Gordon Barlow

Back to the Turning Point theme... We all know that our grandparents' turning points are important to us too. Except where there was a mating of next-door neighbours, it's interesting to discover how each pair met. Not easy to find out, of course; even guesses need to have some kind of explanation. I know where my Dad's parents met, because his mother told me; but I can only hazard a guess how Mum's parents met. Dad's mother and her brothers visited England (they called it "home") in the early 1900s - starting in style, in first-class cabins in a ship across the Pacific from Australia to Canada. The ship's captain took a fancy to her (or her family's money, more likely), and they married in Toowoomba in 1910. He was an Englishman who served in the Merchant Marine during the Boer War, and afterwards signed up with a coastal-shipping line of New Zealand and Australia. One of his brothers settled in South Africa after the War, and sent ten pound notes to Dad and his brother every Xmas, which was thoughtful. I tracked my South African cousins down twenty years ago, and thanked them over the phone.

Gordon Barlow

Someone on my thread in the Australian "Barbie" forum mentioned the difference between expats and immigrants. The latter intend to stay, while the former are just passing through. But not always! During my 18 months in Canada in 1965-7 I never intended to stay - although I carried a Landed Immigrant scrap of paper stapled to my Australian passport from the day I arrived in Toronto. Nobody from the government ever asked for it back. I visited B.C. for a few days in 1985, and nobody at the border ever said, "Good to see you again". Or "Hmm. I see you're 18 years behind with your Tax Returns. Step into this little room, please...." Easy come, easy go!

Gordon Barlow

One recent Turning Point of mine (of a sort) was my introduction to WhatsApp. Youngsters reading this won't be impressed, but oldies will - and maybe even middle-agers. When Linda & I first came to Cayman in 1978, phoning our Mums in Australia cost us $2.59 (in local currency, just over USD3.00; what's that, about $100 Cdn? No, no, just joking! My neighbour is an expat Canadian who is scathing about the Canadian dollar). Then came Skype, which helped a lot; but it wasn't free, and you had to use a landline. Today I can chat with friends there for an hour or two for nothing. I live alone, but am not really alone when family and friends all around the world are with me at the press of a button.

bats

All of those video chat apps are a godsend. We normally use Messenger but Skype, er no landline needed, or Google Meet/Chat are best for us deafies as you can sling some captions on to help "hear"

Gordon Barlow

This is a bit off-topic, but it can be quickly dealt with. What's the general feeling among new-Canadians about the use of what we in the Caribbean call cuss-words? There's a tendency among BE posters to substitute asterisks, which practice I find very irritating. As I explained in a post of mine in the "Rest of the World" forum a week or so ago, everybody knows what letters the asterisks conceal. We all know the "bad words", so it seems a rather pathetic farce to pretend we don't.

What do you reckon? Should asterisks be banned from BE's Forums, and let the "bad words" be typed in all their glory? Or should our ruling class here require that they be replaced by words fit for decent company? Or must we continue to live with the corny old asterisks?

dbd33

We have to use the ****ing asterisks. I have, for example, typed the text in full here but it will display in the edited version. That doesn't bother me so much as deliberate misspellings that go around the filter.

Gordon Barlow

But... but... dbd...That's not how you spell "bloody", is it?

old.sparkles

You know that isn't what was written.

Milder swearing / cuss words can and are used - more often in TIO but occasionally other areas. People often self moderate for the perceived audience. At other times, the sweary filter catches it if it's in the prescribed lists and you get **** - or the user changes the word, or uses local words that the sweary filter does not know - rooted for example.

abner

I remember those truly expensive overseas calls vividly. We had a favourite Aunt from the Canadian branch of the family who was the first to visit Australia, working from the Canadian High Consulate in Canberra. Dad arranged to call her at Christmas one year, and rationed every second of conversation amongst the children, because it was so expensive.

(Later on, one of her best friends would go on to feature in "the Canadian Caper", as one of the consular staff who helped 6 stranded Americans leave Iran during the 1979 Iranian Embassy hostage crisis.)

Gordon Barlow

The topic of "Life's Turning Points" is all about decisions we took that changed the course of our lives. But equally important, really, are the opportunities we missed or didn't miss, for one reason or another. In 1970 I applied from Australia for a job in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and got it, and earned enough money to quit work and take to the road in Europe, in a Kombi with my wife and baby. But what if I hadn't got the job? Or hadn't seen the advertisement in the paper? I don't know. Found work in Australia somewhere (it was my home country)? Or go back to England and work there? Or back to Canada where we'd got married, and work there? Whatever I did, our lives would have been very much different from the way they turned out. That New Hebrides job put us on the path to ending up in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean; a job anywhere else almost certainly would not have done. Our son wouldn't have become a hippie in Latin America and ended up with three Norwegian children. And so on...

It would of course be interesting to hear from others on this new topic. What if you hadn't......? (fill in the space!)

BEVS

I have written and re-written this so many times.

Age 18/19 I was with my fella driving up to Scotland. We were informally engaged , Just hadn't done the announce thing.

His Mum had baked us a cake to take up to my parents best friends. It was on the back seat. I was wearing a scratchy brown polo neck jumper. & a cream pair of flairs. He was in his cords, shirt & jacket.

November the 5th. Latish afternoon. M6 somewhere between Preston & Lancaster. I don't know exactly where . That was it.
The - End.
I do remember the really kind emergency services, even the voices, and the noises & not being allowed to 'sleep'. I still get the flashbacks.

A year or so later the Post Office contacted me - yes they did - to see if I wanted to apply to become a junior draftsman. I did , so I attended some tests and passed. The P.O. required a medical. That was a bit too much for me at that time. I was still adjusting to the new me .

I met someone when I was age 38 and we married as I hit my 40th.

Sometimes what creates a life's fork is tough, hard, sudden and shocking.

Gordon Barlow

Gosh. You've been through the mill, BEVS. I can only say that from my perspective your man got a wonderful bargain. You're a rare gem. (That's what Peppermint Pattie's father calls her, in the Snoopy comic.)

Gordon Barlow

In 1977, I almost got a job in Jersey. Well, "almost"...! Sigh. The London agency I was registered with got me an interview with Sir John Templeton, who owned a well known and highly successful trust company there. Sir John's reaction to my application, as I recall it... "So, two years ago you managed a trust company in the South Pacific with a staff of two - oh, one and a half; right-oh - and since then you've been living out of a camper-van in Corfu. Ummm..."

Ah well. Don't ask, don't get - right? I kept asking, and finally did land a job in Cayman.

My and my family's lives would have been very different if I had got the Templeton job, of course. I probably wouldn't have any Norwegian grandchildren now, for one thing.

Pulaski

I look back at my career to date, and to a pivotal day, a quiet day in the office in London, when an unexpected large project landed. I was assigned, as were many others, but I found the project fascinating, whereas most of my colleagues just saw it as filling time until something else came along. Most of them left within a few months; I stayed four years, and learned a lot. My work on that project later opened doors for me, and led to the work I have been doing for the past 17 years. I still think I have one more chapter to my career, but given the several unplanned twists and turns, I am not certain what the chapter might contain.

Atlantic Xpat

I suppose the turning point related to immigration and Canada, other than meeting Mrs AX and moving here in the first place was September 2010. I'd been in Nfld for 6 years by that point and had a job that I hated with a passion. Mrs AX was working contract to contract as a teacher with no job security. We had an infant child & had just returned from a beautiful three week trip to Blighty. House prices had gone crazy in Nfld, the exchange rate was down at the $1.60ish level & I started talking about selling up and moving back to the UK. The Mrs - a Newfoundlander - wanted to stay but was coming round to my point of view. Two things then happened - I got a role with my current employer, a global business, headquartered in London. The role was interesting and came with global responsibilities ( at one stage I had people working for me in the US, Europe and HK) and has allowed me to travel back to Blighty several times a year not at my own expense. A little while later, the Mrs picked up a permanent teaching role with a start date neatly aligning with end of maternity leave. From a professional standpoint neither of us have looked back since then.