Month: August 2013

As many of you know, I am currently unemployed right now. This hasn’t really been a pressing issue because I received a fairly generous severance from EA when they closed down PopCap Vancouver in late April. The plan was to enjoy the summer, then find a job and start working just around when the severance money was going to run out (sometime around the end of August). Because I wanted to be cautious though, I employed a backup strategy which involved employment insurance. For those who are not from Canada and are unfamiliar with this social program, EI essentially gives out of work Canadians financial assistance when they lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

Now I knew that I wouldn’t get money from EI right away. The system takes into consideration severance money and vacation paid out when it determines when you should start getting your financial aid. With the generous package from EA, I’d anticipated that it would probably be August before I saw any money, which would have been fine. A very important point to understand, however, is that everyone should apply for EI as soon as they lose their job, no matter how large their severance package is. This is partly because of the immense amount of bureaucracy that is installed in the federal government. It can take weeks for an EI application to be processed.

I personally waited a month to apply for EI, which was probably a bit longer than I should have waited. Nonetheless, my application for EI was submitted online on June 3 of this year. From what I read online, the federal government strives to process applications within four weeks. All my supporting documentation was subsequently sent in no less than three days of my initial application. From that day forward, I waited for my application to be processed. You can checked the status of your EI application online and for weeks and weeks it did not change. “We have received your application and working diligently to ignore your unemployed ass… blah… blah… blah…” was the message for weeks and weeks on end. By the sixth week, I went into a Service Canada office to inquire about the status of my EI application. The lady at office checked my application, told me that it looked like it was being worked on and I should check again online in a few days. I asked if there was anything I had to do on my end to move this along. She said no.

Later that week, I checked the status of my application and nothing had changed. I waited another two weeks or so before returning to federal government office to ask again about the long wait. There was a different lady there who seemed very concerned when I told her it had been in excess of eight weeks without any decision on my claim. She told me she had flagged my application for attention and for a callback. I was told that if no one contacted me by the 16th of August, I should come back. That visit to the office was last week on Thursday.

Today, on August 14, I received a call from someone in the bowels of the federal government that my claim had been processed and that I would be receiving financial assistance sometime in September. Now by my math, ten weeks and two days elapsed between my initial submission of my claim to an actual decision. This is simply unacceptable. Keep in mind, it’s not that I needed the money, the severance was keeping me afloat all this time. The sticking point is that the government claimed that most applications are processed within four weeks. My application took well over twice that time. I’m also miffed that had I not bothered people in the office, I probably would have waited an eternity for a decision. I’m almost positive that had I not spoken up, my application would have never been even looked at by a government worker. In fact, I am almost positive that is a ploy by the Harper regime to not pay people when they need assistance the most. Only those who complain actually get government assistance while those who sit silently never get help.

Now all of this might be moot anyways because I’m doing my darndest to find a job before the payments begin in September. So I might not even see a dollar of government money. The whole process has left me with a very negative view of how slow this federal government is though. I wasn’t a fan of the Conservative government before and I sure as hell wasn’t convinced to think otherwise by this experience.

Increasingly, drivers are mounting video cameras on their dashboards to record their outings on the road. This is particularly evident in Russia where video footage can protect drivers from insurance fraud or bad cops.

I found a large collection of videos from dash cams which you can view here. Most of these videos are from Russia since so many drivers have them installed.

In the above video, the woman was later found to be drunk and obviously not wearing her seat belt.

The visitors of this website basically come from two places: the first, being you fine people, who return on a semi-regular basis, and the second, random visitors from search engines.

Every August, I get influx of the latter type of visitors because next month is the beginning of the school year. In September, thousands upon thousands of students will return to school. In particular, some students will be heading off to the University of British Columbia for the first time. At UBC, some will choose to live in residence. A lot of those students are wondering if bed bugs have infested resident housing. That is where this website comes into play.

Several years ago, I wrote about my lengthy battle with bed bugs when I was a student staying at a UBC residence. It’s been one of my most popular series of blog posts. This month alone, I’ve had people from all over Canada, the US, and Asia, and Europe that have found that series.

I hope most of those people found my bed bug chronicles to be of some assistance. That, or I probably added just another thing to worry about when moving to a new city for the first time. Good luck kids!

So if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know I’ve been more active this summer than other any other for about half a decade. I’ve been getting exercise and enjoying the nice outdoor weather.

It seems this might be taking a physical toll on my aging body. Last week, I finished a 6 km walk and felt great. The next day I noticed a slight soreness in my right foot, near where the ball is. It wasn’t so bad while I was barefoot and walking around on carpet. Then I put some shoes on and got some food. That’s when I noticed it was hurting a bit more. The impact on harder ground was intensifying the pain.

I was planning on walking out to Burnaby Lake the next day so this was not a good development. I rested my foot for the remaining part of the day with the hope that it’d just fix itself overnight. The next day, I got dressed for my sojourn and tested out my foot. It still hurt. In fact, it hurt quite a bit for the first ten minutes or so. It might have been dumb but I powered through the pain. It actually felt better as I walked more. I’m not sure if I was just stretching it out or something. It still wasn’t pain-free though and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to traverse the whole 12 km without some significant discomfort. I ended things about half way just in case I was doing more damage to my foot.

I rested the damn thing for about two days and it feels a lot better now. There’s no more pain when I walk but I’m still not sure what it was in the first place.

Then just this afternoon, my back tightened up after being out and about. It feels like a big knot is in the center of my back. I’m betting a massage would take care of that. Perhaps even just a hot shower to loosen the muscles.

I know this might come as a shock to you but young people and their perfectly working bodies don’t know how good they have it.

So a few days ago I bought a package of blueberries from the grocery store. On this lovely evening I decided to take the blueberries out of the package to wash them and then consume some. I poured the berries out into a large bowl and I was about to start running water into bowl when I noticed something. A huge clump of blueberries was stuck together with this white substance that looked like mold. It was gross. There must have been eight or nine large blueberries in this moldy mass. I took a spoon and scooped up the clumped up mess and threw it away. I also took a few berries that were surrounding the clump and dumped them as well.

I then began to run water into bowl to wash the remaining blueberries. As I ran my hand around the berries to wash them in the water doubt entered my mind. What if there was invisible mold on the remaining blueberries? What if the water was just spreading any remaining mold onto the rest of the blueberries? Part of me just wanted to suck it up and throw caution to the wind. I’ve dropped food on my kitchen floor and still eaten it after dusting it off. Was this any different? Then, the flashbacks of my food poisoning experiences came crashing into my head. Then I remembered the two times I caught the norovirus just this year. I remembered the chills, the pain, and who could forget the constant and watery pooping. Oh dear, the pooping. Was I going to risk all of that just to not let a $4 package of blueberries go to waste?

I decided there were plenty more blueberries to eat this summer and it was better to be safe than sorry. These blueberries unfortunately will go into the compost pile. I’ll get another batch from the store tomorrow.

As I get older, I find that I start to do things differently or start to worry about things that never even entered into my thoughts. That’s just part of getting old. My newest senior citizen concern? The damage done by the sun. When I was younger, I never worried about the sun. I never wore sunglasses and I never put on sunscreen. Combined with the relatively weak sun in Vancouver and my skin’s ability to resist sun burns, it just wasn’t something I had to deal with. As a teenager, I’d spent up to five hours a day in the sun playing tennis during the summer. Not once did I slap on any Coppertone.

My thinking changed about a year and a half ago when I was down in San Diego. I saw a lot of people who’d spent decades in the glorious sunny weather of southern California. There were these older men and women who were long time residents of the city. Their skin looked like bronzed, tough, wrinkly pieces of leather. It made them look older and beat up. Along with the cosmetic side of this, I began to think about their skin cancer chances. It was then I decided to take sun exposure seriously. Previous to that, I’d only decided to apply sun screen when I was playing tennis starting in 2010. Strangely, even then, I only sprayed on the sun screen on my arms and legs, not on my face.

I don’t want to look like a lizard when I get super old. Now I liberally apply sun screen to all exposed parts of my body when I’m out on a walk. I’ve been outside more this summer than any other in recent memory. While it’s great I’m getting active outside, it has led to more sun exposure. I encourage everyone to think about keeping yourself safe when you’re out in sun for prolonged periods of time. Please don’t let yourself become like this woman.

Though we’re into August now, I’d like to revisit what transpired last month in the city of Vancouver. According to Environment Canada, since they started recording weather data in 1937, the month of July was the driest and sunniest of all time in this city. There was not a single drop of precipitation in the city for those thirty-one days, not even trace amounts.

As a long-time resident of Vancouver, this was a fantastic record to break. Normally, the people of this city love to complain about how our summers are woefully short on sunny days. I’ve experienced some summers where it seems like we barely get six weeks of sun spread across May, June, July, and August. This year, we got almost all of that just in July. The timing of this great weather has also been fortuitous in that I had all summer off. While most people have been inside at work for most of that sunny month, I didn’t have that restriction. I’ve been outside a lot, going on walks and enjoying the dry weather in general. The picture above is one I took myself on a walk around Stanley Park.

If people were hoping August would be the same, well it rained on the first day of this month already. It’s been sunny since though so here’s to clear skies for the rest of this month!

My loyal readers, if you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll realize I’m not much of a drinker of alcohol. I usually only do my drinking at restaurants and bars, so when I actually went and bought beer to bring back home, it must have been a special occasion. My beer of choice for the last little while has been a shandy, which is traditionally composed of half beer and half carbonated soda. Due to my love of sodas, I find this combo to be a refreshing and tasty beverage. The presence of the beer makes it less sweet than a regular soda while the carbonation gives it an interesting texture.

You can just imagine my delight when Rickard’s began selling bottled shandys as their summer beer. A few weeks ago, I bought six bottles and brought it home. After sufficient refrigeration, I decided to have a taste and cracked open a bottle. Unfortunately, whatever excitement I had for this beer turned into disappointment. The Rickard’s shandy was terrible. It was neither refreshing or tasty. It kinda just tasted very bland. The beer part sucked and the lemonade part was just dull. I couldn’t even finish the bottle. If you think I’m alone in this assessment, I’m not as other people seem to think it sucks too.

Now I had a problem. I had five other unopened bottles of terrible Rickard’s shandy in my fridge which sure as hell wasn’t going to drink. I thought about giving it away but I didn’t know how. Most of my friends live in downtown Vancouver and I wasn’t going to carry beer all that way just to get rid of it. I then wondered if I could just give it to a random local bum. While that would be convenient, my sense of morality came into play and I thought it was counterproductive to give free alcohol to people who needed real help. So the terrible beer continues to sit in my fridge. Short of pouring it down the sink, how else can I get rid of it?

Oh, if you’re wondering if it’s possible to buy a great shandy at the liquor store, it is! I was introduced to the Stiegl Radler while I was in Las Vegas and it’s everything you want in a shandy. It’s simply delicious! At least in British Columbia, you can buy it in cans. Give it a try!

It’s a long weekend here in the province of British Columbia and strangely enough, the holiday is BC Day, which celebrates the province and the people who reside in it. As such, the staff here at et.com are at home enjoying the extra day off with their families. We’ll return tomorrow with our regular programming.

I’m currently typing this out on my tablet as I’m having a slight problem with my computer. I shall endeavour to update this post when possible.