Trip Wrap-Up

We’re back in Boston, after what I think was a kind of water­shed trip.

As Pam noted, we were in a bit of funk before we left. We were focused on the absence of Socrates, and this in turn led us to con­tem­plate the past. This trip to Van­cou­ver helped us make more of a clean break. Instead of dwelling on ‘He used to hang out here’ or ‘Now was the time when he’d usu­ally make a cute noise or sit on your mou­s­ing arm.’ it was ‘Here’s where we might live’ or ‘There is where you might work’. We thought about what we’ll be doing in a few months, or what we might need to do a few years down the road. We tried to imag­ine our­selves in a new house, in a new job, in a new coun­try. My friend Andy calls it a ‘Life Mul­li­gan’. I didn’t under­stand the term at first, but he explained that a Mul­li­gan is a term from golf, mean­ing essen­tially a ‘do-over’. You get them in a polite game. I sus­pect it’s named after some des­per­ately bad golfer who always asked if he could retake his dri­ves or putts.

(Hah! I just found it on About.com and it’s appar­ently a Cana­dian term. Accord­ing to one of the many mys­te­ri­ous ety­molo­gies of the term, a promi­nent hote­lier named David Mul­li­gan (sic) ‘fre­quented St. Lam­bert Coun­try Club in Mon­treal, Que­bec, dur­ing the 1920s. Mul­li­gan let it rip off the tee one day, wasn’t happy with the results, re-teed, and hit again. Accord­ing to the story, he called it a “cor­rec­tion shot,” but his part­ners thought a bet­ter name was needed and chris­tened it a “mul­li­gan.” Per­haps because Mr. Mul­li­gan was a promi­nent busi­ness­man — own­ing mul­ti­ple hotels — the term was more likely to catch on.’ At any rate, I like that the­ory, espe­cially since the guy is both a David and a Cana­dian.)

Any­way, Life Do-Over or not, we def­i­nitely seem to be restart­ing, and this trip made the Restart­ing line seem a bit closer and clearer. We walked the city of Van­cou­ver sev­eral times, took the Sky­train way out into the ‘burbs and back again in a big loop. We walked in parks, over the Granville Bridge (much to my dis­com­fort, as I still do not like walk­ing near the edge of pre­cip­i­tous areas like bridge side­walks), and to many places we would like to fre­quent (the Pub­lic Library, the Sym­phony Hall, the Sea Wall — that last one by Pam alone). We looked at poten­tial con­do­mini­ums, watched for apart­ment rental signs, read news­pa­pers, watched some local TV and lis­tened to CBC radio. We bought food at local gro­ceries, pro­duce stands and bakeries.

As for me, I hus­tled, schmoozed and did my best to learn about the local busi­ness scene, sign­ing up with 2 recruiters, and already inter­view­ing with 2 local busi­nesses. My expe­ri­ences were nearly all encour­ag­ing. I have a strong resume, lots of great expe­ri­ence, and I just have to work on how I present my port­fo­lio (a lit­tle rusty at that, I must admit). I found most peo­ple polite, inter­est­ing to talk to, and curi­ous about why a per­son from Boston would want to relo­cate to little-old Van­cou­ver, which does have a bit of a self-image of being a back­wa­ter eco­nom­i­cally. If this is true, I’m hop­ing that the ‘big­ger fish in a smaller pond’ metaphor does hold true, and I’ll be able to make a name for myself there.

Frankly, given that the cul­ture is so rich with so many immi­grants (tons of peo­ple from China and India), the cli­mate is so mild, the vis­tas so breath­tak­ing, the local gov­ern­ment enlight­ened and the pop­u­lace tol­er­ant, it’s only a mat­ter of time before the world begins to notice that this is one of the best places in the world in which to reside. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure I’ll miss Boston a lot, but with it’s polit­i­cal infight­ing, frigid win­ters, rude­ness, obses­sion with the Colo­nial past and theme park exploita­tion of it’s own her­itage, not to men­tion the abom­i­na­tions of Logan Air­port, the Hynes Con­ven­tion Cen­ter and Gov­ern­ment Cen­ter (ick, yuck and yech! respec­tively), I’m going to have to say that it’s time for me to check out some new places.

A thought just came to me. At Pam’s and my wed­ding, some of Pam’s Aunts came over to us after the reception/luncheon, where we served Vichysoise, Poached Salmon withe some assorted sauces, rasp­berry coulis, and Pra­line cake for a wed­ding cake. They exclaimed how they had never eaten any­thing like that before. In fact, I learned that one of them had rarely ven­tured out­side her 10-mile radius of Quincy. OK. Time to go now.

writ­ten while lis­ten­ing to: Strauss — Vier Let­zte Lieder — i. Früh­ling from the album “Strauss: Vier Let­zte Lieder” by Jessye Nor­man, soprano, The Leipzig Gewand­haus Orches­tra con­ducted by Kurt Masur