The Green Team

At the office I’m a proud member of the unofficial “Green Team”. Our Office Green Team consists of some out-of-the-closet greens, in-the-closet greens, passive greens, gentle greens, you name it.

I’m known as the idealistic, grumpy green who gives co-workers a hard time whenever they wittingly causing harm to the environment.

One act of wastefulness that gets under my skin is when people drink bottled water when there’s an easily accessible tap-water filtration system in our kitchen. I’ve heard many excuses, but few with sound logic (“I can’t be bothered to get a glass from the cupboard”, or “the cup will need to be washed which is more wasteful than the plastic bottle”, or “I’m lazy” etc.)

Recently, I peered into a co-worker’s garbage container only to find a recyclable plastic bottle. In Canada, consumers are required to separate trash from recyclables, so putting recyclable objects in the trash can is a big no no in my books.

I find the best way to combat infractions against the environment or “eco-fractions” or “greenfractions” is to make it socially unacceptable behaviour. Once upon a time, smoking was the coolest thing to do. Now it’s frowned upon due to a mass movement of social dissension (In North America anyway).

There’s no law that’s as powerful an enforcer than mass social dissent.

Are you ‘Made in Canada’?

Are you “Made in Canada”? Perhaps you were “Made in Mexico”, “Made in USA” or “Made in China”. Han and I joke around about this all the time. When we compare our cell phone bills for example, she’ll joke and tell me that mine is more expensive than hers because I’m “Made in Canada”, so I cost more.

Behind these innocent jokes are a harsher reality for many people. For humans, being “Made in Canada” is pure luck; if you happen to be born here, you have the freedom to make many choices in your life. You can choose what you want to do for a living, whether to get an education or not, and you can live your life however you want without much trouble (assuming you obey the law).

You’re not going to find a list of requirements that you need to meet in order to be accepted to live here. You just live here. And like many other people, I took this for granted for most of my life.

But someone who was not “Made in Canada”, but wants to become Canadian doesn’t have a choice. They need to be highly educated and highly skilled. Or they need to have close family here, or find someone to sponsor them or perhaps pay tens of thousands of dollars for a phony marriage.

The 3 basic requirements for immigrating to Canada are as follows:

• You need to have a job offer, or you have been working in Canada for at least 1 year, or you have at least 1 year of experience in this list of occupations.
• You need to have at least 1 year of experience in a managerial occupation, professional occupation or technical occupations and skilled trades.
• If you meet the above 2 requirements, you gain points for the following six factors:
• Your education
• Your English/French language abilities
• Your work experience
• Your age
• Whether you have arranged employment in Canada
• Your adaptability

It’s amazing to me how hard people work to get here, yet some people here treat immigrants as though they are inferior. Canada is such a special country because it’s so tolerant of so many different cultures and religions. But what gives me the right to judge another human based solely on the fact that they are born in a different country than me?

There’s an organization dedicated to reducing immigration in Canada called “Immigration Watch Canada”, and the United States has several of these types of groups. They describe the current policies of immigration as an “uncontrolled, irrational flood”.

I understand that a country can’t just let everybody in, but to be so selfish in thinking that Canada should reduce or eliminate immigration because jobs are being taken away from Canadians is just wishful thinking.

Immigration helps to fill positions where there are worker shortages such as Doctors, Nurses, and University Professors. Immigration brings new cultures, diversity and exposure to other parts of the world that you may have never thought about. Some immigrants are happy to fill positions that we may not want to do ourselves. The list of benefits for everyone are endless.

Humans are humans and should be treated as such.

Sustainable Commuting

Excerpt from my blogTO article:

“When it comes to commuting to work, we have many options to choose from. We can drive to work, take public transit, telecommute, walk, bike, rollerblade, skateboard, fly, take a train, ride a bus. The list goes on and on. At different points in my life I’ve experienced most of the aforementioned methods of commuting.”

Read the full article.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild, the movie, the story, the notion, is more powerful than anything else I've ever experienced in my life. I can watch it over and over and over and still feel overcome with a powerful sense of unyielding passion for life and nature.

The story-line, the cinematography, the music, the actors, the characters, the quotes. I couldn't imagine myself ever enjoying a movie as much as this movie ever again. The movie is so powerful and profound that it literally took me almost an entire year for me to fully digest it and to write about it.

Into the Wild, which is based on a true story, is about one Christopher McCandless who instead of going to Graduate school, donates his $24,000 college fund to charity in 1990 and travels across the country, meeting people who will help shape his life before he heads "into the wild" of Alaska.

I first watched Into the Wild in March 2008 while traveling the mountains in Alberta and British Columbia. The movie has had a profound impact on my life. It brought out feelings I've always had inside that I've never been fully able to express. The movie will always inspire me to enjoy life to the fullest and to stand against society’s material expectations.

Two years he walks the earth.

No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes.

Ultimate Freedom.

An extremist. An esthetic voyager.

Whose home is the road.

So now, after two rambling years comes the final greatest adventure.

The climactic battle to kill the false being within
and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.

No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees,
and walks alone upon the land to become.. lost in the wild.

 

Christopher Johnson McCandless, May 1992

Some things better left unspoken

A January 12th news release announced that the US airline carriers  have gone 2 years without a single passenger fatality. Although this is a remarkable achievement, some things are better left unspoken. The first thought that crossed my mind is that we’re going to see a plane crash in the near future.

It was only 3 days until pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger earned instant fame when he remarkably landed his Airbus A320 on the Hudson river after the engines on US Airways Flight 1549 were blown out by a flock of Canada Geese. I didn’t even think a plane could successfully land on water and still float. The pilots of Flight 1549 deserve all the gratitude they have received, and more.

Although “Sully” saved the lives of all 155 people on board, thus preserving the “no aviation deaths” streak, it was only 28 days later that the streak ended, when a Canadian-made Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 crashed into a residential neighbourhood near Buffalo. All 49 passengers on Continental Connection Flight 3407 perished, as did a 61-year-old man on the ground.

While working in Halifax in 2007, I met a gentleman from Ottawa who had flown from Victoria, BC to Halifax the day prior to my meeting him. Shortly after taking off, his airplane hit a flock of geese and one of the two engines blew. He described the experience as briefly frightening because the plane was falling sideways and rapidly losing altitude. The pilot managed to regain control of the plane and made an emergency landing at the airport. Apparently this happens fairly frequently, so the pilots are trained to handle this situation.

You may have noticed my subtle message about Canada being responsible for the 2 recent plane crashes. It has been 10 years since South Park first introduced the song “Blame Canada”, so I was somewhat amused by the media coverage associating Canada with these crashes.

Higher Learning

I’m sitting in class right now (I’m working on a degree part time), and a fellow student is 3 rows in front of me playing a video game while the professor is giving a lecture.

Aside from the prof’s voice, all I can hear is annoying rapid clicking of the mouse. It’s amazing that a mouse can withstand such blunt force.

I discretely snapped this picture of him in the middle of his video game:

Update 7:30PM – Apparently playing video games during lectures is a normal phenomenon. I just snapped a picture of a completely different student playing a game (The other student is no longer playing his game):

Wealth = Debt in North America

In North America, society tells us that we need to borrow lots of money, and then spend our life paying back our debt; while racking up more debt by buying bigger homes, new cars, ridiculously expensive weddings, and lots of other luxuries along the way.

A friend recently told me that his friend wanted him to co-sign on a loan for a new SUV that was going to cost $35,000. He obviously had bad credit history and he is probably deep in debt.

It makes absolutely no sense to me why someone who’s already in a really bad financial situation would want to make it worse by purchasing a brand new vehicle that will depreciate by 30% as soon as it’s driven off the lot.

Instead of perpetually increasing our debt load and the luxuries in our lives, what if we were constantly downsizing and simplifying?

My friend Kimi met a British Columbia family down in Florida recently who would spend a year working and saving money and then live for a year on a sailboat in Florida; each year alternating back and forth.

Most people falsely assume people who can live on a sailboat for a year are wealthy. This is not the case at all; this family made many sacrifices in order to live this life and spend time together. It’s not easy for them, just like paying back loans is not easy for people who live beyond their means.

It’s too easy to get caught up in the North American society of debt. We can all learn a lesson from the British Columbia family. Life is too short to spend your whole life waiting for a retirement that may never come.

If your dream is to live on a sailboat, then I say go live on that sailboat! You can always go back to society if the sailboat doesn’t work out.

Confessions of an Environmentorontotalitarianist

A while back my blogger friend CrankyPutz wrote an article with some confessions. I decided to put a list of confessions together about myself with things that most people probably won’t already know about me (I’ve tried to make them as embarrassing as possible).

Here are 10 confessions of an “Environmentorontotalitarianist”

• I love watching Judge Judy. When I was a kid I watched her all the time, and every time Han and I eat dinner, I always check to see if Judge Judy is on.
• When I fly, I always sit near the back of the plane. (But not too far away from the emergency exit) Aviation crash survivors always seem to be the people sitting near the back of the plane.
• Sometimes I neglect my toenails – I will frequently cut my fingernails 3 or 4 times before I trim my toenails. I should have put this in my list of New Years Resolutions.
• My favourite alcohol drink is a Malibu pineapple or a Pina Colada. Or any other mixed drink with a pineapple flavour.
• I have a fear of heart failure – When I was younger, my normal sleeping position was on my stomach. When I entered my twenties, I developed a fear of heart failure, so I no longer sleep on my stomach anymore. Weird eh?
• In the winter, I wear my winter hiking boots everywhere I go – Ever since I purchased these boots this winter I wear them with every clothing combination, including with dress pants. Sometimes practicality trumps style.
• I had a “blankie” until I was around 10 years old. I still miss that blankie to this day. It was so soft (It was also ripped to shreds by the time I gave it up).
• I haven’t been to a hairdresser for a year and a half – There are 2 reasons for this 1) I couldn’t find a good hairdresser within the relative vicinity of my home, and 2) Every time I get someone else to cut it, my ears drop 4 inches and my girlfriend would call me “Dumbo the Elephant”. When I cut it myself, I can contain the silly “fresh haircut” look.
• Sometimes I’ll watch Desperate Housewives with Han. Enough said.
• When I was in college, instead of walking 20 minutes (or biking 5 minutes) to my school campus, I paid $250 each semester to park at the campus (With a Jeep no less!). So I evidently wasn’t always an Urban Environmentalist!!

Hockey Locker Talk

The conversations that take place in the hockey locker room are typically inappropriate in our normal civilized society. But these same conversations are key to fostering a bond between grown men that fills a need not provided by marriage or relationships.

That is why men need that time away from the wife or the girlfriend to satisfy this personal need. Women also have a need that can only be met by hanging out with “the girls” as well, though I’m sure the conversations women have are of a much different nature than the hockey conversations.

Since I have yet to write about the hockey locker talks in The Urban Country’s almost 5 year history, I figured I’d share some amusing stories told by a fellow teammate last Friday:

This teammate has a retired neighbour who owns a snow blower. After every big snowfall, my teammate goes outside to shovel his driveway. After a few minutes, my teammate acts as though his back is sore and pretends he’s in a lot of pain. The nice old man with the snow blower always offers to clear my teammate’s driveway.

He’s now at the point where he has to keep his garage door closed when loading his hockey equipment into his car so that his neighbour won’t see him leaving for hockey in order to maintain the illusion that he has a bad back.

Not long after I told my teammate he’s going to end up in hell, he told me another story about this same neighbour. On the same street, they have neighbours who are of Middle Eastern descent. My teammate tells the old man with the snow blower that those neighbours are members of Al Qaida.

The Middle Eastern neighbours have a satellite dish on their roof. My teammate tells the old man that the satellite dish is used to communicate with Al Qaida. The satellite dish has a clearly written “Bell XpressVu” sticker on it, but the poor old man is naive enough to believe my teammate.

To top it all off, the old man tells my teammate’s father that his son said the neighbours are Al Qaida, and his father goes along with the prank and tells the old man they are indeed members of Al Qaida. (It’s quite obvious where my teammate inherited his prankster ways)

In a related story, my teammate told us how he has some Muslim co-workers at work. During Ramadan, (when Muslims can only eat and drink after dark) my teammate waits until his co-worker leaves his desk and he puts food items on his desk as a prank. When questioned on the insensitivity of his prank, he replies “Not my Religion”. 

His pranks are insensitive, outrageous and hilarious all at the same time. They are almost unheard of in an Urban society/professional environment. It reminds me of my youth, growing up in a small town.

In a final “hockey locker talk” story, this same teammate told us how his friend sifts through bank receipts when he withdrawals money from a bank machine to search for the highest balance. He then takes bank receipts with balances of $10,000 or $20,000 or more and goes into a strip club and writes his name and phone number on the bank receipts for strippers. Apparently this is his tactic to get strippers interested in him.

They say what happens in the hockey locker room stays in the hockey locker room. Perhaps I should take this advice, and leave the hockey talk where it belongs… at the rink.