Folklorama

I donno if you’ve ever heard of Folklorama, but my wife has been hearing about it for around 10 years from me. Its a really cool event, well multiple events really. It has around 40-45 different countries represented and its their food, music, dance and sometimes even their alcohol on display. I grew up going to this and its given me an appreciation for different cultures and different foods.

So my wife & I are going to go tomorrow (friday) to 3-4 pavilions. We are in week two now, so it will be the Africa/Caribbean, Ukraine-Kyiv, Paraguay and if we are still hungry the Hungaria pavilion as its right near our house.

Its stuff like this that makes me want to do culture weekends. I may have mentioned it last year but I think it would be great. Take a weekend and from breakfast on Saturday to dinner on Sunday we will pick one culture and make those meals. Some will be easy, some will be hard as special ingredients may be needed. Hell I wanted to make Arros Con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas) I had to search out where I could get pigeon peas (gandules) and found a Mexican specialty store. The owner of the store was very friendly when we told her what I was going to be making, and that Kathy was from California and could understand a bit of Spanish. But I know that we will run into this a good amount when we actually start our weekends, it will just have to be planned properly.

On a side note… This morning, before I go to work, I glance over at my wife’s computer and she’s looking at the picture from this link. So tell me ladies, how would this be even remotely comfortable? My wife said it was an oddity, so she had to look. Uh huh. That’s why she stared at it for so long.

*sigh*

Homes, apartments, condos oh my!

So yeah, another topic on homes. If you’re bored please move along… As I mentioned before rentals here are not exactly easy to get, my brother, the one who lives in Aaman Jordan, has been looking for an apartment to rent and hasn’t been finding any luck at all. He has been looking in a nicer area of town, but that’s because that is where their youngest son is going to go to school. He came by with his oldest son today for dinner, I invited them over for hamburgers on my new grill, and I finally got to make my nice hamburgers in Canada for the first time.

• Ground beef
• Diced red onion
• Grated carrot
• Oats
• Egg
• Lowry’s Seasoning Salt
• Pepper
• Liquid smoke
• Mix all above ingredients well and make into thin patties. Then sprinkle Gorgonzola cheese in the middle, place a second patty on top and make sure the edges are squeezed together as much as you can.
• Gorgonzola cheese

Its yummy. Although the cheese will run out the sides still, but you’ll still get a good enough blue cheese flavour for it to taste real good. I’m not a blue cheese fan, but I love this burger. My brother and nephew liked em a lot.

Anyway… my brother was pretty disappointed with looking for apartments. Places he had called last week to look at apts today were either not answering his call today, or said they had were gone already. So he’s kind of weary about that.

One thing my wife and I have been talking about is possibly going in with my brother on getting a house. Multiple times since they have been back  they have said they regretted selling their house here when they went to the Middle East as they could not afford the house now. So I talked with him a bit about this tonight to see what his thoughts were. It would take longer for him to be able to get into a place, unlike an apartment, but it would be an investment for both of us. I said that in 2-3 years we could look at if they wanted to buy us out, or us them, or just sell it on the market and come away with the increase in the market value including the upgrades we will have put in it. So he is going to take that to his wife to see what she says. They have a realtor, one of my sister-in-law’s friends, so that could be a good help.

I also showed him mls.ca and how to look for houses there. Gave him an idea of what a mortgage on a 200k house would be and how that could be divided into two to make it very easy. I also added that when they left their oldest will need a place to live and trying to find a place on his own will be pretty hard. I said if we went together after they left their oldest would pay their portion of the mortgage, which would be cheaper than rent he would pay, and we would also be there to help keep an eye on him. He seemed somewhat receptive, but we’ll have to to see how it goes. I’m not going to pin hopes on it. One thing for sure is to create a document where it clearly states where each of us stands on upgrades, repairs, etc… That way in 3 years time there is no fight over anything, its evenly split. Money is never a good thing to get in between family, so I want to head that off at the pass.

On another note.

My wife tried Lotsa Fizz candy for the first time tonight. I didn’t tell here what they were, or what they did, but I could sure tell when it finally fizzed in her mouth (Relax Cliff, not that kind of fizz… Dirty mind!) cause she was ‘Oh! Yup, its fizzing.’, it was pretty funny. That and I got her some gobstoppers too.

Basement dweller

No that’s not a picture of me (sorry ladies). But since that’s what I currently am (basement dweller) I figured I’d come up with nice imagery for you. You’re welcome.

Its been almost a year since we’ve moved back to Canada and we’ve been living in the basement of my mother’s house since then. Not the plan we had hoped for, but not overly bad. My mother and her husband Tom are up taking care of a camp, ordering the food and doing handiwork around the camp, so they haven’t been around for a few months and its been pretty nice for both of us. They may even stay the winter there if everything goes right.

Its pretty crazy with rentals here in Winnipeg, less than 1% vacancy rates. Hell its cheaper to pay a mortgage than rent. We almost were paying a mortgage too, our offer was accepted, but the last minute financing fell through. So that was pretty crappy. If you ever leave the country for 10 years, keep an active credit card here so that you can maintain a credit score. My number is good, but because there was no activity it means nothing. So be forewarned.

So we are on the hunt for a place to live, be it rentals or mortgage. Which will it be? I donno yet.

I might even blog about it (maybe).

Well colour me BBQ'd

I figured I'd just head over to Cliff's blog and see if he'd manned up and done the AAR he'd promised if I got him the game he wanted. Alas he has not, and will surely tell all and sundry that he needs a new 6-core, high end machine to play it on. Sure Cliff, sure. It's fukkin ponies man!

Better be careful or that 'other' game will look SOOOOOO nice next to all your war games... I'm just sayin.

But, I digress... I go over to Cliff's site and what do I see? My name up on the 'I will shame myself publicly (well as much 'public' as we can get) by writing a blog post a day challenge'. Well bloody hell I forgot about that. So I suppose here I am. I may do a lot of swearing at Cliff, so no surprise to any of Cliff's close friends who I am sure do a lot of that themselves.

Anyway... I finally bought a BBQ. Its been almost a year since we've moved back to Winnipeg and about a year since I have BBQ'd anything. So we saw a BBQ on sale at Canadian Tire for a decent price ($79.99) and figured we'd go ahead and finally buy one. Not the one we wanted but its a BBQ. So on our way home we stop and grab a few NY steaks, and after putting it together and firing it up for 20 minutes or so I took a break. I mean hell, the piece of shit was a pain to put together and I actually had to be outside! In the sun! Do you know what that does to my pale complexion? I might tan! How can I keep my basement dweller cred if I have a tan? So after a few hours, after its started to get dark, I decide I can venture outside and grill. A little bit of Montreal steak spice and pepper, and ohhh they cooked up perfect! A baked potato and some beer and its a perfect meal!

Until... Kathy after eating about half, and in her fervor to eat this deliciously cooked steak, breaks the plate and spills the steak onto the floor. So she sat there with this horrid, sad, look on her face, sort of in shock at losing this culinary masterpiece. So I did what any loving husband would do. I laughed at her.

*sigh*

No I didn't, I am a sad sad man, I just helped her clean it up and cut a hunk off of my steak and gave it to her. Now I have to say that I had barely touched my steak at this point. In eating I am very methodical and eat vegetables first (they cool fastest), then potatoes/rice/pasta, then meat. Its how I've always eaten and its just what I do. Now here comes this sad face of a wife who looks like a lost puppy in the rain, and I give her some of my barely touched steak. Personally I think she did it on purpose to get more steak than I did. She's American, she'd do things like that.

Keeping America safe…

 

Yes. This is going into Walmarts, hotels and malls, all in the name of ‘keeping America safe’.

Aside from the whole Soviet Union style ‘report on your neighbours’ vibe going on with that. Need I remind you who they are asking to help keep America safe?

 

Are you feeling safe yet?

No?

Well how about now?

I feel safer already.

(Probably because I’m in Canada)

The patience of a god…

 

have I.

Well at least according to my last caller. Today was my first day on the phones without anyone listening directly in, so I was super nervous. By the end of the day I was doing ok, or at least less nervous. Throughout the day I was constantly 5-10 minutes late in starting my breaks as I would get calls just before they started, except the last call was about 8 minutes before the end of the day, which is normally enough time for a quick call.

This one wasn’t.

Her first question to me was, ‘How much time do you have?’, to which I replied, ‘As much as you need’. Silly me, and damn you Murphy! Thirty-eight minutes later I am finally off the phone with her. She had moved from one city to Wpg and was looking for a cell phone provider, she was looking at our website and was asking questions on the plans, as well she was going off track and talking about other things. In the end she was happy and wanted to talk to someone to say a nice word about me to them, so I gave her to one of my supervisors and she proceeded to praise me to the skies, said I ‘had the patience of a god’ and that other providers when she had called them were fairly rude and that I was extremely nice and she was going to go down and use our service because of me. So not too bad for a first day at work, and work does have a system in place to acknowledge ‘commendations’ made by callers about the reps they talk to.

Now I just hope everything I told her was correct.

So things were ok today overall, I learned some new stuff and wasn’t too bad on the phones. All I really have to work on is my after-call paperwork. Some of which is going to get quicker as I learn to listen and fill in stuff at the same time.

I feel like a Sprite

and I don’t know why.

Since Cliff ranted about a commercial today I figured I should at least copy him and add a commercial to my blog. Somehow I don’t think Cliff will be complaining about my ad though.

German(??) Sprite commercial (NSFW)

So next week I start on the phones all by myself. Kinda scared, kinda looking forward to it. The crappy thing is we JUST started a new batch of promotions, so that means all the promos we learned are almost all out the window and we have a bunch more to learn, basically by tomorrow, with no chance to take the material home. The majority of the docs are ‘confidential’ and so cannot be taken home nor emailed to ourselves. So its a bit annoying. Plus just as we get comfortable with that set, we’ll have another set rolling out. Fun stuff.

So far I haven’t been too nervous while on the phone talking with people, but I have had someone sitting next to me where I can bounce things off of, so when I get back to the customer I can actually sound like I know what I am talking about. Next week I won’t have that, although our trainers will be there to help us out.

We are getting a couple of cool phones, but all in all the promotions and phones are pretty weak for Christmas. We are putting in the 4g network around Feb/2011 (supposed to be released already) and thy are probably waiting for that to happen before they do anything big. But what do I know? I’m just a new hire they are throwing to the wolves on monday. *sigh*