Jun - Sep 2010 News

Time sure flies when you are having fun but also when you are in a pickle! Many miles of flying were done since May. I undertook the longest flight ever from Adelaide to Montreal via Sydney and Vancouver! The hop from Sydney to Vancouver was 17 hours by itself. The seats in Air Canada are pretty comfortable in “cattle class” but even that got my coccyx decidedly painful in the end.


Carina finally finished her training before I left for Canada and took leave for the time that I was away. She has received her certificate III in Age Care but she has stopped working.

I arrived in Montreal on the weekend of the Canadian F1 race and all hotels were booked out except the ones close to the airport. I did not purchase any tickets for the F1 as by the time my trip was finalised and tickets issued, I could not purchase any on-line. The hotel was filled with F1 fans and they had a special shuttle bus from the hotel to the nearest underground which took us all the way to the Circuit. I only managed to get a black market ticket for the Saturday qualifying at a truly rip-off price but it was still worth it to experience the noise, smells and the excitement once again.

Work kicked off with a vengeance on Tuesday and fortunately the jet-lag was over when the COSPAS-SARSAT Meetings started. It is a truly international conference in the ICAO building, even the Russians were there. The security to enter the building was worse than at an airport. I dealt with ICAO when developing stuff for the Aero business and it was sort of strange to be “in the lions den”. It was really hard to follow all the discussion and decisions but a very useful experience and a good venue to make contact with all the influential people in the business of Search and Rescue.

Some say:” Montréal is more French than France”, at least they could speak a little more English than in France. The shopping malls are all underground and they have a total of 21km of it! I think it is to cope with winter when everything is snowed in. It was a pretty expensive city and the expectation to tip every service was pretty annoying.

After the conference I travelled to Ottawa where our company headquarters is. It was really a strange feeling to finally be inside the building that was considered to be our “Big League” opposition when I worked at Omnipless in Cape Town. Training was hard and fast but good.

Like Australia which has an odd place like Canberra as the Capital, Canada has Ottawa as their capital. It has many old colonial style buildings and traditions that were inherited from the Brits. The Queen even decided to make her visit to Ottawa and Winnipeg coincide with mine! May sound cool but the effect on security was not fun especially after the riots at the G20 meetings.

I was fortunate to fit in a stopover in Winnipeg with Johann and Lisda. All the children also made the trip from Saskatoon. It was heart-warming to see how their kids matured into really pleasant individuals. Their first grandson, Jannie, yes that is Jannie in Canada with a Canadian mom, was so cute! It was amazing to see this little fella follow the Afrikaans instructions from ouma and oupa. The weather was fantastic and we made a nice potjie on the Saturday. It is hard to imagine the area covered in snow as it was so hot, green and lush when I was there. Because of all the water in the area it was also very humid and I made quite a good acquaintance with the Canadian National Bird: GIANT mosquitoes.

After my return to Oz I spent two weeks in Canberra at the AMSA headquarters for more training. This was once again a lot of hard work, requiring after hours and weekends effort.

Carina did not want to have a big occasion for her big milestone birthday and in the end I decided to take her and Michael with me to Thailand. My tickets were organised by my work and it was tricky to get their ones aligned with mine. After a lot of &^%$ words it all worked out in the end and we flew out of Oz on her birthday. We arrived in Bangkok at midnight and spent 8 hours there and then flew out to Phuket early the next day. We stayed in the Patong Merlin Hotel and it was very spectacular, hot and humid. We did a lot of swimming and walking around in the Patong area. Everyone just want to sell you stuff and everything is so very cheap. We took a day trip by speedboat to Phi-Phi Island where we did snorkelling. We had a traditional Thai lunch and more shopping on one of the bigger islands and then had a bone jarring trip back to Phuket when the sea got a bit rough.

Four days was way too short but we had to get to Bangkok where I had to work the next week. While I was slaving away in the heat and humidity, Carina and Michael explored the city by sky train, minibus taxi (Toyota just like in RSA) and TUK-TUK. They also did a few tours in the area and visited ancient temples and did Elephant rides. There was also a boat ride and a visit to the Bridge over the River Kwai where they did a trip on the “death railway”.

I joined them for a tour to the Tiger Temple on the Saturday. It was bit disappointing but we had the chance to touch the tigers and walk with them. The Sunday before we left we used the MRT to visit JJ-Market; the biggest outdoor market in the world with more than 8000 stalls. You can buy just about anything there. If you can’t find it there, you should seriously analyse why you wanted it in the first place. It reminded me of the Koelie-market in Durban but just much bigger.

After our return Michael had to present a diary and photos that captured his experiences during the trip. He was pretty chaffed with the idea of not having to go to school. As with everything here that is completely over regulated: we had to get special permission to take him out of school and agreed to do home schooling for those periods. We even had to purchase the training manuals.

No sooner had we returned and Carina and I were off to Nambour (near Brisbane) to celebrate an old friend’s 50th. It was great to see L’Marie after so many years. We met in high school and I last saw her in 1974. She recognised my name on the SA-Australian website in 2008 and made contact. It was great to meet her two sons Awie and Darius, his wife Tanya and her family. I met many other great Afrikaners and it appears that they also stick and party together like us here in Adelaide. I could count the Ozzies at the party on my one hand. I did a sheep on the spit, one that I was looking forward to since planning my own 50th in RSA in 2008. It fell through when we moved to Oz in July.

It is good to have a bit of time at home again till end of October.