at 5.30am my mother woke me with a message; her response to mine was that she'd thought my phone would be set to night mode. as i've unfortunately had to explain to a number of people throughout the years, my phone has no "night mode" because i would absolutely hate to miss anything urgent because i was doing something as mundane as sleeping.
serendipity? shortly after i received a burst of sms'es informing me of the bus bombing in tel aviv from a scared pg.
here's the thing that bothers me in particular about wednesday: israel was preparing to move in to gaza to deal with hamas, whose ongoing rocketing has been tolerated for far too long.
so i'm really impressed with israel's leadership... the day of a bombing they agree to a ceasefire and then don't say a word about the rocket attacks afterwards? if that doesn't give the hamas a sense of victory and incentive to keep on going, i'll eat my hat. witness their post-9/11-style celebrations afterwards.
could it be, perhaps, that anything decisive that could relax a scared nation (israel) might be considered a threat to the political positions of those in charge?
not that i think that netanyahu et al have much to worry about, they'll keep their hands on the reigns for a while longer. it scares me that the world will see hamas legitimacy in this, and then both israel and the palestinians will be in for an ugly ride.
i was leaving the hot, packed early rush-hour metro car, wearing my jacket, when i noticed the packet on the floor of the doorway being trodden on by other now ex-passengers. the israeli moment of hesitation passed - could it be a bomb? - and i picked it up and stepped out, holding it up and looking askance at anyone in the immediate area. only one person responded, negatively, and so i found a bench and placed it there. i continued on my way, then stopped when mrs negative indicated that it might belong to somebody still on board.
good idea! so i walked up to the door, looked inside at nobody looking at me, and then realized that i should be waving the packet in question if i was going to get anyone's attention. only by the time i returned with the packet the door closed on me and the train pulled out.
awkward.
[private note about stressing and money and sitting comfortably in three degree weather with the window open, thinking what a beautiful day it was, and showing off by counting and talking at the same time]
i had one thing that i needed to do on wednesday, and i spent all day trying to do it right. after much struggling i realized that the way it's currently implemented isn't subject to any particular rule-set. the "wrong" fix took all of two minutes, and the success was totally unsatisfying in light of the wasted day.
i ate dinner at my aunt's, which was delicious, and i think i upset my uncle a little after he was really rude to me. afterwards, my aunt and i discussed maturity and stress and perspective for the longest time, then my cousin drove me home. he's such an aggressive driver that we had quite the argument on the way; i find it impossible to reconcile the ideas that he's really not a bad guy with him seeming to take pride in behaving like an asshole.
there was still no modem, nor sign of a modem, when i returned home. and thursday was supposed to be internet day.
i woke up on pg's side of the bed, with my neck stiff and sore because her pillow isn't good for me at all. fortunately i managed to correct it before getting up.
for the second time, i began my day with tabata. it does feel good, although i stretched during the cool-down period and i almost pulled a muscle in my leg :(
when we signed up two weeks before, we'd done so under my name and with pg's card. however, the form we'd received was for mr. pg, which seemed suspect. the support agent informed me that she was not at liberty to talk with me as my name did not appear on the account. when i asked to speak to a manager, i was informed that that would be impossible as my name does not appear on the account. so - a rock and a hard place: no pg, no authority, nothing to be done.
shocked and angry, i approached the secretary and asked her if she had any ideas. she sure did: she picked up the phone and became pg for the day! she gave the agent hell, i got pg on skype at the same time so that we could verify her details, and the three of us convinced the agent to let me do as i please.
the first item on the agenda was figuring out what was going on. as it happened, our appointment for installation was fictitious and upon closer inspection it appeared that the idiot who sold us the service had not only grossly misinformed us, but when he'd realized (apparently at least a week and a half later) that it wasn't okay to have a mismatched account name and card holder he manually transferred the account to pg, *forgetting* to inform us and automatically cancelling our installation.
thank goodness these idiots record all their calls. the agent listened to my previous call, then her superiors did too, and they were all (apparently) horrified and apologetic. and would i please bear with them? the internet would be installed in just another two short weeks.
seriously?! it would take ages to cancel everything, but i semi-patiently held the line and handled callbacks and eventually it was all done, and they were *so* sorry to see me go and *so* hoped that we'd give them another chance. for a company so keen to keep subscribers, they're certainly going about it ass-about-face.
the secretary called bell, told them to hook me up with a discount, and within five minutes the guy had offered me a sweet deal and arranged for installation two days later.
@#!$.
i returned home really late, too tired to do anything or even eat decently. i overcompensated for the lack of effort (toast, peanut butter and tofurkey: i won't be buying any more tofurkey) by eating more than i needed to.
i woke up early, had a slow morning and ended it with a bad shave*, which would have discoloured my morning if i hadn't walked into the office and been turned into a superhero. i've been told a couple of times that the biggest reason the company wants to employ me is because i speak both tech and business fluently. i justified their faith** in me when i was asked by the boss for my opinion on a topic, and after explaining why the question was badly expressed discovered a serious flaw in the interaction between the company's business model and its core product. the cfo was called in, and he's a wealth of interesting and useful information, and i laid out their options and advised them to put everything on hold until the board makes a call with more than miscommunication to work with.
all that before my first cup of coffee.
* i accidentally clipped too much of my moustache, it looks terrible but i don't want to shave off the whole beard because of it :S
** please, work permit, hurry up and get sorted out already so that i can get to work!
she reminds me of something...
thought for the evening: how can nine degrees feel so warm?
i did some shopping, made lentil salad and watched some tiger and bunny. my mom called to talk, and then i took a pre-party nap. i was woken just as i entered that level of sleep from which being aroused doesn't change your state - getting up was tough.
my cousin came over to pick me up and ensure that i wasn't violating some weird dress-code he made up. thank goodness his friend, neuroscientist, was there to balance things out! i told them later that i don't want to go to any party where the likes of me, style-wise, aren't welcome.
there was something eerie about meeting neuroscientist. he's one of my cousin's best friends, he's smart and interesting and educated and really fun to talk to. we have some really odd things in common and my cousin was freaked out by our conversation for most of the night. the talk remained on a high level in spite of the quantity of alcohol i was plied with; i definitely had too many beers in that bar in the village that was playing the quebec take on country music and had strange toilets.
we must have been in that bar a long time, because by the time we walked into the club it was almost 3am. we'd quaffed energy drinks on the way in, and i'd shovelled down a delicious salt-n-something slab of chocolate while we stood outside and i shivered because i wasn't wearing a sweater underneath my jacket. that plus the music would have been all i needed.
to describe the evening in short: montreal is partying like it's 1997, only minimal isn't quite as crazy as uplifting and there was a higher ratio of guys. but when the music was good (most of the time) it was good, and when it was great (a few songs here and there) it was really awesome.
internet. hooray! i spent the next hour or so listening to mutha, chatting with k-twang and pg and dispelling greatly exaggerated rumours of my planned wedding date.
it snowed beautifully this morning; the real thing is due to start this week. i'm very excited ^_^
my aunt picked me up and took me to the bank, where we opened an account without much fuss. it's an important step and it's finally done.
what i can't figure out is how anybody can immigrate to this country without friends or family. it's nigh impossible to get a job without being here, and you have to have means to stick around until you can get a work permit, and without a social insurance number you're pretty much incapable of doing anything for yourself. something's not quite right with this...
we went shopping (there's a loblaws close to our apartment, and it's got an israeli aisle so we can get non-dairy versions of things we like), and then i spoke to pg for a while, and then i passed out. i didn't sleep for long because my feet hurt, so i spent the rest of the afternoon / evening slowly and steadily doing things. that's as vague as it sounds, some of the things were on my to-do list and some were just because i felt like it.
this has taken me forever to post. i'm going to bed now.
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