Advice to the young

Someone asked what advice I would give to someone twenty years old so this was my response -

1. Don't just get a job. Take a course like Personality Dimensions (True Colors in the US) to discover your passion. You will spend the majority of your life working so do what you love and it will never feel like work.
2. Find someone special to share your life. Your heart can be tricked and your brain will know something's not right, but trust your gut. A great relationship is based on mutual trust, respect and equality. Never let anyone control you.
3. Travel the world while you are still young. You will learn so much by experiencing other cultures. Take a month every year and travel to different places in the world.
4. Take lots of photos and videos of your life, especially of your kids if and when you have them. You will treasure those when you are old and look back on the memories, especially if you are alone.
5. Never let anything come between you and your family. Blood is thicker than water. Always take the high road and be the one to forgive no matter what they do. Don't let petty issues fester until they are gone and it's too late.
6. Difficult as it is to talk about, know your parents financial situation and their wishes when they are gone. If you avoid it you will face many problems when they are gone.
7. Don't do anything criminal and get trapped in the horrible justice system because it can ruin your life.
8. Regardless of where you are born consider living in other places, even other countries. Look at business opportunities, weather, language, Real Estate to find your own version of paradise.
9. In everything you do pay attention to your health and mental wellbeing. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't do drugs. Have adventures but don't take unnecessary risks getting hurt. Stay safe.
IMHO 😀


I'm a narcissist?

UPDATE: Recently I was accused of being a narcissist and of "abandoning my children". I want to respond to those attacks.

First, I searched for the definition of a narcissist and this one appeared to be the best -

12 signs of a narcissist

1. Grandiose sense of self

  • Feels superior to others and believes they deserve special treatment - Quite the opposite, in fact, thanks to the rejection of my kids I have most often felt totally worthless. In Mexico after my fiancée dumped me by text message I seriously considered swimming out in the lake far enough that I couldn't make it back. I felt totally useless and that nobody cared. 
  • Often accompanied by fantasies of unlimited success, brilliance, power, beauty, or love - I have done several career tests in my life, one of which was an IQ test and I scored in the top ten percent of people, so I doubt this is a "fantasy" of brilliance. Just a fact. 

2. Excessive need for admiration

  • Must be the center of attention - Although I do consider myself an extrovert I am never the centre of attention. I remember back when I was going through the initiation and was the only niner on the bus dressed like an idiot I was terrified. Yes, I did like the attention we got in the bands but I was never the only one. 
  • Feels slighted, mistreated, depleted, and enraged when ignored - I don't think anyone likes to be ignored, including me.
  • Often monopolizes conversations - No disagreement that I am talkative, but I don't monopolize conversations, in fact, I love to hear other points of view.

3. Superficial and exploitative relationships

  • Bases relationships on surface attributes and not unique qualities of others - looks deceive so although I like to be attracted to someone in a romantic relationship I am definitely more interested in their qualities.
  • Values people only to the extent they are beneficial to themselves - very much the opposite. I have hated being used all my life and I have reached out to help people thousands of times, almost never getting any return benefit for me

4. Need for control

  • Perfectionistic - yes with my website designs because I want them to be the best and not have any common errors. Making things right does not mean perfection. 
  • Becomes upset when things don’t go their way - although I will push to do things the right way I couldn't care less if this is not my way.

5. Lack of empathy

  • Severely limited or totally lacking the ability to care about the emotional needs or experiences of others, even loved ones - absolutely not true. No one cares more than me. 

6. Identity disturbance

  • Sense of self is highly superficial, extremely rigid, often fragile, and easily threatened - no. it takes a lot to get me upset or angry. I've often said threaten my daughter and you will see anger, but most things I take in stride and deal with.
  • Self-stability depends on maintaining the view that one is exceptional - I'm exceptional? Hardly
  • Retreats from or denies realities that challenge this view of self - simple answer. No

7. Difficulty with attachment and dependency

  • Relies on feedback from the environment - no idea what that means
  • Relationships exist only to shore up a positive self-image - friends and romances certainly make me feel better about myself
  • Tends to avoid intimacy; interpersonal interactions are superficial - again, the opposite is true

8. Chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom

  • Feels empty, bored, depressed, or restless when attention and praise are not available - although I have the normal feelings of being bored and, yes, get depressed about being lonely at times, it is not a lack of attention or praise. 

9. Vulnerability to life transitions

  • Difficulty maintaining reality-based personal and professional goals over time - although I am officially "retired", I have never stopped working for a day. If being a hopeless romantic always open to finding that special someone is not reality based then guilty as charged. As for professional goals I have worked every single day in every country and back in Canada designing my websites trying to make extra money. 
  • Feels overwhelmed by compromises required by school, jobs, and relationships - no, always more than willing to compromise. 
  • May have “failure to launch” syndrome when young - not sure what this even means but I never suffered from failures. I saw them as opportunities to learn

10. Lack of responsibility

  • Blames others for their faults - I have never said I am perfect in any way and know that I have faults, but they are my own. 
  • Deflects responsibility onto others, often with those close to them - no one else is responsible for me. 

11. Lack of boundaries

  • Beliefs others think the same as they do - I could write a book on this one as I have yet to ever find anyone who thinks like I do about pretty well anything. 
  • Feels shocked and insulted when told no - I've had more than my fair share of no's but they don't shock or insult me because that would be arrogant. 

12. Fear of rejection

  • Afraid of being wrong or seen as bad or inadequate - many people have proved me wrong about something in my life but I'm never afraid of that. I am strong in my own beliefs and don't feel "bad" or somehow "inadequate".
  • Does not develop trust in the love of others - again as a "hopeless romantic" I have never given up on love despite being hurt many times. When I have found someone to love I never hold back because I've been hurt before. 

So, all in all I do not feel that I am a narcissist, at least not by this definition. A true narcissist is Trump and I would hate to think I am anything like that asshole,

Abandoning my children?

The criticism on this one is hardly worth commenting on because it comes from someone who hasn't got a clue about my history with my kids, but just in case anyone else believes this I will respond.

First, as to my relationship with my kids, my son, Chris came into my life March 27th, 1970. He was pure joy from the start and after he started playing hockey at the tender age of six consumed our lives for the next ten years playing for three different hockey teams and eventually signing with the Streetsville Derbys Junior B team. At a tournament in Thornhill he was also scouted by an agent who said he would offer a scholarship to MIT, worth about forty grand at the time. When he signed with the Derbys they had an agreement with York University where he had to maintain a seventy-five percent average to remain on the team. Unfortunately after two weeks with the Derbys he quit hockey, something he would regret many years later and tried to blame me for letting him quit. I told him that I wasn't the one lacing up the skates and two thousand other kids wanted his spot.

Without writing a book on my relationship with him we certainly had our struggles. After he also quit school and had laid in his room for three weeks, not going to school and not looking for a job, I picked him out and threw him out. My ex had a real problem with that. At some point I had cosigned a loan for him to get a car so he could get a job he told me about. Three months later I got a notice from the finance company that he hadn't made a payment in three months. I tracked him down where he was staying and told him he had two minutes to get his stuff out of the car and give me the keys. I ended up sitting in downtown Toronto for days trying to get someone to take over the lease and finally got someone.

Fast forward to 2009. He sent me a message that he was going to be working in London, Ontario where I was living at the time and he wanted to meet. I was thrilled. He said he would call after work on Thursday, but I sat waiting all night for the call that never came. Same thing happened Friday night. Then he called me Saturday morning and asked me to meet him for lunch so I raced over to where he was working. We had a whole forty-five minutes at Tim's to catch up and the last thing he suggested was meeting his three daughters. Again I was thrilled at that, but after months not hearing from him I called the number he had given me. A girl answered and said he had sold the phone to her and she had no idea how to contact him. He had also blocked me on Messenger after I sent a message asking him what was going on. Since then the only thing I've ever heard about him was that he was living in his car. I've never stopped trying to find him.

Heather was the light of my life. She was born with a cleft lip, according to the doctor because my ex had used aspirin for her fibromyalgia. She went through two operations at Sick Kids. Throughout her formative years we had an excellent father daughter relationship. I was so proud of her in every way. We had a lot of wonderful memories like bike riding around Professor's Lake and going to see Phantom of the Opera at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. She played soccer so we went to a lot of her games. When my life took a turn after the company I worked for went down I had jumped in the car just to get away but had no idea where I was going. As it turned out I drove to see my parents in BC. Chris and Heather then came out for the most wonderful vacation we had ever had. When it was time for them to fly back Heather broke my heart by telling me to stay. She said she knew my marriage was long over and that she had never seen me happier. She said they would come out on vacation again to see me and because they loved my family out west. I cried for hours but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving her so I drove back to Brampton only to waste a few more years.

Then I got the disaster call of my life. My mother had fifth stage melanoma and was given only a five percent chance of living six months. My parents had moved out west in 1970 and I had hardly seen them over the years since so I knew I had to go and spend whatever time my mother had left with her. I talked to Heather and she agreed I had no other choice. After a short time out west I made the fateful decision to listen to Heather and to be with my mother so we drove down to Brampton and sold whatever my ex didn't take. I remember the tearful day I said goodbye to Heather as though it was yesterday, but I never thought for a moment that it would be the last time I ever saw her.

The following year she called my Dad to tell him she wanted me to come down to her convocation. Later she called to say that it had been delayed until January but she still wanted me to come. I had a very brief chat with her and we agreed I would drive down. It was now the dead of winter so I knew the drive would be perilous and it was. When I got to Brampton she was not at their apartment as agreed. I went through hell trying to find her but then Chris told me that my ex and her new husband hid Heather away and wouldn't let me see her. I hung around for three weeks at Chris' place hoping to get to see Heather but nothing changed and I drove back to BC in tears.

When I got back to BC I wrote Heather a three page letter asking what happened but never got a response. Later I sent her a cheque for Christmas because I didn't know what she wanted, but it was never cashed. Over the years since many friends, mostly girlfriends, have tried in vain to contact Heather but failed. Quite often people assumed that something bad had happened between Heather and I, but I swear nothing ever did. At one point my Dad called her from Yuma and told her now stepbrother to have her call him collect. She never called. When they returned from Yuma and he told me about the call it really upset me because he could have been calling to tell her that I died. It broke my heart that she didn't care enough to call.

One of Chris's daughters, Mackenzie, contacted me on Messenger when I was in Mexico. She was fourteen at the time and really upset that her parents had  not let her make her own decision about me. We had a number of chats and then she told me she was coming to Mexico for a friend's wedding. She said she would let me know where and when. She stopped responding to my messages and then she posted a photo of herself at the wedding in Puerto Villarta. I was so disappointed that she didn't want to meet, but after I asked her in a message she blocked me. Yet another mystery.

Yes, I have another son, Andrew, although I spent most of my life denying I was his father. Yet another book I could write but in more recent years I have tried to establish some kind of relationship with him. Many years ago we did exchange some emails and more recently I asked him on Messenger if it was okay to add his photos to my family page on this site and he agreed. His mother and I did spend some time together briefly, but today she just wants to attack me.

So the idea that I somehow abandoned my kids or grandkids could not be further from the truth. Even now when I am facing this potentially serious medical issue I have felt that my kids and grandkids have a right to know, but nobody will help me to contact them. Andrew's mother went so far as to tell me not to contact him. Sad.

 


When BIG isn't BEAUTIFUL

Decades ago, back when I started to dabble in the computer business, everything was DOS based, the IBM operating system. It was awkward, cumbersome, counter-intuitive and basically just a pain. Getting anything done involved a knowledge of cryptic commands that took forever to learn. Bill Gates realized that we all needed a better way to interact with computers and helped to developed the Window's GUI (Graphical User Interface) based in large part of the work of Xerox and Apple. Windows 1.0 was born and would soon become the dominant desktop interface on more than ninety percent of the world's computers. Soon Microsoft starting flexing its wings and got involved in a growing trend to have local networks linking computers together with a central server. At the time the dominant player was Novell who had the majority of the networking market.

Back in those heady days I got involved in installing local networks. My first was using Novell, which came with thirteen extremely thick and complex manuals on how to setup a local network. I started on page one and six weeks later had a working office network. Over the course of several subsequent installs and although Novell was somewhat helpful, the best help came from Microsoft. Support was always free and incredibly responsive. On one install at midnight our time I had two Microsoft engineers on the phone helping me install a network card that wasn't working. Their research showed that I had to cut a track on the card, which back then cost over three hundred dollars. As we were discussing the potential danger of destroying the card I went ahead and cut the track. It worked and we all shared a laugh at my gutsy move.

Yes. Those were the "good old days" when Microsoft focused on their customers and did everything humanly possible to help them. Not only did they release better and better versions of Windows over the years, but they also developed a flagship desktop software program, Office, which also quickly became the worldwide standard in desktop productivity software. Among it's many integrated systems, Word and Excel quickly became the standard.

Over the last few years, ever since Bill Gate's departure as Chief Software Engineer, Microsoft has made a number of missteps. They completely missed the boat on the huge potential of search engines, effectively giving the market to Google. Their foray into music sharing with Zune was a disaster, giving the market to Apple's iPod and iTunes. They completely missed the obvious growth of smart phones and tablets. Even Windows now has a ridiculous amount of versions, and not since Windows XP, the de facto standard for years, have consumers readily understood what Microsoft is doing. Their branding has been pathetic and inconsistent at best. Their next version is widely expected to be Windows 9 and hopefully they'll be smart enough to roll all other versions into that moniker, such as Windows 9 Professional for business.

Besides all these obvious missteps the biggest change at Microsoft has been their total lack of concern over customer complaints, best illustrated by the disaster that is Office 2013. For some completely unknown and unexplained reason, the Office team took a giant step backward and released only three themes for this version, all of them virtually unusable. The response from the prerelease focus groups was terrible. No one liked the themes. Everyone found them to be very hard on the eyes, with many visually challenged users stating they could not distinguish the "colors" of grey and they developed serious eye strain. Despite this clear feedback Microsoft decided to unleash these themes on the public. Corporate users, who, partly because of volume licensing agreements that included upgrades, but more out of habit, began rolling out the "upgrade" to Office 2013, only to be met with howls from their users that they HATED the lack of themes. At great expense they were forced to roll their thousands of computers back to Office 2010. Hundreds of posts began showing up on Microsoft's forum under the heading "how to change the themes in Office 2013". The early post from Microsoft ignored what users were saying and simply showed how to select from the three themes, all of which were horrible. Soon visually challenged users were complaining that they couldn't even use the new version because of the lack of contrast. Most damaging were the posts from corporate IT people saying they would not roll-out Office 2013 until the themes from Office 2010 were restored. New users quickly began insisting that their new computers came with Office 2010 and not Office 2013.

You would think that with this massive and predictable response to the lack of themes that Microsoft would jump on this and get the Office Team working overtime to restore the themes, right? Not so. Instead the second post from Microsoft was that they were measuring "pain points", but did not anticipate releasing any upgrades to restore the themes. The frustration and anger being expressed on this forum topic is unprecedented in Microsoft's history. Many people are predicting the demise of Office and even Microsoft itself, but Microsoft continues to show incredible arrogance by refusing to respond to the complaints. There are even suggestions that so many programmers have left the company that they no longer have the resources to solve the problem, regardless of how pressing the issue. No one is asking Microsoft to reinvent the wheel here. They just want the previous themes to be restored. How difficult is that?

Microsoft grew to be the behemoth it is today by listening and responding to the needs of customers. Without the vision of Bill Gates the company has clearly lost its way. They've invested millions, if not billions, in failed ventures, often long after the market has already been captured by others. Witness Bing. Internet Explorer, once the dominant browser, has now fallen to the least used browser, allowing Chrome to now dominate the market. Apple has run away with the iPhone and iPad markets because Microsoft failed to pay attention to what customers wanted. With the release of the first iPhone Ballmer stated that it wouldn't capture more than one or two percent of the market. Yeah, right. How's that for "vision"?

Are we really watching the fall of the once mighty Microsoft? They may well still have billions in the bank to keep them afloat, for now, but if they continue to make the same costly missteps even money in the bank won't save them. If I were a Google I would be investing every penny I could in developing an Office alternative. That would sound the death knell for Microsoft because it has always been their cash cow.


Reflections on my 64th birthday

I suspect that, like many people, I am not where I expected to be at this stage of my life. In my romantic thoughts of youth I expected to have a loving family with a partner by my side, my kids and grand kids sharing their lives with me and maybe some travel once in a while. From the age of nineteen I worked hard both at my career and renovating whatever home we were in, building equity for that day in the future when we would downsize.

One of my favorite sayings has always been "life is what happens while you are making other plans". My life has been that saying personified. Although we are in control of some things in our lives, like what we do for a living or where we live, most things are a result of things beyond our control and how we deal with what happens unexpectedly.

After a life best described as what most would call "normal", a long term marriage of twenty-three years, two kids, a nice home and two cars, two things happened to change the direction of my life. The first was realizing that I was trapped in a loveless marriage that had no chance of getting any better. After a year of living apart but paying all the bills for our last house, while my wife sat doing nothing to help, not working and not even filing for unemployment, I knew it was time to end it. The other was my mother being diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and being given only a five percent chance of surviving more than six months.

My parents, brother and sister, had moved out West in 1970 and had I not met my wife and she got pregnant I might well have gone with them and my life would obviously have been completely different. Given where I am today it would have no doubt been a lot better, for many reasons. Back then the Okanagan was full of so much opportunity, mostly in Real Estate. The prices compared to Ontario were insane. I wanted to form a syndicate, buy up properties, renovate them and put them up for rental. Homes on the lake that I could have bought for less than two hundred thousand dollars were soon selling in the millions. They weren't making any more lakefront so I knew demand would force the prices up and I was right.

With the exception of a couple of visits back and forth and taking the whole family out to Expo 86, I missed having my parents be part of my life. It wasn't my decision to move away from us but my feelings about that all changed when my mother was first diagnosed in 1991. The thought of losing my mother and not spending whatever time she had left with her made me feel selfish and guilty, especially when my own life in Ontario was falling apart. I made the decision to move out West in 1993, partly accepting that my failed marriage was over and partly to be with my mother during her last days.

When I left Ontario I naively thought that my kids would come out to visit us, especially because of my mother's failing health and because we had such a wonderful time when both of them came out for a three week vacation in 1986. As I said a tearful good-bye to my daughter I was shocked that she told me to stay out West because she knew how bad my marriage was and she said she had never seen me happier. I didn't listen and returned to Ontario mostly because I couldn't stand the thought of being apart from her. It was a mistake.

What I never anticipated was that my kids would abandon me for the next seventeen years, something I have deeply regretted every single day since I moved. My mother did beat all the odds and lived until 2007 although she suffered from Alzheimer's the last few years.

The next truly life-changing thing that happened was when my Dad died in my arms in 2005. Not only was this the most traumatic time in my life but it also sent my life into a downward spiral of bad decisions, bad timing and incredible bad luck.

Although prior to his death my father had struggled with caring for my mother, he had done nothing to get her into a care home where she belonged. His drinking escalated and he called me every night crying, telling me that he could not take this anymore, but he was consumed by guilt at putting my mother in a home. Finally he agreed to sell their place although he had no plan as to what to do when it sold. Their home was very dated and he asked me if I would renovate it for sale. I spent four of the toughest months of my life working long days, seven days a week, with them calling me from Revelstoke where they were staying with my sister, constantly pressuring me as to when they could come home.

After my father passed away and given my mother's health we decided it would be traumatic for her to lose her husband and move, so we took the house off the market. I was elected to move in to care for her, although I hoped this would be short term until I got her into a care facility. It wasn't. For months and months I did everything humanly possible to get her into a care facility with no luck. Her condition was deteriorating rapidly and she was put on an emergency first available spot basis. Unfortunately there were three hundred and fifty people on the same basis, so I had to spend my days harassing anyone and everyone who could get her into a facility. Finally I got a call that there was a spot for her and as much as it broke my heart I had to lie to her to get her to go. The day I left her there was the saddest day of my life.

How my sister ended up killing our mother by pulling her out of the care facility is another story, but it's enough to say I have not spoken to her since and I don't forgive her.

After the house sold I moved into a place where, no sooner had I got there than the by-law officer told me I had to move. On short notice I couldn't really find anything decent, but I did find one basement apartment that wasn't terrible in Kelowna. I was on my way to give the landlord the first month's rent when, for some unknown reason I checked my email. There was an email from my Real Estate agent telling me about a place In the Princess MHP that was about to go into foreclosure. He said it was a mess but I could probably just take over the private mortgage, renovate it and sell it for a nice profit.

I ended up losing my deposit on the basement apartment in Kelowna and I moved into the disaster in Princess. Even with the pad rent I was paying less than the basement apartment and I had a place of my own, albeit a mess. Thus began fourteen months of very long days, seven days a week, completely gutting the place and redesigning the layout and rebuilding it from nothing but the shell. As I neared completion I started getting opinions of value from several local Realtors. Without exception they all said it was one of the best manufactured homes in the valley and they all priced it around $159,900. At the time I had been researching other places to renovate and had found three ideal properties so I wanted to sell quickly and firm offers on at least one of these other properties. I listed the place for $139,900, much against the wishes of my Realtor.

The day before it was to hit the market one of the local Indian Chief's came out in the local paper stating that anyone who bought on native land was "stupid" because there was no long term tenancy and all the parks would be closed for redevelopment with no compensation to the owners of the homes. Overnight the market collapsed. No Realtor, lawyer or bank would touch a property on Native land. Even worse, the commitment I had for a private mortgage, just in case the place didn't sell, fell through. Even the Band's own credit union wouldn't touch financing. My world fell apart and the stress was killing me.

My doctor told me to get out from under this stress or it would kill me. The cold, grey winters were starting to get to me so I started researching somewhere warmer and settled on Panama. Another huge mistake. I left my place in the care of my electrician friend who I had let move in when he split with his wife. Another huge mistake.

Long story, but I ended up getting ripped off for everything I owned in Panama, plus the guy I left in charge of my place back in Westbank let the snow build-up on my roof, something I had warned him about, and the roof collapsed resulting in twenty thousand dollars worth of damage. If the place was unsellable before, it sure was worse now. I ended up getting less than half of what I would have gotten if I'd sold it before the collapse.

I managed to sell everything I had left in Panama and returned to Toronto to stay with my cousin. Another long story but I met a girl from London on the internet who eventually came to Toronto and for me it was love at first sight. I ended up moving to London to be with her. Another huge mistake. She ended up screwing around on me with, surprise, surprise, a guy she met on the internet. My world had been shattered yet again and now I found myself stuck in a place I loathed.

London has not been kind to me. My wacko landlady threatened to seize all my stuff so I ended up moving out with no idea where I was going. I ended up sleeping on the vacant office floor of a friends and finally got into the Centre of Hope, only to be turfed out because Ontario Works screwed up my paperwork. I then went to The Mission men's shelter, a disgusting, filthy, dangerous place. After also getting kicked out there I ended up at the Unity Project, a wonderful place full of caring people. With their help I managed to get a job at Home Depot and eventually got my own apartment. It didn't last. My contract ended at Home Depot and I was laid off along with a whole bunch of other people. I couldn't pay for my apartment but I got a call from London Housing that a place had opened up in my current building.


Are we heading for an economic collapse?

Back when my in-laws were looking to buy their first home, first they saved for a couple of years to come up with a down payment of a couple thousand dollars. They then qualified for a mortgage with a twenty-five year term and an interest rate of around 5% for the entire term. New homes at the time were about double the average annual family income, based on the wife staying at home to raise the kids and Dad working. Dad was an electrician making about $6,000 a year and their three bedroom new home in Brampton was $12,900. Affordable.

Moving on to my first home. My first family home, a fixer upper, was $42,500 and our family income was just over $20,000. Throughout our more than twenty years of marriage and eight homes, the price we paid was always right around double our annual family income. Even our last matrimonial home was sold for $189,000; my ex was not working, but I was making about $90,000 as a computer consultant.

Fast forward to today. I am working at a call centre, making just over eleven dollars an hour, not an uncommon wage in London for people who work at the few jobs available here - The Tim Hortons, the Home Depots, Wal-Marts and so on. If you are lucky enough to work full-time that adds up to a whopping $23,400. Assume that two people in the same family are working, which is a stretch considering that 54% of people are now divorced. Let's round that off to $50k for the household anyway, so, if the same relationship is true we should be able to buy a home for $100k, right? Not a chance! The average new home price in most urban areas is at least $400k, four times what we earn!

The housing market has always functioned on the concept that young people buy their first home and throughout their lives they move up to bigger and better homes, gaining equity for that day when they retire and sell their last home. If no one is entering the bottom of the market the whole thing grinds to a halt. Prices will fall dramatically when there are no buyers entering the market for the first time.

The same thing is going to happen with cars. Car payments through a bank or lease payments were always affordable, even for those who wanted a new car every three years. Car prices today often require payments that look more like a mortgage payment on a small house. These car payments together with astronomical mortgage payments are what is pushing the average amount of debt through the roof. Older Canadians usually have no mortgage and no car payments, so that leaves all the rest of the younger population shouldering more and more of the debt load. A minor hiccup in interest rates is going to result in the kind of foreclosures we saw in the US and prices will crash the same.

Add to all this the costs of operating a vehicle. Interest rates on car leases are absurd. Buyouts are insane. Insurance costs are over the top. Repairs, particularly on parts for foreign cars are out of site. Now add five buck a gallon fuel and people are no doubt going to question the value of owning a car. Trips of any kind, whether to the local store or a Sunday drive in the country, must be rethought when the price of gas is factored in. When my kids were young we traveled all over Ontario and the north-eastern states for their hockey and soccer, all year round. Today I could never afford that and my kids would suffer if they wanted to play organized sports.

It's what's behind things like the Occupy Movement. More and more people are feeling disenfranchised because they see the rich getting richer and richer, yet the majority are falling further and further behind. It could all serve to bring on an economic collapse. Thoughts?


A really cheap meal

One box of Loblaws' Butcher's Choice burgers (very tasty) on sale for $4.99 for box of eight. D'Italiano Crustini buns, on sale for $2.77 for pack of eight. Cheese slice, Kraft singles on sale for $2.00, bit of mustard and mayo. Splurge on dill pickles, $2.97 for a small bottle of sliced. Dinner for eight nights, although not a lot of variety. less than $1.50 a meal! If you can do without bread or milk for a couple of days, you can mix it up with bacon, No Name on sale for $2.99, or exotic things like mushrooms. What you can't afford is fresh vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes or onions because these have gone up 18% in the last year, with no increase in the food allowance from welfare.
all prices quoted are from Adrian's No Frills in the Argyle Mall.

If you live in the London area Doris Family Produce at the Covent Garden Market sells a nifty little bag of prepared carrots and cele


The Social "Safety Net"?

I have worked all my life in various pursuits, some admittedly more successful than others. Today I find myself facing physical limitations and medical issues for the first time in my life. My weight gain from not smoking, lack of exercise, my "frozen shoulder", elevated sugar levels, foot swelling and pain, all contribute to limiting the type of work I can do. Throughout all of this, though, my singular goal has been to find work. I have never been one to put my feet up and live off the public purse. It's just not my nature.

Thankfully, Ontario Works, the welfare system here in Ontario, within very restrictive guidelines, has still managed to show compassion and understanding for my situation and I am alive today because of it. Also, having been through the horrible experience of staying at the shelters in town, I am most thankful that London Housing finally came through with accommodation. It is a far cry from living in the hellish conditions of places like the Men's Mission, which no one should ever have to suffer.

Obviously this is the first time I have been subjected to the system of support in Ontario, so everything has been new to me. With the exception of the front counter staff at OW, who treat people like pond scum before even giving them a chance, I take no issue with how I have been dealt with, in fact, I have been pleasantly surprised at the genuine concern for my predicament. What I do take exception to, and I think needs to be rethought, is the systems and programs outside of the control of OW.

Firstly, my experience with a local "counseling" company. Having just gone through the trauma of coming far too close to buying the farm because I had no meds, coupled with the loss of my job and my threat of eviction, I was quite obviously in a poor mental state. It didn't help that I was also all alone in a strange town, with no support network of friends.I had never been to any type of counseling or therapy in my life, so I had no idea what to expect. I did think that they would offer me some effective help by referring me to various agencies or suggesting courses of action to get me back on track. OW approved me for ten sessions and I can only assume they are expensive. They were; however, a total waste of time and I only went to two sessions before quitting. They do nothing more than sit and listen to your list of troubles, but offer nothing in return. I asked a number of questions about things like financial assistance, lodging, work related programs, exercise options and on and on, yet my counselor said that was "not their purpose" and she had no information what-so-ever on anything to help me. What good is that? It was pointless.

Frankly I am not sure how I came into contact with Goodwill, who I know no doubt do good work. Maybe it was a referral from OW, but they did offer some very helpful courses to assist me in my job search. What I found incredibly lacking though was their counseling. My first counselor referred me to a program, part of the Ontario Government's Second Career program, and offered online through Conestoga College. Only after several emails back and forth did I learn that this is a post-grad course and I did not qualify, which my counselor should have known. Subsequent to this total waste of time I requested a change of counselor because I felt she was doing nothing for me. Although, after some prodding, they agreed to assign a new counselor to me, the first available appointment with him was over a month away! My job search is urgent and I need all the help I can get. There is obviously a shortage of qualified counselors or funding issues or something that would delay assistance this long. This is of little help to someone struggling every single day to find work.

The merry-go-round with Leads, a local agency designed to help the disabled, was ridiculous. After my referral from OW in January I received a letter setting an appointment for March 31st, almost three months from the date of the referral! Then I got a call cancelling my appointment with no real explanation. Then after a follow-up on the second referral, they had no record of it and told me to go back, yet again, to OW for another referral. After all this I then got a letter telling me I have an appointment for August 1st! This is six months after the initial referral. Watching all their commercials and looking at their website I did feel that they could be very effective in overcoming my physical challenges and finding me some kind of meaningful work, so I pressed to get an earlier appointment, and was successful.

Last week I met with a counselor and had a very in-depth two hour interview. I left feeling that there was a very good chance that they would find me work. I was to attend again yesterday for a follow-up. Full of anticipation, when I got there, first, they had misplaced my file, but we were to go ahead anyway. That struck me as odd because I assumed there might have been some contacts made with employers or that they had done something. I was wrong. I was ushered into the office, whereupon the counselor looked up job postings with people like the city and a call centre. I had explained that, since the day my contract ended with Home Depot I had spent every day, all day, searching every possible job posting anywhere. There was no job publicly posted anywhere that I did not know about. I assumed that the whole purpose of Leads was to tap into the hidden job market for people with disabilities. I also assumed that they acted as advocates for people like me. The results of the meeting were that I was to apply online, myself, something I could and did do every day, to these jobs. I asked somewhat incredulously, if it wasn't better to go through Leads so that they might advocate on my behalf with the employer to consider hiring someone with challenges. The answer was that it didn't matter, so what is the purpose of Leads?

My point here is that it, in my humble opinion, it is time for reform. I question why there are so many publicly funded outside agencies involved in the process of getting people back to work. Ontario Works mandate should be, simply, to get people back to work. The programs should start with providing people funding for their basic needs, but then it should ran the gambit, from work, home and life counseling, to retraining, to academic funding to housing to employment counseling with resume building and interview counseling to job placement and follow-up, all coordinated under one roof and by a team who are fully aware of the client's needs. There should also be volunteering opportunities to gain work experience and temporary job placement. When I worked setting up the call centre we needed four call reps immediately. I called OW to advise of the job, which paid $11.00 an hour to start. How many of the eight thousand people on assistance applied? Not one. The system is obviously broken.

I don't pretend to understand the internal workings of OW, but I do hope that maybe someone will have the courage to submit some ideas up the ladder. With a provincial election looming and the Premier with the lowest ever popularity ratings, maybe a really effective "works" program would be an effective election campaign strategy. It could start with putting able-bodied people on assistance to work, but letting them keep the money earned. There are thousands of projects in a place like London that could be done with public/private partnerships, like cleaning up all the graffiti or picking up the thousands of cigarette butts lying all over the city.

Just food for thought, I hope.


Planned obsolescence

Anyone who has been stuck in the horrible traffic jams lately probably thinks they will all go away when the new bridge, or rather modified bridge is finally built. Nothing could be further from the truth. By the time it opens this modified bridge will have cost Two Hundred Million dollars and be obsolete the day it opens. It's hard to believe that supposedly intelligent people are involved in this stupid project when the pitfalls are obvious. This brain cramp started long ago when then Mayor Jim Stuart was quoted as saying we didn't even need to look at a new bridge until at least 2010. What was he thinking? This idiocy continues today, when staff said construction on the bridge wouldn't delay traffic. I guess because traffic is already standing still, it can't be delayed anymore than it is. And at this late date they don't even have a plan for emergency vehicles? Duh!

What Kelowna, and the Okanagan, needs now and has needed for the last ten years, and will need even more in the future is a NEW bridge with a bypass. This will get all of the through traffic, mostly commercial vehicles, through the area much quicker and ease congestion on the already packed Highway 97. Make the new bridge a toll bridge to both pay for it, and to earn ongoing revenue to maintain it, all the users expense, not the taxpayers. The existing bridge can then handle the local traffic without the chaos that currently exists. Imagine the cost of all those cars, campers, RVs, and commercial vehicles sitting in traffic jams, both fuel and wages, not to mention lost time and frustration. It's only a matter of time before someone dies in that mess.

We are very lucky that the Okanagan attracts so many tourist dollars to support our local economy. How insulting it is to them to have it take them hours to just get into Kelowna. After all this money spent we'll still have a traffic nightmare and we'll still need a new bridge. Nothing has been solved. We should expect better of our planners and politicians.