About Me

1980-2000

The eighties

I met Ruby at The University of Calgary — in a Romantic Literature class! We got married in my parent's living room. — I met Ruby at The University of Calgary — in a Romantic Literature class!

We spent the summer after the wedding at Rosen Lake (in southeastern B.C.).

Cathy Dafina sitting at her desk at Hire-A Student, where I worked for two summers. — Cathy at her desk at Hire-A Student, where I worked for two summers.

At Rosen Lake, where I wrote my M.A. thesis (on Walt Whitman and Daoism). Here Ruby is entertaining Cathy and her husband Frank, while I get some writing done.

Having tea with my M.A. supervisor Dr. Inder Nath Kher and his wife Sulochana in Calgary.

Ruby and I playing scrabble with my grandma in Carlyle. Here we are in her kitchen, where friends and family would drop by for a cup of coffee, day or night.

For our honeymoon, we spent most of our savings on a year-long backpacking trip around East Asia.We spent two months in Japan, 10 days in Korea, a month in Taiwan, a month in Hong Kong, almost three months in Indo-China, and over three months in Chi… — For our honeymoon, we spent most of our savings on a year-long backpacking trip around East Asia.We spent two months in Japan, 10 days in Korea, a month in Taiwan, a month in Hong Kong, two months in the Philippines, over three months in China, and almost three months in Thailand, Malaysia, & Singapore.

Here are a few shots taken at a market near Dali, which is a small town west of Kunming — see the map below.

Some of the places we stayed were pretty basic — a Chungking Mansion dorm in Hong Kong (below top left) and a Xinjiang truck-stop hotel (bottom right) — but we got to see the less glitzy side of 1985 China, at the start of its boom. We took trains, buses, planes, river boats, a ferry from Shanghai to Hong Kong (it climbed up and down the hill-sized swells at the tail end of a typhoon…), as well as a small working boat that took passengers on the Grand Canal from Hangzhou to Suzhou (top right), and a horse-drawn cart in Kashgar (bottom left).

After China, we spent two months travelling around the Philippines. Here are some kids on a beach on Mindoro Island. — We spent two months travelling around the Philippines. Here are some kids on a beach on Mindoro Island.

After island hopping, we stayed for three weeks in a hut on the white sand beach of Boracay, after which we went up to northern Luzon to see the rice paddy terraces around Bontoc.

For more travel photos, click here.

For fictional, slightly insane travel stories, see∙Philippines: Maria∙Road∙China: At the Pangolin Gardens∙The Bright Hills of Yunnan∙Claudine∙Yunnan Gold & the Madeleine∙All the Tea in China∙The Waitresses of Chengdu

Left: Al & Sin-lin, Me & Ruby, Clark & Jacqueline, & Dad.

With my brother Clark on the Victoria ferry.

Helping Allan build a cabin on Mudge Island.

We went to India from November 1987 to February 1988, partly in preparation for my graduate work on Indian writers. I met with poets in Bangalore and Mumbai (then Bombay), where we stayed a month and spent a number of afternoons in coffee shops with the poet Nissim Ezekiel.