Evening in my neighbourhood

I decided to take a little walk around the neighbourhood before I go to bed tonight. I took my dog and a nice cup of hot tea. It’s a bit chilly outside, and since I have already put away all my winter clothes, I had to put two jackets on. And I swear, if someone were to try to recognise what nationality I am, nothing would have given me away: I wore sandals with socks, workout pants and a leather jacket!

Last time I took this kind of a long, meaningful-less walk around the community was some 3 years ago. At the time, I was still in high school, the mere fact of which I pity with deep sorrow and regret. So, in comparison to what has been about three years ago, a few points of observation taken:

• That huge corner house still hasn’t finished building the wooden fence around it. I mean come on, people! You put poles into the ground and think no one’s gonna see ya? Well believe me, I have seen enough and even more!
• Local arts community is under serious danger of extinction, perhaps due to severe lack of funding: that swastika sign drawn on the sidewalk is gone!
• More and more people have finally started leading an active life style. In fact, it seems to be so active that everyone just gets really tired by the end of the day and neighbourhood falls asleep at about 8 o’clock.
• Dinosaurs are extinct. Not that I’ve seen any 3 years ago, but I’m pretty sure they are.
• The dinosaur cars, though, are still thriving in population and seem to never get old, or hungry, or lonely, because there are just so many of them I lost count!
• The local junior school is still undergoing a one year “facility renewal project”. Its short-term help has just become so very popular over the last three years, because I local middle school has the same sign now, too.

But most importantly, the star-bright sky hasn’t changed its beauty: I want… no-no,.. I need a telescope, right now!

I should do that more often :)

Toronto’s Russian Consulate: Brain Boiler

A few days ago I had to come down the Russian consulate here in Toronto for some legal services. It was probably my nature of wanting everything to be nicely and professionally done, or the fact that I haven’t been to Russia for a little while now and hence had forgotten how all the legal processes are done there, or something else — I don’t know; but the fact stood: I was absolutely disgusted!

Oh those ravishing lineups that have no meaning, nor have they got the beginning or the end; oh those precious fights for who was there first; oh those splendid near-scrummage situations about various matters of mutual (dis)interest; oh those lovely looks on the faces of other people around you, as if you have slept with their mothers; oh those wonderful speaking manners and the beautiful expressions on the faces of the consulate workers, as if they are kings and queens, while you are just a simple peasant, who has forgotten to clean their toilet. Oh those happy-happy things!

I stood about half an hour in a line to get to the window, where a lady in a “very kind manner” said that the issue is to be addressed to another window. Having stood another 40 minutes in the proper line, I finally get an answer from another even kinder young lady: “Oh, we can’t do this for you, because of so-and-so” (something completely trivial). “Oh, yeah?” — I said — “That’s funny, because I just talked to a very-very kind lady in the nearby window, and she didn’t say ANYTHING ABOUT IT!”

You would think that the workers of a foreign consulate or embassy in an English-speaking country would be familiar with English language. You would think. But no, apparently these notions are dumb, and we have no understanding of what the real world really is all about! Nobody in the entire Russian consulate speaks decent English (only the person in the window concerning Russian visas can actually speak a little). A Canadian woman came to get a VISA to go to Russia; he went to pay for the service to the Cashier window. Another very-very nice and sweet lady in that window tried to explain to her things about the payment, but came disastrously unsuccessful, because her English was poorer than my grandmother’s. If it wasn’t for the nice gentleman, who was also getting his visa to go to Russia, that explained everything to that woman (by the way, huge complements and my great admiration towards the knowledge of the Russian language of the gentleman — truly amazing!).

So, can we be anymore pathetic?

I am just wondering…

… what is the meaning of a “consensus”?

Well, the Oxford Concise English Dictionary (which was the first ever English book I bought and did so in the rainy London, U.K.) defines it as a “general agreement”. The Answers.com gives a little more elaboration: “An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole”. While this is all quite fussy and fizzy, a consensus arises when two parties bear discussions over a matter and eventually arrive at a decision or a solution, which at least somewhat equally satisfies the two sides.

Here’s a perfect example of what is a consensus:

Party A wants to eat the whole cake.

Party B wants to eat the whole cake.

Parties A & B realise that they cannot eat a single cake entirely at the same time simultaneously.

Party A: “How about I eat 3/4 of that cake?”

Party B: “No, that won’t do, as I want to get at least half that cake.”

Party A: “Okay, a half is fine with me.”

Party B: “Alrighty then.”

Here, however, is a bloody example of what is not a consensus:

Party A wants to know what to do in this situation. They (carelessly) think about it and somewhat makeup their mind (let’s call their decision D, which doesn’t stand for “decision”). They ask (for whatever reason undefined) for an advice of party B.

Party B, meanwhile, had already done (fairly precise) calculations and made its mind up quite solidly and, shall it be forgotten, had already proposed their solution (let’s call their solution P, which doesn’t stand for “poor”).

At the first hearing, long before party A made up its mind, solution P was ignored by party A as being a low priority issue at the moment.

During the second hearing, at the time of the mutual “thinking-it-over” time, solution P was yet again poorly listened to, although an apparent attempt to be “nice” was acted by party A fairly well.

Party A appreciates the input of party B and refers to it as “yeah, that’s true” and decides that P is a good idea.

Party A decides to go ahead with the solution D and starts to execute it.

Halfway through the work done in solution D, party B comes into the “know” that solution D is taking place.

Party B exclaims its apparent disappointment and claims to have no further business with party A.

Party A answers with a cascade of insults and claims that party B does not understand the meaning of the word “consensus”.

A little while later, party B rubs its hands in consolation, as solution D proved deficient.

Here’s a question for a million: why do we always stick to the second example and never learn from it?

Snowy winter of Toronto

This time Toronto went through a harsh winter, where the snowfall has exceeded the average snowfall (133 cm [Environment Canada] by almost 70 cm, totaling about 200 cm of snow. This winter has almost beaten the record of the 1938-1939 winter record of 207.4 cm; we were just about 7 cm short this time! Wow!

Particularly interesting is the fact that all this snow fell not continuously over the period of three to four months of winter, but rather in sort of discrete lumps. And what a lump each one of those was! At times, we could see no snowfall for a week or two, but then a major snowstorm would come and paralyse the entire city. For example, it was sometimes in the early February, when we received some 35 cm of snow over the course of one evening and one night! If you think about it, that’s about 10 hours of snowfall, with about 35 litres of snow per every square metre in an hour! Now, I have about 220 square metres of paved walkways and driveways, all of which require shoveling. I am sincerely afraid to calculate how much snow I plowed that morning! (that’s close to 8000 litres, those brutal 1.3 tonnes!!!)

Here’s a short video about, made by someone. “It is pretty,.. but not fun to shovel” — absolutely agree :)

Now, as the winter has passed, potholes on the roads happen to be a big problem in Toronto, as they do in Maine, the US (here). But local services here in Toronto came to recognise the fact, as there is now a hot line for all Torontonians, where one can call and inform them about a spotted pothole. The services then must fill that pothole up. Moreover, if one feels that his car was damaged because of a pothole, then one can send a request to a local court about the matter and deserve a proper compensation.

A local TV network decided to make a research about how effective this service really is. What they did is they chose 10 potholes around city, they photographed and filmed them. Then they called this city service anonymously. The city promised that any pothole will be filled within a week (I think) from the time of the call. So they checked a day before the deadline, and all 10 potholes were already filled quite firm. They gave 10 out of 10 to the city :)

I am not so sure how the compensation stuff goes ;)

What is it about speeding anyway?

Yesterday I was driving on a highway (401 in Toronto) and saw something that I became indignant about. As the traffic was fairly condensed (even though it was Sunday afternoon), I already was driving at 120 km/h (75 mph) — which was the speed of the traffic flow, so it’s fine —, when a sports motorcycle literally flew by me. From my humble estimations, the speed he had was certainly over 160 km/h (100 mph)! And it was not at all the case that he drove in a straight solid line along a single lane, as it is in good freshman physics problems; instead, he wobbled from one lane to another, between cars, cutting this one and that one; like a chess-player on the road, that is. I do not know what happened to him afterwards, but I hope he got caught without serious implications to the surrounding drivers.

It also reminds me of how the other day (sometime in early last autumn), I was again driving the same highway, when a beautiful new Chevrolet Corvette flew by me at some 150 km/h (95 mph) at least. The car is convertible, so that guy sitting there was “so cool” that he felt very much superior to everyone else on the road and elsewhere (which certainly is the case, of course, no doubt…). Well, good enough, in a few minutes I easily caught up with him, when I drove by him; he was parked on the curb, while a police officer was quite eagerly writing something down (I wonder what). So, in a way, I have won that race, with a price of a few hundred dollars and a clean driving record; as did a thousand other drivers.

Today, as I was driving down to the subway station, the traffic was slightly packed (end of morning rush), and so again there was this other driver (a woman, I think it was), who so very much in a rush, because no one else was. So she changed lanes every second, cutting, accelerating and breaking at incredible rates. And so what do you know? I got ahead of her, because… yes, you guessed it, a policeman was again busy writing another I-wonder-what down.

Well, what’s the point? Why are you people speeding so much? I figure, it’s okay if you want to risk and endanger your lives — after all, you knew what you went for; but why are risking the lives of the surrounding drivers? What is it, the thrill of being in power of someone else’s being? Or what is it? Please, tell us know, as we are eager to learn.