Ashes scattered, And The Future.

Early this morning, Manu and I headed down to Mosquito Creek and scattered most of the old man's ashes into the sea. It was a lot of work, really, because of the amount of wood that was used. Some parts were identifiable for someone who has some working knowledge of anatomy. My father had also asked that his ashes be scattered in a few other places, which I'll do in time. That's not really too hard. It so happens that he had unscrupulously picked out his own urn.

Every little piece is easy. It's the unexpected things that are a bit hard. Like getting phone calls from people that mistake me for him - a common problem we had when he was alive. My great-uncle John called today and he said he was 'pierced' when he called my father's number and heard what he thought to be 'Rocky'. It's a little eery for people, and it's eery for me when they just start talking to me, assuming that I'm him. I've been considering changing the way that I answer the phone because of it, but reprogramming myself on that might be difficult.

Then there's the problem of going through stuff. I love my father a great deal, but his filing system for his life is somewhat exasperating. When it came to what he considered to be the important things, he has a great system for finding paperwork. Today I spent a lot of time going through his life in reverse chronological order, through his piles of papers. The extraneous mixed in with the important. The legal documents for his personal life were under a pile of documents related to 4x4 dream vehicles he had, and those in turn were under schematics for some solar systems he was working on.

*cough* I guess we're not too different. Follow this weblog long enough, and you can see how I save trees through technology.

I found his log book for this year, where he stored information on the vehicle, the land, and himself - but himself only in whether he could work or not. No real details. Of course, when looking through things like this one tends to hope to find something that one can never find. It's just the way it is.

The Future

So what's in the future? Well, I have to return to Trinidad and Tobago, at least for a while. There are a few legal obligations that I won't discuss publicly (and probably not privately except for a chosen few), so I'll be at least based in Trinidad for a while. It's not too bad, really, though the crime is a real concern.

I realized today that people might think I don't like Trinidad too much. That's really quite wrong. I'm just a very vocal and apolitical critic who expects more from a country that could be much better than it is. Crime, corruption, whatever - things could be better in this country if the government(s) involved from the start actually had some sort of plan instead of playing 52 pickup with the future. It will take more than an election to get things right here... it will take the right attitude of the people; a feeling that they are in control. They aren't right now, the politicians are (sound familiar). This country is rich, it has talented and intelligent people... there's no excuse.

I'll still be travelling, though I will have a base of operations here. I'm not sure exactly where in Trinidad yet, and I don't know that I would post that on the weblog here with crime the way it is.

So - life will be weird... as usual. :-)