Tips on How to Enter a Contest

Air Canada plane not en route to Thailand. 1) Read the rules. Air Canada is holding a contest. Seven hundred and fifty winners will be flown anywhere in the world where Air Canada flies. All you have to do is tell the story of where you want to go, and why. Say - hey! I'm a writer! I can win this contest and return to Thailand, where my family lived during Woodstock, the summer of love and, perhaps more to the point, the Vietnam War. I just spent about an hour pounding out the heartwarming tale of a geeky girl becoming a confident young lady while living in a village called Khon Kaen. Two thousand characters - on the nose! All I had to do was upload my story. Except - I was required to type the first three letters of the destination I desired. T. H. A. "Sorry! Air Canada does not fly to this destination!" Hmm. Come to think of it, we flew Thai Air in '69. I remember the lobster luncheon served on china, orchids for the ladies and little purple souvenir fans. Definitely not Air Canada. Not now. Not ever. GROAN! Yeah, I tried Bangkok. Guess what? An airline that doesn't fly to Thailand doesn't fly to Bangkok, either. Ptooey. So what we now have is a little story about me, when I was 15 years old, living in Khon Kaen, Thailand. It is exactly 2000 characters, including spaces. It includes the only picture of family that has been scanned. Just so you know, though it isn't in my little useless contest tale, I had a pile of boyfriends and they were all gorgeous. No touchee was the rule, which was fine with me. And then along came Sudang. He'd lived a year in America so he knew all about us bad North Americans. Only I was a completely untouched very good little Canadian prairie girl - until he showed up, all busy fingers and sloppy tongue.

But I digress. HA! Don't you wish? Recently I reread The Lover by Margeurite Duras. I thought I might be able to write something similar but . . . no. My story would be completely different. Still, I think it's a tale worth telling. But not today. Oh, by the way, I do know how to make paragraphs on Blogger. But this morning, Blogger does not know how to make paragraphs. Cock-sucking crap. Mai Pen Rai. Today, this is the story you get, in a big fat paragraph-minus lump: KHON KAEN In 1969, while hippies turned a dairy farm into a festival of love called Woodstock and The Beatles released Abbey Road, this Canadian girl from the prairies was living on the other side of the world. My father, a Professor of Engineering with the University of Manitoba, had loaded up his large family and moved us to Khon Kaen, Thailand. At the time, Khon Kaen was little more than a village; but it had something that could be found in only 2 other places in Thailand – a University. My Dad helped establish the University of Khon Kaen and a 15 year old girl from Winnipeg came of age in Southeast Asia. I remember the jets flying overhead, six minutes away from their destination, Vietnam. I remember water buffaloes, elephants, monkeys and snakes. I remember the noise, the smells and the colours of the marketplace; the stares of people who had never seen a blonde, green-eyed white girl before. “Falang, falang,” they cried as I tried to meld into the crowd. I was a “foreigner” and, at first, they never let me forget it. But as I learned the language and the ways of the people, I became one of them. I waiied to the Buddha and left treats in the tiny houses for the spirits of trees that had been uprooted to build houses like the one I lived in. We studied by correspondence but we became part of the University life. I’d arrived a gawky adolescent who’d never been asked to dance at the school I’d attended in Winnipeg. I left a confident girl whose dance card, at the many parties held at the University, was always full. Eighteen months after we arrived, we took the night train from Khon Kaen to Bangkok, to begin our journey home. Our friends cried as they draped us with jasmine leis. I cried, too, and vowed that one day I’d return. That was a long time ago. My firm resolve to revisit the place where my eyes were opened to the wonders of another world faded until it became an impossibility. Until now. I want to go “home.” Please help me make that girlhood dream come true, after all.

Picture of my Mom and my little sister, now a drummer in Victoria, B.C. It's tempting to say the other two girls are my sister and me, but that would be a lie. I have no idea who they are or why they are walking with my Mother and baby sis. -Mad (as hell) Mad