My Continuous Battle with Insurance Companies

There are big struggles in (North) American way of life (not that I'm living that life to the most at the moment!) which applies to almost everyone. Many may not be much affected by them but it's hard to believe so. In the meantime these issues exists at the other corners of the world, more or less with differences. They are:

1- Mortgage (Rent is less sever than that)

2- Health Services.

3- Damn Insurance.

4- ...

Insurance has been so far the most challenging for me and who knows how many times I have had problems with different insurance companies so far. The last one that I'm telling it here is the auto insurance. I had been trying to get a better deal until last month that I found this broker. The company I had purchased insurance from and more specifically the agent was very rigid. It was Our Way or Highway policy. I had the insurance for a whole year and then when I asked to have a little break on the second term, the second term, I didn't see much flexibility. I had to deal with another asshole before that and didn't get any result. The fucking bitch said to me that I have to sell my car as I apparently cannot afford insurance. So I got with this one and as I said she didn't show any assistance. I contacted another fucking whore and that motherfucker didn't even bother answering after the second or third e-mail. Then once I got this paper in the mail which said if I only get a quote from this company, I will receive a gift card and I said to me why not. So I contacted and eventually I had a good quote from them which seemed helping me by saving almost $600 annually! But just right after I cancelled the insurance with the current company the problems started. First of all when I called the woman I was told that she was on vacation and she would not be back until June or July! So I said that would be great. She realizes that she has lost a customer right after she comes back and that would kind of ruin her vacation. I received the remaining months cheque for over $1000 soon after the cancellation and received a temporary Pink Card for a month. But the month ended and I did not receive the yearly card in the mail so I contacted the new bitch and she send me another temporary for another 1 month! 

She requested the history of the time that I drove a commercial vehicle and I finally could get that but now she is asking me to remove the history of one small accident that I had from another time that I drove another commercial vehicle and I have to get that as well. Seems that these problems with the insurance companies are never ending. If i was single, it would be a different situation. I drove without insurance for over 2 years and a half once, I guess but now I can not do that! 

It is good that we do not have to pay for our health insurance in this province at the moment but I can see that being added to the list of or expenses soon and that will be when I am going to have another problem in my list! 

Guacamole

We just recently experienced one of the dirtiest tricks of food industry again: preservatives. F. F. made an incredibly delicious small bowl of Guacamole and I had a quarter of it with bread. So delighting. I covered it and kept it in the refrigerator. 

The next day it was turned kind of gray! The taste has not been changed so I finished so I finished the rest with another piece (it's usually eaten with Tortilla) of bread but sure it did not as good looking as day one. If you go to supermarkets you see packs of Guacamole which sees made with some 90% Avocado and as long as you look at it and doesn't matter how long you keep it, it will have it's bright green colour. The fact is first of all they make it out of old, really soft and almost mushy Avocados, the ones which have been left and not sold for whatever reason. Then they add different preservatives to prevent it from discolouration. And then of course they add some colour to it. There you have the great colour, brilliant, tasty Guacamole that you can eat as much as you want without even thinking twice how in long run it will affect you.
Guacamole's eyepiece is available everywhere but this is what we use and makes it excellent:

1- 3 ripe Avocados.
2- 1/2 cup diced Red Onion.
3- 2 medium Tomatoes, diced.
4- 1 Lime, (freshly squeezed at the time of mixing)
5- 1 small Jalapeno, finely chopped.
6- 1 cup chopped Cilantro.

Mix all the ingredients and at the end add salt, black pepper and lime juice and adjust to your desired taste.
(Picture: This is the real natural Guacamole made with old Avocados and other ingredients without any chemicals and preservatives. Excellent taste too!)

Cultural Discrepancies (4): Eating Habits

People eat differently here from how I used to eat. I better say the Caucasian people eat differently. The foreigners  mostly, most of the time keep their original eating habits and cuisines. Breakfast is an important meal here and while people eat out mostly, breakfast, I assume is the meal that most of the time is eaten outside. There is no single day you pass a Tim Horton's, McDonald's, Starbucks or any other coffee chain or fast food without a line of people waiting for their coffee and breakfast sandwich or something else. And they are mostly Caucasians and the people of other generations who are born here plus at times cab drivers who have nowhere else to eat and have nothing else cheaper than this to eat! 

I used to go to McDonald's regularly eating the full of fat, carbohydrate and cholesterol breakfast sandwich but know that I have less activity and also more aware of the harm these sandwiches so, I barely go, may be once a month or even less. 

Unlike here breakfast is very limited in the old country mainly because people want to rush to work and there is no place that they can get their breakfast from. So it is mostly skipped or limited to a cup pf tea and a small piece of bread with Feta Cheese which in fact is disgusting in taste especially most of the breads which are all made of White Flour but people are used to it because it's the cheapest and fastest breakfast and the most common. Fried Egg or Omelet is common for the time that you are not late and for people who can afford. And of course Bread, Butter and Honey which is another combination. Why I'm saying this because it's a reminder for me and as well I think there might be people who are not familiar with the breakfasts of the old country and might want to know. Of course there are the other ones which are fancier and more expensive and those are the ones that you have to go out with. I very rarely went out back to the time I lived there because I did not consider them healthy and sanitary, which in fact are not, just like most of the restaurants in the West. Among them are Head and Feet (of Sheep) and a kind of thick soup called Haleem and that in fact a bit better compare to the first one. 

Then lunch is just a sandwich here for most of the people or they drop at a Sushi place paying may be $10 for 3 pieces of warped vegetable for raw fish in cold cheap rice! Depending on the weather people might have soup and that always is a powered soup dissolved in hot (not even boiled!) water or made and frozen soup which is thawed in a big pot. Recently people have learnt to eat salad mainly because they consider it healthy. So you may see salad bars in supermarkets and restaurants and notice that people add big pieces of croutons or boiled egg and a whole lot of creamy, fatty sauce at the end, not knowing that has more harm than good! 

And the last but not the least is dinner which has the same importance as breakfast may be even more but the good thing about dinner here is its eaten normally early evening so unlike the old country you would most of the time have no problem sleeping. Dinner has three courses but is usually light because people make themselves full with the combination of three courses and drinking wine while in the old country the dinner while is as important as lunch is mostly served very late, especially at the family parties and very heavily, I would say. 

But regardless of all the above when I saw the organizations reimbursing policy for the meals today, I realized it has a complete conformance(!) with the eating habits of North America. The company reimburses the employees for the meals in this manner:

$x for breakfast, $(x+5) for lunch and almost $(x+5)*2 for dinner!  

You pay not much for the breakfast because you are in rush to get to the destination or catch your plane so you get a coffee and a breakfast sandwich at the most. Then at the lunch time you have to rush back to the meeting or your visit but in case of dinner you are allowed to have a double digit bill which not many employees get that chance! 

After years I have adopted myself with both the old country's eating habits and the West's! I don't eat most of  the meals of both sides especially tons and tons of white, bleached rice and pots of different types of stew and different sorts of Kababs (in fact I don't even remember when was the last time I had Kabab) in the meantime I stay away from daily sausage, Pepperoni crap Pizza with disgusting white flour thick crust and other sorts of trash like Subway, Arby's, etc. I stick with salad and once a week a home made meaty meal  or  other light healthy choices but generally its hard to get good food, especially fruit in here. I was watching this movie's trailer, Food Inc. and added more to what I already had known about the food business here but I have to get the movie and watch it. 

(Photo: Oven pink fresh salmon with onions, herbs and cut potato, this home made is a good and very delicious chose which gave us a very good feeling and we enjoyed a lot after eating)

Disappointing Experience With Ralph Klein Park

I had heard about Ralph Klein Park before going there this morning but I gotta say: It was a very disappointing trip to the south east side of the City. I always admired Ralph Klein although I didn't know him very much and had very little experience with him but it was interesting to me to have a park named after somebody who was alive at the time. So I decided to go this morning to see what it was about. 

First off this park is far away from any neighbourhood so I really see no reason why the City should spend money to build a park where all the surrounding is industrial places. The other problem is the City of Calgary website says that the park is closed Mondays and holidays but the gate was wide open. I don't think anybody could steal anything but there are always sick people who could cause damage. There was only one SUV parked in the park and I didn't see anyone around. 

The construction of the park is not finished yet. I saw what looked liked Bobcats and pile of stones which showed work had not been finished yet. I certainly believe that the City could have finished the park first and then advertise for it. I understand that the City of Calgary's authorities are working hard to make a modern city but looks like they either lack intellectual resources or a good management. Another example of that is building a bridge over Bow River which already have enough! Millions of dollars was spent, not to mention the asshole who was hired to design it, just because someone in the City had though it would have been cool to have another bridge, a fancy one while that money could have been used much smarter. 

(Photo: Construction vehicles are still seen at the other side of this pond like water in Ralph Klein Park. I really liked these glass information signs that the City has put here and there but didn't get a nice shot. May be I will when the park's construction is finished!)

Moving for New Customers

I saw this woman's advertisement a few times, back to the time I resided in British Columbia in the local papers advertising for the service she provided. She indicated each time that she was leaving the country and I guess for that reason she was giving break in her service price. It was kind of strange because once someone is here in Canada especially the one who had a miserable life in his or her original country, they barely want to leave unless they go to Australia, the US or somewhere in Europe. The first one rarely happens and for the second one the person should be really lucky to get a better position in there to go and Europe is only the destination for the western Europeans, for example Germans who are going back to their own country. Other than the mentioned ones, people barely go back to their hometown of the original country unless their situation is really bad or they have made good money so they go and retire over there. It is common within African guys here. They come as refugees, get the Government money for years and then work hard without spending much, save a lot and considering the exchange rate, they go back and live a life of dreams! For a Chinese woman who came to Canada on what basis, I don't know, and gives massage and maybe more, I can see her going back only if she has made enough money to go and start a small business in a small town over there.
Anyways I saw the woman's advertisement a few times in Calgary Sun and that was her! She had not gone back to China but moving to Alberta to make money, probably. I didn't see the same advertisement in the passed few weekends that I spent in a McDonald's for my coffee so I assume the new business has not grown for her, may be here. I remember part of the advertisement in the B. C. paper was that she would not provide any sexual pleasure, which I believe it means she would(!) but here I didn't see that. May be she shows up in the paper again or may be she's running the business with no need for an advertisement on a local paper. 

Tracing Back the Steps

I told myself to go and find the route that I used to take to go to South Glenmore Park back to 2003 every weekend, today. I used to ride my now stolen mountain bike from 17A St. to the park even in cold winter days. So I drive to road that is parallel to Glenmore Dr. and park there. For information it is adjacent to the close-by Golf course(!) So I parked there and passed over Glenmore from the overpass and then I tried to remember where I used to go. So step by step and gradually I followed the Glenmore Pathway parallel to the beautiful  Earl Grey Golf Club and after about 25 minutes may be I was there. The closer I got, the more familiar my surrounding looked like. I realized that the reservoir does not have as much water as it used to, or may be it was just a feeling. I just took a few photos and ran the way back to the vehicle which only took 10 minutes. 

From left Pahlavi II, the King of Iran, Houari Boumedianne the then Algerian Foreign Minister and one of the biggest criminals of the history, Saddam at the time of signing the 1975 Algeria Treaty which determined the Iranian-Iraqi border. Saddam later in 1980 tore the treaty paper as a symbolic gesture on TV and invaded Iran on 22-Sep-1980 , starting a war which as Iran refused the ceasefire after more than a year, caused more than 1,000,000 casualties and billions of dollar damages to both nations. Why Iran refused the end of the war after the libation of Khoram-shahr is a big dispute which should be subject of another post. 

(Photo, top: Golf courses all have a very relaxing and beautiful environment. That is why many elderly choose this sport for their spare time. This is part of the Earl Grey Golf Club close to Glenmore Park which remind me of the very famous Earl Grey Tea. That was very popular and was considered a good gift back to the time I was a little kid in the old country. I remember my aunt's husband used to bring a box every time he visited us. He was an army officer serving in a border town. I guess this memory goes back to 1975 when there was conflicts between Iran and Iraq, It was a border disputes which resulted in signing of the famous 1975 Algeria Treaty between the King of Iran, Pahlavi and Saddam)