Two weddings and a bunch of renovations – my 2021 Annual Update in 181 photos

Dear family and friends, it’s that time of year again when I try to remember what happened over the last twelve months and share some photos on here in an attempt to keep in touch without making the effort to reach out to each of you individually.

Most people seem to agree that 2021 left a lot to be desired, and I must admit it was tough going a second year in a row without leaving Canada even once. For those of you who expect or even enjoy my charts and graphs, here’s where I spent 2021 and how many flights I took compared to past years:

Still, 2021 had its share of neat experiences. Fair warning: this update is almost entirely composed of renovation and wedding photos, and I won’t be insulted if you choose to skip past the former in favour of the latter.

Harpreet and I were stuck in Kingston for Christmas 2020 because of COVID so we woke up January 1st, 2021 still here. We went outside a lot that month to enjoy the winter wonderland around us.

We even found a porcupine named Henrietta nesting way up high in the hollowed out trunk of a long-dead tree. I had no idea porcupines were such amazing climbers!

The insulation in our house is older than I am, but in much worse shape. To keep all the heat from escaping, I decided to update the insulation in the two accessible knee wall attic spaces, and learned that you can fit 7 packs of insulation into a 2017 Hyundai Elantra if you remove the front passenger seat.

I started my final nursing school clinical placement on a trauma unit in mid-January in Toronto, so for the next two and a half months I split my time spending 5 nights in Kingston and 2 nights in Toronto each week, putting way too many miles on my odometer and still very much disliking online learning.

By mid-February I had started actually getting insulation into the south attic space, all the while trying (mostly successfully) to avoid hitting my head on the nails sticking down through the roof.

While back in BC in mid-February, my first nibling was born – Freja! We were all very excited for Josephine and Bryan!

I rarely limit myself to working on a single project at any given time, so I also started the first part of a bigger kitchen renovation project. I tore out two built-in benches from the kitchen nook, removed the restaurant table, and began trying to install cabinets and a countertop in the cramped space. The wavy walls in this 1950s house made it challenging to get things to fit, but I made decent progress.

This is the kitchen nook when I bought the house:

Once that was torn out, I installed 3 new 20A outlets then, with much contempt for the steeply sloped floor and uneven walls, got the cabinets in.

Next, I cut two pieces of acacia countertop and scribed the edges to match the wavy wall:

Before I could complete the upgraded kitchen nook, I decided to try decorating a birthday cake for Harpreet, with one of her favourite flowers: sunflower. This process confirmed two things: eggless cakes are not easy to get right, and decorating cakes is really, really challenging. It gave me all the more appreciation for the skills of people like my sister Lisa and my friend Isabel, both of whom are cake experts. While we didn’t finish eating the cake (let’s be honest, we each had a few bites then decided to just appreciate its looks instead), it was fun trying.

A week later I had finished staining and coating the new kitchen nook countertop with a food-safe finish, and bolted the two pieces together underneath with these fun countertop connectors:

The next day Harpreet and I went for a walk and saw two beavers! Not a great photo, but we were excited, and they were cute to watch.

Meanwhile back home in BC, two more niblings were born just six weeks after Freja. Lisa and Brad had twins named Oakley and Robin!

My last hospital shift in Toronto was March 31st and I was supposed to be moved out of my apartment the same day so I didn’t get a lot of sleep that week. I did learn how to squish a memory foam mattress back down to a reasonable size that I could fit in my little Hyundai, though. I put it in a sealed mattress bag, attached a one-way valve from a space saver bag, then sucked the air out with my shop vac while walking all over the mattress to squeeze all the air out. Once it was nice and thin, I rolled it up and used duct tape to keep it in shape. The duct tape turned out to be a lifesaver because the flimsy mattress bag tore in a couple spots while loading into my car, and the mattress would have quickly expanded back to full volume inside my car if it weren’t for the tape!

Back in Kingston, the roofing company arrived to install a new metal roof since our old shingles had barely survived their last winter.

In April, I started my preceptored / consolidation placement at Kingston General Hospital, which consisted of working a little over 30 shifts with an experienced nurse, gradually gaining more experience and responsibility before being let loose on the world.

I also started putting new insulation in the north attic space in April. It didn’t look so great before I started:

Of course one renovation project seems to spawn 2-3 more, and I realised this was my chance to install a much-needed ventilation fan in the bathroom ceiling, which is directly below this attic space. So I ran more cables up from the basement then watched some videos online, cut a hole from above in the bathroom ceiling, and put a fan in.

Then, on my birthday I came home to this!

On May 1st I nervously cut a big 6″ diameter hole in the side of the house, then much less nervously ran the bathroom vent through it.

On May 2nd I fixed the recently developed problem in which every time we flushed the toilet, some of it would leak down through the basement ceiling. My temporary solution had been to place a bucket of sawdust in the basement to catch the water, similar to the composting toilet method I learned from two Mud Girls cob workshops I attended, and that eliminated any nasty odours until I could properly fix it.

On May 3rd I spotted a tree cutting company taking down some trees half a block away, so I went over and asked and they happily brought me a free truckload of fresh wood chips a little while later. On May 4th I spread them out over the part of the yard that was still flooding occasionally (see the photos in last year’s annual update if you’re curious). The whole yard smelled like a Christmas tree!

On May 5th, a couple of dump trucks manoeuvred their way around our house and left a mountain chain of fill soil, mushroom compost, and topsoil. It took me several days to spread it, but by the end of the month the formerly flood-prone areas were significantly higher than they had been and a mix of wildflowers was starting to sprout.

While I was puttering away in the back yard getting all that soil moved, hundreds of bulbs we planted in the fall started blooming in the front yard:

We also started eating outside every once in a while, now that the weather had improved.

Then, on May 17th I got a message from our roofing contractor in BC: the new roof at Bowen was finally done, only 8 months later than expected and several decades since the last time new shingles were applied. Some of you may recall a glorious photo of Brad celebrating our success installing new roof supports in last year’s annual update, a major turning point in our restoration adventure.

Having finished insulating the knee wall attics in Kingston, and with the backyard finally ready to start turning green, in late May it was time to take on my biggest project yet: extending the kitchen into the living room and bringing it into this millennium. This is what it looked like when I bought the house 3 years ago:

And this is the view from the other side of that doorway, on May 26th, before it turned to construction chaos:

I soon began cutting into the ceiling and peeling away layers of drywall and paneling that had added up over the decades during previous renovations.

The final layers came off on June 1st:

Prem was arriving in mid-June for a visit, so I put the kitchen demolition on pause. On arrival, Harpreet presented Prem with a welcome panda cake, which was delicious. I got my second COVID vaccine dose 3 days later:

Two days later I did the 560km roundtrip drive to pick up my wedding sherwani outside Toronto:

The next day all three of us drove 200km the other direction to spend the day in Ottawa, including a trip to a French tailor there for one of my other wedding suits. The weather was perfect for a day outdoors exploring the town.

The day after that we went kayaking in Gananoque, just east of Kingston.

There are lots of turtles to be seen in this part of Ontario in the summertime, including these ones lined up in Lake Ontario just outside downtown Kingston:

More local adventures followed, including a small group trip to celebrate Harpreet, complete with sashes made by Prem for the occasion and lots of photo ops.

On July 9 I flew to BC for a two week visit to do a bit of wedding prep and finally meet my three niblings. Luckily for me, all three of them were in one place when I arrived from the airport and I got to spend a little time getting to know them. I think they like me…

I also spent some time out at Harpreet’s family home in Abbotsford, and used the opportunity to measure and photograph one of Raj’s rose arbours. You’ll see why in a bit.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stick around very long in BC as I had to get back to Ontario in late July to write the NCLEX in August. That’s the national licensing exam a new nurse needs to pass in order to become a Registered Nurse. Upon pulling in to the driveway I found that the former bare soil in the backyard had grown about three feet in two weeks, colourful flowers (and some weeds) were blooming everywhere, and the entire place was alive with bees and butterflies and birds!

Between studying sessions and time spent staring at the all the flowers in the garden, I finally put handles on the kitchen nook cupboards and took the blue protective film off the doors.

On August 1st, we drove up to Montréal to look for more wedding attire for me. To fuel a long day of shopping, we started with vegan affogatos at Saison des Pluies!

I also tried my hand at making floral arrangements from the wildflowers outside. They don’t compare to the amazing arrangements Julie designed a month later in BC with the bride squad, but Harpreet still liked them.

Our Chicago Peace rose had loads of great blooms over the summer, too:

Harpreet left Ontario in August and as soon as she did, I finished cutting a big 4’x8′ (144x288cm) hole in the ceiling, built two temporary walls on either side of the existing wall to hold up the western part of the house, then removed the old wall that had divided the living room from the kitchen for almost 70 years.

Then I cut the ends off the ceiling joists and lifted an LVL beam up into the void, followed by a second LVL beam, then bolted those two beams together into a single double-wide beam, used joist hangers to connect the joists to the new beam, tapped several 2×4 studs under each end to hold it all up on August 16th, and removed the two temporary walls.

Then I listened carefully for a few minutes, heard no creaking or cracking of the house, called it a success, spent a day in online orientation for my new job, and packed my bags to hit the road again. August 18th evening I drove to Ottawa, arriving at 11pm. August 19th I wrote my NCLEX nursing exam at a testing centre in Ottawa, adventured around town a bit, and wrote and passed my jurisprudence exam online in the evening. I woke up August 20th, saw that I passed the NCLEX, paid a bunch of money, and officially became a Registered Nurse. Then I barely made it to the airport in time to catch my flight to BC, saw my sisters for a quick visit, loaded my brother’s car up with lumber, and by that evening I was on Bowen Island being stared down by a backward facing buck that wouldn’t budge.

I spent the next few days on Bowen working on wedding decor. I got all the prep work done for our centrepieces then Harpreet came out and we assembled and stained them together. They turned out to be very popular with our guests!

Harpreet also designed some fun sign shapes like this one, which I cut out and sanded for Harpreet and Prem to paint later on:

Over the next few days I found logs from the beach and forest and turned them into decor bases, sets of tealight candle holders, and place card holders.

I also turned several pieces of driftwood into succulent pot holders, and made a frame.

Some old siding we pulled off the cabin three years earlier came in handy for this piece:

I loaded as much as I could into the car and drove it out to Abbotsford where the tent company was getting things set up.

A couple months earlier, I learned that one of my groomspeople, Vania, wouldn’t be able to make it from Sweden for the weddings because Canada wasn’t allowing non-Canadians into the country due to the COVID pandemic. Luckily my friend (and former boss from my time working at a lemonade stand) Martin agreed to be a groomsperson in time to get his kurta pajama tailored for the wedding. Then just over a week before the wedding I got the sad news that another groomsperson, Nate, wouldn’t be able to make it to Canada either because of bureaucratic delays with his paperwork in Germany. His kurta pajama was ready, but he wouldn’t be around to wear it. The day after Nate shared his sad news, I saw my friend Dave, who welcomed Nate to stay with him when Nate first moved to London years ago even though they had never met. Dave not only agreed to take Nate’s place as a groomsperson but happened to fit pretty well in Nate’s kurta!

The first week of September is a bit of a blur, to be honest. Lots of driving, site prep, wrangling supplies, etc. September 3rd was a bridal celebration, complete with a fantastic juggling performance by Tim, lots of food, and a quiz about the bride on which I fared quite well. Harpreet’s lovely parents, Davinder and Raj, kindly offered to host 3 nights of events at Harpreet’s childhood home in Abbotsford.

Photo by @gladysacolentava
Photo by @gladysacolentava

The next evening was the sangeet, which started off with mehndi artists drawing gorgeous designs on guests’ hands. I got a simple heart design with Harpreet’s name in Punjabi, drawn by the fastest mehndi artist in BC.

Guests took loads of photos under the two arbours I built, which were beautifully decorated by friends of Prem and Harpreet. My mom and sisters really enjoyed the evening!

Photo by @gladysacolentava

The reason for the frame I made a few days earlier was so that Harpreet could turn it into this:

Photo by @gladysacolentava

The aunties sang songs and danced, and eventually we were all dancing.

Photo by @gladysacolentava
Photo by @gladysacolentava
Photo by @gladysacolentava
Photo by @gladysacolentava
Photo by @gladysacolentava

Later in the night, Nikki asked me how much I weigh, which confused me for a moment but then she hoisted me up on her shoulders while her sister, Sonia, and Gurkirat hoisted Harpreet up into the air for a dance.

Photo by @techung

After the sangeet we had one day off to prepare for the wedding, then we headed to the temple in Richmond for our big day. The following photos are all by @ronnieleehillphotography

After a light breakfast in the langar hall, we had our wedding ceremony surrounded by friends and family:

After the ceremony, we took photos with all the guests inside, had some portraits taken outside, ate a light lunch in the langar hall, then hit the road in a 1935 Rolls Royce.

We drove out to Campbell Valley Regional Park for wedding party photos and some more portraits in the bright midday sun.

Wedding party: Tim, Sonia, Julie, Gurkirat, Prem, Harpreet, me, Stash, Martin, Jason, Dave, Danielle
Just the groomspeople and me
Pretending to be cool
Bride squad

After the photoshoot we had a short break to rest before the reception while Ronnie took some photos of the reception decor like the centrepieces we made with floral arrangements by Julie and the bride squad, blueberry jam by Harpreet, the truck that Heidi and Aman painted, the gazebo a group of people decorated, and the photo board I made from old siding.

Then we pulled up to get the evening started in Abbotsford:

We went to bed late that night, with phone batteries nearly dead, and slept through our alarms the next morning, causing us to miss our ferry to Galiano Island. The silver lining was that we were able to tidy up much better at the Singh residence so Davinder and Raj wouldn’t come home to a post-wedding mess. Then we caught the evening ferry to Galiano, checked into our cabins, talked into the wee hours of the morning and got a tiny bit of sleep before our second wedding day started.

In the morning, once the makeup and hair folks had done their thing, we headed down to Bellhouse Provincial Park for some morning portraits. Prem and I had scouted this location a in the summer of 2020 when we toured the gulf islands together in search of the perfect wedding venue.

Back at Bodega Ridge, the wedding venue, Harpreet changed out of her lehenga and had a much-needed nap while I sorted out a few last-minute details with the venue event coordinator, delegated some tasks to the groomspeople, and had a little more caffeine.

By 3pm Harpreet had woken up and changed into a saree, my dad and Davinder realised they wore matching outfits, and everyone was gathered up at the ceremony site, ready for our second wedding to begin.

I blame the serious lack of sleep over the previous two weeks for my inability to hold back tears as I read my vows out, but I promise they were happy tears.

After the ceremony, we took loads of group portraits, couples portraits, and family portraits. I’m really looking forward to sharing them with everyone sometime soon but here are a select few:

When Harpreet tossed her bouquet, Tim jumped higher than I thought physically possible and caught the bouquet, to many people’s astonishment.

We walked back down to the lodge for hors d’oeuvres and cocktails then a short while later everyone gathered under a big tent for dinner. We decided, instead of formal speeches, to have an open sharing circle facilitated by Stash, and we were blown away by the kind-hearted and hilarious things our family and friends shared with us.

One of the great things about having two weddings is getting two cakes made by my baby sister Lisa. We asked for something classy and floral and she came up with this beautiful artistry using edible flowers and lactose-free ingredients so I could enjoy it without getting sick. We were able to share a bit of cake with the kitchen staff and they gave it high praise, too.

Matt and Jenny kindly brought a big box of our centrepieces with floral arrangements from our Indian wedding reception over to Galiano and they were put to good use throughout the lodge:

With dinner and our sharing circle finished, we headed into the lodge for a night of good conversation and merry dancing.

After yet another short night of sleep, Harpreet and I said our goodbyes to anyone who was awake, then hit the road to catch our ferry to Mayne Island for minimoon part 1. We saw my parents again as they waited for their ferry, and we got to chat with Isabel and Ricardo who were en route to Pender Island.

On Mayne Island, we had the best midday nap ever at our rental cob cottage, then had dinner overlooking the ocean under bright pink and purple sunset skies while two orcas put on a show for us not too far off shore. This is the cob cottage where we stayed, and astute readers may notice we brought centrepieces with us here, too:

Harpreet spotted this cute tree frog on a pine in the Japanese garden:

After two restful nights on Mayne Island, we caught the ferry back to the mainland and spent a night at my parents’ place in Vancouver, before catching yet another ferry to Bowen Island for minimoon part 2.

Since the florals still looked amazing, we brought a few centrepieces to continue enjoying on Bowen, where we had made them a couple weeks earlier. We also went for some really nice walks to enjoy the beauty around us.

After a couple of peaceful nights and nice meals on Bowen, feeling much more human, we returned to the mainland so I could fly back to Ontario to work on the kitchen renovations and start my new job as a nurse on the neurosciences unit. Harpreet would catch up to me later. Most of the photos below are more renovation pics so if you’re not into that then scroll past to the end for one final wedding photo.

On arriving in Kingston I immediately got to work removing all the old kitchen backsplash tiles, chopping up the small countertop to access the pipes below, framing in a wall opening for a rangehood vent, adding more power outlets, and installing recessed ceiling lighting.

I got many splinters during this time, but this one was the most impressive in both its size and its ability to pierce so far through my skin:

By the night of October 1st I had lifted this and screwed in this sheet of drywall, with much frustration and sweat. I would definitely not recommend installing full sheets of drywall overhead without a second pair of hands or a drywall lift. Before:

After:

I decided to use cement backer board to create a flat surface for the tile for the new backsplash, because the wall was super duper uneven and it would’ve been sooo much work to get it flat. A whole lot of shims ensured the backer board sits just right.

I was running out of time before Harpreet would arrive, and I knew she wouldn’t appreciate a kitchen with nothing working, so I set to work installing a power outlet for a dishwasher, staining a countertop, and getting some base cabinets ready in order to install the sink. The floor in this part of the house rises by over two inches in just twelve feet (5cm in 3.6m) which is pretty insane, so I had to do a lot of prep work to make all the cabinets sit level on the floor.

A few days after she arrived in Ontario, we took off for a few days of adventure in the Algonquin Highlands where we went for a few solid autumn hikes, visited a wolf sanctuary and a neat sculpture forest, and even got a canoe ride in!

Back in Kingston, I installed the sink and dishwasher, mounted a bunch of wall cabinets, Harpreet helped me install the rangehood over the stove, then in mid-November I fixed the gap in the floor created by taking out the old wall. This was much harder than I expected, but I eventually succeeded, and in doing so I took a lot of squeaks out of the floor.

Once the floor was in place, I put up the last base cabinets with another section of stained acacia wood countertop, and another power outlet for the temporary microwave home.

I also officially received my bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Toronto in mid-November, although I didn’t bother attending the virtual ceremony.

In the first week of December, I tiled the backsplash. It was my first time tiling so it’s far from perfect, but we were pretty happy with the outcome.

I was scheduled to work at the hospital the nights of Dec 24, 25, and 26 so Harpreet went back to BC to be with family for Christmas. In my time off work, I finished the kitchen cabinets so we could start using them and wired up some under cabinet lighting. I left a few details to be completed later, like the toekick and soffit, in order to turn my sights to yet another project.

On Dec 23, I started on my next project: redoing the bathroom floor, which was a collection of uneven tiles, many of which were cracked. This is how it looked when I started:

Harpreet would be arriving Dec 28 early morning, and I had three 12-hour night shifts in that period, but somehow I still thought I could get the floor done before she arrived. As it turns out, the flooring under the gnarly tile had lots of black mould and rotten parts so I had to remove a lot of it and sand the rest down to good wood while running three fans and a heater to dry it out; I had to remove the old toilet water inlet coming up through the floor and run a new water line inside the wall behind the toilet; I replaced the flange that connects the toilet to the stand pipe so the toilet water goes to the sewer; added loads of extra blocking between joists to stiffen up the floor and give the toilet something on which to sit securely; installed new plywood subfloor, blue waterproof underlayment, and vinyl plank flooring; and reinstalled the toilet.

I neeeearly made it, but Harpreet arrived with the last row and a half of flooring to be laid. Still, by the time we celebrated the end of 2021 we had a new bathroom floor.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve together at home by stuffing our faces from two charcuterie board spreads:

Because of COVID, this annual update has mostly comprised of renovation and wedding photos. We’re hopeful the next annual update will feature some international travel, and it will certainly include our relocation from Ontario back home to BC. We’re looking forward to spending more time with so many of our family and friends in the coming months, and as always I’d love to hear from you about your adventures in 2021. I still haven’t replied to everyone who wrote to me last year, but I will… eventually.

In closing, allow me to leave you with best wishes for 2022, and this epic double exposure wedding shot from Galiano Island:

2019 and 2020 annual update double feature

Dear family and friends, some of you may have noticed that I didn’t put out an annual update for 2019. A bunch of people asked me to continue with my annual updates, so this year I’m doing a quick and dirty double feature: 2019 and 2020 in review. It’s mostly photos, and there are even 2 cat pictures to look forward to!

New Year’s Day 2019 found me underneath our cabin, digging by hand and breaking very big rocks to prepare for eventually replacing all the posts that have been rotting and/or tipping over for the last few decades, like this one:

Helaine was in town so we caught the gondola up to Grouse Mountain and made an impromptu decision to rent snowshoes. Fun!

By January 10th, 2019 I was on a plane bound for Geneva for briefings Jan 11 at World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters. That night I flew down to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which I had left only a few weeks earlier.

I spent most of January to early April 2019 in Butembo, as the WHO logistics team lead for the Ebola response there. It was exhausting. On the plus side, passionfruit is readily available and dirt cheap in DR Congo so I was able to eat 10-20 every single day for months.

There was also a day when we flew into a small village that had never had a helicopter visit before, so the local school brought all the kids to see us landing.

In late February I had a week off work so I flew all the way back to Canada and caught a train from Toronto to Kingston to spend some time with Harpreet, take possession of the house I had bought a few months earlier, and enjoy the balmy Ontario winter weather.

I returned to DR Congo to find more than one Ebola centre had been attacked while I was in the air coming back, and then a second attack happened after my arrival. It was really sad to see, and made my job even more demanding and challenging for the rest of my contract.

In early April I jumped on a helicopter, with some Ebola vaccine coolers, and left Butembo for Goma, then… Germany.

Canada wouldn’t let me come home on my UK passport and my Canadian passport had not been returned to me in time by the US IRS. So, instead of coming home I flew to Dresden, Germany where I could stay with my friend Darren, waiting for FedEx to bring me my Canadian passport. Darren showed me around town a bunch, and ordered our food and drinks in German.

Darren even took me out of town to see this amazing stonework built centuries ago up in the natural rock formations way up above the river valley:

FedEx took nearly a week despite paying for the guaranteed overnight rate, so I went to Prague for a few days and did a LOT of walking and staring at pretty buildings.

The last time I was in Prague, for only a day, was in late April 2003. I had tried to travel by train from Prague to Sedlec that time, but I made a mistake and got off the train one stop later than where I needed to switch to another train. I had to wait 4 hours in a tiny little town for the next train back to Prague. This time around, with my smartphone in hand and a direct train to Sedlec, I had no trouble at all getting there. I had been annoyed for 16 years about that one missed train stop, so I was really stoked to finally get to Sedlec and see the ossuary there!

My flight from Prague to Toronto had a long layover in Warsaw, and I’d never been in Poland before, so I left the airport and had a great time wandering around town seeing a few sites and drinking coffee at world class cafés including my first ever flight of espresso shots.

When the time came to head back to the airport, I boarded the wrong train and found myself in the middle of farmers fields, with no planes in sight. I was lucky enough to get an Uber that got me to the airport just in time. The flight was delayed leaving, or I would’ve missed it.

I spent the next month in Kingston, Ontario, fixing up and painting my house to rent out, and completing two online courses in anatomy and physiology.

From late May through August 2019 I was back and forth a couple times between Ontario and BC, where I worked on renovating our Bowen Island cabin. Most of which involved the continuing efforts to stop it from collapsing into the ocean. Also, my sister Lisa graduated from UBC Nursing!

I also had to finish those online anatomy and physiology courses, otherwise my university admission offer would be rescinded.

Then I broke some more rocks.

In late June Miriam and Chris visited from the UK, and we had a great time hanging out on Bowen.

In July I broke more rocks and dug more dirt from under the cabin. I also went to Steph and Trevor’s wedding, and the aquarium.

Then I spent two weeks in Ontario searching for a rental apartment in Toronto and working on fixing up my house in Kingston.

Back in BC by the end of July I was preparing to sell my 1979 Honda motorcycle and spending some time with Aunty Jo who was visiting from Uganda.

In August I broke more rocks.

And we hiked up to the amazing driftwood mastodon!

In late August 2019 I moved to Toronto, Ontario to return to university. I started a Bachelor of Nursing degree, which should finish in June 2021. It was interesting being back in school, and having my first clinical placement in hospital starting in mid September.

Josephine came to Toronto for TIFF, so we got to hang out!

Harpreet’s sister Prem also visited, which was tonnes of fun. And I started baking sourdough in September 2019 too. It took a while to get the hang of it, but by October things were looking and tasting good.

Ontario has real fall colours, unlike much of BC, so one day we went with Tim to a maple syrup farm north of Kingston to see all the pretty leaves and eat pancakes.

In November 2019, Harpreet and Tim went to New York City without me. So I rented a car, drove from Toronto to Kingston, bought a Christmas tree and hauled it on foot several kilometres through the snowy streets, and set up a bunch of Christmas lights at Harpreet’s apartment, before returning to Toronto. She returned from her trip to her first ever real Christmas tree.

After final exams ended in December, I went home to BC for Christmas, including taking Harpreet and Prem to the Chor Leoni Christmas concert at the Orpheum.

Then Prem got a kitten!

Harpreet came out to Bowen just after Christmas and spent some time with us, including a driftwood beach adventure.

I was looking forward to 2020 but like most people, I have been pretty disappointed with how things turned out. I had one clinical placement on a paediatrics unit from January to February, then my next placement was cut short after orientation because of COVID. All our classes moved online, which has been terrible for me as I learn much better in a classroom environment than staring at a screen. Without hospital shifts to apply the knowledge, most of it only stuck long enough to succeed in my exams. Plus, 2020 was the first year since 2004 that I didn’t leave Canada and the first year since 2006 that I didn’t visit at least one new country.

Still, there have been some good times!

For example, in January 2020 I cut a piece of black walnut in half, added some legs, and got two side tables for my couch.

Then in February I finally found where the tiny red ants in my apartment were coming from – this small box of water filters. Took care of it and I haven’t seen another ant in my apartment since, so that was a win.

In March, I made some focaccia and Harpreet decorated it with a coronavirus design.

And I got these gimmicky glasses for serving cortados:

In April I saw a fox and her cubs in Kingston, and then Harpreet made me a lactose-free version of the Judge’s torte with raspberries and mint leaves on top as my early birthday cake.

I returned to Bowen Island in April 2020 because sitting in my Toronto apartment all day was not a great use of my time. On Bowen, when I wasn’t doing online schoolwork, I was able to work on the cabin or just sit outside in the forest staring at the ocean or bake more bread with fresh herbs from the garden.

There was also a group of California sea lions that hung out until the end of May. They were really fun to watch!

I also bought an ebike in April and used it to ride in to Vancouver every couple of weeks for supplies, so I was in half decent shape for a little while (my ebike won’t go anywhere but downhill unless I pedal, and 35km of steep hills is still hard on a cargo-laden ebike).

On May 31st during a storm, a boat ran ashore on the beach below our cabin.

On June 1st, at about 2am when the tide was high, I helped my brother Matt float the boat off the beach and tie it up at the dock nearby, and the owners came and got it.

In late June when the first wave of the pandemic had calmed down, I flew back to Ontario and helped Harpreet move out of her Kingston apartment. It was a big undertaking, but we got everything packed up and into storage or my apartment, using several vehicles including this cargo van and jeep.

In early July we returned to BC and a few days later we got engaged on Bowen, with some help from our sisters to organise the surprise and a 4-person celebration afterwards.

We also hired our good friend Alasdair Benson to take some engagement photos for us before Harpreet returned to Ontario.

In August, Prem and I scoped out potential wedding venues.

In late August Brad, Lisa, and I succeeded to make, scribe, and install some braces on the cabin.

In September I got to hang out with Mushu and nearly finished the roof overhang before flying back to Toronto

Back in Toronto, I had delicious vegan ice cream with Harpreet.

In early October we went up to a cottage with some friends, and enjoyed the fall colours.

By mid October my only clinical placement for the semester was already over so I moved to Kingston. We moved into my house at the end of the month and I bought my first car!

I spent a few afternoons in November digging swales in the backyard to try and channel the seasonal flooding that happens here every year into a water feature. It worked for a while.

Then we had two days of BC-style normal rain over Christmas and the swales couldn’t quite cope, so there’s more digging in my future.

Harpreet and I put a bunch of Christmas lights in the tree. This is what they looked like before the squirrels started chewing through wires faster than I could splice them back together:

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, neither of us could go home to BC for Christmas, but we still had a great time!

To round the year out, I finished this live edge cherry vanity for Harpreet as a belated Christmas present, we toasted the end of 2020, and Stash organised a zoom call for a bunch of us to play Among Us.

That’s it for this year! Fingers crossed that my 2021 annual update will have some international travel and large groups of people in it for a change!

Annual Update v8: a rambling recap of 2015

Dear family, friends, colleagues, and various types of acquaintance:

Only four weeks later than planned, this is the annual update I share with evvvvvveryone I know, because it’s far easier than actually trying to keep in touch with all of you individually. 2015 was a tough year, so I’m not entirely unhappy that it’s finally over, but there were some highlights and other parts worth mentioning: below you’ll find photos plus odds and ends of stories that have already begun fading from my memory. Good luck making it all the way to the end!

Key facts and figures:

Chart of countries visited in 2015

Canada -> France -> Guinea -> Portugal -> Guinea -> Portugal -> Guinea -> Belgium -> Canada -> Netherlands -> Djibouti -> Yemen -> Djibouti -> Netherlands -> Canada

30 flights, 8 countries (including 2 more letters of the alphabet), so many chameleons, uncountable airstrikes, and a lifetime worth of coffee consumed.

2015 in photos and video:

January 2015 found me in Vancouver, learning how the world of online dating works while waiting to leave town again. I therefore drank a lot of coffee with strangers and walked around town a fair bit, including strolling along the downtown waterfront simultaneously disliking but wanting one of the super yachts moored in Coal Harbour, and admiring the neatly moored seaplanes.

Seaplanes in Coal Harbour, Vancouver

I also watched ghosts playing ping pong in the basement of my parents’ century-old home:

Ghost ping pong

The ends of my trouser legs were white from being sprayed hundreds of times with chlorine in the Ebola centre in Sierra Leone at the end of 2014 so I made a solid effort to dye them brown again and met with some success – works well for blue jeans that are too faded but still in good shape, so give it a try.

Dyeing trousers

My sister Josephine is a crazygood documentary filmmaker; the client work that pays her bills is also fantastic. She was kind enough to invite my brother and me to help her film a piece about a UBC robotics professor, complete with hugging robot! You can watch the impressive, hilarious 2 minute video here: Rewild Films: A Robot in Every Home (UBC Trek Magazine). You can check out her other work at RewildFilms.com.

Robot hugging a human at UBC

Fun and games can’t last forever, though. I was contacted by the Red Cross in early January and asked if I would consider working for them. The significant wage increase compared to my Doctors Without Borders salary made it an easy decision for me. By 27 January I was in a fully-automated futuristic hotel room in Paris on a long layover, playing around with the LED mood lighting.

Mood lighting in the Citizen M hotel, Paris

I also managed to head into the city centre to see my friends Tom and Estelle before boarding my flight southwards, passing over North Africa en route to West Africa.

Scenic views flying south from Paris to Conakry

Flying in low over the jungle on 28 January, I arrived in Guinea – the country in which the 2013-2015 Ebola epidemic began.

Flying over West African forests

This would be the start of the longest five months I can remember, and easily the worst work experience of my professional life. However, I’ll spare you the details that support this statement. The experience wasn’t entirely negative, and still produced a few odds and ends worth sharing. As in other parts of West Africa, slogans adorn the taxis and minibuses all over Guinea, many wishing us “bonne chance” (good luck), an unfortunate necessity on Guinean roads…

Minibus taxi in Conakry, capital of Guinea

I spent my first few days in the polluted, congested, noisy seaside capital: Conakry. With very little to do in the coordination office, I left on 5 February to Kissidougou, a small town halfway across the country. Keita – my driver / makeshift logistics assistant – and I rolled along the potholed roads in our Land Cruiser pickup, pausing occasionally to admire the scenery.

Guinea landscape view on the drive from Conakry to Kissidougou
Traditional homes in Guinea
Bridge at the entrance to Faranah

I spent one week in Kissidougou, advising the local Guinean Red Cross team on correct procedures for disinfecting living people, dead people, equipment, and homes, as well as helping organise their stock of Ebola-specific supplies. The morning of my second day in Kissidougou, I helped manage the patient transfer of the last Ebola case (ever, hopefully) in that town, and the hospital room disinfection that followed.

Disinfecting the hospital room where Kissidougou's last Ebola patient stayed

Kissidougou isn’t a particularly impressive town, but this tree is:

Baobab tree on the main drag in Kissidougou

We were lucky to have a visit from MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders), who made a presentation that helped correct some of the misperceptions held by the local Red Cross volunteers, whose training over the previous year was dangerously and unforgivably inadequate.

MSF presenting to Kissidougou Red Cross volunteers

On 13 February we drove north to Kankan, the second largest city in Guinea, and regional capital of Haute Guinée, where I would be based for the following two weeks. Ryan joined us for the first couple of days – during the drive we played trivia over the radios from one car to the other.

Driving through Haute Guinée

In Kankan I spent my time preparing to set up a regional office and warehouse for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC – my employer), and visiting Guinean Red Cross committees in the surrounding sub-prefectures to check their supplies of Ebola equipment and materials, as well as advising on correct procedures. Much of this time was spent driving from place to place, staring out the window at the flora, fauna, and surroundings.

Guinean man walking along the side of the road in Haute Guinée
Farmer's fields outside Siguiri, Guinea

Here are a couple of short clips to give you an idea what the Haute Guinée countryside looks like:


I also finally got to eat cashew apples, which grow all over the northern parts of Guinea. More on that experience in this blog post from February 2015: What did the nut say to his buddies as he left the cocktail bar?

Children bringing us piles of cashew apples as a gift
Cashew apples and mangoes in Guinea

When we visited the Guinea Red Cross local committee office in Kouroussa, to the northwest of Kankan, I was impressed by the old French colonial administration buildings with trees growing Angkor Wat-like through them, and the sheer size of some of the older trees:

Abandoned French colonial administrative buildings in Kouroussa, Guinea
Trees grow through old French colonial buildings in Kouroussa, Guinea
Large baobab tree in Kouroussa, Guinea

Among other sights in the region, I enjoyed this Christmas ornament tree (sadly, not its scientific name), millions and millions of termite towers, and a few formerly motorised but presently human-powered vehicle ferries:

Nature's Christmas ornaments
Termite tower in Guinea
Ferry crossing in Guinea

By the end of February, I was driving back to Conakry, where I received some cash, sought approval for my plans in Haute Guinée, picked up the rest of my personal belongings, then set off to move to Kankan to establish our regional base. That process mainly consisted of finding a suitable building to use as a house and office with some storage space, then filling it with furniture and equipment to render it usable. I also continued visiting the Guinea Red Cross local committees in the surrounding sub-prefectures, so there was no shortage of back-breaking bumpy roadtrips. Combining aggression with a tremendous lack of skill, most Guinean drivers are true dangers on the road. Luckily my drivers were far above average, so we never ended up like these guys or the dozens of flipped and burned eighteen-wheelers lining the highways of the country:

Flipped car in the outskirts of Kankan, Guinea
Car crashed into a house in the outskirts of Kankan, Guinea

As I sat down for my usual morning sandwiche omelette avec café noir at an outdoor restaurant at the edge of a roundabout in Kankan, colonies of fruit bats (the natural reservoir for Ebola and a number of other terrible diseases) would sometimes play excitedly in the trees above:

I’d only spent three weeks in Kankan, and was nearly ready to leave on a weeklong holiday to Portugal, when I got a call from Conakry. They asked me to move to Basse Guinée and set up a regional base there, as Haute Guinée had become a quiet area with no new Ebola cases while Basse Guinée was the hot zone of the country. On 19 March I caught a United Nations Humanitarian Air Service flight from Kankan to Conakry, and that afternoon drove to Forécariah, where there were the largest number of active cases at the time. I spent the next three days helping scout out additional rental housing so that our local volunteers would no longer be sharing bedrooms in cramped quarters as they had been for some time, in blatant contravention of the standard protocols for working in an Ebola setting. I also got furniture made, helped disinfect and burn the mattress and belongings of a first Red Cross ambulance driver, Michel, who’d caught Ebola, and organised for the Land Cruiser ambulance below to be disinfected and repainted so the surfaces could more easily be disinfected and cleaned in the future. The driver of this ambulance, Sheriff, who I’d met only briefly when I arrived in Forécariah, also caught Ebola and died a few weeks later. Michel just barely survived, but will never fully recover.

Repainted ambulance for transferring suspected or confirmed Ebola patients

On 24 March I flew from Conakry through Casablanca to Lisbon, Portugal for a much-needed short holiday. This was my first time visiting a country starting with the letter P, leaving only O, Q, X, Y, and Z to cross off my list.

Portuguese coastline

I went straight from the Lisbon airport to the nearby city of Sintra, where I enjoyed the freedom to shake people’s hands, speak face to face at a distance less than 2 metres, take public transit, share food with other people, and generally do all the things that you can’t do in an Ebola context if you want to stay safe. I posted a whole whack of photos from this trip (39, to be precise), which you can see here: Two trips to Portugal. If you go to Portugal I highly, highly recommend spending a few nights in Sintra rather than simply making the day trip from Lisbon that most tourists do.

Three-wheeler on cobblestone in Sintra, Portugal
Waves crashing to shore in Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, Portugal
Cabo da Roca, Portugal
Views out to sea over Cascais, Portugal
Tower at Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal
Monserrate Palace, Sintra, Portugal
Pena Palace, Sintra, Portugal

I spent my last two nights in Lisbon, then flew back to work in Guinea. On arrival, I was asked to head to Coyah, just outside Conakry, to set up a regional base there. My work in Coyah was fuelled by black Robusta coffee from the local street vendors. They all owned the largest size of Moka pot and brewed over a woodfire, storing the strong coffee in thermoses. This was the only reliable and rapid service delivery I encountered in Guinea. Local Red Cross committee executives hung about one particular cafe and played a lot of Scrabble, albeit with extremely liberal rule interpretation and mostly invented words.

Scrabble at the café in Coyah, Guinea

In addition to setting up a regional IFRC base, I spent a lot of time creating an Ebola operational base for the Coyah committee of the Guinean Red Cross. The function of each of our operational bases in Guinea was for the Red Cross volunteers to prepare their protective equipment and disinfection materials before going out for safe and dignified burials, for which the Red Cross was solely responsible across the entire country. After burying someone or disinfecting a location, the teams also needed a place to return to disinfect and clean their vehicles and reusable protective equipment, dispose of their hazardous waste, and prepare for the next burial.

Sand delivery for construction at the Red Cross Ebola operational base in Coyah, Guinea
Coyah Red Cross Ebola operational base in use

Soon I was asked to support other nearby Red Cross committees in Dubréka, Fria, Boffa, and eventually even Boké and Kamsar near the border with Guinea-Bissau when the epidemic spread to the area and risked crossing another international border. I helped set up or kickstart operational bases in each of these places, with the bases varying in size and complexity depending on the number of burials being performed in each area. Sometimes we could use the existing Red Cross committee property, and sometimes we had to rent land or request to use it free of charge from the local governance structures. Here, volunteers in Dubréka receive basic training for disinfecting materials on a simple sloped washing platform with soakaway pit running the full length of the platform. It’s worth mentioning that local Red Cross volunteers bore the brunt of the workload, stress, and risk in the work we were doing in Guinea, and while they weren’t perfect they made a solid effort:

Training hygienists how to disinfect and clean reusable equipment at the Red Cross Ebola operational base in Dubréka, Guinea

Back in Coyah, where I slept most nights, we had some power issues at first. With the unbearable heat inside, and no power for the fan to blow hot air at me and help me sleep, I dragged my mattress and set up my mosquito net outdoors:

Quick mosquito net setup

This steep mountain dominates the landscape north of Dubréka:

Massif in Dubréka, Guinea

On the drive from Dubréka to Boffa, there’s a sign that reads “Bridge over the Ibola, length 105 metres”. Seemed fitting given the epidemic sweeping the region, but the poor grammar of writing “la Ibola” instead of “l’Ibola” bothered me. It was only after the third or fourth time driving past and considering this grammatical error that I noticed the first letter was in fact an ‘M’, worn partly off. It should be “Bridge over the Mbola”…

Bridge over the Ibola er... Mbola

On the drive into Conakry, there are a number of strangely-named so-called universities, including these two classics:

Winfrey Oprah University of Guinea
Barack Obama University

After eight long weeks racing back and forth across Basse-Guinée, to and from each of the places named above, with frequent weekend visits to Conakry, I took a second much-needed weeklong holiday in Portugal. Loads of photos from that trip are also in the blog post about my two trips to Portugal. Highlights of the trip included spending the whole time with my friend Angela, who I hadn’t seen since 2005; brunch with Callum in Porto; and fado and drinks with Sebastian and Mike in Lisbon.

Guimarães gondola with Angela in Portugal
Breakfast with Callum in Porto
Fado in Lisbon
Hanging out with Mike and Sebastian in Lisbon

Angela and I spent the first few days adventuring around Porto, plus a day trip to Guimarães where we walked around on the mountaintop and discussed my whimsical but never-gonna-happen-in-real-life plan to make a coffee table book about moss. We also spent one night in Lisbon before I flew back to Guinea. Some views of Porto:

Porto, Portugal
Porto streetcar

Some say this bookstore in Porto inspired the Hogwarts Library:

The inspiration for Hogwarts Library?
Porto, Portugal
Bridge over the Douro River, Porto, Portugal

Boats advertising for the major producers of port wine float on the Douro River in Porto, replicas of the ones that once carried the barrels of fortified wine from inland to the large storage cellars in Porto:

Replica port wine cargo ship on the Douro River, Porto, Portugal
Barrels of Taylor's port in Porto, Portugal

Moss in Guimarães:

Moss in Guimarães

Back in Guinea, I was asked to return to Kankan to close the regional base I’d opened just a couple months earlier, owing to a distinct lack of Ebola in the region. On the drives, we spotted a number of chameleons crossing the street, and several times stopped to take photos.

Chameleon on the road from Kankan to Kérouané, Guinea

This one got scared and puffed himself up to frighten me away:

Chameleon on the road from Kankan to Conakry, Guinea
Angry chameleon

Once I’d closed that base down, I was asked to fly to N’Zérékoré to do the same for the base that one of my colleagues had established some time before. A short while after closing this base, I reached the end of my time in Guinea. I flew home to Vancouver in the first week of July, with a short stopover in Brussels where I left the airport for an early morning walk around town and a coffee at the MSF Belgium office with my friend Elvina.

When I arrived back in British Columbia, there were forest fires raging all over the province, including several on the Sunshine Coast, not too distant from Vancouver. An apocalyptic haze of smoke and ash soon descended on Vancouver and the nearby Gulf Islands, including Bowen Island, where I spend much of my summers. The ferry in this photo is roughly 500 metres from me, and usually you can see the Vancouver coastline clearly right behind it:

Queen of Capilano through the forest fire haze at Bowen Island, BC, Canada

I never get sick of hanging out with deer on Bowen, or taking their photos:

Young buck on Bowen Island

One of the highlights of July in Canada was the wedding of my friends Ricardo and Isabel. Another highlight was hanging out with my grade 6 teacher (my favourite teacher of all time), Mme Grenier. This time I managed to round up all four of my siblings for coffee together with Mme Grenier in the sun!

All five Anderson children with our grade six teacher, Mme Grenier

At the end of July, I made it to my friend Stephanie’s West End apartment just in time to catch the offshore fireworks festival:

Fireworks in English Bay

Over the summer I also met up with several couchsurfers visiting Vancouver, taking them cycling along the seawall, walking around town, etc. One of them – a Torontonian named Jana – suggested we head to Whistler for the day so we rented a car on a whim and I drove us north up the Sea to Sky Highway. Once we arrived, we had a quick look around the village and signed up for a zipline ride. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would be no ordinary zipline: Jana signed us up for the Sasquatch – the longest zipline in Canada & the US, connecting Blackcomb Mountain to Whistler Mountain. After riding the chairlift up Blackcomb, we got strapped into harnesses and jumped into a huge passenger van which drove us further up the mountain, then hopped out to walk the last few metres to the launch platform.

Walking to the Sasquatch zipline platform
Sasquatch zipline platform, Blackcomb Mountain

Human beings hanging from a contraption with a wheel clipped onto a steel cable flying through the air at over 120 km/h… it still sounded like a great idea when I heard Jana say it, until we arrived at the launching platform and saw the steps leading down into thin air and the steel cable going nearly vertically downward through the trees.

Terrifying start to the Sasquatch zipline at Whistler

I can honestly say I’m not afraid of bombs going off nearby, drones circling overhead, or angry-looking men with very large guns. Standing there looking down at the Sasquatch zipline, on the other hand, had me completely terrified. With no way to back down, however, I had to go through with it. The advantage of the Sasquatch is that they’ve installed two cables parallel to each other so you have company, sort of. Jana and I got clipped onto our cables, walked through the safety gates and down onto the steps, and with much hesitation on my part (and absolutely none on Jana’s part, because she’s fearless), we counted to three and stepped into thin air. For the first few hundred metres, the cable is so steep that it feels like a freefall, but you’re flying through a swathe cut through the trees so there’s a very clear reference point to let you know how incredibly fast you’re moving, unlike skydiving where the ground moves slowly toward you at first. I started spinning around in the wind, my chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe, and then I gave up trying to resist. I guess the adrenaline must have kicked in, because I relaxed more completely than if I were in a hammock with an ocean breeze rocking me gently to sleep. At that point, the ride became entirely enjoyable – I took in the scenery around me, pulled my camera out of my pocket, snapped a few shots of Jana flying along on the other line, and tried (and failed) to get a good selfie. I highly recommend the Sasquatch, though it is a little pricey, and would definitely do it again (if I have to).

Jana sailing through the skies between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains
Trying to take a selfie. Photo taken by Jana.

The very next day, a group of my friends invited me to hike the Stawamus Chief, which I hadn’t done since I was maybe 11 or 12 years old in Boy Scouts. We took a group photo at the base, before I left them in the dust…

Group shot before hiking the Stawamus Chief first peak

I arrived at the summit of the first peak half an hour before my friends, and took advantage of my early arrival to have a nice nap in a spot where I was relatively confident I wouldn’t easily fall to my death.

Climbing up to the Stawamus Chief first peak

I spent the month of August split between Bowen Island and Vancouver, rather enamoured of a young lady I’d accidentally met in a coffeeshop, and cycling around town on my Bumblebike, enjoying the daytime sunshine and nighttime city lights.

False Creek and Science World at night

Much of my time on Bowen was consumed working on the rowboat restoration project I’ve been slowly tackling for the past couple of summers. This time around, I built a steambox to bend strips of teak for a new breasthook…

Early stages of my steambox
Bending teak strips into a new breasthook after steaming for a few hours

…carved out a new support for the centre thwart…

Cutting a new support for the centre thwart of Jaro, the family rowboat

…and carefully cut out new seat surfaces for the bow and stern seats from marine grade mahogany plywood:

New stern seat for Jaro, the family rowboat

Bowen Island has loads of interesting wildlife, including this mischievous little climbing creature:

Trinity showing off her ninja skills at the cottage on Bowen

One day in August, Nikki and I saw this seal making a commotion in Deep Bay:

Summer adventures must come to an end, however, and by the 1st of September I was airborne once more, flying over beautiful landscapes without knowing what I was looking down upon:

Pretty landscape, unknown location

This time around, my destination was Yemen via Amsterdam and Djibouti. After a few days in Amsterdam for briefings at the MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) office and a home-cooked meal at Martin’s place, plus a museum visit with Lysandra, I flew east to Istanbul then down to Djibouti. Djibouti city is not a particularly beautiful place, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless your aim is to head out to the nature reserves or offshore diving with whale sharks.

Arriving in Djibouti

On 5 September our little MSF plane took off for Sana’a, Yemen, but turned around and landed back in Djibouti a short while later as the cabin wouldn’t pressurise. On the 7th we tried again and made it all the way to Yemen, so I could cross Y off my list, leaving only O, Q, X, and Z. After a poor night’s sleep, owing to the lack of mosquito net on my bed in the MSF Sana’a guesthouse and sizeable mosquito population at that time of year, we made the six hour drive down through the mountains to Taiz, where I would be based for the following three months. Here are a few photos and a tiny video clip from that drive:

Green fields in Yemen
Yemeni scenery
Old fortress on the drive from Sana'a to Taiz

Bridge cut by an airstrike:

Bombed bridge on the road from Sana'a to Taiz

My first six weeks in Taiz were… disappointing. I arrived on the ground having been briefed in Amsterdam about my role as a logistician setting up a Mother and Child Hospital, only to discover that we had no permission from the authorities to run a hospital, nor a physical building in which to house it. Unfortunately, there was also very little I could do to speed up the process and tear through the bureaucratic red tape holding us back. I focused instead on office work, some preparations for the hoped-for hospital, admiring roadside camels, and hanging out with Clockwork the clothesline chameleon.

Camels on the Taiz-Aden road
Clockwork, the clothesline chameleon, in our backyard
Clockwork, the clothesline chameleon, in our backyard
Clockwork, the clothesline chameleon, on our clothesline
Clockwork, the clothesline chameleon, on our clothesline

We eventually got permission from the health authorities to run a hospital and, finally, in the evening of 19 October we received the keys to the building which, long before my arrival, had been selected for conversion from shopping mall to hospital. For a bit more on that process, you can read this blog post: Three Familiar Sounds.
From the morning of 20 October onwards, we worked full-tilt to get the new MSF Taiz Mother and Child Hospital up and running. My role was focused on setting up the physical infrastructure and medical warehouse. I opened an Instagram account on 15 October 2015, which has lots of photos of my time in Yemen, mostly showing progress on setting up the hospital: Instagram: @photodiarist.

The basement started out like this:

Basement of the hospital building before we took possession

Later, half the basement was filled with shelving and became the medical warehouse, while I set up walls, furniture, equipment, and lighting in the other half to create the Emergency Department and Lab. I use Trimble SketchUp for all my mapping and planning during my work, so I know beforehand exactly how everything will fit. Here’s the design I made for the basement, showing the warehouse along the left side and the emergency department on the right, with the lab on the far right:

Design of our hospital basement, which we completed before I left

This is the large hospital waste zone I designed and had mostly built before leaving Yemen:

Hospital waste zone design

Getting started on the generator shelter:

Rear compound at the start of work

Generator shelter nearly completed:

Generator and fuel storage area nearly complete

Cleaning the diesel storage tanks before installation:

Cleaning the diesel reservoirs

Installing walls to create the outpatient department on the ground floor:

Erecting walls in the outpatient department at the MSF Taiz Mother and Child Hospital

Putting in new basement doorways:

Installing better doors at the MSF Taiz Mother and Child Hospital

Welding outdoor waiting area benches:

Welding benches for the outdoor waiting area

Excavating for the waste zone:

Excavating pits for the hospital waste zone

Foundation work for the waste zone:

Early foundation work for the hospital waste zone

Converting a minibus into an ambulance for transferring patients to other hospitals:

Minibus converted into a patient transfer ambulance in Taiz, Yemen

We opened the hospital, with just the Outpatient Department operational, on 7 November:

Opening day of the hospital, 7 November 2015

We opened the Nutrition Programme a week later, and the Emergency Department a week after that. I worked late and slept several times at the hospital, enjoying the occasional sunset from the rooftop:

Sunset view from the rooftop of the hospital

Yemen has been in the midst of a civil war for quite some time now. Taiz was a particularly noisy place, with a nearly constant stream of bullets, bombs, and missiles flying through the air and landing all over the place. Here are a few photos taken immediately after airstrikes launched from Saudi-led coalition fighter jets:

Smoke cloud after an airstrike in Taiz, Yemen
Smoke cloud after an airstrike in Taiz, Yemen
Smoke cloud after an airstrike in Taiz, Yemen

I took this photo of the landscape nearby, for no particular reason, the day after arriving in Taiz:

Hilltop building on 9 September 2015

Exactly two weeks later, there were a series of airstrikes and at least one of them hit the building in the photo above, destroying everything but the reinforced concrete pillars and floors:

Hilltop building on 23 September 2015, shortly after several airstrikes

As I wrote in the blog post mentioned above, this airstrike on 2 December indirectly resulted in me arriving back in Canada a few days earlier than expected:

Smoke cloud after an airstrike near the MSF tented scabies clinic in Taiz, Yemen which killed one person and injured several

On 3 December most of our team drove up from Taiz to Sana’a, admiring the scenery along the way, with an overnight stop in Ibb where I got to catch up with Ahmed and Armando, two guys with whom I lived and worked in Iraq three years ago.

Terraced hillsides on the drive from Ibb to Sana'a, Yemen

I spent the next few days working out of our Sana’a office, speaking with suppliers for hospital equipment, finishing up some 3D hospital plans and designs, and writing up my handover report notes, before flying out to Djibouti on 9 December. The Sana’a airport runways were repaved some months ago so that aircraft could land again, but the place is still littered with the remnants of passenger jets, fighter jets, helicopters, military vehicles, and old airport buildings. The terminal itself is in decent shape, at least!

Bombed infrastructure at Sana'a International Airport, Yemen
Destroyed fighter jet at Sana'a International Airport, Yemen
Destroyed passenger or cargo jet at Sana'a International Airport, Yemen

Taking off from Sana’a on the little MSF Beechcraft King Air 200 with its leather aft-facing seats and matching 1988 safety cards:

Beechcraft King Air 200 cockpit

Goodbye, Yemen:

Looking back down on Yemen

After a night in Djibouti, I flew back up to Istanbul and then over to Amsterdam, where I once again had a fantastic homemade meal and fascinating conversations with Martin and Kat. Once my debriefings were over at the MSF Amsterdam office, I flew to Toronto on 12 December to finally meet the MSF Canada people who’d been employing me for the past few years, and to give a presentation about my experience and MSF’s work in Taiz, Yemen.

I was lucky to arrive on the weekend, so I had Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday to see friends; the last time I was in Toronto, arriving on a bicycle, was in the summer of 2009. I managed to see Nikki, Mike C, Danielle, Joy, Bill, Ashik, and Amanda, plus the CN Tower (from a distance).

CN Tower, Toronto, Canada

On 14 December, I landed back in Vancouver, where I enjoyed much coffee and food with friends, tried my hand at online dating once again, and even tasted a little mulled wine at Sonja’s house:

Sonja with her spatula-turned-sugar melting tool for making mulled wine

I also made it out to two incredible Christmas choir concerts: Chor Leoni downtown at St Andrew’s Wesley, and the Corpus Christi College Chamber Choir at Our Lady of Fatima:

Corpus Christi College Chamber Choir Christmas Concert

The rest of those final two weeks of 2015 were occupied by catching up on sleep, hanging out with my wonderful family, and wondering where in the world I’ll be heading next…

That’s it for 2015! As always, I’d love to get an update from you – whether we know each other well or not at all, whether it’s a quick hello or a rambling email telling me every little detail of your life. I promise to read it, no matter how long, and eventually even reply.

A Week in Toronto

After 378km of cycling over 4 days, I arrived in Toronto on July 25th. I stayed with my friend Jackie, who somehow managed to put up with me for a whole week! Then I flew to Vancouver.

I spent my time in Toronto walking around a lot, meeting up with a few old friends like Bill, who was my roommate in England in our first year of university, Alvin who used to climb rooftops with me, and Amanda with whom I inflated a bunch of balloons and half-filled a phone booth in Edinburgh one time.

I didn’t take very many photos in Toronna, but here are a few:

The Ontario College of Art and Design, which is not to my taste at all, but is at least quite creative and intriguing:

A building more to my liking, University College, on the University of Toronto campus as the sun was going down a little after 8pm:

On the 28th, I was hanging out with my friend Amanda when we chanced upon a free open-air performance of King Lear in a park near her work. We ended up watching it, and it was really good!

This bench was in the same park:

And a blurry no-flash shot of the play:

On the 30th of July, I bought a cheap ukulele which required a ridiculously long walk west down Bloor Street, past Ossington (if you’re familiar with Toronto, you’ll know how far that is from College and McCaul). On the long walk there, I passed this famous store but didn’t go inside:

On the 31st, I boxed up my bicycle and sent it by Greyhound to Vancouver, and on August 1st Jackie and I went to the Caribana festival down by the water. It was terribly organised, just a whole bunch of people wandering around, uncoordinated. It was fun to people-watch, but the parade was quite disappointing and didn’t yield any good photos.

After leaving Caribana, Jackie and I returned to her apartment where I picked up my bags to head to the airport, and flew to Vancouver for a four week family visit.