reality checking

after dinner last night, my uncle asked me a very big question: "why do you want to come here?"

he meant quebec, as opposed to anywhere else in canada, and he proceeded to make a very strong case for "going west". he's very one-sided and pessimistic, though, and i'm sure it's not all as bad as he described it. still, much food for thought and since then i've very seriously thought about the other side of this very, very large country.

not that it really matters. in the meantime i'm going to compile a list of recruiters and employers to contact and on monday i'll get busy ringing them.

after an episode with the dog (he came trotting downstairs to pee, he's seriously in trouble at the moment) my aunt took me and pg downtown this morning to sort out my phone. it took far longer to jailbreak and unlock my phone than anticipated, but as soon as he said he was done i tested my iphone with a random sim of his and it worked just fine.

satisfied, i parted with my $25 and we went to the fido store. the queues for the iphone 5 were surprisingly long, considering the major ios 6 map fail. really? in spite of apple's biggest qa failure to date people are still camping out to get the latest phone before a patch is released? i don't get it.

as we weren't interested in obtaining a new model, we got to skip the line and were treated to first-world class service. not only were the guys at fido all super-helpful, but the contract i've taken is unbelievably good: 500mb 3g, not amazing. free international sms'es and completely unlimited outgoing calls to anywhere in canada?! holy shit!

i felt absolutely awful physically - pg and i are both exhausted but there were a few minutes during which i felt *sick* (i'm sure you know what i mean). then it passed, and we were on our way home with a new sim and an assurance that it would be activated within the next half hour to an hour. very soon, whatever that means.

well, we arrived home, ate, i sorted out my lost apps (at least that wasn't a mission; i kinda assumed that backing up and restoring an iphone would include those), and pg and i went to sleep for a while. i woke up a couple of hours later, it's now more than five hours and my phone still says "no service". i manually select the carrier (it's the correct one) and every time i get the message "restricted network" (although it connects) and my status is "sim not provisioned".

the latter seems to indicate that the fido network is simply overloaded due to the immense number of new phone activations (i have stupendous timing), but my conscience is overshadowed by the possibility that the network unlocking was unsuccessful, and that now that i've had it done (albeit unsuccessfully) i have given up the rights to full assistance from apple.

---speaking of conscience: yom kippur is coming up soon and with it pg's primary reason for not wanting to stay with my relatives. she is entirely disinterested in jewish rites, and my aunt and uncle might be okay with us not attending synagogue but they would be very uncomfortable with the idea of us not fasting.

i hear tuvye singing about tradition.

on a similar note, i am very conscious of the fact that k-twang totally burned bridges with these people: the sense that he and his girl took advantage of their hosts and were ungrateful is overwhelming, and while i was never ungrateful to begin with i can't help but feel like i'm somewhat in his shadow. fasting aside, this arrangement pg and i have is absolutely fantastic and i can't shake the feeling that small gifts and putting up with my uncle's inappropriate sense of humour and outrageous bigotry is less than inadequate compensation. i can only hope to do these people proud.

which means that i really, somehow, need to get organized with a work sponsor. even if we don't end up in this province, a work permit anywhere will at least afford me the ability to earn decently, live (temporarily) a better quality of life and be close enough to the rest of the country to be able to interview for the real deal. whatever that may be.

...

pg's biggest issue at the moment is not the quebecoi attitude to french and anglophones. it's the size and presence of the muslim community. or arab community. everyone's a little bit racist, sure, but while i'm fairly comfortable with all these people over here - as opposed to in the middle east - i can totally understand her desire to see other bits of the country. the ottowa protocol unfortunately doesn't stop the french and the arabs from hating jews, and there are, as everywhere, less of us than them.