Dear Videotron

Thank you so much for over 6 years of service, but it is time I bid you farewell. Yes, this has been a pretty uneventful long-term relationship, but I am not really seeing the need to continue with it. For some reason you treat your new friends with far more respect and interest than a faithful old dog like me; paying my bills on time, sticking with you through address, partner, work, and other life changes.

So why this sudden change in my sentiments towards you? It is not as though we've had a huge argument or I caught you in bed with my boyfriend, more that I am sick of this one-sided relationship and your inability to see me as someone whose custom you are interested in keeping.

I am sick of paying more money than new clients for the same services, sick of your greedy prices, sick of your vast monopoly over Quebec's TV and internet. So, my old yet not really good friend, I am cutting myself free of your strong grip and heading off to your biggest competitor: Bell. After years of claiming that they were monopolising bastards (much like you! Maybe you should get together and conquer the world) I must admit that, at the end of the day, their prices are far more attractive than yours, not to mention no yearly contract (without the higher fees you charge for said service).

I am sure your other friends will happily keep your plate full and you'll continue to dominate Quebec with your fibre-optic cables and ugly vans. Bye-bye!

Plugs

I've been thinking about them a lot recently. Blame it on the biological clock, ticking away without my permission or desire, changing the way I look at babies and couples with them from horror and fear to something more akin to some kind of ... yearning that doesn't fit at all with my current financial or life situation. Don't worry, I'm not about to pop one out, it has just been rather odd to feel this strange emptiness inside me, a desire to be full with a creation of love. Icky I know. Nothing like reality, I know. Blame it on those rose-tinted spectacles my Dad always accused me of wearing.

However, various discussions and news reports have made me wonder, like many others before me, (there are various blogs on this topic...) if there should be some sort of licence for childrearing. Or, more simply, mandatory parenting classes at secondary schools. I understand that there are many disturbing implications involved in the government or society at large deciding who can have children and who can't; but then seeing as we all end up paying for everyone's biological experiments gone wrong (not to mention the emotional and physical pain that many kids go through), shouldn't there be some sort of ... precedent to be set before people can start churning out the wee little'uns?

I have not really thought this through all that much, but in light of recent (and recurring but mercifully not that prevalent) cases of severe child abuse ending in death - Baby P., Victoria Climbié and a few others spring to mind, not to mention the British government's recent decision to install CTV cameras in some of the homes of 'problem families' (at a cost of £400 million ($668 M)!) it seems like an increasingly important consideration to me. You see, I really think that parenting classes (and a shift in social services, including income support etc.) could help reduce the amount of children born into families who don't know how or don't even really want to look after them.

Let me clarify something here. I am not advocating that those who 'fail' the classes should not be allowed to have children, or that the government should put agents in place to constantly check up on the raising of some (or all) children over others. More that...well... in all honesty I have not researched any statistics but it does strike me that the British government will give you a house and money if you pop out a child and are unemployed (then give you more money and an even bigger house if you have more: where is the incentive to work?) and have more teen pregnancies and 'problem families' (am not making a correlation between the two; more that I think certain behaviours are generational - as in become the norm as are learned from those around us) than most other western countries.

*A quick Google search - what would we do without it? - shows that the UK and US are top on teen pregnancy rates in the developed world (guess Hungary is not counted as developed then).*

Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that there is help available for those who need it; and having lived on that sort of help myself at various points in the past, I would be hypercritical to deem it unnecessary. What really gets to me is the people who abuse the system: most people who grew up in the UK know of at least 1 person in their peer group whose sole desire when they left school was to get pregnant and get a house. The crazy thing is that that is how it works. This is where seemingly contradicotry statements appear.... You see, I hate the idea of the nanny state, but at the same time think that a lot of heartache, pain, time and money could be saved by making some small changes.

- Give teenagers real advice on bringing up children. Give them alternatives to getting pregnant at 16, being given a house and living their lives in unemployed sloth from thereon in.

- Make all teenagers and prospective parents take some sort of parenting class, from the basics of changing nappies and feeding, bathing etc. to more complex things (that are somehow transmitted as objectively as possible) such as child development.

- Reduce income support and jobseekers allowance payments for those who don't show any effort to find work (for those who can work) over a set period of time.

Meh I dunno... just sometimes I wish I could change the world and help it become a better place somehow. However, I should really be starting with myself. As Mahatma Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world".

Other noises

So, I live on a largeish street in Montreal. Avenue, to be precise. Van Horne has quite a lot of loud (read heavier) traffic on it, mainly in the morning and evening. However, for some reason that has yet to be explained to me, it also seems to be home - or passing place - for people who seem to feel the need to talk as though they're in a very noisy bar at 2am.

I know I live in a city. I am not stupid. I don't expect people to spend their lives whispering so as not to disturb the 'hood. However, I don't like being woken up on a week night (not that I have much to do, but it's the principle of the thing) because some people are unable to think that maybe they shouldn't be yelling to each other across the street or having a raucous discussion in the wee hours of the morning.

Speaking of morning.... builders are often accused of waking people up earlier than may be desired with their incessant banging, hammering and other loud noises that you can't escape from, even in another room (when the floor starts shaking in time you know you should just get up and invite your friends over for a party). This morning, after being woken by the strangely chirpy yet insistent meowls of Mr. M wanting to be fed I decided to crawl back into my comfortable bed for more shut-eye. As previously mentionned, I have no reason to get up, also a bit more sleep than the 6 I got before being so hungrily awakened would be nice.

To no avail. The people across the back (to be perfectly correct side) alley from me have decided to bring their party outside... or maybe just start it early. Luckily this is far more auditorily pleasant than builders. Guitars being played, people talking, whistling and joking around. All I need is to get M to sing more and be invited over!

Time travel through my mind

there are moments when you could decide to fling yourself away from everything in your life and jump into something completely unknown. I crave this while I crave to settle down and have all these elements of security that I think would make me happy (in a more conventional sense).

I am feeling useless, again. What accentuates it, and thus makes it even more frustrating, is that it is such a throwback to another time: spinning in the same cycle in the hope it will wring more out of me. Instead I feel, yet again, like my brain is spiralling out of control.

I am forever amazed at its power to turn against me (and itself) when it is not otherwise occupied. Perhaps I am just a pessimist at heart, or lack serotonin in the right levels for my brain to be happier overall, to analyze less and stop thinking ridiculous paranoid thoughts that I then sickly seek to discover are true, negative thoughts that I self-perpetuate through misunderstanding situations, jumping to yet more negative conclusions and generally doing all I can to sink further into the abyss.

A very large part of the problem is my lack of employment. Being unemployed is great in many ways, especially during the summer. You can do whatever you want with your days and only have to worry about having enough money to pay your rent, the bills and buy food. That is simultaneously the problem with being unemployed. Further to this though, is that employment, however dull, gives one a sense of purpose along with which comes a feeling of usefulness.

So, while I continue to look for a job, what else can I do to inculcate a sense of worth? At the moment I fill my days with looking and applying for work, going for walks/bike rides and letting my brain run away with itself. Laziness, therefore, is a key factor in my problem. I need a giant kick up the arse. Given by none other than myself, otherwise I will view said kick as someone telling me what to do.... even though sometimes I long for that - the secret password for me to get that life I dream of.

As I know though, this situation is exacerbated by my mind. It can improve with some 'physical' changes (employment, keeping my mind occuppied in meaningful, positive-reinforcing ways) but the main changes that need to be made involve myself. I have to make myself think differently... this has led to me looking back over my life and trying to find out where this huge lack of self-confidence comes from, and how to deal with it now.

This is a project I will not enjoy starting, but I feel will reap many rewards. Something to jump into, I feel.

I don't want

any of your beauty products
t-shirts for $20
shoes at half-price
phone plans for 50% less

all I want
is

for things to be better

. . .

there's a feeling I get
when I'm falling in
my dreams

but I am always jolted awake before I hit
the bottom.


Like the slight pause before a song changes pitch
or key

my heart leaps that way


lately I've been feeling like
I am missing an integral part of life
with another.

integral for me
but maybe, I've been thinking
make-believe.

Doctor, Doctor....

...I think I'm suffering from Deja Vu!
Didn't I see you yesterday?

If only it was as easy as that.

I apologise, Montreal. You did not deserve such a vitriolic hammering yesterday. Put it down to the anti-climax of returning home and so many other cities filling my mind's eye. 10 days is the longest I have been anywhere since Sydney (over 5 months ago!) so I should only really expect to feel strange and disjointed.

However, I am unable to apologise for my next rant. In fact, I think it is very well placed and don't understand why more people aren't making a fuss about it (unless they've simply realised that there's no point - thing is, it's the same story with cell phone companies (although I admit they are improving) and banking (quite why I have to pay a bank every month when they make money off my money is still strange to me, let alone the extortionate ATM fees that they are all allowed to charge - whoopsy, did I think that money was mine? Silly old me!) unless Canadians simply too good natured to bother standing up for their consumer rights?).

Prepare yourself...

So, today I had to go back to the doctor after going to a walk-in clinic last week about an ear infection. Why did I have to go to a walk-in? Well...in Quebec, and Montreal in particular (probably Canada as a whole) it is virtually impossible to find a doctor who will accept new patients on appointment. There are these places called CLSCs (free clinics run by the government) where you should be able to get medical care also, but guess what? They don't accept new patients either. So, your only option is to go to a walk-in clinic, where you have to wait anything from 30 - 240+ minutes to see the doctor, who has no idea of your medical history and is often overworked (having seen tonnes of patients before you, day after day after day). Should you be unable to wait that long...tough luck. Should you have a job and cannot get the morning (make that the whole day, just in case) off work, tough luck. Should you have a medical problem and want a GP to follow it: yeah, you guessed it. Tough. Luck.

As you'd expect, this wonderful predicament means that a lot of people end up going to the A&E department of their closest hospital for very minor ailments (or alternatively ones that were minor but are now rather major). This in turn puts a strain on the hospitals that they could do without. So, what is wrong with primary care in Canada?

Some would argue that it's not just a Canadian problem - it is one of social healthcare. Australia and the UK have long had issues with their national healthcare systems, but at least you are able to find a family doctor in those two countries who you can see on appointment and who has some knowledge of your medical history. Could it be that simple - that if we were all willing (not to mention able) to pay more, then healthcare would suddenly improve? How much do doctors get paid anyway, and is it enough? A few articles have been written about it, but none seem to give many conclusive decisions on what can be done, so I decided to come up with some of my own.

1) Pay hospital administrators less and doctors and nurses more. I don't think there is anything wrong with unions per se, but when hospital porters, administrators etc. can strike when the actual care-givers can't, then maybe it's a good idea to give them less power.

2) Something that's been suggested before, but worth repeating. There are lots of qualified immigrants in Canada who could work in the medical industry, but they have to take equivalency tests before they can practice. I can understand this with medical professionals from second and third-world countries where care is completely different, not to mention some of the equipment available, but when those professionals are coming from other western or modern countries? What a waste of potential! Give them some integrational training, put them under the wing of another practising professional (like a mini-internship of sorts, or when you get your hair cut by a student and the senior stylist is on hand..I mean this more for GPs than surgeons etc.) and voila - an influx of doctors who are already here, and qualified.

3) Furthermore, open up more residency positions. More on that and the whole doctor immigration debate here.

3) This thought came to me while my buttocks moulded to the plastic chair beneath them as I sat (for hours) at the clinic the first time: If I were coming here for an immigration medical, I could choose when to see the Dr (though I would have to pay the $195 fee for all the 'tests'). Maybe that's the going rate to get an appointment - should I bribe the receptionists? Joking aside, maybe less doctors should be able to do immigration medicals - which are a huge farce anyway: they check reflexes, blood pressure, weight and eyesight (no matter if you're wearing contact lenses), whether you can walk straight, do a urine and blood test for communicable diseases and a chest x-ray to check for TB. It is up to the individual to divulge any long-term medical problems they may have. Needless to say most people don't.* Then there would be more doctors available for those who really need to see them.

4) Educate. If people understood their bodies better, knew what was good and bad for them, could better comprehend how various systems work (I eat this = I feel sick, get fat, have cholestorol issues; I have a cough, runny nose and sore throat = keep hydrated, rest, get vitamins and see if it improves in a day or 2; I cut my finger slightly with a knife = apply pressure and bandage it; I keep getting dizzy for no reason = go to doctor right away instead of waiting for something terrible to happen, etc.) then they would not need to seek medical attention as much as they do. Prevention is better than cure, as they say.


Really I am just frustrated at always having to wait hours to see a doctor the rare times I have to go, and them having no real clue about my health, medical history, allergies, etc. Not to mention patient-doctor relationship! I did find one thing that made me laugh though when trying to get more information on finding a doctor in Quebec, right here.

My favourite line? "Check out the waiting room and doctor’s offices. Is the general atmosphere comfortable?" Good luck finding that chic new clinic where you can sit for hours, probably even years, waiting to see the doctor.




*I found this page about immigration to Canada. It is of course possible (minimially so) that each doctor treats their immigrant medicals differently, however, I cannot help but scoff about the medical records and 'mental health' bit. Unless you were obviously insane, as in muttering, plucking at yourself and shouting obscenities, talking from my experience (applying for residency in 2004) the designated medical examiners have NO CLUE of your medical history or mental health. They ask if you have any long-term problems and ask about mental health in your family etc., but they would have NO IDEA whether what you were saying was true or not since they only ask you to bring medical records if you have a lifetime-type illness. It is up to you to decide what that may be and whether or not to bring the records - furthermore, how on earth would you find them if you've been living in Montreal the past X years and have no family doctor?