At Last: All Moved In & Our New Job

So we're finally all moved in to our new apartment.

We got a new job, working for Killam Properties as resident managers and we're one week in. Well, one week and three days, to be exact.

The move was kind of stressful, we packed everything up and moved it one carload at a time over five or six days. Then Joanne and Colin loaned us their van and we moved our couch, bed, and bookshelves. And we bought a new couch from the Brick. It's in our office now, and it's getting lots of use.

We started working at the new job as soon as we moved in. It's great though, there's no commute. We can just hop out of bed, get dressed, and ride the elevator down to the office.

Our co-workers include, Joy, Henry, Lawson, Jane, and Mary-Anne. Joy is our immediate supervisor, she lives just down the hall from our apartment, which is real handy if we have any questions late at night. She's great. She works real hard but she's fun to work with and great to be around. Henry is our sweet little old maintenance man. His office is in the dungeon-parking garage. He fixes everything from plugged sinks to broken toilets. Lawson is the maintenance man for the building next door, but since the two buildings share one office, we get to see him all the time and he's a great help too if we have any questions. Jane is the manager of the building next door (she's Lawson's supervisor) but she mostly does paperwork in the office and since she's mostly always in the office, she's also the unofficial receptionist. Mary-Anne is everyone's boss. She's a great boss though, I mean, she's got a no-nonsense personality and high standards but she's also really nice and compassionate.

Anyway, our job is something like this: we start at eight o'clock and ride the elevator down to the office. Someone is always there before us with coffee from Tim Horton's across the street. Joy pays her kids to fetch the coffee on their way to school. If Mary-Anne is away (at a meeting or running late) we hang around the office for about twenty minutes or half an hour, drink coffee, and talk about the day and night before or whatever, just to get all caught up. If Mary-Anne is there, she doesn't like us hanging around the office, so we either hang out on the smoking dock while Joy and Jane and Lawson smoke or we get right to work.

The first thing we do is sweep and mop the lobby and all the elevators and in front of all the elevators on every floor, and the laundry room. This takes about an hour and a half or two hours. When Janelle and I do it together it takes less time and that always surprises Joy. We also check the hallways for garbage and the garbage chutes for any garbage or recyclables that haven't been properly disposed of. We store any glass or plastic bottles in the electrical rooms on every floor and every once in a while Henry will come by with a shopping cart and collect them all. Then they go down to the bottling room in the dungeon and when we have spare time we sort them into blue bags and once a month they get taken to the bottling place where we get the deposits back. And we have to check some of the gauges in the boiler room, to make sure everything is going okay. In the boiler room there's also a door that leads onto the roof, and I always like to stand on the roof and let the cool salty wind blow me around for a bit while I look out over the harbour and the city.

After the sweeping and mopping are done we check in at the office again to see what needs to be done, or if it's obvious we just do it. Last Monday they told me to sweep the parking garage. Just like that. So I hunted all over the building for one of those long brooms (that took about half an hour--but that's okay because I'm not getting paid by the hour) and I started sweeping up the dirt and the dust and the garbage in the parking garage. I had a nice big pile of dirt accumulated after about an hour and a half and I was calculating that the job would probably take me the rest of the day. It was hard work too, and I was covered in sweat and all the dirt that was flying up from my sweeping was sticking to me so I was really dirty, like an eighteenth century chimney sweeper from a Charles Dickens' novel. That's when Henry walked by and saw what I was doing. He started laughing and said, "Contrary to what they told you, you don't have to do that."

Then he explained that I don't have to sweep the whole garage, I just have to go through it and sweep up all the garbage, like little pieces of paper or broken bottles and things like that--anything that looks like it doesn't belong in a parking garage. So, after that it only took me until half an hour after lunch. Yeah, we get a one hour lunch from twelve to one. We usually go back up to our apartment for soup or sandwiches. I like to stretch out on the couch and take a nap or something. After I finished sweeping the parking garage I swept the stairs and that took me the rest of the day because it's a twelve storey building.

The next day Janelle and I mopped the stairs and it was a bit faster because there were two of us. (Janelle was working at Little Caesar's on Monday.) Aside from that, we vacuum every second week, sweep the back stairs (the tunnel to the Stupid Store) every second day--that only takes about ten minutes though--, and clean up the garbage on the lawn somewhat regularly; like when it looks bad. At four, we go home and have supper. And we're off for the night.

Every second night and every second weekend we're on call. That means one of us has to stay home all the time with the telephone, Killam gave us a cell phone and on the nights that we're on call, we turn on the call forwarding so that anyone calling the office phone will ring on this cell phone. So we deal with all kinds of things at night. Mostly it's the money machine in the laundry room. The paper feeder jams all the time. On Sunday I got called down to fix it four times, and two times on Saturday. Or if anyone gets locked out because they forgot their keys, we let them in. We also have to do the evening checks on the boiler room, and a quick walk through the building to make sure everything is okay and there's no garbage lying around. On Friday and Saturday a security guard comes in at night from ten to five and he deals with all the noise complaints and the people smoking in the lobby or drinking on the front step so that we can get some sleep.

Sometimes homeless people come in and sleep in the stairs. If we find them, we have to kick them out. The socialist in me feels bad about kicking them out, but it's my job and they defecate and urinate in the stairs and we have to clean up after them; we really don't need that. The insane part is that it's the tenants who let them in. If they see them waiting by the door, they hold the door open so the homeless people can come in. That doesn't make sense to me; what's the point of having a security system if you're not going to use it? Before we let anyone in, if they claim that they don't have their keys or got locked out, we need their apartment number or social inurance number and then we double check it in the office. If it doesn't check out, they can't come in. Mind you, if they wait by the door long enough, one of the tenants will let them in. But if they keep hanging around, we're supposed to call the police to have them removed. I'm glad Janelle can put on a pretty stern voice. Anyways, there are places they can go to spend the night but the reason they don't go is because they don't want to give up their booze and drugs.

On our first night on call, we got a call from someone in the laundry room complaining that his laundry had been stolen. So, I went down and double checked. The laundry was really gone. So I called Joy, who happened to be doing her laundry that night too, and she met me in the office where we checked the security cameras. It turned out that someone was helping Joy and she took the laundry from the wrong dryer. We found the missing laundry in Joy's apartment. The next day someone else came by the office with the same complaint and we found his laundry in Joy's apartment too.

It's just a day in the life.

Crazy Beautiful Day

We had an awesome day today!

Our first real day off together in a really long time, we packed a picnic lunch of pitas and babaganouj and tzaziki and some grapefruit and pomegranate coolers and headed for the beach.

We found ourselves a nifty little beach on the side of the road just between Tantallon and Hubbards and hiked up the rocks out to a little point in the middle of the bay where we hunted for seashells, watched sea gulls and cranes, and watched the waves on the beach, and then we sat on a giant rock and ate our lunch while we chatted about all kinds of awesome things.

Afterwards we climbed a tree.

In and Absolut World

I read in the news this afternoon that many Americans are calling for a boycott of Swedish vodka manufacturer Absolut because it launched an ad campaign in Mexico featuring a pre-1846 map of parts of North America.

I wasn't alive back then, but some of you might remember a time when most of the United States was Mexican territory. American settlers tried to annex the state of Texas into the United States in 1846. The two countries went to war when Mexico refused to recognize the annexation and Mexico City was occupied by American troops, ending the war in 1848. Mexico was forced to cede most of its territory including what is now California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Colorado.

Now, the United States is constructing a large fence along the border between the two countries to prevent illegal immigrants (otherwise known as undocumented Mexicans) from crossing.

This thing about constructing fences is vaguely familiar. Wasn't it in Israel that international controversy was aroused by the construction of a protective barrier around parts of the West Bank to prevent Palestinian terrorists from launching suicide attacks on the Jewish population?

We feel justified in giving sympathy to the poor Palestinians who get so oppressed by their Jewish neighbours but we forget that Israel is the only country in all of history that has won every time it has gone to war and gave up the land it has conquered.

In 1948 Israel was invaded by five neighbouring states but managed to expand its borders.

In 1967, the six day war further expanded Israel's borders to include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank--Palestinian territories.

In 1973 Egypt and Syria tried to invade Israel but were repelled. Israeli troops took the Sinai peninsula from Egypt but later returned it peacefully in a series of peace negotiations with that country. Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize the state of Israel.

Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel is in the process of giving the right of self-government to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Despite huge territorial gains in war, Israel has made many significant concessions to Palestinian Nationalism. Shouldn't this principle be followed everywhere? Should the United States be forced to return the territory conquered from Mexico? We could even take this further and assume that all descendants of Europeans should be forced to return to Europe and allow the Americas to be ruled by 'indigenous' Americans.

One thing we must remember is that every power that has ever existed, every nationality or national group that exercises control over territory has won that territory from whatever national group possessed it first. The only rights that any nation has over territory is the right of conquest. You keep what you conquer. N'est-ce pas?

just thoughts

janelle and i went to bridgewater conference on easter sunday afternoon. it was nice to get out. some of the ministry made me think though.

i don't know why it is that just about every time we hear ministry about reverence, our behaviour in meeting is pretty much the main topic. i mean, don't get up to use the toilet, don't chew gum, don't fall asleep...

reverence is something that we do every single day. if we haven't got it monday to saturday, we aren't going to have it on sunday--even if we manage to sit through meeting without going to the toilet or without chewing gum and falling asleep.

the thing about ministry meetings or pretty much any conference meeting is that it's a facility for learning. when people get up on the platform it's to teach the Bible. the main problem with that is that only about a third of the people actually learn very well in a lecture style setting like most ministry meetings and conferences are. so the other two thirds of the people have to either work very hard to understand and to learn from and retain what the preacher is conveying or they get bored and uninterested. and regretably, sometimes the preaching is pretty shoddy. not that i want to knock anyone's preaching because i know it's a tough job, but realistically, it can be and sometimes is ineffective.

so what happens a lot in gospel hall culture is that the audience gets blamed for being uninterested, bored, and incapable of learning when it is quite possible that our whole system of teaching is fundamentally skewed to cater to only a minority of the people.

i'm a visual-kinetic learner, i learn from diagrams and charts and maps and things like that. it takes a lot of effort for me to follow a ministry meeting. especially if i've been up late the night before at a sing and full of delicious, hot food and full of exciting and fun people (like usually happens at conferences).

new at 3dhippo.com

so, i've started adding a "video of the week" feature to my website. unfortunately, i've been informed, many of you haven't been able to view the videos because of missing codecs. i don't know which codecs are missing, otherwise i would make them available for download, but i do have an alternative solution!

i suspect that you may have the same problem when attempting to view some of my older drawings. both problems can be solved by my alternative solution.

My alternative solution
get Ubuntu. it's a free, easy and safe linux-based operating system! go to www.ubuntu.com for more information on how to download and install Ubuntu. After this, you should be able to view my videos without a problem.

My Favourite Customer

I've never had this happen to me before ...

Yesterday I was working cash when this woman came in. Pretty much the first thing I noticed was that her boob was hanging out. It was kind of nerve racking but fortunately her order was really quick and she left. I felt really embarrassed but it was funny afterwards.

Anyways, I have a favourite customer. His name is Jason Sampson and he comes in at least once or twice a week. The first time I noticed him, he was calling in to complain that the pizzas he had ordered were old and getting really cold so we ended up giving him some free pizzas. (Someone wasn't rotating the pizzas properly in the box or something.) What makes him stand out to me, though, is that a normal customer, after getting an order like this, would ask for fresh pizzas (not ones from the hotbox) every time afterwards, but he never does. He just comes in, makes his order and takes what he can get and he never complains unless there's really a problem. I mean, I like it that if there is a problem with the pizza he will let us know and get us to get him free pizzas but that he won't just try and get free pizzas from us because he can (Little Caesar's has a product satisfaction guarantee) and he doesn't complain if he has to wait or anything.

Going to Space

So last night I dreamed that I went on a weird mission to Pluto to deploy a camera-satellite. It was a white circular device equipped with a lens that took pictures of the planet's surface.

After deploying the satellite, my partner and I donned our astronaut costumes--tight pants and capes--and disembarked the shuttle (which looked hauntingly like the Real Canadian Superstore) to have our photos taken by the satellite (so everyone back on earth could see us in our astronaut costumes??)

Anyways, when we got back to earth I wrote everyone an e-mail telling them that I was in space for a couple of days. So if you got that e-mail, it didn't really happen, it was just a dream, okay?

On Across the Universe

Janelle and I watched Across the Universe last night. It was really good; one thing that I really liked about it was that it didn't preach. It didn't have a big political message that was right at the forefront. It just had a handful of relevant themes.

One of these themes was war. And it depicted the anti-war and the peace movements in contrast to the Vietnam war. What becomes very evident, though, is that the anti-war protesters are in fact waging a war against war--an exercise that is eventually showed to be self-defeating. Other characters, though, while not waging a public and physical war, are nevertheless engaged in a real battle. What the film shows is that all the characters are deeply tangled in battles of their own.

I think this is true of every human being. We all have wars. Whether they are public and physical wars that we participate in--perhaps by going to Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces--or private, personal wars that we engage in every day. I believe in war. I believe that this planet--and that life itself--is a battlefield. Refusing to fight or denying that there is a war is denying the nature of humanity. I like the line from that film on WW1: "We do this because we're good at it."

Adventures

Yesterday I was reading an article about video and online gaming culture. At the end of the article, several gaming addicts and their partners or people close to them commented on the effects of this kind of addiction. Reading it, I was surprised at first at how many ordinary people are addicted to online gaming. I mean, these were nice, regular, family people, not computer geeks who hide out in basements and have no friends or significant others.

There were some women, but most of the online game addicts were men. And while I haven't much insight into why women would be addicted to this sort of thing, I think I can understand at least some of the reasons why some men can be addicted to video games. I mean, we sometimes automatically think--video games? and put all the gaming addicts into one box (or dingy basement) and label them all "geeks." But they're not, they're regular people...

So here are my thoughts; some reasons why men can be addicted to video and online games. I write from personal experience; I know about this because I know myself.

One game that I find particularly addictive is called Freeciv. It's got poor graphics and all that stuff, and when you get right to thinking about it, it's not so much fun. You just build an empire and conquer the world or send a spaceship to Alpha Centauri before the year 2000 or something like that. Anyways, the whole reason why I find it addictive is that I get to make big decisions, administer an empire, and while I know that it's a fantasy, it makes me feel competent and in control. It's a fantasy that I'm doing something meaningful and it's easy to get so caught up in it that you can think and believe that you're doing something meaningful and important.

I also like to play real time strategy games, for the same reason.

A different genre I find particularly addictive is the role playing game, also known as RPG. The reason this genre is addictive is that it gives me an adventure with varying degrees of freedom. Not that the freedom in itself is very important, but the fact that I have control over my adventure, my choices govern my adventure. The game presents me with a series of problems that I can solve whichever way I want. And that is pretty significant. Along the way to solving the problems there are always battles to fight.

I think there's something in the male psyche that is starved without adventure (I can't speak for the female psyche--I don't have one.) and these games offer us adventures. Sure, the adventures are artificial, but our world seems to have cut out adventure. For many of us, it's impossible to find real adventures outside of these games. I think these games wouldn't have nearly as much marketability if the real world offered real adventures. Instead, in the real world, I'm finding it hard to find a place for myself. My actions, my decisions have no impact. I don't make a difference--worse, I can't make a difference.

I know... people will say, I do make a difference. And I know what you mean and I can accept that. I make a difference to the people who love me. I hope you know, you make a difference to me too. But...

...I'm talking about BIG difference here. I'm talking about adventures with far-reaching and life-altering consequences. I don't particularly care if people in Thailand know about me or not, the issue is not that I want fame or even money or glory, what I want is to feel like I've done something, accomplished something. Without that feeling, it's so easy to feel bored with the real world.

I don't hate my job. In fact, I have a lot of fun at work and I like my coworkers and I enjoy my work-environment. But I do find it by far the most boring job I have ever had or could ever have. Maybe that's an exaggeration... but the point is that I come to work, make and sell pizzas, and go home. I'm not saying that that's boring, on the contrary, making pizzas could be a very exciting thing. Let's pretend there was video game where you have to build a chain of pizza shops across a city. You have to pick the best locations for your stores, you have to interview and hire employees, you have to manage your stores and compete against other stores. Wow, that would be a great game! It would be addictive too. Isn't that weird? Something so brutally mundane as making and selling pizzas could become a best selling video game. (Ok, I'm not so sure about the best-selling part, but it would definitely turn a profit.)

Do you get the point though? The most exciting thing I've done at my job so far is sheet-outs. I try to make as many sheet-outs as I can in the smallest amount of time possible. That's exciting because I'm racing against time. I have a goal, and deadline, and I'm racing to meet it, working with my whole body, as fast as I can. Another exciting part of my job is when I'm on cash and we have to do a ring-off every half hour. Every day, Manager Colin sets a sales goal (well, he thinks of it as a forecast, I like to think of it as a goal because it makes my job more meaningful) anyways, the ring-offs are exciting because I get to see how we're doing compared to the goal. When we exceed the goal I'm thrilled because I feel like I accomplished something, I feel like I'm a contributing member of a winning team. And I think that's an important feeling. But in the everyday life of the real world, thrills like that are few and far between. In the artificial world of online and video gaming thrills like that are almost unavoidable.

new look at 3dhippo.com

in case you haven't noticed yet, 3dhippo.com has a new look... okay, the penguin wasn't supposed to have a black eye and his bow tie was supposed to be white. there are still a few glitches.

anyways, i plan to add product somewhat regularly. especially movies, now that i can make them again. (i found a way to make my computer run swish.)