Where are your manners?!

I’m feeling very irate on behalf of DD. She’s feeling quite livid on her own behalf. Why? Read on …

DD’s major assignment at school this semester is to research a career in which writing skills are used and to interview someone who actually works in that career. This is not necessarily a novelist or journalist, though it could be. There are many, many ways to earn a living that involve writing, and after much thought and deliberation, DD decided to research a public relations career.

What she learned excited her – particularly the fact that if a PR person works for a large company, it is very possible to earn scads of money. This really interests DD. So, she found a woman who runs her own PR company, contacted her, and arranged to meet her for an interview.

DD rehearsed all her questions many times, figured out the most efficient way to get to the appointed location on time, practiced with her digital recorder, carefully planned her clothes, hair and make-up (must look professional, you know!), and headed off early so that she wouldn’t be late. She texted me when she arrived, way too early.

Then she phoned me. In the middle of the morning. You don’t phone a teacher in the middle of the morning. We are busy teaching. So when the phone rings, we immediately assume that it’s an emergency and we answer in a panicky voice.

It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but DD was pissed. Her interviewee didn’t show up. All that preparation for nothing – not to mention a big project that revolved around this interview.

But DD did make contact with her MIA interviewee later, who was full of apologies. So sorry, she wailed, I forgot! One of the casualties of running your own business is that you don’t have secretaries making your appointments and keeping you organized any more, it seems. The woman offered to meet DD another day, but that didn’t work for DD. So, she offered to set DD up with another PR person who lives in our area. DD agreed, thinking that this would be the very least this PR person could do to make up for the missed meeting.

So, after a few emails and phone calls back and forth, DD ended up making an appointment to meet with this second PR person today. She even emailed her yesterday, reminding her of the time and place of their scheduled appointment, concluding with a friendly, “Please call or email me if something has changed and you’ll be late or won’t be able to make it after all.”

I was getting my nails done late this afternoon. My phone rang. Luckily, one hand was done so I could answer. It was DD.

“Mom,” she said flatly.

“Hi DD,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“I have a question.”

“Okay.”

“How long is it appropriate to wait for someone when they don’t show up on time to meet you?”

“This one didn’t show up either?!” I sputtered.

DD’s voice was cold. “No, she didn’t. I’ve already left her one message saying that she was fifteen minutes late and I was wondering if she was still on her way or had I gotten the day or time or something wrong.”

No, DD, you didn’t get anything wrong. You did everything right. It’s just too bad that some people can’t keep commitments to those who are counting on them. And five hours later, this woman still hasn’t had the courtesy to call DD back to explain her absence. I hope it’s not death or destruction, because that’s all that could possibly excuse this lack of manners. Possibly.

And DD still has to interview someone who makes their living by writing. Someone who will actually show up to the interview.

Who ya gonna call?

I was driving home from work today, minding my own business. I’d just turned onto a busy four-lane road that leads up a hill to a traffic light, where I then turn left down my own street and from there, into my driveway.

I heard the wail of a siren. (Apparently I didn’t have my stereo cranked too loudly this time. That has happened in the past.) I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the lights of an approaching ambulance.

I was in a line-up of four vehicles, in the left lane. I know you’re supposed to move to the right and stop while the ambulance passes, but there were more vehicles in the right lane, so I really had nowhere to go. I chose to stop right where I was.

The two cars ahead of me did the same thing. As the ambulance came closer, the three of us didn’t move. But the white SUV directly behind me did.

The joker in the driver’s seat decided to drift over into the right lane, regardless of the what the cars already there were doing. Fortunately, they had all pulled over to the far right, beside the curb, and were waiting motionless, just like it says to do in the driver’s manual.

But our friend in the white SUV had obviously never read a driver’s manual. This brainiac kept on driving, slowly, in the right lane, with the ambulance coming up fast to the rear. The SUV finally rolled to a stop pretty much in the middle of an intersection, and the ambulance threaded its way around it. The ambulance returned to the lane which the SUV was now blocking, and when it picked up speed, so did the SUV, right on its tail. In this manner, the SUV passed everybody who was correctly stopped either in the left lane or on the right side of the road.

The rest of us watched this twit zoom up the road, as if in pursuit of the ambulance. Then we started moving again up the hill, sedately.

I just don’t understand how some people think that their time is so much more valuable than that of paramedics in an ambulance trying to get to a medical emergency as quickly as possible. In a perfect world, these would be the people who one day have their own medical emergency, but the ambulance cannot get there quickly enough due to incompetent drivers blocking their progress.

But that probably won’t happen.

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Pinklea’s political rant (to be read at your own risk):

The paramedics here in BC are currently on strike and have been since April 1. The thing is, they are an essential service, and as such, the public hasn’t seen as much disruption to their life as might be expected if, for example, grocery store employees were on strike. People make that 911 call, and an ambulance still shows up. The government doesn’t seem to want to negotiate better ambulance service for all, as well as better working conditions and a fair wage increase for these hard-working people. I don’t know any of the details about what the paramedics are asking for or what the government is offering or even if they are going to mediation soon, but I do think that a six-month strike is ridiculous (hello, OC Transpo?). Surely there is some room for compromise before people start to die at an alarming rate. Surely, if they are deemed an essential service, the government can treat them like one, with updated and properly tested equipment, sane working hours and conditions, and wages that match the importance of their work.

There. Political statement over. Back to our regular programming.

On not losing it

I’ve been trying to lose some weight for a few weeks now. It’s not going well.

I appear to be stuck at 4 and a half pounds down. That’s it. In five weeks. I lost that the first week and now I am stuck.

I have upped my exercise. I have religiously counted every mouthful I consume. I have weighed myself as sparingly as possible so that I don’t obsess too much over the numbers. I have tried to keep busy enough that I don’t have time to graze all day, just to eat my normal meals and snacks. I have watched my portion size. I have drunk more water than a fish. I have practically cornered the market on fresh fruit, veggies, non-fat yogurt and other low-fat food options. I am eating healthily, dammit!

And I am stuck at 4 and a half pounds.

But I believe I have figured it out. There is one more thing I can do, and if this doesn’t work, I am just going to have to learn to live with the extra weight (not necessarily a bad thing, because I’m certainly not obese or anything. I just want to drop the almost eight pounds that have crept up on my frame this past year).

I am simply going to skip weekends. My eating habits fall completely by the wayside on the weekends. Most of the calories I consume then appear to be alcoholic or deep-fried. The only water I see then is what cleans me in the shower. Most of the exercise I get then is – well, just use your imagination for that one, why don’t you?

So, yes, I am going to skip weekends altogether. Then all my healthy eating and exercise habits that I have during the week will just continue on and on, and I will lose those other stupid three and a half pounds that I have been aiming to lose for the past four weeks.

My days of the week will now officially consist of Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday …

Saturdays and Sundays will return eventually. When I lose three and a half more pounds.

Incognito

The other day, for the very first time, I met a blog buddy in real life, the lovely Hannah. She and her Hubby were in my neck of the woods on holiday and we had brunch together. We had a great time and the conversation flowed effortlessly. I quite enjoyed myself, and I hope they did too.

The thing is, I was rather nervous about the whole idea. Not about meeting new people so much (and Hannah and Hubby are the farthest things from scary that you could imagine!), but about the idea of shedding a little anonymity.

I have not been blogging a very long time. In fact, I am just coming up to my first anniversary. But I never have and never will give real names or super-identifying characteristics about myself or the people I write about. I will never post photos showing faces clearly. Yes, if you already know me, it is certainly possible to figure out who I am if you just stumbled across my blog by accident. But for the most part, I prefer to protect my privacy and remain more anonymous.

I don’t really understand those bloggers who tell all, with full and extensive photo coverage. Do they not worry about it coming back to bite them in the butt? Are they not concerned that everything they post is out there forever, that they have willingly given away all privacy? And worse, do they not consider the fact that they are also compromising the right to privacy of the people about whom they write – without those people’s explicit permission?

Well, to each their own. I guess I am just more comfortable with keeping myself to myself. Not so much in real life, no. There, I often tell too much! But in my blog, I do censor myself and I do consider the possible implications of what I write, particularly to those around me. As well, I sometimes pretend that my mother is reading this (although she doesn’t), so that certainly can make me stop and rethink things before I hit that publish button!

And Hannah shares this same philosophy. So you won’t find that photo of the two of us on either of our blogs.

I probably look too fat in it, anyway.

Vacation-part 3

Yes, my bloggy buddies, there is indeed a Part 3 to the never-to-be famous Pinklea Vacation Series. This part won’t be full of photos, however (You, at the back! Sit down and quit cheering!). This part details Four Things That I Did Not Like On My Vacation.

The main thing I did not like was being without luggage for our entire first day. It wasn’t so much the lack of clothes or toiletries, because those can always be purchased (and some, in fact, were). What really bothered me were my contact lenses. I wear daily contacts, meaning that I put a brand new pair in every morning. I can wear them for two days, or even three if I’m very careful (they are extremely thin), but there is absolutely no way I could wear them for three weeks. And of course I had my package of extra contacts tucked away in my suitcase. So if my luggage was permanently lost, I had two options: 1) be unable to see clearly more than a couple of metres away, or 2) find an English-speaking ophthalmologist somewhere in Athens, have my eyes examined and a prescription written and new contacts purchased. Fortunately, in the end, I didn’t have to deal with either scenario. Lesson learned: Do not pack ALL your contacts in your suitcase, keep SOME in your purse Just In Case.

Another thing I did not like was being on a tour. Granted, our tour was only four days, and also granted, we did get to places that would have been a lot more difficult to get to had we opted to do it all ourselves (Olympia, Delphi, Arachova). That was the only reason we took the tour in the first place. But it was awful to be shunted here and there, to be told bluntly “The bus will leave in 30 minutes, so please be back here on time”, to be practically forced to follow our tour guide through museums (we ended up listening to her introductions, then quietly slipping away to explore on our own as much as we could), to be taken to tourist-trap shops over and over and being overly encouraged to buy-buy-buy, to have no choice in restaurants for lunch or dinner – and often no choice in what we ate, either. I know that many people are very comfortable with this sort of travel and find it so much easier than finding their own hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc, but DD and I are not those people. Lesson learned: Avoid tours if at all possible, and if it is not possible, SUCK IT UP and make the best of it.

I also did not much like waking up with a very sore back in Crete. I didn’t even do anything to it, I just woke up in the morning and discovered that I couldn’t bend without pain. This is the same back pain that I experienced last March, which was only alleviated with several visits to a chiropractor. O – kay. But I was in Crete this time. My chiropractor was very, very far away. My three options: 1) Let it ruin the remaining week of my holiday, whining loudly about my enormous suffering. 2) Find an English-speaking chiropractor in Iraklion, stay put for a few days and have a couple of treatments to realign my back. 3) Roll out of bed slowly and gingerly, then carry on with the planned itinerary, being as careful as possible to minimize bending and carrying, take drugs if required, then seek treatment when we get home. I chose number 3, and managed reasonably well till our return and two (so far) visits to my own chiropractor. Lesson learned: Be very careful of your back, and always bring Tylenol and Advil whenever you travel Just In Case.

The final thing that I did not like was the male-dominated atmosphere in Istanbul. This is a little tricky to explain, because I did enjoy Istanbul and I am glad I went there. But would I go back? I don’t think so. You see, when you are a tourist, more specifically a female tourist in the touristy old part of the city, everywhere you go there are men at the front of stores and restaurants yelling at you to come in. They’re not necessarily rude, it’s just how they do business, but I got very tired of being constantly called out at as I walked down the street. “Hey gorgeous!” “American or Australian?” “Come in and look around!” “Excuse me, girls!” and my all-time favourite call of “Hey! How can I help you spend your money today?” We literally could not stop to admire anything in a window because there would instantly be one or two men right there in our faces. It was never, ever women working in the shops or restaurants either. And as DD pointed out, you never see groups of females walking around together either, unless they are young teenagers. If you see a woman, she is surrounded by her children and her husband or other male family members. The women are always covered up (headscarves, shoulders and arms covered, long skirts), while men and children appear to be free to wear whatever they please. I know that Turkey is a Muslim country and I know they do have a different attitude towards women than we are used to in North America or Western Europe and I do respect that – but it was still disconcerting. Their explanation is that men are the weaker sex, so in order for women to be safe around them, women must be discreetly behaved and cover up much of their bodies. Huh?! MEN are weak so WOMEN are required to behave and dress in a particular manner?! I’m sorry, I just can’t agree with that, and this way of thinking is just so obvious in Istanbul that I must confess that it bothered me. Lesson learned: Be grateful for the experience of visiting a Muslim country, but think twice about visiting another in the future.

So – there it is. I really did have a wonderful vacation (I think DD did, too) with many, many good points, and if there were only four little things that weren’t exactly pleasing to me, oh well. Nothing’s perfect. But this vacation came pretty close, overall!