Category: Rant

Canadian Hater

I need to set the record straight. It seems that I have been mischaracterized as someone who hates Canadians. This is totally not true – I did marry one after all…! 🙂

I think generally speaking Canadians are more warm, friendly and socially active than the average folk.

However, I also find them irritatingly smug and self-righteous (especially about how un-smug and un-self-righteous they think they are). This is by no means meant to imply that Americans aren’t, however nobody ever calls Canadians on this whereas bashing Americans for their arrogance and hypocrisy is practically a national sport in most countries.

Salim vs His Freezer II: The Revenge

Before defrosting
Before the defrosting battle – note the pot pie that is embedded into the *CEILING* of the freezer!
Defrosting 1
The steamer is just warming up…
Defrosting 2
*Now* we’re talking!
After defrosting
After I prevailed!
Exactly 30 years ago, in the late months of 1974, well before the term "no-frost-freezer" had entered the American lexicon, my Tappan Refrigerator-Freezer was born. I inherited it in 1996 and I knew from the beginning that it didn’t like me. It was responsible for numerous instances of freezer-burn and I am pretty sure that it ate half a tub of ice cream. For seven years we endured these little "border disputes" when finally my freezer made a full scale attack. After about a week of battle I defeated it. This battle was chronicled in the first movie in the installation – Salim Vs His Freezer.

Embittered by its defeat, my freezer bided its time while rebuilding its strength. A year later it struck setting the stage for the sequel in this series.

Like all sequels, the bad guy is bigger and badder – in this case, the ice was *quite* a bit thicker and now caked across all four sides instead of three like last time.

But, also like all sequels, bigger and better weapons are featured as well, namely the Euro-Pro Shark Super Steamer

Unlike the marathon weeklong battle that ensued last time, the Shark Steamer took care of even more ice in (just) under an hour!

Canadian Speed

The posted speed limits in Canada are just too damn slow… and the worse thing is that Canadian cops are *soo* much better at enforcing the speeding laws than American ones are.

The Canada Files

This is one of those long running projects that I have been meaning to do for a while, but had always found enough actually important things to do to never have gotten around to it. It first came to mind when I was living in Canada, then becoming engaged to a Canadian and making subsequent trips back to the frozen north added fuel to the fire. Well finally, I have managed to procrastinate away enough important things to make time for this… a reasonable compilation of my rant, raves and observations of and in Canada.

And now presenting…

Salim’s World – The Canada Files

SF Wedding reception pics

The miserable photographer took many multiple months to actually deliver the pictures to us, and it took us repeated attempts to get the CD of pictures from them. Despite a professional setup and friendly staff, the quality of many of the pictures and most of the prints were sub-standard (especially for a professional) and we ended up feeling like we would have been better off just giving a camera to one of our friends.

Overall our experience with Image Arts Etc located on Main street in downtown Los Altos was just terrible and we strongly urge people to run, not walk away from them.

Actually, before you run away – please go inside their store, ask to use their bathroom and leave a big smelly dump in the toilet without flushing. We would appreciate it. 😉

Roads redux

While I am on the subject of the roads in the US vs. the UK – one huge pet peeve that I found while driving in the UK was that it seems cars can seemingly park on whatever curb they want to, even if this means that being parked on the side of the road means you are sticking way the hell out into the middle of the road. In fact in many places, if two cars were parked on opposite sides of the street, they would block enough of the road where it would become unusable. This has the effect of reducing many small 2 lane roads into windy single lanes where the various drivers have to decide, in a polite game of chicken, how best to navigate the resulting single lane without killing each other or sideswiping a parked car.

In the US, if there isn’t room on the road for a car to park *and* for traffic to pass through, we simply don’t allow cars to park there.

Looks kids, there’s parliament building and Big Ben…

I was driving around and for some reason (more often than usual) found myself in the incredibly annoying situation of being the only car in an empty intersection, but having to wait for a red light.

It made me think back to my time when I was driving in the UK and I am definitely now starting to realize the value of the roundabout. Assuming reasonable traffic, it means *never* having to stop for a light. Having an initially slightly more stressful road construct is a *small* price to pay for never having to stop at a red light.

I don’t know why they don’t build more of these in the US… well actually I do… they take more room to build and UK drivers, are consistently more considerate than the average US driver and the only place in the US where I’ve seen roundabouts (Boston), I was constantly fearing for my life because Boston drivers are assholes and everyone believed that *they* had the right of way…

Amway Strikes Back

Arghhh!!! It happened again!! I was walking through Fry’s, really tired, I had just picked up a pack of CD-Rs and was milling around, minding my own business, when I met another freakin’ Amway guy!!! (For those of you unfamiliar with my prior experiences, a little historical reading is in order, see my posting on September 3, 2001).

He was a dead giveaway, using all of the familiar tag-lines: "I own my own business" (he *is* president after all :), "It’s an e-commerce business that deals in goods and services", "I do it on the side", "I’m looking for a select few people to help me", "Can do in my part time, without affecting my life (that cracked me up, he knows my life so well!)", "Very lucrative if I keep an open mind" etc. He sported a business card with the company name of GK Business Solutions, that provided – get this – "e-Commerce Business Development" (whatever the hell that means). As per Amway (Quixtar, i-commerce, whatever) standard operating procedure he wrote his cell phone number on the card as he handed it to me and asked me if I had a card. Unfortunately I had *just* run out or else I would definitely have given one to him ;-). He then suggested that we get together and have coffee at some point and he would be able to explain the whole thing in more detail, I told him that I would get back to him.

However recognizing who he was almost right off the bat, I had a little fun with the guy watching him squirm when I tried to get some specifics out of him…

     "So what does your business do?"
     "We are an e-commerce business that provides online services."
     "What kind of online services do you provide?"
     "My business deals with goods and services, utilizing the internet to better enable people."
     "Better enable people, what does that mean?"
     "Well, we work with the manufacturing sector, moving valuable goods and services to people that need them."
     "What kind of goods?"
     "All kinds of goods that people need."
     "For example?"
     "Well, mainly recession-proof goods, stuff that is not subject to the fluctuations of market conditions."
     "What does recession-proof mean?"
     "Standard goods that all people need. [Seeing my blank look] You know, like what you can get at Walmart."
     "Well, I’m sure Walmart was also affected by the recession."
     "No but the goods that they sell are universal, needed by everyone."

This went on for a while before I grew tired of playing with him.

If I had an infinite amount of time, I would be really interested in taking one of these guys up on their "offer" and seeing how they target people, *just* so I can learn, what the hell is it about me that makes me such a mark for these guys???