Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Fuck, what am I to do with myself? 29th May 2002 in Calgary, Canada


I wasn"t quite sure what I was going to do when I got home. I flew to Toronto and decided to goto my Aunts house because I knew that there would be a stable environment there. I quickly learned how little I knew of Edmonton and how I didn"t want to be there. When I came back to Calgary I had great anxiety, I wasn"t sure what I was going to do or where I was going in life from here.

I always knew I wanted to write software and this should be the time that I made that step. So I decided I would write code non-stop, work for a while and head back to London with a improved portfolio and another shot at becoming a professional programmer.


First I knew I needed money. I didn"t have a job here. I had great anxiety over the fact I didn"t know where my next pay cheque was coming from. I went back to my old boss at Amonson Wealth Management and got a little work out of there, but nothing stable and definitely not enough to support me and get me back to London. So I decided, after having a conversation with one of my bother"s friends, that I would take 3 shitty jobs work my ass off and have the cash in no time. No such luck, I gave out 30+ CV"s to every job in the two malls close to my house, I applied to ads in the paper, internet, ect... nothing. Finally I gave up. I went to Moxies and applied for the job of a dishwasher hoping to make it on to the Line. They said they might be able to swing it.


Some things I quickly learned: (1) Anyone applying to be a dishwasher will get the job (2) Anyone who starts out in dish will live in dish forever (3) People tend to quit dish quite often. Good dish washers tend to last 2 months. No one I had met there had been there longer than 3 weeks. (4) You"ll get more hours than you ever bargained for because of the high turnover rate and the need to fill shifts.


Anyway, so hoping to make it to the line and realizing it won"t happen I decided to stick it out as a dish washer by day/night/early morning and work for AWM and write code in my spare time. I thought that I wouldn"t spend a penny, go out at all or meet anyone while I was here and that I would be back in London in no time. Then I met Twilla.


Looking at her face takes my breath away. Her eyes alone have such a twinkle in them that it"s like looking at them for the first time every time you see her. Just looking at her face you just can"t turn away. With every moment there appears to be more and more detail. I had to meet her.


She works Expo and Prep at Moxies so there is the odd time she comes back to dish to wash her hands or to clean one small thing off, creating a few moments to look at her and maybe say a word or two. Finally one night I got to chat her up whilst working. We talked for about 30 minutes, then around 1:30am she was about to go home. I talked her into staying, I couldn"t talk to her enough.


The next day I asked her out, we went out with one of our fellow colleges, Kevin, who also washed dishes. We went to Limericks on MacLeod Trail, one of the commercial drags in Calgary, and sat on the 2nd floor patio talking while looking out at the sun set, the planetary alignment and the cars as they passed by on the warm, mild summer evening. Kevin didn"t have very many life stories to talk about but Twilla and I did. We found out we had common interests in Human Beatbox, Golf and Travel. Throughout the night she kept saying "Isn"t he great, your awesome" to me, I kept replying with "Your wicked, your so brilliant" and laid on a bit of English charm I had picked up in my journeys. Kevin just sat there feeling out of place.


When we left Limericks, Kevin realized he forgot his bag and ran back to get it, meanwhile, Twilla and I found a patch of grass on the busy commercial strip and we sat with our arms around each other while watching the cars fly by into the evening. Later on, Kevin tripped over a shopping cart, cut up his hand and broke his thumb, Twyila and I ended up ditching him in a movie theatre surrounded by gaurds and 15 year old consession droids.


The next night we set a date to go out again. I brought a long my friend Matt, from my former days at PSINet, with me. We all met up at the Moxies lounge after Twilla got off work. Even after being in a hot kitchen for 6 hours, she managed to look perfect. We eventually ended up on the Patio at Limericks again. The staff didn"t notice we were out there and Matt went to the bar to have a drink. We sat talking and occasionally hugging one another throughout the night. We eventually went inside and did the same. We ended the night at Dennys where we met some drunken yahoo that looked like the guy from the Dell commercials. He kept asking me if I was English.


For now, with my sights set on London, I"m not sure what"s going to happen. Tomorrow were going to be heading out to the Driving Range and going for a walk in Fish Creak National Park. Hopefully we"ll make it up to the ridge at the back of McKenzie so that we can look at the Rocky Mountains.


    Recent Posts