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IN THIS ISSUE

• Louise begins another story of a journey from China to London
• Bill McNair expresses his opinion about the world´s greatest threat
• The editor recalls her life as a journeyman printer
• Dick Monaghan adds one last Irish joke to the week
• Jack Peaker sends examples of how children think
• Carol Hansen, Don Henderson, Jack Peaker and Jay suggest sites

Louise Kruithof begins the story of a long

JOURNEY FROM LUOYANG, HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA, TO LONDON, UK

My daughter had her first child, a daughter, on June 19, 2008, in a suburb of London, close to Heathrow. Prior to the event, she had said that her husband was going to take some holidays in addition to the allowed paternal leave and be home with her and the baby. They had discussed it and wanted to be alone with the baby for the first two weeks and enjoy their time together. So be it, I thought with a shrug of the shoulders. First baby, first-time parents, it is possible to do it without help but could be a struggle. She is the youngest in her family and so is he. They did not have much experience with babies.

She is very resourceful and he was willing to go out of his way to help. I believe in the "hands off" theory unless asked to help. In England, the Health Care System seems to be very supportive of new parents. They have home visitors who come by and check the baby and the mother, and answer any questions there may be. It all looked good. Every day at first, and then every week, and then every month they come to visit.

On the 20th, I was told that delivery was very difficult but listening to the account, I was amazed at the medical team that had assembled to help. On the 22nd, the phone call was, "Mom, can you come and help? Please." I discussed with my husband and we decided to wait a few days to see if it was really a call for help. The same request was made the next day, and the next day with the added "So when will you get here?"

Being a mother and all that, I started looking into the logistics of leaving a city in the middle of China to go to London, England, within the next few days.

I had started investigating the means of getting to Beijing and then to London in the most economical way. There were three options:

1) Take the only daily flight from Luoyang to Beijing and arrive in Beijing a half hour after the departure of the flight to London, therefore having to spend the night in Beijing;

2) Take a taxi from Luoyang to Zhenzhou, fly to Beijing, then to London. I did not really like this option as it meant getting up at 4:00 in the morning, would cost 400 yuans, and then a flight to Beijing with a half hour between the flight arriving from Zhenzhou and the one departing for London;

3) Take the night train from Luoyang to Beijing overnight and wait for the plane to London at the airport.

I picked the third option. What the heck - just another adventure, correct? After discussions with Willem, my husband, it was resolved that I would take the train, first class, to Beijing and then fly to London.

In China, the train gives four options for the passengers´ comfort during travel: hard seat, soft seat, hard bed, soft bed (first class). I decided to go in style - first class, thinking that I would be in a comfortable, hopefully private compartment for the six-hour train ride to Beijing. Here is how it went.

The week before, my husband and I had gone to one of those expats restaurants/bars not far from the hotel and we had met some people working in Luoyang, but originating from other countries. There were people from Canada, the USA, England, Portugal, and other western countries. I sat beside someone who was from the UK, just outside London, and as we chatted I mentioned that my daughter was now living in Egham, and he toldl me that he originated in Egham. The couple from Canada came from St Catherines, just a few kilometres from Hamilton, where my husband and I live. Small world it is! Sometime during the evening, someone gave me the business card of a Chinese gentleman who had made travel arrangements for him before and had done a great job. Someone else told me that if I was interested in teaching English at the University, she could probably find me something. I said I was interested in teaching. A little while later, my husband and I left and went back to the hotel.

How does that fit in the whole scheme of things? Well, now I needed someone to help me get a ticket for the train to Beijing, with departure the same day, and a ticket to fly to London the next day. Anywhere, anytime, that is asking a lot, but I went for it. Remember the travel agent I mentioned? I called him at 9:00 in the morning, told him about my wish to take the train that night and the plane the next day, and he said: "OK. Just let me find the price and I will call you back."

About an hour later, he called back to tell me how much the train would cost and how much the plane would cost and asked if I wanted him to proceed. I answered yes. Then he told me that I needed to give him the money in cash so he could go and get the items. It had to be cash because he did not have an actual office, did it all from his home, and had no credit card facility. The sum of all this was slightly over 10,000 yuans and I needed to get it from the bank.

Have I told you about banking in China? They have bank machines, but like in any other country, only certain banks are affiliated with certain banking systems. What it means is that if your bank in Canada is dealing only with Cirus, you need to find a bank in the other country that deals with Cirus. In China, it was the Bank of China and no other. It is easier now because the Chinese banking world has made great improvements to accommodate the visitors to the Beijing Olympics. But the Bank of China gives only 2500 yuans per withdrawal. There are also daily limits to how much one can draw from the bank machine on the card itself, and that is established by the bank where your account is. for me it is in Canada.

I took my bank card and my husband´s card and withdrew 2500 yuans from his account and then the same using my card. I had to go back after 1:00 in the afternoon to withdraw another 2500 with his card and 2500 with my card. Why after 1:00 p.m.? So I would not exceed the daily limit on the cards, because by 1:00 p.m. it was 2:00 in the morning in Canada, which is the next day and a new limit takes effect.

So the travel agent came to the hotel at 2:30 p.m. to get the money to buy the train ticket and the plane ticket. He needed a copy of my passport and my Chinese visa to go with the money. He took the lot and disappeared. I looked outside as he left and wouldn´t you know it, he was riding a bike! Now I really started to wonder about the wisdom of giving all that money and information to a perfect stranger. What I have not told you yet is that the train is scheduled to leave at 8:30 p.m. and all passengers must check in by 7:30 p.m. at the latest, otherwise the seat could be gone! Would I ever see my money or the tickets? That remained to be seen. I bought my tickets this way because if they are purchased in China by a native Chinese, the cost is almost 20% less than if bought on the internet or from an international location.

There was not much I could do except wait. Upstairs, at the hotel, I packed my suitcase. I called my husband to tell him that I should have my tickets by 5:30 p.m., as that is what was promised. He told me that he would ask his driver to take me to the train station. He called back a few minutes later to tell me that they would meet me downstairs at the hotel at 6:00 p.m., as the train station was a good hour away from the hotel and often there were traffic problems in the area surrounding the train station. Cell phones are a marvellous gadget sometimes! I was also told that Hongcai, my husband´s colleague, (he is a native of China but now lives in Canada) would come along in case I needed help with something. Things were looking up.

I am usually very calm and relaxed about what goes on, but this whole thing was testing me. Tickets getting to the hotel at 5:30, leaving the hotel at 6:00, leaving town at 8:30 - that was a lot of hoping for things to all fall into place on time. Whow!

Around 3:30 p.m. the agent called to tell me that the price of the plane ticket had gone up 200 yuans since that morning, and asked if I still wanted it. I was not happy with this turn of events but half expected it. It is normal for the cost of plane tickets to change many times during the course of a day, even when dealing with official agents. I still wanted to get the ticket and go and I told him so.

Suitcase ready, passport in hand, extra money for the increase in the cost of the ticket, and downstairs I went at 5:30 p.m., expecting the man to be there. He was not. So I sat and watched the door. 5:40 p.m. and he still was not there. Should I start biting my nails now? 5:45 p.m. and he was still not there. As the expression goes, I was having kittens now. He finally showed up at 5:50 p.m. with all the excuses, and handed me all the documents and tickets. I gave him the extra money he had to spend to get the tickets and thanked him for his efforts.

I looked at the paperwork and everything was in Chinese characters. I asked him which terminal I needed to go to at the airport in Beijing. His reply was that there was only one terminal and all I needed to do was to ask the taxi driver to take me to the airport. I insisted, because only a few months before there were news about the new terminal 3 being ready on time for the Olympics. I was so insistent that he told me that he would ask and call me back. I looked and looked at the piece of paper which was my receipt for the plane ticket, and finally made out that the plane would leave from terminal 3. Good thing I started learning Chinese, it sometimes came as a great help! Ten minutes after I discovered the information on the paper, the agent called to tell me that it was terminal 3. I thanked him and he wished me a good trip to England. As soon as he hung up the phone, my husband called from downstairs at the hotel to tell me that they were waiting for me.

The driver came out and put my suitcase in the trunk of the car and in I got. My husband, his colleague, the driver and I were all on the way to the train station. It did take a whole hour to get there, and what a scene! People and people and people, all milling around. As soon as we got there and the driver parked the car, we went up the stairs towards the station and the driver asked for my ticket and told us to wait and that he would be right back. He was back a few minutes later with passes to allow them to come to the train with me. Only one problem: there could only be two tickets issued for visitors to go with one passenger to the train. Again, we waited a few minutes, and he came back with someone he knew who was going to Beijing on the same train, and borrowed that man´s ticket to go and get a third pass so he (the driver) could also come to the train. But that was not all. He was walking around talking to people and pointing at me. I wondered what was going on and so did my husband. The driver came back to us with a man in tow.

What he did, which I thought was very considerate, was to ask people he knew and thought reliable if they were going to Beijing. He found one, and asked this man if he would be kind enough to look after me and make sure I got a taxi at the train station in Beijing, and to tell the taxi driver to take me to the airport. I was quite impressed with the thoughtfulness of this man, whom we had nicknamed Charlie. He seemed to like the name. As an assurance that all would be well, he wrote on a piece of paper, in Chinese, something along the lines of: "Please take this lady to the airport" that I was to show the taxi driver if the other man did not manage to get me to a taxi.

All five of us then proceeded to the train. All was not going as planned: right at the gate, first class went right and everyone else went left. The man who was supposed to look after me on this train had a hard seat ticket. We exchanged information. He took my wagon and compartment numbers and went left, and with my retinue, I went right.

Picture this: Charlie spoke only Chinese; Hongcai spoke Chinese and English; my husband spoke only English; and I had a smattering of Chinese and some English. On the way to the train, in the station, I saw a small store, like a convenience store, selling fruits and packaged meats and chips and peanuts, etc. I asked if we could go in there because I had not eaten any food since breakfast and tomorrow´s breakfast was still a long way away. I got looked at, stared at, followed, and when I picked up a package of peanuts, some lady shook her head and showed me what she thought were better peanuts. I smiled, thanked her, and took it. Chinese women are great!

Off to find the wagon we went. Good thing I had people who were fluent in Chinese with me - I would have been lost without them. One was carrying my suitcase, the other my purchases from the store, and the third one was holding my hand! Even after 37 years of matrimonial bliss, we still occasionally hold hands.

Once inside the wagon and my suitcase put away, Charlie and Hongcai sat down. A little puzzled, I said, "Thank you for helping," but they remained seated. What I had not realized was that my ticket showed that I had an upper berth in a four-berth compartment. They wanted to wait and try to persuade one of the holders of a bottom berth to trade with me, given that I am an older person and might have difficulties climbing to the top. When two younger men showed up, there was a discussion accompanied by much pointing to me and to the lower and upper berth, and I was finally told that I could have a bottom berth. I understood nothing of the discussion, all in Chinese, but was quite happy to rest my weary person on the lower berth.

To be continued.

CORRESPONDENCE

Bill McNair, responding to a discussion of "the good old days" in the Silver Threads issue I sent out this week, writes:

As the world becomes ever more populated, there will be more vicious fighting, killings based on cultural and religious hatred.

This was written some time ago long before I was a RCN sailor from 1951 to 1956 by a very famous doctor named Dr. Selye, a man who spoke and wrote 11 different languages. Dr. Selye wrote many books on stress. He was named by global doctors as the originator and doctor of stress management. His books are still used in medical schools today. Dr. Selye said many years before I read his book that as the world grew more populated, stress would create more diseases, wars, and crime. I think we can see that already.

I will add that raising children is like running a business or anything else. There are bad parents raising children as well as good parents, just like good managers and bad ones. There are no lessons or education on being a parent either ... maybe there should be!

I remember going swimming in the summertime in a river with a buddy or two, as all kids did in those days, and never heard of a child abused doing that. But today we send our kids to school on a bus because we can´t trust any stranger; people fear going out at night and leaving the children.

The world population is still growing and that causes pollution, loss of potable water and ground water. The north and south Arctic regions are losing their ice caps, glaciers are disappearing globally, and what will fill our rivers that feed the crops that feed the people?

Population is the world´s problem, not pollution of the air we breathe or the water we drink or the food we eat. We are breeding ourselves into extinction.

Encouraged by comments about the story of my printing apprenticeship last week, I am going to tell you about my many years in the trade before I changed careers entirely:

A JOURNEYMAN PRINTER

After a five-year apprenticeship at the Salmon Arm Observer, I found myself without a full-time job. At that time, I was engaged to John Sansum, who had graduated from UBC as an electrical engineer and had obtained a job with CIL in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec. I contacted a publisher of a small newspaper in that city, and was told they had a position as a Linotype operator open. So we decided we would get married and live in Shawinigan Falls.

Working in a French-language newspaper was quite different from working in English. I had three years of high-school French, but it did not prepare me for the vocabulary I encountered in my new job. The people in Quebec spoke an informal mixture of French and English, sometimes called Franglaise, but the newpaper used more formal French. Much of the material I was setting was religious in nature, and I had no inkling of its meaning. All I had to go on was the repetition of certain letter combinations in French, and my fingers did the rest.

I worked on the night shift, and left in time to catch the last bus home. I remember that during the winter the roads were icy (where do you think all those French kids learned to skate?), and that the bus drivers used to play leap-frog with their buses. While one had to stop to let off passengers, another would pass it. Passengers were caught up in the excitement and yelled, "Vite! Vite!" at people disembarking. Everyone had a jolly time except me, who was not used to this sport.

I worked at this shop until I became pregnant with my first child, Judith, and did not pursue my trade until John was transferred to Hamilton, Ontario, at the end of three years. We found his miniscule wages did not cover our cost of living, so I supplemented it by working in a job shop, again at night. I received $2.00 an hour as a journeyman. I worked there until I again became pregnant, this time on purpose.

Again after three years, John was transferred - this time to Edmonton in Alberta. He became the maintenace foreman for the new plastics plant CIL had built there. This was in 1952 - it´s hard to believe we did not have plastic bags before that time! Again I worked at a job shop, again at night. At that time it was against the law for women to work past midnight in Edmonton. The shop was situated in a poor section of the city, and I had to time it so that I just caught the bus that passed nearby at midnight, and many a night I ran for it.

I remember that shop. It was a huge old barn of a place, two storeys high, filled with printing equipment downstairs and offices upstairs. I was the only one working the night shift, and it was a creepy feeling, working under one lone light in an otherwise unlit building. One night another worker walked up silently behind me and spoke. I just about went through the ceiling! I had been setting material for a police magazine full of gruesome murders, and his silent approach was the last straw.

At the end of another three years, John was transferred back to Ontario - this time to Brampton, close to Toronto. The next few years, until we decided to move back to B.C., were among the few that I did not work at my trade.

We moved to North Vancouver and John worked in the Vancouver office of CIL. It was not long after that he decided he wanted to go into business for himself, making items from plastic. Without his salary, it was very necessary for me to go back to work.

I got a job at Pacific Press, which published the Vancouver Sun and the Province, operating a Linotype on the night shift. There were about 300 people employed in the print shop, almost all of them men. There were four other women besides me working the night shift. Only one - and she was the only one I ever met - was a journeyman printer: Dorothy Hurley from Winnipeg. The others had learned the Linotype in shops owned by their husbands.

Working in a large shop is quite different from working in a small one. No longer were the operators expected to service their own machines, to change the heavy magazines that held the matrices (mats), to hang the lead pigs, nor to clean up the squirts of hot metal that resulted from a lockup that was not quite tight. In fact, we were forbidden to do anything but operate the machines; there were machinists whose job it was to do all that. Also, with so many operators, we were not expected to work as hard as possible. The first night I worked, I was approached several times by men who asked if I was trying to set the whole paper by myself.

When the rush was on to get the type ready for the morning newspapers, stories were divided among a number of operators, and the type was put together by floormen, who assembled the stories into pages. I never did see what happened to those pages after they were put together, though the roar of the presses could be heard from downstairs.

It was not long after I started working at PP that John´s diabetes, which he had developed when he was 18, deteriorated to the point where he was put into hospital. Six months after his doctor told me he was dying, he gave up the unequal fight and died at the age of 39. I was now the sole support of my two children and my mother, who had come to live with us, and printing became a lifesaver.

There were many times when there was not enough work for all the operators on the board, and I drove from North Vancouver to the PP shop twice a day, only to be told there were no vacancies. During the winter times were hard and there was no work; in the summer, when people wanted to take time off, there was a demand for the subs who had looked in vain during the winter. Eventually I stopped working at PP and went to a smaller shop in North Vancouver, where I operated a Linotype and also worked on the floor, for the first time since I had left the Salmon Arm Observer.

When I was 43 years old I realized I was working at a mindless job, mostly setting classified ads, which took no thought at all. I wanted to go to university and become a librarian, my long-time dream. So I took a correspondence course from the Department of Education in Victoria to see if I could still study. I cannot speak too highly of that course. Every essay I wrote - and there were many - was meticulously marked by a very conscientious man. (That was where I learned about the "Oxford comma.") My marker was supportive and urged me to go on to university.

I went back to Pacific Press, and worked full time while taking courses at Vancouver City College - I finished first year university that way. Then I went to UBC eight months of the year and worked the other four, having obtained a loan to supplement my earnings.

During this period, typesetting changed radically. No longer were we working on Linotypes, but switched to computers. This entailed learning the typewriter keyboard, and operators attended typing classes to qualify. We had to be able to hit 100,000 key stokes in a shift, and they had devices which counted every stroke. I had an advantage when it came to typing because I had taken a short course in high school and had used a typewriter for many years. Thus began my acquaintance with computers, but I did not become seriously involved with them until after I retired at the age of 65.

At the age of 49 I became a librarian in an inner city school in North Vancouver, and for the next few years I worked part time as an operator. My starting salary as a teacher was $6000 a year. I found I could travel on what I was making, and my first trip was to Portugal and England, which cost me all of $800 for three weeks. After I started travelling, I never worked as a printer again, but the trade had served me well for 30 years.

You were probably inundated with Irish jokes and stories this week. Just in case you missed this one, Dick Monaghan sends an example of

IRISH THINKING

An Irishman moves into a tiny hamlet in County Kerry, walks into the pub and promptly orders three beers. The bartender raises his eyebrows, but serves the man three beers, which he drinks quietly at a table, alone.

An hour later, the man has finished the three beers and orders three more. This happens yet again. The next evening the man again orders and drinks three beers at a time, several times. Soon the entire town is whispering about the Man Who Orders Three Beers.

Finally, a week later, the bartender broaches the subject on behalf of the town. "I don´t mean to pry, but folks around here are wondering why you always order three beers?"

"´Tis odd, isn´t it?" the man replies. "You see, I have two brothers, and one went to America, and the other to Australia. We promised each other that we would always order an extra two beers whenever we drank as a way of keeping up the family bond."

The bartender and the whole town were pleased with this answer, and soon the Man Who Orders Three Beers became a local celebrity and source of pride to the hamlet, even to the extent that out-of-towners would come to watch him drink.

Then one day the man comes in and orders only two beers. The bartender pours them with a heavy heart. This continues for the rest of the evening. He orders only two beers. The word flies around town. Prayers are offered for the soul of one of the brothers. The next day, the bartender says to the man, "Folks around here, me first of all, want to offer condolences to you for the death of your brother. You know - the two beers and all.

The man ponders this for a moment, then replies, "You´ll be happy to hear that my two brothers are alive and well. It´s just that I, meself, have decided to give up drinking for Lent."

Jack Peaker forwards these examples of

HOW CHILDREN THINK

While I sat in the reception area of my doctor´s office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist´s desk, the man sat there, alone and silent. Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother´s lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man´s, he said, "I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller too."

As I was nursing my baby, my cousin´s six-year-old daughter, Krissy, came into the room. Never having seen anyone breast feed before, she was intrigued and full of all kinds of questions about what I was doing. After mulling over my answers, she remarked, "My mom has some of those, but I don´t think she knows how to use them."

Out bicycling one day with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little wistful. "In ten years," I said, "you´ll want to be with your friends and you won´t go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now." Carolyn shrugged. "In ten years you´ll be too old to do all those things anyway."

Working as a pediatric nurse, I had the difficult assignment of giving immunization shots to children. One day I entered the examining room to give four-year-old Lizzie her needle. "No! No! No!" she screamed. "Lizzie," scolded her mother, "that´s not polite behaviour." With that, the girl yelled even louder, "No, thank you! No, thank you!"

On the way back from a Cub Scout meeting, my grandson asked my son a question. "Dad, I know that babies come from mommies´ tummies, but how do they get there in the first place?" he asked innocently. After my son hemmed and hawed awhile, my grandson finally spoke up in disgust. "You don´t have to make something up, Dad. It´s OK if you don´t know the answer."

Just before I was deployed to Iraq, I sat my eight-year-old son down and broke the news to him. "I´m going to be away for a long time," I told him. "I´m going to Iraq." "Why?" he asked. "Don´t you know there´s a war going on over there?´

Paul Newman founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children stricken with cancer, AIDS, and blood diseases One afternoon he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with the kids. A counsellor at a nearby table, suspecting the young patients wouldn´t know that Newman was a famous movie star, explained, "That´s the man who made this camp possible... Maybe you´ve seen his picture on his salad dressing bottle?" Blank stares. "Well, you´ve probably seen his face on his lemonade carton." An eight-year-old girl perked up. "How long was he missing?"

THIS WEEK´S SUGGESTED SITES

Carol Hansen sends the URL for a video of "extreme sheep art":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

Don Henderson suggests this amazing site. He writes: Did you ever wonder what they did with all those school photos you had to sit for each term? Well, I couldn´t believe it - this website is absolutely brilliant. They actually have photographs of almost every school in the world, dating back to the year dot! Unless you went to school when cameras weren´t invented, then you will probably be able to find a photo of yourself - or at least of your classmates. Click on the link and enter the name of your school and year that you were there:

http://www.worldschoolphotographs.com/wsp/index1.htm

Jack Peaker sends the URL for a fast and easy online dictinary. You can look up one word at a time or multiple words. If you are looking up more than one word, simply put a comma between each word. The link for the online dictionary is:

www.NinjaWords.com

Jay suggests a video showing Model T Fords adapted to snow conditions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9CgOhj0HP0&feature=related

You may also read this newsletter online at http://members.shaw.ca/vjjsansum/

or http://nw-seniors.org/stories.html