Life is busy once again. It is not only with travel and the usual days' distractions, but I have the thrill of transition in my life. I have found that times of change have always been quantum leaps towards new, exciting and beneficial times in my life. Also, Heidi and I are due to be married on June 1st after I return, I am moving out of my little 14 foot by 16 foot log cabin that I have occupied after my Boeing layoff (thank you, thank you) and entrance into college for my two year Environmental Science (aquatic invertebrates - a passion since the 70's). Within hours of my arrival back in the U.S next weekend my three sons will arrive at my cabin to help move my few large possessions with the truck that I gave my eldest since Heidi and I needed to downsize from our collective 4 vehicles at our new home.
Heidi has a much larger task of nearly emptying her two bedroom house with fenced yard and garage in order for us both to move into a small 2 bedroom house about 1/4 mile "above" to location of my little cabin. It has a spectacular view up to the glaciers on Whitehorse Mtn perched above the Stillaguamish Valley. Almost four years ago,I emptied my 3 bedroom house with a full basement and upstairs laden with 30 years of possessions and memorabilia. amazingly, after I finished giving away, selling (much more fun "watching" for single Mom's, young families, grandmothers to essentially give away) and taking ot the dump nearly THREE tons (yes, 6,000 pounds) of un-used possessions. Afterwards, I regretted very little of this dispensation of earthly goods. It felt sooo good to be unencumbered. I had little idea of what direction my life would turn after college, and I wanted to be light in substance for flexibilities sake.
I have really enjoyed that little place of mine. It was only 15 minutes from town, Arlington, WA and 20 minutes from Interstate 5, the main north-south corridor through Puget Sound. I am surrounded by tall western hemlocks and red cedars there, most 100 to 200 feet tall. A small ephemeral stream flows directly out the back of my cabin window. The street (gravel) is a dead end loop (how can a beautiful arbored road be considered "dead-end"?) that is silent after the few cars hasten to work in the morning, and the din returns for a time in the afternoon. It has been a refuge betwixt trips overseas for Save the Children, 17 countries and it must be towards 300,000 miles since I started with them as a volunteer in 2003.
I recall sitting in a meeting room of NPower in 2003 listening to a proposed solution being offered ot the Country Office director of El Salvador for Save the Children. I was actually anecdotal to the meeting, hoping to stay closer technologically during my occupational sabbatical, than in a distant position relative to the bright young IT folk I saw as I exited the Boeing Company as a database designer after nearly 12 years. In that NPower meeting, I recalled them discussing PDA's (never seen one, but had heard of the term, "Palm Pilot") and a suggested PDA survey forms software program called Pendragon that would be much easier to use than a SQL Server design requiring a high degree of technological support.
The suggested program used Microsoft Access as a back-end database, so when they turned ot me and asked if I could do "it", I said, "sure!". Actually, I was not quite clear on what"it" encompassed. I was told to get my passport and travel to a foreign country in a couple of weeks. I was left the laptop that had the SQL Server product on it and I was asked if I could also figure out why it would not work (I figured that this was a test). Boy, did I luck out. All that was needed was a severing and re-attaching of the database objects.
Well, I have been to foreign countries before. A couple of forays across the Canadian border into Vancouver (those red street signal lights seem to be synchronized to "my" sense of traffic flows. Also, I had seen Tijuana, a less than attractive city bordering my home town of San Diego (left with my ex-wife and four small children in 1989 to find some green and moisture from the dry, brown 'burb).
But I was unprepared for El Salvador. I took a quick class in Spanish and received the most dismal grade ever in my multiple college careers. I received the PDA's just two days before my flight, so I quickly laid them out on my dining room table to charge their batteries and perform some utility configurations. I begin reading in earnest the Pendragon software manual in-flight.
I was up for 30 hours for that trip (no problem) and the following day awakened to swarms of parrots circling over the city of San Salvador. That morning, I was introduced to the Save the Children office and provided my memorized speech in Spanish that simply gave my name, where I lived and the names and ages of my children. I concluded with how I was honored to have El Salvador be the first visit to a non-adjacent to the U.S. foreign country. As I sat town, the staff, and those who had traveled in from the field locations, arose and gave a seemingly heart-felt applause. I recall that I quickly retreated to my upstairs office wondering about this ovation. Was it real, or "normal" in a Latin country. I asked later and was told that the staff was thrilled that I would even consider traveling ot their tiny, impoverished for my first trip abroad. Hmmm, something is about to be changed, and I think that it will be me.... More ancient history later.
I am a morning person. Ah, freshly drawn coffee with the morning light slanting through my cabin. this morning, I awoke ("Que tal amaniciste?" - meaning did you awaken well? with empahasis on the awakening, not the sleep) refreshed, showered and shaved and hasten down ot breakfast. I was really looking forward ot this as this hotels' dining area is situated on a large balcony overlooking the city.
On my last visit of 2005, I sat down to a table and began looking for the coffee. I am a coffee lover and I regularly consume a french press of coffee each morn (you can make it stronger with full delightful coffee flavor without the bitterness). Since Haiti is a french-speaking nation, proper decorum is emphasized at such an elegant hotel ("no shorts or T-shirts in the dining area!") A very small cup was at my table which would contain two gulps (I guess that I should of said sips) of coffee after pouring from the waiter hovering nearby. Well, after his needing ot re-fill my cup in quick succession, he just brought the carafe from his nearby waiters' station and left it on my table ot my delight. The next morning, I spied the carafe of delightful pleasures and just picked it up and brought it to my table. Of course, I was a most un-civilized person in the Continental sense ( I really am often to negligent of manners), I had removed my new (to me) waiters' livelihood and he came right over and and placed his hand on the carafe to return it to his station. Uh-oh, don't touch the coffee buddy. We struggled lightly and momentarily, I was triumphant. I was given a glare and once again I was the ugly American. Hey, we're talking coffee here. I had given much thought ot this tussle in the last year, so upon arrival at my same table this morning I very politely "asked" the waiter (whom i recognized as the beneficent one from 2005) if I might please have a carafe of coffee for my table. This request was all in french, as a leftover from my four years of french language in secondary school in the 1960's and entailed most of what I remembered. I had hoped the using the lingua franca and requesting it beforehand that I might avoid the situation of last year. Soon, I had my own carafe, a delightfully buttery croissant (ummm) and a view of Port au Prince on a sunny day.
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