The Squidboy

This trip started with a work-stint at the upstate-New York facilities of a well known tech vendor. The journey was good value for knowledge and networking. In-room Internet access meant I could keep in contact with the Hong Kong office via email, instant-message and Skype, edit copy and file stories.


Residence Inn Marriott, Poughkeepsie, against storm-clouds (we had hail at one point, one of rural North America's highlights).

The voyage also brought me to eastern North America. Here's the deal: I have these relatives in Montréal who I only discovered recently. Why and how is a story for another time--the key is that I had strong motivation to visit what everyone describes as Canada's most dynamic and interesting city.

So after a few days of being driven around and living off suburban-industrial food augmented by self-catering from the local airplane-hangar-sized supermart (just can't survive without fifteen kinds of refrigerated pre-made hummus, dontcha know), I took the train to Montréal.

I love trains. Was I going to be driven two hours into NYC, queue up at JFK airport with all my liquids in a separate portable-tabernacle, squeeze into a dinky airplane seat and wait to be delayed, or the alternative: book online at amtrak.com and hop on The Adirondack headed north? Poughkeepsie to Montreal: US$61. No-brainer!


Poughkeepsie Station interior.


The" Ichabod Crane": why they'd name a train after a mythic headless horseman is beyond me (this isn't the train I took).

I rocked up at Poughkeepsie's gorgeous 1914-built train station and clambered aboard the train when it pulled in. Plenty of room for bags, legs, snacks. A 110-volt AC power outlet at the seat. I plugged in my MacBook and wrote/rewrote/edited copy as the train chugged its way through New York farmland and towns that reminded me of Superior, Wisconsin (I'm talkin' to you, Albany).

Polite Canadian immigration officials boarded the train at the border and went seat-to-seat to check paperwork. "Bonjour mademoiselle" I said to the officer, and continued, in French: "My French is in a regrettable state of disrepair." She responded, also in French, "Well then perhaps we should continue in English" and shifted gears effortlessly, as I would find many Montréalers can easily do (but don't be fooled: French is the prime language here). A short and polite conversation followed, she inquired about my baggage to make sure they belonged to me, and wished me a pleasant stay. The drones of Homeland Security could learn a few things from these folks.

The train arrived on time at the Gare Centrale and I was met immediately by José, who married my cousin over four decades ago. I hadn't met him since I was about ten, but recall both him and my cousin Ada--brief, succinct memories which never faded from childhood.

As I write this, in a coffeeshop near McGill University in downtown Montréal, I haven't decided how much to say about José, Ada, and their grown children: Federico and Victoria. For now, I'll say that they are four of the more remarkable people I've met as an adult, and all for diverse reasons. One thing they have in common is that they've all been involved in showbiz/photography/filmmaking/art, often in uncanny analog to my own interests and activities. The synergy with film (specifically Asian, horror and Hong Kong film) and photography, as mentioned, is remarkable, but the equation's more than the sum of its parts.

Another person I was also delighted to meet on this trip is my sister Lara, who flew in from Chicago and met her friend Kim, who lives in Boston. My life these past few days has revolved around socializing, chatting, and examining large quantities of photographs and newspaper clippings related to the past with the first-cousin-generation. With the once-removed generation, it's been more about the future.

And my own history features notches cut by instinct and circumstance that support various parts of the puzzle. Before I unilaterally decided to move to San Francisco in the 1980s, I had no concept of Latin culture, little knowledge of Hong Kong film, and lacked the wisdom to communicate effectively. Now, I've built imperfect paradigms that function in these areas, and am beginning to explore my eastern European heritage. Being skyrocketed into an environment with people who are trilingual (and more) by nature and have compiled impressive accomplishments yet remain grounded/humble was exhilarating. There will likely be more on all this later, but let's get to some fotos.


Extended-family portrait June 2008: (L-R: Victoria, Lara, Jose in foreground, me in the back, Ada, and Federico).


Fede and his son Damian.


José made these huevos rancheros for me from scratch. OK, he bought the tortillas from a place that makes them fresh, but he made the salsa, eggs and refried beans. Cubes of Honduran queso duro at right. By far the best huevos rancheros I have ever eaten. It has been proven by top scientists and chefs that Spain's victory in Euro 2008 was directly related to this excellence of this specific plate of huevos.


My father Kazimir smoking a pipe, early 60s. Whoever sees a resemblance, please raise your hand.


My sister Lara the doc. She can take your kidney out. She totally rocks.


Fede and his daughter Talia.


Talia having fun in the Montréal summertime--I gave her the neon-colored tennis ball, which she promptly repurposed for amusement purposes.

Victoria's site:
http://www.victoriasanchez.com/

The site for Fede's latest project:
http://www.annexmediagroup.com/elsa_web1/index.html

FantAsia (Montréal's premier film festival):
http://www.fantasiafestival.com/2008/en/

The Nikkatsu section for FantAsia 2008. If you're in Montréal or anywhere near, oh yeah, any late-60s Nikkatsu on the big screen is worth the effort:
http://www.fantasiafestival.com/2008/en/films/spotlight.php?id=1

POSTSCRIPT:
The rant that follows was ripped out of my subconscious at JFK Airport. Fortunately I got a decent amount of sleep on the plane and arrived just prior to a Signal 8 typhoon in Hong Kong that gave the entire city a morning-off, and produced the photograph at the end of this rant. The chaos produced by the storm pales in comparison to my internal focused chaos...I wasn't sure whether to run this unedited brain-blast but my pal Rico said, RUN IT.

So here 'tis. Cover all flammable material...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What is the DEAL with the shoes?
Sitting here at JFK Airport in one borough or another, steaming like one of those franks they sell on carts in the city. Or maybe used to sell, until the Department of Motherland Insecurity made the hot dog salespeople take off their shoes and put them in a plastic tray, because...

Because, why? What is the DEAL with the shoes? Why on earth do we have these polyester-jacketed people stacking plastic trays so little kids can take off their pink My Little Pony shoes and run them through an X-ray unit? I'm not saying, let's get rid of airport security (on this trip, I'm reading Bruce Schneier's excellent "Beyond Fear"--Schneier uses a simple five-point assessment for security situations and applies it to a bunch of situations, HE could deconstruct the scrutiny of My Little Pony shoes from button-cute seven-year-olds), I'm saying, when I am exhausted from getting up at 0355 for a one-hour flight from Montréal and have just walked what seems like five kilometers (likely no more than 1-2) across travelators and London-tube-length escalators and upward-sloping corridors, stopping to interrupt the chitchat of a trio of salesgirls...

- Where is "TM7"?
- What?
- TM7?
- Is that a flight?
- No. this is your airport. You work here. I am a traveler, looking for Cathay Pacific flight CX 831, which is listed on your video terminal over there as departing from "TM7." So, where is TM7?
- (Random confusion)
- OK. Is there a terminal seven at this airport?
- This is terminal eight.
- OK, so there IS a terminal seven??
- Yes.
- How do I get there?
- You take the air train.
- And where is that?
- Over there.

...and on we go to more escalators and corridors and onto a monorail which takes you to a street crossing that leads to terminal 7, where you follow the signs to Cathay Pacific past the British Airways signs (HATE that airline) and once there, show the printout of the online checkout that explains you can just use the kiosk to print out your boarding pass but are told instead to backtrack to the British Airways area where a hidden Cathay Pac counter staffed by a woman who vaguely resembles a cross between Macy Gray in TRAINING DAY and Mr? Billie McAllister issues your boarding pass and...

And...yes that question-mark was intentional, imdb.com-whack Rudy Ray Moore or Mr? Billie McAllister and quit asking those punctuation questions, I'm having trouble finding the right song for this rant, Green Day's "American Idiot" was perfect but ended too soon, Slipknot seemed indicated but Rabbit Junk's "In Your Head No One Can Hear You Scream" now fills the bill. And...

- Do you have a bag checked in?
- Yes. It's an ugly one.
- A heavy one?
- No, ugly. It's a joke.
- You mean it's like twenty...(she paused, maybe she was searching for the word "kilograms")
- No, it's about ten kilos. It's a normal bag, it's just bright yellow, that's why I said it was ugly.
- Oh, so you can spot it easily when it comes out.
OMG, A GLIMMER OF INTELLIGENCE.
- Exactly.

She hands me my boarding pass.

- You need to go to the yellow, I mean, gray area.
- You were thinking of my bag! (big grin)

Not even the glimmer of a return smile.

But it's my black carry-on bag that's been crushing my deltoids and trapezoids as I've hiked all over this depressing, poorly organized airport with its idiot zombie-staff, made all the worse in comparison to the switched-on, polite, helping-you-before-you-ask bilingual staff at Montréal's Dorval Airport I had just departed. If Americans want a crash course in staff training and customer relations they don't need to hire some pogue consultant, just do a bit of traveling north of the damn border.

So I ended up in the gray area, stuck behind a mom and her delightfully cute kids, who dutifully deposited their shoes in the correct trays once the logjam of regular-drones putting their laptops, bagged liquid unpleasantries and other heinous items, battleaxes and flails and knouts and brass knuckles and Japanese police truncheons and shoes in the correct gray plastic trays in the gray area, long after I'd deposited my black bag on the ground to avoid more neck/shoulder pain.

Visiting the USA has its advantages, but please oh please, if there is an Airport God, please o lord of aerodromes replace this facility (and that utter horror in Los Angeles, the Thomas Bradley Torture Chamber) with something either like Dorval or Singapore's Changi Airport.

Thanks to Samsung for the electricity, and Green Day/Rabbit Junk/Sex Pistols for the noise. And now I'm going to make my way to my flight, which, to add to the overall experience, is running half-an-hour late.

HONG KONG A DAY OR SO LATER:


Dismembered tree branch on my street-corner.