Wandering around London...

We went to Madame Toussaud's Wax Gallery but there was a three hour wait, so we got a picture with this Astralian guy in an orange wig trying to talk with a Cockney accent (he works there, believe it or not).

Then we went to the King's Cross Train Station, which any of you with children will know is where Harry Potter and his friends caught the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 3/4s. Natalie is a big HP fan and I enjoyed the books tremendously (on my Air Egypt flight from Khartoum to Cairo I sat beside a young Egyptian woman who was reading a Harry Potter book). And Melanie knows how to read, thats as close as she comes to the Harry Potter phenomenon. A highlight of the trip so far.

Then we went to the theatre last night. Since the five of us can never agree on anything, Stephanie and Natalie went to see the Lion King (loved it); Melanie, Sandra and I went to see Wicked (I had a hard time following the plot but I loved Defying Gravity and one line in the second half made it all worthwhile (a tender love scene, in which Alphaba says "For the first time, I feel....wicked!" It was great).

Then back to our hostel for KFC and beer, naturally, and the girls checked their emails while I savoured the moment. Defying gravity.

Merry Old England

I'm in London with the girls and Sandra, on our first family reunion trip. I've been here before so the excitement for me is in seeing the girls after 3 months. Natalie, who works at Tim Hortons, brought me a box of double chocolate donuts. I ate three on the train back to our hostel. Yes we're staying in a six bed hostel, its like when we travelled when the kids were young and we all stayed in one hotel/motel room: kids and clothes and knapsacks and shoes and books and mp3 players and makeup and,,,were all over the place,

I've been eating a lot here I confess, we went to a pub last night for fish and chips and yesterday morning we had a big English breakfast with fried tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans (I just can't get away from them, can I?) and all the chocolate covered peanuts, chocolate bars etc. they brought me.

There's a lovely little square outide our hostel, the picture of Melanie and I is from there. Then we went for a walk through Hyde Park to see the Diana memorial, Prince Labert Hall, Kengsington Palace and the highlight of the day, squirrels that ran up to us as if they were going to eat out of our hand and then ran away. The jerks. Oh well, the girls liked them,

I'd forgotten how much teenagers sleep.

quick post

Did I mention that as i was driving through Juba the day beofre yesterday on the way to pick someone up that a monkey ran across the road in front of me, just like a dog would.

Holidaying in London, U.K.

I'm in London, England to meet my daughters (Sandra is along too) for nine days of R&R. It ws really hectic the last two weeks, I'll try to detail it over the next few days as the girls usually sleep in in the morning so I'll head over to this Internet Cafe and write something on my blog each day.

Today I had to go to the dentist for some emergency dental repairs, I broke off a part of a tooth on a piece of fried chicken a few weeks ago and it was bothering me so I got it patched up. After I got back here and checked my emails, I find that our "emergency dental coverage" only covers dental injury from being punched in the mouth, not from eating something. I guess I was expected to suffer until I returned home in Feb. Bureacrats!. I deal with 'em in the UN, I dealt with them at HQ, I dealt with them in my personal life...where do they find them all?

Wayne

Some random thoughts..and a few pictures

Some random thoughts this morning.

Just so you don't think I don't do anything over here, these photos are from inventory taking of the Regional Training containers, four in all, that we (Charita, Resistant and I, middle picture) did Saturday morning with some of the Regional training people. No, that is not a beer in my hand in the middle photo. And if it was, the observant among you would notice that the cap isn't off it. And as Mary hilariously called me "that little grinning-from-ear-to-ear BASTARD" because I've got these big smiles in every picture and lost all this weight without trying and am obviously having way too much fun over here, I thought I'd make sure I included one of me not smiling, just so you know the work here is hard.

Now for the random thoughts. First Heba has done a story on me and the mission that should be airing on CBC Radio tomorrow morning, Aug. 14th. It has some quotes from me, Bill Kelly the retired Mountie in UN Security here in Juba and some others. It sounds interesting, but then anything about me sounds interesting to me, so give it a listen and let me know what you think.

I also wanted to comment on the recognition Canadian police get here for our multiracial, multicultural policing. It doesn't hurt that our contingent is the only one with mixed cultures and ethnicities i.e. a black African-born member, a member of South Asian descent, a member with Portugese parents. And a previous mission member, William Chan, was obviously of Asian descent. Lots of nations and police agencies talk about being multi-cultural. We are. Everybody sees that. I'm really proud of that. let me gush for a moment. I'm really proud to be the Canadian Police contigent commander. I really like the guys I'm with, I consider them all good friends and I like a lot what we're bring to this mission. I wish I had twenty five more Canadian police officers to distribute to every team site.

I just wanted to comment on my uniform too. For me this has been “back in the blues”, the working uniform of the RCMP albeit modified a bit. I like the cargo pants even though they’re hot and I wish they were thinner. And I like wearing our working uniform shirt, the blue/grey one again. It feels like being a police officer in Richmond and UBC and Bella Bella and Kelowna and Cornwall. It feels good.

Another weekend, another going away party (sigh)

One of the unfortunate (!) aspects of being on a mission is that there always seems to be somebody "checking out", reaching their End Of Mission date which means a going away party. In this case it was two members of the Phillipino contingent, Lorenzo and Noel. Going away parties are usually happy affairs, everybody is happy to be going home. Lorenzo has a one month daughter he hasn't seen yet. And in the case of Phillipinos, a party means karaoke, all night long, interspersed with lots of dancing and lots of eating, OH MY GOD do they prepare a lot of food for a party. Enyways Mark Goode, Noel and I are bellowing out a Beatles song (I think) in the first picture, Heba and I are singing something or other in the second, Jas is humming along with Heba in the third. Actually Jas wouldn't sing no matter how much I tried to get him to. He doesn't want to look silly! Notice the hat that Heba is wearing in the pictures? Jas was wearing it by the end of the evening. He didn't look silly at all.

In the fourth picture Noel, Lorenzo and another guy and I are singing something or other, I don't know, the songs all kind of blend together after a while. In the last picture Jas, Heba and I posed with a bunch of the Philipino women that were there. Sigh.

It was also Heba's last night in town, she flew back to Khartoum yesterday to resume her serious journalism duties there. I'm going to miss having her here, she was like a surrogate daughter for my girls, it helped having her here when I was missing them. Tyseer, thanks for the loan of your daughter, it was a riot. I maybe didn't keep her locked up the whole time she was here but she seemed to have some fun with us.

No we don't party all the time on mission. Just in the evenings.

I'm going to bed.

I forgot to add something...

...to my last post. After a communal dinner we had at Robert the German's container on Sunday night (the Kraft puddings I made for dessert were a big hit!!), when we had all gone back to our containers, I got one of those real intense loneliness attacks that completely baffle me, I'd been with people all day and normally I need some alone time after that to order my thoughts and mull over what we'd talked about and what I'd learned during the day, but it just hit me as I was sitting at my table (maybe its sitting at my table that's doing this. Hmmm). Enyways, I ended up washing all the dishes from our dinner and a load of laundry by hand just to get over it. The feelings are so sudden and so intense it almost overwhelming; if I could phone an airline in Juba I'd probably call one in the middle of the night and make a reservation to come home. But it passes. Heba tells me that she has experienced these too, she's done a lot of extended travelling and I haven't, so its the first time I've encountered. As she says, all I wanted at that moment was some familiarity.

Heba has been a great friend through the last month or so, and I like her bluntness with me (another story for another time). If she'd only stopping calling my music leftover '80s aerobics songs...

Hiking in the mountains, all right, on the big hill behind Juba

On Saturday we decided to hike up the "mountain" behind Juba, Rock City (don't ask me), we being a group of us from the UN camp, some of whom had been up to the top, some of whom, like me hadn't. Actually two of our German colleagues, Robert and Gerhard, are leaving on Friday so we've been on a week-long going away ceremony with them. I'll talk about Friday night's going away party next but first I want to talk about Saturday's hike. Its my blog and I'll tell it in any order I want. All right that was childish but I'm more excited about the hike than the party, parties are getting to be old hat around here.

We didn't get away until after 4 which ultimately meant that we couldn't get to the top and back down before dark, so we quit about half way up. Nonetheless the view was spectacular and we're going to try it again this week before Robert and Gerhard leave. I'm already thinking ahead to we Canadians' Contingent Meeting and Medal Parade in Oct. and thinking that we should do this hike as part of the festivities then. So anyway, this is the group that started out, minus the photographer, nine of us in all. Yes the adventurous Heba, who has become a fixture around here came along as well. I mean, I let her out of the container where I keep her locked during the day at her mom's request. The second photo is the view from about halfway up the mountain back towards Juba. The third photo is obviously me with my explorer hat on stopping for a drink of water on a rocky stretch, and the fourth is me again in my explorer hat showing how tall the grass was. Yes I was afraid of stepping on a snake, this picture gives you an idea how high I would have jumped if I would have stepped on a snake, I would easily have cleared the top of the grass.

The fourth picture is Michelle (Belgian, French charm without the arrogance), myself and Robert relaxing and commiserating afterward at Robert's container (I stayed in Robert's container while he was in Germany on leave early last month. I bought him a case of beer in gratitude and I'm his friend forever. Actually I organized his going away party on Friday night and he was really touch how it turned out. Those sentimental Germans! But more about that next...)