TriumphAnt

Now that the stories of our recent wonderful encounter with the sublime (Hikana) are past, it’s time once again to turn to the ridiculous.

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Bits and Pieces

I’m way too Canadian. So I’ve decided that in future, if I’m standing in the aisle of a large hardware store and an employee is halfway through answering a question I’ve just asked, and he interrupts his answer to me because he chooses instead to respond to the jarring electronic buzz of the cellphone clipped to his belt, instead of waiting passively and patiently (and most Canadianly) for him to conclude his interruption, I am just going to turn and walk away.

If I’m feeling especially ticked, I may even throw, “You might remember next time that in this store, you are overhead; I am profit!” back over my departing shoulders. That way, even if he is responding to some misguided higher-ups’ dictum that a cellphone call should take precedence over an in-store customer, maybe he will carry the message back to those same higher-ups that they might want to rethink that policy.

Just because a means of communication is immediate doesn’t instill upon it automatic urgency. That’s my new motto – for today, anyway.

And likewise, if I – with purchase in hand – approach a cash register at which the cashier is chatting on the phone, and if an interval any longer than 15 seconds transpires between the time he or she sees me, and the end – or suspension – of the phone conversation in order to ring through my purchase, then at second #16 I will leave my product on the counter and walk out the door. Hopefully, it will be a large and expensive custom cut of meat, the loss of which sale will be compounded by the inconvenience of the need to (a) get it back swiftly into refrigeration at the meat counter, and (b) try to find another customer who wants the same large joint at the same price before its best-before date is reached.

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Mail! We got mail!

Some might recall when, a few posts ago, I ended the saga of our delightful experience with Hikana’s cooking with a plaintive query, “So, does anyone have any ideas on what to do with five leftover bags of ‘foul-smelling’ ‘noxious weed’?” Well, friend Ian took all of about ten seconds to remind me that I live in a city with three universities (two secular and one theological) and a large community college. How long would it possibly take, he mused, to elicit a reply to a posted bulletin board notice in a post-secondary setting, offering bags of “noxious weed” for sale?

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The media rumour mill is happily churning away with news that the public service union to which I belong, the powerfully-named Public Service Alliance of Canada (whose acronym yields the unfortunate image of the urinary equivalent of a colostomy bag – pee-sack) will soon be on a full-blown strike.

At the moment, both sides – the union being one and the Government of Canada being the other – are furiously posturing away in the press and over the airwaves. Because the present government is a minority, with at best a tenuous hold on power, and because they included “rein in public service spending” among their many campaign promises, the generally accepted belief among talking heads is that the Prime Minister pretty well has no choice but to appear tough and to ensure that the eventually agreed-upon settlement will at least make it appear like he’s fulfilling his campaign promise.

Add to this the fact that he also made lavishly expensive campaign promises to increase health care spending, and you have the basis for an especially cynical bit of speculation that the money to fulfill those commitments will come in part from the money saved by not having to pay over 100,000 striking public servants for a few days, possibly even weeks.

Rumour is all I have to go on, because absolutely nothing official in the way of communication has come to my desk. I am a public service tyro and actually have never experienced a direct encounter with a PSAC strike, except once as a snarly member of the general public whose access to my favourite morning coffee shop was denied because it was in an office tower populated almost entirely by government departments and, thus, blocked by a union picket line.

The prevailing view among my co-workers is that, unless declared an “essential service”, one should be on the line, rather than among those trying to cross it. In one conversation I was told bluntly (and by a manager) that one’s position during a strike is very closely monitored. If one challenges the union and elects to work, then at any time down the road when one might need union support – even years later – it simply will not be there.

The opposite possibility – that one day down the road one might need support from management in a challenge of some union-driven policy or decision – would yield no help whatsoever from management. This same manager informed me that management simply won’t confront a union that is capable of making its case by taking well over 100,000 people off the job to support it.

The fun starts Monday when the union is looking for a large show of employee support by holding a corn roast in the courtyard outside our building. As the promotional flyer gleefully announces, Reg Alcock, who heads the government’s bargaining unit (Treasury Board), is “in real hot water”. Get it? Get it? (It would have been funnier if Mr Alcock had been a retired “kernel”, but I guess you can’t have everything.)

So while I am willing to Google the lyrics to “Solidarity Forever” **, I will be damned if I will take part in any chant that begins, “Hey-Hey! Ho-Ho!”

I have my limits.

** (To the tune of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”):

Chorus: “Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong.

When the union's inspiration
through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater
anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker
than the feeble strength of one?
But the union makes us strong.

(Chorus)

They have taken untold millions
that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle
not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power;
gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.

(Chorus)

In our hands is placed a power
greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies,
magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world
from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong.

(Chorus)

This labor anthem was written in 1915 by IWW songwriter and union organizer Ralph Chaplin using the music of Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic. These song lyrics are those sung by Joe Glazer, Educational Director of the United Rubber Workers, from the recording Songs of Work and Freedom, (Washington Records WR460)”

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I have an exceedingly expensive umbrella I bought a few months ago. Its design is actually trademarked as the name, “Gustbuster”. (Googling that name will reveal some colourful variations of its trademarked features.) Essentially it’s a large golf umbrella made up of two rings of fabric. The large lower / outer ring is covered by a topping “cap”, and it’s the unsewn overlap between the two that makes it especially effective on a blustery day. Whenever a surge of air billows under the dome, instead of blowing the delicate ribbed structure inside out and bending it into a tribute to the sculpture of Joan Miró, the air spills out through the overlapping layers. And think of it! It only took humanity five millennia or so of official “civilization” to figure that out.

So today, as I walked across the bridge dividing Ontario from Quebec amid the blustery northern residue of Hurricane Frances, I observed several lesser rain shields being relentlessly yanked inside out by the hefty gusts of wind. I, meanwhile, strolled along, both hands gripping the post, revelling in the buffeting. My umbrella is a most manly dark olive and black (with a huge white, manly “Nike Golf” logo painted on it) and I felt positively riddled with testosterone as I rebuffed even the strongest of the wind’s efforts to invert my canopy.

More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!

Manly singing “Chim-Chim-Cheree”, and other themes from Mary Poppins, every step of the way.

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Hikana update

At 7:30 am Thursday morning (8:30 pm Thursday evening in Kyoto), the phone rang at home. For the record (family and friends take note), I have a heart-skip whenever the phone rings at 7:30 am at home, because so rarely does it happen, if it’s not a wrong number it’s almost always bad, if not outright alarming, news. So tensing myself, I picked it up and said a tentative “Hello”. After a couple distant electronic clicks, I heard a hesitating “Hello… Mike?”

It was Hikana, and even without the benefit of a shared electronic translator, we were able to communicate that: (a) for our part we were delighted to hear from her and very glad she had made it home; (b) for her part, her return had been delayed because a typhoon had swept over Japan not far from home (Google News reveals that Typhoon Songda has just “buffeted”, “hammered” and “lashed” the country, leaving – so far – 31 dead in its wake, half of whom were crewmen on a single ship grounded and sunk by the storm.)

She actually apologized for not being able to reach us until now.

We already knew that her house is being renovated to convert the ground floor into a café / restaurant to be run by her father. She told us that she is now living with her grandfather until that work is done. (We know December 24th is the milestone date, but we have not yet been able to ascertain whether that is the date on which construction is scheduled to be done, or the date the restaurant will officially open.)

We also agreed to communicate by “paper letter” until she can re-enable her access to e-mail. At least that’s what I think we agreed to. She’s still a little uncertain on verb tenses. Certainly, we’ll write and if I understood her correctly, she has already sent a note to us.

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Me update.

Friday after work I’m heading down to Oakville’s Glen Abbey golf course with my brother-in-law for the weekend to watch the likes of Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love aye-aye-aye (that’d be “the Third”) play the final two rounds of the Bell Canadian Open, courtesy of my father-in-law. (That is to say, “I’m watching” courtesy of my father-in-law, not “they’re playing” courtesy of my father-in-law.)

At least I assume I’ll be watching the final two rounds. Hurricane Frances’s northern effects seriously delayed Thursday’s opening round and, if she persists in drenching the Glen Abbey course, the worst case scenario will have them bumping all or part of the final round to Monday. (*cough* *cough* Oh, I feel a possible nasty weekend cold coming on. I might just have to phone in sick on Monday morning.)

I’ll add a report in my next update. (*cough*)

“Super-cali-fragilistic-expialidocious…”