Category: Uncategorized

$900 FOR WHAT?

Today, or I guess yesterday technically, I went out to Burnaby in the early morning to see my gum specialist. This in itself is interesting because up until yesterday, I didn’t have a gum specialist.

That’s because on Monday, I woke up early to see my regular dentist. He said I have a problem with periodontal pockets, so he booked me with the specialist. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned for my break.

Anyways, my regular dentist also said something weird. He said, “Erwin, I think you should get some blood work done. There’s a really small chance it might be diabetes.”

Had he said anything else other than diabetes, I would have been really worried, but I wasn’t. That’s because I’m hypoglycemic, which is like the exact opposite of diabetes. I’m well aware of the symptoms of diabetes, and I know I don’t have any of those.

Then my dentist made an odd comment. “Oh, by the way, it’s not anything serious like leukemia if you were worried about that”.

Leukemia? I just came for a check-up. Who goes to their dentist thinking they might have leukemia? Geez.

So, I’m getting the blood work done anyways just to appease him. After I saw him, I went to the clinic to a get form for the lab. The doctor asked, “So, wait, tell me again what your dentist said?”.

I told him and then the doc gave me the standard diabetes questions. Pee lots? Tired more? Nope. Nope. He gave me the form afterwards, but I could see the skepticism in his face.

So anyways back to the gum specialist. He said I needed this procedure done on one of my teeth. It’s where they peel away the gum, clean up the root of the tooth, and re-suture the gum back together. Grand total for this hour of fun? $900. I checked my UBC dental plan and I’m covered for half of that. Wow, I might get two done then.

Dude said, “Have a nice meal beforehand, ’cause you’ll be on soft foods for a while”. Nice.

Tomorrow, I am going to wake up and not see any dentists or have anyone shove anything in my mouth and tell me I need to pay them lots of money.

And I will end with pictures of a Valentine’s Day Party.

BE BACK IN A MINUTE

This is supposed to be reading week, where I had planned on getting lots of sleep and studying done. This is not turning out to be the case.

I gotta bus my ass out to Burnaby tomorrow morning. Really early. I’ll fill ya in when I get back.

CRIME BLOTTER

Well, I hadn’t planned on posting right now, but the damn freaking cable service at UBC just went crazy about 25 minutes ago. One minute I’m flipping back and forth between the lovely Jennifer Garner on Saturday Night Live and some sex ed show, then I’m seeing and hearing static.

I’m sitting there in my underwear wondering what’s going on. I check all the cables and everything is as tight as a drum. I re-start the TV app and still static. I get dressed and head on up to the TV room. Some dude is flipping through static as well. He tells me it went out about the same time mine did.

Back down I go, and I get on Messenger to see if anyone is on that lives on campus. Jonathan is on and he lives over at Gage. He tells me he’s getting static too.

So, I could either do work, or something else. Here we are doing something else.

I’d like to share a new link with you. I’ve been reading the on-line press releases from the Los Angeles Police Department for about two years now. These releases detail all serious incidents that the LAPD are involved in on a monthly basis.

Reading through them is fascinating. I know LA is a big city with lots of crime, but the details of each incident just highlight how dangerous it can be to live there. In each month, enough people are murdered to equal maybe half a year’s worth of Vancouver’s homicides. It’s almost unbelievable how many times LAPD officers are involved in firefights in the average month. It’s no surprise they were one of the first departments on the continent to switch their regulation sidearms to semi-automatics.

The LAPD press releases can be found here. When you look through them, take note of the phrase Officer Involved Shooting, usually those are the most interesting. Click here for one of my favourite incidents in years past.

Got no one to give you Valentine’s candy today? Make your own.

TIRED

The pickets did come down before I was even awake. The strike, however, did not end. The pickets came down for bargaining talks, but that accomplished nothing. The talks went no where.

You’d think that would mean this strike is likely to last a long time, however, tonight, I received some info that does not bode well for the TAs. I’m not sure if it’s entirely true, so I won’t mention it.

The buses were running as normal as of 9:30am which meant I got my haircut without any problems. I did, however, make an unscheduled stop to the Student Health Service today. It all started last night when my ankles got really itchy before I went to bed. I scratched them to much relief, but then I broke out in hives. I think I ate something that my body didn’t like.

Anyways, when I woke up, everything was fine. Then on the way back from my haircut, knees got itchy. It took all my willpower not to take my pants off on the bus and just start scratching.

As soon as I got home, I scratched like there was no tomorrow. I swear, I have not derived so much physical pleasure from scratching an itch. Of course, the hives popped up all over my knees, at which point I decided I needed to go to the doctor.

When I got to the clinic, this super-hot blonde was ahead of me in line, and by the time it was my turn to see one of the doctors, my hives had gone away.

She said I had a really mild form of whatever it was and gave me an anti-histamine. One a day she said.

I had a long day. I’m going to bed now… well, not really… lol.

THE STRIKE BEGINS! FOR REAL!

Today, or I guess I should say yesterday, the last legal impediment to the TA strike was removed. At 6:30am on Thursday morning, the TAs will begin their strike. Why so damn early? Well, two other unions wanted the strike to start before their employees got to work so they wouldn’t have to pull them off the jobs. Good to know those people are getting the day off.

The TAs here at SJC are scheduled to meet at 6am, at which point they will make their way to strike headquarters, which is the Lutheran Center. That’s located by the old General Admin building. I’d love to show my support, but hey, I’m not a 6am type of guy.

Mediation is scheduled for 9:30am, so there will be at least 3 hours of strike time. I’m sleeping in tomorrow, so theoretically, this could be all over by the time I wake up, but I doubt it.

Lucky me, I have to run an errand off campus tomorrow, which necessitates me taking the bus. The buses though, will in all likelyhood, not be running all the way into the campus. That means I’m looking at a 30 min. hike just to get to the buses now!

I don’t expect it to be as crazy as APEC, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting tomorrow.

In completely other news, joining in the ranks of erwintang.com, ryannordman.com, and garrettknights.com, Ryan Allan (or RALLAN for those in the know) has registered… flyingboxstudios.com. Yeah, he broke away from the first name, last name.com convention, but hey, flyingbox is what he’s most famous for.

RALLAN assures us that great things are on the horizon for Flying Box Studios and that the corporate web site will be the definitive source for all things Flying Box, including the much heralded FBS press releases.

Good job Ryan!

THE STRIKE BEGINS… ALMOST

Everything was heading towards labour action as of 7am on Wednesday morning. UBC didn’t seem to want to head back to the bargaining table and the TA union and the TAs met tonight to make posters and signs.

I prepared by not reading the pre-lab for my soon-to-be-cancelled-lab on Wednesday. It was coming to a predictable start of a campus strike. Then, at 12:30am, just hours short of the kick-off, I get an e-mail and then the CUPE 2278 web site gets updated. This is what I read:

Notice – A legal impediment due to unforseen complications in Essential Services mediation means there will be no job action Wednesday February 12, 2003. Please be sure to attend the General Membership meeting scheduled for 5pm in the University Chapel.

Apparently, the hospital and firehall essential staff services mediation has raised a legal impediment. So, the TAs can’t legally strike until 7am Thursday now.

Like a false start to a race, people are nervously waiting for the real thing to begin. It’ll be business as usual on Wednesday. Personally, that means I’ll have to go to my lab. Bummer. And I was so hoping to not have to go.

I’m not sure if anyone saw those full page ads in the newspaper taken out by UBC, but they don’t exactly represent the truth. UBC is quick to point out that they are bargaining in “good faith”. However, there are more than a handful of incidents that demonstrate otherwise. Once, all parties involved agreed to meet, but the UBC negotiator failed to show up. Another time, the UBC negotiator went on holidays. Eager to get things moving, the union requested a second negotiator, but was ignored by UBC. When the negotiator did show up, he once said, “I wouldn’t give you the change in my pocket” to the other side.

I know nothing about labour negotiations, but in my mind, this certainly isn’t the way bargaining in “good faith” goes.

On a final note, when this strike goes full-scale, I’ll be needing to get a resident-pass for myself. This way, I won’t be questioned when I need to cross picket lines to get back home.

And so the drama continues…

MORE STRIKE INFO

Today, the TA union entered into a legal strike position as of approx. 1pm. Since there are currently no scheduled bargaining talks, it’s looking like there won’t be an eleventh hour reprieve.

All signs point towards Wednesday being the day it all starts. During dinner tonight, I had a chance to speak to a few of my fellow SJC residents. Most of them have signed up for picket duty. They don’t know where exactly they’ll be picketing. Their assignments will be handed out when they show up.

The interesting thing is that students can choose to honour the picket lines, if and when they go up. As long as you inform your Dean that you’ll be honouring the lines, the University can’t test or assess you on the material you miss because of the strike. So let’s say that the pickets are up outside your classroom. If you don’t want to cross the picket lines, that’s your choice. Unfortunately, they also say you’ll have to make up for the material when the strike is over.

However, if the strike forces you to miss two weeks of class and then the strike ends, any exams immediately afterwards can’t have any material from those two weeks. The gray area is that you’ll need to make up for it somehow and how much time they’ll give you is up in the air.

I linked to CUPE’s web site last time, so if you want to see management’s side of things, here is UBC’s negotiation site.

In completely different news, I have ventured into new underwear territory. Many, many years ago, when I was a little boy, I made a promise I would never ever wear white Jockey briefs. I’d always hear people say that they wouldn’t get a white car or a white furniture. Why? Because dirt and stains show up so easily on white cars and furniture. It occurred to me that was crazy that men, and women I guess, would wear white underwear right next to places on your body where… well, you know… you might be making stains of various nature.

I told my Mom, who bought my underwear back then, who still does to a certain extent, never to pick out the white briefs. Good old Mom got all sorts of colours, but she never did get white.

Well, over the summer, my Dad was at the Bay or something, and there was a sale. He got me a three-pack of briefs: black, gray, and… white. When I opened the pack, I was thought two outta three ain’t bad. I was going to use the white one as a cleaning cloth for my collection of antique muskets, but for some reason I threw it in the laundry. Mom did the laundry and the whitey-tighties got placed in my underwear drawer.

I never did wear them at my parents’ house, but they got moved with me to SJC. Fast forward to tonight. I take a shower. I am completely out of underwear. It’s too late to do laundry. I want to change my ginch. There is one pair left however… the white ones.

Well, rather than go around with day-olds around my loins, I slip on the stain catchers. Click here for a visual representation of my current plight.

I’m doing laundry tomorrow night, and I’m hoping to hell I haven’t made any art on the canvas by that time.

STRIKE!

I’m not sure if everyone has read this in the news, but there is strike action is imminent at UBC. The teaching assistants have voted to strike and picket lines may go up as early as this week.

The main points of contention between the TAs and the University are: wage parity and tuition increases. UBC TAs are among the lowest paid in Canada. UBC has also increased the tuition of grad students, but not their wages. The TAs say this amounts to a wage cut.

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty specifics of the strike action, you can visit the website for CUPE Local 2278, which represents the TAs.

The effect of this strike remains to be seen. It could serve to be a minor disruption, or it could shut down the campus entirely. It wouldn’t be that bad for a while if the TAs stopped working. Marking wouldn’t be done and definitely lots of labs would not be run. The profs however, would still teach for the most part (if they didn’t honour the picket line). The question in all of this is how will the other unionized workers on campus react?

I have no doubt Local 2278 has been in touch with the other unions. Solidarity seems to be a quality most unions have. One of my profs explained that most likely other unions will honour the picket line. How does that manifest itself? I haven’t been here during a strike, but this is was my prof said. Buses will only run to Alma. That’s a 20 – 30 minute walk to campus proper, and what ever is left to get to your building. This will hit the students the hardest. Picket lines might be setup at the major roads into campus. In years past, people on the picket line walked really slowly across the crosswalks, going in pairs in opposite directions. Cars have no option other than stopping. Legally, the strikers can’t block traffic indefinitely, but this slows traffic down.

On the actual campus, I believe that no more construction work will done, and this goes for Plant Ops as well. The residences might be hit hard. Food for them has been deemed an essential service, so the first-years will be fed. Their cleaning staff, however, will not be deemed essential. This means that in Vanier and Totem Park, their washrooms will not be cleaned. From personal experience, I can tell you that after just one weekend of not being cleaned these washrooms were a war zone. I cannot imagine what they’d be like after a week.

I imagine a few UBC Food Services outlets will be closed too. Thankfully, the Village isn’t union run, so people will be able to get food there. I guess we will see how many unionized workers are employed at UBC, just by their absence.

So, will you see me out there with a sign, warming my hands next to an empty oil drum fire? Unfortunately, no. I was kinda standing behind the door when they were handing out TA positions in the summer. Most of my fellow residents here at SJC are TAs however. They’ve all signed up for picket duty and will receive strike pay for doing so. In rare cases, some TAs will actually make more money from this strike than if they just did their TA work.

This week will be a very interesting one on campus. And into the unknown we go…

P.S. Enetation, my commenting service is currently down. From what I see in their forums, their entire user base can’t get into their comments. Yikes. I’ll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Comments are back up! I think…

ANOTHER SATURDAY, ANOTHER LOSS

We played our third ball hockey game today. It was against a frat team. I made sure to tell a few of our newer players that it was a frat. You gotta be prepared for anything against frat boys.

Our entire team showed up for the game. There were lots of spare bodies. We even had a ringer for the game. Arash’s brother came to play goal for us. He was awesome. I played one shift during the first half because there were so many lines to cycle through. It did not help that guys were taking marathon shifts. One of our best players also had only one shift.

At the end of the first half, we were behind 5-1 or so. Suprisingly, there wasn’t as much body contact as I had expected. Aseem got our first goal. He pinched in from the point on an awesome play and was left alone in front of the goal.

The second half was where it got chippy. I was going for the ball, and this guy behind me stuck out his stick and I stepped on it. I went sliding on top of the ball. Dude behind me then grabbed his stick and started cross-checking me on the ground. I grabbed his stick to remove it from my back, and when I got up, the ref gave me a penalty! Two minutes for holding the stick! What the hell? What about the cross-check? I swear the ref had some funny dealings with the frat team, because they didn’t get a single penalty for their stick work.

I sat for two and luckily they didn’t score. Everyone started getting into it at this point. The frat boys were fond of shoving you into corners if you were the first one in. Nic was having this great battle out front with this guy. Of course, the frat guy slashed him but the ref didn’t notice.

Steve said he was gonna fight a guy, but we had so many guys he didn’t get back on for another shift.

The game ended like 10-2 or something. Aseem notched our second goal on another beauty of a play.

So, we’re not the best team in the league, but guess what? We maybe not the worst either! Check out the standings. In Pool A, the Law team has a huge negative goal differential just like us!

In the grand scheme of things, it’s still fun to go out and get some exercise. It’s also a chance to do some bonding with the boys at SJC. So, even we go winless for the season (and we probably will), I have no second thoughts about playing.