Meeting the Boss

I was sitting in my colleague's, The Tote Lover(!), office the other day and the Boss-to-be, who actually is the boss barged in! He shock hands with me and from the beginning I confirmed that I was right: He's really crazy! That was my first meeting with him after two Teams. He's a tall man with a big head where he has lost most of his hair and a big belly. He sat next to me and we were having a meeting with someone else in another province. He was speaking loudly which I'm sure the people outside the office heard him although the door was close. He barely let anyone else talk but I was very polite and courteous! When he was talking and looking at me I was confirming by nodding and but most of the time I was quite because the other guy, in the other province, was just full of shit! I didn't want to say something which might trigger the boss! Then the asshole, who was basically helping us with an issue, giving us advices started smoking! That was one I realized that the boss was smoking an e-cigarette too! I was in shock but what can I say? he's a fucking addict. 

The next day we gathered for a practical test in relation to the problem we were working on. He kept smoking one after another! In addition to that it appeared that he is not a patient man and kind of know-it-all! After that though he offered to take all four of us to lunch and of course we accepted! He didn't have to, of course but I don't know why he did it! He could've simply say goodbye and leave all of us there. I must not forget that after the practice was over I thanked him and the other guy guy and he thanked us back!

The lunch was good. I hadn't eaten out for more than 4 months and it's not only because of the cost, but also because I'm a picky eater. I ordered a Mediterranean Pizza and it came out nicely. I was going to go for small but then I said to myself: What the hell?! I'm not paying for it and I don't eat out every day. So why the hell should I be worried about it?! The Pizza had so much Carbohydrate that I didn't eat anything else the entire day! Beside I had lots of cake and junk food the day before, from a company's so-called party that I was about to be sick! 

We thanked him after that and he promised that he visits us soon! I can't wait to see him again!

(Photo: Boston Pizza's Mediterranean is really good)

Not Without My Daughter after 30 years

Not Without my Daughter came out in 1991, from what I've read, and I think it was a few years after that when I was still doing my degree that I watched it with a friend or couple at his home on VHS! I'm referring to the movie not the book. The movie is based on the book of the same name written by an American woman who was held in Iran against her will. American movie were rarely shown in theaters or on TV but this one was different. This movie was banned for showing a cruel and wild image of Iranian society, after the revolution and at the early years of Iran-Iraq War. I remember that the movie's quality was very poor at the time and that was because it had probably been copied several times from different formats and of course my English was not good. So we didn't get much of the story but the images shown, which even now I believe is exaggeration, was ugly and embarrassing!

Even today I wouldn't be able to watch the movie with a foreigner who has never been to Iran! With all the propagation against Iran and its nuclear ambition, no one would believe what I said about the movie! Some of the scenes are truly a joke and a silly but I can understand many of the behaviours that are shown in the movie. The fact that Iran at the time and even to a certain point, now, is a male dominant society, is undeniable. Add on the top of it, the brutal Islamic law which basically deprives women from most of their rights! They might not be, in appearance, as bad as Taliban but they're certainly not much better. 

Women still cannot leave the country without first the permission from either their father or husband. They cannot divorce men. They do not have much rights when it comes to what is left from their parents and what they can inherit. They have to cover themselves from head to toe and even when they are together, where men are not present have to do that! If anything goes to the court, women have no chance of getting what they want. 

A very famous picture taken by Alfred Yaghobzadeh during the first years of Iran-Iraq War shows a very young soldier. The young fella later was reported kIA.

So that's what Betty (Sally Field) learnt after a few months of living in the country and that was when he realized if she doesn't leave soon, she'd be stuck forever. In the meantime I'd like to point at a few things for someone who has recently watched the movie but have never been to the country:

1- Scene 1: Betty and Mahtob (her daughter) get off a cab to walk home and in the background a small herd of sheep and their shepherd is shown! Domesticated animals are never seen in major cities, running around and grazing! You might see them if you go to a small village but never even in a town! 

2- Scene 2: Dr. Mahmmody's uncle, who is a Mulla (Islamic clergy with a sort of turban on the head and robe on the shoulders) is their guest for lunch one day. Everyone is sitting on the floor, around a kind of table-cloth which is food is being served (was common at the time). He is a clean-shaven clergy! Shaving is something close to taboo in many Islamic sects, particularly if you're a clergy! You're an idol! You cannot shave your beards! 

3- Scene 3: Betty, Dr. Mahmoody and the relatives are going back home from shopping where is sort of police car stops next to them and asks Betty, violently to cover her head. The so-called police/soldiers in the film, who are holding a Kalashnikov Assault Rifle, are all clean shaven! Another gaffe that the Israelis (I believe that's who produces the film) made! 

4- Scene 4: The Friday Prayer Scene in University of Tehran is a real joke! Betty is standing in balcony, with a few others and they're looking directly down at the prayers! There's no building, even in the university that you can have that view and I truly don't know what is the reason behind showing something that is not even close to reality! 

5- Scene: Betty is sitting in a vehicle, next to someone who is trying to help her to leave the country when a is scene stopping next to the kids who are playing on the street. The kids are loaded to the pick up and the guy says that they are being taken to the front line of Iran-Iraq war! It's true that young soldier were fighting in the war but they were mostly either volunteers or from small villages. I, personally know 4 students who went to war, all my classmates in grade 10 or 11 and 3 of them got killed. I know very well that no one forced them to go. It was their believes which sent them to the fields. 

Scenes like that are a lot and there are other scenes worse than that. They constantly show armed soldiers walking up and down the streets! Something you would never see anywhere in the entire country! I think their intention was to show a totalitarian society but their approach were wrong. Iran is not such a better place now. It was the chaos of after the revolution and the war in those years. Now it is the economy, the brutality of the regime and sanctions but I think, or perhaps I should say, I hope, people are awake now. Took them 40 years, yes! forty  years to understand that religion is not a way to go with, if they want to manage their country! 

(Photo, top: Sally field, as Betty Mahmoody [Nee, Lover], delivers a magnificent performance in the movie)

Fuel Cost for a Week

The cost of fuel has gone up so high and no one is able to do a damn thing about it! They all blame it on Russia-Ukraine War! I got gas for $1.91 the day before and last night it was about $1.89 in a non-so-popular gas station! I don't know how different the quality of fuel is between a giant corporation such as Shell and a small old gas station but I was running low and was afraid that I might get stuck on the road. I went and bought gas from the small place for 2 cents cheaper, not even that much, I think! 

So now due to the long distance between the home and work, I pay at least $50 a week for gasoline! There's no doubt that the car is now wearing much faster than before and every day I have to get out at least one hour before the start of work and that is not because I'm so eager to be there! It's to avoid to be stuck in a traffic jam and having a rush breakfast. Beside I am never late at work.

The other thing is all of my efforts to buy a new car is abolished. I wanted a hybrid because the cost of the cheapest electric car is out of my reach but now even a hybrid which ranges from $30,000 to $35,000 is impossible to get and that is due to the backup in manufacturing and supply chain. 

Tesla 3 which is cheapest of the Tesla family cannot be obtained for less than $65,000 and now even that is far-fetched! They have increased their minimum interest rate, for the shortest period of financing to 5.2% (used to be a little more than 3%). If I was sure of my employment status after this project, I would not waste a minute because now the earliest delivery is Dec. 2022!  

(Photo: The price of gasoline for one litre of regular gasoline in Downtown Calgary on Thu.,  16-Jun-2022. Other gas stations don't offer much less than this. Once I saw a bunch of idiots lining up for nasty whole-seller whom I won't release their name here! For a price which was probably only 3 cents less than what you would have gotten in other places!)

Hotel Mumbai

I stayed up a few nights ago and watched an incredibly strong movie: Hotel Mumbai. It's one of the movies which doesn't do well in North America, and most likely Europe, because there's no sex scenes, no drug using or stupid superheros! When a society is sick, then their interests and hobbies are sick and unusual too, like driving big 4x4 vehicles in mud! Destroying the nature, burning fossil fuel for fun(!) and making extra noise is apparently a hobby for some! . A garbage movie such as Reservoir Dogs or From Dusk till Down which has no meaning and is comprised of nothing but coarse language, shooting and killing, apparently is praised a lot in this society(!) while movies such as Seven Years in Tibet, Valkyrie and Foxcatcher are ignored! 

Hotel Mumbai is the true story of the people who stayed at their job and defended their guests and their workplace against brainwashed terrorists who had no motivation but blind hatred which had been given to them by someone who eventually was not apprehended. The movie is directed by an Australian and different actors and actresses have roles in the story including an Iranian lady named Nazanin Bonyadi, a British actor, an British-born Indian actor, a number of Australians and of course a number of Indian actors who by the way provide the best portrait of the terrorists. They show how cold-blooded they were and their world collapsed on them at the end when they realized that so many innocent people had been killed by them and they got nothing! 

If you haven't seen a movie which takes you to the last minute, without any pause, watch Hotel Mumbai but remember that it's a sad and disturbing story, at the same time. People might not be comfortable to watch it to the end but generally it is a superb movie in terms of story-telling, direction, acting, editing and everything else.

The movie showed a few things that some might like that and I wonder what the reaction had been:

1- The Indian police in Mumbai, I'm not sure whether the police force in India is federal or municipal, acted very poorly which led to more people being killed. They basically were not engaged and waited for the Special Forces to be deployed from New Delhi which is more than 1,400 km away! I don't exactly know how those guys got themselves to Mumbai but according to the movie they arrived in helicopters and perhaps army trucks and it took them more than 12 hours since the initial attacked had been commended! Something like that in North America would not have been accepted in the first place. How could a country such as India which has been in three wars with Pakistan in the past, maybe, 50 years or so and is in constant clash with China, lack a strong police force in its major commercial city!? That is beyond my understanding.

2- Dev Patel, the British-born Indian actor performs very well in the movie and portraits a Sikh guy who is a member of the hotel staff. He manages the catastrophic situation very well. The question is how did the Sikh community reacted to his performance and accepted him to be one of them in the movie? Sikh Punjabi people are very fanatic about their images in the public and although he portraits a brave and wise man, I still have difficulty understanding that he had been given permission to be Sikh in the movie!

3- Jason Isaac plays a former Soviet Special Forces officer who had served in Afghanistan and now is the guest of the hotel. He is supposed to meet a couple of escorts and have a party in the suite he had rented but gets trapped in the restaurant amongst a few other and eventually is taken hostage and shot to death. In the last minutes of his role he admits that he was in Afghanistan and tells that to the guy on one of the terrorists' phone, to their boss, that he had f*cked his sister and mother! I don't know how they could put that in the script! The fact is most of the things that the Soviets did in Afghanistan was good. They built roads and bridges and they tried to save the country from fundamentalism, something that the country has just fallen into since Taliban took over again last August and now they're shown as rapists in this movie! The US and its allies, including Pakistan, UAE and others did more harm than good in Afghanistan! 

Amandeep Singh, right and Manoj Mehra in a scene of the movie both show one of the strongest and best  performances that I have seen for years 

4- Zahra Kashani is a guest in the hotel who is played by Iranian-born American actress Nazanin Bonyadi. There's a scene that she's talking with her mom on the phone and when her mom says that she would pray for her, she goes: Pray for what? When did praying ever work? Then in another scene when she is captured within others and they are being executed one by one, by one of the terrorists who had been injured, she begins praying and that basically saves her! The terrorist, despite his direct order from his boss on the phone, leave her alone and goes. Does the movie wants to say that praying works or is it just saying desperate times calls for desperate measures?! 

(Photo: The real Hotel Taj Mahal Palace in the city of Mumbai in India. A group of terrorists who had been trained in Pakistan attacked different spots in the city of Mumbai and at the end whoever was left gathered in the hotel with the aim of killing more people and destroying the hotel. They gained their first goal and killed more innocent people but failed to destroy the hotel as they were raided by Indian Special Forces and were all killed but one) 

Extreme Work Conditions

There has been an ongoing alert for most of the Province of Alberta and particularly the southern part. We had to shut down the work on Mon. due to the risk of electrocution (getting hit by lightning) and today was extreme wind (70 km/h) and heavy rainfall/hail. I, despite this was asked to go to the site and provide assistance. 

The Right to Refuse might have been applicable here but since the other guy was working, I didn't say anything. I generally don't mind the outside when there's extreme weather but for this wage, I don't think it worth it! I even ripped my pants by getting stuck in some pieces but since there was no injury, I couldn't file a report! 

The drive to and from work was not too bad except for the morning traffic because of an idiot who paid no attention to the driving condition, got himself into an accident and blocked half of the highway! 

This is my choice. I wanted to rid of the toilet which I had been working in, for over two years and now I face new issues! The next two months are critical because now they want me and The Tote Lover to do a small program which includes practical and written tests. There's basically no easy job here, unless you work hard and prove yourself. Maybe!

(Photo: As I am slowly approaching the beginning of the blocked part of the highway, it can be seen that a fire engine has blocked the that last lane and made a bottleneck. This was in the morning. No photo of the site due to privacy reasons!)

Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat it

Lazy Ass showed up at the door about a month ago around 22:00. It had been more than 3 months that we were not in touch. I had not given him my new number. So that is why he showed up to see what was going on. I was on the second floor, watching a movie and pretended that I was asleep! He kept ringing the bell! I eventually went to the balcony and told him that he had to leave! Just bluntly like that! He asked me if I was okay. I told him that I could not open the door for him! I hope that is the end and never see him! 
I had wanted to do this for a long time but every time he called I answered. Now I have given him the final answer and haven't given him the number. I think that should work. Once when he was insisting by sending me text messages such as " Call me " or " Let's hang out " and so I wrote him: Those who forget the past, are condemned to repeat it! I meant that I had witnessed his disgusting animal behaviour and pig-house life style and I would not like to see that again! He didn't understand it. I think he has now!

(Photo: This decision was one of my favorites in my entire life! It felt so go that I saw he had to leave and go all the way home, rejected and humiliated) 

Mentally Sick People of North America

I've studied Canadian and American societies through the past 20 years or so, watched their habits, behaviour and culture. The Canadians have been observed all these years as I have been working and living with them, basically. The Americans just by seeing their lifestyle and the news I hear or watch. 

While I've met some of the nicest and most beautiful people, in heart, both in the US and Canada, I've come to the conclusion that the number of crazy, mentally disturbed, psychopaths, the ones who should be locked up for the rest of their lives, the ones who should be hospitalized in nuthouses and such people is way more, way way more, in fact, than what we see in the so-called Third World countries if we compare this number to the total population. One example of that is the sick maniac who went and fight for ISIS! Think about this: A nasty, disgusting, sick, Caucasian American woman, leaves her country, travels around the globe and gets herself into Syria and leads a group of women who kill people of their own and addition everyone else whom they could get their hands on! What can you tell about this person rather than someone who belongs behind the bars for the rest of her life? Most likely one of the million women who were mentally and physically abused and bullied and even raped! Who knows? Their story emerge once in a while. All the allegations against the gymnastics coach which later were resulted in his conviction, the story of Harvey Weinstein, allegations against Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby and many more! All the stress and mental problem which is caused by these behaviours will show it differently in different people. And I'm sure that this woman is not alone. There were many other Westerners of Caucasian race who went to Syria and Iraq to just kill! You never hear or see any woman from all those troubled country or the countries which are constantly being teased and degraded by Westerners and their leaders always pity them and try to take advantage from! 

(Photo: The American woman who admitted, during a court hearing, that he fought for ISIS)

A New Position

Once again I'm involved in projects and have to deal with all sorts of animals! The only difference is that they are less harmful in comparison to the assholes that I had to struggle with earlier! I also started to think that maybe it's me who has difficulty adopting himself to his environment and work comfortably with everyone and in everywhere! There's one big factor which should not be forgotten: What helps you to get through all the difficulties and stress in life!

Here in Canada there're plenty available. 

1- Alcohol: Many people seek to resolve their problems and calm their stress by drinking alcoholic beverages and that start at early ages. You shut down the liquor stores here in Canada for a week and there will be a civil war worst than Syria! 

2- All sorts of legal and illegal narcotics: You have access to everything that makes you forget about what has been going on in your life! From Marijuana which has been legal and can be purchased from stores and anything else which can be purchased on the streets! The Province of British Columbia just decriminalized a certain amount of hard drugs, if that is for personal use! I think that's 2.5 g. So there you go! Soon there will be legalized prostitution! Although the country is not too far away from that!

3- Casual sex and prostitution: Only 49% of the people in Canada live with their family. It means the rest live by themselves but doesn't means they have to be under sexual tension! For me that has never been a problem but for the majority of normal(!) people, men or women, access to opposite sex (or the same sex, if they're homosexuals, is easy and available. Even if there's some loser like me(!) who has always had problem with finding and then keeping women, could go to prostitutes (not hat I regularly do that or I am for it!). The funny thing is prostitution isn't illegal in Canada but you could be prosecuted and possibly go to jail for that! How? The law, like every other law is complicated enough to make it hard to understand for the general public so they get caught and get trialed but the simple version of it is that offer can be made but seeking it would not be legal! Try to figure that out by going through contract law! 

4- Other sources of release(!), if I could say that, such as games to watch, games to play and anything else which practically help you to relax and get your mind off the normal, hard life.

Going back to the subject, I've just finished the second week of work and the hard part still to come. We have a nice office, a huge very nice lunchroom and even a gym which I haven't been to, so far. The people are no so bad but mostly careless and dumb! Running their pickup truck engine for hours without caring about the fumes and the gasoline that they burn for no reason, smoking constantly and carelessly, driving the pickup truck up and down the project site for distances less than 10 feet, you name it. I, in the meantime, all I have to do is just to keep my head down, do my job and be very nice, friendly and professional to get through this. There will be either a chance to keep my employment with the company or at least have something good in my resume to find something else when these projects are finished, I guess, next year.

(Photo: I'm positioned in a cubicle like this but not that busy. Assholes and elbows talk loudly on the phone, laugh hysterically or make joke with each other but the good thing is I don't have to be there all they long. I usually have to go to the site which is not too far away. The fat-fuck, though, sits in a nice office, away from this melee!)