there were rows upon rows of photographs of the victims — men, women, children who looked at the camera with blank faces and no expressions in their eyes. Did they feel no fear or had they already given up hope? Did they wonder why they had been brought to the centre for interrogation or didn’t they care any more? It was hard to imagine who could have gone on in their minds. According to statistics provided in a brochure for visitors, in a four-year period, 10, 499 people died within the walls of the one-time school. It was the first time in my life that I came face to face with evidence of the evil man is capable of committing against his fellow men. I was stunned by the scale of it all. John told me he had to leave, it was really getting to him.

Rules for Detainees at Tuol Sleng

In the afternoon, after a rather expensive and not quite up to par lunch at the famed Foreign Correspondents’ Club; we decided to walk back to the hotel. It would take something like forty minutes, but it allowed us an opportunity to just walk around the streets and get a feel of the city.

There were a lot of small, dingy hotels all along the promenade by the side of the Mekong. These would be the places where the budget traveler would stay. Instead of the carefree, park-like atmosphere that my guidebook talked about, the famous promenade felt tired and run-down. We didn’t see many of the French colonial-style houses, probably because we were in the wrong part of town. The people we encountered did not seem hopeful or contented. Just like in the child vendors we came across at Angkor Wat, there was a strong sense of uncertainty, as if they were not very sure if the opening up of the country to masses of tourists was what they really wanted.

In the morning, we flew out. It was a quick visit and I know I did not really get to know Cambodia the way I would like to; nevertheless, it was a trip like no other I have taken. It has got me thinking about the role of history and the preservation of a people’s history, the assumption that most of us have about the good in human nature, consumerism and tourism, and human dignity. I came away feeling challenged. Maybe that’s what traveling and seeing the world should be all about.

I did not find this house likable on first sight. It looked dowdy, old fashioned, even a bit frumpy – somewhat in the manner of an elderly, widowed aunt who’s living on her own. It didn’t seem to me to be a good match for the tasteful, stylish new owners who were about to move in.

The second time I saw the house, it had had a make-over. It was not what would be known on TV as an “extreme makeover” – where the person goes under the knife, and returns with a totally different face or something. It was more along the lines of, “Let’s see how we can get you to dress differently to bring out your natural physical advantages.”

This house certainly has natural physical advantages galore. Now that the drapes have gone, the light has taken over, so that being in the house is like talking to an open, direct person, where you don’t need to read between the lines or worry about what’s the right thing to say. It is an honest house without a hidden agenda.

It is interesting that those features which contributed to the sense of dowdiness now give the house its character. The wooden deck with its peeling paint, for example, fits perfectly into the environment – the rushes, the lagoon at the bottom of the slope, the birds that come to feed. It gives a sense of a life lived, of life stories having unfolded in front of its eyes, but it has not become jaded.

There is, too, a strong sense of serenity in the house. There is nothing frantic, fast-paced about it. It is an inviting spot for reading an interesting book, daydreaming, idle chat and being oneself. There are no chairs that one sinks deep into or overstuffed sofas; the comfort one feels is part of the aura that emanates from it. This is a house where happiness resides.

House in an Industrial City

I feel rather sorry for this poor house because its owners don’t seem to like it very much; and really, it is through no fault of its own. It’s a bit like being an adopted child who has failed to please her new family.

From the very beginning, this house was assigned a difficult task – to be a “show home” but without anyone being aware of it. It is a bit like those little girls whose mothers dress them up in expensive designer children’s wear so that people will go “ooh” and “aah” and say, “What a pretty child you have there!” But a child dressed in designer clothing cannot forget her ladylike manners, and that precludes fun, games and having a good time.

I always get a strong feeling that the house is a bit lost because it hasn’t been asked to fulfill the function for which it was created – to be a home to its owners. It is a fully-equipped house, but daily living hasn’t been able to make it presence felt. There are few indications of what the people who live here do on a day to day basis. Nothing is ever out of place. There isn’t a half-read magazine lying around anywhere, there is no daily newspaper on the kitchen table, there are no indications of what books the owners have been reading or what music they have been listening to. Every item that is taken out of the storage cupboard is quickly put back inside. Neat and new as the house is, expensive as the fixtures are, the house feels sterile.

To return to the analogy of an adopted child – a child who is loved returns the love; a child can only bring happiness if he is allowed to live in a happy environment. Life, of course, can bring us heartaches, frustration, and stress, but it is also where we will find passion, love, happiness, and contentment. The deal, though is, you can’t have one without the other. If we are won’t let heartaches and frustration into our lives, then happiness and contentment will turn their backs on us too. Life is messy, and it is mirrored by the state of the homes that we live in. A home where the signs of living are not evident can never be a happy home.