Critical Prosperity

 

It is with cautious optimism I say this: (and let’s be honest devotees, after all you’ve read about how the Fates like to play dice with my fortunes, if you were me and you had any at all, would you have any other kind of optimism remaining?) it looks as though the tough part of re-settling in Canada is behind me. Again to the devotees, if any there be, would you even think let alone write, let the bloody hell alone publish in your blog a Fate-double-dog-daring statement such as that if you were me? Well putting all determinist thinking aside, I AM me, and I just LOVE tempting those damned Fates! Verbal (and written) self-sabotagery has been my most dependable source of blog fodder and to this point, the Fates have rarely failed to attack my bait.

It's Victoria Day here in Canada. Happy Victoria Day to all! To me the holiday during which we, for some reason, honour a British queen of the past has no more meaning than Korean Peppero Day which is celebrated on November 11^th to “honour” the four ones in the date and how much they resemble four Peppero chocolate cookie sticks. In truth, it has slightly more meaning as demonstrated just ahead with the third spelling of the word “honor” as honour with the British u. May the red squiggly underlining in Microsoft Word represent my residual loyalty to the crown on this Victoria Day. It’s probably more than most Canadians will do in observance of the holiday.

To be honest, I’d rather have the stores open today like any regular Monday cuz I got shit to do. I will, against my personal blogging conceit, begin this entry with some good news! I got my B.C. security guard license… FINE SCALLY! I have just finished my breakfast/lunch (I refuse to call it brunch) of four waffles with olive oil Becel and Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup warshed down with two cups of coffee and preceded by an appetizer of Doritos. Hey, it’s a holiday. I’ll eat healthy tomorrow. Anyways, while I was punishing my body with my morning/afternoon meal I looked at my freshly laundered Safety Net Security shirt hanging on my door hook and thought of how nice it is to have a dryer. The shirt was given to me the day I received my license and became eligible to wear things with the word “security” embroidered on them without danger of violating any impersonating safety officer laws. It was too large and wrinkly. Now it’s just too large.

On the day I received the shirt I had been scheduled for another midnight mobile training shift but as the Fates’ dice would have it, somebody called in sick at the last minute. Since I was now eligible to do a solo shift, I was chosen to fill in for someone who was supposed to work the silver refinery while THAT person filled in for the sick person who was supposed to do the mobile (and train me). I was scheduled for silver refinery training, and still am, for tomorrow. Yup, my first legitimate shift was in a position I was not trained for. As the shift boss Rob said to me, “Welcome to Safety Net Security!”

To be fair, there isn’t much to a shift at the silver refinery (Ag) and it was the Friday of the Victoria Day long weekend, so it was especially event-free. In a 12-hour shift I think I did about 4 things. I watched mobile 2 open the truck gate to let out some workers so they could take out the garbage, I checked a few samples, and I wanded one person when the metal detector went off three times. Most of this I knew how to do from my mobile training. I say, “most,” because I had not been trained on checking samples that were anything but precious metals. So when the first guy came with samples to check, I started doing them the way we check on mobile. It turned out to be the wrong way to do it, but I hadn’t been trained, so I think I will probably be forgiven. Anyway, tomorrow at 4:30 in the AM I’ll be up to go to work and get trained to do what I have already done. Lol The next day I’ll be trained on Warfield, another position I can now do since it doesn’t require any driving. This way I can cover shifts in these two areas while I am waiting for my driver’s license. I don’t think I’ll get as many hours as I want, but I gotta hand it to Safety Net Security, they’ve kept me busy with training shifts and got me the money I needed to get half-way established here in Trail.

The other part of the good news about my security guard license is that I can almost immediately start working for another security company to fill in the extra hours that I’m not getting from SNS because I still don’t have my driver’s license. That is, if I can get work at another security company that doesn’t require a driver’s license. That might not be so easy, and I may have to settle for minimum wage, but this is how I roll when I live in Canada.

Another bit of good news, believe it or not, is my BC Service Card came in. Now I have at least bare minimum health coverage and a personal health number in case of medical emergency. So I got THAT goin’ for me… which is nice. But the big thing is I can now get my FISHING license. This might be really great for me because right now there is a bounty on pike caught in the Columbia River. 10 bucks a head! I have already fixed up the rod Art gave to me. The reel was no good so I bought a new one and the rod needed a new tip and had to be glued so the reel could line up with the eyelets. I did all that on my day off yesterday. Sunday. On Saturday I got home from my Ag shift at around 7, slept till noonish, went to Canadian Tire and bought all the stuff I will need to go hunting pike, then went to visit Mom and Art. It was a surprise drop-in visit and had to be because of my BAD news. You KNEW it was coming. Why else do I write these posts and give the Fates so much to work with?

What, you might wonder, is the latest Canadian inadequacy that has met with my livery disapproval? My phone’s been turned off! You could almost have guessed that one, couldn’t you? Still, “Come on you fuckin’ Fates! Three things at a time! Or even two? Eh?” But no, they’re piling it on. Nothing new to me, as my close friends and fellow accomplices in survival are aware, but it’s always heartening when the sheer inequity of my taxing slog through life in the face of over-extenuating circumstances is recognized. When I was telling my Mom and Art about my phone being turned off, after all the troubles I've had since I've been here they were both saying, "What the frig? You have some extraordinary luck on you!" They aren't the first and won't likely be the last. I surely do! But it's fun to complain about it. And it's kind of a good feeling when somebody doesn't just default to "Everything is your own damn fault." I won't mention any names but there have been many who just assumed that about me. 

Trail is nothing yet like Seoul or Gwangju or even other large Asian cities where one can find a pub, bar, restaurant or hang-out popular with expats and engage in fascinating, arbitrary conversation with strangers. I met a Kiwi fellow in the German Bar in Gwangju who regaled the table with stories of how he had drunk the tap water of every major city in Asia and survived; a Canadian ESL teacher in Seoul’s Fat Albert’s Pub who had kayaked the Yangtse River and woken up in her tent to Chinese soldiers pointing their rifles at her head; an American military helicopter pilot who crashed a barbecue at my apartment in Seoul told me of a bullet that went in the bottom of his thigh, out the top, rattled around in his cockpit for a while and then showed me the scars on his leg and the bullet on a chain around his neck; a British newspaper reporter I met in Eastern Promises Restaurant in Kemang, Jakarta, Indonesia who told me that the bar of the Commodore Hotel in Beirut has a parrot that can accurately mimic the sounds of gunfire and bombs; I worked with a gal in Yongin, Korea who rode the roof of a bus in India by mistake; an Australian writer I met hiking in Korea told me she had played soccer with some monks at a temple in the mountains of Tibet; I sparked up a conversation with two Dutch guys in a bar on Kowsan Road in Bangkok, Thailand whose luggage had been lost by Thai Air on the same day MY luggage was lost by Thai Air… I could go on and on.

So far here, all I get are stories of yardwork and home improvements. If I give it time and put in the social effort I’m sure I’ll eventually find some bush gurus and acquaintances with endlessly entertaining stories of logging, mining, fishing, hunting and the like, but for now things are a bit boring in comparison to what I have grown accustomed to overseas. During my visit with Mom and Art on Saturday afternoon they told me of their recent landscaping exploits, and I told them the story of my phone being disconnected. 

Above is the pear tree I pruned. I guess I didn't kill it eh? To the left is the garden that's coming out. Below are the planters Art made for Mom. They have automatic sprinklers too. Cool, eh? 

In mid-March when I landed in Vancouver I knew I’d need a phone and took the first offer I saw. It was Bell. I paid a 30 dollar hook-up fee and my first 100-dollar monthly bill. Just a bit over 130 bucks with all taxes. So I was good until mid-April. In EARLY April I went to The Source in Castlegar to get automatic direct debit set up with Bell. I brought a paper from my bank that they gave me for that purpose. The teenager who set it up told me it might take up to a month and I would get messages saying that payments are due, but I was to ignore those messages and wait. They’d take the money out. So I waited and waited. Nothing was taken out of my account that I could see. I called one of the numbers on the Bell website for service. It was a girl. She sounded like she was at a call center in Manila. After checking on my identity with several questions like my birthday and mother’s maiden name, she quoted me a bunch of information that came up on her computer when she brought up my account. All of it was wrong. Nevertheless, I was told to be patient and that everything was fine.

I waited and noticed no money coming out of my account. Meanwhile, I was spending like a guy who just moved to a new country and needed to put furniture and food into a new apartment. But the whole time I made sure I had enough money for my storage locker in Victoria and my phone bills. The storage was taken out but the phone bill never was. And the data started getting really REALLY slow! I mean back to the stone age slow. I had used up all my data on phone plans in Korea and noticed a slow-down, but nothing like this! And I got a message that my next payment was due May 15^th. It was like May 10^th or something. I had drained my account buying stuff for the apartment and was going to be paid on the 19^th. So I called another number and did the requisite telephone gymnastics before I got a person in another call center. Might have been Manila, might have been Delhi, it was a brown voice that told me he couldn’t help me but gave yet another number to call. I got another guy with an unmistakably Filipino accent. I asked if the payment could be delayed until the 19^th and he said he didn’t know how to do that. I then asked if I could somehow go to another The Source office and make a payment in cash. He said he wasn’t sure of THAT either. He then brought up my account on his computer and said, “Your last payment of $150 was… today!” I said that was wrong. My payments are for 100 and change and I didn’t have any money taken out of my account today. He then did some other searching and made some other incorrect guesses before saying, “Okay, sir, don’t worry. Your next payment will be taken out on June 1^st. So you are okay.” I confirmed that he was positive of what he was telling me and I didn’t need to make a cash payment. He repeated June 1^st, don’t worry.

May 15^th rolls around and the internet speed was back to usable again. I thought maybe this dude knew what he was talking about. Then, precisely at 12 noon, I got cut off. No data, can’t phone or receive phone calls. All I can do is use wifi. Hilariously, that day I got a message before being cut off that my next payment is due June 1^st.

So on Saturday, before visiting my folks, I went to The Source in Trail and there were three Indian guys working there. I think I got the most senior of the three because he was helping both of the others while dealing with me. He actually told me some useful information! He said there had been an attempt made to take money out of my account on May 5 and I had been charged $30 for having insufficient funds. I checked today and I had sufficient funds on May 5^th so the direct debit isn’t working and I am getting charged for it. He then told me the amount they were trying to withdraw was 230 bucks. I guess the 100 or so for the 15^th of April to the 15^th of May, the 100 or so for the 15^th of May to the 15^th of June and the 30 for insufficient funds? Not sure. He asked, “Haven’t you received any emails itemizing your bills and informing you when they will be withdrawn?” I said I had only received texts, which the guy at The Source in Castlegar had told me to ignore. He said, “Well you should be getting emails. Something is definitely haywire here.” So he gave me YET ANOTHER number to call and all the information I will need to give whoever answers the phone. My customer ID and account number. He said they probably will not be able to do anything. I will need to go to my bank to get things sorted out. But he said at least they’d be able to tell me what the 230-dollar bill was for.

So now I have to wait for a day that I am not working, my bank is open, and have access to a phone to get things worked out. For now, I can’t call anyone and all the people to whom I have sent resumes who are trying to get in touch with me by phone are receiving a message that my number is no longer in service. I have to walk a block and a half down the street and use free wifi to check my email and Facebook messages on my phone. And about half the time I have to deal with one of the street people in downtown Trail. My Peeps! So far they’ve been harmless. “Did you hear that Fates?” There’s one girl who asks for money all the time and I’m pretty sure she has a lot more than I have. The other day I was using wifi in front of the drugstore and she came by singing a happy tune. “Hey man, do you have any money you can spare?” I said, “No, I don’t. Do YOU?” She says, “I just had a shot of (I can’t remember but it’s probably the free shots they get of the socially acceptable, more pharmaceutical versions of heroine or fentanyl or animal tranquilizer or whatever the going street addiction is these days).” Then she says, “You probably know my Dad. [insert name here] Have you ever worked for him?” “Nope,” I reply. “Well everybody knows him. Okay thanks for all your help. See ya.”

I’ll probably go to A&W tonight for supper so I can upload this blog post and send resumes to a few of the interesting jobs I have been alerted to by Indeed or Jobs BC. I STILL haven’t heard a thing from any other job I’ve applied for. About 60 or 70 jobs by now I’d guess. Not even a PFO letter. Nada! It is UNBELIEVABLY hard to get a job in Canada nowadays if Trail is any indication! I bought a book for my shift tomorrow at Ag because it is so boring there! I’ll be working with a trainer so we can chat and it won’t be nearly as dull as the shift I was thrown into there on Friday, but just in case I bought “The Little Drummer Girl” by John Le Carre. I have read a few of his books in the past and really like his writing. There is a highly topical quote right at the beginning that goes, "... depression, inflation, insolvency, unemployment, all the usual and apparently incurable ailments of a massively prosperous capitalist economy." Canada looks to be critically prosperous from what I’ve seen so far.

But, as I said in the beginning, I knew the start of life back home was going to be the difficult part. With any luck (calling all Fates) I’ll get my phone turned back on or get another number from a better provider, I’ll get home internet, my roomie will move in, I’ll get my driver’s license, I’ll get another job to augment my SNS income, and the worst will be over. Hmmmm… that sounds a bit like throwing caution to the wind optimism, doesn’t it? Updates will follow as events warrant.

I'll leave on a positive note. This is a pic of the rainbow trout I ate the other day. Taste of home!