Management Misadventures

Canadians shouldn't be so smug

2008-07-17T20:47:00.002-04:00

Interesting, isn't it, how certain Canadian publications are commenting on the American economic, dare I say, crisis, yet major economists are taking every crumb of passably good news to say that Canadians won't suffer the same fate. But, will it?

First, the good news: the government saw the writing on the wall and put an end to no money down, 40 year amortization mortgages, thus putting constraints on a lucrative, yet higher-risk segment of the mortgage market. Does this avert a U.S. type housing-crisis in Canada? Well, probably not, but it's a solid step toward limiting the possible damage.

Supposedly, Canada's economy rose 0.8% at the latest outlook. However, this increase was largely buoyed by consumer spending. Have we not learned that an economy buoyed by consumer spending is fools gold? Consumers are spending more, yes, largely because 1) it's the summer and people are getting outside more, and 2) shit is more expensive. More expensive shit = more money spent. When people run out of money, these gains will be evaporated, and yes, they will run out of money. That's what happens during times of rampant inflation when you have to spend more just to stay where you're at.

Other danger signs: remember, it's never different, and history ends up repeating itself. I've repeatedly stated to my friends that we're in 1928 right now...just before the Great Depression. Heading into the Great Depression, Canada had the world's fastest growing economy, largely through our exports to the US. However, people thought the boom times would never end, and extended their credit to afford to increase their standard of living. When the US, also tapped out, were unable to buy Canadian resources and manufactured goods, the economy sank into a tailspin.

Now, things needed to play out in the States first for the ripple effect to hit Canada, and I can imagine the Canadians of the 20s looking pretty smug too. But after the dust settled, Canada actually suffered MORE under the Great Depression than the US did. Eighty years later, and in spite of an increasingly globalized world, we are staring the exact same problem in the face. Ontario is already starting to suffer, and this will continue for the next few years, as people downsize houses, or hold on to their vehicles a little longer, or can't afford good cuts of meat.

There are differences, however, between then and now, which will allow Canadians to come out of this situation relatively well. First, we have been using our economic boom times to aggressively pay down national debt. Our government, if need be, has the resources available to massively invest in make-work and infrastructure projects. The timing couldn't be any more fortunate, as much of our infrastructure is at least 40 years old and is sorely in need of renewal. Also, personal debt in Canada is lower than in the US. This means that if the financial situation gets tough in Canada, people will have a few more options in front of them.

That said, we are just at the start of a very ugly chain reaction. Banks and manufacturers going out of business and laying off employees, contributing to less consumer spending, which means businesses make less, lay off employees, who in turn spend less and force further layoffs, etc. Until citizens, corporations and governments can get this situation under control, it's only going to continue.

Living the Dream

2008-06-14T22:25:00.002-04:00

One of my friends is in a band. It's a pretty good band. He's in it with another guy I know, and two other guys who I don't know. I used to jam with them a bit on weekends, and he told me that he wanted to see if he could actually make this work. And kudos to him, he's going and doing it.

His band, the Insurgentlemen, put out their debut CD, Cement, a few months ago. And even though I've listened to the CD, and it sounds good, and they've played a few shows, it was still pretty surreal seeing their CD on Amazon and iTunes.

Can't say that I'm not a tad envious, but I know that these guys aren't just partying it up, they're working very hard at their craft and I'm happy that they're catching a few breaks and building up a following.

If you make it big boys, make sure to think of me while you're having mad groupie love.

I'm sure this is a great metaphor for something...

2008-05-14T16:23:00.002-04:00

Two people are walking towards a bus stop. They both are in a hurry to get home because they're running a few minutes late and they promised their significant other/child/parent a nice evening outing. The bus whips by them before they get to the bus stop, and picks up a few people at the stop, then takes off quickly because it's behind schedule, leaving our subjects a few steps behind.

Person #1 waves his arms incredulously, as if it's impossible the bus driver couldn't obviously see that he wanted to get on the bus. He rages internally about how he'll be late, his evening will be ruined, how people will be upset with him, how life isn't fair, how this always happens to him, and why can't he ever get lucky. He gives the bus the finger and sullenly puts his head down and pouts at the bus stop.

Person #2 puts his head down and starts running after the bus. He figures he might as well give it a shot, he's late anyway and he's got nothing to lose. Besides, he wasn't at the bus stop yet, and the bus was, according to his watch, a little behind schedule anyway. And this'll be a good way to work off the extra donut he ate over lunchtime.

The next bus stop is just past some stop lights a bit further ahead. Person #2 looks up and notices the light has gone red and the bus is stopped behind it. If he can only get to the stop lights before they turn green, he'll be able to get to the bus stop on the other side and hop on. Person #1 mumbles to himself about the lack of courtesy of city bus drivers and kicks at the dirt.

The light turns green, and Person #2 never has to break stride and runs clear across the intersection to the bus stop, hopping on the bus. Person #1 finally looks up, sees what's happening, and starts sprinting like a madman towards the bus. But the light at the intersection goes red, and he has to stop, looking up and seeing the bus heading off into the distance. There will be no catching it now. Person #1 screams obscenities, and since he exerted himself and didn't get any further (well, maybe a half-block), he's even angrier than before.

Person #1 gets home 20 minutes late and in a bad mood. He already considers that his nice evening is ruined. He barks at his family, is rude to the waiter at the restaurant, doesn't talk to his date, and goes to bed regretful about how he intended on having a nice evening, but the stupid bus driver ruined it all.

Person #2 gets home on time and energized because his gamble to run after the bus paid off. He tells the story of his trip home to his family, who are flattered by the fact that he went to such an effort to make sure the evening took place as planned. Everyone enjoys their dinner, and go home, deciding that they don't want their evening to end just yet, and stop by the movie store to pick up a rental and some popcorn. Laughter is shared by all, and all go to bed happy.

What have we learned?

Midnight insomniac posting marathon

2008-04-26T00:01:00.003-04:00

Got a lot of crap floating around in my brain tonight, apparently. Feeling your eyelids closing and your brain moving a million miles an hour at the same time is never a good feeling.

I wanted to think of a clever anecdote to write tonight, but none seem to be coming to me. I just reread some of my archive and saw just how frankly I laid my life out over the Internet. Pretty crazy.

The other night, I was thinking of blog ideas and realized that I was starting to have a bit of trouble remembering my university days clearly. Then I realized that all that stuff - the craziest of it, anyway - happened over 10 years ago. Fuck. Even my commune days are getting tougher to remember.

YoungExec2B...no more?

2008-04-25T23:57:00.002-04:00

Oh sure, I'll keep posting under this handle. Though I was thinking of renaming myself the Sheepleherder. How cool would that be?

It's more my lot in life. In a matter of months, I may have to drop the "2B" off my name to remain honest. It seems like I have an inside track on a couple of executive jobs, so odds are I'll come away with at least one offer. I've scored well on the exams (in the "these scores are practically unheard of" range), which is very important, because it was necessary to counter my lack of actual working experience.

The one job would be the coolest. 15 minute drive from home means I get to both pick up and drop off B at daycare, and my wife can work whatever schedule she likes. Much better home life that way. W00t.

Someone else's problem...is still a problem

2008-04-25T22:26:00.002-04:00

Quick word on the rice shortage, which somehow has become my new interest as far as planetary doom is concerned, ahead of the housing bust, devaluation of the US dollar and impending stock market implosion.

I wish I could find this quote I read yesterday, but some important guy said that we have been dipping into our rice reserves for 8 of the last 9 years, that is, that we've been overconsuming rice for at least 80 percent of the last decade. And people somewhere knew this? And no one made a fuss about it until now???

The more I look objectively at what goes on around me, the more I notice that somewhere in the last few generations, humanity lost the ability to think and plan collectively. I don't know that we were ever really able to before then, but it sure seemed that way. Now, everyone is looking to get rich quick, drive a nice car, have a huge house in the burbs, and nuts to the other guy. Sure, I think that way too, but at least I draw the line somewhere before "nuts to the other guy". Rice? Wheat? Corn? It's ok, it'll magically come up from somewhere, even though more land is being used to support our housing addiction, fewer people are farming, the world's population is growing, our climate is (for whatever reason) changing, and more people are eating meat, which takes a lot of rice, wheat and corn to raise. But it'll magically be ok. Of course it will.

I'm not asking for pity or looking for handouts. I've taken care of myself and my family, so food can stand to get more expensive and I'll be fine. But I find the idea of food riots and people eating dirt to survive pretty unsettling in this day and age, and nobody (me included) seems to have any idea how bad it's going to get.

Don't Believe Everything You Hear...

2008-03-17T11:22:00.002-04:00

So, inflation is stable in Canada, or at least, so reports the media.

But why, then, am I now $3 for a loaf of bread, or $1.15 a litre for gas? And I haven't really noticed anything else get particularly cheaper except for the price of cars, and I don't buy a car every week.

Again, I'm not telling you what to think, I'm just telling you to THINK. Take a look at what is happening. Bear Stearns claimed all is well last week, and is now being picked up off the scrap heap. Hard decisions around the world will have to be made regarding climate change, the financial crisis, demographic shifts, and the transfer of power from the US to several smaller powers, which we believe will include China and India, but really, next to nothing is known at this point, because we're entering uncharted territory. I certainly don't expect people in power to be up front with us, because these decisions will be hard and will not guarantee success. Nobody wants egg on their face, so the name of the game will be denial and misdirection until hopefully, something positive happens that can be reported.

Read the papers, watch the news, read the blogs. But then, after you've done that, look at the facts and make up your own mind.

"She Had A Hard Life..."

2007-11-15T22:05:00.000-05:00

So...been a while. Brandon's getting older and is turning my previously scheduled life into a train wreck, and what with a new job and such, blogging unfortunately takes low priority. Shame.

However, I saw two unrelated newspaper articles that deserved comment.

1) Lady in Sudbury kidnaps a baby. Relative asks for forgiveness, saying "she had a hard life...".

2) Newspaper columnist has grade school bully attempt to befriend her on Facebook. Not only refuses friendship, but sees fit to send an insulting message back to said bully, followed by further insults and all of a sudden, I look around, and everyone's back in grade school again.

These two articles, to me, epitomize the worst of our victim society. Look, EVERYONE has had a hard life. Sure, what I consider "hard" and what others consider "hard" are in the eyes of the beholder, I don't think you'll find a huge percentage of people who say their lives have been roses the whole time. The easiest way to get attention, is to get people to feel sorry for you. Case in point: what's the first thing you do when you hear someone's sob story? The first instinct, usually, is to try to tell a bigger sob story. I do it, even though I don't intend to. If you don't have that instinct, kudos to you.

"Having a hard life" is not an excuse to kidnap babies, set fire to things, exact revenge on your tormentors, etc. "Having a hard life" should give the motivation required to escape the socioeconomic barriers imposed upon you at birth. Everyone has it in them to rise above their personal situation and grow. Some situations are more difficult than others, but with hard work and dedication, all your dreams might not come true, but you'll certainly end up in a better place than where you started. And isn't that all that anyone really has the right to ask for?

On the subject of bullies: yeah, I was bullied as a kid. Not as badly as kids get it nowadays, but I got roughed up a bit. And I got made fun of because I was gawky and smart. Hell, even some of my teachers joined the fun at my expense. But if any of those people were to try to get into contact with me today, would I begrudge them? Absolutely not. I believe that it's the cumulative amount of our life experiences that make us who we are, and as I've said before, since I really like who I am now and where I'm at, I therefore have to be grateful for everything that's happened to me to get me to this point, for better or for worse.

Being an adult and still harbouring grudges against people who wronged you during school, which amounts to a lifetime ago, is just sad. It's a waste of precious energy and no good can come of it. You end up just reliving all of that pain over and over again, with no way to resolve it or change the past. The idea isn't to take all those negative feelings and bury them, because that isn't any better. The idea is to accept your past and acknowledge that it can't be changed. Then, even if you never see your bullies again, you have to forgive them. Not in person, but within your heart. You have to forgive, and thank them for giving you a challenge in your life to overcome, which made you a stronger person. That way, your negative experiences get reframed into a positive. It's easier said than done, but if you manage, it can set you free.

One step closer...

2007-07-15T20:33:00.000-04:00

...to fulfilling my handle. I have been offered an assignment at a regional manager level starting in September, which is one level up from where I'm at now, and one level below executive director. It's a huge vote of confidence, as I've been asked before people with far more experience. Then again, those people didn't get superior performance appraisals two years running.

In addition, I've been identified as having executive potential, and I get to compete for admission into an exclusive executive training program in the fall. If I get into the program, it's usually a fast-track for VP level jobs and above. All I have to do now is not blow it.

My wife has earned a promotion as well, so it will be good to get some extra $$$ rolling in. Being of the school of thought that it's easier to rip a band-aid off all in one go, I've decided to do the following work in addition to our foundation repair (which, it turns out, insurance *may* be able to cover).

- Re-grade front lawn
- Repair minor crack in brickwork
- Install underground sprinkler system
- Redo interlocking brick at front entrance
- Fix minor crack/leak in front window
- Re-sod front lawn

I've already ripped up most of the sod and the existing interlock (thank God I've been working out) and my hands are about to go on strike. On the plus side, I'm down to a svelte 177 lbs, only 7 more pounds to go to reach my goal. This week, I have to go through the insurance papers with my lawyer to see if my home warranty will cover the foundation repair, and maybe the window and brickwork. I'll also have a parade of contractors in to finish all the work. I figure I probably saved myself about $500-700 with the work I did myself this week, and I had fun doing it, so it's all good.

I've had to stop the mortgage double payments for the last few weeks, because of these repairs and since my wife has had pay problems since she got off of maternity leave - she hasn't received a cheque in two months. Fortunately, we were prepared for potential problems, so as long as she starts getting paid before the end of August, we should be fine. We're back to living like college students (even moreso), but I don't mind because I know that when she gets paid, we'll be sitting on a pile of cash. Things are definitely looking better than they were a few weeks ago.

On the Run

2007-06-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

I wrote decently early in this blog about the installation of my home gym and getting back in shape.

Well, after a few false starts, things are going ok. I've lost about 6 lbs, but more importantly, I've lost 4% body fat. It's still not where I want to be, but it's getting better. I bench pressed 210 lbs for the first time tonight (at 180 body weight). It's on the Bowflex, so it's not really like lifting barbells, but I'll take it. I'll be happier once I actually get to tighten a belt loop, and I'm almost there.

Getting into better shape, I've been able to start doing what I like doing again - running. When I got out of shape, I was too heavy to run on my bad knees, and my knees had worsened. I have two torn tendons in my right knee and some cartilage damage in my left, so running was basically an instant recipe for tendinitis for a while. Thanks to my elliptical trainer and some intense stepping routines, I'm happy to say this is no longer the case.

I've traced out a 5 km course through my neighbourhood and the next subdivision over. I currently run it in about 28 minutes, which I am pretty disappointed with. I was never a competitive runner, but I probably should have been. When I was younger, I used to run a 3 km course I had traced out for myself in 8 minutes and 20 seconds. The Canadian 3000 m record is about 7 minutes and 53 or so, and I was running up and down hills as opposed to a flat track. So if I could have saved a few seconds on the flat track, I would have been spitting distance to record time. The record for 5000 m is 13 minutes and change, so yeah, I'm pretty pissed about my 28 min.

Since I always need to set goals for myself to keep myself motivated, my goal for this 5K run is 18 minutes. That allows me one minute longer per km than the Canadian record. Since I will likely be about 32 by the time I reach that level (I'm giving myself 18 months to do it), I don't know that I'll really be able to go faster. But I hope I get the opportunity to find out.

House rant

2007-05-31T18:55:00.000-04:00

So, I'm outside, doing some gardening and some clean-up of my thoroughly shabby lawn. As I'm tending to the flowerbed at the front of the lawn, I notice something. A bit of mortar missing from between some bricks. Oh look, there's a crack under the missing mortar. And look, that crack spreads down through the brick underneath it. Then through more mortar. Then another brick. Then it turns sharply to the right. Then into the foundation. Then underground...FUCK.

So I call in a foundation guy to assess the house. On my five-year old house that I've owned for two years, I have four cracks in the foundation. Those of you with houses know that having a crack in the foundation is no laughing matter, much less four. The good news, if there is any, is that three of the four cracks are considered low-grade, that is, that the possibility of enough water seeping into the house to cause damage is minimal. That leaves one crack where enough water could get in, causing water damage and mold infestation. You can imagine how I feel about a mold infestation in the house my soon to be 1 year old lives in.

I have these horrible images of my beautiful basement, which aside from the open concept kitchen, was my major contributing factor to buying this house, being gutted on a mold and water hunt.

The precise reason that I bought a newer house was to try to avoid the whole roofing/foundation problems as long as possible. The bill to fix the cracks will come out to about $3K, and I was told that there's a possibility I could recover some of the costs in court or through insurance, but it's not about the money. We have enough in our contingency fund to cover most of it, and I'll just have to reroute a couple of my extra mortgage payments to cover the rest. But that doesn't include the brick repair, or the air quality testing in the basement.

More important than the money is that I know that I'm going to be paranoid for the next few years about every creak that my house makes, every rainfall and every freeze/thaw cycle, and be on the lookout for more cracks, more possibilities of my home being ruined and my investment going down the drain. I'm guessing that it will take me a long time to get over that.

Baby's First Steps

2007-05-12T10:07:00.000-04:00

Baby's first unassisted steps came this morning, around 8:00. At 10 months and 2.5 weeks. He's got about 3 real words down, and about a half dozen baby words, where he makes a noise to mean something in particular. Every day there's something new...but I'd by lying if I said that I expected him to learn all of this so fast.

I guess addiction is in this year.

2007-05-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

Drugs, booze, tobacco, sex, porn, food, shopping, work, email, everyone has an addiction. Whether people look up to you or down on you for it, depends on what it is. It's funny, how easy it is to become a creature of habit and to depend on ingesting, doing or seeing certain things on a frequent basis. There must be a biological reason for it, but I think there's also a sociological reason for it.

In today's (North American) society, we're having more and more things planned for us, and we're constantly having the consequences to our actions thrown back in our faces. Start saving for retirement. Raise your kids properly or they'll be axe-murderers. Find a good job. Do your homework. Diversify your portfolio. Eat your veggies. The focus is not on the here and now. The focus is that we're spending too much time in the here and now, and not worrying about the future. Which, based on what I see around me, is basically true.

But there's something almost carnal about addiction. Addiction is the opposite of planning ahead. Addiction is give me what makes me happy, right here, right now, consequences on myself or others be damned. Whether it's snorting coke, cutting yourself, or bench pressing 300 lbs, the goal is to get yourself into that position as much as possible, for as long as possible, and reproducing that high from getting what you want, when you want it.

Sure, people check into rehab after a while, but that's only when they want to reprogram themselves, or if they're forced into it by law. As long as the high is still enjoyable, there's no need for rehab. It's only when your brain forces you to consider the consequences, the destroyed relationships, the empty bank account, the ill-health, that the long-term outweighs the short-term and the body and mind seek to rebalance themselves.

I have to admit, there are days when holing up in the Chateau Marmont and indulging my every whim sends like a fabulous alternative to everyday life. And I'm probably the most long-term oriented person I know. The only way out that I know of is to find healthy addictions. Working out, spending time with family and friends and eating healthy can become every bit as addictive as all those nasty vices, but in a positive way. It's all about finding routines that are productive, and not destructive.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

2007-05-09T20:37:00.000-04:00

So, I'm on a REALLY short list for a not-unsubstantial promotion. Specifically, it's between me and one other person. It's a fairly high-profile job, with travel, clout in the industry, etc. And it's about a 10K raise. I should find out whether I've been selected in the next few weeks.

If I do get offered the job, I'm a lock to accept, right? I'd like to say yes, but it's not that easy.

Through my contact network, I've found out that people in the job I've applied for have a burnout rate of approximately 80%. Not good. Too high to be a fluke. This job is tough. It's a high-risk, high-reward proposition. If I survive, the contacts I'll make will benefit me for the rest of my career, and I'll certainly be able to parlay this experience into a high-flying executive career. If I don't, I'm one more ego on the scrap heap, another promising manager this job has chewed up and spit out. And that's just me, there's my family to think of too. Will I end up being more of a liability around the house if this job saps my life force even more than my current one does?

There's also the fact that as much as I bitch about my work, no one can deny that I've done something of value there. My unit had its best year on record, with gains that are directly attributable to my procedural changes and motivational techniques. All of that, and I didn't manage to get everyone on board with what I was doing. Every day, the results improve, and I get more buy-in. Another year in this job and I might cause enough good to impact the entire organization. Or screw-ups elsewhere could make whatever I do a moot point as we're all shown the door.

Nobody ever said it would be easy, but I've never been presented with dueling possibilities that both have the potential of being win-win or lose-lose...

Introspection

2007-04-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

"When I revisit the past, it's a blast...I've just got to move on..."

John Frusciante, "A Firm Kick"

Doesn't matter what kind of life you've led, no matter which culture, religion, race, sexual orientation or geographic area you're part of, everyone brings with them a lifetime's worth of baggage. Things that have happened in your past that make you the person you are. The difference lies in the amount of baggage that people decide to carry with them. Think of life like taking a long and fulfilling trip. Don't bring enough baggage with you, and you're bound to have forgotten something that you will unequivocably need. Try to bring too much baggage, and you'll never be allowed on the plane...that is, if you can even get out of your house.

The worst thing about baggage, and I've been guilty of this in the past, is when you meet someone and you share your baggage, hoping that that person will help you carry it. But they already have their own baggage, and were hoping that you could help with theirs. And you end up fighting over a pile of baggage, when you really should be enjoying your trip.

I can't tell you how many people I've met over the years who still live as though they're in high school. Frankly, I don't understand how people can pigeonhole themselves like that. Years of evolution should have taken place since then, but people still slip into their high-school archetypes - the slacker, the jock, the nerd, the smelly kid.

It's true that when you're in high school, where you fit in the hierarchy takes on a disproportionately important place in your thoughts, because you don't know anything else. High school drove me nuts, because the friends I had in 9th grade ditched me and I was the worst sort of loser you could be...eating lunch by myself on the steps in the summer, or in the bathroom in the wintertime. For a while, nothing helped. I was branded the smart kid. Didn't matter that I was a decent basketball player, a hell of a volleyball player, and could run circles around most people on the soccer field. I would never be a jock. That's just how it would be. Such is life when you're 6 feet tall and 128 lbs.

It really gnawed away at me, until perspective set in in my last year of high school. So what if I was rejected, I'm making a big deal over a 5-year period of my life. Over a lifetime, there are so many opportunities to start over. To learn and move on. To evolve. Yet most never do.

How many athletes from small towns get scholarships to go to larger schools in the city, get freaked out because they aren't the big fish in the small pond anymore, then move back home, get a job at the local processing/power/sanitation plant, eke out an existence and spend all their time drinking and reminiscing about the old times?

How many people were the butt of jokes in high school, and because of it, developed ticks and psychoses that haunt them long into adulthood? These people are mired in a self-fulfilling prophecy, wallowing in self-pity and anytime they have a chance to meet someone new, they latch onto them like a drowning man onto a life preserver. I've been that drowning man, and it's a horrible, helpless feeling. But I've also been that life preserver, and honestly, that probably feels worse. Even though you know you're responsible for keeping that person afloat, you yourself are getting crushed by the insane amounts of baggage. So you pull a Kate Winslet and kick Leo the fuck off the floating suitcase. Well, sort of like that, but a lot less fun than it sounds.

So what to do? Every once in a while, you have to open up that baggage and look inside. And some of it is ugly, like old bellbottoms. And some of it doesn't fit anymore. And you have to take stock of it, keep what you need, and leave the rest behind. Got made fun of and beat up in high school? You aren't alone. Most people in high school are jerks. But either those jerks reform, get picked on by bigger jerks, or stay jerks in their little world while you move on. They don't matter anymore. And hey, be honest with yourself, you probably got made fun of for a reason. I was tall and gangly, wore glasses, had bad hair and acne, seemingly incurable dandruff, bad breath and I wore outdated clothes. If I was in someone else's shoes, I'd have made fun of me too. But I filled out, got nicer glasses (or I wear contacts on occasion), my skin cleared up, I've gone through so much Head & Shoulders that I should own stock in Johnson & Johnson, and I updated my wardrobe. How about my bad breath? Turns out it was caused by stress and when I took care of all those other things and people stopped making fun of me, that went away too.

I choose not to let my past limit my future. I don't deny those experiences, but they have to be used to grow and develop, not as an excuse to inhibit growth and development.

The Most Anticlimactic Keg Party Ever (Post-Uni)

2007-03-31T00:55:00.001-04:00

My roommates and I were feeling pretty good about ourselves. I had just been interviewed by the organization that I am currently with and told that my prospects were excellent, and they were on the verge of completing their college programs, and already had some decent jobs secured. So we knew that we'd have to start acting grown up. Eventually.

But first, it was decided, that we would have THE KEG PARTY TO END ALL KEG PARTIES. The ultimate blow-off to our adolescence. After all, we were all in our mid-twenties, it was time to take that step forward. We invited all of our childhood friends, people we went to school with, acquaintances from around town, anyone who we thought would be interested.

Anyone who has planned a keg party knows that logistics are very important. Where the kegs are placed, how many of them you have to buy, how much to charge each person, etc. Serve too little food and everyone gets too drunk too fast and the party sucks. Serve too much, and everyone gets full and no one drinks the beer. The type of beer is also important. And there are few things worse that sitting around on a Sunday afternoon trying desperately to get your money's worth by sitting around that last three-quarters full keg and passing the nozzle around between four bloated, desparate drinkers.

So, logistics experts that we were, we decided on three 20L kegs (which are a bit smaller than the large round ones) with three different kinds of beer. The keg party was to take place on a Saturday, allowing us to pick up the kegs on Friday night, leave them on the balcony packed in snow, and they'd certainly be ice-cold by the time Saturday evening rolled around. One of the guys volunteered to pay for the kegs by credit card, and he would be the one collecting money on Saturday, and just pocket the cash.

We had everything planned out. The brewery across town carried the kegs, and closed at 6. My buddies were usually home from school at around 3:30, and I got home from work at around 4:15. That gave us an hour and 45 minutes to make a trip that usually took about 40. And we had never actually ever been to this brewery, and the directions were a tad odd. And because I'm volunteering all of this precise information, I'm sure you can guess that something went horribly awry.

At around 3:30, I was starting to pack up my shit at work - I usually worked until 4:00, but I had forfeited a break to get to leave a bit early and make sure that I wasn't holding anything up. I looked outside and I saw some snow starting to fall. At 3:35, it was a total whiteout. A freak snowstorm was coming through.

Now, driving in snowstorms never bothered us. We grew up in the country, and we had seen more snow and slush and ice than Toronto ever would. The problem was that no one else in the city knew how to drive in the snow. Most people never bothered to put winter tires on their cars. Even half an inch on the roads meant hundreds of fender-benders around the city. And I had watched half an inch fall in five minutes.

I got home at 4:00, and I was the first to arrive. Already, a bad sign. The guys came in about 20 minutes later, as a drive back from college that should have taken 8 minutes took 35. The snow was already up over our shoetops. But we decided to press on, even after we checked the news and heard that the worst was yet to come.

Onto the expressway, and we were just praying that we wouldn't see a tractor-trailer on its side in front of us. After a few minutes, the wind picked up and we didn't have to worry about that, because we couldn't see anything at all. We were crawling along, the only thing visible were the outlines of brake lights in front of us. We heard tires spin, brakes screeching, and every time, we prayed that we weren't driving straight into a multi-car pile up. Then, everything stopped.

In the best of times, Toronto's expressways are pretty slow going. They are, after all, the most used sections of road in North America. That's right, North America. Busier than New York City, busier than LA. Look it up. Add a freak end-of-season snowstorm to the mix, and you've got total gridlock.

We sat idling in the car, still nowhere close to our destination point, which we weren't even confident we'd be able to find in good weather conditions, and our window of opportunity was steadily closing. We were stuck on the expressway for over an hour, and we knew that we couldn't continue like this. It was 5:30, and we still hadn't done half the trip. Defeat started to set in.

"I don't think we're going to make it, we might as well find a place to stop and wait out the storm."

"Yeah, it would be kind of lame to die searching for beer kegs. Imagine our tombstones?"

But I never lost hope that we would find a way. If for no other reason, that if we managed to pick up the kegs, it would make for one of the greatest shared experiences that we've ever had, and we've had quite a few.

"Fuck that guys, we're not giving up."

"We'll, what do you suggest? We've got 25 minutes left before the brewery closes, and I guarantee they're not going to wait for us in this weather."

"First thing's first, we have to get off the expressway."

"WHAT? ARE YOU CRAZY? We don't even know this part of town at all, and even following the proper route, we don't know whether we can find this place."

"Hey, all I know is that we're never going to make it while snails are passing us at the side of the road. We know that we have to go west, and all of Toronto's roads split off of Yonge St. into East and West. So we just have to find a road that goes west, and make sure that the numbers keep going up, that way we know we're headed west."

"Then what?"

"Then we stop at a gas station and ask for directions."

An audible gasp was heard in the car at the thought of asking for directions. I didn't like the idea myself. We were all guys, after all.

"And you think that some gas jockey is going to know how to find this brewery?"

"How couldn't he? He's a gas jockey. He probably knows every place to purchase alcohol, and whatever else you want, within 20 square kilometers."

"Can't argue with that logic."

So we took the next exit off the expressway.

5:40 pm. The wind died down somewhat, so we could see a bit further in front of us. Unfortunately, solidly a foot of snow had fallen since we left home, and nothing was plowed. We weren't even sure what side of the road we were driving on, or whether we were on a road at all. The traffic had subsided a bit as people were starting to get home, but there were still a lot of people stuck in their cars.

5:44 pm. I start to get shit on for my decision to veer off the expressway, as it seems that all hope is lost. Toronto has a gas station on every street corner, but we've gone 7 blocks without hitting one. Goddammit. We try to read the street signs to find out where we are, and they're all caked with snow and illegible. Goddammit.

5:47 pm. We find a gas station and my buddy whips in and gets the directions. The guy starts giving him street names. "Fuck that, we can't read shit out there. We need landmarks and stuff to go by". True to form, the gas jockey draws him a detailed map with little pictures and such. We invite him to the party.

5:51 pm. According to the map, we're about 5 blocks away. But then, the guy tells us to turn right on a one-way street...that goes left. Goddammit. We double back and get all turned in circles. The driver pulls over to the side of the road, defeated.

"Fuck! We were so close!"

Just then, the sky cleared just enough that we could see, three stop lights away, the brewery. With 9 minutes to go. Of course, we hit every red light, and pulled into the parking lot at 5:58 pm. Doing about 90.

5:58 pm. The lights are starting to go out at the brewery, and we see the guy fiddling with his keys to lock the door. We knew there was no hope...unless...

The driver hammers the gas and heads straight for the door. He pulls the emergency brake and goes into a fishtail, bringing the passenger side door in line with the entrance to the brewery. Shotgun flings open the door, undoes his seatbelt and leaps out, on a dead run before he hits the ground. He stops running about 15 meters before he gets to the door, and slides the rest of the way, slamming his face into the door at 5:59.

"DON'T LOCK UP! WE'RE HERE FOR THE KEGS!!!!!!!"

After completing the 360 fishtail and stopping, the other three of us slammed into the door right behind him. The store clerk looked at us and kept going to lock the door.

"YOU CAN'T LOCK THAT DOOR! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE WENT THROUGH TO GET HERE! WE CALLED AHEAD FOR THE KEGS!"

"The three kegs?"

"YES!!!"

"Oh well, alright then."

So he let us in. We got the kegs, the pumps, and everything.

"So, how are you guys going to pay for this?"

"Visa."

"Ok. No, wait. We've already shut down the visa and Interac thing. I hope you guys have cash on you."

The four of us look at each other in panic. Fortunately, I had already gotten to the point where I had shunned debit cards and paid for everything in cash, so I had about $180 on me. Problem was, the other guys had to find about another $100 between them. We were down to toonies and loonies, but we just managed. I think that the four of us combined had $4 to spare.

And we walked out, kegs in hand, savouring the sweetness of victory. It was all we could do to not start drinking them that night, for all that we went through.

Now the party.

You know what? The party wasn't even all that great. I can't even remember a thing about it.

The Rise and Fall of Carlos (Uni)

2007-03-29T19:04:00.000-04:00

"And in my mind I'm every one of you..."

The Smashing Pumpkins, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans

*If this post doesn't convince you I could benefit from some professional help, nothing will. :)

On several message boards, Don Carlos is my screen name now, but when I was younger, there was a time where he was his own person, and referred to as such by myself and others. He was the Superman to my Clark Kent, the Hulk to my Bruce Banner, the Spider-man to my Peter Parker, the ROJ Luke Skywalker to my ANH Luke Skywalker...

I never thought I'd owe so much of my social development to my first-year Spanish professor. In first-year Spanish, we were all assigned Spanish equivalents to our given names. Since my name is Chris, it should have been Cristobal. However, since there was another Chris in the class, I was given Carlos.

Towards the end of semester, there was a snowstorm and my Spanish exam was rescheduled. So my prof called me at the residence, but my roommate answered the phone. Not remembering my given name, she asked if "Carlos" was there, to which he answered "Carlos? There's no Carlos here..." and I said "no wait, that's for me, I'm Carlos". With all my floormates partying in my room at the time, the nickname instantly stuck.

So the joke became that Carlos was my suave Spanish alter-ego, like a womanizing superhero type of deal. And somehow, over the next few weeks and months, that prophecy began to manifest itself. See, being raised in a strict household with a sick mother meant I had to repress a lot of stuff. A LOT of stuff. I always had to be responsible, couldn't ever slip up, couldn't rock the boat. Girls, cars, sports, being popular, even though I wanted all those things, I had a black cloud hanging over me that I couldn't escape. And even in university, I had so conditioned myself that even though I was doing my darnedest to break out of my shell and really let loose, a lot of things I wanted to do were so far out of character for me that I just couldn't clear that mental hurdle. That is, Chris couldn't, but Carlos could. So I started to create a new personality for myself.

Carlos didn't have a past, and nobody knew him and nobody had any expectations, so I could pretty much build him from the ground up. Carlos lived in a world of no consequences, did what he wanted and everything was based on the next party, the next date, the next drink. As university should be. And the more I slipped into the alter-ego, the realer he became, the more a life of his own he assumed. Chris never wanted to upset people, tried to make people happy, kept to himself, internalized things, pined away at crushes he'd never bring himself to talk to. Carlos, having none of the baggage that Chris had, looked at himself in the mirror and saw a guy who was over 6 feet tall, slim, with piercing blue eyes, who was also funny, was a pretty good athlete and had a good head on his shoulders. And from that self-assessment, grew a confidence that bordered on cockiness, and he became brash, aggressive, and obnoxious. And everyone loved him.

Sure, people liked polite, reserved Chris, but Carlos, he was the life of the party. Chris was the "friend", Carlos was the guy who went home with the girl on his arm. In essence, Carlos was the guy who picked on Chris in high school. In my own mind, Chris had become boring, tired and weak, while Carlos was new and fresh. So that stronger personality began to emerge more and more.

Professional wrestlers will say that their characters are based on their real-life personalities, but they're amplified so they can project their personality throughout an arena, radiate their aura throughout a screaming crowd. The negative is that the adrenaline rush of putting your amplified self out there is addictive, and many wrestlers start to have trouble turning "off" their personality. Much the same way, Carlos became the dominant personality. The problem was that Carlos was a made up thing, a shell. So people would become attached to Carlos, and there was the inevitable letdown when relationships got deeper, after the initial rush, and Carlos gave way to Chris. And all of a sudden, the confidence was gone, the life of the party guy was gone, Cinderella's clock struck midnight and all there was left was the bookworm who always wondered why people didn't respect him, but let everyone walk all over him.

I had a bad experience in my third year, where Carlos had picked up, well, a variety of women. In the same room. At the same time. Well, that wasn't a bad experience, per se. But out of that night grew a relationship that lasted for about 6 months. But the poor girl was bounced around constantly from the-world-is-my-oyster Carlos to needy, insecure Chris. And she wasn't exactly the picture of mental health herself. So ill-fated from the start, she dumped me for another guy, became an alcoholic, and the last time I saw her was a few years ago, where she staggered drunk out of a bathroom with her shirt tucked into her grandma panties, which were pulled over the top of her pants. I sure know how to pick 'em.

But, for as bad a fit as we were, Carlos was some pissed that there was always Chris behind him to ruin everything. Carlos came to the realization that he was incomplete, but he'd rather be incomplete than have someone like Chris to complete him. Carlos was the one who put the brains and brawn to its proper use, Chris never capitalized on what he was given. Besides, Chris was just as made up as he was, a fake personality put on to please his parents that fooled himself into thinking he was a whole person. Chris dropped the ball, it was time for Carlos to take center stage.

Carlos' first decision was not to return home for the summer. I found a job at the university to avoid having to go back to my parents, so I could have a summer completely alone with my newfound confidence, without anything to bring me down. Without Chris as the ego to Carlos' id, I went on a 3-month adrenaline high: I could talk to girls without even giving it a second thought, asked people for their numbers and actually got them, I didn't even care if they were seeing someone else, because Carlos believed there wasn't anyone better than him.

I even picked up a girl who had been saving herself for marriage, but she and her fiance broke up. And well, she couldn't say she was saving herself for marriage anymore after Carlos had his way with her. With Chris pounding away from his shackles and praying that Carlos wouldn't do anything rash, Carlos shut him out and proceeded to end up hurting someone that was unlucky enough to be with the wrong guy at the wrong time. She got clingy (can you blame her?), and Carlos dumped her over the phone. And he still wasn't done.

Carlos had so taken over by the time the next school year rolled around that people who hadn't seen me over the summer noticed the change. The id had totally taken control, and I was basically a walking, talking pheromone. It was to the point where, literally, I could walk onto a dance floor, pick a girl, summon her and start making out. And it was starting to get too easy. And it should have been fun, but it wasn't. Because Chris, that conscientious little bastard, wasn't happy. Somewhere, his voice of reason, however quiet and unassuming, became a little more convincing. But why?

Because over the course of the summer, I had met someone when I wasn't ready. When I wasn't trying to turn up my personality, when I wasn't expecting someone to befriend me. I was in a pretty vulnerable spot, locked out of my room with my guitar in my arms and my luggage strewn about the hallway. And she said hi. And we just talked. And I never thought anything of it, never tried to impress her with Carlos' bluster and nonsense. So I never got the chance to be anything but my real self, my true self, and she thought that self was pretty cool. And the more I learned about her, the more I learned that even though we seemed like complete opposites, she was just like me: an unfortunate upbringing had forced her to fabricate a personality that wasn't quite her own, and she was trying to find herself, just like I was. But one day, she saw what Carlos was, and thought he was a dick and didn't want anything to do with him. And it really made me feel bad. And I knew that I somehow had to find myself, to accept that I was Carlos and Chris, and somehow bring the two halves together. As usual for me, that meant a walkman, some tapes, and a long walk in the woods.

I left campus and kept walking. In a small town, I was lucky enough to have hiking trails, etc. around my house to lose myself in. But in the city, I had to walk for an hour and a half before I found someplace where I could really be alone with my thoughts. I climbed a large rock and laid down under the autumn sun, and felt the cold of the rock below me and the coolness of the breeze that sent shivers up my spine, but at the same time, the warmth of the sun beaming down on me. And I realized that I had spent my whole life making myself into whoever everyone else wanted or needed me to be, instead of being what I wanted to be. Chris had to be who he was to keep his parents happy. Carlos was who I thought everyone else wanted me to be. In my constant need to feel accepted, I had never really accepted myself. And I decided that from that point forward, I accepted everything about me. I accepted that I could be confident and insecure at the same time, funny and serious, moody and level-headed. I accepted that in certain situations, my perceived faults could become my strengths, and vice-versa. I accepted that I'm a complicated person, and that dealing with that would be someone else's problem. All I could do was be honest with myself, and accept that I would never be all of what anyone else wanted me to be, so I might as well be comfortable with the person that I was. At least then, I'd make one person happy.

So after 10 hours in the woods, I emerged a changed man. I accepted and embraced all of myself, Carlos, Chris, the parts of me I'd left behind, the parts of me that had yet to emerge. Because all of it was me.

So since the start of my fourth year of university, I've been blessed with an inner peace that comes with knowing that I've found who I am. And having bounced around from one personality to another helps me as a manager, when sometimes you need to use kid gloves, and sometimes you come down with the iron fist.

So, you ask, whatever happened to that person that I met unexpectedly that summer?

She's Brandon's mom.

RRSPs: What should you do?

2007-01-29T19:28:00.001-05:00

So, here in Canada, as every major news outlet has been sure to mention, it's RRSP season (RRSP are like 401ks), and everyone has to make sure to contribute as much as they can before the deadline. There are the typical stories of how you don't want to find yourself flipping burgers in your golden years, and bleak images of penniless seniors wasting away, alone, in decrepit retirement homes. As a result of these aggressive campaigns, people will head to their banks and financial advisors in droves and shovel money at them in the hopes that they can somehow avoid a pauper's fate. I am here to tell you today that all of this is hogwash. Pure hogwash.

Not that I think that RRSPs are a bad idea. An easy tax shelter, a giver of peace of mind, a way to squirrel away your savings so that you can't easily get at them, RRSPs are a wonderful savings tool, if used properly based on your own financial situation. However, contributing to RRSPs shouldn't be automatic. You have to think about what you want to invest in, what kind of lifestyle you want now and in the future, and how you plan on managing your account, while taking into consideration the other major socioeconomic challenges in your life (buying a house/raising children/taking care of elderly parents). Many of the people I know who opened RRSPs recently didn't even know that they had to invest in something, like you just had to put money in and the rest would take care of itself. Often, these people, when told they actually have to invest in something, get sold mutual funds with questionable returns and high MERs, or other things that may not be in the best interests of the client. So really, who gets rich off registered retirement savings programs?

In addition, everyone plays up the tax shelter advantage. Yes, there is an advantage, in that your contributions and capital gains compound tax free. But what if I want to pay my taxes now? For example, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a struggling university student to make RRSP contributions from the lowest tax bracket, the return just isn't worth it. Then, when the money is withdrawn upon retirement, it's withdrawn in a higher bracket. So, on occasion, paying into and RRSP means that you could end up paying MORE tax over the course of your lifetime. This is the case with me.

As of right now, I fall squarely in the upper-middle income tax bracket. However, I am only 30, and I am safely assuming that over the course of my career, I will in all likelihood progress well into that upper income bracket, the one where you lose about half of your income in tax. In fact, I am assuming that I will progress far enough into that bracket that when I receive my pension of 70% of the average of my five highest income years, I'll still fall into that upper income bracket. So I would contribute to an RRSP now and get 30 cents back on the dollar for the privilege of withdrawing that money in my retirement and paying 50 cents of tax on the dollar at that point. No thanks.

There is also the matter of paying off the mortgage. You won't get many financial advisors telling you to pay off your mortgage quickly instead of contributing to an RRSP. Why? Because paying off your mortgage quickly results in less money being made by the bank, while banks keep a little of every RRSP contribution you make. And guess what? Even if your investments tank, the bank still takes it's cut for managing your account, even though you lost money. I am looking to pay off a $250,000 mortgage in 7 years, instead of the standard 25. In doing so, not only is my head above water faster, but I save over $125,000, in the form of interest I don't have to pay. I don't know of any financial product that can net me that high a return in that amount of time.

I'm not saying that everyone should neglect your RRSP and run your financial advisors out of town. Just that as in all of life's challenges, you have to carefully weigh all of your options and do your research before you decide what's best. Commercials and marketing campaigns don't know who you are and what you think is important. Don't be so quick to take what the media is saying at face value, as you'll come to discover, they have interests too. Some people in my situation could look at the same factors I looked at, and decide that an RRSP is right for them. That's ok. The important part is that they did the legwork. I'm not going to tell them they're wrong if they're aware of the positives and negatives of their decision and stand by it.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty sound piece of advice for more than RRSPs: don't leave it up to someone else to make up your mind.

...And So This is Christmas...

2006-12-24T00:38:00.000-05:00

Not quite, but it's officially Christmas weekend. Christmas is a very odd time for me, as I'm sure it is for most people. I associate so many good and bad memories to this day, that I'm never sure from one year to the next which memories will win out.

The bigger deal here, is that it's Brandon's first Christmas. Not for him, of course, his main goal will be drooling over as many gifts as possible, but for my wife and me, it's very symbolic. This is where we officially start creating our own family traditions, and charting our own course as parents.

As I grew up, Christmas went from being a magical time, to stressful, to a hassle, to downright depressing, culminating with the year where I spent the holiday with my terminally ill mother and her 24-hour nursing care, while my dad was away visiting his family. While I was there, we were literally buried in snow, receiving a solid foot of snow a day for a week. Because our home was an official workplace for the nurses, I had to keep the driveway and walk cleared at all times because of health and safety issues, which meant 12 hours a day of shovelling, and 6 months of back pain after the fact. And when I wasn't outside shovelling, I was cooking, cleaning, and waiting on everyone hand and foot.

Most of the nurses viewed me as little more than a hassle in the house, and I really didn't feel comfortable being there on my own. It was like being a guest in some absurd mausoleum where the enterred are still alive. I totally understand why my dad often felt that he was a stranger in his own home, as the nurses had made it theirs. To top it off, the majority of them were utterly incompetent, and I seemed to have more knowledge of general first aid and patient care than they did.

To top it off, I had pulled the plug on my relationship with my mother many years previous. To me, unfair or not, she and her illness grew to symbolize all of the weakness I saw within myself, weakness that I sought to eradicate at all cost. Too sensitive, too self-absorbed, too weak, too naive, too easily pushed around, too easily defeated. The ultimate blows to the relationship were her hypocrisy in thinking less of me for turning my back on religion, and her leaving my father for the second time (a further display of hypocrisy). Even in the best of times, her holier-than-thou attitude grated on me, and I used to revel in throwing stones through her glass house, but her disease had progressed to the point where she was just a morbid caricature of herself, somehow amplifying her weaknesses while completely burying her strengths. Coupled with our strained relationship at the best of times, it just got to the point where there was nothing left to love, and I couldn't even bring myself to be upset about it.

I still wonder if there was something I could have done differently, something that I could have done to salvage things while still evolving into a reasonable facsimile of the person I am today. There is no doubt that I am completely happy and satisfied with who I am today, but it makes me sad that I had to amputate the emotional connection to my mother to grow in the way that I have. It just doesn't seem natural, and many of my relationships with other family members have grown needlessly complicated as a result.

Christmas always brings me back to this. The nights half-heartedly putting up a tree, the days opening afterthought gifts, the fake and materialistic absurdity of it all. But then...

That Christmas that I spent buried under an avalanche and a heavy heart was also the first Christmas that my future wife spent with me. Even though I warned her what to expect, she still agreed to come with me, and help me out as best she could, all this despite the fact we had only dated a couple of months. And she didn't get scared off. If anything, our relationship grew stronger. And we made a pact that when we got our way, Christmas would be a real celebration again. Not all about presents, but being together with loved ones, and celebrating those relationships. Every year, we've gotten a bit better. More decorations, better suppers, bigger parties, more charitable donations.

I must admit, I'm still lagging behind a bit in the whole Christmas celebrating. I just can't get into it yet. But I'm getting better. Brandon's arrival couldn't have come at a better time, as the firstborn of his generation, he's had a unifying effect on our family, and as he grows up and learns about Santa Claus and all the traditions that come with Christmas, I'll be able to restore some of the magic in my own heart.

So, I guess my message is that Christmas is a time where you're supposed to come together as family and friends, and put to rest all the petty shit that taints your relationships, at least during the holidays. Enjoy a good meal, let the people around you know that you love them, and just relax and have fun. Don't worry that your new tie doesn't match any of your suits, or that you don't know what you'll do with four more sets of candleholders. It isn't about the gifts, anyway.

On the Environment and Climate Change

2006-12-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

Usually, I'm more than happy to leave these issues to the experts. But because a whole lot of people are self-proclaimed experts on everything that has to do with the environment, I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to throw my hat in the ring.

Keep in mind, I don't approach things the way an expert would. I don't know anything about kilotonnes or greenhouse gases or anything like that. But you don't get to be an aspiring executive without being able to anticipate how people will react to the information presented to them.

The environment is a big issue in Canada right now. The public is upset about the perceived lack of commitment and leadership shown on this issue by decision makers and those in power. The Conservative environment minister, Rona Ambrose, is under a lot of scrutiny, and it is rumoured that she could lose her position. Some reports have blamed her, others her department. So it's probably a little of both.

But really, what kind of progress could be expected? This is a huge issue, so huge that it is beyond the realm of comprehension of most human beings. Certainly mine. But I think that two crucial missteps were taken on the environment issue, missteps that, if they were addressed, could help to make the issue a bit more digestible in the future.

1) Environmental issues, more often than not, are expressed in terms of climate change. The problem with this, is that not even everyone in the scientific community can conclude that the climate is changing because of human intervention, and if it was, how large a role our actions have with respect to the environmental changes occurring around us. Furthermore, climate change, to most Canadians, means that our winters get a little milder. Most don't really see that as a problem. So if we're going to make headway on the environment, we have to express the issues in terms that everyone can rally behind. Instead of being all about climate change, why not express our concerns in terms of concrete, undeniable statements? For example:

"The pollutants we release into our atmosphere affect the air that we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we farm, and the animals we raise for consumption. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to take concrete steps to find out which products and which industries do the most harm to our environment, and either help them clean themselves up, or find alternative products that do not produce the same negative effects." I don't think you can find anyone with a theory that can counter that.

For the record, I don't fully believe in climate change. Somehow, I have trouble coming to grips with the fact that in 150 years, humanity could irrevocably alter a series of ecosystems that have grown and evolved seemingly on a whim for hundreds of millions of years. Yes, we spew a bunch of pollutants into the air. So do volcanoes. So do decaying forests. So do dead animals. I'm not saying we're not playing a part. I'm just saying that we could be responsible for 90% of the environmental change in the last 150 years, or 9%, or 0.9%, or 0.00000000009%. That's why we need to take climate change out of the equation, and limit our arguments to the water we drink, the air we breathe, etc. That makes it seem a lot more real and concrete.

Sometimes, the best way to tackle a huge problem is by taking small bites out of it. Work with one industry here, one there. The argument is that we've been screwing up our environment for 150 years. I don't think there's a magic bullet that will repair it in five. Talking about magic bullets, my second point is this:

2) There is heavy support for the Kyoto Protocol, but find a person who can describe how the protocol can be implemented in reality. I don't believe such a person exists. The Kyoto Protocol gives guidelines and suggestions without coming up with answers. In essence, it attempts to bury emissions in red tape.

I do not support the Kyoto Protocol, because it just sounds like so much watered-down, double-talking corporo-political nonsense. Find me a real solution.

Businesses should really be jumping on the bandwagon now. If the issue is such a hot topic in political spheres, people running the corporations should know that any product that has positive effects on the environment or that produces less pollution than its competitor while remaining at a competitive price point will be a hot seller. And yet, there still aren't enough hybrid cars to meet demand, and the technology, after initial rave reviews, hasn't progressed as much as we would have expected. The technology is there to build houses that are energy neutral, that is, they create enough energy (through solar panels, thermic heating, etc.) to return energy to the electrical grid and ease pressure on the dirty coal plants powering our energy-consuming excesses. Why aren't there full subdivisions of these houses on the market yet? If there's a tax credit for modifying one's house to be energy neutral, why isn't this advertised?

The environmental campaign, just like many others, needs intelligent leadership at all levels. Not people standing out on the street and yelling or writing inflammatory editorials based on half-truths, just a bunch of people with the necessary motivation and resources to tackle the problem. We also need to be patient with these people, and understand that the solutions won't come tomorrow, next year, or the year after that. In return for our commitment to patience and aversion to glory-grabbing headlines, we should expect to see slow but steady progress along the way.

Is This What I Have to Look Forward To?

2006-12-18T07:42:00.000-05:00

I've always wondered what it means to get older. Like, when will I realize that I can't climb stairs three at a time, or go on a 2K run anytime the mood strikes me, or stay up until 4:00 am watching movies? My grandfather once told me that you never really feel old. You just sort of wake up one day and find out your body can't do stuff that your brain still takes for granted.

One thing: I am scared to death of colostomies. Back when I was a medical translator, I had to translate a file belonging to a patient who had had a colostomy. A colostomy, in case you don't know, is a re-routing of your internal plumbing. If something goes wrong with your colon or lower intestine, like cancer or chronic inflammation or polyps or whatever, the doctor goes in, snips your intestine, uses his scalpel to give you a new asshole just south of your ribcage on the side of your body, and attaches your intestine to it, giving whatever injured part of your digestive tract the opportunity to heal without all kinds of shit (literally) passing through it. Because medicine isn't advanced enough to give you a sphincter for that secondary asshole, they just stick a plastic ring around the hole (to ward off infection), and you can attach a plastic bag, known as a colostomy bag, to the ring. So your shit just happens to fall into the bag whenever it's ready. Then, once you heal up, you get opened up again and the plumbing is reattached. But now, all your rectal muscles are weak from lack of use, and you get to spend months wearing diapers because you never know when you're going to shit yourself.

This, to me, is a fate worse than death. I've already told my wife, if I ever need to get a colostomy, to drive down to the US, get a 12 gauge shotgun, and shoot me in the face.

So, where does all this lead? Straight to the bathroom on the floor where I work. I eat a pretty balanced diet, drink a lot of water, and take care of myself. So my morning shits aren't much of an ordeal. Just go in, get comfortable, drop a decent to considerable-sized log, couple of wipes, flush, wash hands and walk out. If I've got a touch of the flu, it gets a little more interesting, but still nothing to write home about.

Now, I don't know if I'm the exception to the rule here, but a lot of the older gentlemen I work with treat taking a morning shit like it's a combination between powerlifting, defusing a bomb, and doing atomic physics. I'm sitting there minding my own business, and you hear guys throw the door open to the bathroom and are obviously in a hurry to get into the crunch position, fiddling with their belt, breathing hard, the sense of fear is palpable. Then, a nasty, wet, chunky explosion, followed by moans of relief and pain. Then audible grunting. Then a second explosion, twice as vulgar and wrong as the first. So me and my semi-soft stools are sitting there like wtf? It would be normal if this happened once in a while, everyone goes overboard on the hot wings now and again, but with some of these guys, it's EVERY DAY. Sometimes I just feel like yelling out "Hey! Lay off the curry!", but I find myself quickly clasping my hands over my mouth and nose because of the smells of death and decay emanating from the neighbouring stalls.

Now, I'm the last one to claim that my shit smells like roses. It smells, well, like shit. Vaguely reminiscent of what I ate the day previous, but mostly just your basic shit smell. Bad, but not overly offensive. But man, some of the smells I've smelled in that bathroom border on the absurd. I ask myself, do these fools eat nothing but raw chicken, cumin and dog feces? What's the deal here? Then I start to wonder, is this what I have to expect? Does the digestive system start to fail as it ages? Have 50 years of steak, pizza and hot wings rotted these guys from the inside out?

Needless to say, with that in my mind, I never need any encouragement when it comes to heaping on that second serving of veggies. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, so I'm keeping my colon as clean as a whistle.

Light Grenades

2006-11-26T11:13:00.000-05:00

I just streamed the new Incubus CD, Light Grenades, because I'm oh-so impatient about these things. I always end up regretting not having the feeling of popping a brand new CD into the player and losing myself in the music, but if that's all that technology ends up taking away from me, I'm fine with that.

Anyways, it's really, really good stuff. I identify very closely with Incubus as a band because they're about my age, and seem preoccupied about the same things as I am. I wish that lyrically, the band could occasionally go back to the Make Yourself formula, writing about internal dilemmas and struggling to come to grips with the inanity of the world around them, but I think Light Grenades did address this with a few songs, notably Dig. But one of the things that frustrates me about Incubus is also the reason why I like them the most, that they're never afraid to buck convention and try something else, and do it with conviction. They adapt and they always try to stay one step ahead of what everyone else is doing, and do so like it's second nature. I haven't liked everything they've put out, but at least I can understand where they're coming from. That, and having met them on a couple of occasions, they seem like guys I wouldn't mind partying with.

Why I do What I do -- Or, the Joys of Delayed Gratification

2006-11-26T10:37:00.000-05:00

So, haven't been around much. I've been working for the most part, and having fun with the boy, who is currently sitting on my lap. Already 5 months old, and he's in the 90th percentile in height and weight, to boot, so he looks like he's about 8 months old.

I'm feeling a bit better about a lot of things, because I've adapted to the amount of work I need to do, which is about the work of 4.5 people. And I mean, it's not like I *have* to do everything I'm doing. I could up and quit, I could transfer out, I could just let things go to shit, these are all choices I have, but choices I refuse to take.

But the question is, why put up with the torture?

I'm a strong believer in having a plan. And I'm also a strong believer that good things come to those who wait. So I'm making some sacrifices now which will pave the way for a better future for me and my family.

Like right now, even though my wife and I have a total salary exceeding $125,000, we still live like college students. We hardly go out (we didn't even before the boy was born) and we don't spend extravagantly on ourselves, except for things like appliances or furniture, but you can argue that even then, we're being frugal, because we're spending a bit more for something that will last for 15 years instead of 7.

We each have one credit card, and we pay off our balances every month, unless we discuss going over budget beforehand (like, for instance, when we had our home gym installed).

So, why do this? So that every extra penny we make can go to paying down our mortgage. At the rate that we're paying it off, it will take about 6.5 years to pay off our 25-year mortgage. Since the boy wasn't born when we bought the house, he'll be about 6 when it's paid off.

Think about the freedom that not having a mortgage provides. Going back to school, taking a job at reduced pay, not working summers while the kids are out of school, all these things become not only possible, but easy. I'm currently making $3,200 worth of mortgage payments every month including all the extra payments, which will become a surplus when there are no payments to make. So even if I only worked 10 months of the year (July and August off), we wouldn't be lacking income.

I am bound and determined to correct all of the failures I saw in my parents' parenting. By paying off my mortgage as quickly as possible, not only am I buying financial freedom, I'm also buying time. Time to go on vacations, time where I can refuse to work overtime, time to help with homework and housework. One of the things I hated when I was a kid was that my parents worked so hard, but no matter what they did, because they didn't have a long-term financial plan, they always seemed to come up a day late and a dollar short. Vacations were often cut short and budgeted to the penny, and we'd always be hounded by vacation guilt, knowing that we'd have to scrimp harder upon our return, and that a lot of the time, it just wasn't worth incurring extra expenses. To me, that's not what a vacation is.

It seems ridiculous, but I've already planned the first thing we're going to do to celebrate the mortgage being paid off. We're rounding up the kids and going to Disneyworld for 2 weeks. I've already started planning the trip so that the end seems real, even though it's 6 years away.

Another reason I stay at my job is because of the years I already have in. I started with my organization at 23, so I already have 7 years in. With the way my pension plan works, I can retire at 55, or at a full pension at 58. Again, the joys of delayed gratification. If I started in another organization, I lose my pensionable time and have to build up my retirement savings more aggressively to retire at the same date. Since longevity runs in my family, I figure that I could benefit from nearly 40 years of retirement should I retire as early as I can. Again, short term pain for long term gain.

As I've written earlier, the poor savings rate and massive amounts of speculation taking place in today's economy is setting us up for a rocky road ahead. What better way to insulate against potentially wild fluctuations in interest rates and inflation than to not have any debt? The way I see it, our additional income in a few years will go towards buying assets at the bottom of their economic cycles, and selling at the top. One of the advantages of having more uneducated speculators in the markets these days is that it's much easier to spot the trends and see where the sheep are flocking to. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to get there first, and to make sure you're not the last one at the party.

Anxiety Chokes me Like Razor Wire (redux)

2006-11-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

Wow, and I thought things couldn't get any worse. How wrong was I. I won't be blogging much these days, if for no other reason that I have to save my strength. Some serious shit is going down, enough for me to wonder what my organization is even going to look like in a year, and whether or not I'll be a part of it.

Why do I put up with it, you ask? Because I have to take care of my family. I will put up with any manner of crap I have to to make sure that my family has the things that they need and deserve. Besides, look at this guy. How can you not want to give him everything in the world?

Everything that I want to say...but better.

2006-10-16T20:06:00.000-04:00

I've had a lot of thoughts rushing around lately...the possibility of finding a new job...the fact that even though I've come pretty far pretty fast, I still know there's a long journey ahead...the fact that I have to prove myself twice as much and be twice as good because I'm half the age of my colleagues. I'll leave it all up to special guest blogger, John Mayer:

Waiting on the World to Change

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing
There's no way we ever could
Now we see everything is going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
Its hard to be persistent
When we're standing at a distance
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would've never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on the door
When you trust your television
What you get is what you got
'Cause when they own the information,
They can bend it all they want

So while we're waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It's not that we don't care
We just know that the party's there
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

We're still waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population

So we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
Know we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

***

Vultures

Some of us, We're hardly ever here
The rest of us, we're born to disappear
How do I stop myself from
Being just a number
How will I hold my head
To keep from going under

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
But I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me,testing me

How did they find me here
What do they want from me
All of these vultures hiding
Right outside my door
I hear them whisperin
They're tryin to ride it out
Cause they've never gone this long
Without a kill before

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing me

Wheels up
I got to leave this evening
Can't seem to shake these vultures
Off of my trail
Power is made, by power being taken
So I keep on running
To protect my situation

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me

Decompression time

2006-10-15T20:43:00.000-04:00

"I fear that I'm ordinary, just like everyone"

The Smashing Pumpkins, "Muzzle"

Now, I don't know whether Billy Corgan meant that everyone was afraid to be ordinary, or that he was afraid that he was like everyon else. I'd definitely go for the latter.

One of my best friends called me the other day. His kids are a bit older than Brandon (3 years old and 18 months, with another on the way), and he related what a preschool teacher told him:

"Oh, you don't want to teach your daughter to read or write or do math. If you do that, she'll be so far ahead of the other kids she'll get bored and it'll be difficult for her."

So much for encouraging the best and brightest, huh? I'm a little worried about Brandon starting school and having the same problems, but I'd much rather have him be too far ahead than too far behind. He's only a tick under 4 months old, but people from doctors to daycare workers to other parents have already told us that he's undeniably bright. Hopefully he'll be lucky and find some good friends and not get chewed up by the system.

Am I afraid he'll get bullied for being different, like I was? Not really. More often than not, I'd be the ones sending the bullies home with aches and pains of various degrees. The last bully I had was actually in university (can you believe that?), and he got a couple of trips to the hospital for his efforts.

I'll definitely try to do a better job of being a life coach for him, and for all of my kids, should we have more. I'm a strong believer that kids should be allowed to make their own mistakes and learn from them, but there were times that I really needed some guidance that I wasn't always in a position to get. My parents were/are both bright and intelligent people, but somehow, the way the dna fused, I developed into someone neither of them were really able to relate to. If I had gotten different advice, I surely would have become a different person. The jury's out on whether or not that's a good thing, but it's the sort of thing you think about when you're having a rough time in your chosen job/profession.

My resume is handed in for another job, but it will be several weeks yet before I hear any news. I'm doing my mental prep work to get ready for the prerequisite exams and interviews. I haven't really done a job interview in almost 7 years, and I'm probably pretty rusty. Though I do have a 15-year streak of getting every job I've ever been interviewed for. Hopefully this will be one more.

***

This weekend, I really rediscovered my love for playing the guitar. I'm no virtuoso, I'm self-taught and am pretty sloppy, but there's just something cathartic about belting out a song and not caring what you sound like. I just finished playing a marathon of songs by the Smashing Pumpkins, opening with Rhinoceros, then in order, Drown, Cherub Rock, Today, Soma, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans and Muzzle. I haven't played some of those songs in years, yet somehow, my fingers still remembered where to go, after a false start or two. I refuse to tune my guitar to flats, so I have to stretch a bit with my voice in the higher key, but what the hell, it's not like Billy's voice is outstanding anyway. That's not the point.

I really feel rejuvenated and ready to go back to work on Monday. I just hope the weeks start getting better from here on out.

It's Dog Eat Dog, Baby!

2006-10-07T09:01:00.000-04:00

"Resist, unlearn, defy."

Incubus, "Out From Under"

Sometimes, external forces mold your personality so subtly that you don't even notice the change you've gone through until it's passed.

I started out as a pretty high-flyer in my organization. Went from the bottom rung to a manager's position in record time. Tried innovative ideas that are now company policy. Changed the way we do business with our clients. But, for the past few months, I find that I've been given some redundant tasks, and I've missed out on the plum committee appointments. It's as if my organization has said "thank you for your hard work, but the spotlight is off you now, so just go on about your business".

Not that I ever stopped pressing for these things, as I know that my skills lie more in strategic management and organizational culture than line management, and I know that those skills are in demand. But every time I've requested an opportunity, I've been told "you can't do that, you'll burn yourself out". Or "you've come so far, so fast, I think you need a break now". I will be the one who determines what I can and can't do. Besides, I know myself, and I know that without the energy and learning opportunities that these extra projects provide, I'd likely burn out anyway.

So, a job posting shows up on my desk yesterday. It's a great position, great pay, and no more work than what I'm doing now, either about the same or less. There's also a lot more strategy involved, which is what I want. The only downside is that it's in a sector of the organization that I don't know very well. Let's put it this way, if I worked in the construction industry, I would be in the sector that builds frames, and the other sector would be the one that does the roofing. But, it's nothing that I can't learn.

However, the first thing I think is that "well, I'm sure someone else deserves it more than me, I've come so far so fast that it would be better if I stayed where I was - I'm sure I wouldn't get the job anyway." What the fuck kind of thinking is that? FROM ME? I've never, ever viewed potential jobs like that, then I realized that the months of years of downward pressure and pigeonholing got me second-guessing myself.

As soon as I realized this, I was able to snap out of it. It's a great job, and I deserve it just as much as anyone else does. I'm not expecting it to be handed to me on a silver platter, but I'm going to be ready to compete for it, and there aren't many people who are better in a competitive situation than me, because I don't crack under pressure. I'm applying for this job, and Lord help anyone who is stuck in that exam room with me. It's back to dog eat dog. And I'm the biggest, strongest, fastest, youngest and smartest dog in the neighbourhood. And it's about time that I remembered that.

The Need for Constant Evolution

2006-10-02T19:25:00.000-04:00

So, it was the last day for one of my employees today. She quit and found herself work elsewhere. The gut shot was that she even took a pay cut and a longer commute to be happy. I like to think that I make the work environment as positive as possible, but there's only so much a line manager can really do about working conditions. Thus my need to move up in the organization.

But, strangely, I found myself really envying my employee. And I thought about it, and figured this is why many of us feel compelled to move from job to job. We miss the initial adrenaline rush of having to learn something new and how to adapt to new situations. We miss displaying the added-value we can bring to an organization, before that added-value becomes taken for granted and added to our regular duties. We miss having the hope that we have the power to enact change around us.

I haven't lost hope that I can bring lasting change to my organization, but I know that it won't be worth the price I'll have to pay if I manage. But the fact that my chronically shortstaffed working unit is getting 8 employees this month is reason to believe that finally, people are seeing what's going on and trying to make amends. I'll supposedly get about a dozen more over the next 2 years. Now, if only I can keep others from leaving, I'll be set. And I'll be able to leave myself with a clear conscience.

Thoughtlets

2006-09-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

A whole bunch of stuff that wouldn't make it as an entry on their own:

Looks like my work project is going to go through, at least in part. Don't need to quit after all. I do, fortunately or not, need to double down and refocus to guide my unit through the changes that have now become necessary. That, and another employee quit last week. No one ever said it would be easy.

I figure that after I clean up this mess at work, I'll see if my resume will be good enough to get me into an accelerated development program. New challenges for me, no pay cut, and my department retains my rights. Everybody wins.

Workouts are going well, but I've been a little fatigued lately. More sleep is needed.

I was promised a considerable raise this year, but our pay systems haven't been updated yet. So I'm gonna get some insane retro pay backdated to April 1. I hope they get this done soon, the extra money is going straight to mortgage principal.

It's too bad that I often have to make decisions between what's right and what's fair. It's surprising that many people haven't learned that life isn't fair yet.

I read the other day that there are no bad employees, only bad leaders. I would challenge the writer to spend a week in my shoes.

I need to buy a minivan. But I don't feel comfortable in them and they're ugly as hell, and I refuse to drop top dollar on those new SUV/car/minivan hybrids. Any suggestions?

I'm looking forward to having my friends over for a Hallowe'en party at the end of October. But I'm having trouble finding the time and energy to do any prep work. I feel as though I owe them something special for travelling all this way.

I only seem to have enough time to do one of two things: play the guitar or work out. Since I'm committed to getting and staying in shape, I had to put the guitar down. That makes me sad.

I have training on Wednesday on "Leading Through Change". I know many other people who think this training is beneath them who need it far more than I do.

I've been thinking a lot about family lately. You'll notice that I've been open about a lot of things on this blog, but my family isn't one of them. I'm wondering whether I shouldn't change that. The problem is that it puts me in a place to which I don't want to go and it pulls me into the pattern of victimization that I seek to avoid and that I give other people a hard time for falling into. But it's also something I'll have to confront someday. There are still outstanding issues with a lot of family members, but they've been sort of patched over. I don't know whether it's worth lifting the patch and fixing the foundation, and I don't know whether the foundation can even be fixed. Brandon deserves to grow up in a tight family, but that just isn't how it'll be, probably, and I have to find out whether or not I'm ok with that.

So maybe some therapeutic writing is in order. Or not. We'll see.

A new beginning?

2006-09-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

"I used to be so full of my confidence,
I used to know just what I wanted and just where to go..."

Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Hey"

So, a bunch of things are happening at work. Let's just say that I'm really starting to find out that this isn't where I want to be, for a variety of reasons. But at the same time, if I wanted to leave my job, I'd most likely have to take a pay cut. It is extremely possible that we won't find a spot in day care for the little guy, and my wife may need to take extra unpaid leave, so the possibility of taking a job with less pay, even if it's in a better environment, doesn't strike me at the greatest option at this point. However, my colleagues are dropping like flies, and I don't want to be next, and people are starting to hand in their resignations en masse. On the bright side, I could probably move up pretty quickly because there'd be no one left, but then again, what's the point of being the King if all you end up ruling is a scorched pile of shit?

So, long story short, I have until Wednesday end of day to hand in my resume for a job posting that seems like it could be interesting. It's a step down in the hierarchy, but it would be a good learning experience and set me up for a possibility of taking one step back to move two steps ahead. Besides, even if I end up being offered a job, I don't need to accept it.

I'll likely end up applying, while giving myself the leeway to refuse the job if things improve at the office. The next few weeks will give me a lot of the information I need in order to decide whether I will leave or not.

The first step... (post-Uni)

2006-09-14T20:01:00.000-04:00

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Confucius

Summer 1999.

As I indicated a while back, I was having trouble finding work in the city. While I did well on all the aptitude tests and that sort of thing, my professional credentials didn't do me any good outside of the industry I wanted to break into (which is notorious for being guarded about letting in new people), and I just couldn't manage to convince people to take a chance on me. Finally, a leasing agency accepted to take me on a 6-month term to handle some of their admin work and give them some to speak with their French dealers and customers. And so began my thousand-mile journey. And that single step landed squarely in a pile of dog shit.

The leasing company I worked for had started out as a small, little engine that could type of company. But it had been bought out by a bigger company, which in turn had been bought out by another company. So now, it was sort of lost within the corporate shuffle and treated like the red-headed step child it was (our division did small consumer leases, while other divisions handled huge corporate transactions - I don't even know why we were worth buying).

As my first "office" job, I couldn't wait to put all my smarts and work ethic to good use. But then, I started noticing that people weren't exactly putting everything they had into their jobs. Or even a bare minimum. Here's a quick sample of the type of people I was dealing with:

1) Our manager had been brought over from another division. She was one of those people that couldn't ever find a way to deal with something she hadn't seen before. And yet, in her mind, she was the only person allowed to make a decision. I learned quickly to go behind her back as much as possible. I swear to God, she was one of those managers who had a Big Book of Management, and she was screwed if whatever was going on wasn't in that book. I actually hid the book on her once. That turned into quite a day.

2) Our portfolio officers were a lovely combination of the following:

A divorced single mom who loathed all men and spent her day talking on the phone to Lord knows who about it, then cried about not getting any opportunities in life.

Her best friend, who was too busy being her social worker to do any real work.

A lady who had immigrated from somewhere in Indonesia, and hardly spoke English, even though she had been in the country for over 10 years. Then, during those 10 years, she forgot her native language, so she was running on about 1/3 to 1/2 of a language.

The sales and IT guys had built a fake network stocked with some of the most gonzo porn I've ever heard of. And I'm fairly open-minded about these things.

To top it all of, there was this old guy who was a former member in the South African army, and when he went to talk to you, he got all like 1/2 an inch from your face and stared you down into submission. He also carried a nasty looking knife, and looked like he'd cut you with it. His assistants were two hot Asian sisters, and no one knew what the three of them did.

There were a few solid workers: the admin supervisor, the business analyst, the accountant and his assistant, and we banded together to stay sane.

So I worked there, then got home, opened my velcro-fortified fridge, and slept in my circus tent.
How did I not kill myself again?

The First Day of the Rest of My Life (Uni)

2006-09-10T15:15:00.000-04:00

Finally, the time had come. Time to say goodbye to everything and everyone I knew to strike out on my own. And I couldn't wait. After 3 summers of busting my balls at the grocery store, I had amassed enough cash to pay for my first year of university tuition and residence without needing to work.

I saw university as a way of starting over. A sorely needed one. After all, the only thing I was known for in high school was being the smart, weird kid. I guess it was better than being the loser, but not by much. I just didn't have a lot in common with the farmers and hockey players that frequented my high school. I didn't fit into their regular mould of people, it was like I wasn't allowed to be an athlete, or popular with the girls, because I was considered "too smart". Never mind that I could have whipped any of the so-called "jocks" on the soccer pitch, the volleyball court, or on the track for that matter, and that I secretly suspect that a lot of the girls liked my quirky sense of humour. It was too late for me at that school, and university was the perfect way for me to really display all the aspects of my personality.

I didn't even try to hide from my parents that I couldn't wait to get out of their house, or that I wouldn't miss them while I was gone. I was on cloud nine for the whole week before leaving. I wasn't even nervous, I was calm and relaxed, but focused. The university was 5 hours away from my hometown, close enough that it was easy to go back and work at the store during holidays and exams, but not close enough for my parents to visit on weekends. Perfect.

So my dad and I load up the van and head off to school. We chatted a bit in the car, but it was hard to really find anything to say. I had purposely not done any research on the residence I would be staying at, because I wanted the sensation of being a fish out of water. And wow, was I ever.

My dad and I pulled up to the residence and registered with the director, who told me my room number and floor, and instructions on how to get there. So up we went. And I walked straight into a scene from Animal House. Since my dad was still there, I tried not to smile too broadly.

I hadn't brought very much stuff, figuring that I would buy what I needed when I got there. So two suitcases, a stereo, my PC and two boxes of odds and ends were about all I brought.

My RA (residence advisor, or "Don") was in the room across the hall getting smashed with the rest of the guys from the floor. I was apparently the first frosh (freshman) arrival on his floor. I could see them sizing me up, so I decided that the new me was going to take the initiative with these people.

"Hi guys, just give me one minute to bring up the rest of my stuff, and I'll be right in."

"Uh, ok, sure, you don't need any help?"

"No, it's ok, there's just a few more armloads. Me and my dad got it."

"Really, that's all you brought?"

"Uhhhh, yeah."

So, after the last load of stuff, my dad looks around...

"So, I guess this is going to be where you're going to live for a while."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Ok, give us a call when you have your phone set up, ok?"

"Yeah, sure."

And after probably the most awkward hug in human history, my dad leaves, and I stroll into the RA's room.

"Hey guys, here I am!"

"Hey, I just figured out who you are, you're my worker bee frosh!"

"What?"

"We tried to call you all summer, and you were always working. Didn't you get our messages?"

"No, my parents sort of suck at giving them to me."

"So, I guess you're gonna go get groceries, or stay in a hotel with your dad or something?"

"Nope, I'm here with you guys. I just got away from my parents, why would I want to go hang out with them?"

"Well, some of the uncool kids do that, but I can tell you're not one of them."

"No sir, I'm not."

"So, next question....do you drink beer?"

I had never drank while in school, for no better reason than I didn't have the time. The schedule I kept required me to stay in tip-top shape, and there was no room for hangovers.

"No."

"AWWWWWWWWW."

"But I never said I wouldn't start..."

"SWEEEEEETTTTT!"

The whole day was a blur, helping other people bring their boxes in and doing beer bongs and whiskey shots. I was being accepted by the cool kids, it was great. We went out and played football, and it was great just competing with people and having fun. None of these guys knew me, but they'd accepted me with open arms, which was something I'll never forget. Even when the cooler frosh came onto the floor with his own car and beer for everyone, I still felt really good about my place in the residence. It felt like I was able to sprout wings and fly.

Then, I started noticing other frosh getting hazed. And I was kind of concerned. But my RA pulled me aside...

"Ok dude, here's the deal. This is why we asked all of you to bring old clothes. See, a lot of floors in this rez believe in ritual hazing. We know it sucks, but we all went through it. It's a way of bonding before school starts. But we do it differently on our floor. Here's how it works. Basically, you do everything we ask you to do. If you're not a dick about it, you eat and drink for free all week. No other floors offer that kind of deal."

"That sounds fine with me, I know my role."

"Wow, cool, time to go get changed. And if things get too hairy for you, just kind of pull me aside and let me know."

"Don't worry, they won't. I'm no pussy."

So from then on, we got treated like human salads, human hamburgers, wrapped in saran wrap and rolled down hills, all while being drunk out of our minds. It was the best week of my life. I made so many new friends, and just knew that it would be the place for me. It would surely be a matter of time before I started meeting co-eds and losing my v-card, I just knew it!

Then I get the phone call from my father..."Your mother just left me...what am I supposed to do now?"

People sometimes wonder why I don't particularly give a shit that my mom is dead. I'd say that that phone call had a lot to do with it.

Oh woe, woe is me!

2006-09-10T15:03:00.000-04:00

"Times change, and people change with them.
Some people love to play the victim..."

Alexisonfire, "Keep it on Wax"

I'm honestly getting sick of this. Again, I've been called into work on a weekend because people are unwilling or unable to sort out their own messes.

Now, I realize that I'm the manager and that it's my job. I know that I'm getting everything I asked for in taking this job. But goddamn, can't people figure anything out for themselves? Every day, I have employees arrive at my desk with a pile full of tasks, utterly unable to figure out what is the most important, and what has to be done first. After about oh, 5 minutes of half-hearted analysis, their tasks are organized and they're sent on their way. It's the same thing, day in, day out. People don't learn. Or they learn, then they're good for a few weeks, then they forget.

I don't want to be mean to these people, the sorry thing is that I think they're trying their best. They just never learned what work is, what responsibility is, what figuring things out is. All I know is that the day will come when I'm gonna let these people have it with both barrels if some of my teachings don't start sticking. You can only kill people with kindness so long, then you just want to kill them.

***

Training update: Since acquiring my home gym two weeks ago, I've lost 4 lbs and 2% body fat. But the biggest change is the energy levels. And I need every ounce of this new energy I can find. I'm three times as productive at work as I was before I started training (I now estimate I am able to do the work of 15 regular people), and I still have plenty left in the tank to help out with chores when I get home and play with the boy. I now sleep like a log, something I've rarely ever done in my life, but I view that as a good thing, since I wake up in the morning so well rested.

Next week is my last week at work before my week long manager's symposium, so I have to get some loose ends tied up before then. Could be some long hours in my near future, as I now know the kind of effort it takes to keep things afloat.

Welcome to the Brave New World...Where Nothing Is Your Fault

2006-09-03T19:43:00.000-04:00

Hmmmm. If you've been following the mainstream media lately, you'll see that the North American (and specifically, the American) economy has hit a bit of a rough patch, specifically in the housing market.

Turns out that taking on more debt than you can afford is unsustainable. How about that? That fact, compounded with the stalling of the housing market, is bringing in gale-force winds to fuck with the fed's economic high-wire act.

So now, the search for the scapegoat is on. It's the Fed's fault, they lowered interest rates too far. It's the bank's fault, they made it too easy for my impulsive ass to get vast sums of money. Now they're suckering us all by raising rates and going to get rich off of us.

If you are in this situation, the person to blame is staring back at you through your mirror. No one forced you to take on more debt than you can afford. I've had people tell me "but I wouldn't have been able to afford a house otherwise". Then guess what? YOU COULDN'T AFFORD A HOUSE, WHY WOULD YOU BUY ONE? Then compound it by taking on a neg-am mortgage?

You may think that I'm being smug about this, but it's the furthest from the truth. I'm in the same situation - I was forced to buy a house because of my work transfer and my wife's pregnancy. However, I went for a fixed rate and am paying off my debt aggressively. That said, the housing market in my area seems to have leveled off, and I am quite likely "upside-down", meaning I owe more on my house than what it's worth. The difference is that for the remaining 4.5 years of my mortgage, I should be able to get myself into better shape.

It would be easy for me and other Canadians (aside from the Westerners) to look at our mildly cooling housing market and thank our stars that we're not going through what's happening in other places. But really, if the US is heading towards a major recession, the likes of which we may not have seen in 80 years, how long will it be before all of Canada starts to suffer? I'm not naive enough to think the worst is over. On the contrary, I believe it's just beginning. It's like we're sitting in the back car of the roller-coaster, watching the people in front head down the hill. It's only a matter of time, folks. The economy, like the links between the roller-coaster cars, binds us all.

Repeat After Me: No Debt is Good Debt

2006-09-02T15:29:00.000-04:00

Here in Canada, there's this show called "'Til Debt Do Us Part". It's a show about young couples who want it all and want it now, and have absolutely no clue how much money they make or how much they spend.

On one hand, I can't believe there are that many people in the world like this. But then I think, our generation has been raised to keep up with the Joneses, so I think that many people just believe it's normal to have huge credit card debts and prohibitive mortgage payments.

People: get a grip. Lines of credit, credit cards, home equity, these are not INCOME. You are spending money you haven't yet earned. That means that the money you earn pays for things you already possess, not things you want. When interest rates rise again, that's going to be a lot of interest on old things that need to be replaced, but you don't have any money to replace them because they're still being paid for.

Over the next few years, there will be an unbelievable North American recession. It will start in the States (specifically, on the coasts), then spread through the mainland, and up to Canada. Then it will impact the world. Who will be blamed? The Fed? Probably. The banks and lenders? Most likely. The consumers who spent and spent with no clue as to how they would actually AFFORD what they were buying? Of course not. You see, they were just the innocent pawns of the banks and big business. That's the story that will be told, and it will be complete bullshit. Had more people managed their money wisely, we would have a steadily climbing economy and probably have started paving the way to prolonged prosperity. Instead, the economy boomed, and now we're all suffocating under our own debt.

So, what should everyone do?

1) For God's sake, pay off your credit cards. This should be a no-brainer. Then, don't put anything on them you can't pay off within a month. If you're unable to do this, cut 'em in half. If you NEED to put things on your credit card in order to get by, you're in deep shit. But, you can at least see if you can get a line of credit at a lower interest rate and use that instead.

2) Lock in your mortgages as soon as possible. Don't wait. Yes, the payment will be higher. But you'll actually be paying off principal, which will hopefully build faster than your home loses value, and you won't have any nasty rate jump surprises. Can't afford to do this? Have some relatives move in and charge rent. Liquidate some investments if you have any. Americans can use their tax returns from mortgage interest to drop on the principal.

3) Re-assess all big ticket items. Do you own your SUV and your plasma tv, or are you paying a ton of interest every month? Do you lease a car? Ask yourself, do I really need all this stuff? That second car? The jacuzzi? The VISA-financed trips to Europe? If the answer is no, start liquidating. Trade in your car for a slightly older model, or a same-year model that consumes less gas. Sell the crap you don't need and can't afford. I've never owned a car that was less than 5 years old, and I've never had any major problems with them, only regular maintenance and a few repairs. Sure, they're not the nicest cars in the neighbourhood, but why do they need to be?

4) Learn how to cook. Going out and ordering take-out is a huge guilty pleasure for most (me included). But it's expensive. You can cook the food yourself for a fraction of the price. Most cooking isn't rocket science, it just takes practice. Buy a good, solid cookbook and pick out 3-5 things that look interesting, then try them out. There are good recipe sites all over the Internet. Kitchens these days are becoming the nicest room in the home, spend some time there. Use those stainless steel appliances. When you do go out (hey, you have to treat yourself sometime), limit yourself to one drink, or better yet, just have water.

5) Adopt a cash only policy. Charging things on a visa or using a debit card does not make you aware of the money you are spending. Take out a chunk of cash to last you a few weeks, and use that. If you're not comfortable carrying a semi-large amount of cash on you, hide some in your home and only take what you need for a given day. When you start dropping a wad of bills instead of plastic on a shopping spree, you quickly realize just how much dough you're going through.

It's not too late. Rates are still low compared to historical standards and the economy's momentum is still pushing it forward. Get yourself into the best position you can.

And I wait....

2006-08-29T20:40:00.000-04:00

My project proposal at work still hasn't gone through. I've been waiting news since Monday. I know it's only two days, but it's a lot of time for someone that's as bogged down as I am. It doesn't shock me that word is coming back late, but it is bothersome that I had to bust my tail last week to get things done on top of everything else I had to do, and it's being kicked around the office.

Interesting point: senior management's response to my initial proposal was that my numbers had dropped by 13%. However, once you factor in that we've had to farm out some work and our billing rates changed, making some of our services cheaper, we have a real increase in workload of 6.5%. But no one bothered to figure that out.

I took an Internet course on crisis management yesterday. One of the lessons taught was to be prepared for any eventuality. For example, when determining possible crisis situations, if someone at the table says "that couldn't happen here", it usually means that it's something you should prepare for.

So if the response I get from the worst-case scenario in my project proposal is "that couldn't happen here", I'll know I'm onto something. ;)

Blubber Begone!

2006-08-25T17:41:00.000-04:00

Finally, the day has come. The day that I begin building my home gym.

Believe it or not, I used to be quite an athlete, back in the day. It's easy when you do manual labour for 8 hours a day, then work out for another 3. But, switch your job where you run around 8 hours a day for one where you sit at a desk, then switch your 20 minute walk there for a 45 minute commute, then switch all your free time for a 2-month old son. Then, after all that, switch your parents' fridge stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables for takeout pizza. Then struggle with tendonitis because of all the time you spent wearing out your joints while playing sports. I've kept extra poundage off for the most part, but I'm still not quite as firm as I'd like to be, especially around the middle. I figure I have 15 lbs or so to lose, but I'm more about how I feel rather than what I weigh.

So, tomorrow, the exercise equipment starts rolling in. You might say you've heard it all before, and that equipment is just going to collect dust. Uh uh. I still remember what it's like to be in shape, and I won't stop until I feel that way again. Then I'll just keep going.

Contrarianism: It's More Than an Investment Strategy, it's a Lifestyle

2006-08-24T19:16:00.000-04:00

"I don't know why you say goodbye when I say hello..."

The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"

In case you haven't guessed already, I'm a pretty independent thinking person, and have always sort of marched to the beat of my own drum. At first, I didn't like being an only child, I always wanted to have a little brother to play with. But I learned to appreciate the time I had on my own, and to make the most of it. There's evidence now that the more you "exercise" your brain, the more efficient it becomes, so I'm pretty happy that I spent all those lonely rainy days alone with nothing but my books and my thoughts.

I never was really interested in the outside world growing up, but there were two things that really stuck out in my mind. The first was the importance of spotting trends ahead of time, so that you could always stay ahead of the game, and the next was that no matter how good things were, they were bound to go bad, and no matter how bad things got, they'd get better.

A lot of people have made a lot of money viewing the world this way. It's the principle of contrarianism. As it relates to purchasing stocks, it's the strategy of buying steady performers that are out of the public eye or have fallen out of favour among investors for whatever reason, then waiting for the economic spotlight to shine on them, and sell them and make a killing. Then, while everyone jumps on the bandwagon, you find the next hidden gem.

But contrarianism is useful outside of the stock market: buying a winter jacket at the February end of season sale, taking the train when its en vogue to fly, going on trips down south in July instead of during spring break, etc.

I've also adopted the principle in my lifestyle: most people my age want to travel and skip from job to job. I've started a family, and found a job with a good pension plan and am staying put. I bought a bungalow when two-storey homes were popular. And I'm paying down my mortgage aggressively and limiting my debt while I hear stories about debt spiralling out of control everywhere while people are taking advantage of the increases in their home equity. Do people really think the good times are going to last forever, or do they just want to live it up now and deal with the consequences later?

In the 80s, your average Joe yuppie never thought the good days would end. Then the recession of the 90s hit and wiped out a lot of the world's equity. We are just now reaching the heights of the mid 80s. And once again, very few people are noticing that we're at the top of the hill and closer than we think to going over the edge.

Unlike most people my age, I don't believe that a world of unlimited credit and low interest will last forever. I know that rates will rise and that banks are going to tighten up, and I'm saving hand over fist right now to get ready for that time, while most people are happy to charge everything and build up debt like lemmings.

How much can interest rates mess up finances? Think about it this way. For every $100,000 you're in debt (mortgage), a 1% increase in your mortgage rate adds an extra $70 or so to your monthly payment. So if you've got a $200,000 mortgage and renew your mortgage at a 3% higher rate (entirely conceivable), that's an extra $420 a month in interest payments. And that doesn't count the extra you'd pay on your car loan, line of credit, credit cards, etc.

That's when the banks go for the kill. All of a sudden, your debt-service ratio is out of whack, and they know they're in the driver's seat, and won't negotiate your mortgage rate. So, if your credit is already maxed out, the bank starts protecting its investments, which is when repossessions and foreclosures come into play.

And when that happens, and I'm guessing it will happen in about 5-6 years at the current rate, possibly far sooner if we're subjected to further terrorist attacks, consumer spending will dry up now that there's no home equity left, there will be a mass-selloff, a surplus of inventory in the market and few people qualified to make purchases, which will drive down prices. Investors will flee the housing market, since the combination of higher interest rates and dangerously low equity will but them in the red. All those people on the informercials proud of the fact that they're carrying investment real estate while holding next to no equity ("Get rich in real estate fast! Make over 10,000 a month!") will be ruined. Book it.

By that time, I'll be free and clear and sitting on a pile of cash. And ready to buy your investment condo for 50 cents on the dollar.

...And I'm spent.

2006-08-22T18:31:00.000-04:00

"I'm taking an awful risk here, Vader. This had better work."

Grand Moff Tarkin, Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope

As we all know, Grand Moff Tarkin's risk didn't really pay off. The homing beacon Vader's operatives placed on the Millenium Falcon led the Death Star straight to the rebel stronghold on Yavin IV. The potential reward was to crush the rebellion once and for all with a decisive strike. However, the rebels, particularly Luke Skywalker, dealt a mortal blow to the Death Star through a small thermal exhaust port, right above the main port. That blow was the tipping point that ultimately swayed the momentum of battle into the hands of the Rebel Alliance.

I'm reaching a similar tipping point in my work. While I'd hate to characterize ourselves as the Imperial Army, we're getting to the point where we have to start thinking outside the box to resolve our problems. Today, I came up with my last hurrah, the only thing I haven't tried. It's not a sure thing, and I'm not arrogant enough to say that it's guaranteed that it will be accepted, though I can safely say that I did all my homework and presented a strong case.

If this doesn't work, I'm out of ideas. I can honestly say that I'll have tried everything. So, what to do then? I couldn't leave in good conscience, because I know that if I did, nothing would have even the slightest possibility of working. But how much do I owe my employers? Will I sit there like Tarkin, proclaiming certain victory while everything explodes around me? Or will I enter the dogfight like Vader, claiming little victories and being a witness to the catastrophe, while living to fight another day?

Like Elephants in a Stake-filled Yard

2006-08-19T19:33:00.000-04:00

Elephants, for the most part, are pretty smart creatures. As the saying goes, an elephant never forgets. Which is good, in some ways. For instance, they remember where all the fresh water is. And they know where all the tigers prowl.

But it's also a bad thing. For instance, did you know that circus elephants are tied to a stake with a heavy chain so they don't escape? For a while, the elephants try to escape, but then ultimately resign themselves to the fact that they're stuck. The funny part is, you can remove the chain, but as long as the stake is there, the elephant knows it has to stay put.

When dealing with change, a lot of people act like those elephants. The chains have been removed, but they're scared to walk away from the stake.

All We Wanted Were Some Chicken Balls! (Post-Uni)

2006-08-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

When you live in an apartment with 7 people and have a kitchen the approximate size of a walk-in closet, you get pretty familiar with the local delivery establishments. Especially in the wintertime, when we couldn't barbecue.

We ate all the junk that could get delivered to our door: pizza, KFC, Swiss Chalet, there was even this great little Italian place down the street that could whip up an awesome fusilli carbonara. It was good for three meals and only cost like $9.

But when you've got a bunch of starving guys who know they want something fast and good, but don't know exactly what, and can't agree on anything, Chinese food is the preferred option. There was this awesome place in the mall that served up great Chinese food (both traditional and "white man" Chinese), the only issue was that no one at the restaurant really spoke English, so ordering was always an adventure.

So we found a simple way to get the ordering done. Instead of trying anything fancy, we sacrificed a bit of selection for an easier order. This place did two different kinds of combo delivery meals: the "regular" (white man Chinese, with egg rolls, chicken balls, fried rice, you know...) and "spicy" (more traditional asian cuisine, hot and sour soup, lots of mushroom and veggie dishes, and yes, a bit spicier than normal).

So I call up the restaurant for a delivery.

"Hi, I'd like to order the combo for six, delivery."

"Combo for six?"

"Yes."

"Delivery?"

"Yes."

"Regular or spicy?"

"Regular."

"Regular or spicy?"

"Regular."

"Regular or spicy? Restaurant very loud..."

"REGULAR."

"Spicy?"

"No, NO SPICY. REH-GEW-LURR."

"Oh, ok, I got it."

"Are you sure? REH-GEW-LURR."

"Yeah, sure. Thank you!" *click*

"Uhhh, guys, I'll bet you $20 our order's fucked up."

I don't remember why we were so hungry, but we were all in agony waiting for that delivery. Needless to say, the delivery guy comes in, and we just throw the money at him and start diving in. Then we notice that we got the spicy combo, of course.

So I call the restaurant back.

"Hi, I'm calling back about an order for delivery, combo for six, regular."

"Yes? Everything ok?"

"Well, no, actually. We ordered the regular combo and got the spicy."

"Oh, so sorry. We make proper order right away."

"How long?"

"About 30 minutes."

"Ok, that'll do, I guess. Thank you."

"Thank you, and so sorry, bye!" *click*

"But...wait...what do we do with the rest of the food?...Dammit."

So, we're sitting and waiting. And the spicy stuff is smelling, well, spicy. And good. And we're all circling it like vultures. Then we start to rationalize...

"Do you think they're going to ask for the food back?"

"They could, I guess, but why would they?"

"What would they do with returned food?"

"That's true, maybe we can just have a little bit, and they won't notice..."

Well, a little turned into a lot. A half-hour came and passed, so we figured they forgot about us. So we kept eating. Fifty minutes later, the doorbell rings.

"SHIT."

"Hi, I'm here with the replacement delivery, combo for six, regular."

"Hi, thanks a lot for coming."

"Ok, we take other combo back."

"Why?"

"Because you didn't order it."

"Ok...but why else? What are you going to do with it?"

"Don't know, but kitchen wants it back."

"Are you sure? It's all cold...and eaten."

"Oh...well, I don't want any trouble, and it was our mistake in the first place, so just give me back what you have left."

So, we kind of spread the remaining food around the containers to make them look more full. Meanwhile, the delivery guy calls the restaurant and starts speaking in Cantonese. He hangs up the phone and turns to us.

"Everything ok, just one big misunderstanding. I take back what you didn't eat. No problem."

"Wow, ok, thanks man. We're sorry, but you were late and we didn't think you were coming."

"No, it's ok. Just misunderstanding. Good night."

So, we thought we were home free, and we had ANOTHER six person combo for free, very useful for when we were going to be hungry again in an hour. All in all, a good night. We were even talking about how cool the delivery guy was.

Then, about half an hour later, the phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is XXXXXX restaurant. You owe us money?"

"Why?"

"You got two combos, only pay for one."

"That's because you screwed up our order."

"Yes, but you ate food anyway."

"That's because you were late with the replacement and *snicker* we were really hungry."

"Oh, you think this is big joke?"

"Actually, I do."

"You had to pay delivery man."

"He never asked for money."

"Well, I send him back, you pay for combo."

"No. This is really poor customer service, you know. You messed up our order, and you want us to pay for it? If I ordered a pizza and they screwed it up, we'd get another pizza free."

"NO YOU WOULDN'T!"

"Yes we would, it happens all the time."

"I call cops on you!"

"Yeah, you do that. Bye." *click*

*RING*

"Hello?"

"DON'T HANG UP ON ME!!!"

"Whatever." *click*

*RING*

"What?"

"Oh, you in trouble now. I call cops."

"You know what, fine. Call the cops. Let them know what happened. That you screwed up our order, then we ate it anyway because of a misunderstanding, then you delivered the proper order, and asked for the other food back, and now you're harassing me over the phone. What good is that other food to you?"

"None of your business!"

"What were you going to do with it? Dump it back in the buffet? Go on, admit it, and I'll call health and safety on you, and you'll get shut down." (huge laughter and cheering from the guys in the background. I don't know how I kept a straight face through all this...come to think of it, I didn't.)

"That's it, you never eat here again!"

"Let me get this straight, you would refuse a paying customer if we called you back?"

"Yes. I hate you!"

"Ooooooh-kaaaaay. Look, we won't call you anymore, but you have to promise to take anger management classes or something, alright?"

(Unintelligible yelling and screaming.)

"I'm going to hang up the phone now...are we done?"

"YES. YOU GO NOW. DON'T CALL BACK!"

And with that, went our Chinese food dealer. But a week later, we found another one, even better. And we gave him all our business. And all our friend's business. And we talked everyone we could out of going to the other place.

Last time I went to that mall, our old Chinese place wasn't there anymore. Hardly surprising. Whatever business you're in, good customer service is a must. I'm not saying you can't hate your customers (they deserve your anger more often than not), but telling them about it isn't wise policy under any circumstances.

Moving Day! (Post-Uni)

2006-08-18T20:39:00.000-04:00

Well we’re movin on up, to the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up to the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

Jefferson's Theme

***

(Recommended: go back and read Lords of the Slum before taking on this bad boy)

February 2002.

Even though we were all still friends, it was widely acknowledged among the group of us that we really needed to see a bit less of each other. Tempers were fraying, everyone was tired, we had all gotten new jobs that were a little more stressful and demanded that we be a bit more responsible, so no more drinking till 2:00 am on a Tuesday. The girls were working shifts, which further added to the tension.

The original idea was for all of us to stay together, but just buy a bigger house to give us more room, and take advantage of the booming housing market. But we could never agree on a location in the city, or how much we wanted to pay, or how long we'd commit to staying there. So, we were pretty much screwed on that one. Besides, in the 2 years I lived there, I was the only one able to save up any money for a downpayment.

So, I figured, I've got a pretty decent salary, and my girlfriend's got a new job and she's holding her own too, we should be able to get a decent place, right? Not when your significant other is towing along an anchor in the form of a $50,000 student loan, you can't. But, it was confirmed that my roommate and his extra-drippy ex-girlfriend were leaving no matter what, because she couldn't stand us, and we couldn't stand her. I definitely didn't want to rent again, I wanted to get into that hot condo market, but we couldn't afford much. So in a rush, we decided to buy a condo out in the East end, which, while it had its moments, was basically a disaster. If I had to go back and play my cards differently, I would have found new tenants and held on to the rental until after the student loan was paid off, while buying a condo from plans in the neighbourhood I wanted to live in, waited until it was built, moved in, lived there for about a year and a half before my transfer, and sold the place for $70,000 more than what I paid for it, instead of making a paltry $2,500 on the condo I ended up buying before deciding to rent an apartment in the very neighbourhood I should have bought my condo in. But that's neither here nor there. And I'm not bitter, of course not. Pssh.

My other roommate has this knack for lucking into some great arrangements. He found himself a cool little house to rent on the west side with a few of our other buddies, and got a great deal from the owners. I was really relieved and happy for him, because I was worried we were leaving him up shit creek by moving out. Turns out he got the best deal. Not that I'm really surprised.

Anyways, this house had a rec room, and he decided to celebrate by buying a ping pong table before we moved out. Which, of course, was set up in the middle of the living room for our entertainment. Drunken ping-pong is close quarters is the shit.

So my other roommate and the oozing wonder moved out, leaving their bedroom empty. Originally, the plan was to pack up all of our boxes and leave them in that room until we were all to leave a few weeks later. But that plan was quickly scrapped.

See, the house the remaining roommate was moving into had no garage and was pretty wide open to the elements, which was bad news for the new sport bike he had just bought. His solution was to build a huge box that he could use to protect the bike from the wind, rain and snow. And now that there was an open bedroom, it seemed like as good a place as any to build it.
So he builds his box in such a way that it was basically being held together by 4 toggle bolts and you can just unscrew it and collapse it down, so that he could fit it out of the door and out of the apartment, but decided to leave it assembled in the guest bed so that he didn't wear the bolts out.

My girlfriend and I start packing up our shit, and stacking everything out in the living room, around the ping-pong table. The remaining roommate packs up his shit, and takes up the wall on the other side of the ping-pong table, and the kitchen. There are boxes EVERYWHERE. Such is life when 7 people are moving.

So, of course, we get a call from building management:

"Hi, this is building management, we'd like to show the apartment."

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Well, we are legally entitled to showing the apartment when we know you're moving out."

"We're aware of that, thanks. We're not saying no, we're just saying it's a bad idea."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, dumbass, we're moving out in two days. That means there's boxes and shit everywhere, and the place is a sty. We gave you 60 days notice. We kept the place clean for you to show it in that time, but now, we're in the middle of moving, so find another apartment to show if you want to attract a new tenant."

"But yours is the only three bedroom available."

"Then show them a two-bedroom, and say that 'your place would be just like this, but with an extra bedroom'."

"No. We're going to show your apartment."

"Fine, suit yourself. But you're gonna regret it. And all those repairs we requested didn't get done by themselves, either."

My roommate comes in.

"Who was that?"

"Building management. They want to show the apartment."

"Did you explain to them what it looked like in here?"

"Yep, and they want to show it anyway."

"So, what are we gonna do?"

"Fuck 'em. By the way, it's best of three, and we're tied at one. Your serve."

It's pretty interesting when you live and spend your time with a small group of people for a long time. Certain things just become accepted. Like there's an ant colony living in the cases of beer stacked 6 high right across the kitchen wall. Or the freezer door is held together with velcro. Or no one bothers sweeping away the roaches (both kinds) anymore. Or there's a punching bag collecting dust in the corner. Or that all the furniture comes from three different goodwill stores. Or the half bath smells like a McDonalds bathroom. Before cleaning. See, you sort of build up a tolerance to that stuff. Then someone steps in from normal society, and they get their fucking minds blown. And then you think "yeah, I guess that's not really normal, is it?"

The super knocks on the door. We don't even stop the rally. "IT'S OPEN!"

By "IT'S OPEN!", we meant "You can open the door about 18 inches before hitting a pile of boxes!". So the super walks in with what appears to be a charming young couple, full of hope and dreams and happy thoughts...which all got flushed down the crapper in about 0.06 seconds.

The young lady walks into the apartment and immediately kicks over the nice pile of warped parquet tiles we had stacked on the floor.

"Oh, don't mind those. One night a few months back, our toilet exploded and flooded the apartment got shit everywhere and warped the tile, so it popped off the floor. But I'm sure they'd fix that before you move in. Right Mr. Super?"

But that didn't hold her attention for long.

"You have a ping-pong table in your living room?"

"Yeah." While taking a swig of my drink. "Nothing beats beer and ping pong."

"But how do you get to the other side?"

"Silly, we climb over it. Besides, usually all these boxes aren't here, so try to imagine this place without them."

"I'm trying, but it's hard."

"Tell me about it."

Desperate to find a selling point to the apartment, the super turns to the kitchen, sees the pile of dishes in the sink, the half-packed boxes, the wall of beer and the velcro on the freezer door and does the smoothest 180 I've ever seen.

"Yeah dude, just forget about walking into the kitchen altogether."

So he goes to the major selling point of the apartment, the beautiful balcony. You know, the one hidden by the former circus tent drapes. So he goes and opens the drapes, stepping out onto the balcony, half of which was taken up by the frame of the weed tent (the guy who had moved out took his tarp with him) with readily visible extremely vulgar stoner vandalism, along with what remained of the circus tent frame. Again, the young lady turned to us with a look of disbelief.

"You guys sure have a lot of lumber up here."

"Oh, yeah, that. Actually, it used to be the frame of the fourth bedroom that we built out of one third of the living room. Because there were seven of us living here at one point, you know. And those sheets hanging up there were the wall."

"You...what?"

She looked like she wanted to ask us more questions, but thought better of it and said something in quick, hushed tones to her husband, who by now was completely turned off of moving in, but I think he must of thought we were pretty cool guys, 'cause he just smiled through the whole thing like he was the only one in the room getting the joke.

They walked past the two bathrooms...with "Dump Entrance" signs nailed to the doors of each. They left well enough alone there.

Then they get to our bedroom, which was fine, with the exception that there were no drapes in the window, just a sheet stapled to the wall. That was probably the least shocking thing they saw.

Now, onto the empty bedroom. That is, the bedroom that was empty except for the 8 x 5 box in the centre of the room, and sawdust and power tools. I watched the lady go into that room, and she seemed to be doing some advanced, lost form of calculus to figure out how that box was going to fit through the door to get out of the room. She probably figured we kept bodies in there. Or we were growing weed. I thought of throwing her a bone, but I was just too amused by the whole thing.

All of a sudden, her brain aborts the mission, she turns on her heel and starts heading out.

"I think we've seen all we need to see, thanks." The super's shoulders slumped and his face harboured the look of a defeated man.

"Really? We could show more. The mismatched tiles in the bathroom, the water damage in the master bedroom... what would you like to see?"

Of course, I cut off the super before he caught up to the couple, who would have probably set an Olympic record getting from our door to the elevator.

"Now, I told you showing this place was a bad idea. Did you listen? No. Now, if you guys can just keep your shorts on for two days, we'll be out of here, and this place will be empty. You can fix everything that you never took care of while we lived here, and then you'll actually have a chance at renting this place instead of wasting your time. Deal?"

"Deal."

We were gonna be nice, we really were. But then they ended up double booking us on the service elevator, being assholes about it, and wanting to charge us extra to undo the booking. So, we just didn't throw out any of the lumber on the balcony, and left all the garbage and sawdust in there to rot. It's not like we gave real forwarding addresses anyway. And they had already given us back our deposit. We all wanted to take turns taking a shit in the busted-up half bath toilet without flushing, leaving a mountain of unflushable shit in there. But even we weren't that mean. So with that, we all went our separate ways (east side, midtown, west side), but we can't deny that the two years we spent in that apartment made us closer than we had ever been before.

***

Since my transfer earlier this year, I now live about 500 km away from my friends. The ones who live the closest to me, anyway. I miss them terribly. I love my wife and son, but it's different. When I'm not around my friends, I feel empty, like there should be someone by my side to have beers with and rehearse with and help me out with the yardwork and barbecue great meals and talk shit with, but there isn't. I guess I've been writing about all this lately because these memories are good, and it makes me feel like my friends are close by while I'm typing away. I can still hear them laughing, still hear their voices in my head, clear as the day the memories were made.

I know that I made the best choice for my family by moving here. I'll have career opportunities here that I never would have had otherwise. As will my wife. My child gets to grow up surrounded by parkland, instead of gang turf. And my starter home here is bigger and nicer and newer than any home I could have ever bought there.

I guess I just didn't think that the sacrifices I had to make would hurt so much.

The Legend of the Extra Drippy Cunt-eh (Post-Uni) (Redux)

2006-08-16T20:36:00.000-04:00

"We're never gonna survive, unless...we get a little...crazy..."

Seal, "Crazy"

As an aside, an extremely underrated artist, IMO.

It's funny, even the telling of this story has a background. See, it sort of was the inspiration for this blog. I posted it on a message board a while back to rave reviews, which led me to believe I had an audience for this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, I never kept a copy of it on my hard drive, and the site got hacked and we lost the original story. I will attempt to recreate it here as faithfully as possible.

***

Sometime in summer 2001.

So, as I had mentioned, six months after I moved into the apartment, a couple moved out. My girlfriend and I took the bedroom that was left behind, leading to the dismantling of the circus tent. At the same time, one of my other roommates had recently started dating a girl, and they decided (she was from out of town), that she should move in to try to find a job. So, there were five of us living there full-time, with an extra two guys part time. In addition, the third guy roommate was dating this other girl's best friend. There'll be a test later.

Everything was fine at first. But as is always the case when you bring girls into the picture, things got complicated. As time passed, we started to suspect that this girl wasn't very bright. Then, we were convinced of it. My roommate referred to her as "the stupidest creature to walk the face of the Earth".

Now really, this girl was stupid. You know about book smarts, and street smarts. This girl had neither. In fact, she had the opposite of both these things. Now, as long as you didn't stray from general small-talk, she could be an ok person to be around, barely. But as soon as we would talk about more serious stuff, she couldn't keep up. I don't mean to rag on the fact that she was dumb, but I mean, she didn't have any matter of in-depth knowledge about anything. And people like that, in addition to being boring as hell, get really annoying after a time. Especially when they think they're as smart as you. Which they're not. 'Cause they're dumb.

This girl enjoyed arguing for the sake of arguing. She was never right, but would just stick to her guns like a captain going down with the ship. Now, my roommate was a pretty high-strung person, so he'd just end up going ballistic and getting stressed out. It was not a good situation for any of us, and when you've got 7 people living in 1100 square feet, there isn't anywhere to really get away.

However, and here's the kicker, you can't just up and tell your best friend that his girlfriend is a troglodyte bitch. Men get blinded by love, it's true, and you can't tell him anything bad, because it could potentially ruin the friendship. So you just stick it out and make sure that you're there for them when things invariably go bad.

Things went from bad to worse as she dug her claws in. Since we had my old 21 inch tv in the living room, she volunteered to bring a newer, larger tv from home. We thought "hey, great! The bitch is good for something!" Well, no sooner did that tv come in than she placed a ban on all sports shows. Uhhhhh, what? The deal was, we were allowed to watch her tv as long as we asked her, and that she was ok with what you were watching. Uhhhhhhh, WHAT?

Now, I watched sports a lot more than the other guys, so I became a raving lunatic for a while. I probably don't watch any more than 10 hours of tv a week, but probably about 9.5 of that is sports. So I brought my tv back out in the living room, put it on a table beside hers, reconnected the cable to mine, and watched nothing but all sports, all the time, just to spite her. Fuck you, bitch.

Now, as I was saying before, when you live in close quarters, you find things out about people that you never want to find out. My roommate, as was his habit when he smoked a lot of weed, came out with a lot of secrets. So, when he banged this chick for the first time, I could just see it in his face that he wanted to come out and tell me about it.

"Listen man, now, you can't tell anyone about this, but I fucked her. I fucked the shit out of her. And she leaked EVERYWHERE. It soaked through the blankets, through the sheet, and it soaked right into my mattress. My parents are coming to visit this weekend, and I can't get the smell of pussy out of my room."

"Dude, are you sure she didn't just piss herself?"

"NO. Uhhh, NO. Ummmm, I don't think so, she couldn't have...fuck off. No. FUCK. NO."

Now, as loath as we normally are to using the "C" word (girls don't like it, and it's just plain rude), this girl had already done enough to earn the moniker Dumb Cunt (even my girlfriend called her that). So now, she was the Drippy Cunt. And somehow, that wasn't enough, so she became the Extra Drippy Cunt. In addition, she had told her best friend (who was dating the other roommate) about this, and she told her boyfriend, the other roommate about it. And I told my girlfriend about it. So we all knew, but we didn't know that anyone else knew...until one afternoon...

We were throwing a huge bash one weekend for no particular reason. At least if there was a reason, I don't remember it now. To spice things up (and get the girls drunk), we started playing a drinking game, Kings. Now, I don't remember much about this game, except that you use a deck of cards, you have to drink with certain card combinations, then you make up bullshit rules, then you drink more.

(One funny rule before we go on: the NO SIMPSONISMS rule. Because all of us were avid Simpsons watchers and quoters, I figured that I could get a lot of people drinking if I made a rule that no one was allowed to quote the Simpsons at the table. If they did, they had to drink. Honest to God, here was one exchange we had:

"Eat my shorts!"

"That's a Simpsonism, you have to drink."

"D'OH!"

"That's two drinks."

Another guy at the table: "Haw haw!" (Nelson the bully)

"That's a drink for you."

"D'OH!"

"That's two drinks."

First guy: "Haw haw!"

Third guy: "No, no, dig up, stupid!"......"D'OH!"

First and second guy: "Haw haw!"

Not our most brilliant hour. Anyways, on with the story.)

So, on the tv is that "I AM CANADIAN" commercial. So, like good Canadians, we make up a rule that we have to finish all of our sentences with "eh". Then, the other girlfriend picks the "questions" card:

(From the Kings rules site:

Q) Questions
You start by making eye contact with someone and asking them an off-the-wall question. The players then go around in a circle asking each other questions. The point is to do this fast and to make the person laugh. Whoever laughs first drinks. In some groups, the first person to answer one of the questions, or make any statement other than a question, drinks instead.)

And finally, because of all the bad feelings simmering under the surface, and the amount of booze everyone had had to drink, my other roommate's girlfriend turns to this girl and says:

"So, I hear you've got an extra drippy cunt, eh?"

And we all just start roaring (and drinking, as per the rules), and we started laughing harder once we realized that all of us knew what it was that we weren't supposed to know, and that everyone else knew as well. As you can well imagine, the rule goes into place that every sentence must be finished with "extra drippy cunt-eh". I thought this girl was gonna freak out, but she was too drunk and stupid to be any more than slightly embarrassed. She was even good about it, finishing off her own sentences with the lovely phrase, which made it all the funnier.

The game went on for a while, but then we started noticing that this girl's boyfriend had never really stopped laughing, but now he was starting to stop breathing. He was clutching at his sides, tears squirting out of his eyes, snot running down his nose, and his face was contorted into a painful looking laugh, with no sound, and no air going in or out. Each time he calmed down enough to draw a quick breath, his laughter redoubled in intensity, until he got to the point that his sides hurt so much that he couldn't draw in any breath at all. For a minute, we wondered whether someone could really die laughing.

All of a sudden, there was a split second of calm. Then, his eyes bugged out and both hands instinctively clasped tightly over his mouth. It would seem that all of the rapid-fire drinking and laughing had churned up his stomach something awful. We didn't even hear him heave, but chunder started squirting out between his fingers, coating the table, the floor, himself, and the guy beside him. (Ewwwww, that's warm. Can someone get me a towel?)

Never have I seen so much puke come out of a man. And he could never position his hands to stop the flow, it would just squirt out between different fingers. So it was like a puke sprinkler. He finally half staggered, half was pushed out onto the balcony, and he coated that entire balcony, which was no mean feat. Even after all that barf in the living room, out on the balcony he looked like that the guy in that one scene that everyone knows about from Stand By Me, during the pie eating contest:

Which...well...sort of meant the end of the game. And it was probably the start of the end of that relationship. The horrid thing was, was that she was pressuring him to move out with her, and the rest of us wanted to move out to get away from her. My girlfriend and I ended up buying a condo that, if we had taken the time to research a bit more, would never have bought (and taken more time to pay off her student debt), and the EDC-E and my roommate broke up a few months after they moved out, so he got shafted paying rent in an apartment by himself. And the third guy had to scramble to find other people to live with, which put a dent in our friendship for a while, it seemed.

So fuck you, you extra drippy cunt.

Lords of the Slum (Post-Uni)

2006-08-15T21:13:00.000-04:00

For all the fun that we were having, discovering the city, making our first forays into adulthood, dreaming the big dreams of the young, naive and overeducated, we were never able to rationalize the fact that...well...we lived in a total shithole.

My buddies had been living there for about a year before I moved in. They had two smaller places between them, but decided to get a larger place together to reduce the rent. However, they had just enough money to escape the worst of the ghetto living. That's to say, we weren't in any immediate danger of getting shot. As in, most of the gunshots we heard were from one street over. And that's about the best we could say.

We were living in what was referred to as the "Immigrant Ghetto", where various immigrants and refugees (some legal, some not) crammed themselves into apartments in the hopes of making it big in Canada. We were doing the exact same thing, except we were refugees from rural Ontario. So the other tenants sort of saw us as a novelty act, I think. We always figured, there's no way property management can bust us for having a circus tent in our living room, because there's probably 50 more of them scattered throughout the building.

Here's a snapshot of how shite this building was:

We had 1 1/2 baths in our apartment, but because of my one roommate's penchant for the McDonald's value menu, the toilet in the half bath was reserved for him, until he clogged it. Drano saved us for a while, but then the situation got dire. So on average, about every 2-3 weeks, we'd call the super to come fix the toilet. So he'd come up to our apartment, laugh at the circus tent, and use that snake thing on the pipes. Over and over again.

Well, you know, that snake thing doesn't really fix anything, it just pushes the shit further down the pipe in the hopes that it dislodges. But it never really did.

I wake up at five in the morning to banging on the door and screaming. I walk out to the hallway and notice that we have a river flowing through, coming from the half bath. We quickly put two and two together and realized that months of snaking the toilet had created a monster. The supers were yelling at us, saying they were going to take us to court and all this stuff. Apparently, a pipe had burst from the pressure caused by McDonalds-bred fecal matter and the water was causing damage all the way down to the 15th floor, from the 18th.

So, of course, we show off all of the service requests that we had made for the toilet, and that matter was resolved. Then, we start noticing how uneven the floors are, because lakes are gathering in certain areas of the floor, while others stayed bone dry.

So, our place smelled like Lake Erie for a week until we were able to finally get the smell out. The water raised and curled all of our lovely parquet flooring, so we stacked all the tiles neatly in the corner. We put in a service request for tile repair, but if that stuff ever got fixed, it was only after we left.

***

So, one night, we were screwing around in the building hallway, and one of my drunk buddies kicked the door to the utility room. And it broke open... JOY!

Once in that room...we noticed the Holy Grail of drunken mayhem...the door to the roof. Unlocked. HAPPY! HAPPY! JOY! JOY!

Now, I'm deathly afraid of heights (or more specifically, falling off of high things), so I peeked my head through the door and was satisfied with that. But, as every night went on and the utility room door still wasn't fixed, the guys came up with bolder and bolder plans.

One of my buddies still brags that his longest golf drive was over 900 yards. Yep, that's right, off the end of the building, bouncing through the mall parking lot across the street and over the parkway on the other side. We made sure to listen to the news the next day to make sure he hadn't killed anyone.

But that's not even the best one. One day, we decided that we should throw something off the roof, just to see what happened. We couldn't throw anything off the balcony of our apartment, or we'd be busted, so we figured if we dropped something off the roof on the other side of the building, no one would suspect us. Now...what to use? Eggs? Oranges? Pudding? Too small. This would be our only chance at this, and we had to think big. Ah, here we are...watermelon. One whole watermelon.

Now, the goal was to drop it from the top of the building into the dumpster. And we had to definitely make sure to pitch it far enough that it wouldn't land in someone's balcony. So we overshot the dumpster by about 4 feet. Damned if that watermelon didn't sound like a 12 gauge shotgun at impact. Total disintegration. The only evidence was the very top of the shell, and a little bit of juice had sprayed onto the dumpster. No pulp, no seeds, no shell, except for that one piece. We lifted it up, and the grass below it had also disintegrated. Nothing there but dirt.

But damned if later that summer, that wasn't the best fertilized patch of grass on the lot. I could barely contain myself as I walked by two months later and the supers were standing out in a lot full of dead grass, looking in amazement at this one round patch of the greenest, lushest grass you've ever seen...about the diameter of one medium-sized watermelon.

***

The building hadn't had any renovations to its old plumbing since it was built. There were leaks and sweating pipes everywhere. One of them was located in the wall between our bathroom and the master bedroom. So, we'd call down to have them fix it, as the walls on both sides would bubble and blister and crack and peel. So how would it get fixed? Remove the tile, shave down the blisters, replace the tile. Or, shave down the blisters and repaint. By the time we left that place, the whole master bedroom wall needed replacing.

***

The thing that pissed me off the most about that apartment, was our fridge. After years of sitting on an uneven floor, we just couldn't finagle the feet on it to keep it steady because the screws on the feet were so worn out. So it would rock forward and the doors would swing open. Particularly the freezer door.

It was the start of summer, and of course, barbecue season. Four renowned carnivores in one apartment, you're damn straight there's gonna be some charred meat on the menu. We went shopping on Thursday night and filled the freezer. Steaks, chops, chicken, ribs, you name it. We dropped about 2 bills, I think. We left town on Friday to go to a birthday party, and planned to return on the Sunday afternoon, in time for an official start-of-summer barbecue feast. Came back to the apartment on Sunday to an open freezer door and the smell of rotten meat.

First, we stared in disbelief. Then, we were all like, "it's just a little thawed out, it's still good, it's still good", then we cried, then we got really, really angry. I grabbed one of the drivers of the group by the collar.

"WE'RE GOING TO HOME DEPOT, AND WHEN WE COME BACK, I'M GONNA MCGUYVER THE SHIT OUTTA THIS SUMBITCH!!!!"

"Do you have any idea what you're going to do?"

"NO. BUT I'M SURE IT'LL COME TO ME."

So we're roaming the isles of Home Depot. Axes, sledgehammers, chainsaws, all of these are looking like good options. As my cooler head started to prevail, I figured that we could just shim up the legs and make it at least lean backwards, but that wouldn't be enough of a conversation piece. Installing a clasp system required drilling a hole in the fridge...no good. Ah, here we go, velcro. Two stickers, then a velcro patch that you could put over them. We got home, one sticker on the door, one sticker on the side of the fridge, velcro holding the two together. Problem solved. And what a conversation piece that was. "My God, is your freezer being held together by velcro?" "Why, yes, yes it is. Why do you ask?"

***

After six months, one of the couples moved out, so my girlfriend and I took their bedroom (more on this later). But there was still the trouble of what to do with the circus tent. After all, we had spent about $60 in wood, we didn't want it to go to waste. Two things happened with it:

1) We built a frame for a hotbox tent on the balcony, which was covered with heavy duty tarpaulin (great for smoking in the wintertime). I think the guys even got cable and a LAN drop out there at one point. The frame stayed out there, complete with stoner vandalism (XXXX has a small penis! Fuck you, no I don't!) long after we moved out.

2) The stress of living together was getting to us, so we decided to buy a punching bag so we could pound it and not each other. One of those heavy 70 pound fuckers. A quick reconfiguration of the remaining wood built us a pretty handy frame for it. We wrapped some sponges and towels around the points that came in contact with the wall, and let the fists fly. So yeah, we had a heavy punching bag in our living room. At the point we had reached, this seemed like completely normal behaviour.

Me and one of the other roommates used to come home from work, put on the gloves and take turns doing 3 minute rounds on the thing for about half an hour before supper. One day a few weeks in, we were REALLY laying into it. So we get a knock on the door. It was this cute little Indian lady.

"Ummm...hello?"

"Hi...can we help you?" (We're all breathing hard, sweaty and still wearing sparring gloves)

"I was just wondering if we were having an earthquake..."

"No, I don't think so, we wouldn't really be able to notice with our sparring."

"Oh...OH." (looks in and sees the bag)

"OH, you must stop the boxing, please. I am one floor below, and doors are rattling, pictures are falling, it's not good."

"We're very sorry. It won't happen again. *snicker*"

"I'm sorry you guys, I'm sure that's a lot of fun."

"Would you like to come in and try it out?"

"No, no thank you."

***

So, as I said, about six months in, one of the couples moved out. We took a bedroom, two other guys moved out into the living room part time (we charged them food and use of the one guy's meat freezer as payment, they only stayed with us about 3 days a week). And one other roommate's girlfriend moved in, which put us up to 7 people half the time. And what an interesting arrangement that turned out to be...

Like, when you live with people too long, you learn things about them you never should. Next entry will go into detail about one of those cases...

I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends (Post-Uni)

2006-08-15T08:20:00.000-04:00

Someday we'll wave hello
And wish we'd never waved goodbye...

The Smashing Pumpkins, "This Time"

I have the best friends in the world. It's a shame we don't live close together anymore and don't see each other as often as we'd all like. But we stay in touch as much as we can. We've all spread out across various provinces and states, but think nothing of driving all night to spend a weekend together. We'll see how having a baby interferes with that, but it hasn't so far.

With a few additions and subtractions, our core group of friends has been together since the 7th grade. Of that group, there are a few of us who can trace our friendship back to the 1st grade. And since I can't really remember further back than that, I can honestly say that I've known my friends my whole life.

We're closer than family, closer than brothers. So, when I had a hard time landing on my feet after university, they were the ones I turned to. And, as usual, they came through, just like they've always done, and I like to think I've always done for them.

***

Spring 1999

I'm working the two jobs (unofficial grocery store trainer and bilingual admin clerk) and scuffling along. I'm stressed out because my girlfriend is still in school and, at the time, even though I knew I wanted to pursue the relationship after she graduated, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Nothing was forcing her to move to the same city as me, and I'm not the type of person who wants to keep someone from doing something they want to do, even if that doesn't involve me.

The three guys I moved in with are a year younger than me, and thus, were still completing their degrees and were in their last year of school. In addition, one of the guys had his fiance living with us as well. So, that's 4 guys and 1 girl in a three-bedroom apartment. I didn't care that I slept on the couch, because it was only fair, and because I have a grand total of zero shame ("hey, if you happen to see me naked, that's YOUR problem, not mine.").

Then, the summer rolls around, and my girlfriend calls. She's having trouble finding a job, so she'd rather stay with me for the summer, while still trying to find work. I felt sort of bad, because the apartment was already overcrowded, so I asked the guys:

"Hey, do you mind if my girlfriend stays on the couch with me?"

"Is she cute?"

"Yeah."

"Is she a bitch?"

"No."

"Will she take a share of the rent?"

"Yeah." (going up to 6 people paying rent in the apartment brought our shares down to $227 each a month, we quickly figured...then started cracking up)

"No problem. We'll figure something out."

That "something" was probably the most resourceful, eccentric, yet all around retarded decision we've ever made. And, it probably set the tone for a bunch of other stupid things we did over the total of two years we lived there.

Our living room was L-shaped. The back third was basically just used to stack empty beer cases and pilfered street signs, and play cards, drink and smoke. We hypothesized that we could condense everything down to 2/3 of the living room, then build "some sort of structure" that would serve as the 4th bedroom.

I don't know if it was the lingering aroma of hash and weed in the air (don't do drugs, kids), or the consecutive weeks of drinking until 3 in the morning on work nights, or watching Animal House too many times, but the "some sort of structure" became a temporary wall frame assembled by 4x4s that sealed off the back third of the living room and was held up by huge L-brackets. So, so illegal. We now had a wall frame, and decided to push this project to the limits of absurdity.

In order to give us some semblance of privacy, we went to a fabric surplus store and got reams of the cheapest stuff we could get. Since one colour would be too bland and flowery patterns would be too gay, we decided to go with various samples of bold colours - red, blue, green, yellow, purple, gray, pink. In honour of the colour scheme, my bedroom was dubbed "the circus tent". The really funny part was, that after a few people moved out and we got a bedroom of our own, the tent sheets were used as drapes for the living room of our 18th floor apartment. At night, when it was dark out and the lights were on, a multi-coloured glow shone out into the street.

But that didn't help that our room was still very visible from the balcony - the sheets only cut us off from the living room. So we drew a line on the balcony, that the guys knew not to cross for risk of seeing my furry white ass fornicating.

We stayed up all night assembling that tent the day before my girlfriend was due to arrive. I wonder whether our neighbours had the slightest clue what we were doing. I mean, high-rise dwellers would have to get curious when they hear power tools 18 floors up at 1:00 in the morning.

I still can't believe that I lived in that tent for 6 months. At least I got to the point where I had bought an air mattress to go on top of the pullout, but still, what the hell was I thinking?

The relationships started getting a bit strained because of the close quarters and conflicting schedules, but if it was anyone aside from my best friends, we'd have killed each other. But looking back on it, the nights playing euchre and bitching about work, the treks throughout the city to find the best wings, and the best strippers, and sometimes, the best wing/stripper combo, the stupid dares, the road trips, getting high and going to the mall, and just generally being guys away from home, were some of the best times I ever had. I don't miss the jobs I had, but I certainly miss our time in that apartment, and looking back on it, I shouldn't have left when I did, but sometimes all the petty shit that gets in the way looks more important than having fun with your friends.

I'll get into that petty shit next time... :)

Everything Looks Nicer in the Rear View (Post-Uni)

2006-08-13T18:28:00.000-04:00

"I'm alright with the way that I've become
I've paid my dues, I'm ready for whatever comes..."

Ben Kenney, "Inside, Pt. 2"

You know the people who say that it's the journey that's important, not the destination? Fuck them. They don't know shit.

People who can say that without any sense of irony are usually the people who ended up in a favourable destination, the circumstances of which they can use to go back and rationalize their journey as being worthwhile.

Busting your ass in a band and hauling your gear in a van for a few years while slowly building a fanbase and eventually achieving all the musical success you desire (whatever that level of success may be) is laudable. Doing the same thing your whole life and never getting anywhere is depressing.

Starting out as a factory worker and grinding your way up the ranks is an inspirational story. Starting out as a factory worker and never getting past entry-level is a waste of human potential.

The point is, people bust their asses along the journey, with the hopes that they arrive at the destination they're looking for. Sometimes they get there, most of the time they don't.

***

May 1999.

Upon recovering from my habanero-induced illness, I took stock of my situation:

$40 to my name
no job
no leads
no car
no driver's licence
new city
no bed

Literally, the only things I had were my guitar, a suitcase full of clothes, two blankets and two pillows. I was crashing on my buddy's ancient pullout couch, the kind with the springs and bars that reorient your spine while you sleep. Not only did I not have a job, but most of the large employment firms deemed me unemployable because of my very odd set of particular and disparate skills. Ironically enough, those same skills are paving my way to executive management as we speak.

So, using my last $40 to find enough sustenance to last me as long as possible, I ventured to the neighbourhood grocery store which, convienently enough, had a Help Wanted sign posted in the window. Well, it was a start. I might have been considered unemployable in the office world, but damn if I didn't have more than enough experience to get me that job. Figuring that lump in my throat proving really difficult to swallow was only my pride, I marched into that store with every ounce of false confidence I could muster and basically begged for the job.

I stated that I thought that my five years of experience and supervisory skills far outclassed whatever employees they had currently working at the store, and I was right. The stockroom was a mess (I was responsible for organizing the stockroom once a week at my old job), their dairy case was full of expired product, and the shelves were empty while there was stock collecting dust in the back. Upon looking at the store, I went and bargained for $10 an hour. The store owner didn't buy it, but he said that since he was going to pay me $6.50 an hour, he'd meet me halfway and pay $8.25.

I told him that I needed any money I could get, but that I wouldn't stick around at $8.25 an hour. After all, in my last year at the old store, I was making $11.50, and I'd gotten a university education since then. So I gave him my business proposal:

"You and I both know that as soon as I get a halfway decent job, I'm out of here. So here's what I propose. Your store is a mess. If inspectors walked into your dairy case, you'd be busted. No one can find anything in your stockroom, and your student workers haven't been properly trained. (After all, he was a businessman who had bought a franchise - he wasn't a qualified store manager, and the person he had hired to do that needed training himself). I can come in a few nights a week and maybe a day on the weekend to get your store in shape, but you have to leave me my days off so I can find a real job. If I can't find a decent job within a few months and if you like what I can provide you, you can hire me full-time and I'll run your store."

Upon hearing me talk, he knew that he was in trouble and needed what I could provide badly. So for 22 hours a week (3 five hour weeknight shifts and one 7-hour weekend shift), I did what I said I would: I cleaned up his dairy case, trained his student staff (who weren't at all lazy, they just didn't have a clue what they were doing), washed his shelves, reorganized his stockroom and even found the time to train the store manager on a few things, like how to provide proper customer service, how to set up promotional displays, and how to position product so it would sell better.

It wasn't long before my efforts were noticed. My roommates, who were scared to shop at that store before, commented on how much better it looked. The owner was happy, but I was frantically looking for another job.

After trying to find work at a bunch of employment agencies, one agency finally found me an entry-level administration job at a lease financing company. Thank God I'm bilingual (I speak and write English and French fluently), because that's the only reason I was hired - their old bilingual admin clerk quit, and they didn't have anyone capable of interacting with the dealers and sales staff from Quebec. Well, I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, but it was a start. The salary: $12 an hour., at 35 hours a week. I went into that job with the biggest chip on my shoulder, especially once I met the complete tools I had to work with. Even though it was more money, it wasn't enough to quit at the grocery store. It was especially difficult to deal with, considering that my last student job (admin assistant to the chief librarian) paid me a government subsidized $13.25 an hour.

So, for all you math majors, I was up to working 57 hours a week, with an average wage of a shade above $10 an hour. A four-year honours student, second in my class in a professional vocation. Had I stayed at the old store in my home town, pay increases would probably have gotten me up to about $18 an hour, and I'd have been pulling a solid 42 hours a week.

So, had I decided at that point to cut my losses and beg for my old job back in my hometown (which I had given more than a passing thought to, but the store had switched management, so I didn't have any goodwill built up). The way I saw it, I could break off my long-distance relationship (with the girl I eventually married), move back into my parents' basement, start work at the store again, squirrel away some money to buy property while it was on the cheap (my hometown's major industry was cyclical, so many permanent residents had gotten rich buying low and selling high repeatedly), probably marry some failed cheerleader and spent my life working up to store manager and wondering whether that was all there was to life. My town was filled with people who had grown up waiting to get out, then saw that there were fish in the big pond far bigger than they were, and eagerly swam back to their goldfish bowl.

Had I done that, there's no way that I would have figured the "journey" was worth it, because I would have poured 4 years and $40,000 into an education that would have gotten me exactly where I had already been.

Fortunately, I stuck it out, but it wasn't easy. How did I do it? That's an entry for next time, boys and girls...

Piloting Projects into the Ground

2006-08-10T21:06:00.000-04:00

"Is it coincidence that the craziest fools have the strongest belief that they're right?"

Ben Kenney - "Wrong"

12-hour days mean a lack of patience, blogging time, baby time, guitar time, and any other time other than eating, sleeping and working time. Even eating time gets compromised, which makes me very cranky. At my last unofficial count, I'm up to doing the work of 11 people. It's no fun being the manager when there's no one available to delegate to.

So, until yesterday, my team was taking part in a pilot project to test the effectiveness of a new piece of software to be rolled out in the fall/winter. It doesn't work all that well, and we were losing patience with it, but we were trying to make it work. Yesterday afternoon, I was taken off the project for a number of reasons, one of them being that I was unable (unwilling?) to follow the precise instructions I was given for operating the software.

Now, as manager, am I not ultimately responsible for the workflow in my unit? We tried things the way the project team wanted them done, and it didn't work. And it wasn't for lack of trying. So I asked my team (because I let my subordinates make decisions, shocking, isn't it?) what they thought would work. And they had a few suggestions. And we tried them. And they didn't work. But they didn't not work as badly as the original idea...follow what I'm saying? There was enough promise with the new workflow that with some tweaking, we had a chance at making it work.

So I bring this up to the project team, thinking they'd be grateful to have a second option. Nope, they want us to go back to what has no hope of working. Meanwhile, this is costing us time and money and people are getting upset and frustrated, so I draw the line in the sand and say no, this is how it's going to be. My youthful stubbornness getting the better of me, they thought. But then I went over the rationale for my decision, and people agreed that it made sense. BUT THEY STILL WANTED ME TO DO IT THE OTHER WAY.

Long story short, my director caught wind of the situation and pulled the plug for compassionate reasons, knowing that I was already overworked and apt to blow a fuse and that the project was doomed to failure because of the overall shoddiness of the software anyway. I feel sorry for the sucker who gets suckered into this job next.

So basically, because of my boss' intervention, I'm off the project, I don't have to do everything they want, but I still get to keep the software in case we end up finding a way to use it. Which is what I wanted in the first place. ;)

On a larger-scale, here's the question: how do you go about running a pilot project to test new software? We had it introduced into our workflow without even bothering to find out whether it was even STABLE (it wasn't) or able to do what it advertized (yes, but only in very precise and unrealistic conditions). We were given one set of possible directives, and if those directives didn't work, we were just to keep doing them until further notice.

If it were me, I'd have assembled a working group of people who are more comfortable than the average with various software packages in order to do some troubleshooting, and giving them free reign to find out what works and what doesn't, while working with the project team to record the strengths and weaknesses of said software, which would then lead to joint recommendations on how to incorporate it into the general workflow, while giving instructions to everyone in the workflow chain on how to provide feedback, which would be used to further refine the procedures. And if anyone found a better way, they would be welcome to keep working that way. But that's just me.

Am I the only one who thinks that makes sense?

The Curse of Longwindedness

2006-08-07T17:56:00.000-04:00

So...if you haven't noticed, my posts are kind of long. That's ok, it lets me get a lot off my chest. But my longwindedness does have its disadvantages.

I write music. I don't aspire to be a rock star, or to sell millions of records. I just want some songs to call my own. I'm not even that good. But I can't write a goddamn lyric to save my life. Anyone have any ideas?

Vision of the Future...or...How Google Changed the World

2006-08-04T22:45:00.000-04:00

The amount of information that is available to most people is astonishing. Through the power of Google and the Internet, we can find an absurd amount of information on any subject, and often, with a lot more detail than what we're looking for.

This has had a lot of impact on specialists in today's society. Doctors are faced with patients who tell them that their diagnosis differs from what they read on WebMD, lawyers are being quoted case law by those who they represent, and all of a sudden, everyone knows how to hotwire a car or defuse a bomb.

Knowledge used to be defined as "what you know". However, anyone skilled at the use of Internet search engines will tell you that knowledge is defined as "what you can find". I don't know how to change a tire on a car, but I know where to find out how to do it.

So what does that mean for today's business world? For starters, everyone is on an even playing field, because everyone has access to the same information. The Internet is a mine of information ripe for the picking. Since everyone, in theory, can find out the same things, what will set the best and brightest apart from the rest, is how successfully they will be able to pick out trends and patterns out of that information, and intelligently push the boundaries of critical thinking and innovation. These people, the natural problem solvers, will no longer be limited by their own knowledge and experience, but will be able to tap into the collective knowledge and experience of society through the Internet. I can't wait to see what kind of innovations we'll see in the future as a result.

Origin of a Workaholic (HS)

2006-07-31T20:12:00.000-04:00

I have to be completely honest here. I love money. LOVE IT. I don't necessarily love spending it, nor do I have expensive tastes, I just enjoy the piece of mind and comfort it brings when you have enough of it. When I was a kid, I'd probably empty out my piggy bank and just count the money about twice a month.

So, when it came time to do chores, I'd always try to haggle to have a little extra money added onto my allowance if I did this thing or that. I saw any quarter extra I received as a sweet, sweet victory.

As I got a little older, I took to doing some volunteering and odd jobs, if for no other reason than to make money while getting out of the house during the summer. Even as a kid, I had a long-term view, so I knew that one summer spent volunteering would mean that I'd be ready to apply for real jobs the next summer.

Then, with mom getting sick, the pressure was on. All of a sudden, I had to make money for a reason: there wouldn't be enough money to pay for mom's care and my university, so I was going to have to work in order to get what I wanted. Which was, in short, a guarantee that I could get out of the house. University provided me that guarantee. As an added bonus, I was given the ultimatum that I could get a job, or I'd be put in the Army Reserve. Yipes.

After weeks of dropping off resumes at wherever I thought I stood a chance, I was starting to give up. I was given the opportunity to stay with my grandparents for the summer in an effort to try to find work there. A few days before I was due to leave, I got a call from one of the grocery stores in town for an interview. This was the store that my parents shopped at, and was considered among the neighbourhood kids as a pretty cool place to work: pay above minimum wage, unionized, good, flexible hours, and a decent management staff. Needless to say, I really wanted the job. So, in order to impress them, I decided to dress for the interview in a white shirt and brown slacks, which was basically the uniform of the store clerk. What a fateful decision that turned out to be.

I was told to report to the customer service counter at 1:00 pm, at which point I was to meet with the manager for my interview. So I arrive at the counter, to find a herd of irate customers. It seems that the store was so busy, it had run out of shopping carts (we were close to the July holiday), and people who just wanted to get in and get out were complaining bitterly.

Not wanting to upset anyone, I got in line and hoped they'd get to me by 1:00. Just then, the store manager, who was a short, little man with a voice that betrayed 40 years of smoking and a rapid-fire delivery that made you think he should be on those boisterous furniture store commercials runs up to the counter.

"Are any of those boys here yet?", he barked out.

"Uh, sir, I think you're looking for me?", I asked. Note that at this point in my life, I was pathologically shy, and barely spoke above a whisper, especially around people I didn't know.

Even at 16 years old, I was a full head and then some taller than the store manager, and he was a little taken aback at first. Then, he sized me up, and seemed to have a curious look on his face. Then, a thought hit him like a lightning bolt going off in his head. Seeing that I already basically looked the part, and he had all those irate customers in the front of his store, he asked me:

"So, do you think you can keep this store full of shopping carts?"

"Uhhh, sure."

"You're sure, are you? It's pretty hot out there."

"I'll do my best."

"Ok son, you do that. We'll check on you in a while and see how you're doing."

And with that, I was sent outside to keep the store full of shopping carts. Now, this was no easy task. There was no shade, and it was 40 degrees celsius outside with the humidity. The parking lot sloped down away from the store at a considerable angle down to the laneway, then sloped back up to further parking on the other side. So you had to push the carts up a decent incline to get them in the store.

So I started with 2 carts at once. Not fast enough. Then 3, no good. Then 4, 5, 6, 7. In my lack of experience, 7 carts was about all I could fit through the door. And with the slope going up into the store, 7 carts was HEAVY. Really heavy. I was outside for 20 minutes, and already, my shirt was drenched with sweat and all the muscles in my legs were aching, to the point where I thought my quads were going to pop off my kneecaps. I had shoulder length hair at the time, and had a lot of trouble keeping it out of my eyes.

I was managing, but barely. In the time it took me to run (on a dead sprint) to pick up the few carts available in the parking lot, there was already a lineup of ingrates waiting for them. And they'd wait right in front of the automatic door, so there was no way to get into the store. At first, I'd ask to excuse myself, but after a while, as dehydration started to hit me and I lost my voice, I couldn't even bring myself to talk.

The minutes became hours, and I never stopped running. To this day, I don't know how I managed, and neither do my co-workers. I was relieved for a 10 minute break at about 3:30 pm. I was so exhausted, I hadn't even stopped breathing hard until I was back out again.

At 5:00, the manager comes out to see me. He seemed pretty grouchy, like he'd been having the longest day of his life, but he did his best to put a smile on when he came out.

"So, how are you doing?"

"Ok", I wheezed, trying not to let on that I was probably mostly dead.

"Well, you look pretty tired, and everyone says you've been working really hard. So what do you say you take a half-hour dinner break."

"A half-hour?" I asked, not so much as a complaint, but a confirmation.

The manager smirked at me, as if I was arguing with him. But then he saw how sunburned I was, how glassy my eyes where, and how drenched in sweat I was.

"Yeah, you'd better take an hour. And change your shirt."

So I called for my dad to come pick me up. He poured me into the passenger seat of the van and hauled my limp carcass home.

"So, you're done for the day?", he asked.

"Actually, the boss wants me back in an hour."

"Oh.", he replied, in equal parts pride, astonishment, and pity.

I have never, ever, experienced this kind of pain in my entire life. I was never in horrible shape as a kid, but adrenaline at the thought of having a steady income powered me through four straight hours of running in a parking lot on the hottest day of the summer, taking in car exhaust in huge gulps. And now that I had stopped, the overexertion was taking its toll. Every muscle in my body ached, and I had a stitch in my side that wouldn't go away. I was burned cherry red, so badly that my hair was matted as a result of being burned itself, in addition to my scalp bleeding because it had so badly burned it was cracked and peeled. My hands were dry and the skin cracked and worn, and I had blood stains on my pants from where I had wiped my hands without paying attention, as I hadn't yet built up the necessary callouses, and I had pinched my hands several times between the shopping carts, which were the old style models and hadn't had their edges filed down.

I was dizzy and nauseous from heatstroke, and had more than a passing thought about just not going back. Or calling 911. My throat was parched, and I tasted and smelled blood. Upon changing my clothes, I noticed that the muscles in my legs were so stretched and tortured, that blood had started to pool, and they looked bruised and disconcertingly swollen.

My dad had barbecued up some sausage and baked potatoes, with corn and salad. I took three bites and vomited, as my throat was so dry I couldn't even swallow. With only a few minutes to go before I had to be back to work, I threw myself in a cold shower to try to cool down and came damn near close to fainting as I washed the scabs out of my hair and watched as my scalp and hair fell out in chunks.

Somehow, even as sunburned as I was, I still managed to look pale and sickly. But I decided then and there that if nothing else, my dad, who always considered me to be soft because I was always better with the books than I was with my hands, would have to admit that I was as hardcore as they came. So I downed as much water as I could and went back to work. To this day, I think the store employees were surprised I came back.

After a few more hours of running outside, the pace finally slowed enough for me to go in the store and learn a few more chores. Like facing up product (pulling product to the front of the shelf so customers don't have to reach), stocking shelves and packing groceries. I met a few of the other clerks, who were older than me, as well as the assistant store manager, who forever earned my good graces by giving me an extended evening break, as long as I didn't stay in the same place long enough for people to ask questions.

After the longest 8 hours of my life, the manager was closing up the store.

"Long day, wasn't it, son."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"So, I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Does this mean I have the job?"

"Be here at 9:00 and we'll talk about it. And don't worry, I'll make sure you're paid for all the time you work here, whether we end up keeping you or not."

Well, it was better than nothing, at least I knew I'd be paid for a couple of days. I limped back home and kneaded my knotted leg muscles until I could start feeling a bit of give in them again, coaxed down some leftovers and headed to bed.

What started as a day to day arrangement, seemingly on the manager's whim, became a 5-year relationship, which contributed more to my personal development than any advice I got from my parents or any course I took in school. I learned principles of sound management, leadership and customer service that I use to this day. In fact, now that I'm a manager, I use it more than my professional training. I also learned that whatever the conditions, like that first day, which I believe still stands on record as the busiest day in that store's history, that when it comes right down to it, if there's work to do, it needs to get done, regardless of what kind of shape you're in, and if you can't do it, someone will take your place. It's that mentality that allows me to do the work of 9 people (see below).

So never underestimate the benefits of a part-time student job.

Anxiety Chokes Me Like Razor Wire

2006-07-31T19:54:00.000-04:00

Wow, I thought last week was bad. Due to people disengaging because of stress and overwork, I find myself doing the work of no less than 4 people in addition to my own, and probably closer to 9. The thing that distinguishes me from other people is that I know in my heart that I can handle it, and then some.

It's actually having the desired effect too, people are seeing the amount of work I'm doing and not complaining, and are starting to hop back on board.

Upon further analysis today, myself, my boss, and our account exec have determined that we're short approximately 14 people to properly do our work. So if you count the fact that I'm doing the work of 8 people (in addition to myself), we're still six short, and I can't sustain that pace forever. Well, I could, but I'd leave a trail of bodies in my wake.

I previously alluded to the fact that I have already suffered a burnout, in my early teens. A counsellor asked me if I had ever become suicidal during that time, to which I replied "no, but I was homicidal for a time". My patience for incompetence stops when people can't do their own job properly, while I'm taking my best shot at doing 9.

So I guess the question is, will I quit? The simple answer is no, because I'm not a quitter. Never have been, never will be. I choose to see myself as part of the solution, and if I quit, I just become part of the problem. If you're 30 years old and are looking for a long, promising, profitable career, no matter what, you NEVER want to be part of the problem. Once I've exhausted all my options (and I'm not even close), I may revisit the issue, since if my leaving forces people's hands, my departure may become the tipping point of a larger solution.

If I can turn this into a piece of advice, try this one:

There's a stereotype of young, promising workers that we have no roots and no allegiances, we just follow the money and go to the places that can give us the best pay, most fun and most vacation. That may be true, to a certain extent, people in my age group are more likely to want to be fulfilled at work in addition to (and sometimes, rather than) paying the bills. But if you keep jumping around at opportunities and change jobs like you change suits, sooner or later, it'll catch up to you and you'll take a wrong turn. A few really successful and increasingly important jobs (assuming you never overstay your welcome) will mean more than a bunch of positions where you've produced negligeable results. Always keep your eyes on the big picture, which is, "how will this decision affect the rest of my life"?

Since I'm writing an anecdote immediately following this one that is sure to attract the most reading, bonus points to anyone who comments on this entry.

Like frogs, oblivious

2006-07-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

So, in response to a comment: does my work have an anti-blog policy? I have no clue. I can't imagine they would.

However, I am aware that people have gotten in trouble for blogging about their work before. That is because they listed real names, real jobs, protected information, etc. I don't plan on doing any of that here. Even though y'all know I'm a manager for the feds and I work really hard in some difficult situations, this blog isn't gonna be all like "then Mike told Jim that Nancy did this, and she got written up because of this, etc.", it will be more limited to general observations that won't put anyone up shit creek without a paddle.

There are also policies about writing about specific goings-on without authorization. That is why I'm not writing about specifics. The stuff I write could impact anyone in any workplace.

My goal here is to relieve some stress, find some kindred spirits, educate some people and share a few laughs in the process. This blog will not be used to slag on individual people or specific situations.

Anyways, on with today's comment:

Floating in this cosmic jacuzzi
we are like frogs oblivious
to the water starting to boil
No one flinches, we all float face down...

Incubus, "Warning"

There always seems to be a metaphor that gathers steam in pop culture at any one given point in time. The boiling frogs scenario seems to cover that right now. The general idea is that if you put a frog in room temperature water, and slowly start to boil it, the frog won't notice the water getting gradually hotter until BAM!, poached frog's legs.

It seems like as humans, we put ourselves through the same experiment on a near daily basis. At work, we always have to do a bit more, at home, the house always has to be a bit cleaner, the lawn a little greener, the car a little newer, the kids a bit smarter, and we don't seem to realize that not only are we stewing in the pot and the water's getting hotter, but we're the ones turning up the temperature on ourselves. Until one day, the water gets too hot and you're too weak to get out of the pot to turn off the element.

Old man sits at his desk
Waiting for retirement
Let himself over you
The question what to do is never there
The workload grows

I’m always wishing, I’m always wishing too late
For things to come my way
It always ends up the same
Count your blessings
I must be missing, I must be missing the point
Your signal fades away and all I’m left with is noise
Count your blessings on one hand

So wait up I’m not sleeping alone again tonight
There’s so much to dream about, there must be more to my life

Poor little tin man, still swinging his axe
Even though his joints are clogged with rust

My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away
Safe in monotony, so safe, day after day
Count your blessings
My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away
Cold wind blows off the lake and I know for sure that its too late
Count your blessings on one hand

So wait up I’m not sleeping alone again tonight
There’s so much to dream about, there must be more to my life

Can’t help but feel betrayed, punch the clock every single day
There’s no royalty and no remorse
You spoke for present check
That makes me fucking sick
He sick of, he can’t say no

Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh

So wait up I’m not sleeping alone again tonight
There’s so much to dream about, there must be more to my life
So wait up
So wait up I’m not sleeping alone again tonight
Between the light and shallow waves is where I’m going to die
Wait up for me
Wait up for me
Wait up for me

Alexisonfire, "Boiled Frogs"

Is that what happened to the generations before us, did they burn themselves out and not even realize it?

Now, I'm more resistant to stress than most. For the record, I already experienced what psychologists call a "burn-out", at about 13 years old. Through that experience, I learned what I need to do to keep things in perspective and avoid a reoccurrence. I push myself very hard in work and in life, because I'm the kind of person that likes to explore my limits. I strongly believe that anything I can do, I can do better, but that kind of inner drive is starting to take its toll.

I first noticed it a few weeks ago, when I was flipping through old photo albums, and came across a picture of my dad, at my age. Now, he didn't have it easy himself, and worked some pretty high-pressure jobs, but in that picture, he probably looked 5-7 years younger than I do now.

So, as of yesterday, I hit the release valve. My resume has been posted in various places, and even if I never leave this job (which I honestly love), just the fact that I'm giving myself permission to consider doing something else is giving me a sort of feeling of relief, like I'm only there as long as I want to be.

So, as I drive into work later today on a Sunday afternoon for about 6 hours of unpaid overtime, I remind myself, I'm doing this because I *want* to do it. The water's getting hotter, but I haven't started to boil yet.

Habaneros and Testosterone Don't Mix (Post-Uni)

2006-07-25T18:53:00.000-04:00

Jeebus, what a horrible, long day. The days where you think you do everything right and everything turns to crap before your eyes are tough ones to take. I'm still sorting through the issues that were left to wait for me until I got back from my holidays. And of course, it's all time-sensitive stuff, so the time to satisfy clients is gone and past, I'm in strict damage control mode now. Problem is that you can't really fire someone for incompetence in government. But that's a topic for another day.

Today, to brighten the mood, the story is about something a little less depressing, the very first day I set out on my own.

After university, with not a penny to my name (literally, my last $13.17 paid for lunch for me and my dad on the way home from school), I moved back in with my parents. But, there wasn't a job to be had in my hometown, let alone a decent one.

So I packed up a suitcase full of clothes, a blanket, a pillow and my guitar, and went to the big city (Toronto), to try and bring in some cash.

I had a few friends there who were finishing up their college degrees, and they were more than happy to have me crash on their couch, as it was one more drinking buddy and one more chequebook paying rent.

Apparently, one of my buddies had bought a bagful of habanero peppers a few days prior. Habanero peppers, in case you were born yesterday, are the hottest peppers known to man. They're about the size of a golf ball, and they pack some ridiculous heat. The night before, they had made pasta sauce and dropped in about 5 full habaneros, and could hardly even get close enough to the pot to throw it out.

Then, as you can well imagine with an apartment full of guys, eating habanero peppers became an extreme sport. The peppers were sliced paper thin, and it was a contest to see who could eat the most slices.

Unbeknownst to me, everyone in the apartment pretty much tied at one slice. Then I walked in the door, fresh from the three-hour car-trip, suitcase in one hand, guitar in the other. I never even put down the suitcase before my buddy comes in and says "dude, I dare you to eat one of these".

"What is it?"

"It's a habanero pepper."

"Aren't those things really hot?"

"Yeah, but they're not that bad, go ahead, try one."

"I don't know..."

"Come on man, we all did it. Think of it as your initiation to the apartment."

"Well, if you put it that way..."

So now, it's all about my manhood. I figured I'd down a few of them and be in pain for a while, and that would be that. The key, I thought, would be just to not taste it on the way down.

Ever seen that Simpsons episode with the chili cookoff? Where Homer eats the insanity pepper laced-chili (The merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango! Grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.)? That's where I got the idea...well...I don't have a bunch of wax to pour in my mouth, but as long as the peppers don't hit my tongue, I'll be fine...

So, I open wide and drop the pepper slice right onto the back of my throat and swallow. And grab another slice, and another one, and two more after that. All my buddies, who were laughing and carrying on moments prior, are now staring in shock, amazement, and more than a little concern.

Needless to say, I'm feeling quite proud of myself. I might be overeducated and unemployed, but at least I'm now unequivocably the alpha male of this bachelor pad. Then, as I assumed, the pain kicked in. Of course, my mistake was that I thought this pain would be limited to a mild-to-moderate discomfort, nothing a shot of Pepto Bismol wouldn't be able to fix. What I didn't expect, was not being able to see or breathe, with the feeling like someone was stabbing me in the stomach with a knife dipped in acid and lit on fire. I felt so sick. On top of it, I was so stunned that, you know guys, when you get squared in the balls just perfectly, and your abdomen hurts and you feel like you're going to throw up? Well, that's how I felt. In addition to someone setting me on fire.

So my buddies rush in...a bag of milk and half a loaf of bread later, and it's still getting worse. I'm not even trying to be a man anymore, moaning and groaning and whimpering in agony. As a last resort, I shotgun four beers and down a few shots of vodka, praying to God to just let me pass out. Which I finally did after three hours of mind-numbing agony. I woke up in a pool of my own sweat - my pjs and sheets were so drenched I could wring them out - downed about two litres of water, and fell asleep again. My diet was limited to peanut butter and crackers for three days, and I couldn't stop sweating for almost a week.

But dammit, I won.

The Generation War: My Money's on the Last Ones Living

2006-07-24T19:02:00.000-04:00

It's funny, I intended on writing about this today anyway, then I saw something happen that matched my subject perfectly. Things will go well if I get those coincidences every day...maybe tomorrow I'll write about how my wife should let me go for a threesome... ;)

This is a story of two generations, boiled down to two people:

Employee #1 has been with the organization about 25 years. He's happy to do no more than what is expected of him. And barely that. But, he knows exactly how much to give you in order to stay out of the doghouse. Doesn't volunteer on special projects, doesn't like doing things that stray the least bit from his regular duties. He talks to the other workers about how he can't stand the new ways of doing things, and threatens to leave constantly, but everyone knows he never will. We'll see his skeleton sitting at his pc before he ever leaves.

Employee #2 has been with the organization about 4 years. She recently returned from study leave, and will be quitting in about three months to pursue another career. Since I was assigned to this unit after she left for her study leave, today was the first day that I was officially her manager. So I asked her, what made you so unhappy that you felt you had to leave? Is there something we could have done differently? And she answers "it's not that I wasn't happy here, I just thought I could be happier someplace else". Hmmmmm. Can't argue with that. I've often pondered the same thing, so I couldn't really hold it against her.

In essence, these are the two major cohorts in today's workplace: the Boomers and Gen Y. The martyrs and the dreamers. With Gen X, God love'em, stuck as the weirdos in the middle.

The problem is, the Gen Yers don't understand why the unhappy old farts don't just quit, or why they don't want to stop doing things their way. And the Boomers don't understand why the Gen Yers don't seem to have any idea that work isn't supposed to be fun, and you have to put in your time to get ahead.

What compounds things is that more often than not, managers are boomers themselves, and tend to identify more readily with members of their own cohort. My problem, as a young manager, is the opposite. But, to all you Gen Yers out there, I've had the opportunity to infiltrate the Boomer camp, and made some really interesting discoveries, which I will share, in order to allow us Gen Yers to get ahead.

So, in a nutshell, this is how Gen Yers should try to work with our more experienced (rule 1: never say "older") colleagues:

Rule 2: Boomers will NOT meet you halfway. They have the experience, they have the power, they know how things work, and they will not hesitate to constantly remind you of this fact, while mixing in such lovely commentary, such as "if you were here in the 80s, you would have known that..." or "why should I have to adapt to computers? I've been here longer than they have". Or the classic line in the sand: "I've been doing this job longer than you've been alive."
How to overcome this? Hang on a Boomer's every word, as if they were Moses descending from the mount with the 10 Commandments in hand. Once you get around their disdain for you, they actually have some useful information.

Rule 3: Let the Boomers have the last word. They'll have it anyway, whether you want them to or not. Just keep in mind that you'll be around longer than they will, so you'll have the last word of all.

Rule 4: Let the Boomers have the credit. During team projects and exercises, be content to sit and learn from your colleagues. If you have a suggestion to make, make it briefly, but don't press the issue if it isn't accepted. Often, a Boomer will magically come up with the same idea minutes, hours, days or months later, once your poignant comment has seeped into their subconscious. If the project is a success, defer all credit to your team leader. He will appreciate the fact that you "know your role" and see you as less of a threat to his modus operandi, which is to survive long enough for an undiscounted pension. Once this relationship is established, he will be more willing to open up and share, and also slightly more willing to hear your take on things. A sign of this willingness is when he makes statements like "I thought all you young people didn't want to listen to your elders and do everything your way".

Rule 5: Even if you know it all (I'm not ruling out that possibility), act like you don't. Boomers don't take well to hearing how the world works from a 26 year-old MBA. And can you blame them? Every young whippersnapper that comes along is a reminder of their missed opportunities, of how much they could have done if they had cared enough, if they hadn't had that fourth child, if they had moved to the city younger, etc. As an aside, MBAs come across, for the most part, as pompous asses, and no one likes a pompous ass on the job. I have to side with the Boomers on this one.
So, how to let Boomers see things your way, without telling them? Boomers like nothing more than to figure things out on their own. They have this knack of putting two and two together and thinking they've discovered Einstein's Theory of Relativity. So, present them with the information in a clear and logical manner (this will also help you organize your thoughts for things like business cases), and let THEM figure it out. Of course, present the information in exactly the right way for them to come to YOUR conclusion.

Rule 6: Take the high road. Remember, they're the ones on the top of the hill. They'll get the benefit of the doubt. Make sure you keep your nose clean. And never, ever, EVER, kick anyone while they're down. Actually, use this rule for interacting with everyone.

Basically, just remember, they've got the authority for now, but you're the ones being left to pick up the tab. The sooner you can work with the Boomers without coming to loggerheads with them, the more you'll be able to learn from them, and the more damage you'll be able to mitigate while they're still there.

Hello and Welcome!

2006-07-23T21:10:00.000-04:00

Well, it's Sunday night, and I figured I'd give a bit of context to my latest creation, my online diary.

I've been on holidays for most of the last month, celebrating the birth of my first child, Brandon William. Isn't he a cutie?

Anyway, he is indirectly the reason why I'm starting up this blog. You see, with all the added responsibility of being a parent, in a new city, with a new job, it seems that I don't have all the same outlets to relieve my stress that I used to. So, consider this diary my stress release from all the crap I have to put up with, mostly having to do with my work.

So, why all the stress? To get you caught up, here's the story so far:

Kobe Bryant once referred to himself as a "talented overachiever". I think that best describes me, as well. I grew up as a middle-class kid in a middle-class household, but I always thought my parents could have done better for themselves if they worked at it. Then, my mom got diagnosed with MS and passed away after a long battle. Because my university tuition (rightfully) went to her medical treatment at the time, I learned an old-school work ethic and put myself through 4 years of university working up to 3 jobs at once with nary a cent of debt.

Having graduated from university, I set out to find a job in my profession. It wasn't easy, and I had to work a year's worth of dead end jobs before I found my way in to the federal government. After a while, I finally started working in my profession. But soon thereafter, it wasn't enough. I had worked my whole life to get to where no one told me I could go. But I had gotten there at the age of 26...so now what to do?

So, I now manage a team of professionals. It's interesting managing people twice your age, and it creates a particular set of problems, but I manage.

So that's basically it. I'll provide more of my story as the days and months go by, and on slow days, I'll intersperse some anecdotes from my youth, specifically those which led to me becoming the person I am now. I guess the point of this, as well as relieving my stress, is to hopefully run into some people who might have stumbled into the same demographic crevasse in their workplaces. And of course, there will certainly be many stories about little Brandon too!