Oahu: Kasia

Giving Kasia her own digital camera for her birthday, just prior to the trip, has proved another brilliant move on Mary’s part. Not only has having her own tiny camera meant that she has not demanded to borrow ours – with all the missed shots, fingers over lenses, and ‘where did you put the camera?” issues that would entail --it has provided us with key insights into Kasia’s experience of the trip. We get that scenery and museums and the like may not hold the same appeal for a four year old as for the rest of us, but it wasn’t until I saw her pictures that I fully realized that a Kasia-eye view of Hawaii is very different. Here we seen Kasia’s view of our scenic car trip to North Ohun and our walking tour through the Polonesnian Cultural Center. Suddenly, we see why these may not be as engaging for her!
a Kasia-eye view of Oahu


Still, Kasia has held up amazingly well, partly because Mary has built in enough breaks so that we don’t burn the kids or ourselves out, and partly because Kasia seems to love it here. She has repeatedly asked why we can’t move here. When I asked her why, she answered “Because it is always summer here.” Can’t argue with that!

Polynesian Cultural Center, Oahu

We arrived at the center shortly after it opened, found our way to the right line up for our pre-booked tour. We were expecting the tour guide to escort us around on a 45-minute or hour-long overview of the facility, and then let us take in particular exhibits at our leisure as our inclinations and the kid’s patience allowed. But it turned out our small tour group (less then ten people per group) stayed together for the next six hours! The guide made sure we reached each exhibit at the precise moment the demonstrations for that exhibit were scheduled, got us seated in the best seats, and on several occasions, got us involved up on stage. At the conclusion of the six-hour tour, we were deposited at an excellent dinning room for– supper and then a two-hour show. It was a pretty sweet deal.

I was constantly impressed by the scale of the facility, it’s very high staffing ratios, and the overall quality. Every exhibit seemed to involve at least half a dozen dancers or warriors or drummers or whatever, and often much larger casts, and every “island” had its own shops, interpreters etc.

The shows were often very good, my favorite being the Samoan, a one-man show by the muscular gentleman shown here who was very funny as well as informative. He demonstrated how islanders made fire (in about 4 seconds compared to the “two weeks” or “never managed it” typical of North Americans in the Survivor series) and how to crack open and milk a coconut; a younger assistant demonstrated how to retrieve a coconut from the tree. All accompanied by a very funny running dialog. Great stuff!

I did, after six hours or so, grow a bit bored with yet another set of island dancers. Although not wishing to denigrate the importance of dancing in Polynesian cultures, there is more to a culture than dancing and drumming, and I would have liked to have seen more information on other aspects of the culture. There were, to be fair, some printed displays here and there that I was unable to access as the tour moved to the next exhibit, and one or two of the interpreters did mention other aspects in passing, but the visual appeal of the dances make them just too easy to emphasize. It’s what the Decore Report labeled ‘the dancing minority trick’ in its analysis of Alberta Social Studies materials, complaining that showing a minority member in traditional clothing and dancing is the easiest visual to add to a textbook, but it has the unfortunate cumulative effect of convincing Grade 6 students that all minorities are defined by weird clothes and dances, and when you come right down to it, why bother preserving those. The subtler and more profound cultural differences concerning, say, the nature of time, the different conceptions of ‘family’ or ‘honor’ or ‘property’ tend to get short shift in such treatments.

 

That one cravat notwithstanding, the day was a huge success. To our great surprise, it maintained even four-year-old Kasia’s interest throughout, her only falling asleep briefly during the evening dance extravaganza, but even there, coming awake again for the astounding and (slapstick funny) fire knife dances. We were on site for almost 11 straight hours, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment.


Highlights included the Marquise display at which I got to participate in a mock wild boar hunt to prove my worthiness to marry Mary; the tribal dances of the Aotearoa (New Zealand); and the very lavish Broadway scale evening show (I counted at least 60 performers on stage at any one time).




So, I’d have to say, I would highly recommend the Ambassador package to anyone able to travel to north Oahu.

Oahu: Turtle Bay Resort

4 AM and we get up and carefully examine Kasia. No new pox! We get to go!

We then have a short flight to Vancouver, a not too awful rush to collect luggage, negotiate American immigration and customs, and catch our 8 AM flight to Honolulu. The scheduling was a bit tight, but Mary had researched the turn around extensively -- the percentage of on-time arrivals, the average time through customs, etc., and determined that rushing a bit here was the better option of that or waiting around the Vancouver airport for an additional four hours trying to entertain a four year old. The flight to Honolulu was uneventful, if long (longer for Mary who had to wrangle the kids -- I offered to switch off with her, but Kasia insists on being with Mom, and the seats are three and one, so, the best I can do is try to entertain Tigana from across the isle). The plane hit some air pockets which caused the adults to gasp a few times, but Kasia and Tigana are going, "whee!" and "Again! Do it again!" so not exactly traumatic.

We arrive at Honolulu in the pouring, and I am surprised to find that it is raining inside parts of the airport because although there is a ceiling, there are often no walls. I have a difficult time taking in the concept of a climate where walls are redundant, and wonder momentarily how they deal with it in the winter, and then I remember that this is is winter. The other thing that strikes me at once is the number of individuals in uniform. Of course, Hawaii is an important naval and air force base (actually, a whole bunch of bases, judging by the road maps) but I did get the sense that American society is much more highly militarized in comparison to our own.

We rented a car and drove to the north shore of Oahu, and the third thing we noticed is how polite the drivers were on the roads -- as nice as drivers in Halifax. People would let you in, or give you the wave if you let them in. You don't always even get that in Calgary any more.

We stopped at a little beach on the north shore in the rain to give the kids their first run through the sand, and to watch these enormous breakers crash into the shore. The surfing championships were being held that week along that shore because this is the season for the most impressive waves. Then back into the car and on our way to the Turtle Bay Resort (with lunch en route at my first ever Jack-in-the-box restaurant.)

The resort was great, we got a great room with an ocean view, and took the kids down to the beach. Turtle Bay, particularly in the rain, reminded me strongly of Tofino, only, you know -- warm. We had an early and excellent super at the adjoining Ola restaurant where I had the house specialty (a salom dish) with sea asparagus which I had never heard of before but which is amazingly good. Mary also notes that they made the best Mai Tai ever. The kids surprised us by behaving extremely well throughout supper, especially considering the jet lag, how excited they were, and how long and tiring a day it had been. So, after supper, it was off to bed for all.

Hawaii Conference and Vacation

Having had a paper accepted at the Cross Cultural Research Conference in Hawaii, and it being our 10th anniversary December 16th, we decided to add a few extra days onto our business trip to enjoy a vacation. As Mary started planning, she suggested drawing a clear line between business and pleasure by moving to a second island for the vacation portion of our trip. Unfortunately, her original plan for us to take the Superferry to another island fell through because the Superferry was suspended pending environmental impact studies, so Mary started casting about for alternative transport. What she found in the end was a deal on a inter-island cruise, which offered the advantages of a single "hotel" while visiting all the islands rather than having to choose one.

Mary then spent every free moment planning our trip down to the smallest detail. I was astounded at how much information was available online, including live blogs from passengers currently taking the same cruise, to an excellent blog by one of the junior waiters, to web cam images of the actual cabin we would be in; reviews in-depth of very excursion available on every island; and more restaurant reviews than Alberta has restaurants. Preoccupied with NaNoWriMo, and frankly useless at this sort of planning anyway, I left everything to Mary. I realize that this was a totally unfair burden to place on her, especially given all the other pressures on her from work and family just now, but she is just so amazing at this stuff that it is the only logical division of labour. Any time I've attempted to arrange anything, I always forget a hundred details -- like booking passage for the kids or making sure our connecting flight doesn't leave an hour before our initial flight is due to land. Stuff like that. So ten year's experience has dictated that Mary does the planning, and I try to contribute in other ways...

Such as holding her hand and remaining optimistic as everything begins to unravel. After two months of planning, we arrived at Kasia's preschool a couple of days before we are due to depart on our vacation of a lifetime to find a notice on the door that there had been chicken pox in the school. I turn Kasia around and whisk her home for the day, but it is too late: We find two clear pox marks on her chest. Off to the doctor's the next morning to have Kasia checked out.

Mary, convinced that we will have to cancel the whole trip, or at least the first half, awaits the doctor's verdict. Fortunately, we have had Kasia innoculated against chicken pox (given the very terrible experience Tigana had with the disease six years earlier) so the doctor's view is that although Kasia does have the chicken pox, that it is a very mild case, and that it has probably already run its course, such that Kasia is no longer contagious. The test, he tells us, is whether there are any additional pox that show up today, in which case she is still contagious and travel is off, or whether she remains with just the two crusted over existing pox, in which case we should consider ourselves free to travel.

Mary is convinced that we should start rebooking everything, but I have faith that the gods would not have set us up that way (too cruel to Mary, who really, really needs this vacation) and insist on our driving up to Calgary where we stay at the Delta airport hotel awaiting our 6AM flight. It is a long, nervous night.

Handbook of Arts in Qualitative Research

The Handbook of Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples and Issues (Sage Publications, 2007, $130, ISBN 971412905312) is out at long last. I contributed Chapter 26 on blogs. Nice to see it in print.

Santa

Tigana and Kasia with Santa, Dec 1, 2007

Day 30

Well, I finished today at 56,501 words. Unfortunately, due to timezone error, the wordcounter stopped counting my words at 11PM instead of midnight, so my chart is a little under the actual total, though that's okay. The official number is still good!

And I'm almost exactly half-way through the novel, the heroes have finally solved the first of three major mysteries, and I have stopped at a good point to pick the story up again when next I have time.

A very positive experience. But now time for me to go to bed.

Day 29

I won! Okay, along with thousands of others, so it is not a competitive win, but WooHoo!

Now, I just have to keep plugging away until I finish the actual novel. I seem to be about half way through the outline, which sounds about right: first draft is likely 100,000, then up from there as I add bit more description etc, then down as I cut redundant scenes etc. -- first novels pretty much have to be under 100,000 to sell. I'll spend today and tomorrow still writing, having budgeted November to this task, but then I will have to go back to real life. Specifically I promised to spend the first couple of days of December cleaning house, then there is a long vacation with family, then the new year and a ton of research work waiting. But I will try to squeeze in some novelling time too. I do not wish to lose momentum on this novel, and I have at least 12 more in the files awaiting similar treatment. Well, time will tell.

Big thank you to Line Noise for comments and encouragement throughout the process (I've based about half the character of Crane on him as a result); to M.D. Benoit for giving me the final push to go for NaNoWriMo this year; and above all to my wife for putting up with it while I abandoned other responsibilities to take this on.

My wife has mentioned several times this month that she can't remember seeing me so engaged and happy before. And I'm a guy who loves his day job... Still, Dave Duncan was exactly my age when he quit his day job to write, and he's now up to, what, 42 published novels? Makes a person think!

Day 28

At 49,742 when I called it quits tonight...just over 250 words to go and two days, so feeling pretty confident I'll make the minimum quota.

Quit because it was bedtime, and one important lesson I have confirmed through this exercise is the importance of stopping mid-idea.

In the past, I would make the mistake of working for as long as the words were pouring out, fearful that if I turned off the faucett when it was running, it might be a long time before I could get it turned back on. So I'd keep working as long as it kept coming. correspondingly, if I'd get to a tough patch, I would take a break, rather than continue to spin my wheels until despondancy set in. But the inevitable result of this combination would be that whenever I went to start on the next day's work, I come back to a problem area. I'd have finished up whatever was working for me, and had either to start the next section from scratch -- so I'd spend hours staring at the blank page wondering how to begin and what to put next -- or be stuck facing the same problem that had defeated me the night before. Demoralization, procastination and angst were therefore the constants of this process.

In contrast, I have learned (it may have been Candas Jane Dorsey who first suggested this to me, but can't be sure) that if you stop at some arbitrary deadline (dinner time, bedtime, kids story time, etc.) in the middle of a sentence you really really want to finish, that it's driving you crazy you didn't get a chance to put down before you forget it, then what happens is that when you do eventually get back to the page, you start by furiously writing down all that pent up stuff you didn't have a chance to get out last time. So you hit the page running, as it were. So in contrast with the procastination that plagued my thesis and dissertations, I found more recent writing (and particularly the current experience with NaNoWriMo) one of hardly being able to wait to get back to it. Instead of constantly facing problems when I start each day, I start the day with momemtum working for me rather than against me. It is sooo simple a principle!

As a result, I really only had one day with a very minor writer's block. hardly even worth mentioning. A very great contrast to my previous experiences!

Day27

Another productive day as I sprint towards the finish line: 3,519 words today, total: 47,301 (94.6% to target).

I've had to ignore the need for revisions: I notice, for example, that my characters only nod, shake their heads, or shrug while talking -- obviously some need for editing there! And my dialog is filled with "said bookism" -- the dreaded tendency for some writers to use descriptive words (shoulted, exclaimed, argued, agreed, snorted,cried, etc etc.) instead of just "said". Drives me crazy as a reader, and so bit shocked to find myself doing it -- but I'm letting it go in this draft because it's easy enough to fix later when I have time to reflect on which terms should go and which stay.

Watched an episode of House tonight and wonder if my style in this novel has been influenced by it -- the fact that yet again today my heroes have come up with yet another completely wrong theory as to what is going on sort of parallel's the formula of the House series where the first 8 diagnoses always turn out to be wrong.

keep writing myself into corners, and then out of them...but each time end up diverging just a little bit more from original outline. And yet it oddly seems to be coming together...like it turned out in today's scene that the character's previous occupations were a key to their being able to resolve their current crisis -- but I never saw that particular crisis coming nor planned that far ahead -- I just randomly chose occupations for them as I typed frantically to reach that day's quota and pulled their backgrounds out of a hat. So how does that work exactly that 8 chapters later that turns out to be crucial. But no one will believe it and just assume I manipulated it so it would work out as necessary plot coupons. (Plot coupon == where the kid goes on adventure, finds cup of swords, sword of hearts, and mystic key, all of which turn out to be exactly what he needed to kill the giant in the end.)

Still enjoying the writing process too much...but I guess I can't give up my day job just yet...

Day 26

Whoohoo! Very productive day, at 4094 words, bringing my total to 43,786. Two more like today, and I'll make my target. Oh wait, I only have a couple or three more days, so I have to be this productive again tommorow and Wednesday. Let's see, I'm at 87.6% of target, with 86.6% of the time elapsed...so for the first time I am actually 1% ahead of schedule!

The last few chapters have been almost entirely dialog, however, I will clearly have much revision to undertake to introduce necessary description to bring this up to standard. But that is for later. I just have to keep pressing ahead, even knowing that some of this dialog will undoubtably have to be trimmed at a later date. And I like how the characters are developing, their interactions and how the plot is thickening, albeit not quite fast enough. (At current pace, novel is going to be 100,000 long since I'm only half way through the outline, and still have two more characters waiting in the wings...maybe 3).

One aspect that I am rather proud of is that the heroes are constantly confused about what is going on...I recently reviewed a book I criticized because the characters would take one look at the alien technology or one look at the situation, and immediately intuit the right answers to all the mysteries. Bugged the hell out of me. Like a guy walking into a Jumbo jet and flying it after 10 seconds. Yeah, that could happen. So my characters keep operating on the best information available to them at the time, and then they allow themselves to build up these increasingly sinister hypothesis, most of which are dead wrong. They get there in the end of course, but by then have completely changed their perspectives on everything and everyone.

Day 25

Only 570 words today...spent time writing other stuff (see review below) and working daughters second birthday party (for four friends from old school). But I've been told that writing even a few words each day keeps momentum up, whereas missing is a sure way to lose it. So, something better than nothing, but bit disappointed haven't broken 40,000 yet. But hope to catch up tomorrow and Tuesday. Just have 11,000 words to go, so 3,000 words a day is not impossible in the final sprint to the finish.

Alberta Dance Theater's Harry Potter

November 24-26, 2007.Lethbridge; November 29- December 2, 2007 Calgary.

The frustration of attending the opening night production of Alberta Dance Theater's production of Harry Potter was knowing that after five more performances in Alberta, this brilliant dance production would be history. It's one of those rare productions that one feels ought to be available to everyone; it ought to have gone on to tour through Canada for the next two years and then into the States and across Europe, because, by god, it was that good. Not feasible, of course, given that most of the performers are school age, but wow! Where's a CBC Arts film crew when you really need them?

Artistic Director Emily Forrest's first smart move was, of course, to pick a story that everyone knows and loves. The problem with a lot of modern dance productions is that, with the possible exception of a few aficionados, no one can figure out what the hell is going on. I have seen my share of productions of, say, "Dance of Spring" in which various figures pranced about the stage perhaps being flowers or bees or rain, or perhaps just abstractly representing their feelings about spring, but either way -- not strong on plot. Such productions are often painfully tedious, and likely not accessible to young audiences. But here we have Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which the majority of the audience has memorized and routinely recites to each other the way my generation did Monty Python skits. Consequently, the young audience knows exactly who everyone is and had no difficulty following what's going on. Indeed, the production was so accessible that it would be the perfect introduction to modern dance for young audiences everywhere, which is again why I desperately wanted it to go on national tour. What Rowling did for reading, Forrest's production could easily duplicate for dance.

Furthermore, the Rowling factor meant the young dancers really got it, in a way they might not have even with Forrest's previous productions. I gave Lost in Space a quite positive review (NeoOpsis #8), but most of the performers were too young to have ever seen the original TV series. But Harry Potter? These kids get Harry Potter, so when the choreographers collaborated with their young performers to pull out ideas for the dance routines, the level of connection, creativity, and commitment was through the roof. And it showed!

And, I was surprised to realize, dance is the perfect vehicle for Harry Potter. Forget the movies, which merely portray the parallel world of Howarts through straightforward narration and literal-minded special effects. With dance, the otherworldiness of Howarts is perfectly evoked through the smooth and fluid and natural movements of the performers, which are nevertheless still somehow not quite the way people move and interact in the real world. The hidden connectedness between the characters and their environments that necessarily underlies any system of sympatric magic is perfectly portrayed by the rhythmic coordination of 50 dancers interacting on stage.

Another smart move by Forrest was not to try to cram the entire first novel into a 70 minute dance performance. Instead, she and choreographers selected key scenes, and because there was no attempt to follow Harry's moment by moment through the book, were free to develop these from the viewpoint of other participants. For example, rather than the scene in which a mountain troll invades Hogwarts, we are shown trolls in their home environment; we see the Hogwart ghosts interacting when students aren't there; we see the Weasley brothers' antics when they are not with Harry; and so on. Consequently, Harry and his friends stagger in and out of scenes whose existence extends in time and space beyond merely Harry's witnessing of them, thereby imbuing these locales with a greater substance and continuity than perhaps that available through the books or movies.

It is difficult to identify the production's highlights, because it was all so excellent, but you haven't seem Quidditch until you've seen it live on stage; the Sorting Hat was funny and clever, as students switched from novices to their house colors; as was Platrofrm 9and ¾;and the Mirror of Erised was a good introduction of how dance can portray abstractions. But really, it was all superb and a wonder to behold.

But wait, there's more! I loved the owls that haunted Privet Drive in the opening scene, and made the occasional appearance throughout: If Albert Dance Theatre is looking for merchandizing opportunities, these owl kites would be eminently marketable! And the owls and black cats and wizards outside Privet Drive showed up before the performance started. As soon as the doors were open, stuff was happening on stage so that there was no possibility of the younger members of the audience getting fidgety waiting for the curtain to go up. And the transitions between scenes were similarly handled by projecting videotape of the girls brainstorming their favorite bits from the first book or waiting in line outside a bookstore to buy the final installment. It's an inspired solution because it not only allowed them to get up to 50 dancers and their scenery off stage and set up for the next round without ever slowing the pace, but simultaneously brought any audience members that may have forgotten some bit of business in the book back up to speed through the girls' discussion. And have I mentioned the sets yet? Inspired use of very simple props and backdrops. Indeed, the entire production was flawless.

Most impressive of all was that Alberta Dance Theater was able to get all 50 girls, some of them very young, to such a high level of professionalism. I saw very few missteps the entire performance opening night, and even those blended seamlessly into context (because Quidditch players are going to fumble occasionally, and if a student in potion's class is slightly out of step, isn't that just the reality of any classroom?) Not only the dancing, but the acting was near flawless.

This was quite simply the most enjoyable dance production I have ever attended, and I am very sorry you weren't there to see it.

Day 24

A disappointing 1,023 words today, about half what I was aiming for. A combination of not getting as much time at the computer as I had hoped, a mini-writer's block as I found I had written myself into a corner, and not being very confident with how I wrote myself out of said corner. Lost some momentum because I'm less sure that the direction currently travelly in is going to work. I'm alergic to wasted effort, so hestitant to continue until I've thought through whether this is actually where I want to go, before going there.

But hopefully back on track tomorrow.

Odd how all my training and experience the last 20 years or so is how to CUT word count -- most academic journals have ridiculous word limits -- generally 6-8000 to describe your research, but in some cases, as little as 750 words (I've nver managed a submission to those journals) so I'm always trying to find ways to cut down on wordiness, Which, as I cut down a scene from yesterday by finding shorter ways of saying the same thing, I realized is not helping me with NaNoWriMo.

Day 23

2908 words today, total to 38,110 (76% of target; 76% of my time used, so finally caught up. Mary has promised to take the kids and give me some time tomorrow, so I should break 40,000 words.

Still too much talking heads, but I went and got get my characters stuck on a long space voyage where pretty much all they can do is talk at each other until we make planet fall. Hopefully the pace will pick up a bit there(. I'm debating whether to blow up the planet they're about to land on, for example, but then they'd be stuck on the damn ship again....)

But so far so good!