Say
what you will about traveling light, it is a sound theory, and one
which I usually adhere to, but if you happen to be on an around the
world journey, traveling lets say, from Perth on the West Coast of
Australia to the United Kingdom up into northern Scotland, then flying
across the Atlantic to Toronto and from there down to San Francisco,
over to Sydney and finally back home to Perth again, as my wife and I
did last year, you will no doubt find that the notion of traveling
light is simply not a feasible plan.
An
UMBRO athletic bag or a ROOTS knapsack just will not cut it if one is
trying to transport all of one’s accumulated souvenirs: the
tablecloths, the commemorative ornamental plates, the collectible
spoons and God-knows-what-else acquired in every port of call back to
their home to be given away to relatives and friends who really don’t
want that kind of junk in the first place.
I
don’t believe it is humanly possible for someone to leave home for any
prolonged period of time and return carrying less than they had when
they set out, with the possible exception of an individual who has gone
off to fight in a foreign war and finds himself coming home somewhat
diminished in the appendage department. When we unpacked upon arriving
home, I was like a child on Christmas morning, rediscovering this and
that, items that I had forgotten about almost immediately after
cramming them into my tattered and torn oversized black suitcase. I
feel I must be blunt about this: My suitcase is
pretty much useless now. It didn’t cost very much and it hasn’t even
given me a year of service. The handle is now affixed to the main part
of it with an elastic band and a twist-tie, a necessary spur of the
moment repair job made soon after I discovered the handle hanging off
to the side as my shabby suitcase limped and hiccupped along the
mechanized moving luggage carousel at Pearson International Airport.
My
black bag is frayed and worn at its corners and doesn’t quite stand
upright without assistance. I am ashamed of my suitcase. When claiming
my luggage, I usually stand in front of the baggage carousels, as close
as I can get to it after shoving my way past fifteen hundred fellow
travelers with less patience than me (and I am the most impatient man
on Earth) who for some reason feel the compelling need to occupy
precisely the same spot that I am trying to occupy at the same time. So
there I stand, shifting my body weight from one leg to the other,
enviously eyeing the expensive bags that tumble past on the belt as I
await my own with apprehension, dreading the state it may now be in. It
is easy to spot expensive luggage. These are the only pieces of baggage
that are not ripped or torn, that don’t have dirty laundry hanging out
of the unzipped sides of them, or that don’t have massive big wet
stains where the sixty ounce bottles of over-proof rum that people
spent hours carefully wrapping to ensure that they would not shatter
and leak out all over their newly bought clothes have done precisely
that -shattered and leaked out all over their newly bought clothes.
The
expensive luggage seems impervious to such indignities, seemingly never
causing its owner any undue shame or embarrassment at all. Expensive
luggage is sturdy and firm, with zippers that zip properly and buckles
that fasten tightly, not needing such frivolous newfangled doo-dads
like Velcro handle wraps and pocket snaps. I
sometimes amuse myself while awaiting my luggage by playing a little
game. I will pick out a particular piece of expensive luggage as it
goes by and then I will scan the faces in the
crowd, and attempt to match the bag correctly with its owner, trying to
do this before the owner claims it and hauls it away from the heap of
inferior baggage surrounding it. More often than not, expensive luggage
will almost always appear to have nothing or next to nothing inside, seemingly weightless as it is plucked from the rotating baggage belt by its owner who expends a minimum of effort.
Everywhere
my wife and I traveled to on this particular journey, we noticed
evidence of wealth and affluence, but having pots of money does not
necessarily go hand in hand with having good manners.. People have
designer bags but attitudes to match. We
witnessed a deplorable display of indifference to the rules of
politeness and common courtesy on the part of many of the human beings
we encountered during our travels. Nobody seems to be concerned with
being polite anymore. Good manners no longer seem to be fashionable. No
one smiles and says “please “, “ thank you” or “excuse me” at all
nowadays. I am not only referring to our fellow travelers here but even
those employed in occupations wherein such niceties ought to be
commonplace, like shop sales staff or individuals in information kiosks.
When
we disembarked at Toronto’s airport and started on the three mile hike
from the airplane to the baggage pick up area, the aggression and
hostility hung in the air like an invisible fog all over the place; the
tension almost palpable. I decided later that this was probably due to the populace of Toronto being gripped in a state of fear, and after reading the
local newspapers I discovered why. There had been nearly fifteen
handgun murders so far in the city in that month alone. One unfortunate
fellow was randomly shot in the head and killed by bullets fired from a
passing automobile not two blocks from where we were staying as he
walked along minding his own business on the first night we were in
town. So much for Michael Moore’s cinematic
depiction of Toronto “the good” as a metropolis where it is safe to
walk the streets and even leave the front door to your home open
without fear. The only “door” the Canadians have been foolish enough to
leave open is their borders. All manner of riff -raff are coming across
the invisible line that serves as the largest unprotected boundary on
the planet, and they are bringing the heavy artillery with them.
[BB]
The
savagery and stupidity of gang violence seems to have spilled north
from American urban jungles like Detroit and Chicago, with a youth
“culture” infected and warped by the twisted values and the perverted
code of honour of the “gangsta” or “thug” lifestyle. Toronto is now
home to a generation of sneering, homicidal morons who wear their
clothes several sizes too large, wear their baseball-caps backwards and
decorate themselves like Christmas-trees with gaudy costume jewelry
known as “bling”, which very often will have a cheap gold medallion in
the shape of a handgun hanging on a chain around their necks right
alongside an oversized crucifix.. I may be wrong but I lay the lion’s
share of the blame for this frightening phenomenon on the glorification
of the “hip hop” or “rap” lifestyle. The city I once called home now
has a subspecies of psychopathic young maniacs who are perhaps
embittered by the fact they seem to be incapable of finding a suitable
number of words that will rhyme with the necessary key word
“mother******” in order to complete the “song” they have been toiling
over, and they are taking their artistic frustrations out by speeding
throughout the town in stolen SUVs and murdering defenseless civilians
by using them for target practice on the streets. Why not?
The
entertainment industry seems to have no ethical dilemma over making
millions of dollars every year promoting “talent” whose contributions
to popular culture for youth are nothing more than choreographed hate.
The television is contaminated by music videos extolling the virtues of
the mistreatment and denigration of women; of the attractive lure of a
criminal lifestyle, fueled with drug abuse and the worship of the
firearm; of a disrespect of law enforcement officials and authority
figures. Less than sixty years ago, Elvis Presley appeared on
television filmed from the waist up, because his hip gyrations were
considered too sexually provocative. These days one would be hard
pressed to find a music video that did not contain scantily clad women
simulating assorted sex acts, or shaking their “booties” for the
performer who scowls at her and calls her his “biatch”.
The
new cult of celebrity has deified the criminal. Snoop Doggy Dog (real
name Calvin Broadus) waltzed onto the stage to accept a Grammy award
scarcely hours after being involved in a drive by shooting where a man
lost his life. The image of the late rapper and actor, Tupac Shakur (
murdered in a rap-rivalry shootout in Las Vegas that, conveniently, there were no witnesses to) glares down from posters in teenage bedrooms all across North America. He
is depicted as Christ-like in the posters; a martyr for some ridiculous
cause. Perhaps, like Jesus Christ, Tupac Shakur did indeed die for our
sins. We as a society have committed the irredeemable sin of allowing
this madness to get this far and we shall inevitably suffer further for
allowing it to continue. One newspaper article I read proclaimed that
in Toronto
it has now become easier for a young person to obtain a hand gun than
it is for he or she to secure a student loan. It occurs to me that the
type of individual willing to empty a revolver into someone’s body
simply because they might be wearing the wrong colours while in the
wrong neighbourhood, or perhaps listening to a form of so-called
“music” from the wrong coast, is not likely to be the type of young
person interested in gaining a post secondary education anyway.. Senseless and cowardly gang violence is globally pandemic.
Make
no mistake. It is not a white or black issue. This hideousness is not
about race. The ridiculous notion that rape, murder and doing jail time
is some kind of noble pursuit is being adopted by blonde, blue-eyed
disenchanted youths as far from the black populated housing projects in
Compton, California as Copenhagen, Denmark . The baggy pants, prison
hand gestures and scowling young faces full of hate are as common on
the streets of Hamburg, Germany as they are in Harlem, New York City. In San Francisco
I found myself in an unenviable and inescapable situation. I was
mugged. A tall young black fellow (who could just as easily been a tall
young WHITE fellow in any given city across the globe) confronted me
and demanded all of my money. He relieved me of the contents of my
jacket and trouser pockets which consisted of a ten dollar note and
half a pack of cigarettes. I made no attempt of debating the issue with
him. He demanded that I hand over my money and my cigarettes, and with Toronto’s newspaper headlines still fresh in my mind, I cheerfully complied.
To
my amazement, he actually thanked me and did not run, but rather,
WALKED leisurely away. I shook my head in disbelief. Perhaps Bay area
criminals do not flee in haste from the scene of their crimes because
making a hasty getaway usually involves them having to run up hills
nine times out of ten. Criminal activity and the very real ,or even
perceived, threat of it touching our lives surrounds us all, wherever
we may happen to live or visit. It has probably always been
this way, only now this violence seems to be closer to home and the
likelihood of it affecting us personally is stronger than ever. My son
was mugged recently in Toronto
and had his laptop computer taken from him by four punks as he got off
a bus on his way home from college. He was lucky to escape alive and
unscathed. What has gone wrong with the world? I have
no answers, I am but an observer. Our planet is apparently in a state
of anarchy. The lunatics are now running the asylum and nobody cares.
One blatant larceny my wife and I both encountered
on our around the world journey was the payment we forked over to stay
in the San Francisco hotel room we had booked using an internet service
only the day before our arrival . The service we use usually enables us
to secure full sized hotel rooms at half the price. Unfortunately, when
we booked for our stay in San Francisco,
we got half a room at the full price. This room was so small it could
barely accommodate our luggage. I had to leave the room to change my
mind. You could have raised veal in there. And there was nobody on hand
in the gaudy lobby to assist with our considerable baggage, either.
After unloading it by myself from the trunk of the airport taxi and
loading it onto the hotel’s four wheeled brass cart, it took all of my
strength to get it from the curb and into the hotel lobby without
losing control of it on the steep hill and re-enacting the chase scene
from the classic Steve McQueen film, ‘Bullitt”. Gone
are the days of the fresh-faced, strapping bellhop in red tunic and
white gloves who rushes to assist you the instant you appear in the
driveway of the hotel. Gone are the days of the quaint old steamer
trunks that told the story of their owner’s journeys by the amount of
stickers on them.
Travelling
around the world is no longer the romantic adventure it seemed to be
not so many years ago. So many individuals are criss-crossing this
planet at every hour of every day of the year, it seems, that the
importance of your journey means very little to the person sitting next
to you on the plane, should you make attempts at conversation, and
means even less to the customs officials, baggage handlers and taxi
drivers whose job it is to assist you in getting where you are going. Everywhere
you go people are likely to be rude and nasty to you and either trying
to kill you or steal all of your money. The only thing that today’s
long distance traveler has in common with the travelers of days gone by
I think, is the joy and relief they feel upon arriving back home where
it is safe and secure, where they can sit down, put their feet up and
watch some entertaining music videos on television.
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