4920 Darcy Road, Courtenay, B.C.

Finally we have moved into a new place.

It is on Vancouver Island just outside the town of Courtenay, directly on the other side of the ferry from Powell River. Our "yard" is a 5.2 acre smallholding near the end of a cul-de-sac (Darcy Road) and next to a Blueberry farm. We're renting a Racher-style, 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom, open-plan, cedar-post place with a double garage that includes a handy space (which I have claimed and turned into an office).




Here is the Google Maps link: http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Courtenay%2C%20B.C.&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl

It's good to know the tide is slowly changing.

Woertsmannetjie Begins - Part I

Ziets Productions take you on a harrowingly realistic, 2-part tour through the origins of one of our world's most amazing self-proclaimed superheroes...
*Featuring special guest performances by Family and Friends.

Woertsmannetjie Begins - Part II

1 month to the nuptial...

OK, July 8th has come and gone, leaving us with a month before the big day. Despite some unexpected changes, summer colds and necessary employment, things are coming along well and everything seems to be...progressing.

Caila is currently visiting her Grandma, Mom and Jana, looking for a wedding dress that you could wear again after the day and generally enjoying some time to herself. This past weekend she was "invited" along to Salt Spring Island for a camping trip and a visit to the market by some of the ladies from her old sorority (for lack of a better word), which turned out to involve blue hair, a tiara and lace gloves and strange men eating candy off her wrist - and this is before the Tequila came out of hiding! She had a great time though and it does my heart so much good to see my princess smile that broadly.

Paul came back from Myanmar a married man! A cyclone struck the country and the lady he had been building a relationship with over e-mail and the phone needed rescuing - so off he raced (minus the white steed of course) to save her from the less-than-best conditions over there. Mrs. Swe Swe Myint Holbrook arrived in Canada, wide-eyed and understandably disorientated after her first international journey. Soon enough she started adapting to Lund-life and now ( a mere couple of weeks later
) she has become and invaluable resource; helping out with the gardens, cooking, cleaning and occupying Paul's free time. She is an outgoing, wonderfully-friendly and intelligent individual who worries way too much about her spoken English (which is perfectly understandable). At 26-years she has undoubtedly seen sights we have not and lived a life so far removed from what we are used to that at times I want to take her by the shoulders and ask her question after question after question. But there will be time enough for that in the future seeing as how she is now part of the family.

I just finished a roofing job with a friendly fellow named John Edwards and consider the experience gained more valuable than the renumeration, although the latter will go to finance our "honeymoon" in Lund. We have decided to take over the cabin we rented for my parents after they have gone and will spend most of August (finally) enjoying the sights and activities the Sunshine Coast has to offer. Caila will most likely try and do some more work on her thesis and I will try my best to keep my honeymooning hands and comments to myself - but there will be late mornings and much chocolate, of that you can be sure.

At the house Paul has been putting in a big effort on the new bathroom and it seems set to actually be completed and useable during the wedding. It's awesome to have a hot shower at home, let me tell you. I have a few final touches to put on the outhouse (like a roof and back wall) and soon there will be another work party to get the final things sorted out. Some efforts are continuous, like searching for cheap mattrasses, wine stoppers, glasses to drink the wine out of and an amplifier that can carry the speakers. But other things have fallen into place conveniently and semi-miraculously. I found my monkey suit by chance (pretty much exactly what I was looking for) and for next to nothing, Susan dropped by with our Raspberry/Currant wine and offered to help us find fresh salmon (many many thanks Susan), the last of the accommodation hassles was confirmed and thankfully Tannie Chrissila won't have to sleep on the doorstep of Piet and Drien's cabin after all.

That kind of brings us up to date with pre-Nuptial life in Lund. Here's to sunny weather and safe fun for all come August 8th.

Alone at last!

Thursday afternoon and Paul has been sent off to SE Asia, Sophie (the dog we are looking after) found after a panicked search and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Silver Skull just about finished downloading. The rain has finally come to give relief from the dryness and offers the perfect excuse not to go work, so SuperP has some time to catch up with personal chores.

We have been housesitting an amazingly beautiful octagonal home owned by new friends Coco and Trisha. With the sun only going down around 9:30, we've been enjoying sunset views of the Malaspina Strait while the two kittens (Leo & Quinn) wreak havoc on everything that crosses their path. More than that though we have been loving a bit of privacy. It has been more than 2 years since we've had a place we can call our own and the pressures are starting to get to us.

Time is moving fast again. It is June and the wedding is 2 months away! At the house we have settled for replacing the ladder to the 2nd floor with stairs, but the list of tasks is still long and daunting. Finish siding the house, complete the porch and get the new bathroom up and running. And now Paul has set off and we only half-jokingly wonder if everything will get finished?!?! Oh well, if it doesn't it doesn't. Disappointingly many of the invited friends are living lives of their own and cannot find their ways over the Lund, so we've had to adapt our mindsets. It may not be a huge party, but we plan to make the most of it and stylishly celebrate all night long! At least the Musketiers (Kennedy, Larry, Johan and Charl-Ziets) will all make it, constituting a reunion a decade in the making! And on PrincessC's side it seems like the ladies from her past are going to roll a few surprises out in front of her. Viva!

This Master's degree is getting a bit long in the tooth now and I can see Caila's anxiety and frustrations growing. But I am SUPER proud of her and the way she's taken on this mammoth task. I cannot say that her dedication, creativity and resourcefullness is sexy, but it certainly is admirable. (On a side note, same goes for Mickey D and his MBA - the "admirable" part not the "sexy" part.) That she does manage to remain as smiley, sweet and sympathetic to others simply shows the quality of her character.

Wish I could say the same about my adaptation to Lund-life. After 2 months I finally found my feet and now it almost seems normal to me, but every now and again I still stumble over examples of how this is not the place I grew up in. The rugby helps and more surf trips will serve to soften the xenophobia, but there are days when all I want to do is fly back to SA/Taiwan/Indo/Bali...anywhere really.

And then comes June and a month of having space of our own and summer sports and friendly fun and everything seems ... better ... again. Guess I'd better stop this blogging and go enjoy!

Video of Caila's speech at Martin Rossander's life celebration (22 June 2008).

Summer to winter, hot to cold.

SA to Canada. For the purpose of immigrating. For the purpose of starting a new home. For the purpose of getting Paul's house ready for the wedding in August. Big tasks, all of them.

And tomorrow is April Fool's Day...

2008 - The Year of the Rat

A freezing, uncharacteristic-for-this-late-in-March wind is blowing outside Nancy's Bakery and soon I have to jump into Godfrey (our "new" Ford Aerostar Sport minivan) to meet with professional gardeners regarding gardening before rugby practice, which we of the Otago Rugby Club need before Sunday's game.



Continual palingenesis indeed. It feels like we tried to squish a lifetime into the last 5 months. From Taiwan to Canada to SA to Canada to USA and back, with a few more USA-and-back's thrown in for good measure. And now, these are our Canadian surroundings and our new life. For a while at least. Until August. Until the Nuptial.