Rural Olympics... the next best thing?

I was going to write a posting about this, but it seems my travelling companion, Ryan, has already written a very good summary of our trip. So I will lazily direct you to his link... and make possibly empty promises about adding my own photos and a blog entry later.

A third time???

Okay, I just can't keep up anymore. It turns out that a bronze medal also slipped by me. Melissa Hollingsworth-Richard won a bronze medal today in Women's Skeleton. I don't even know when that happened, but I think it was while I was online???



There's a better picture here but it won't let me grab it.

Yay Canada!!! Woohoo! ... Okay, I gotta go to bed. But feel free to win some more medals without me.

Double-whammy!

Wait! While I was researching details for the previous blog post, I saw the homepage change yet again, but I thought that it was just CBC rewriting the article on the women's win to include the previous men's win in the same category, to make the article more complete or something. But when I checked the medal standings, I realised that we JUST won that Men's Silver Medal!! Some more live-action thrilling webpage-updating happening here. This IS kind of exciting! So now instead of being at 7th, Canada has been bumped up again - this time to 5th place! Not too shabby!

Now if only we can catch the US who are in 4th...

By the way, Ryan, the UK finally won its first medal. Ooh! And it was in Women's Skeleton! Gutsy.

Almost the Real Thing

Wow!! I was just checking the CBC Olympics website for my daily update on the action (since I don't get any Olympics coverage on my Indian TV even though there are at least two sports channels (ESPN and StarSports) that only seem to be interested in horseracing and cricket, but I'm not bitter) and when I navigated back to the homepage, it had been updated with Canada's latest medal!!!!! A nice shiny silver medal in the Women's Speed Skating Team Pursuit! It was almost like watching it live on TV...sort of.

Now we have a set of silvers since our men won the silver in the same race. That bumps Canada up from 10th place to 7th in the medal standings. GO TEAM CANADA!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

On an average work day, you will see me rushing out of my front door and throwing open the front gate in order to run to my rickshaw stand as quickly as possible. My guard scarcely has a chance to jump up from his chair, exit the guardbooth and catch the gate as it swings open.

However, today was a little different. Instead of surprising my guard like I normally do (even though I come out at about the same time every morning, so you'd think he'd be used to it by now), he was waiting for me at the gate. He kindly opened the gate for me and to my surprise, wished me a happy Valentine's and gave me a rose! Aw, shucks! Now isn't that sweet?

(Don't worry Dad, seeing as how he's married and has just had a new baby, he's not a stalker or anything like that.)

Hockey Night in the Himalayas - Day 5

Day 5 saw a bright clear day and clear runway so we were set to go. The
flight out was uneventful, just wonderful views on take off and a warm breakfast. We heard the night before was a record low of -27 degrees, so the cosy warm plane was welcome. Reflecting back I see some improvement in the men's teams again this year, however the biggest improvement is in the kids. They are getting proper coaching, and with 800 sets of donated skates and equipment just arriving they are looking sharp as well. They now have a skate sharpening machine, and many of the kids are taking up speed skating with nice new skates. As usual I have no idea if this fourth trip to Leh will be my last, if I'm here I'm definitely going to try to put a team together but if not there are some very excited and dedicated folks to take over and plan Leh 2007.

Jullay!!!

Finally!

Woohoo! I finally got my one-year raise! It is retroactive to August 10th, 2005, so I wonder when I'll be getting the big chunk of moolah backpay in my bank account. After waiting for my two appraisals that my supervisors didn't have time to do (understandably given the workload here), I finally submitted them about a month ago and now the review committee has approved my raise. That's one year done out of my three year probation period.

This money will replenish my bank account nicely now that I've just purchased my first car! (picture to follow on the blog)

Hockey Night in the Himalayas - Day 4

Everyone waiting in the lounge/dining room at 7am to hear whether we would be able to fly out that day.

It only snowed about 2cm but as you know they clear the 10,000 ft runway by hand so it still takes a day. No problem, plans were made to take a half day trip to Alchi on what was supposed to be a 1 /12 hour bus ride to see a 1200 year old monastery, and get back in time to play some afternoon games. With the snow and roads however it actually took 3 1/2 hours each way! Seven hours on a unheated bus, ouch our toes were cold. To make it worse we had to take off our shoes when entering the temple, so we putour mittens on our feet and that actually brought some relief. Then back into cold shoes for the bus ride home. The views on the drives however were unbelievable. The passes we crossed on the one lane road were about 12,200 feet high. It was at times pretty scary on the switch backs, on one part we passed another bus but the snow pushed him into us and we scraped each other along the entire length of the busses. Nothing doing however, we just continued on and so did he, not even stopping to look at the damage and each having to worry about their own. Pretty funny looking back, not so funny at the time. It was a new bus, larger than previous years so a nice step up, just no heat and now a scraped up driver's side! In the end we did not get back for an afternoon game and just ended up having dinner and playing cards in the evening.

The most beautiful natural sight I've ever seen in my life. Made the whole trip worth it! Including the constant feeling of bonechilling cold, the exhaustion and headaches from the altitude, and the near-collapsing yesterday due to oxygen-deprivation. I can't even describe how beautiful that view was.


Just breathtaking!


The Indus River - When it freezes over, then the villagers from remote communities use it as sort of a pedestrian highway to get to Leh. But with global warming, it isn't freezing over like it's supposed to.


Me!


We couldn't take pictures in the temples due to the age of the drawings, but we were allowed to take photos of this sand mandala. Can you believe that this is all made of piles of coloured sand, poured by hand? I love these things!

Hockey Night in the Himalayas - Day 2.5 to 3

(...continued)

I forgot to talk about the rest of Day Two:

After the hockey and getting cleaned up at the guest house, we headed to Castle Tsemo. It was closed to the public in the winter, due to the lack of tourists, so we didn't go inside, but the views from the outside were spectacular.

A hill facing the castle. Love those colourful Tibetan prayer flags.


Patrice, our photographer, trying to get the perfect shot.



A view of the city of Leh from the hill.


Looking at the castle from the hill. Even though the walk to the hill doesn't look very steep, I was still totally scared of tumbling down the hill, but I forced myself to go anyway. I know - I'm a wuss.

The sign says it all.


Me standing beside the sign (not visible).

The bus left us so that we could walk down from the castle to get back into town. We had to traverse a maze of passages through people's backyards before we reached the centre of town.


The winding path we followed to walk down from the castle.


The backyards we walked through to get to the centre of town.

Before going for hockey, Sandy, Art, Ben and I decided to climb up to see a stupa (I think this means buddhist monastery) right next to our guesthouse. We woke up with so much energy thinking that we were more or less acclimatised to the high altitude, but after my first ten steps, I had to stop because my heart was beating so fast. So panting all the way up, we slowly climbed up the steps taking frequent breaks to admire the scenery. Art and Ben decided to head back half-way up because they didn't want to tire themselves before the game.




The stupa.


Wow, what a view! One of the few tourists we met was admiring the scenery from the top of the climb.

Day 3 was a bit cooler, and we again headed to the rink for an 11:30am match. This would be the test, the Indian Champion Army team was itching to play us and many fans somehow made it to the rink to catch the action. Word of the Canadian powerhouse had spread and people came to see the match with the team that beat the Canadians the past two years. We asked for the rink to be swept before our match, and the Zamboni brothers did a great job clearing the ice.

Shane getting in on the action.


Phil showing 'em how it's done.

The temperature was a bit cooler and the ice harder, it would be a fast game. The army team was pumped but so were we, and we had a relatively easy time running up the score on them over 2 periods. After a short break we then took on the best club team, Rimo. Again over 2 periods we had an easy time, with the game challenge turning into how to get 10 year old Austin a goal. He parked himself in front of their net perfectly and had several good chances, but his one timers did not catch mesh.

Cynthia and two of her colleagues. Cynthia is an American, who has done her higher studies in Canada and would switch nationalities if she met the residency requirements. She came to this region to do research for her graduate project and fell in love with the place. She's been living in the Himalayas for the last 10 years at least. She started an NGO, Health Inc., in 1992 to facilitate grass roots initiatives in health, nutrition and education in remote villages throughout the Ladakh region of the Himalaya. She'll walk on foot over ice and snow for three days just to get to a village that is inaccessible by road! Her two colleagues played on our team - though they weren't too stable on their skates, they made a valiant effort!


Everyone's interested in watching the hockey, including some army guys and a couple of buddhist monks.


More spectators


The announcer with his sophisticated PA system.


The chai/Maggi noodles tent


Buddhist monk/first aider/ambulance driver

Afterwards we again turned to working with the locals, coaching, playing, and giving tips as we have done in past years.

Women's hockey on a rink next to ours


The Ladakhi Winter Sports Club is also trying to develop speed skaters.

We headed back to the hotel undefeated, and could sense a bit of surprise in the Ladakhi's who for the past two years had stolen a few ties and wins against the Canadians. At the banquet that evening we had the usual speeches, drinking, dancing and fun, and tried to assure the locals they had not taken a step backwards as the scores showed but that we had a powerhouse team this year. The
washed up 40 year olds of the past were being replaced with Junior and College players as word of hockey in Ladakh spread. The highlight of the evening was when the Region's Chief Councilor announced the government will be donating land to the Winter Sport Club to build a permanent rink, something they had hoped for the past several years. The banquet ended with many new friendships developed, and cheers of joy from the Ladakhi's as snow began to fall and the Canadians may have to
stay another day!

The musicians at the banquet


The same set of dancers came out and gave us demonstrations of various different traditional Ladakhi dances with a change of costume each time. Most of the dances were slow-paced due to the lack of oxygen at high altitudes.


In this dance, the men had to balance a pot of water on their heads. The climax of the dance came when they had to run in circles faster and faster without spilling any water.


Various presentations were made from both sides. The Ladakhis presented us all with white prayer scarves as well as a gift of yak socks and a Ladakhi Winter Sports Club pin which is now displayed proudly on my jacket lapel.


Art read out a letter from the mayor of his town, Grand Forks, stating how honoured the town was to have three representatives participating in the tournament. There has since been talk of making Leh and Grand Forks sister cities.


After the presentations and some more dancing, we were invited to stand up and dance as well. It was fun, but would have been a lot more fun if we weren't all reeling from oxygen deprivation. They had outdoor gas heaters operating indoors at full power. It was the first time during the trip that I felt really warm, but I think I would have preferred the oxygen. They were just giant airsucking devices. I felt really sick by the end of the night, the worst I've felt in a long time. Faint, nauseous, loss of appetite. The works. But luckily, I started to feel better after I got some food in me and breathed in some fresh (but cold) air.

Backtracking a bit: That afternoon, the "Howe family" and I went to visit a functioning buddhist monastery.




Inside, we made a contribution and lit a candle. We walked around and when we went back to the candle again, it had gone out, showing just how little air was in there - scary! That was not the only incidence of lack of oxygen that we experienced on the trip.



Buddha


Buddhist monks chanting while playing simple instruments and sipping chai. What a great experience to see a real functioning monastery in action.


YOu see these wall hangings on sale everywhere in Dharamsala. It was neat to see them displayed in the monastery.


Look at how long those horns are!


Monks and monklings. How do kids end up living in a monastery anyway considering that monks are celibate? Maybe they were orphans? When Paul was showing them his digital photos, he accidentally flipped onto some of the hockey ones and the monk boys' faces lit up as they exclaimed, "Hockey!!"

Hockey Night in the Himalayas - Day 2

(...continued)

Day 2 was a gorgeous day, sunny and temps just near freezing. We headed to the rink for our 11:30am face off, not sure what to expect from our opposition and still adjusting to the altitude. They said they would start us out slow with some easy matches, but after 10 minutes we were walking all over the team so they lined up a new team for period 2. That team gave a bit more opposition, but again too easy for our fast passing, fast skating team so they lined up a third team. By then the altitude was catching up to us a bit, our skating slowed but the goals did not. Three periods against three fresh teams, with no real team to match us. The line in the sand was drawn, the next day they would be sending their best squads to see if they could test us. After the games we stayed at the rink, playing with the local kids, running drills, coaching, shooting on the goalies, handing our souvenirs, and just soaking up the atmosphere. Players young and old were drawn from the other rinks to watch our matches, and just flooded onto the rink for some on ice time with the mighty Canadians. It was a true exhibition of hockey diplomacy at it's best, interacting, chatting, coaching, and playing with players of all ages. We left the rink around 3pm to head back to the hotel for lunch, still bubbling with excitement of the day.

There were even Ladakhi women's teams there!

Ahh.... the mountains. :)

They have a funny way of doing faceoffs here. Instead of waiting for the line changes to take place and for everyone to get into position, the ref just throws the puck onto the ice from a distance as soon as he can. No puck drop or anything.

Some spectators in the corner. At one point, there was a coach with his team there. It sounded like he was telling them to take note of the ways the Canadians played, and even how they did their line changes. In Ladakh, they don't do any line changes!

The Ladakhis lent us a goalie. He played really well for us. Don't you just love his jersey?

Our goalie in action


Sitting on the sidelines. Every time there was a line change, the players had to stumble over the short wooden plank and crash onto their chairs before they completely ran out of breath. Only problem was that the chairs were plastic and kept breaking in the cold!



Check out the melting ice on the side here. It was gorgeously sunny that day.

The customary shaking of hands after the game. Notice the puddle has gotten bigger.

The team.



The Canadians doing some drills with the local teams.

I finally get to go for a skate and did it ever feel good to get a chance to do that while living in India!

Me pretending to play hockey.

Me pretending to play on our team.