Summer's the Best!

It was marginally nicer weather today.  The rain is supposed to return tomorrow.

   

Surely, summer is coming. I've always enjoyed summertime.

Our First Trip to the Dehiwala Zoo

Day 63 - We've already been away for about nine weeks this winter.  We had planned to have today off and get ready for a trip to the Dehiwala Zoo tomorrow.   The zoological gardens are the national zoo not far away from Colombo.  The day was all arranged.  We were to get up a bit early tomorrow and be able to enjoy the lush grounds while the cooler morning air lingered.  A piece of jungle is easily to landscape.

Then, as we were watching the evening news, we found a strike has begun by that union of workers.  Although there had been a few murmurs about a new director, today the protest became obvious on national television.  For sixty years the zoo has always been open but the very day before we had planned a visit, it seems as though it'll be closed.  We called to cancel our van and driver.

As a group, we haven't been to the zoo since 2004.  That was the year that Babby left for Cyprus. and I have a few photos from those days.  However, I went back farther in my collection.  I found these two images taken on film in the fall of 1987.   This would have been the first time that Jay and I had visited the Sri Lankan zoo together.  Nowadays the cages have been switched to larger animal enclosures but we look remarkably similar after 35 years, don't we?  

Almost Half My Life Ago

Today's six images are new to the Internet. However, they were actually photos snapped between 25 and 30 years ago. 

After getting home in the spring, I bought a dedicated photo scanner with the goal of getting rid of a huge box of old, personal photo albums. The images were paper dating back before my first job out of college in 1981. Most were taken overseas in countries where I worked or visited. Even photos from our first years in Canada were inside the heavy cardboard container as digital cameras weren't available in 1996. 

This summer, I've put over 1700 of them on Flickr; however, that's a small dent in the 34.2K photos now found under my account. Today's batch of 68 was taken between 1991 and 1996.  They were all of my time in Dubai when I was working at the old campus of the Higher Colleges of Technology - Dubai Men's. Lots were staff functions but quite a number were simply around the Foundations building too. 

In mid-November, we are planning to head back to Dubai for a month.  We wanted to take in the Dubai Expo and further explore what's happened in the city where we lived for five years.  Our last visit to DXB was a five-night stopover in 2015.  We are using Dubai as a jumping-off spot for the rest of our winter away.

Friday Flashback

This week I made a few dozen more of our old paper images 'Internet-friendly'.

Whereas the farthest we got today was to the Home Depot across the river, the following image was taken twenty years ago. Jay and I were in dinosaur country in Alberta on our way across this great nation to Newfoundland. It took us six weeks to traverse Canada and return. We put 15,000 km on our former Ford Ranger on this mega, camping, road trip.

 

Hell's Gate

 

Our first summer in British Columbia was in 1996. This means we were exploring our new home twenty-five years ago. That surely sounds longer ago than it feels. In these two, recently-scanned photos, we were visiting Hell's Gate Airtram. This is along a very narrow part of the Fraser River.  It is about 180 km away and definitely a nice day trip. 

In fact, I think we'll make it an upcoming one as we can use our revisit as a way to celebrate our anniversary of being in BC.  Starting tomorrow, our province hits the second step of its reopening plan after travel being restricted due to the COVID situation.  Now, the government is actually encouraging us to get out and enjoy BC as a means to help travel-related businesses.

 

Twice in Waikiki

I'm still pulling out little piles of old photo snapshots and scanning them. I give myself plenty of rest too.  So far, I've run 1610 pieces of paper through the plustek ePhoto Z300. I was right thinking there'd be at least a couple of thousand to complete. 

Lately, I've been scanning ones that feel relatively new but, in actuality, are more than two decades old. This was our first trip from Canada involving a flight over an ocean. We took a Canada 3000 for a one-week packaged hotel stay. Then, we stayed on a few days after finding a relatively cheap Waikiki hotel.

 

We returned here on a port day on our big 'Vancouver to New Zealand' cruise on October 5, 2017. However, by that time Kodak had gone belly-up and the KODAK HULA SHOW ladies were only a part of island history.

Old Snapshot Arrives in Time for Retirement

If you've seen daily posts on 'my eJournal and images' in the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed many old snapshots have surfaced. My goal has been to scan everything so that I can throw away around fifty pounds of yellowing paper and albums. These have been sitting in our closets in Canada for about twenty-five years. I'm making pretty good progress and estimate my work is nearly half over. 

I recently added all my fading images from Kuwait in the early 80s. Once I knew they were securely on Flickr, I looked for an up-to-date contact at my former school. Of course, forty years on, it was easy to turn to social media and I sent messages to Mr. Kevin Fullbrook. Here is our exchange:

 

What auspicious timing! I can send my wishes for a happy retirement to Lamies just in time! Sixty of my recently-scanned, school images can be found here.

 

During Our Second Year in Canada

I am still slaving over a hot scanner. Whenever I have a few minutes, a few times every week, I pick a pile of old snapshots and run them through the Plustek. I immediately upload them to Flickr snapshot album. 

Although I have completed some of my initial overseas years, there are still many more. However, I recently moved to the new snapshots taken in Canada during the years before my first digital camera. Although I consider them recent photographs, in reality, our first summer in BC was now 25 years ago! I completed many from the summer and fall of 1996 earlier this week. 

Today, I hit several rolls. I've now uploaded 1,470 formerly-paper images.  Some of the ones I added today were from a trip in November 1998. During some time off that year, we took our very first trip to Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa. We figured it was a necessity to visit our adopted nation's capital city!  We flew on a now-defunct airline called Canada 3000. We must've travelled by bus to see the other cities.

 

A Bit of Kuwait (circa 1982)

Over the last dozen years, I had scanned a few dozen snapshots from my days in Kuwait. I worked there as an elementary teacher from 1981 to 1983. 

 

Last month, however, I finally bought a dedicated photo scanner in order to make copies before the ink and paper deteriorate further. I completed one set of nearly two-hundred images this afternoon. Many will eventually benefit from some quick editing, but I can get to that at a later time.

1988: When One's Selfies Were Taken by Others

Today was grey and cold. It was quite unlike yesterday, but not all that unusual for a Victoria-Day Long Weekend in BC. 

We wanted to walk a little, so I thought of the idea of going to Metrotown Mall, about 10 kilometers from our place. I think it is the largest mall in British Columbia. First, we parked in the maze of lots under the mall. Our closest door brought us right next to the T&T Supermarket.  We generally visit the supermarket chain's branch close to us in Surrey.  However, today's has a much more authentic feeling as there is a very large Chinese and Asian community in that part of Burnaby. Although the products are the same, the aisles feel crowded with a much more Asian vibe. Jay was able to pick up some good quality pandan and curry leaves. We are now partial to goji berries with our evening snack of nuts and picked a large packet and a few other items. They also have a great takeaway food section and we got a container of Spicy Chicken with Chili.  I didn't take any photos today though. 

In the afternoon, I did hit one more pile of old snapshots. I swear I will keep at this chore until I have scanned and completely ripped up every paper photograph in the house!  Today, I tried to choose a small pile and found 1988. It was the year I was working in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. My teaching job was with cadets of the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. I was a teacher there for exactly one year and after completing my contract, I moved to a different job in Bahrain. Today, I've picked four pictures from that time and place to include today.  Let's see, where's the calculator?  One-third of a century ago, in 1988, I turned twenty-nine years old.

 

India During the Summer of 1994

Today, I did get to a stack of old snapshots. They were fading images from 27 years in the past. I'm putting them online at a time when the country is being ravaged by a variant of the COVID virus. It is sad to see the news but much sweeter to remember travelling there during a pre-Internet era. Each of the 76 images added today has the following caption.

"One summer while at Dubai Men's College, we chose to spend about 6 weeks of the summer in India. We first flew into New Delhi and were on a private escorted tour of Agra and Jaipur. We continued for the next five weeks travelling by ourselves. We took the train to Bihar for the Buddhist things, and Varanasi. We continued down to Calcutta and then Bhubaneswar. After we flew to Madras and went to a Jain temple in the Bangalore area. We flew to Goa for a short stay. Finally, we travelled overland to Bombay (called at the time) and returned to the UAE from there."

I love the power of an image to help prompt memories. I'll choose just five from different parts of India to include here today.

 

Where I Was 40 Years Ago

On the coffee table, I have a large stack of old pictures to scan. The snapshots were taken in India during the summer of 1994. It seemed like a bit too much to attempt this afternoon, so I went in the bedroom and fished through a container with more images. I have vowed to put every single one of my paper photos online this summer. I was reaching for an envelope that felt fairly thin. I didn't know I'd pull out one with only twenty photos.

Interestingly, they were taken during a May, but they were from May 1981. So, the trip these photos represent occurred exactly forty years ago. Forty! When did I get old enough to type a sentence with a number like that? 

We graduated from Keene State that year. KSC was formerly known as a normal school meaning they took in high school graduates and made teachers out of them. Even in the early 1980s, a large proportion of the college body was involved in training for educators. I graduated with these three friends in my program of Elementary Education. We grabbed our 'Bachelors of Science in Education' that month and headed on a road trip to Florida. We figured we could use a vacation. I put six of my twenty images here today.

 

Ripping Up Old Snapshots

Once a photograph has been scanned, the original is nothing but useless paper. 

So, Jay is going through a pile that we've carried here from the other side of the world and kept in closets for 28 years. This particular pile was from Nepal and taken in January 1993. The paper hadn't been handled in decades. I'll pick the image that Jay is ripping. I put it and sixty others on Flickr today. This image had likely never been seen by more than five people. Now, however, it lives on the Internet. I can put it right here for you to see.

   

And if you stop at the apartment, I can show it to you on our TV as well. All of the Nepali photos have the following description:

While working in Dubai, we had a chance to take a vacation to Nepal in January 1993. We went to Lumbini to see Buddha's birthplace. We also took a bus to Pokhara and flew back to Kathmandu.

I'll add a few more. 

This Was Tuesday

We only see the inside of a bank a couple of times a year. Today, was one time for 2021. We had a 10:00 AM meeting with our banker to renew some GICs and shift funds into accounts that will minimize our taxes. It is always nice to chat with Frankie.

I hit the scanner again in the afternoon.  I'm glad I've made this a summer project as getting old snapshots scanned and organized will take a while.  I repurposed an existing Flickr album to include only images taken of our group of friends.   It'll be a while before I hit the film photos taken during the first few years in Canada.  I didn't get my first digital camera until 2002.  I didn't start putting all digital photos online until the mid part of that decade.

Then, I pulled from early experiences. I uploaded a roll of film from our first trip to Thailand in the spring of 1991. Next, I went back to an even earlier time to put a number of photos from a trip to the Maldives.  It is fun breathing new life into old prints.  It is also very satisfying getting rid of the original prints.

 

When Writing This, I Craved Turkish Coffee!

Last Sunday, Turkish Airlines began a new non-stop route from Vancouver to Istanbul. I'm glad they are brave enough to expand during this time of COVID restrictions and its accompanying travel slowdown. They already had flights into Montreal and Toronto, but a non-stop from here will undoubtedly create some possible interesting itineraries and future routings for us. For example, we usually fly over the Pacific when travelling to Sri Lanka, but the distance is comparable in either direction. Stopping over in Turkey sounds like an exciting possibility. 

When Jay and I were in Bahrain in the years surrounding 1990, we first visited that country. We travelled twice from Bahrain and once from Dubai. It was a short, easy getaway from the Gulf and gave us a chance to experience a little winter. In fact, Jay first touched snow in Ankara, Turkey! 

So, I hit one of two piles of snapshots from Turkey with the scanner. I will include four of the fifty photos I uploaded to Flickr today. This is the blurb, I wrote to accompany the batch of images.

"At the end of 1989, I flew through Istanbul to go home.  Jay stayed  a few weeks until I returned.  Then, we used free air tickets to take visit Ankara.  This was the first time Jay played in snow.  Getting to Turkey was quick from the Gulf and we visited several more times during the next couple of winters, once more from Bahrain and once from Dubai.  We travelled locally by bus and visited important sites such as Antalya, Ephesus, Cappadocia, Pamukkale, and Konya."