It was one of those things that boggled the mind, the fact that I was leaving my house Monday morning and wouldn’t get to where I needed to be till Wednesday morning. But the trip was surprisingly easy, the thirty-six-or-so hours of itinerant homelessness unoppressive. It was not without surprises: at immigration in Vancouver I learned that I need a visa to transit in Canada. Ah. For the bargain price of two hundred Canadian dollars (the alternative was deportation), the nice immigration girl granted me a temporary resident permit so I could make my connection and later transit there again on my way back. She was so nice she took my picture for the permit and then pressed another button on the camera, saying, “Well, let’s just erase that one and try again.”

A legal resident of Canada for two weeks, and with six hours to kill before the next flight, I stepped through the airport’s sliding doors into sunlight and freedom. There was a raucous, chortling phone call to CC, and striding up and down the pavement singing Stevie Wonder songs till I thought it might look suspicious before going back into the climate control.

From Vancouver to Sydney via Honolulu, the back section of the plane was a Christian family from Singapore, complete with Bible, plus the Australian ice hockey team fresh from playing in Spain. I asked Stephen Gallagher, Australian ice hockey player, if they’d won, and he explained how they were no longer in Division Three but had managed to stay in Division Two. “Congratulations,” I said. “Wait, that’s a good thing, right?” By the end of the flight, some of the younger players were getting a little punchy. When the stewardess started making the bilingual announcement in French, one of them called out a nasal “haw-haw-haw.”

I got to Sydney and CC was getting us doughnuts from Krispy Kreme. In the car, the baby was as advertised.



Yesterday afternoon saw some of us stretched out on the red sofa reading a cookbook while others of us lay on the blue sofa reading a comic book, that is the sort of winter summer vacation it is.

It is the sort of vacation where in the sun we go out for juices and sandwiches and salads of sweet potatoes and beetroot; the sort of vacation where you put a pink sock on the baby’s head, because it’s funny, and then you laugh, because it’s funny; the sort of vacation where you sleep with the windows open to the cool night breeze, and when you wake up in the morning Matthew puts on the coffee and a Van Morrison record.

(“I thought Van Morrison was a band,” I said, looking at the album cover, “and had I thought he was a man I would’ve thought the whole thing was his surname.” “Like Von Morrison?” Matthew said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead. This is not the first time I have had this effect on a boy. And this is not the first time I have had this effect on Matthew. Matthew likes to put on music from back in the day, and when I say, “Who is this?” he repeats the question, all incredulous-like: “Who is this?” Sometimes he doesn’t even get to answering the question, he is so incredulous. Then I ask again, and he shakes his head. In any case, today, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead, he said, “Like Von Morrison? He’s not Dutch!”)

An excursion to Chinatown brings home bean cakes, bubble tea, chocolate rice, yoghurt candies, a can of lychees, a variety of buns, a box of meats, and some green sauce. That is the sort of winter summer vacation it is.