spoiled chinese girl

the fact that I left myself open to being pagejacked, or that no one called me

call me now! ***-***-****

Alright so I really shouldn’t even have an opinion on the recent “Wildcat” strike held by the TTC maintence workers.  I no longer rely on this service for my transportation, and now I’ve got even more of a reason why.  I found out at about 10am that the TTC was on strike and no one was going anywhere very slowly.  Apparently people who depend on the TTC found out that workers were on strike and/or locked out when they arrived at their stations, greeted with signs saying “On strike” which was crazy, with people either hitching rides to work, or not working and being forced to take sick/vacation days, or spending crazy amounts of money they don’t have on taxi cabs.
Now I have no clue what on earth would be the soloution here, but one bright idea would be to not contstantly hold your paying customers hostage.  It wasn’t that long ago I ranted about a possible planned TTC strike, that was thwarted at the “11th hour” and resulted in a lot of people still not taking the TTC the next day, it was only last summer at most.  Then this completely unplanned TTC strike with no warning or announcement, and the threat that it could happen again since nothing has been resolved.  It’s not a thrilling prospect for a major player in transportation for some hundreds of thousands of people to suddenly disapear, leaving them to wonder if the strike is over tomorrow, if they would still have employment themselves.
But when the giant blackout of the North-East coast of North America happened, the TTC was demanding that they be put as an emergency service, one of the first to receive power should anything happen.  Well emergency services aren’t or shouldn’t be allowed to strike.  So what is it they want?  Yes I realize the TTC and the workers/union are still seperate entities, but generally if you want one you can’t go pretending you’re something you’re not.

The compensation for riders was laughable at best.  Those who owned either weekly or monthly passes were to receive a $4 discount on their next pass.  A cash fare is $2.75, and assuming people take the TTC twice a day, that would be a grand total of $5.50, so they’re already shortchanging people $1.50 for the “inconvience” of not having transit they’d already paid for.  Yet those who pay via tickets, tokens or cash will receive nothing, though they probably lost the most during the strike date, either by spending probably upwards of $50 for cab fare, walking large distances, hitching rides with strangers/coworkers/friends, or risking their job with an unplanned day off.  My grand opinion says that the TTC should have been free for the remainder of the Monday, and the following Tuesday as well.

I mean, it’s not like the drivers of streetcars and busses are supposed to argue over fares anymore. Their union deemed it unsafe.  The drivers really shouldn’t be attacked while they work, but why they aren’t properly protected is something quite different.

Anyways, while it’s highly unethical, I’m glad I have my own car.  I don’t have to follow any rule or schedule, I can get immediately from point A to point B without having 15 stops inbetween, and I don’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit anymore.

Anyways in an effort to kick this “I'm feeling fat and lazy” bug I've had for a while I just sent off an e-mail to the Toronto Brazillian Jiu Jitsu Academy that one day a week does women-only Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu classes, and also offers a co-ed Muay Thai boxing class. All of you know I'm not a big supporter of “women-only” type events, but hey, because of their gender bias, the classes they're offering are free, and with my ass being unemployed, I can't argue with free!

I haven't given up on joining Vladimir Vasiliev's Systema Classes and am going to have to find time in my unemployed busy schedule to go and check the place out. But I think this BJJ thing is going to have to tide me over until I start getting paid.

Lord knows how I'm going to fit all this into my schedule when/if I find a real job. But meh. Real jobs are for chumps.

P.S. I'm terrified of doing any and all of this, mostly because I've got no one to go with, but I generally don't like joining things with other people because I'm scared I'll let them down.

Edit: I just realized that I can't start this weekend since I'll be in Ottawa for the OUI (Ottawa Unicycle Invsaion) tournment!

Yesterday while stopped at a red light in downtown Toronto, myself and my vehicle were approached by a squeegie kid.  A punk version of a squeegie kid wearing a leather vest, a bright pink, very high mohawk and metal galore (not necessairly piercings, but generally a lot of metalic accents)

He attempted to squeegie my windshield, by first pouring water onto it then to wipe it off with his tool of service.  Unfortunately for him, and to the amusement of myself and my driver, my automatic windshield wipers sensed the water that had suddenly been on the window, and immediately started wiping, sending this water straight back into the face of the person who put it there.

We weren’t rude about it, we didn’t plan to do that on purpose, I just have smart wipers that like doing that. They’re not actually that smart, sometimes they wipe in the driest desert-like conditions and sometimes they won’t if you pour enough black ink into the wells.  But they worked that Wednesday afternoon, and to them I’m grateful.  It was the highlight of my day.  While I had no intentions of giving this boy money, after seeing what he went through I felt I should.  Sadly I actually had no money to give him.

He took it in good stride, mentioned that the automatic wipers would be the death of him, and went on his way.  It was definately interesting.

(P.S.  I still haven’t had time to backdate some moblog posts, I should soon though!)