Roger Pires August 25, 2011
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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In praise of summer vacations
It’s never a bad time to take a vacation. I’m not aware of any member of the medical profession ever declaring that a couple of weeks of down time will cause cancer or bring on genetic mutations. Quite the opposite in fact. The sawbones agree that everyone should take a couple of consecutive weeks off at least once a year. And hey, they should know; they’re experts on the subject. This is no knock; I salute them for it. Besides, I want the guy checking my prostate to be well rested and in good spirits.
The trouble with down time is finding an appropriate time to take it. In the throes of the rat race, we can’t always get it when we want it. How many of us have been given the directive, “You can take vacation any time after August and before November as long as it’s not an Olympic year.” There are times however, when you know you absolutely need a vacation. And so do the people around you.
I had reached that particular crossroads when I showed up for work wearing mis-matched socks and the letters ‘L’ and ‘R’ scrawled on the toes of my shoes. Most people with even a cursory knowledge of burnout would recognize these symptoms. But when you are so far gone, it takes a little more evidence before you realize you’re a candidate for the butterfly net. I finally got the message when my co-workers began averting their gaze whenever I passed by – like you would if you saw a guy singing “My Funny Valentine” to a lamppost. (I exaggerate of course; there was no ‘L’ or ‘R’ on my shoes). And so I was dragged kicking and screaming into the wonderful world of mandatory rest.
The timing couldn’t have been better. That first week we were billeting a university student from the Dominican Republic. He was in Canada as part of a program put on by our church. Bright kid. Very engaging. But when he told me what his field of study was, I almost reached for the paddles. He wanted to be a software developer - the same profession that almost turned me into a human lab rat. Mind you, it wasn’t always thus. Back in the glory days before outsourcing, a developer (we were known as “computer programmers” back then) actually stood a chance of meeting a deadline. Then came the Internet and instantaneous processing. “We want the world and we want it now!” became an actual business case. A generation later, guys like me spend our evenings trying not to drool on the furniture.
Of course, I couldn’t tell the young fellow that. In the world of cyber geekdom a lot can change in a month, let alone a few years. Let the kid live his dream. What we did promise him during his stay with us was a nice leisurely week of doing...well…squat. That’s right: no stuffing the minivan full of coolers and camping gear and spending six hours on the traffic-choked highways and byways of our fair province. I’d be content to lie in a hammock until I turned into a pool of hairy jello. It turned out to be a good plan given that it was the week of the heat wave of 2011. Most days we felt like we were living in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Ambition was redefined as trying to make it from the fridge to the pool without passing out. The kid had to fill in his compadres about our weather. When he phoned home and told them it was hot enough to buckle the knees on a camel, they didn’t believe him. That hot? In Canada? The truth was verified when one of them checked the Weather Network on their iPhone (and how many lab rats did it take to program that little operation, huh?).
We spent most evenings watching baseball. The Blue Jays have several Dominicans on their roster and he’s a huge fan. I was fully on board with this item on the itinerary. Each subsequent evening I felt the stress of a hectic life wash away. I could almost feel my muscles unclenching.
By the end of the week, I was coherent enough to drive so we decided to take in the zoo. The thermometer had dipped to a balmy 36C, which seemed like autumn compared to what it was a couple of days before. It took us an entire day to cover Africa, Indo-Malaya, and parts of the polar regions where several Arctic species lay half-dead in the otherworldly heat. The Eurasian land mass would remain undiscovered. The kid loved this world tour.
By the time he left, I was so calm you’d be tempted to check my forehead for lobotomy scars. A week later, I returned to the rat race refreshed and ready to face more impossible deadlines.
