The Most Amazing at Glenmore

I went to Glenmore Park, the section adjacent to Heritage Park for my normal running. It was snowing and almost -13 degrees C and there was barely anybody there. My car was the only one parked there around 17:25 hours. I got on the track and walked a few steps and then started running, followed the path toward south. Just after around 2 minutes I thought I saw a dog in distance. I told myself that someone was walking his or her dog. Then when I got closer I realized that, first that the dog was not leashed and then I found out that was not a dog! Looked like a Coyote to me! The poor animal was probably hungry and looking for food in the bushes and shrubs! I soon lost the track of it. I tried to get a good shot but this new mobile phone has a stupid camera! Only 0.3 Mega Pixel! So I carried on until 10 minutes passed and then turned back and took the same path, the opposite direction.

I was running and I was on the upper path. There is another path which is closer to the reservoir and for a moment I had a quick look at reservoir and I saw two animals were moving their head on something! They took a few steps back, the second they sensed me and looked at my direction. Another animal, a little smaller in size, appeared and started running up the hill, getting to the same path I was in, just about 20 m. away. I immediately took my camera phone out and started taking photos. The two big ones which looked like Wolves to me went away from the lower path and stood in the middle of frozen, covered-with-snow reservoir. I followed the other one which looked like it had been wounded around the neck and hands but only could took photos of the foot prints and a few drops of blood. The blood drips had been solidified, kind of frozen. There was no other sign of it. It was getting late so I continued on the path while the two Wolves were still on the ice.

(Photo: This picture might not be very clear because it was taken using a X2 mobile phone camera but the two wolves can be clearly seen in the reservoir in distance)

Payback Time

All the stupid mistakes that I made in the first few years of living in Canada are now beating me in the ass! I failed the damn NPPE and foolishly refused to write it again! I failed the damn CQE exam of ASQ and now I am paying another $260 and have to write it again while am not really ready and stopped job searching and now I'm stuck with this ignorant morons without much chance of getting a better position.

I only have a very limited time. If I do not move fast enough, I'll be done. In the meantime A. F. e-mailed me and encouraged me to apply for the new posting of CBSA. I don't know if I wanna go back in there or if they ever accept me but I will give that a shot. The struggle seems never ending and it's payback time for me!

(Photo: Character Blain in The Predator has this quote of Payback Time although he never got the chance to use his machine gun and give The Predator a full magazine. He was the first one wasted!)

The Hidden Fortress

For years and years I wondered what is special about The Hidden Fortress, one of the most famous movies of Kurosawa that IRIB did not want to broadcast it while most of his movies have been shown over and over. I finally found when I bought the DVD of the film from Farmers Market last year and watched it twice. One of the main characters of the movie is a young girl in shorts and sleeveless shirt. Obviously violates the basic policy of IRIB!

The kind of dress that the Princess of Azuki has on in the movie was not considered appropriate in that time when Japan was considered a feudal country. You can see it clearly by the way the public looks at her in the movie. And still not appropriate in the IRIB's view and organizations like that. But who care whet they believe in!?

But the movie itself is not as great as what I expected to be. The movie is basically not about a hidden fortress. The fortress only occupies probably not more than 45 minutes of the 2-hour movie. It is about two groups of small people who happen to have the same intention and that is crossing a border so for that reason they cooperate and accomplish their goal. Like most of Kurosawa movies there a few nice Samurai battle senses but again not as much as what you expect. The movie is basically about the way the plan and execute that plan. But overall its worth watching and buying. I guess I only paid $5 for it which is absolutely OK.

One interesting thing about the movie is that George Lucas used the opening scene of it for his blockbuster, Star Wars and in the DVD he actually talks about it as part of the special features of the disk. If you remember the way Star Wars, the very first movie started, it resembles the exact same way that this movie begins. The peasants are the two droids and the Princess of Azuki is Princess Leia!

(Photo: The main characters of the story: The Princess of Azuki, Mifone, a general of the same tribe or whatever they call it and two peasants who got caught in the middle of the battle and get together with the other two to cross the border and go to their village)

Witness for Prosecussion

For years I had heard the name of a German actress over and over, Marlene Dietrich but had not seen any movie of hers until last night. I was playing with the remote after dinner and stopped in a channel which was showing a black and white movie from 1957. The movie was Witness for Prosecution staring the above actress and Charles Laughton which was known to me at time. It was a good movie and although a few minutes had passed from the beginning, we continued watching it to the end. Dietrich's role is an aggressive and proud woman who is trying to trouble the guy whom she lives with and testifies against him. To the last minute of the movie everything goes the way that movie follows. There is an evidence that the woman is lying and she is being accused of perjury, the man, the one who assumes is her husband is found innocent by the jury and everyone is happy. But right at the moment that everybody's leaving the theatre it appears that all the woman's act was actually a play to trick the jury, the prosecutor and the judge to save the love of her life! This is the first flip! Then a woman shows up and shows her affection to the alleged guy. Dietrich is astonished seeing that the man who she would be accused of perjury actually is in love with another girl and care less about her situation and her jail time! desperate of the situation, Dietrich grabs a dagger-like knife (which I do not know why was there on the courtroom's table and stabs the guy in the stomach and kills him! This is the second and last flip. Now the prosecutor, Laughton calls for another trial, not perjury but murder but the German actress who plays a German woman who had been brought to England from a ruined Germany after the Second World War. pretty interesting. And this magic has been created by nobody but Agata Christie and directed by Billy Wilder! Enough said about it better get the movie and watch it as I would if i could!

(Photo: Charles Laughton as the prosecutor and Marlene Dietrich as the witness in the final moments of the movie)

Capitalism Does Not Give You Choises

This movie of Michael More, Capitalism: A Love Story is interesting but not as good as his 9/11 story. However he condemns good enough the bullshit story that these stooges have been trying to sell to people. One of the principals that they claim Capitalism provide to the society is competition and choice. They say you have the choice to choose what you like and in fact this makes the service providers or manufacturers to improve the quality of their service or product. This is not entirely true. I had to pay $72.72 for my electricity bill last month and live in a small 1-bedroom apartment! I had no choice but to pay it and there was no way to question the charge. If there was the answer was: the rates have gone up recently! I had no choice but to pay that and I have no choice to get my due date extended, if I do not have money. More than 3% interest would be charged to my bill if I pay my bill late. I have no choice to go to another electricity provider and I can not tell Enmax that they could simply turn a few more lights in their stations and buildings off so more power is available with less cost to the people. I have no choice when they ask me for $100 deposit because there have been crooks who used the services without paying. I really have no choice when it comes to most of services and products and Capitalism just screws over and over.

(Photo: Michael Moore the director of Capitalism: A Love Story talks to the Wall Street guys in New York over a load speaker and asking them about the money that people of the States have lost!)

Revising Old Belief

Many things have been changed in more than 10 years that I have been living here. The time flies by. One day I wake up in the morning and I say: It's Mon. I have to go to work and the next day, really next day I see that it is already Thu. and I have one more day to go. I know that I don't have much time left and if I wanna do something I gotta do it this year or at the most the following.

Earlier I strongly believed in the Three Essentials but know I see that I am losing too much money without gaining much in return for them. The Bastards of Fido put me into a damn 2-year contract so I can not get rid of them until next Feb. unless I pay $20 for each month I cancel my service. I can do that and still save some $20 a month but I need that for a reason that I will tell later. The damn car's insurance just cost me almost $1900! I tried to get away from that but my situation is different from the time that I did not have this stupid service and would go anywhere I wanted.

May be the Internet is the only service you essentially need here. I do my banking, job searching, communicating with friends, long distance calling using the Internet. So I should revise that as the only vital service here, may be. But I guess if my work place was not too far from my apartment, I would also mention a reliable vehicle because bus and train are both pains in the ass. I mean the amount of jackasses, drunks, homeless and maniacs that you have to put up with from the moment you get to the station or stop to the moment you get off is sometimes too much!

The Devil You Know is Better Than the Devil You Don't

There is this knew guy who has joined the company recently, T. T. He seemed a reasonable guy but it didn't take a long time for me to find out who really is. First off he was shortly known by T. M. Apparently T. M. had been to his office once a few years ago and had audited him and the guy was completely out. Then when he talked about his past there were obvious skips and contradictions which showed that he really had not done something that he could be proud of! The funniest part was the presentation that he had. That was one of the most stupid one that I had ever attend to! He would just read the title and would say it was very important as well! His catchphrase is and such!

But one thing that he said was really true. When we were talking about the obnoxious, repulsive, little turd supervisor of mine he said everywhere I went would have an asshole like that. Everywhere is almost the same, the same shit, just a different smell! And he added: The Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't! What he means obviously is I have been dealing with jerk for almost a year know and I know him. It's easy to deal with him. If I go to another company there might be another asshole, a bigger one that I do not know how to deal with him and will take me a while to do that. He's right. After all I would only relocate if I can find a job with a better income and more stability.

Unfinished Project

T. M. had a two-day trip to a manufacturer plant to check on them. A kind of like pre-assessment. Sounds something very simple and normal but listen to this. The facility is built at a former nuclear plant complex! For the people who always complain about how long a project may take in the old country I would like to bring their attention to this. The project had to be halted after 76% completion and that was a result of a huge budget shortfall. The US has spent billions of dollars on the wars in the past few decades but they did not have enough money to finish this power plant!

The manufacturer has apparently leased the site and turned it to a 3-story facility and according to our buddy they are good to go!

(Photo: This picture taken by the passenger shows one of the protective gates which probably opens to part of the facility which supposed to be a high radiation area)

CrossIron Mills

We spent a few hours in the newly (2009) built shopping center in Alberta, CrossIron Mills near Balzac. I'm not a shopping maniac but seemed many enjoy themselves walking with bags of goods or having a meal or snack. It is nicely organized and decorated and has mostly all of the retailers and different entertainment centers. What I don't understand is why the retailers have to build a shopping center like that while Deerfoot Mall is only 10 minutes away. I know one may say that Deerfoot is an outlet mall but it's still OK.

We did mostly window shopping as F. F. hard to please! She did not see anything that she like after almost 4.5 hours in there!

(Photo: Caveman in a block of ice was put in one of the mall's corridors. I took this using the new handset of mine a Nokia X2. The phone is good but the camera sucks! only 0.3 pixels!)

Stupid Weather Forcast

The average daily temperature in Calgary is around 5 C, I think while Environment Canada had predicted a very cold winter, the worst in the past 10 years! But when it's 10 or 8 it's not really pleasant because the damn wind bothers you then!

So when I went to the Eau Claire outdoor rink last night the ice was really messy and it was cracking under my feet. It was not really nice for a beginner like me! So I didn't spend much time, may be around half an hour at the most and that included putting the skates on and taking them off which is a real pain. The problem is the lace. You have to tie them tight so your feet would not move inside the damn skate.

Tomorrow I'm goin' to the University again for the third session and it seems the weather will remain the same so I will park somewhere that I won't have to pay! I'm getting far from the subject but this stupid parking is a real rip off! I guess I paid a $5.25 for an hour and half and it's probably around $3.75 or so for one hour. Damn thieves!