Private Peeps

My funny dicks.

I stood before the customs agent as neutral as I could. A blank piece of paper. Like an unthreatening swath of undyed muslin. I took nothing, I gave nothing. I had been fairly anxious about going through US customs for a work trip given everything being reported and rumoured. The anxiety was soon quelled by boredom after several frustrating lineups. If the anxiety doesn’t get you the boredom will. After two or three benign questions, I was directed to stand in front of a camera, remove my hat and glasses and stand still. My photo was then taken. No one asked me. I was told.

A similar thing occurred coming back in Toronto going through Canadian customs. Remove your hat and glasses and hold still for your unrequested portrait. Then the kiosk produced a small portrait of me on a slip of thermal paper. In the week in between those photos my picture had been taken numerous times by work colleagues at restaurants or by the government of California as I drove south on the 101 as I tried to avoid the toll lanes. Who knows how many other times I was in the background of someone else’s photos or surveilled by some other government’s camera.

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I'm Obmutescent 

I don’t have words to describe the spectacular event of the eclipse we recently witnessed. There are so many ways of describing the eeriness of the light quality, the sheer awe of seeing the corona and diamond ring effect, and the humbling realization of the wondrous dance of the cosmos but nothing that encapsulates the joy, wonder, and humility one feels at that precise moment. Now that Grammarly has replaced my Strunk & White The Elements of Style I find I struggle even more to find the right words. As robust as the English language is, we've never really had any rules for inventing new words, which might explain why English is so eccentric and weird. We mash existing words together in portmanteaus such as breakfast and lunch to make "brunch", or we borrow from the French to have words such as bureaucracy or entrepreneur. We even look to both the Danes and the French to describe that cozy warm feeling of hygge or àpres-ski and even though we may think of Germans as being unpoetic, we love terms like schadenfreude when we find ourselves enjoying the downfall of others. It seems particularly in English that we'd rather write essays, poems, novels or op-ed columns about things that are really common experiences like the ones we have when we travel. Perhaps we should take a page from the books of Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) or Douglas Adams and invent words as needed.

Like a word for the high expectation of going to a museum paired with the despair after finding it has been closed for renovations.
Proposal: Acropoly - from the Acropolis in Athens, a site of ruins.

Or a word for the joy and satisfaction when you finally find a nice restaurant followed by the lull of waiting for your order to arrive.
Proposal: Mealacuna, from "meal" + "lacuna" (an unfilled space from the Latin, "lacus" or lake.).

I think I need a word for the difference between my happiness at going to my dream bookshop only to realize that everyone else thinks it’s just a very regular bookshop.
Proposal: Bibliomojo - like library vibes, you might claim to others who look bored, "You're jamming my bibliomojo, man."

There definitely should be a word for the anxiety of catching the one bus that will take you somewhere you have to be but once you are on board, you're entirely unsure if it’s going in the right direction.
Proposal: Autoxiety - autobus anxiety portmanteau, applicable to any automotive travel. Usage: "This on-ramp is giving me major autoxiety!"

A word for the butt-clenching refusal to use the onsite toilets at a music festival.
Proposal: porta-not.
Usage: "This $50 Coachella burger isn't agreeing with my stomach right now."
Friend: "The porta-potties are just over there."
Me: "Porta-not."
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Hurkle-durkle 

An unbiased interpretation of hurkle-durkle.

Hurkle-durkle. No, not the first draught of the lyrics of Helter Skelter, but a word, of Scottish origin, to describe lounging in bed when one should be up and about. Apparently, some time ago this word became a meme on social media that I clearly overlooked while busy experiencing reality in real life. I realize to those of you with children or more than one job, that the idea of lounging about is not only remote but perhaps even angering. Merely thinking that someone else has such leisure may be triggering for you. I assure you, to those of us without children, that having such time is a luxury that is never unappreciated.

It was on a recent Sunday when I hurkle-durkled my way to idly watch online videos, read inconsequential articles and flip lazily through a book or two. How was it that time, essentially poorly spent, was such a luxury? Just as scarcity creates value, abundance depreciates it. If you have too much free time, it's boring. Only when you're busy do you find the gaps with nothing planned, nothing scheduled, without errands or chores to do, that time feels as luxurious as high thread count cotton. Leisure like this can feel like a pause in a meal when you enjoy the scent of wine in your mouth, or chocolate melting on your tongue.

So it was that I enjoyed the nothingness. I could've easily manufactured some busyness. Laundry could've been laundered, dust could've been swept, bills could've been paid, e-mail read or written, groceries procured, but all of it took a backseat to this most important of tasks. The task of not doing any tasks. The absence of tasks.

I'm reminded of reading about a book, Voyage Around My Room, written by Xavier de Maistre while under house arrest, in which the author describes his room as if part of a travelogue. Within the boredom of his confinement, he discovers an appreciation for the smallest details of life. Sure, some may call it a "stay-cation" but I like to think of it more as a vacation from myself. A holiday from my everyday. It was like I was on an all-expenses paid trip where my bed was the cruise liner.

It should come as no surprise, a fair amount of guilt had to be ignored if I were to truly enjoy this decadence. It seems this kind of guilt is built into a society that despite our many advances believes that your time is better spent by working, regardless of what the work is. This is true in religious communities, capitalist countries, socialist countries and, despite the stated goal of setting the worker free, communist countries. Even in the laziest of modern occupations, the "influencer" is a job where people who found success are quitting as the demand for content has led to a kind of creator burnout. This demand on us to busy ourselves seems to me, to be the single biggest factor in suppressing creativity. Though let's be honest, there is much creative work made while in the middle of a grinding schedule. In fact, there are plenty of people who will say they were at their peak creativity while at the same time, at their peak productivity. Many people, be they entrepreneurs or artists had their best ideas while they were also at their most prolific. Yet that just isn’t sustainable. I’m in this life for the long haul. I’m not aiming to be the flame that burns twice as bright for half the time. I want my creative life to simmer on the back burner, always bubbling at the ready, always warm to the touch. If a little hurkle-durkle helps maintain a frothy fermentation, then so be it.

Time Rift

aestas canadensis (Canadian Summer)

I always have this nostalgic vision of summer: lazy, sunny mornings, padding around the house barefoot, where I linger over coffee, pastries and seasonal fruit. Reading in the shade while listening to new music or podcasts. Countless swims and bike rides and plentiful stops for ice cream. Restaurant hangs with friends. Movies in cooled theatres. Music in parks. Slow shopping in markets to get ingredients for a great meal made over a grill under a salmon coloured evening sky. None of that is exceptional or difficult but you need time such that none of it is rushed. You need a special kind of time. You need summertime.

Yet, what is a summertime? It's really just a dozen weekends, and if you really think about how many weekends others ask you to join them in their summer endeavours or that you have to use for all the chores and errands you were leaving for a warm, dry day, that number is probably closer to half of that. You also need summer weather. We now have summers of crushing, searing heat, oppressive humidity, raging forest fires, overwhelming droughts or deadly flooding and mudslides. Not a time for simple pleasures.

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How to know if you’ve stayed too long. 

Edward Gorey's The Doubtful Guest most likely stayed too long.

There is an old saying that visitors are like fish: after three days they begin to stink. Whoever came up with this expression may not have been aware that some fish stinks a lot sooner than three days. Also, this adage is really intended for the host but how would you, as a visitor, know you've overstayed your welcome. We are here to help and hopefully provide this guidance on knowing when you've stayed too long.

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Road Tripping

Road trips used to be a lot harder.

In August I flew back to Newfoundland. It was the most expensive flight I’ve purchased in years. The flight was delayed twice and, if you count the train ride to Pearson, the wait at the gate and the time filling out COVID documentation once I landed, I was wearing a mask and breathing with difficultly for over seven hours. This is how we travel now. Not by hook or by crook but by cautious and respectful steps.

In contrast, in September, Julia and I took a road trip a few hours outside of Toronto where we listened to our own music and podcasts, took our own time, took the road less travelled, snacked on our snacks and spoke and laughed entirely unmasked.

I’m not generally a fan of the road trip by car. The stress of driving on a 400-series Ontario highway combined with junk food, intermittent radio, carefully timed bathroom breaks, not to mention other idiot drivers, all while sealed inside a ton or so of steel, glass and plastic seems more like torture by boredom than fun. By comparison, nothing comes close to the thrill and genuine freedom of heading out on the open road with just your bike and a couple of stuffed panniers. When you bike it takes a day to cover the same distance you might go in an hour by car but you remember every minute of that day and every kilometre of that journey. It is so visceral. The sun or (god forbid) rain on your cheeks, the aromas in your nose, the wind buffeting you, the sounds from roadside woods or creeks all become unforgettable. The journey isn’t just the way you got somewhere on your vacation but it is the vacation.
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21 Things That Will Be Different in the Future 

The Office of the Future

The question keeps coming up. After a global epidemic has ravaged our populations and our economies, what will the future look like? What will the future of work be; what will the future of travel be; what will entertainment, sports, or restaurants look like? I think I have some answers.

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Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered 

View this post on Instagram

Summer vibes.

A post shared by Peter Rogers (@peterrogersesq) on Aug 5, 2019 at 5:39am PDT

A man trying to fit his oversized bag into the overhead bin looked angrily at the compartment while not understanding how his overhead-bin-sized-bag would not fit. A flight attendant came to the rescue and turned the bag 90° clockwise and pushed it easily into the available space. When the flight landed a woman stood up and started towards the toilet before realizing that the plane’s exit was the other way. Even then she seemed unsure. Later in the terminal at a sandwich shop a man stood in front of a menu board looking so intensely at it you’d think he expected it to deliver the meaning of life. After a minute he abandoned the task and walked away in a huff. While I waited for my boarding call I entered the men’s room to be met by a woman shaking water from her hands. For a moment I thought I had gone to the wrong restroom but the urinals told me otherwise. This woman clearly now recognized her mistake, dropped her head and muttered, “Excuse me.” It’s a look I’ve come to know as “The Bewilderment”.
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It's Hot in the City 

Maybe looking at Wayne Thiebaud's “Untitled (Three Ice Creams)” from 1964 will cool you down.

You know it’s really hot when you step out of your air conditioned office to find yourself relieved that it’s only 28°C with 66% humidity instead of “boil-you-alive° C” with “you’ll-never-feel-dry-again%” humidity. I spent most of the weekend lying prone in front of a fan, trying not to move for fear the exertion of say, batting an eyelash, may lead to more sweating. I’m starting to think the scientist who said, “sweating is the body’s built-in air conditioner” never really knew what an air conditioner was, or what “sweating” was, or what “built-in” meant. I realize that weather isn’t climate and one heat wave during one summer isn’t proof that we’re destroying the planet yet it feels so much like what I imagine the end-of-times would feel like, that blaming something like climate change feels good. Not "comfortably dry at 23°C" good, but the kind of good like when you curse after stubbing your toe. It does nothing but it mends the psyche if not the toe.

One thing did occur to me during the hottest moments of the weekend. Feeling near death in the punishing heat is sort of an ailment of the poor or the slightly less privileged. People who can retreat to air conditioned homes have something that people living in older sweltering apartments do not. People who drive with their vehicles sealed shut while running their A/C on full blast are far more comfortable than those walking the hot sidewalks or riding the older stifling streetcars. Air conditioning used to be considered a luxury but it has become a necessity of life. During a heat wave the city advises those without air conditioning to seek out cooling centres. Air conditioning is as essential to a modern city as elevators. You can’t live in a tall building without an elevator to take you to your floor and you can’t live on that floor of a tall building (essentially a chimney stack with rooms) without air conditioning.
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The Ultimate Road Trip has No Roads 

Rocky Mountain Flyover - click left or right (or use the arrow keys) to see more.

As a kid - or even as an adult - I was never fond of the classic road trip. When you’re small and sitting in the back of a car all you see is the inside panel of the car door and all you feel, if not motion sickness, is boredom. Well now I’ve found the ultimate road trip doesn’t even have roads. If I told you, you could be ferried through some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes sitting in a comfy chair while someone brings you snacks and drinks and meals you may think I’m referring to a virtual reality video game. Yet in truth it’s the oldest form of road trip - the continental train passage from the lush verdant west coast to the pointed snow capped peaks of the Rockies.

Oh sure, you pay for the privilege of experiencing beauty ensconced in luxury whilst uniformed staff offer sweets, savouries, wine or beer but hey you’re worth it. If not you then who?

I guess you could do this via the cruelty of the winding highway and common crudeness of gas stations but then you would have to pay attention to the road and not the mountains where the earth literally touches the sky. Or maybe you’d prefer to hike the trails with a rucksack and a mule full of supplies like out forefathers did. Trust me, I’m pretty sure our forefathers would have preferred a leather chair with a glass of ale and the occasional nap rather than risking life and limb. Plus, all the bugs? No thanks. You know there are ticks now that can make you allergic to red meat? Yeah. I may never go into a forest again unless I’m surrounded by steel and glass. That's the beauty of taking the train. You’re separated from the dirty bits of nature while simultaneously carving through it - with a glass full of your favourite beverage, with or without ice.
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Total Eclipse of My Summer 

Betwix Signal Hill and Cape Spear…

A post shared by Peter Rogers (@peterrogersesq) on Aug 15, 2017 at 3:25pm PDT

It all began after a late work day and heading to Toronto Island where I was immediately handed a cold beer in front of a beach bonfire. Someone played an ukulele, someone else talked about D&D, and someone splashed in the Lake. A few hours later I was on a ferry heading into Toronto’s sparkly skyline and a few hours after that I was on a plane headed east.

“under artificial lighting, chilled by artificial breezes, occupied by artificial deadlines”

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Keep Breathing 

A post shared by Peter Rogers (@peterrogersesq) on Feb 22, 2017 at 6:27pm PST

Enter Bangalore's stream of unconscious traffic.


Upon arriving home from India after an epic 30 hour trip, I took a little nap. What felt like only a few hours later, I found myself standing in a new office space, unpacking a crate, looking for a power bar. That’s when someone asked me, "What was your impression of Bangalore?"

I meant it when I said Bangalore was like the 16th century smashing up against the 21st century. Imagine for a moment, London in the late 1500s. It’s good place to start because Tudor England around Shakespeare’s time has been pretty well represented in a lot of plays, movies and novels. We can kind of picture it in our minds. You can imagine London as a teeming city of around maybe 500,000 souls crammed into congested blocks of low rise buildings. Think of it, people lived or had shops on the bridges back then. Most people are dirt poor (picture really horrible teeth). There’s no sanitation so everyone throws swill buckets into open gutters. Beasts of burden and livestock are everywhere, and so is their waste. Homes or more accurately, hovels are heated by open fires, everything is cooked or boiled over wood or charcoal fires so the air is ripe with smoke, sewage and probably the rank odour of the nearby river and every one of the Queen’s subjects. Yet a wealthy aristocracy moves throughout the city. They've created a bubble of carriages, fine clothing, and perfumes to isolate themselves from the clatter and chaos of everyone else.
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Before All Hell Breaks Loose 

The chaos of Carnival is only a memory to me now.

In a few hours I will embark on one of the most arduous journeys of my life. The fact that approximately 30 hours of transport in taxis, planes, and trains can be referred to as “the most arduous journey of my life” tells you just what an incredibly overindulgent and mollycoddled life I’ve led thus far. I would never be called a refugee, escapee or even a “boat person” (with apologies to those referred to as such). In the past, as a student, I took a hockey bag full of all my belongings (how quaintly Canadian) and hitched a ride with friends by car from Ottawa to Toronto, flew economy (as I still do) from Toronto to Halifax, took an unusually long train ride from Halifax to North Sydney, where I then took a cab ride to the ferry terminal, took the overnighter boat to Port aux Basques, then a bus to Deer Lake and days later, I took an $80 flight from Deer Lake to St. John’s. The longest uninterrupted section of that trip took 24 hours. I recall the sensation that my clothing felt starched and stiff and fused to my skin.

This trip to India has already surpassed that; traveling from Toronto to Bangalore was about 30 hours yet the six hour layover in Frankfurt included a shower, a full buffet breakfast and a two hour nap in an over-stuffed leather recliner. That Germanic break came with vitamin-E infused moisturizer, lattes and little cakes which made the entire trip much more tolerable. That will not happen this time. Additionally I’m leaving from Goa to Bangalore (in +30 C heat) before I even begin. Taxis and hanging-around-abandoned-terminal-time will add some eight hours before the wheels on my flight to Toronto even begin to roll. I expect the entirety of the trip to be about 28 hours, non-stop, if everything goes as planned.
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Pack and Get Dressed 

I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world. Not as well travelled as I’d like to be, but certainly open to it. Clearly I am wrong. I am a withering petal on a dying plant. I can be sheepish and susceptible to suggestions when overwhelmed or hugely skeptical, obstinate and cynical if pressured to make a decision. Every time I see an article titled “How to Have a Better Flight”, I eagerly hope to find a new insight or some helpful “travel hack”. Instead I read it and think, “Well, that was obvious.” A recent New York Times article offered, “Be polite to flight staff.” Well, I’m not going to anger the fop who controls all the food and doors in a flying metal pod am I? I want to know how to sleep on an overnight flight or better yet, how to avoid an overnight flight. I have learned however why sometimes I feel immediately hungover when I drink alcohol aboard an aircraft (apparently, a loss of pressure in the cabin can make you susceptible to a mild altitude sickness and alcohol might worsen that). On this trip to India, I discovered some airports have day passes to lounges with showers, buffets and, more importantly, comfy chairs or loungers. After an overnight flight to Frankfurt with a six hour layover before continuing to India, I took full advantage of a Luftansa Lounge. Once I found the lounge, I immediately showered, shaved, took my meds and brushed my teeth. I then had a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, fruit salad and a croissant. I had to try at least 3 seats before I found a quiet, darker corner where I dozed off for a couple of hours of sleep. Given that I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight, and knew I wouldn’t sleep on the next leg, it turned out to be the only sleep I got over 30 hours of travel. I won’t have this luxury on the way back and will go from one 8 hour flight to the next.
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Today We Escape 

Frankfurt Airport around 6:00 AM local time.

I had been in India less than 5 hours when I vomited. I hadn’t even eaten anything which was probably the problem. You see I left my house in Toronto around 2:30 PM Saturday. By 6:00 AM Sunday the next day I was in the Frankfurt airport. Six hours later I was on a flight to Bangalore and by 6:00 AM Monday morning I had gone through customs, currency exchange and an hour long cab ride to finally be able to lower my head on a pillow for the first time in about 35 hours. That’s when I started to shiver and things began to spin. Fortunately, I think that was the briefest affects of having taken an anti-malaria pill on an empty stomach and it quickly subsided. I awoke about 9 hours later.

In the last 90 days of 2016 I spent 32 nights in a different bed. That’s over 1/3 of that time or 1 day out of 2.85 days were spent away from home. While it was mostly on someone else’s dime, it was also someone else’s time. It’s strange to have it seem a burden to go from New York to Paris, but it was. The trick with business travel is to figure out a way to use it in your favour which is what I’m trying to do on this trip to India.

Last Autumn’s Total Travel Numbers = 48,429 Km
33 days
4 Countries
7 Cities
61 hrs of flight time
25 hrs of movies and TV
10 lbs of extra weight

Now on to India you can add another 26,000 Km, 48 hours of travel time, and 9 more nights in another bed to the tally. I’m here for work. Exactly about 16 hours of meetings. So yes, it took me longer to get here than I have to be here. But I’m going to take the second half of the week and take in the beach and the heat and some swimming and some beach (did I say beach?) and some of the culture of Goa which is about an hour’s flight west of Bangalore. My first impressions of Bangalore? Well, it seems like a place where the 17th century rubs up against the 22nd Century with a lot of friction in between. In front of gleaming towers, is a woman over an open fire, no stove, just a fire, cooking something? The highway occasionally became a dirt road or at least the lane that a bus decided was a lane was just dirt. And here I am, in a very Western style hotel with all the amenities, which is situated in a business park of low rise modern buildings but looking out my window I can see several rising plumes of smoke, a ramshackle building where sarong-wearing young men come and go for unknown purpose and oddly an employee of the hotel seemed to be carrying some kind of smoking canister, apparently dusting the bushes surrounding the building. As I write this I can hear a group of dogs barking themselves hoarse.

It’s already been an adventure, but there’s work to be done before lying in the sun and days before I’m spending a night in my own bed.

Peter-odometer
Toronto to Oslo: 5932 x 2 = 11864 Km
Toronto to Canmore: 3530 x 2 = 7060 Km
Toronto to Winchester, UK = 5655 Km
Winchester, UK, to Paris, France = 550 Km
Paris, France to Toronto = 6000 Km
Toronto to NYC 555 x 2 = 1110
Toronto to Paris, France = 6000 Km x 2 = 12000 Km
Toronto to St. John’s and back = 4200 Km

I Had the Strangest Deam 

Farine Five Roses, Lachine Canal, Montreal

With a calm canal flickering by one shoulder and a near full moon over the other I couldn't escape the feeling, an intense feeling, of deja vu. I had been here before and I knew every detail. It had been a dream but now I was experiencing it for the first time for a second time. I knew from the moment I stepped from Saint-Ambroise to Turgeon and the eery familiarity of the cascading light over the red brick houses that this was the same surreal, I'm talking Giorgio de Chirico surreal, setting I had wandered through in a dream I had years ago.

I rarely remember the dreams we apparently have every night. Such is my sleep cycle I guess. But occasionally I will awake fresh from a dream in the way that I not only remember it afterwards but that it stays with me for a very long time.
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Receipt Diary 

Dig a little deeper and you can expose the complete EXIF data for every photo taken.

For years I’ve kept receipts. They have piled up on dressers and side tables. On the surface I keep them in case I need proof of purchase for a return but more deeply, they are a record of my life. Paper print-outs of data that record where exactly you were at what time, doing exactly what. Paper fossil records of a day in the life. I’ve definitely missed some including items purchased where I refused a receipt or lost an inconsequential one (ice cream bought at a truck, items at a corner store, a fast food meal purchased with the tap of a debit card), not to mention use of things procured within a mobile phone app or on a tap-to-use transit card. Yet this marks a journey of just some of the data bread crumbs I’ve left behind. You can even garner the exact time the photos were taken (somehow that seemed like overkill - or I was too lazy to note it). I’ve added notes where I remembered the transaction but amazingly you forget what it was you were thinking or even doing despite having an actual record of it in your hand. This seems a little strange to share how much I spent and what I bought but it also feels “truer” if that makes sense? I’m not sure why I’m starting this on August 5? Maybe it was the first August receipt I could find. I’ve also included my activity data to fill in when I wasn’t buying something. It’s strange how there are very little impressions from these moments yet it feels like it adds up to something. This is how I spent August including a week on vacation in Québec.
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Summer is a Girl 

Haydée Politoff in Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse represents the kind of girl the protagonist says he has no interest in, despite being seemingly obsessed with her.

Summer is a girl on a bike, gliding effortlessly, brown shoulders bared with her hair blowing in lazy loose wisps and a tattoo dripping down her thigh. Summer is an ice cream that started to melt before the first sting of cold even touched your lips. Summer is when you savour the last rays of daylight like a candy you let dissolve on your tongue. Summer is the flutter of birch leaves and the dappled sunlight diffused beneath its branches. Summer should be warm cheeks and cool breezes, sudden storms, fresh cracked cans of beer, the spit of a sizzling steak and the electric hum of cicadas. It should be air from open windows disturbing papers while fans throb and sweating glasses leave rings on tabletops.
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Parliament Piñata 

It's been years since I was in Ottawa on Canada Day, but @CarlaAyukawa brought it all back with a Parliament piñata. pic.twitter.com/MilAze9jQP

— Selena Ross (@seleross) July 1, 2016

Adventure Ottawa 

For the last decade or so Toronto has gotten on my nerves, especially in the summer when it seems to get hotter, louder, brighter and more annoying every year. Lately, I’ve been working from first to last light and the upcoming Canada Day holiday took me by surprise. Did I want to spend another weekend doing my best by pretending to be an extrovert and “getting out there” going to a concert (alone) or a movie (alone) or to an art show (alone) or some free-for-all multi-cultural self-congratulatory-hug-fest (alone) or did I want to do something I knew would be fun.
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