The Miserable Weather of Quebec!

When I lived in British Columbia, or to be specific, the disgusting Lower Mainland, one of my main concerns was its damn weather: Raining most of the time! I hated that! Here, in Quebec, it doesn't look it's much better than there! It hasn't rained for a few days but the cold weather and chilly wind still exists. I just checked the weather and I realized that there will be rain for the rest of the week and even the next week! Thanks!

It's been either rain, snow, extreme wind, snowstorm or chilly weather since I came here. Probably as many as 3 sunny days! 

I don't have big plans for the weekend. Where can you go without a proper vehicle?! You're like a crippled person(!) but I wanted to have a walk around the town which now seems far fetched especially with the damn cab fees here! The damn cab charged me $9 for a 3 Km ride last weekend!
(Photo: Bad picture! I took it when I was being driven from P. E. T. International Airport to Saint Jean Sur Richelieu. The damn ride cost me more than $100(!) and like most of the days the weather was shitty! Dogs and cats coming down!) 

CFLRS Notes (9): Padre

I've never been religious in my life. Maybe it's not entirely true. I was partially brainwashed(!) during junior high when I attended Elm-o-din (meaning Science and Religion) school. In case you wonder it was called that name, I should say they probably intend to say that they care both about science (education) and religion at the same time in the school. The religious team of teachers and staff were strict over students over those years particularly because those were the years of Iran-Iraq War, the very bad days that both sides, mainly Iranians had high casualties and that was because Iraqis used chemical weapons against the Iranians. I remember posters of injured soldiers with big blisters and wounds all over their partially covered body on the school corridor. You could not, not be religious (this is used in Seinfeld!) on those years because that was a religious war or as they call it Sacred Defense.

I'm getting off the track but this is short top story is a good example to read for the asshole who say Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction! If a chemical gas such as Mustard Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction then what is, morons?! It's a separate topic that I should perhaps get into it later.

Anyways the reason why I brought that up is just to say that I'm not religious but when I went to CFLRS I realized that the school has several Padres and they offer religious and consulting services. Interesting.

I had the chance to meet two of them so far, not personally though. One when I was part of the main platoon, during introduction to the Chapel and then when I was thrown out, (a separate story), another one, a French-Canadian gentleman, from Montreal.

He, with his interesting French accent, told us once a story about the time he was in Afghanistan (many of the staff there had been to that country as part of Canada's long mission) which I don't think would cause any issue if I told it here:

When I was deployed to Afghanistan I once shared a room with someone else. I snore in my sleep. So when we woke up in the morning I said good morning to him. In response, he just growled! I then realized that his behaviour was different through the day. I eventually got an opportunity to ask him if everything was OK or not. He said that it was not! I asked him what the problem was. He said I snored so loudly that he could not sleep! He then added that he was so mad that he wanted to wake me up by shaking me hard (the padre actually imitated that move!) but he was afraid of doing that because he thought God was at my side! 

We all burst into laughter here! It was impossible not to laugh the way he narrated the story!

(Photo: Here in a photo taken from CAF website [I hope they don't mind] a padre is leading a ceremony on a Canadian ship)

CFLRS Notes (8): One Night in Farnham

Farnham is a little town south of Montreal which is used for field training by CFLRS. There used to be a WWII POW camp there. We were scheduled to go there for a day and a night. That was my second trip to the place. After the primary activities and a little theory courses, we were to set our camp in a swamp which it's actually called bivouac! Yes! Recruits set up there camps in a forest area and that day it was raining and it was wet and muddy everywhere.

The first thing you have to set up is your tent so you don't get wet during the night but there's a little issue: There's actually no tent! Instead you have a long tarp which has zipper at one side and you match with another recruit's and make a roof on the top of your heads! It's very narrow and the two people, especially if they're a little big, will have a hard time fitting in! You use strings and pieces of wood to tie two ends of the tarp to two trees and stabilize the tent-like shelter to the ground. There's no bottom! You will have to use your air mattress which actually is not too bad but it's very narrow. This tent-like shelter, which is designed for sleeping only because it's too short to be sit in, is called Hoochie but don't use it individually! Use it with the word tent,coming after it if you're looking for it in the Internet! It should be Hoochie Tent because the word Hoochie by itself means something like slut! I asked the Lieutenant whether the term was Japanese or not. He said he did not think so. When I looked it up (after finding the right spelling and knowing the meaning of Hoochie by itself!) I learnt that the word is probably has Japanese roots!

Setting up Hoochie is not hard. Sleeping in is a bit, particularly if it rains all the fucking night! We had a lesson on how to use Lantern and Field Stove which was good and we got the chance to see and taste prepared food. There was a variety of them: From Spaghetti with Meatball Sauce(!) to Chicken Breast with Vegetables and different types of sliced fruits and desserts(!)

We eventually decided to get to the damn Hoochie and get some sleep especially because we had been woken early to be able to get to the bus on time. It was raining but it was not very cold. I first decided to sleep on the top of sleeping bag while it was laid down inside a waterproof bag and that was on the top of the air mattress because we had been advised that sleeping in the sleeping bag would require to take all the cloths and be only in underwear and I didn't want to do that because I didn't have a spot to put my cloths. They would get mud on them. It was a disaster. I first left my rucksack, helmet and vest outside because the rain was not much but I had to bring them in as the rain was intensified. I arranged myself on the top of everything I had brought while have all of my cloths on, even my raincoat(!) but soon I realized that my butt was muddy and wet! I tried to ignore that and sleep for a few minutes and even fell sleep once but my buddy said something or made a noise that made me up! I then decided to go to the toilet and there I used a few pieces of toilet paper and covered the wet area!

I then went back to the Hoochie while rain has not gotten slower and the bivouac was like a real swamp! You would go a few millimeters down when step your foot on the ground. It was colder than the evening so I took my muddy boots off and went inside the sleeping bag with the hope that I get a few hours of sleep. I guess it was around 05:45 hours that I was woken up by my partner. It was our time to watch. Every two persons get a half an hour (our in cases an hour) of watch for the camp. We were lucky that we were the last team and didn't have to break our sleeps! Collecting the stuff (both personal and common) was the next. We then transferred the rucksacks to the gym so the truck could be cleaned and then cleaned the gymnasium itself and after a course in the rain (which was presented by the Lieutenant) we headed back to the garrison for lunch. Overall it was a good experience but its level of intensity was not even 1/10 of what recruits get as members of their platoons(!) but we learnt a lot and enjoy the trip.

(Photo: The Hoochie tent we assembled was quite similar to this one in the photo except that the sides were closer to the ground and we used pieces of small woods to secure that and the ground was not as clean and nice as this picture. It was all muddy and wet with pieces of rock, tree roots and broken branches and was not leveled like this!)

CFLRS Notes (7): The Clinic

There's a big clinic in the garrison. Who thought there would be a need for that?! ... Well ... It definitely is a must in an environment where all sorts of injuries happen. However you need a variety of specialists with good experience. Unfortunately there's neither specialty, nor experience!

I first ended up going to the clinic when I had pain in my left knee and my left calve was swollen twice its normal size! I realized one afternoon but I ignored that. It must have been the result of continuous working my feet: Going up and down 5 floors few times a day, marching, running, squatting, you name it. 

One day we did an intense exercise and then in the afternoon there was a march drill. I thought I should go to the clinic. I found a time that it did not interfere with any course. 

After waiting for a few minutes I was examined by a physician (I assume) in uniform (I rather not disclose the rank). There I was told that I might have had a blood clot!! 

I'm quite familiar with that condition. The Screamer, the fucking, disgusting, human-like animal, in the previous work, has it! He had to go for blood test every often and he had to take medications. The presumably physician prescribed me a pill (a blood thinner) and told me that I was in dire danger! He warned me not to fall(!) and ordered me to go to the local hospital the next morning and do an Ultrasound Test. That was it. The next morning I was driven to the town's hospital and as I knew it was found out that I didn't have any clot in my veins or vessels! 

That kicked me back for more than probably 2 months(!) because I missed a mandatory course the morning that I was sent to the hospital and after that I was automatically sent to TRP section!

TRP is for the people who are re-coursed, meaning they have to stop their course and start it later. It's a terrible experience and makes you lazy for the time you have to go back to a platoon again but that is what it is. Generally the clinic staff are very polite, helpful and nice but not skillful and experienced as I said in the beginning. As a Master Corporal told me once and I only quote here: If you're good at what you're doing as a physician, why would you join such clinic? Unless you were the last one in your class, there would be no other reason for that!
(Photo: This areal view of the school. I'm not sure who has taken this. The clinic is seen on the lower right corner)

A Walk Around Saint Jean Sur Richelieu

I normally do not use Wi-Fi for Internet on my phone because I don't like small screens but I'm sitting in a McDonald's in the town, waiting for my $1.94 medium coffee to cool off! I walked from the garrison in a chilly, windy 4 ℃ (around 0 perhaps with windchill). It took between 50 min. and one hour and having a bad cold and coughing chest didn't make it a pleasant walk but it was better than sitting in Subway or the cubical! I'm going for a little shopping in a few min. but I probably take a cab, although I might not be able to get one! When we were going to P. E. T. Airport in Montreal I called a cab but it came we got to another one which the driver was not able to find his customer.
(Photo: It's a big two-story McDonald's in the town, the only one rather than the one inside Wal-Mart. The entire second floor was almost empty. Richelieu River at the east side)

CFLRS Notes (6): The Abusers

It didn't take long to me to learn that there is a good percentage of the recruits who actually come to CFLRS for things rather than being part of CAF! Yes! It might sound strange but the following a few categories of those individuals:

1) Collect cheques from the Federal Government, spend the money on computer, strippers, prostitutes, alcohol, weed and other drugs and go back home because they never saw that much money (as much as $1200 per months) in their life and probably that would be as much as they make, if they found a job.

2) Find a mate (girlfriend/boyfriend). Fuck her/him for a while. Stay with her/him for a while to see if it taste good after that while or not and go from there.

3) Find a way to file for VR (Voluntary Release) and possibly combine that with do-nothing-for-as-long-as-possible and if they're smart enough, (in their philosophy of living!), get permanent disability fund.

There might be other reasons but these are the three main ones. 

I understand that someone might go to CFLRS (or any other work-place or school for that matter) and finds it hard to continue. Abusing the system is wrong and unfortunately I have to say that the Government provides them with that opportunity. 

(Photo: Regular [Perhaps better to say old], Canadian Armed Forces recruit uniform, also called Combat Shirt. Unlike what I said above, majority of the recruits go to the school with the aim of finishing it and join the Forces but many plan to leave by the end of their first contract)