2008 Canada .... Part 3

Part 3. Northern Alaska in the Veendam

We had three days to walk the streets of Vancouver (two days there initially and one day a week later) …. taking lots of photos see the Blog Sites in Part 2. On the second day we caught a taxi to the waiting ship for a week long cruise to Alaska and back again. We cruised right up to the Skagway in northern Alaska and back finally to Vancouver. Here are some photos of our week long trip in the Veendam operated by the Holland America cruise line. It had 1200 passengers and 600 crew to look after you.

..... Ken and Harriet have just boarded the Veendam
for cruising to Alaska for a week ….

…. A liner similar to the Veendam
moored up in Skagway, Alaska …

The Interior Of The Ship: The ship had
eleven floors on it. You would go up
by lift to the general Ship Restaurant and to
the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating
Room on the 11th Floor. The two photos below
show one of the many halls and the general Ship
Restaurant which was duplicated on the other side
of the ship.

It was very stable as the ship travelled

up the Alaskan Inside Passage .....

This is our Bedroom on the 5th Floor …

.. it isn’t called a Bedroom. It called a
State Room = 516. At night, you would be left
a notice by your room that if you would like
breakfast in your State Room, what time would you
like it and what breakfast selection would you
have from this list? In the morning at your set time,
a man in his catering uniform would wheel a tray
of your special breakfast selection to your room,
knock on your door and when you had opened,
he would hand - carry in a tray of your selection
to your table. He would come back and pick all the
trays along the hall when you left them
outside on hall floor beside your door.

The Interior Of The Ship

• The Interior of the ship ….. see the photographs here
• The Veendam on the 11th Deck ..... you come up by lift to the General Ship Restaurant and to the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating Room which looks over the water .....…..see the photographs here
• The Veendam Auditorium ……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Formal Dining Room ……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Ken’s Birthday Dinner (May)……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Library ……See the Photographs here




The Exterior views from the ship ….. see the photographs here

• Bob Silverman’s photos …… the man above in the red coat …. See his many photos through Kodak Gallery. We got to know Bob and his wife Elaine on the ship in a close way over the whole week we were on the ship. He appears in my photos above section: The Veendam Ken’s Birthday Dinner (May)……See the Photographs here ‘ His photos are wonderful and show scenes inside the ship, on the ship (including several of Harriet and I walking around on the timber deck for exercise). He shows photos of two places we stopped for excursions right in Alaska ...... Juneau and Skagway. I will focus on these places in our Blog Sites in Part 4 and 5 which will come out as later date. Bob and Elaine are now on my worldwide e-mail friends list.

I cannot organise things very well or drive due to my severe brain injury twelve years ago. I used to do this very capably in my former business. I ran a small business in upmarket landscape design and construction for wealthy clients around Brisbane for twenty years. It was called ‘New Earth Systems P/L’. I was an Outer Gardener concerned about Outer Sustainability. This Outer Sustainability was fragile and easily eroded, dependent on my performance and people's acceptance of my work. Two specific blog sites of my past gardens are these:

• Greenmount Beach Resort … 28 years on from when I did the garden in 1980
• Sheehan's Garden in October 2007 .... House and Garden in West End, Brisbane … 23 years on from when I did the garden in 1984

I thought of a landscape as a three-dimensional piece of space that people walked through. This space changed with time as it grew and changed with the time of day: shadows vs. sun patterns, boulders, colour, plants, trees, earth-forms, solid structures and water. These were the ingredients in a subtle flow of landscape design and construction. Rather an intangible product to sell and run a business with!! Out of this stage I built a structure for my life: my marriage with Harriet, business and our house plus we had a family of two children.

Now I cannot do these things. I am in a new season of life where other people are very important. One thing I do now is that I now facilitate The BRAIN INJURY SURVIVOR NETWORK around the world ….. there are hundreds of fellow survivors all linked by the blog site as given here. The BRAIN INJURY SURVIVOR NETWORK is about HOPE and RESTORATION.
Hope and RESTORATION: that by following the fundamentals of the Sustainable Life, you will again be a valued member of the community again. Such a life has the ability to be continually and maintained everyday. From my personal belief and experience there three important components in recovering from a brain injury and maintaining an ongoing life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall.

Hope and RESTORATION : that by following the fundamentals of the Sustainable Life, you will again be a valued member of the community again. Such a life has the ability to be continually and maintained everyday. From my personal belief and experience there three important components in recovering from a brain injury and maintaining an ongoing life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall over in what you could call an Unsustainable Life.
Now Harriet does all the day to day organising and the daily driving. I instead focus on visually recording the experiences through photographs ….. all the places we go to. I came back from Canada with 3000 ++ photographs from our 3.50 weeks in Canada on three 2 GB chips. When I came home, I then downloaded them onto my home computer into many folders and many subfolders. Then I can use them in blog sites of photographs and word explanations. I can then communicate with many associates and friends around the world by sending a few e-mails.

Regards,

Ken Aitken (B.Sc.)

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