Fall trip 2011 - part 2

The Super 8 motel in Peterborough was quite a bit of improvement over the usual look and feel of the chain. It was a four storied building, recently renovated, shiny and clean (or the other way around). The rooms were specious for something less than $100 per night and were clean - something very important for the missus. The kids were very excited and immediately switched on the TV and got into their usual brawling about who would watch which channel. Eventually they settled for a young adult channel – something none of them should be watching. But considering every kids program now were about boyfriends and girlfriends we stopped being picky any more. The networks were more interested in cashing in by tickling the hormones of the growing kids early than to presenting them with decent shows, something that didn’t go overboard on many unwanted fronts. [I guess we could ground them from watching any TV shows until they grew up. But we are not nuts! If they aren’t watching TV who is watching them? TV works as pacifier, let’s not disregard that fact.]

Within hours all our friends had arrived except one who planned to join us the next morning. Things turned a little noisy at this point. We had arranged with the motel to place us in one continuous area so that we could keep the noise level contained in one part. In reality, we got rooms spread out in one floor. This gave the kids an opportunity to race up and down the corridor visiting each others rooms. Fortunately there were only a few other guests beside us in that floor but we still had to reign in – before the motel authority did. But it’s quite difficult to manage a dozen kids in a vacation mode – regardless of their age. Ours are young and restless.



We had dinner outside and later went to watch movies. During our summer outing in the Thousand Islands this year we went for the same routine and watched the Transformer Movie – Dark of The Moon. We paid a lot of money, sat occupying couple of adjacent rows and then slept most part through the metallic battle bonanzas. Unfortunate but true – these robotic monsters with their flashy movement and changing shape and forms quickly becomes boring especially if you are caught slightly tired, which most of us were driving a few hours on our way from GTA.

In Peterborough we went for different movies based on interest. I grouped up with the young boys for the showing of Real Steel and God O’ God did I like it! I enjoyed every moment of this movie, and was much more enthusiastic about it than the kids. It had the right dose of emotions, actions and heroisms. If you are reading this and haven’t watched this movie, take my word and watch it (All risk is yours, I am just providing my opinion – there goes the fine print).

I am not going to describe every moment of the trip here. Let’s cut the blabbering and get to the couple of attractions that we visited there. Customarily, before visiting any place I took the time to browse through the net to find out the local area attractions and activities keeping in my mind the combined interest of the group that had an effective age range of 5 years to 50 years. Unless you are in my shoes you would never know how daunting a task it is. Some stuff kids just embraces while the adults outright not interested in, while there are others the adults can’t contain their excitement about when the kids turn lethargic.

1. Warsaw Caves: A nice place to visit, about forty kilometers North West of Peterborough. The caves were not really anything grandiose but were interesting enough to get the gang of boys going. These are really crevices along the surface of rocky areas inside considerably dense woods. Some of the caves were too narrow for even our skinny bunch to explore; some others were just big enough. Most were short, confined caves but some went across several chambers underground and presented the boys an opportunity to get a taste of underworld adventure. I had carried a flashlight knowing it may come handy in the caves. The boys snatched it away from me and used it into the sub terrain passages. I am usually a willing partner in crime when it came to similar activities but looking at the narrowness of the cave mouths and exits I dared not to wondering how odd it would look when the fire brigade came to rescue me with my butt stuck inside a narrow crevice. I could even see my butt first images in the newspaper – local and national.

There was also a kettle near by, a small water body inside a kettle like natural rocky enclave and being nourished by a stream that emerged from underground and flew through the kettle deeper into the woods. The kettle provided us some good entertainment as everybody tried to cross it hopping on small chunk of rocks scattered across the water body. The depth of water at any point couldn’t have been more than two three feet, hence the risk of drowning wasn’t there but a fall would mean getting soaked and couldn’t be a comfortable feeling as the temperature hovered below 15 degree Fahrenheit. However, things do happen. One of my friends 9 year old son was trying a stint to cross it balancing on a fallen tree that connected the two sides of the kettle and like all movies that are trying to tickle people into laughter at the cost of others misery – he fell, chest first, with a big splash; it was something heartless to do, especially knowing the water was cold, but most of us broke into laughter while the poor kid sobbed in sheer embarrassment and possibly of cold. After this we had to cut short our adventure into the caves and quickly returned to the parking lot where we helped him change his cloths. Nobody needed a sick kid in an outing.



The next attraction that we visited there was….. that’s in part 3.

An Interracial Marriage

One of my wife's cousins called a few days back to invite us in the marriage ceremony of her oldest son. She has been trying to set up a marriage for him for a while now and had no luck for years as the potential groom liked none. Eventually he revealed the truth - having brought up in this country he felt awkward thinking that he had to resort to arrange marriage. I understood his reluctance to follow on a century old South East Asian tradition – a tradition with its own set of pros and cons. I personally felt many people in this country had very little understanding of the tradition. I barely see any difference between an arranged marriage and couples meeting through dating services (and many other services providing similar meeting opportunities) with the intention to find a life partner. Modern arrange marriages rarely take place without both parties giving full consent after several meetings. Sleeping with potential groom before exchanging vows to try out sexual intercourse obviously is never an option in our culture. We are sucker for institutionalization. While our institutions work well or not that a completely different question.

As usual, I drifted away from where I started.

Let’s start over. We were invited in my wife's cousin's oldest son's marriage. Interestingly, the bride was from a Caucasian family. Apparently he had met the girl a few years back. They had dated, liked each other – both being intelligent, smart and particularly sportive – he liked mountain climbing, she liked hiking, biking and possibly some climbing as well – this sounded like a match made in heaven. Good stuff! Especially considering he was crossing forty and his parents were totally at loss wondering if they would ever see the face of any grandchildren. They were religious Muslims, how a Christian daughter-in-law would fit in with their social structure was a slight concern but it wasn’t anything new in the family. Multiple family members had already gone away from tradition and married men and women quite different in religion, language and nationality. Things proved to be smooth, no particular complains – none that plagued my ears.

The marriage ceremony took place on a Saturday evening in a large hall room of a reputed hotel. This was supposed to be a small gathering of close relatives only. It’s been a while since we last met the groom and his family. It was a great pleasure just to see them again. I rarely show up anywhere in a suit (I am a jeans kinda guy). This time I did. So did eleven year old Zakeem, my only son. He actually looked quite elegant in his 40 buck suit and tie and in a pair of loose dress shoes (belonged to somebody else – we are cheap! Correction – prudent is the word). I am quite hateful of the thing called tie and do not wear one unless absolutely helpless (like a company meeting where some worthless executives pay more importance on the color of your tie then the merit of your proposal). I carried my tie in a side pocket, just in case. Farheen, my only daughter, looked very pretty in a white dress that she got as a gift in her 6^th birthday, celebrated just a few days back. Neither of them had any interest in coming to this party. They always look for kids of their age and correctly guessed there would be very few in this party.          

The ceremony started in a timely fashion. An ex imam of a Toronto mosque and a senior member of local Islamic foundation (can’t remember his name) was given the honor to get the two married in accordance to Islamic and provincial law. This was an elderly gentleman with adequate amount of sense of humor (and no beard or trade mark middle-eastern long dresses). He started well with a few good words about family values and importance of marriage as an institution, however things started to go awry when his short speech kept on extended to unending blabbering, good things he said but there’s a limit of good stuff that one can take in one sitting, not just the kids even I almost dozed off. Not sure if he had seen me closing my eyes under my glasses or just ran out of more things to say, he finally decided to give us a break. The whole hall room sighed in relief (or that’s what I wanted to believe I guess – I did hear a few sighs though). Now he proceeded to carry on with the actual procedure, the ‘I do’ parts, the signing of the registration papers, the ring exchanges. Another brief speech before leaving the stage for the final time (I hoped).

Next came the time for photo shoots followed by the most awaited event of the evening (I know, I am ashamed) – munch time. An Indian buffet was arranged with traditional Indian dishes in one end of the hall room and traditional Indian/Bangladeshi sweets at the other end. I was hungry, starving since the big meal that I had the night before from a social gathering. I rushed to the buffet while most rushed to the podium to take group photos with the bride and groom who were now seated at the center of the stage on two big, kingly chairs side by side. They looked good together – I thought as I poured spoon full of beef curry on my overloaded plate.    

The food was disappointing but I was hungry and ate until my stomach hurt. (This whole practice is scientifically wrong (in English - unhealthy), but it works for me to keep my weight under control. When hungry I eat until I drop and then skip the next two meals). The sweets were not total failure. Most were good – sweet, a few were even delicious, couple devastating, but overall not bad.

Eventually came the time for speeches – not the ex-Imam – thankfully, but the friends and families of the bride and groom. From groom’s side the dad, a short and sweet man who is currently working in the Middle East on a consulting contract after retiring from a Canadian government position, graciously congratulated his son and the bride, expressed his happiness in getting a daughter-in-law, and looked genuinely excited. His wife didn’t dare to issu3 a speech, not having enough proficiency in English. Next was one of bride’s female friends who taught in a college. The first thing she did was to retire the microphone. Visibly overweight, this friend of the bride, issued a great speech. She was loud, honest and hit all the right chords with her speech, from describing her friendship with the bride, her first meeting with the groom, how things progressed between the two – things none of us in the audience obviously knew. They had hit it right at the first date, we are told. Next series of dates sealed it off. It was just matter of time when they were going to tie the knots. She even explained how tough and outgoing the bride was, having cycling in Cuba and Nova Scotia, covering hundreds of kilometers everyday on rationed food and ignoring natural disasters. The bride was 36, tall, skinny with a tough outlook but a smiling and fun loving attitude. Yep, a girl like that could press on riding a bike against an oncoming storm (that’s what had happened in Nova Scotia – her friend mentioned). The groom as I know was a sucker for outgoing activities. No wonder the two hit it right away. Congratulations! They have proven it once more that neither race nor religion, even social differences can hinder the real match that is required for a life together – the attitude. They will be happy; especially considering this was a marriage in maturity and not on a teenage hormone.

The program ended with a western style dancing stint where bride, groom, the parents, friends, some family members all hopped in onto the dancing floor and shook and bend and some even kicked and jumped and had a great time while the Karaoke singer sung to her heart’s content.

The kids were getting really impatient and started to chase each other around the hall room – an activity which is a sure sign that their reserve of patience had totally wore off and now nothing else would matter. This was the right time to take off. Mili, my better half, hunted down her cousin sister and her husband, thanked them for inviting us, bid good bye and there we went. It was a great evening overall, something that I’ll remember for many years to come.