Posts in category "Random"

In Return

It’s only the dri­vers who yield to pedes­tri­ans who deserve a quick­ened step across the lane. I take my time, some­times even walk slow­er, for the dri­vers who have no regard for the pedes­tri­ans.

Only patient peo­ple deserve patience in return.

You Don't Know Me

On a day-to-day basis at work I have to deal with a mul­ti­tude of con­tacts from all sorts of busi­ness­es, such as print­ing com­pa­nies, media com­pa­nies, survey/research com­pa­nies, phone/internet providers, mag­a­zines, tech sup­port depart­ments, mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies, and tons of oth­er ran­dom oper­a­tions either try­ing to get my busi­ness or required by me for a product/service. At the begin­ning of every phone call, every sin­gle per­son I deal with asks me how I’m doing. It’s become a chal­lenge not to shout into the receiv­er, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME. DO YOU REALLY CARE? I’M A LITTLE WORRIED CAUSE IT BURNS WHEN I PEE! DID YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW THAT?!!”, every time I hear the cook­ie-cut­ter ques­tion. The worst is when I have to call some­one sev­er­al times in a day to fol­low up on some­thing, and I’m greet­ed with the same ques­tion every time, as if my com­pa­ny might have been built on a fault line that some­how sep­a­rat­ed between 10:00 and 10:15.

I know that ask­ing is a polite thing to do, and it’s polite of me to ask in return, but it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for me to say things that I don’t real­ly mean. I gen­er­al­ly only ask my friends how they’re doing, and I cer­tain­ly only tell my friends how I’m actu­al­ly doing.

I sup­pose it’s all just a haz­ard of the job. One day, for one of the less friend­ly, more aggres­sive, rude­ly patron­iz­ing, dread­ful­ly unim­por­tant calls (such as one I got the oth­er day from a com­pa­ny sell­ing solu­tions for high search engine rank­ings), I’ll go on about some make-believe prob­lem I’m hav­ing. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how long they can stay on the line, how much the busi­ness worth to them.

Gillette MACH3 Razor with 2 Cartridges

Features:

  • Gillette MACH3 Razor and 2 Cartridges
  • Triple-blade shav­ing sys­tem with an advanced indi­ca­tor lubri­cat­ing strip
  • Razor fea­tures ergonom­ic han­dle; 3 blades grad­u­al­ly extend clos­er to beard, less reshav­ing is required
  • The indi­ca­tor lubri­cat­ing strip has a blue stripe that fades away when blade is no longer opti­mum*
  • Each blade has a patent­ed DLC com­fort edge to glide effort­less­ly across face

*Note: Does not apply to Chinese males with sis­sy facial hair. Please use eight to twelve months as a gen­er­al guide­line for replac­ing dull blades.

The Steve Lam

I used to real­ly, real­ly admire the steve lam. He seemed to have his own style, and not care what any­one else thought. I want­ed to hang out with him, get to under­stand him bet­ter, maybe be a lit­tle more like him. I even bought him lunch once (he chose a club sand­wich from the cafe­te­ria), although one time we almost shared a bag of roast­ed peanuts while stand­ing next to a vend­ing machine.

I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed. Sure, he prob­a­bly still does­n’t care what oth­er peo­ple think, and he has real­ly cool hair that I want SO BADLY, but now it seems like he’s caught up in the whole “indie new york rock­er” image.

Image.

That’s what’s wrong with this pic­ture.

Yield To Me

On the way to work I walk adja­cent to a lane of traf­fic, and cars on the high­way can exit onto that street using a lengthy offramp. I have to cross the offramp every day, and there’s a yield sign there for cars com­ing from the high­way, but they nev­er slow down or yield to pedes­tri­ans (unless it’s some­one old dri­ving). Since it’s a busy area, the cars can just keep com­ing, and I’ve spent a ridicu­lous amount of time just wait­ing for the line of vehi­cles to end.

Right now I just get out my frus­tra­tions by pre­tend­ing that I don’t notice any cars com­ing, and tak­ing one step onto the ramp. Most dri­vers don’t care if some­one is walk­ing across; as long as they know that one sees them, they assume that one will jump out of the way. Drivers who believe that some­one does­n’t see them will almost always yield.

This morn­ing, for exam­ple, I pre­tend­ed to be com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to two cars speed­ing down the offramp. I made one con­fi­dent step across the path and then quick­ly looked up, while con­tin­u­ing to cross. The first car sped past me, but the sec­ond car slowed down sud­den­ly enough to make the tires squeak. The car actu­al­ly pulled to the side of the road and came to a com­plete stop. I could tell that the dri­ver, a book­ish man with light hair and glass­es, was both angry and shak­en, and had to stop dri­ving to com­pose him­self. I swear he was about to get out of his car to tell me off, had he not brought him­self under con­trol, and real­ized that it’s not a fuck­ing MERGE sign, it’s a FUCKING YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS SIGN.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always assume that I have the right of way (although I do believe that pedes­tri­ans are sup­posed to under the Highway Traffic Act R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8, s. 144 (28), unless the car can’t stop in time) and just walk across the cross­walk regard­less of oncom­ing vehi­cles. It’s in every­ones best inter­est to be safe, but I do my part by keep­ing an eye on vehi­cles, and not jay­walk­ing or cross­ing unpre­dictably. This guy, as well as many oth­ers, have plen­ty of time to see pedes­tri­ans approach­ing the cross­walk but decide to nev­er slow down.