Where's the Beef?

People travel for many reasons. Some leave their homes in search of new ones. Some set out with the hopes of learning a new language or experiencing different cultures, or both. Others just leave the safety and familiarity of home in search of anything new. Regardless of the goals that we originally set out with, there is one thing that most come to realize – it is the people that make travelling worthwhile. You can witness a thousand glorious sunsets, climb dozens of mountains or explore ancient cities, but the things that you remember are the people you meet and the memories you make with them.

Some wise person once said that we travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us. Reading this little nugget of wisdom came just at the right time for me when a good friend of mine questioned my drive to seek teaching assignments overseas as opposed to settling for working "at home" in safe, stable and clean Canada. If I remember right, he asked me, in his own subtle way, what I was escaping from. In all fairness though, I have to point out that at that time, I was looking at landing an interview for a school on Sakhalin Island, that large Russian island in the north Pacific Ocean, pretty dismal place, kind of like Thompson, Manitoba without the bowling alley. 

Mind you, I admit that I was a bit taken aback by this question of his, and to be honest, both Madeleine and I have occasionally asked ourselves that question, especially when we found ourselves tangled and mangled in some banana-republic-like dysfunctional country...or, to be a bit more politically correct I should rather say 'emergent nation'... where we have served.  At the risk of sounding judgemental, or offending someone, or finding myself decapitated in a ditch somewhere and left to rot under the orders of some crackpot dictator, I shall not name names, but pardon me while I take a drag form my Shisha pipe and adjust my camel bench. Yes, I may sound a bit judgemental or narrow-minded by describing some of these places as dysfunctional because what may be dysfunctional for me may be normal to others.

Fried scorpions - finger food on
KaoSan Road in Bangkok

As Madeleine and I approach the end of our careers as global nomads, we often spend time thinking about what we will do in our post international teacher lives. (I am purposely avoiding using the R word here). It is just plain thrilling to think of the endless possibilities that are out there for people who are about to enter another stage of their lives where they spend their time engaging in ventures, projects, pastimes, and whatever else that is not tied to that paycheque at the end of month. For all I know, I may just be content with sitting all day on my balcony in Port Moody, sipping my coffee while watching the boats sail by.  Whatever comes up, continuing to travel the world will probably be a small part of our retirement scheme (ouch, I just used the R word!).  As I said at the outset of this entry, it is the people you meet and relationships that you establish that make travelling worthwhile. What has made our international lives so fulfilling were not the monuments we've seen in Rome, the mountains we've climbed in Kenya, the bugs we've eaten in Thailand, the number of cities we've experienced (hey, as a Starbucks City Cup collector, I've done good) throughout the world, but it's the people we've met and the friendships we've made. And this in fact represents the essence of what emerged from the depth of my being while munching away at a Burger King in Chennai.

Now, I have been around long enough to know that substituting chicken for beef in a Whopper, under normal circumstances would be nothing short of an ugly aberration in the world of Whopper aficionados, of which I am a member. However, I am one who has always believed that things happen for a reason, and therefore, there was a life lesson to be learned by my descent into the abyss of beefless whoppers.   As I munched away on my Whopper, I could not help but think how much I missed the beef patty.  My Whopper Chicken was good, but when your palate is accustomed to beef in a Whopper...well, what else can I say but where's the frickin' beef?

And this was the thought that dawned on me as I munched on my burger.  Here we were, in Chennai, in India, an exciting, colourful, culturally stimulating foreign land. And yet, for both Madeleine and I, this visit would be scant in meaningfulness if it was not for the main purpose of our visit, and that was to visit with our good friends Kathryn and Cherno. Without them, our visit would be like eating a Whopper without beef.