Now how things are going decidedly depends on whether you ask me yesterday or today. Yesterday I awoke for the first time in new sheets, a comfy bed, and to a fox sleeping on the roof of a shed outside my window, who was just waking up as well. I then got to work in little time due to the bank holiday, was very productive, and found a foldy bike on craigslist to boot.

The downside of the day was discovering that my oyster card wasn’t valid on south west trains, and that I would need to purchase a separate ticket. But the train was empty, comfortable, and very fast (though not TGV fast). I bought a bike for only £95 from a nice white haired old man with a cute northern accent who looked like he should be a professor at some quaint uni.

And of course, as soon as I had my grubby little paws on a bike, I decided to head off at random (unlimited data+gps+google maps=no more planning), and shortly found myself trundling through a park, first with a fox, then with about 8 deer, followed shortly by about ten thousand rabbits, with cute White tails. (the phone _really_ wants to capitalize White).

As it was getting dark and I took a wrong turn in the park that must have added 5km to my ride, I ducked in to a little pub in the middle of nowhere that I just happened upon, and had a tasty meal and a pint.

That was yesterday. Not too shabby. Then came today, as if to make up for the bunnies.

After my shower, where I forgot to bring my towel into the bathroom and had to dry off with a hand towel, I was already running late for work. The busses were so crowded, I could only manage to cram on to the third one that came. The morning saw me worrying a lot about the £95 I had just spent yesterday, not because I didn’t get a good deal or didn’t need a bike, but because I now had only £80 left.

This was even more troubling because I still have no bank account, and without a bank account, I can’t turn those two ‘for deposit only’ cheques I have into cash. Which I need to buy ale. And food. But mostly ale. So shortly after lunch today, I set off to bang my head against a brick wall, or as Canadians would say, try to open a bank account.

For comparison’s sake, to open my bank account in Australia, as someone who was technically not a resident, I needed to show up at a branch with my passport and declare my intention to hold an account with them. No further proof was needed, and shortly afterwards, I received all my goodies in the post and I was (and still am) a full-fledged customer. Or as you could also view it, allowed to give my money to them.

The British system, alas, is not nearly as simple. For certain people, it might be. If you are a UK citizen, for example, have good credit and haven’t moved in 3 years, I’m pretty sure it would be a piece of cake. But those people don’t _need_ bank accounts, because they probably already have them. I, however, hold the quite dodgy ‘Canadian’ passport, have no credit history in the UK, and because I rent a room, have no utility bills coming to me. All I have is my passport and a letter provided by my employer, one that proved decidedly useless today.

The first bank I tried was adamant that I could only apply for their ‘starter basic untrustworthy immigrant’ account or some such nonesense, where I would me given the great privelege of a bank card to access my money from a machine. And it would take 9 business days to open and a few more for your counterfeit fraudulent copy cheque to clear, and no you can’t have five quid for an ale.

So I returned to work, asked at HR for a recommendation, and was given the name of someone that ‘lots of our employees’ used to open their accounts in as little as one day, no hassles asked. So up there I went, only to be told that 1) he no longer worked there, 2) I didn’t have sufficient documentation for even their ‘thieving bastard’ account, and that when I did return with this documentation, 3) I could open the account on a 12 month contract at a cost of only £6 per month. Hearing which I promptly gathered my papers and walked out.

My day finished with me staying late and getting nothing done, because I was so steaming mad at the banks, and I knew I’d have to do it all again tomorrow. Which it already is.

And I still have only £80…

I’m also trying to put together some of the forms you may need to get filled out before you leave, but I can’t seem to find them at the moment. I’ll update this posting when I do. Please, if you find I’ve missed something, big or small, let me know below.

So to whet your appetite, here are some photos from along the route. Bon voyage!

In Canada, Terry Fox is a big deal. He set out on a cross-Canada ‘Marathon of Hope’ to raise money and awareness for Cancer research, a disease which took his leg. He was able to unite the nation and realise his goal of raising 1$ from every person in Canada, and is a national hero to this day, with schools and communities holding Terry Fox Runs. With no winners or losers, set distances or acceptable modes of conveyance, anyone can join in. And at this year’s run in Doha, whether young or old, dogs or dolls, in-line skates, unicycles and strange moon-boots, they all came to join the fun.

By the time I arrived at the College of the North Atlantic’s Doha beautiful campus, the event was already well under way with the fabulous team of volunteers from the Four Season’s Hotel hard at work (and busy playing) on preparing food for all. They had been there since 8 in the morning, grilling hamburgers and hot dogs over custom-made barbecues, twisting delicious shawarmas along long tables, and laying out heaping piles of fruits and other goodies.

I quickly joined the ranks of the green-shirted volunteers, and started to mingle with the folks waiting at the registration tables for people to make a donation and possibly buy a shirt before the race. Although this moved slowly in the early part of the day, as the race drew nearer larger and larger crowds just kept forming.

Soon, the field was full of people from all ages and walks of life. Indeed, although there were a lot of Canadians present, there was no shortage of other cultures present. People played football on the field, sat in the shade, talked, and walked around while waiting for the run to commence. The kids had special treats, with cotton candy and face painting being two of their favourites.

As soon as the announcement was made that the run would be starting, the kids were the first to dash to the starting line. The course was a roughly a square around the campus, with motivational messages having been written in many languages by the student volunteers. When the drop of a hat started the run, though not a race, there was a fury of energy that exploded off the starting line and started around the track.

It wasn’t long, however, before I started hearing people as as they passed, how many laps they had to do of the 1.7 km course. I was passed by people of all ages; running, walking, cycling, skating, boarding and scooting. I even saw more unusual contraptions, including two people in boots like springy stilts, a unicycle, articulated 2-wheeled skateboards, a doll in a stroller, amongst others that I surely missed.

For some, there were only laps; the finish line wasn’t for them.

See the entire photo set on flickr.

I originally wrote this piece in late 2007, but for some reason I never got around to posting it. Enjoy!

Last night I became incredibly thankful for the retroreflective properties of the retina, quality German engineering, and my firm belief that one must be highly focused during the task of driving.

Today I am comfortably holed up in the Deerhurst resort in ‘Northern’ Ontario. I haven’t yet ventured out, but I will shortly to find some food, and I’m sure I’ll find the autumn atmosphere crisp and pleasant. The leaves are many brilliant hues, and the sky is dotted with just a few puffy clouds. Supposedly I missed the early morning fog, but I might get that some other day. It’s my last weekend before I begin my job for the next few months, and although I don’t expect a crazy schedule, it’s still nice to have some time away from home.

Last night Mandy and I drove from Montréal to Hunstville, and with the setting of the sun coming ever earlier, it was dark for a good portion of the drive, including a small chunk of Ontario’s largest provincial park, Algonquin. It was here, specifically, that I earned my respect anew for biology, engineering, and concentration.

As soon as I entered the park, the frequent small towns gave way to retroreflectors of all forms, on barriers, sidings, in the road, on the paint, everywhere. Navigating the park in the dark is actually a fairly simple task, as you never have to guess which way the road turns or twists, the ample notice allows you to adjust your speed well in advance to handle these situations. And of course, I was well aware of the possibility of wildlife, so I kept my eyes peeled and scanned the edges continuously, knowing that you don’t always get much notice.

Twice before, both times this previous summer, I encountered animals in a too-intimate-with-my-car situation. The first was a moose heading happily down an embankment towards the road in the dusk hours on the northern shore of Lake Superior. I braked hard, but had sufficient time to do so without testing the limits, and the moose saw me and sauntered off the other way before ever stepping on the road. Jarring, certainly, but no harm done and not even that close of a call. And hey, I saw a moose in the wild for the first time, quite clearly, if briefly, and that was cool too. The second incident was on the Yellowhead heading into Edmonton, a little after midnight and after the longest marathon day I’ve ever driven without assistance. I was staring ahead on the divided freeway, aware, but not too aware that I was actually aware. I found out I was still quite lucid when two deer darted across the freeway just ahead of me, and this time I needed all of the brakes to help me out. Still, deer are fast and this time certainly fast enough, I hardly saw them as they leapt past the cones of light at the front of my car.

So last night, twisting and turning my way through Algonquin in the dark, I noticed some reflectors on the road in the distance that didn’t quite seem right. Then, without going around a sufficient corner or large enough rise, they went off. I went on alert, and as soon as I did so I noticed that the blue-green road reflectors were back, right in front of me, and quickly resolving into a black bear and her two cubs. I hit the brake as hard as I could, prepared to steer if necessary (though it wasn’t), and didn’t even manage to get the clutch down. I didn’t care. I stopped. Short.

I have never in my life had to press on the brakes quite that hard. I have, for sure, to test the car, because only in knowing limits can you properly use them. I’m glad I did that too. I thought of this like a grand piano hung from the sixth floor by a fraying rope; you have three basic options, and only two of those are likely. Most probably, you’re either under the piano, or not. It’s not really expected that you’ll be half-under, and it’s fairly improbable too. This felt exactly like that, either I would hit the bears or I wouldn’t, there wasn’t much hope of a ‘light tap’. And although bears are fairly massive, even when compared to a car, the two cubs were distinctly closer than their mother, and there is no hope that they would have stolen enough momentum to prevent me hitting the others. It was all or nothing.

I’ve only once before seen a bear in the wild, at quite a distance and with hordes of Japanese tourists chasing after it. I’ve never seen a mother and cubs in the wild, and in spite of the harrowing nature of the sighting, I am very glad I did. Although in the high beams they were only visible for a few seconds as they rushed away, I felt a such a strong sense of joy, one whose existence could only have occurred from the moment I saw the reflection, and whose chances perhaps stronger against than they were for.

And I treasure that joy.

Update: I’ve posted a handy checklist!

As a Canadian, I have a certain preconception about land border crossings. I can understand a long wait, sitting in a seemingly endless line for hours. I will pass the time by noting when the car crosses the actual line and my last chance to turn around is reached. The actual time spent at the booth with the nice monsieur and lots of technological paraphernalia surrounding you is pretty much inconsequential in the whole scheme of things. And on a good day (or dead of night) there’s not even a line. Only recently have I even had to think about the requirements for ID.

As an expat, I can safely say that that view of borders is now dead. Canada and the USA are now the friendliest of countries (to each other) I can possibly imagine, and I can see how travellers would opt for the nationality-agnostic view of travellers taken by airports. It’s a lesson both on how nations view each other and how much time you need to leave to cross those borders.

There are many more steps than I was accustomed to involved in making this trip. Visas had to be arranged in advance, not from the Saudi embassy here in Doha, but from a car rental company acting as their service agent. The bank had to give us permission to take our car out of the country and money had to be exchanged for purchases in other countries such as fuel and insurance. And of course there was the seemingly endless research required on things from how to dress while in Saudi (at least for Mandy), what documentation we needed to take with us, what fees and such we would have to pay along the way, and of course how long the whole trip would take. I still don’t think we answered all the questions.

The trip began weeks in advance with the application for our Saudi transit visas. The process was simple, we needed only to drop our passports off at a hole-in-the-wall car rental company in a seemingly random location and with no obvious signs of being anything official at all. They took our passports, 125 Qatari Rials per person and my mobile number so that when the visas were processed I would get a call, which of course never happened.

A week in advance Mandy went to the bank to arrange for the permission to take the car out of the country, and was told ‘No problem!’, come back a day before we leave, the letter will be ready. As is to be expected, the rules changed in the intervening week so that we now were required to have a guarantor, who was a customer of the same bank, a different nationality, and remaining in the Qatar during our absence. A day before we left, in a community of expats many of whom had a month’s holidays, Mandy used her amazing skill to wait in the bank long after closing. She demanded, against the insistence of the staff, that tomorrow wasn’t good enough (it would be Friday, the first day of the weekend), the letter was needed now. And that the rules could be bent, at least this once, to use a guarantor who was also on vacation. And so it was that with all the documents fastidiously placed in easy reach during the voyage, after all this bureaucracy and with an almost inevitable irony that must be quietly accepted and understood in this culture, in this part of the world, no one ever saw that letter again.

On our way to the border it rained. Not that it rains here, it never does. But once a year, the heavens open, the dust scrapers on the front windscreen are reminded of their true purpose and even the highest setting seems wholly insufficient. But it didn’t last, and just out of Doha the sun returned. The only stop we made was to change drivers just before the border, at what appeared to be a fairly well-used beach, though more for rest-stop use than normal beach purposes. Alas, there was a horrid stench likely coming from a dark stain dripping over the embankment and into the water, where it appeared someone had upturned a large drum full of oil. There were many piles left from previous passengers, both snack wrappers and the aforementioned outhouse without walls, as well as strange looking black carcasses of what appeared to be fish unfortunately caught in the vicinity when that barrel was emptied out. So we partook in this uncovered outhouse, switched seats, and got back in the car with due haste.

And even though the GPS showed the border was still many kilometres away, it was with some surprise and very little warning that I found myself cautiously inching over tyre spikes. There’s something I find very frightening about driving over large spikes. They have a sense of certainty about them, clearly stating that there is no return from this point. But beyond that, I find myself constantly concerned that they might malfunction; that a freak circumstance will cause them to pierce my tyres even when crossing in the intended direction, or my car will unexpectedly roll back just a little bit, and at exactly the wrong moment. The kind of spikes that are recessed, their presence indicated only by a long row of narrow slits, I find even more disturbing, because they don’t tell you in advance which direction you are allowed to go over them, if any, and the accident causing their deployment could be entirely out of my control. Luckily, the policeman in the sun-baked booth did not accidentally drop his mobile on the button that pops them up.

The series of booths in each country varies, both on entry and on exit, and I profess no knowledge as to what rhyme or reason they may have for the number or order of steps required to pass. But where my experience has always been at a single, multi-purpose booth, rest assured that no booth here functioned for more than one single task. On our way out of Qatar, there was the police booth on entry, with the tyre spikes, where you don’t need to, or are indeed discouraged from stopping. Then a second booth checked that our car’s registration was in order, a third was a bit of hassle as the occupants of the vehicle are verified, a final stop at a booth where your documents and various papers you collected were either collected or returned, and then a final pass over another series of ominous slits. That’s to leave Qatar. Then, after a very daunting 8 km drive through a valley of barbed wire fences with impossibly tall towers with video cameras and snipers lurking behind small dunes, the process was repeated in a slightly modified order and surprisingly good demeanour to enter into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Spikes and police, some booths, a thorough squeeze of one item in our boot, hand over 100 Saudi Riyals to some dodgy looking blokes in a booth for ‘insurance’, more random exchanges of papers some containing stamps, more spikes and police, and we were in Saudi Arabia. Or we had been for the last six kilometres, but now it was official. We headed out on the road, largely dark by now, nearly 2 hours after starting the process.

The trip through Saudi, what little of it I saw, was decidedly different from Qatar or the UAE. The road was in poor condition, to say the least, and the unmarked and unpainted speed humps a small terror on the 120 km/h highway. On the way out the cheapest petrol station I’ve ever used, I felt quite fortunate to not be travelling at high speeds as I crossed over some very large dents, for lack of a better description, in the road, reminiscent of the drop created when the tarmac is stripped away in preparation for resurfacing, only much deeper and just wide enough to give a good solid hit. Even then I felt like I could have gone 30 km/h slower and still felt like I ruined the suspension.

There were also many trucks on the road that, for reasons beyond me, loved to decorate their trucks with flashing red and blue lights. Time after time, I would slow the car down until the constant companion of the speed limiter stopped dinging, only to find that no, it was just another truck. At which point I would turn the limiter on again by resuming speeding, until I was again uncertain about another set in the distance. Which continued, except for the one time that the lights actually did sit atop an oldish Crown Victoria or similar American-model police car, and I wondered why they bought so many American vehicles in this part of the world.

Many times I thought I was coming upon the border with the Emirates, only to lurch to a halt before yet another freeway model speed hump, and realise that it was just a turnoff to another industrial complex glowing on the horizon. When we did finally get to the border, it was much the same as before, exchanging bits of paper for passage, slowly advancing from one booth to the next. A booth that was covered five rows deep with little stickers quoting various unknown phrases in Arabic had a single, solitary English phrase ‘We defend our prophet.’ Shortly afterwards we left.

There were a few notable differences in entering the UAE. The first booth we waited in line at for many minutes as the other cars went about their business, only to be told upon approaching ‘You, go inside’. Upon parking and entering the obvious building, we found ourselves facing a huge counter, easily fifty metres long, with two people working behind it at unmarked points. We approached one, stood in the line, and the person there kindly handed us a form and pointed to a small room off the end of the hall, for when we finished. We filled them out as best we could, but for one reason or another I left about half the questions blank, expecting clarification. Which came, from the man in the room in the form of a stamp, and a finger pointing us back out to the hall. So we got back in the line, got more stamps, then back to the car. We joined the line of cars, and passed through at 4 km/h a large machine that described itself as a ‘Z Portal’, which I later confirmed is in fact a large x-ray machine. I picked an aisle for what appeared to be the visual inspection, but the official looking men pointed me towards someone in street clothes, who simply waved me through. However when the gate to exit didn’t open, I looked back to find him waving me back, as if he somehow never meant to wave me through in the first place. Sheesh. The search was just as cursory as before, and I started to get the sneaking suspicion that two hours was pretty much the minimum in which you could expect to pass these frontiers.

After the customs and immigration formalities, you need again to leave your car and approach a bunch of booths that could well be carnival vendors for how loudly they yell at you for your patronage. We picked the quietest one, having been told they were all the same, and proceeded to get ourselves some candy floss, shoot a row of ducks, and purchase more insurance for our week in the UAE. I later learned, but haven’t yet verified, that many insurance policies in Qatar also include insurance in the UAE and Oman, so we might have been able to skip this step.

After a whirlwind of a week in Dubai, a city which feels ten years ahead of Doha, we found ourselves with a car packed to the ceiling and a fear of sudden maneuvers. A conversation overheard in a rest stop confirmed that others were as displeased as I to discover that their cars had speed limiters singing to them the entire trip, and the car next to us at the Saudi Border proved that we weren’t the only expats who headed to the Emirates to buy carloads of furniture. Their car was packed in almost exactly the same fashion as ours, so much so that I wondered if there was a large mirror in the inspection bay. The officials were also clearly used to this behaviour, and didn’t blink an eye.

The only extra step we encountered in leaving the UAE was a 30 Dirham departure tax, normally rolled into airline fares, but collected on the spot when leaving by land. As usual, there were no signs above any of the windows or wickets, but people helpfully pointed us in the right direction or rudely yelled at us to skip the line (an activity we are never really inclined to initiate but rarely mind). Also seemingly par for the course is the way the tax is paid, as a 25 Dirham tax, and a 5 Dirham ‘Finance Electronic Sticker’, separated for no evident purpose.

The ride home was as time consuming and uneventful as the trip out, with a steady increase in Toyota Land Cruisers behaving badly as we neared the Qatari border. We were tired from the drive, exhausted from the week, and ready to be back in our own bed.

If you’re reading this and are thinking of making this trek yourself, don’t hesitate to contact me or ask a question below, because there’s a ton more information that I haven’t covered here.

On the way through Saudi, our SUV needed fuel. We were down to half a tank. All service stations here seem to be aptly named, so the gentleman filled our tank, topped it off about ten times, then took our hundred saudi riyal note. He gave us 75 saudi riyals plus ten Qatari rials, I don’t know why. At today’s
exchange rate, do you know how much we paid for roughly 25 litres of petrol?

4.78 Canadian.

Or about 21 cents per litre.

Seriously.

The really amazing part, however, is that I’m listening to this on an aeroplane. The volume is at normal levels, and the background noises are subdued enough not to interfere. A few weeks ago, I thought myself crazy for spending what I did on yet another pair of headphones. Today, as I settle into almost 24 hours of air travel, I wonder why I haven’t done this sooner.

So, to anyone who may be in a situation where noise would do better to not be heard, I strongly urge you to consider a pair of quality, noise cancelling headphones. I highly doubt you’ll regret it.

Also, having 3 seats to stretch out across doesn’t hurt either.

Personal experience has shown that, at least from the photographer’s point of view, he’s dead right.

It’s of particular note to me, because I just acquired a fast lens myself, a Sigma 30mm f/1.4, my first foray into large aperture lenses. I’m loving it, and have been keeping it on my camera most of the time lately.

From Coudal Partners via Daring Fireball

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As a person who spends (too) much of his day trapped behind a monitor, I tend to want to have the largest amount of real estate available to me. It was with this in mind, and after years of using dual monitors at various workplaces that I decided to take the plunge and get this 21” used beauty. It was cheap, as all good technology hopefully is as well as rarely is. I bought it on eBay and hauled it across provincial borders, and even managed to mark up my desk trying to lift it up.

Now I have a hole on my desk. Given that I’m moving soon, I’m not too sad to see that much space cleared up. Even if I wasn’t moving, at an almost perfect 53cm cubed and a back breaking 32 kg, it’d clear up some major desk space. I’ll probably pay 10 times what I paid for it and get an LCD with a few extra inches in my new home, but part of me will miss the misfiring guns, the plethora of inputs of which only one is useful to me, and the 4 minute waits for it to warm up before the image appeared.

Nostalgia is a weird beast, attaching us to something that has so many drawbacks, making us feel a loss when all signs point to an improvement.

\* sigh *