{"id":6295,"date":"2014-09-10T17:26:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=6295"},"modified":"2014-09-10T17:26:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:26:57","slug":"why-didnt-i-go-to-calgary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=6295","title":{"rendered":"Why didn’t I go to Calgary?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrived in Ottawa in mid-July, 1987 as a landed immigrant. I was sponsored by my aunt and her husband Andr\u00e1s. It was Andr\u00e1s who awaited me at the airport on the evening of my arrival. (No, I did not arrive by air. My connecting flight from Montreal was canceled, so Air Canada put me in a limo along with another passenger. As the limo driver was not from Ottawa, and I knew nothing about the layout of the city, he dropped me off at the airport instead of taking me directly to my aunt’s house.)<\/p>\n

I spent some time in the old (since decommissioned) airport building waiting for Andr\u00e1s to arrive. (In the pre-cellphone days, I first had to exchange some currency, then get some change, then find a payphone in order to be able to notify them about my whereabouts.) After a wait of a half hour or so, Andr\u00e1s did arrive. We only ever met once before, briefly, when they were visiting Hungary and I spent a few hours\u00a0at my parents’ home, on leave from my mandatory military service. So when Andr\u00e1s saw me, he was not sure if I was the right person… as he approached me, he asked, “So you are Viktor?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” I answered,\u00a0to which Andr\u00e1s replied with a second question: “Why did you come here, why didn’t you go to Calgary instead?”<\/p>\n

Yes, Andr\u00e1s had a weird sense of humor. Not everyone appreciated it, but I did. I really grew to like him.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, it was Nature’s turn to be funny, while also providing me with a perfectly good answer to Andr\u00e1s’s question from 27 years ago. This is why, Andr\u00e1s:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, Andr\u00e1s, I am a wimp. I can tolerate winter, but I really don’t like late summer snow storms.<\/p>\n

Alas, Andr\u00e1s is no longer among us to hear my response. He passed away many years ago, after losing his\u00a0battle with pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I arrived in Ottawa in mid-July, 1987 as a landed immigrant. I was sponsored by my aunt and her husband Andr\u00e1s. It was Andr\u00e1s who awaited me at the airport on the evening of my arrival. (No, I did not arrive by air. My connecting flight from Montreal was canceled, so Air Canada put me […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,35,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-personal","category-weather","category-22-id","category-35-id","category-34-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6297,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295\/revisions\/6297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}