Planning:2012

Planning. Whats that about? We can try to plan but when your destiny appears to lay in the hands of others it is not so easy, you have to do what feels right, be courageous, follow your spirit guide.

In summary, our plan for the rest of 2012:

Boys (all 3)
10 July 
Beirut  - London 
(in Wales and England with Auntie Margaret, family, friends)
18 July 
London - Switzerland
(with friends from KL!)
22 July Switzerland - St. Pryve
(kids stay with les grandparents)
Daniel
25 July  - 13 August
on Elemental Yoga Therapy Course in Portugal*
Cecile
04 August - 20 August
On leave to France

Boys
20 August
Paris - Guayaquil
(inVilcabamba to Jan/13)
Cecile
19 August
Paris Beirut
(visit to Ecuador Oct/Nov)

Early 2013 we'll likely move to the next post destination which is for now an unknown. Read on if you have an interest in the why's and wherefores, otherwise, if your plans and ours coincide in dates and locations, let us know. All are welcome to the sunny south of Ecuador!

This year we knew we had to move on from Beirut with the expiry of Cecile's time here with UNHCR. The process requires her to apply for a new post and so she looks for family duty stations, where she can work as a Protection officer and at the appropriate P4 middle-management level and...there are other considerations, like good schooling, work opportunities for spouses (me), availability of skiing for spouses (haha, but a good bonus!), clean air, etc. Think of these as filters which in effect reduce the number of possible jobs to apply for. Add to this that UNHCR's staffing pyramid shrank by 30% in the past 5 years of reform and budget strife (even though the number of refugees and internally displaced has grown globally), and so the higher your grade level and filters the fewer jobs there are.

Finding a suitable post is much more challenging than for a young singleton and the competition fierce...permanent staff have to do this every 2-5yrs depending on the post duration (which depends on the country). Suffice it to say UNHCR staff fight the battle to find work against the demographic odds and economics of the times like everyone else. We are lucky in a way, Cecile has a 'permanent contract' so there is a certain job security in that and although the built-in uncertainty doesn't go away.

We knew from the get-go, the year of the dragon was was going to be an interesting year. Without being appointed to a post yet, Cecile will be on a temporary assignment (TA) until the next round of posts comes up for January. It was only earlier this month that the office in Beirut got around to offering Cecile a suitable 6 month TA, she will work on the crisis of Syrian's displaced in Lebanon until December, before that she could have been going anywhere.  

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My own career path isn't so easily defined, it is more like that tangled spider's web from the spider on bennys experiment (watch the vid to the end)(at least I quit coffee!) so I can deal with another convolution, twist or turn. Good that one of us stays on track.

Now they say everything happens for reason; in this uncertainty I saw the chance to give the boys a break from formal schooling, to my mind an option while they are young and something I have been wanting to do for a while. The best place for this.....Ecuador of course! The house and land in Vilcabamba is really what makes such a possibility real. It also gives the chance to finally live in the house we built in Vilcabamba in 2003....a chance that has also been elusive so in a sense things start to come together. On the schooling question we consider that Mark Twain said 'don't let your schooling get in the way of your education' and Thoreau who said 'travel is the best education', I am working on the modality we will use for an informal home school.

Even not to planning to return to Lebanon may be wise the way things are going; the hard analysis says that unless the Syrian situation starts evolving differently, Lebanon stability appears like a small boat on the outer swirl of a spinning vortex going round round round and down down down. The pessimists view? I hope so and we pray that the power-brokers remember the damage of the long civil war here, and recognize the potential that awaits Lebanon that can only come with a sustained peace and proper governance.

Apologies friends in Lebanon for the visual metaphor but if things keep going the way they are, it could get quite shitty.

So by 20 August us boys will wing out over the Pacific to southern Ecuador until the end of the year. Work progresses on the construction of a casita adjacent to the casa roja in Vilcabamba to serve as a guest house. Construction is being supervised by our most excellent tenants and they will be the first 'guests' to live there. Rather than having to move away when we come, they'll just move next door!  They will manage the rental of the casita once we leave....a good option for all!

The footprint and foundation. Rebecca surveying.

So thats the plan, by remote I am working on this casita project, getting things ready to move to storage and closing the apartment, studying for my yoga course and looking at the education programme for the boys while we are in South America, I'll blog on that anon, stay tuned. busy is as busy does.

*The course is in Elemental Yoga as I build further on a different modality bringing therapy back to yoga practice and hope to work with people open to the notion that yoga as a life science can help them better manage their spiritual, mental and physical wellness. The more I practice, the more I realise how important this is in today's fractured and confusing world. This idea fits into a longer term vision to open a yoga/meditation site in Vilcabamba on the land, a project which has started and will grow organically as interest, time and commitment will allow, being there this year will help catalyze things significantly.

Summer hols 2010 - Itinerary to date

July 4 Cecile leaves for Geneva for the annual UNHCR Resettlement powwow

July 6 Us boys head to London with a quick stop in Paris which went very smoothly because the flight transfer was in the same terminal!
Lengthy wait for the bus to get to the hotel, Night spent in a Travelodge without the planned rendez-vous with our friend Annabel. Quel dommage!

July 7 Bus to Chepstow and pick up by Auntie Margaret soon to be 87 and still whizzing around in her Rover.

July 8 - 10 Builth Wells, Wales with visiting Grandpa Canada now 85, took in the Zippo’s circus which was quite fun and with no animals involved (but the humans seems to be trained and treated quite well). Boy's and Daddy-oh got their new scooters which I'd ordered online. Micros.






July 10 Grandpa Canada and Auntie Margaret to Manchester by train for Dad to take his plane back to Alberta (with escort)

July 11 Auntie Margaret returns, the boys and I spent the day in Brecon browsing a second hand bookstore, lunch locally, chasing sheep and hide-and-seek in the ferns on the Beacons.

July 12 Drove to Bristol with my 2 illiterate navigators to pick up Cecile, her flight from Geneve arrived an hour late but not too late to make a quick tour en famille round Bristol Zoo on the way home. Arrived back to find sister Felicity, Malcolm, Tabitha (celebrated her 13th birthday!) and Timothy had arrived. Full house! Went to the pub up the road for dinner.





July 13 A morning kicking around Builth with the sister and the boys loving being around their cousins taking in the Grow, the ‘swing’ bridge (that doesn’t swing since renovation in the ‘80’s sometime!), Zaki had the oddest allergic reaction and took him to a doctor when his finger joints suddenly started swelling although originally was taking him to see the doc because of the return of the family diarrheal curse that started with a bout of salmonella 10days ago. The Royal Welsh Show, the largest annual agricultural show in the UK was about to kick off under rainy skies but we escaped that yet again. Worthy to note is that in 2004 on our tour du monde with Zaki we were also in Builth at the same time as Felicity et.al. so this was a bit of a ‘déjà vu’ only this time we had two boys.

July 14 Packed up and said good-bye to Auntie M. (who at 86 insisted she would sleep on the couch in a sleeping bag while we were all there!!) and headed to the Cotswalds and a visit with cousins Jean and Douglas in their new (1yr ago) home in Fairford where the Royal International Air Tattoo was getting underway with the sonic blasts of various jet planes overhead practicing whatever it is they have to practice in preparation for the show. The UK in the summer…..one big festival.


July 15 Visit to the Cotswalds Wildlife Park.

July 16 Visit by cousin Marian who I apparently hadn’t met since I was 2yrs old!

July 17 Early departure with the rental car to London and to Hackney to stay at Peter Kessler's place backing onto a great canal across from Victoria Park where the LoveBox concert weekend was kicking off.

Brunch with Cecile's friends Evan and Bernard who we haven’t seen together since mid-Malaysia years and picnic with now Londoners Cathy (Mulloy) and Tony and Frank at London Fields with the kids whizzing along on scooters. Late dinner with Peter and his new wife Rachel.

July 18 Another early departure to St. Pancras International for the Eurostar to Paris, Staying at Ariane and Alain’s place in the 13th.

July 19 Picnic in the Park Floral with Ramon and his kids, Vietnamese dinner with Joseph and Beatrice who are on holiday from Nepal.

July 20 - 23 Train to Orleans and St. Pryve for time to relax, eat and sleep with the Fradot’s

July 23 - 26 Weekend at Center Parcs water park with the whole Fradot clan. Les cousins (Geoffrey, Anthony and Samuel, Zaki and Kasem) swam like seals and thoroughly enjoyed the slides, the jacuzzis and the wild river!

July 26 - 30 More eating and sleeping some shopping at the Fradot’s. Saw two movies, Inception and a chick flick , visit to Zoo Beauval and a nice Thai dinner with Cecile's friend Miriam, the only one of our mutual friends to have ever slept in the Vilcabamba house!

July 30 Cecile and I to Geneve on TGV to stay with Tilman, Lucia and Leo who are all waiting for the arrival of their new brother!

July 31 Vespa buzz for a a hike and BBQ with erstwhile humanitarians Sally and Jeremy at their place in the paysan then returned for a BBQ with Tilmann, Lucia, Leo and their friend Ursula.



August 1 Cecile returns to Beirut, I spend the day with Terra Mack meeting up with Kahin and his friend Judith in the Park who provided a picnic then dinner with Sri Lankan former expat Meriel and her kids in Crozet, a wet and wooly vespa ride away from Ferney!

August 2 Return to Paris-Orleans to reunite with the boys

August 3 Repacking for the phase 2 of our Summer Escape from Beirut

August 4 Departure to Ecuador via Orleans – Paris (train, met Kavita for the station transfer)Paris – Amsterdam (3hr fastest train in the world (TGV) Amsterdam – Bonaire (Plane 8.5hrs, boys slept 7hrs!)Bonaire – Guayaquil (Plane 4hrs, boys watched vids) Guayaquil – Cuenca (25minute air-hop) Cuenca – Vilcabamba (4hr taxi, boys were amazed to hear Daddy speaking his bad spanish...slept 3hrs!) 3 planes, 2 trains and a taxi in 29hrs AND NO MELTDOWNS!

August 5 - 29 VILCABAMBA! First week was getting over jet-lag, second week building a new playhouse and tenant Christina and baby Keola returned from Quito, third week learning how to not have a plan, last week chilling, being and leaving party.

August 29 Vilcabamba - Quito - Panama City, great time spent with former Beirutis Pablo, Clara, Melena, Maya and greeting baby Iago.

September 2/3 Panama City - Amsterdam - Paris - Orleans, what to say. we made it, again without meltdown, the last trip by auto-navette which is definitely the way to get to Orleans from CDG!

September 3-5 Orleans

September 5 Orleans - Paris (again the auto-navette)Paris - Beirut (4hrs) Finally home, Kasem had his only transportation meltdown of the entire trip getting on the plane to but probably a total emotional release since he had been talking about going home to Beirut for 3weeks. Cecile there to greet but then returned to Pakistan on Emergency mission for the floods.

AND YES THERE ARE LOADS MORE PICTURES.....TO BE FOUND ON FACEBOOK AS THEY ARE TOO MUCH OF A PAIN TO LOAD HERE.