Hamilton

I live in Hamilton, Ontario and recently an issue came up that the municipality felt it had to deal with immediately. For those of you who are not familiar with Hamilton, we have an expressway that travels east-west then north-south that is basically around the southern and eastern perimeter of the city. Anyways, the expressway has 2 lanes traveling in each direction that are separated by a sodded section.

The grass in this section grows a few feet high each year and no one really thinks anything of it. Well this year, after increasing property taxes for the umpteenth time, and voting on it in council, they decided that they have extra money to throw around and decided to cut said grass and make it an additional maintenance issue for the city. Last winter we went over our snow moving budget and used up some of this years budget just so we had clean roads to drive on. It’s funny how when the sun comes out, people forget how bad our winters can get here. In all fairness I will stick up for our Mayor Fred Eisenberger has he thought this was a stupid idea as well.

I don’t know why I am surprised by this, this City is one of the worst cities to deal with. Their logic is so screwed up. I have my run ins with their logic in trying to get a building permit and helping them budget capital repairs. I have dealt with other cities on similar issues and do get half the headaches I do with Hamilton. I may not agree with them, but I at least understand the logic.

The only thing worse than trying to get a permit is maybe the City Planning Division. These guys are such morons. They will re-build a road from gravel base on up to the top coat of asphalt one year, and then the following year they will cut up the brand new road with service cuts or with main sewer line upgrades. If you had half a brain, you would think that you would do all that work at once. First of all you are ruining brand new road way, and second, you are not pissing off the same people that use the road for back to back summers.

Don’t get me wrong here, I love Hamilton and I always defend it to those who put it down, but sometimes, they really do make it difficult.

Commercials!!

I have been really disappointed in commercials these days. Most of the commercials these days suck, and I mean SUCK. It’s like they don’t even try anymore.

The main commercial that has pissed me off, is the stupid KIA commercial. If you admit to liking this commercial, I will find you and I will hurt you. It is the shittiest commercial I have ever seen. If I was ever going to buy a KIA, there is no way in hell, I would do it now. Honourable mention however goes to the Swiss Chalet commercial, the one with the ‘kick’. WTF, if I was to kick my dad like that he would have beat my ass so bad, public or not. Honourable mention also goes to the stupid Yellow Pages commercials and every Tim Horton’s commercial ever made.

Things maybe turning around though, a few months ago, Shreddies came out with a great marketing campaign: New Diamond Shreddies. That was fantastic! And now recently, I saw a KFC Commercial for some wrap that cost $1.79. And the dude finishes his wrap and the price thing goes home with him, he plays soccer with it, rough-houses in the park with it, skips along the street with it. Me Likie!

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

I saw this movie last night. As a Palestinian Muslim I guess I should have been offended by this movie but I thought it was hilarious. If you are a Palestinian or even a Jew and have a sense of humour about your own kind, definitely go see this movie. It’s no Oscar or anything, but still a good time.

The Hook Up – Part Three

This guy is officially useless.  I tried.  God knows I tried because well if I didn’t, my career would have taken a hit already.

In our firm, we are required to fill out time sheets to show how our activities and how much time we are spending on that particular activity for a given project.  The goal for the the firm, obviously is for every employee to be complete chargeable to a client for an entire 40 hour week.  Thankfully, I have one of the highest chargeable percentages in the company.  The only time when I am not chargeable is when I am preparing a proposal for potential work, and that goes under sales, which the company doesn’t mind, especially if we get awarded the project.

The other day he was talking to me (notice how I said he was talking to me, not we were having a conversation) and says this was a good week for me, I almost had 50% of time chargeable.  He has been with the company for some time now but he should have beyond the 50% marker months ago.  Not that I should really be surprised or anything, he knows nothing and spends half the day chatting with this other tub of shit we have in our department. These two were made for other.  This tub of shit also is also uneducated and knows nothing, including personal hygiene.  I love the summer, just not around him.  SOAP and WATER!!  Or at least deodorant.  This tub of shit quit the firm a little while ago because he thought he was too good for it.  He went to work somewhere else, he got canned after 10 days.  10 days.  What does our company do, hire him back!!

While I am busting my ass meeting deadlines, keeping clients happy and such, these two play solitaire on the PC all day.  The tub of shit even has the guts to stay late because he’s so busy and then charge overtime.  Overtime!!  Today I walked by the new guy’s cubicle and noticed he was on the phone and no solitaire on the screen.  I thought to myself finally.  NOPES!!  He was talking to a Ford dealership trying to get a good deal on a trade in.  Fuck me.

Our department should be the most profitable in the firm, but we are so inefficient its ridiculous, as noted above.  Our reputation is horrendous.  On top of that, we had an outside consultant come in and assess our middle managers.  Each manager had to evaluate the biggest strength and weakness of each of the departments in our office including their own.

The brainiac middle managers left the meeting with everything still written in the white board in the board room.  This is how I know all of this information.  The meeting was supposed to be confidential, but when you have moron managers like that, well hey.  So I read the comments for our department.  There were as follows:

• unmotivated
• inefficient
• lazy
• uneducated
• missed deadlines

I was like durrrr, you need an outside consultant to tell you that.  Just open your eyes!  And don’t forget some of those points even came from our own manager.  Ya, you wanna correct that, STOP HIRING YOUR FUCKING UNEDUCATED DRINKING BUDDIES AND GET RID OF THE DEAD FUCKING WEIGHT!!!

I’m not that pathetic.

In my last post I talked about my latest encounter with the opposite sex. This is a continuation of that story.

After that episode I needed time to recoup. I decided to to just screw it with women for now and go back to having a one track mind on my career. To be honest, I was bumming out hard after that. I know we didn’t know each other and to be honest with you, I didn’t really feel the feeling that I was told you would get when you meet the girl you were meant to be with, but it was the circumstances more than anything that bothered me. So I put it behind me. Aside from one or two things in my life I have gotten quite good at putting things behind me and moving on. I mean even the tumour doesn’t bother me.

So after putting this thing behind me and moving on, we get a call from the girl’s best friend, the one that was grilling me the last time. At first I didn’t even who she was. I met her for like 15 minutes! She called to apologize for what happened with the other girl and then actually had the guts to suggest another girl for me to see. She says, “I think this girl would be PERFECT for you!”. We met for 15 minutes. What the hell do you know about me to say that some girl would be PERFECT for me. You’re a complete stranger to me and you think I’m gonna take your advice on some broad I have never met before. Oh, and here’s the best part, she’s a Muslim like me and drinks. I found that out because the friend tells me that you know, she’s cool like us, she only drinks socially. For the first time in my life I actually hung up the phone on someone. Click.

Ever since I decided that I want to move on with my life, meet someone and fall for her. Everyone seems to think they know me and who I am looking for. My family tried that once and it didn’t work out at all and I ended up losing big time. They learned their lesson and now leave me alone. I wish everyone else would too.

Hanging up that phone on her felt so good, that at times, I wish the world was a phone I could hang up on people that think they know me and try to fix me up. Like I said, I’m not talking about my family here, I’m talking about co-workers or even better friends of friends! I’m telling you, some days, just click.

How come people suck sometimes?

Two weeks ago my aunt set me up with a girl as a potential mate. I wasn’t really opposed to it as I think I am at that stage in my life where I would really like to find and get to know someone with the intent for marriage. I thought I met that person a couple of months ago, but it turns out, it wasn’t meant to be.

It has taken me a while to get over her, but I think I have now and wanting to meet this new girl was definitely a sign of that as I have turned down others that my parents have wanted me to meet to help me get over her. The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff really got it right when they said “Parents just Don’t Understand”.

Anyways, so I meet this girl two weeks ago and things went well. Both families sat in the living room, drank tea had cake, blah blah blah. She gets up and leaves the room, followed by, what I thought was her sister and then her brother. A few minutes later, they called me to follow and we sat outside on the patio. I soon found out that the girl that was with us, was her best friend, not her sister. I was like great, as if it isn’t uncomfortable enough, I’ve got to deal with the best friend too. The brother I can handle, he’s a dude, they are much easier to handle, but the best friend takes care. The brother was simple. He’s 21 years old and its the basketball playoffs with EURO2008 upcoming. So he was easy. The best friend however grilled me like you wouldn’t believe. It was a job interview. For the first 15 minutes, I didn’t even get the opportunity to speak with the actual girl, it was all the best friend, and this was after the brother left!

Finally, the best friend leaves and we are left alone to talk to each other. I was under the impression that she knew that I had/have a brain tumour. My moms told her mom and I know that for sure, because I was there when she called her. Apparently the message did not get relayed to her. I have to admit, as awkward as it was before, it got 1000 times worse. So I explained the situation to her and she seemed ok with it. Thankfully God was kind to me when he placed the tumour in my brain. The tumour is not something I’m going to die FROM, but likely die WITH.

The evening ended about an hour later and she asked me well, what do you think? I was like well, we’ve only just met, but you know, you seem cool and I think I’d like to get to know you more. I then followed with, “How about you. I was surprised you didn’t know about the tumour, your mother knew.” She said she had no problem with the tumour and that she would talk to her family about visiting our house the following weekend. I was like sweet.

So this past Wenesday we hear from them, I’m assuming it’s to set up their visit for this past weekend. NOPES!! It turns out her father does not approve of me. Does not approve of ME. I was blown away. Stunned! I was like umm ok, why not. It turns out its not me thats not good enough, it’s the tumour.

I was diagnosed over a year ago and this was the first time, ever, that I actually felt like I had something wrong with me. I mean who is this guy. Who does he think he is? He has no idea about my condition or anything. So mama talked to this girl’s mom to ask what the hell was going on, how come she didn’t tell anyone about the tumour. Apparently, the mom forgot to tell the father and purposely did not tell the daughter for 2 reasons, 1 she didn’t want her daughter to prejudge, which I appreciate, and 2, she wanted to see how forthcoming/honest I would be about the issue. The thing that kills me is that this the purpose of us meeting was for our future, as in our happiness, not theirs, OURS, and she didn’t have a problem with the tumour but because her dad, some guy that doesn’t even know me or know anything about my condition is making the decision. The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff really got it right when they said “Parents just Don’t Understand”.