Life stories: 2000

 Millenium [Previous ¦ Next]

No sooner was I done with the Y2K project at BP that I turned onto other projects which took me to UAE and Oman, Nigeria, France and Scotland. Again a lot of traveling in project work, that taxed my time with my family - even though Sandra was 'at home', I loved this work and Petra was happy near her gramps, this was not to last forever as it was. My next project lay in Kazakhstan, which may have been a great adventure as a younger bachelor but not with family with the brewing geopolitics of that area. It didn't help that while the previous fall was glorious, this year would turn into the wettest on record, since data were kept starting in 1865 (little did we know then that three years later would see the hottest summer on record, at least we didn't witness both...)! We spent lovely summer holidays nonetheless in the Devon near Bishop's Lydiard and Minehead - lush hill country as you imagine it from romantic English writers, some of whom frequented the adjacent Quantox Hills. We were also southwest of London which is Jane Austen territory, and Sandra's a fan of hers, as well as lots of airplane and automobile history which I grew up with in Australia (Brisbane was far more British than anyone would admit to then!)... My highlight were the fireworks in the 'real Millennium as the English called it, that is January 1 of 2001 not 2000! Barges were set up along the river Thames from Greenwich (the astronomic base for mean time) to Windsor (the royal residence) - not only were the fireworks a sight to behold form each barge, but they were lit in sequence upstream from east to west at the exact second when each barge was at the midnight! Petra slept through it, but what struck me was the quietness of the crown - there were hundred of thousands pressed along hte banks in central London, and never did I feel in any danger of sudden crowd movements or stampedes (not my experience at the 14 Juillet fireworks in Paris a few years prior, where kids threw firecrackers into a smaller crowd which grew restless as a result).

And then the manager I dealt with in southern California at ESRI whose software I used at Landmark, asked me if I'd like to replace him in a few years as director of marketing for petroleum? I thought that 'a few years' would leave us the originally planned time near family in Europe, and while I wasn't looking for work Landmark wasn't offering me a bright path. Most importantly however, project work did mean weeks if not months away from home abroad, whereas a possible sales job might mean weeks if not days away from home on tradeshows. And ESRI worked across many industries, and was thus less subjected to the vagaries of the petroleum industry (or the dot.com and financial debacles we would learn later). If I gave a qualified yes, I had no idea that he'd call me late that summer in a panic - his boss had passed away, he took that job, and would be running two jobs until he found a replacement... So would I please consider moving from London to LA, later that same year?! Well, we had just moved from Houston to London and barely settled in a country I always had wanted to live in (perhaps I married Sandra to vicariously live that?). And Bush Jr. was being elected just then, but we decided it was an issue for Americans not us. So to Sandra and Petra's credit, we pulled up stakes and moved lock-stock&barrel back across the Atlantic ocean and the American continent to Redlands, halfway between LA and Palm Springs in So. Cal. (as southern California is called there). I learned a lot of fortitude from my in-laws, when said: "we look at it as a year more with you, than we would have had otherwise".

Pre-9/11 note - we spent a weekend mid-October to fly to LA for an interview, and Sandra was invited. The weather was perfect interview weather meaning that the air was crystal clear and anyone would want to move there seeing that, and not the haze and heat mid-summer here. What was wonderful in the pre-9/11 era is that we could nip&tuck before our transatlantic flights a visit around Redlands that would never happen today - the Sunday morning before our mid-afternoon flight form LAX an hour and a half drive further east, we went up to the mountains above Redlands that we saw in its pristine state before five years of forest fires destroyed it at the outset of a five years of drought...

I learned that the east end of the valley that opens to the ocean at LA harbor was called by the original Indians Valley of Thousand Smokes,  not hippie joint haven, but rather: there were so many natural wildfires in the dry area, that fire smoke naturally stayed put in this geographic cul-de-sac... This proved to be prophetic in the 2003 - 2004 fire seasons that were as terrible as they were natural. White Man simply built houses where grasslands and woodlands naturally burn. And to top it off, not only were unnatural pine forest planted in original sparse oak woods, they remained unmanaged through forest fire prevention that let them overgrow, so that a five-year drought turned the whole region into an underbrush-clogged tinderbox. I wonder what the Indian elders thought of that, if they weren't too busy building or running casinos on their federal lands?!

2019 Update: this was repeated in SE Australia, only much bigger and more terrifying: Not only were affected areas an order of magnitude larger (open hill country like the Darling Downs, rather than a single valley hemmed in by steep mountains between LA and Palm Springs), but also climate change meant droughts stretching over a decade rather than under five years in So. Cal. For a poignant vocal rendition, listen to Lionel Long's West Country, from the 1964 vinyl album my parents had, Songs of a Sunburnt Country   ***

Back in England, that summer having been the wettest on record, the joke on me was that I was fleeing to the sunshine in SoCal, more on that later. But as many people at Landmark still remembered my move from Calgary to Dallas - midwinter when winters grew colder again in Calgary - the overlain joke was that I kept moving toward better climes... and that prove to be true re: my next move too! Read on...

So we arrive in Redlands on 10 December, and rent an apartment at a local Lawn and Tennis Club on Barton Road, walking distance away from work. It was a moving nightmare, as we had to move our stuff in two lots, one for the apartment, and one for storage - together with our faithful Honda Civic this all fit into a 30 foot trailer, but when we unloaded, we didn't examine what we put into storage - only much later would we find what went missing, too late to claim any damage from moving (in fact only a box of misc. stuff left at the end of packing went missing, but it was maddeningly random like a sleeping back, kitchen utensils etc.).

The move itself in Walton was quite a palaver. It was raining solid (as it had all summer, see right above), and Sandra was busy making tea for the movers who took morning and afternoon breaks, and packed in three days not two - what a contrast with US movers who brought an army of low-paid Mexicans, and did it all in two days not three as planned! As my last show with Landmark at PETEX in London was the week of my move, I had to bow out and they were OK if not happy. But hen my future boss shows up and sets up visits on behalf of ESRI before I even get started, and guess what? We go to PETEX! So I had then to tell my old boss that not only do I not help Landmark at that show, but they might see me with my next employer... Together with my pre-Christmas move, this was a harbinger of things to come in Redlands, but hindsight is 20-20, isn't it?!

I'm not sure what grabbed me that Christmas, but I was caught up in the excitement of the move, and I suppose I daren't stay in an empty apartment with neither friends yet nor family any more - on the face of it, it was rather rude of ESRI to steal my second Christmas with family, but as you'll see this was nothing compared to me exit at the other end. So staying in the present, we spent the week between Xmas and New Years in Venice Beach, where I found a funky hostel that took us back to our travelling days in SE Asia... talk about regaining your youth on the beaches of Southern California! But that is where we got the low-down on the fables sunshine, which is just that, fabled. As there's a cold ocean current offshore, there is constant evaporation and mist offshore that hugs the coastline. The same breezes that keep the coastline cool (and thus attracts everyone, pushes prices up and makes the mile band along the coast a millionaire's alley) also keep the mist swinging back and forth atop the beaches. So where is the sun? Nowhere to bee seen until it's burned off until about noon... We even had to buy Petra a jumpsuit to keep her warm in her pushchair, so much cooler it was than expected! Welcome to VVVVVenice BBBBBeach...