2016: Cooking Together at Home Again

Our 2016 end-of-the-year blog is also available in Portuguese. Click on any picture to see a larger version. Previous editions are found here.

In this highly connected world of social media most of you already know the highlighs of our year. But traditions should not die easily. Thus I am still summarizing our year in this blog. Our January Christmas-after-Christmas at home remained a highlight of our January calendar. As all the children mature we see more eating and more video watching/playing and less running around and screaming. But the chaotic environment of a Christmas party and the gift exchange for the children are still anticipated whenever we return from our Christmas travels. Last year all three of us were at Gaga and Grandpa Meadows in Oklahoma for the Christmas break.

One of the new activities for us this year was to restart the hosting cooking-at-home parties. We had several of those with many different styles of food and groups of friends: a French-Italian menu with colleagues in January, a Southern Brazilian home cooking menu with students and friends, a Brazilian Bahia menu with soccer families, and an Indian feast with students, colleagues and friends. I like to plan the menu, organize the recipes, gather the ingredients and utensils and then watch the guests cook together. It makes for great interaction and lots of fun at the gatherings.

We enjoyed Winter activities in Edmonton --- Daniel played indoor soccer --- and my work took me to Fremont in California and to Toronto during that time. I was still on Sabbatical for the first half of 2016 and thus spent more time visiting my collaborators at IBM there. I had a group of student working on an exciting project on the software support for a new supercomputer that will be delivered to USA national research labs.

In March I took a longer trip to the Netherlands, Germany an Brazil. In the Netherlands I had a short visit to Delft University where it was great to visit with my colleague Alexandru Iosup --- the best instructor of the Netherlands in 2015. In Germany I had a rare opportunity to watch a match between the Dortmund and Tottenham at the home stadium of Dortmund with my friend Matthias. This was a very unique experience. Going out for beers with Matthias (who I met on a flight from Houston to Amsterdam in 2010) and Stephan (another German friend with whom I had toured Hyderabad downtown in May 2015) was one of these "small world" experiences. It was great to visit with Matthias, Anja and Svea --- their little daughter. I even cooked a fish moqueca at their neighbor's house, Janika and Marc, one evening. From there I went to my third seminar in Dagstuhl, a castle in the South of Germany. The Brazilian portion of this trip was also very interesting. I had a few days off in Rio where I got perfect weather and had a great time walking around, drinking agua de coco and relaxing in Ipanema beach in between meetings. I attended a conference in Mangaratiba, a nice resort close to Angra dos Reis, and even had a chance to squeeze a quick trip to Porto Alegre to visit with my Mom, my sister, and a some friends.

While I was in this long trip, Gaga and Grandpa were in Edmonton for their annual Spring visit to Daniel and Scott. Daniel loves the time alone with the Meadows side of the family this time of the year. His favourite thing is to simply seat and watch TV with Gaga and Grandpa.

I was hardly back from my European/South American tour and I was departing to spend a week in Victoria, BC, to attend an IFIP meeting with a whole different group of colleagues. And then back to Toronto for another IBM visit. I started hearing the "why do you have to travel so much" chorus from Daniel around that time.

May and June were outdoor soccer season months and once again we had a great time with a wonderful group of parents cheering the Windsor Park/Garneau team on, a team with great skills and that knows how to have fun. In my interest researching food, I spent some time reading on Spanish cooking and organized a "Tapas y Futebol" party at our house at the end of the season. The only interruption to my attendance to Daniel's soccer matches was a conference trip to Chicago. Another highlight of the Summer was Daniel's golf games. Daniel was part of a Golf Junior League in Edmonton this Summer, which allowed us to drop him off for rounds of golf with other youngsters and instructors. But we also took him for rounds of golf on our own. Neither Scott nor I golf, thus we are always his caddy. I enjoyed spending time walking with Daniel on the golf course, it led to conversations that do not happen elsewhere in our busy lives.

In June Daniel graduated from Windsor Park Elementary and moved on to Junior High at McKernan in September. Daniel enjoyed all his years at Windsor Park and will carry good memories from there. With the community soccer and other activities he continues in contact with many of his classmates.

May to August was also garden season in Edmonton and we had a bounty of fresh produce from both our garden and the ploth next door that I am cultivating. I am also slowly recovering the raspberry patch behind the fence of our next-door neighbor. We had fun with the garden this year.

In July Scott and Daniel hiked to the Shadow-Lake Lodge close to Banff while I went to present at a conference in Valladolid in Spain, a place with lots of old churches, great tapas, and great people. I managed to squeeze a weekend in Madrid with some good sightseeing.

Later in July I took Daniel to Texas so that he could see a bit of Austin, to visit the places where Scott and I had lived while getting our Ph.Ds there. We went into the Longhorn stadium and had a burger at Hut's --- our favourite hamburger place in Austin. We had a great, even though brief, visit with Joydeep and Samira Ghosh. Daniel was super impressed with Samira's Tesla red electric car and also had a good time trying some authentic tex-mex food. Then we spent a weekend in San Antonio with Gaga and Grandpa. Before going in this trip Daniel and I read the book "Face-Off at the Alamo" of the Screech Owls series by Roy MacGregor. Thus we had to go to "Casa Rio", a Mexican restaurant on the River Walk, where one of the scenes of the book takes place. We even had to go check the layout of the bathroom. Daniel was very interested on how the author could have know exactly how everything was laid out. So we chatted about field research for writing fiction.

From San Antonio Daniel went with the grandparents to their house in Ardmore where he had a great time. He played with his cousins, reconnected with his friend Jacob --- who used to live in Edmonton and played soccer with Daniel but who has now moved to Texas --- and also with his "best-friend in Oklahoma" Sam, a boy with whom he plays every time he goes to Ardmore. The grandparents make it so special that Daniel says that their house is his "happiest place on Earth." Gaga and Grandpa flew with Daniel back to Edmonton in time for our traditional Summer party. We had a great time preparing for it and having friends around. But this year we had a few friends cancelling because of health issues with their parents. Also Gaga herself, who usually is very active with decorations, was suffering of a very severe back and neck ache. Dealing with issues with our parents, and our own, health comes with the times for our age group.

About the same time I was myself dealing with some serious pain and numbness in my legs and feet. I tried the typical male approach of ignoring it as long as I could, but that was not working. It was by chance that I mentioned my issues to Alex, a friend who owns a studio most focused on women's fitness called ReDefining Eve. As we were passing Daniel's used hockey equipment to her daughter, Alex kindly offered me several one-on-one training sessions at her studio. I had no idea how much my posture and muscle structure had deteriored --- in spite of regular swimming --- until I started training with an expert that focus on core strenght, stability and mobility. Now I continue with daily exercises and am doing reformer pilatus class once a week at Redefining Eve and Daniel is coming with me for the classes. I have seen very signicant improvement in my mobility, posture and all the pain and numbness are gone!

Daniel had been complaining that we never take family trips together. This happens mostly because Scott takes the opportunity to take Daniel to the mountains while I go in my international trips. This situation led Daniel to think that I do not like the mountains --- a place that he and Scott adore. Thus, late in August we managed to schedule a week-long trip to the Yoho Valley in British Columbia. We stayed in the Whiskey Jack hostel with a gorgeous view of Takaka Falls right from the porch. We got good weather and went on hikes for three days, including the most gorgeous trail that I ever been to: the Iceline Trail. We also had a chance to go take tea at the Twin-Falls Chalet. Tea and muffins taste so much better when you have to walk four hours to get to it. The internet-disconnected hostel was busy and we slept nine to a room. The entire place shared the same cooking/eating space. It is a great place to meet interesting people and to have great conversations. We hang out a lot with a group of tourists from Germany, including Marcel and Svenja, who are teachers. Besides the hikes, which he was always ready to go on, one of Daniel's favourite things was to make a fire and spend the evenings around the fire pit.

This year we kept our tradition of visiting with Daniel's sisters in Calgary in the Spring. It was very nice to spend an afternoon at Emily's house. Mac and Daniel's nephew, Leo, were there too, and it was very nice to be with them. It was very nice that Emily came over to our hotel to play with Daniel in the pool. They always have so much fun together. In the Fall Emily's family drove to Edmonton to meet us again at our house. We treasure these meetings as they keep Daniel in touch with his sisters.

From September to December I have been reimmersed in teaching. With 3+ courses there were many very early mornings to get ready, and to set/grade exams. I had a great time being with students again. But I was not quite prepared for the new generation of students that were in front of me. I believe that we get a new modus operandi in the student population every 4-5 years depending on the technology that they get exposed when they are 9-13 years old. This is a very distracted group where a large number of the students rarely or never spend any significant amount of time focusing in one problem or one subject. I saw many students with good potential achieving below the level at which they could simply because there was no focus. Also there is a tendencing to search and borrow rather than solving problems themselves. As a consequence I had to deal with many cases of plagiarism in the assignments: a process that includes individual formal interviews with each student involved and significant paperwork.

Daniel started grade 7 at the McKernan school. Academics continue to be a great challenge for Daniel and we keep working with him one-on-one so that he is not terribly lost in class. He still enjoys going to school though. Daniel has a new best friend from school. It is another boy that also struggles with ADHD, but his friend performs well academically. They have been playing at each other's house and it is very nice to hear very long deep belly laughs whenever these two boys are hanging out together. For sports, Daniel is the goalie in community-league boarded indoor soccer --- a Canadian version of the sport that borrows a lot from hockey.

Daniel did not play hockey this year, but we continue to be strong supporters of the University of Alberta Golden Bears hockey team and went to every game that we could get to. In January we were "Hockey Ambassadors" for the international-student hockey night. Our job was to briefly explain to the students the main rules of hockey so that they could understand the game and then we went to watch a game with them. There were lots of Brazilian students there that night and we had lots of fun. In the Fall we also rediscovered the Oil Kings --- the junior team for the Edmonton Oilers. Being the most conservative and averse-to-change guy that I know, Daniel was very upset that Edmonton had built a new hockey arena and that the Oil Kings games had moved from the old Rexal arena to the new Rogers place. That all changed the first time that I took him to the new arena --- against very intense protests from him. By the end of the first period he was asking if we could start going to see every Oil Kings game from then on. I did not commit to every game, but we managed to watch four games before the end of the year. We even managed to drag Scott along with us to watch one of the games.

We also had our attention draw to all the unprecedented political events around the world, from Brexit, to the catastrophic election in the USA, and the incredible shenanigans in the politics in Brazil. The isolation of the ideological echo chambers is not new. I do remember in the early 1990s when a friend returned horrified from a visit to her mom as she realized that her mother was exclusively listening to ultra-right-wing radio shows. But the intensity of the isolation created by the use of technology to filter the information that each of us receive heralds a frightening future ahead of us.

I wrote this blog when Daniel and I were on our way to Oklahoma to spend another Christmas at Gaga and Grandpa. This was the first time that Daniel was in "Santa's team" and helped make Christmas magical for his second-cousing Karsten. Daniel still often asks about the details of how we made the magic of Christmas happen to him until now. Who carried what present, who drunk the milk, who put the carrots out for the reindeer, etc. This year he was part of it. But still, he was surprised by his first cell phone under the tree on Christmas morning.

We are staying here until Friday when we will fly to Punta Cana and meet Scott and my family (mother, sister, brother, nephews, nieces, grand-nephews, etc) for one week of rest and relaxation in a resort.

Happy holidays and a great 2017.