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Farewell
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2104
A productive day. Daughter to camp, AMA, Maps and Health Insurance, Bank, deposit cheques, write up a years worth of child support, various other things...
Then Lunch with A*****. His last night, Saturday, he's on vacation with the rest of us, going back to Italy, but he's decided not to return. I don't blame him. Life here, in this restaurant, it's fucking shit. He misses his daughter, his common-law, well, there are problems there, but whatever battles he faces there are easier than the restaurant here. He's done.
So is the restaurant. Lunch, a cheap ethnic buffet, we talk about it, how tired it is, the faded and worn linen, dirty, old, it's over, it's time. The owner, the customers, the freeloaders and moochers, it was, still is, an institution, but it should be done. Over. Now. He's free, I still have a month left, and the impending vacation with the daughter, the trip (just passed) to Saskatchewan, they're all threatening my finances...
We talk, of his past few days, the going away parties, the people he saw, people he missed....he didn't miss much. In the two years he worked here he left the city maybe 3 or 4 times, always, only with me, to Waterton one weekend, Banff another, Prospecting, Drumheller another. His life, otherwise, was work, the classic immigrant-on-immigrant slavery, the Conservative sanctioned and thinly veiled "TFW" program, the 12 and 15 hour work days, 5 and 6 days a week...
The restaurant, we've been besieged as of late with Corporate Realtors, Accountants, he's making plans, we don't know what they are but we can guess, the Nephew, supposedly the "Inside Scoop", he isn't privy, he provides us with contradictory guesses as to what it's all about twice a day...
I'm envious of him. I don't want to go back, at all, ever, we've been through a lot, me and him, we and the nephew, he's been a sport, born all our innuendo and insults, dark gallows humor, he's been a good worker, a proper colleague, co-worker, another stand-up guy in the trenches, these are rare, and we talk about his job offers, opportunities back home, they are not so good, restaurants there are run much the same as restaurants here, shit pay, long hours...but there, there's no tipping, no compensation, it's worse, if it can be imagined...
Awkward, these goodbyes, he still has to pack, get to the airport, me, to pick up my daughter from camp...
But it's time, and he comes round the jeep to give me a hug, he's crying, and I feel it, feel every fucking inch of shit this country dumped on him, there's no reason for it, fucking hell, and a slight epiphany, selfish motives perhaps, mediocre financial gain, but I'm in the same boat, and why is it so fine that the restaurant so shit on me, and I double my resolve to leave...
...he's crying, leaves quickly, I promise to visit him, but time and paths weave and I think we both know better...
In a sporting good humor, good-naturedly wearing the boots, belts, cowboy shirt I picked up for him, he'd never been hit on by so many men in his life...
Pokemon
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2346
I'd been seeing them forever, late at night they'd come out after I had a few drinks, lurking about the apartment, I never told anyone, who would believe me?
As luck would have it, the daughter, she caught a couple of pictures of them...
***
After which we went a little further afield, I'm interested in this, not so much that I'd play, but in the possibilities. There's a Lure set up in the neighborhood, a gym, countless people in the parks waiting for the Pokemon to show up, there's the Pokestops, and other, older players give her advice how to level up quicker, how to shoot them in drive by's, the walking aspect of it, the attention to neighborhood attractions, these are all very cool things, and I can imagine a thousand ways the technology will evolve, different fauna for different regions, appearances at different times of day, in differing weather conditions, the possibilities are just beginning and my mind races, but for the moment, it's time well spent with the daughter...
Vacation...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 2060
Not even 24 hours into the vacation and I start getting texts. From the Nephew, the Owner has just left for Italy (with his Canadian Girlfriend, no doubt doing for Canada's reputation in Italy what he's done for Italy in Canada...returning the favor you might say) - and no sooner did he get on the plane than his daughter showed up, found the key to the liquor room (hidden, especially from her...) and began to have a party. Oh yeah, and what a party it was...her daughter is 15 (same as mine. You'll see the reference in the texts...)
The owner will return to a fine situation I'm sure...
Privilege V The World
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2093
The whole thing is amusing, but forward to 2 Minutes & 22 Seconds.
This short segment is not a blooper. It's what he "thinks", and it's scary as hell. It's typical of privileged white folk to think this way. I know enough of them to assure you that he isn't kidding. So there's really no surprise that it will be The Donald or The Hillary coming to office.
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