Jananas

Our travels are starting to wind down and we’re on the last leg of our Asia adventure. My mind is starting to focus on finding a job when I get back. I had hoped that some time would help me sort out what I want to do with my life, but I’m no closer to having an answer than I was before. Its trying to find a balance between whatever my ideal job is and the fact that we’re in a down economy and bills still have to be paid. Right now I’m trying to find something that fits my skillset and that I could enjoy doing.

Whenever I think about jobs, I’m reminded of a conversation I had years ago. There was a man who didn’t enjoy his job. It was boring, not stimulating, soul sucking, whatever. It wasn’t for him. He did, however, love hockey. So he found a way to work in the realm of hockey. He times minor league hockey games for a living. Yeah, he doesn’t earn a tonne but he loves what he does.

That conversation changed me life. Before then I’d always thought of jobs as being things like teachers or doctors or businessmen. My view of what constitutes a ‘job’ is narrow. My work experience has all been in corporate head offices. I like the work – its intellectually stimulating and can be challenging. But I can’t help but feel that there’s more to life and that I’m missing something. I want to find my equivalent of timing minor league hockey. Maybe I just need to stop being afraid and jump.

I knit a lot, which should com as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I also have cats, again no surprise. Sometimes the two intersect. Like when Romeo gets used as a scissor rest. Or when she falls asleep face first on my measuring tape. This is why I tend to have multiples of things at hand. I tell myself that its because I don’t have to wake the cat up to keep on truckin’ (er, knitting).

Here’s a close up of nose on measuring tape goodness.

We’ve seen a lot of different types of meat while traveling, mostly in open air markets. We’ve seen chickens, pigs, and cows in various states of dismemberment. Sometimes the chickens are even still in cages hanging out until their time is up. We’ve seen shrimp, eels, fish (sometimes still moving after being cut in half), squid,  snails, and mussels. We’ve even seen frogs and turtles (both hard and soft shelled).

We knew that dog was eaten sometimes in Asia, but we hadn’t come across it – even though there are apparently many restaurants serving it here in Hanoi. Walking through the market in Sapa, Vietnam however we came across this.

Its the head and paws of a dog. We actually saw at least three more heads, but weren’t able to get photos of them. It was strange because we saw lots and lots of relatively well looked after pet dogs in Sapa as well.

We’re not sure how to reconcile these two concepts – pets and food. Does it stem from the many different cultures/tribes in the area (i.e. one eats them and one keeps them as pets)? There’s some information on Wiki here.

Regardless of anything else, this is something that I could have gone the rest of my life without having seen. And no, I didn’t try it.

One of the difficult things about traveling in Thailand (and even most of Asia for that matter) is seeing all the street dogs and cats. They aren’t neutered/spayed, they have minimal (if any) care, and are generally pretty sorry looking animals.  I’ve been planning on adopting a dog when we get back home from our adventures and I started thinking about adopting a dog from Thailand. I did some research and came across SCAD in Bangkok. I even went as far to contact them about meeting some dogs once we were back from Phuket.

However,  in Phuket I happened to stumbled across the Soi Dog Foundation when reading a local paper at a cafe one morning. I hadn’t meant to switch my animal rescue loyalties, but Soi Dog has over two hundred adoptable dogs and SCAD only had a handful. Plus I had a tonne of time to kill while in Phuket.

As an aside, both of these rescue groups do an amazing amount of rescue work. They run spay & neuter programs and Soi Dog has spayed 18,640 dogs and 5,750 cats since 2003. They have also raised enough money to buy a parcel of land and built two permanent dog runs plus a vet clinic and a small run for dogs requiring medical care. They have seen some of the worst cases of animal abuse possible – dogs have had acid poured over them, string tied around their muzzles until they were almost severed, starvation, poisoning, machete attacks, and just general run of the mill fungal or skin infections. They do amazing work and are often the animals only chance for help. So, if you have a few bucks to spare you should consider donating. Not only will it make a real difference it’ll go an awful lot further than it would at home.

I arranged for us to head out to their adoption facility one day to meet some dogs. I had looked through their list and while there were many cute dogs I didn’t really have a particular one in mind. Rather,  I had some basic personality traits in mind (calmer, older, gets along well with other animals, etc.). Outside of that, we just counted on letting the right dog pick us. We went through Run A and saw about 100 dogs – even that was overwhelming. Two in particular stood out, with us leaning more towards the second. Before leaving that day we agreed to come back to visit a second time before we flew back to Bangkok to confirm our adoption.

He’s about 3 years old and has been with the rescue group since July 2008 (so 15+ months). He’s an awesome little wiry haired guy with a beard and a bit of a mohawk. He’s missing 3/4 of one ear and no one’s entirely sure why. I’m going to tell everyone that he lost it in a firework accident during the Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods (aka the Vegetarian Festival) as it makes a better story.

We were back 5 days later. We asked to just see Gucci (the second dog) so that we wouldn’t face the heartache of saying no to adopting a second dog. And its official, we are smitten! We were all stoked at first because we thought Gucci was a lady and so we’d spent some time coming up with a great name. Lila, after the bearded lady in the show Carnivale. Contrary to our initial belief, Gucci is in fact male. We haven’t been able to come up with any other great ideas and so Gucci has stuck, although I have altered it to Brigadier General Gucci. And its official, he’ll be flown to Canada in December for his very first Canadian winter.

In fact, we even picked up a knock off Gucci logo necklace in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to use as his name tag (I’ll have my phone number engraved on the back). What’s more perfect than a fake designer nametag for a fake purebred dog?

Sometimes its as simple as holding hands.