a unique perspective on this crazy world

Archive for April, 2013

DO talk to strangers ;)

Maybe not when you’re five 🙂  but my life would be a lot poorer if I hadn’t learned how to talk to strangers.  And I wouldn’t have an obsession with crawfish 😉

As my regular readers have learned to accept, we are time travelling again – and using geography as a tool to tie together disparate experiences.

So I am writing about New Orleans sitting in the airport in Panama City drinking premium rum (12 year old Abuelo – definitely a discovery!).  And crawfish is on my mind because I finally had some at the airport in Houston.

That is the beauty of travel.  I wasn’t planning to be in Houston last month when I was in New Orleans.  But, while I was trying to find a decent glass of beer and hear some jazz, I was eavesdropping on a lively conversation between some exuberant locals and guy with a questionable haircut and a hard to place accent.

But I mostly hang out in bars for the entertainment value – and chance to engage in lively discourse and meet locals.

I am very quick to smile and that gets people’s attention.  The mystery guy turned out to be Finnish and he was eating oysters from the Gulf.

I keep trying to love oysters but so far I remain on the fence.  But I have a lot of great memories that involve oyster eating so I think they ARE special 🙂

The Louisiana guys were making the poor Finnish guy feel bad that he had overpaid for his gulf oysters while they consume them by the sack for practically nothing.

What was more interesting to me was the discussion about crawfish.  Apparently it was crawfish season in the gulf and I determined that I should have some even if I didn’t exactly know what they were 🙂

I did manage a crawfish étouffé while I was in New Orleans but my time was too limited to seek them out again and really confirm exactly what a crawfish tasted like.  (But I did manage to engage in a lively conversation with the Finnish stranger about multiculturalism and the virtue of speaking lots of languages…)

Life is full of serendipity!  So there was a proper seafood restaurant in the Houston airport right next to my gate.

I think I got a few tourist points when I asked the server if it was still crawfish season.  It was!

They were deep-fried (welcome to the south :)) but I still got a much stronger impression of their flavour and texture.  And – if you share my fondness for shellfish – they are a great addition to your repertoire.

And I’m still not 100% sure how to describe them.  They are bigger than a shrimp, smaller than a prawn and not at all like a langoustine as I had imagined from the bar conversation.  The thing they most closely resemble is a spot prawn – a short-term delicacy of my home region.  Both are really worth trying, more fragile and succulent than ordinary shellfish.

I talked to lots of strangers in New Orleans.  It has become my new modus operandi when I travel.  My ten year old self is still in shock!!!

I think it’s a great example of how any human is actually capable of change.  I certainly support the proposition that you can’t change someone and should never enter a relationship with that as one of the goals in your five year plan.

It is a setup for disappointment – and conflict.  I have left all my relationships because I knew I couldn’t change the other person – and he wasn’t open to any modifications.

I have learned that is the norm.  But it’s kind of tragic.  When you get born into the world, no one says, “wow, I hope I will get parents and teachers and bosses who hold me to an almost impossible standard and constantly critique me ;)”

But, people, it has its rewards 🙂  It keeps you off balance.  It makes you strive.  It quells any opportunity to get arrogant before you have really achieved anything.

I continue to evolve.  I have conquered a lot of anxiety and I have become almost fearless.  But in a great way that relies on geek-worthy risk assessment and self-confidence borne out of life experience.

So… not only do I talk to strangers… strangers talk to me… I engage with the locals everywhere that I go.  AND I meet other travellers.  And hear their stories.  And am inspired to further explore the world…

Talking to strangers requires some finesse.  It needs to come from the right place.  You want to make sure it is a genuine interest in other people, not some lonely, needy gesture that makes the other person worry you might be a stalker 🙂

One of the highlights of my trip to New Orleans was making a new friend while were both perusing the menu at the Red Fish Grill.  Neither of is pushed it too fast so by the time we had both decided independently it might be far more enjoyable to dine together than alone, the choice was easy to make.

http://www.redfishgrill.com/

And what a great decision!  I met a fascinating man with a personal history to rival mine.  We talked about the arts, travel, the various cities and countries that had left a mark on us.

It was my first experience of Bourbon Street.  As previously noted, Bourbon Street definitely not a total class act –  but, luckily for me, I explored it with my new friend who embodied the concept of a Southern gentleman so he gave even the low rent aspects of Bourbon Street a borrowed sense of decorum.

It certainly gave tacky Bourbon Street a halo it hadn’t earned and etched yet another classic cinematic evening into my memory.  Those are the moments when I am so happy that I learned to talk to strangers 😉

I raise my glass of delicious 12 year old rum to everyone out there who talked to a stranger and came away with a special memory…

Hopefully I will finish the New Orleans stories before I get on the plane to Lima… 🙂

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eating & drinking - well, life philosophy, travel stories

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quoting Casablanca ;)

Everyone has to find his own path in figuring out how to cope with death.  It’s never easy.  And there is such a mysterious, fluid quality to death.

It takes some time to really accept that you can’t dial his phone number and hear his voice.  And that you will never again feel the warmth of his embrace or have a heartfelt face to face conversation.

It leaves a void – as mysterious as a black hole.  And when the relationship is dramatic and complex, when you know the other person is struggling – yet you also can’t find a way to break in and fix things – the end hits you harder.

You wonder if you’d just acted differently… if you’d had more time… if this… if that… it’s hard to accept the status quo and not imagine the “what if’s”…

That’s how it was with my father.  Our relationship was complex and tumultuous.  When I spoke to him on my birthday a few days before he died, it felt like a new beginning.

Was it D-Day or the Arab Spring?  I’ll never know.  Would there have been a permanent change in our relationship, a Marshall Plan that restored the close bond we had had for so many years?  Or would it have just been an ethereal burst of hope unaccompanied by sufficient planning, ready to burst into disarray at the first hint of discord?

He was the one who taught me to be a critical thinker – so I felt he would be disappointed if I just glossed over the rough patches because he was dead.  But there had been a lot of great times and I owed him a lot.  So I decided I would celebrate his good qualities and remember the good times – and the life lessons he had tattooed into my soul.

So I’m ready to deal with my friend Sean’s death.  It doesn’t mean that I’m not weepy.  But I’m a crier – I accepted that a long time ago.

Sean is one of my oldest friends.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to capture over 30 years in a few brief paragraphs.  I know I just have to accept that this will scratch the surface and that memories will continue to bubble up unexpectedly for the rest of my life.  That’s how life goes… personally, I think it is one of the greatest pleasures of being a little more sophisticated than the average monkey 🙂

sean the scholarI met Sean in 1982, more or less my first day at the University of Western Ontario where I had somehow managed to get admitted to this mini-Harvard undergraduate MBA program that I had quickly discovered would be the most intimidating experience of my life.

I wasn’t even legal to drink in the USA yet.  It’s hard to remember being that young.  But I do remember how freaked out I was by the country club school.  In those days the Preppie Handbook ruled and I was in the middle of all these kids with money and a secret code I couldn’t decipher.

We were arranged in a “participation circle” for classes and every class we sat behind our name plate in the semi-circle around the professor so that if we spoke, he could call out our name.  The name plates were organized alphabetically so many of my friends were made based on the alphabet.  I am an “H”.  He was an “M”.  So he sat directly behind me in class.

I can’t remember how it all began but one of the first things he did was explain the “preppie code”.  The more significant thing that he did was ask me to join his group for the final year project.  I couldn’t believe it as he was easily one of the smartest people I have ever met – and likely the smartest at that point – so I couldn’t believe he would consider me worthy.

But it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship 😉

At the time I just thought he was a great guy.  He gave me confidence in a new environment when I was mostly intimidated.  I became a confidante when he started dating one of our classmates.  He broadened my horizons by introducing me to new cuisines.

Like so many of my great friendships, it spanned cities – and continents.  His son was born in New York.  His daughter was born in London.  He travelled to exotic places.  He went to Virginia to learn how to be a southern gentleman.  He went to Wall Street to learn how to work for weeks on end with almost no sleep.  I knew all about Notting Hill before the movie because I got to go and hang out at his house there.

There is no doubt he had an impressive career but what was really impressive about him was his generosity, his warmth, his interest in the people in his life.  As I started to write this, I quickly realized it would be impossible to capture our relationship and all the incredible memories in this short space so no doubt, like my dad, he will just keep popping up in other posts.

For now, I just want to pay tribute to him.  He is one of the people who changed my life.  When we met, I was a geeky kid from a small prairie town who didn’t even know there was such a thing as investment banking.  I might have dreamed of going places and doing things with my life but they felt like pipe dreams.  I didn’t think I really had the tools to make them happen.

But Sean blew my world wide open.  He bolstered my confidence.  He introduced me to new worlds I hadn’t even realized existed.  He was a guy from a modest background who conquered the world.  And took me along for the ride.

He grew my dreams.  And helped me develop the tools to realize them.  A beautiful friendship indeed… :)))

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life philosophy

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we’re not in Kansas, Toto! ;)

eventually I will finish writing about New Orleans 🙂  April is usually less nuts so fingers crossed…

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived in “the big easy”.  The nickname suggested promise – and the friendly guy at Homeland Security in Vancouver had been there and thought I was in for a treat.

And he was right.  The first hint was when I checked in and the guy at the front desk told me about the libertine rules on Bourbon Street.  You don’t normally get to walk around with alcohol on the streets of the United States.

But New Orleans doesn’t feel like the USA.  It’s not quite Europe – or Montreal – but it does have an European flavour you rarely encounter in the land of the stars and stripes.  There is a relaxed attitude to life – and playful vice.  There is a rapturous connection to food and drink.  And there is a sense of hospitality that reminds me fondly of Europeans.

It feels more multicultural than most places I have been in the United States.  I think some of it stems from the history.  Much like Canada, it was a place whose potential was not obvious to 18th century Europeans, so it was tossed like a hot potato between the French and the Spanish with only the hardy and disadvantaged willing to try to make something of the place.

music on the streets

music on the streets

Fighting off the alligators in the swamps and hoping a hurricane wouldn’t wipe out your shelter couldn’t have been much fun but it did mean there was little chance of a hoity-toity Northern European culture developing.  It became a place for mavericks and outsiders.

And musicians apparently 🙂  Of course a lot of great music has come from the streets – and from the oppressed trying to find a way to cope.  In New Orleans you hear all kinds of music.  And some of the best comes from the streets.  It is a music lover’s paradise.

There is music on Bourbon Street – but also on Royal, on St Peter, at Jackson Square, in the French Market… and likely lots of places I never even got to…

One of the other big delights is food 🙂  I’ve already mentioned some of the meals – and beignets…

But there are other treats.  One of the most famous is pralines.  My aimless wandering brought me to Laura’s Candies, a place I can highly recommend.  Lots of free praline samples – but also salt water taffy, the largest truffles I have ever seen in plenty of exotic flavours and – only in New Orleans – chocolate alligators! 🙂

The other big discovery came courtesy of my guidebook… a gelateria (La Divina Gelateria) full of strange and exotic music on NOLA streetsdelights… I managed to score some root beer (locally made :)) gelato and then listened to an incredible band on the street – the serendipity of the streets of the French Quarter.

And you can also play Tom Sawyer and take a real steamboat up the Mississippi.  As a child I dreamed of taking a steamboat the entire length of the Mississippi.  I’m

the mighty mississippi

the mighty mississippi

not sure if that’s even possible but a couple of hours allows one some nostalgia and a view of the city from a new perspective.

And there are also garden tours, cemetery tours, swamp tours… maybe other cities have gardens worthy of tourism but only in New Orleans would cemeteries and swamps make the grade…

I didn’t have time for any of them.  I didn’t manage to find room for bread pudding.  I still have to try gumbo.  And fresh crawfish straight out of the Gulf… there are all kinds of reasons for another trip… the only question is when… 😉

 

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eating & drinking - well, travel stories

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