My family and I went out for dinner tonight at our favourite local italian eatery. We had just sat down at a table by the door and were perusing through the menu when a man wearing a nice-looking suit walked in. Our server happened to be near the door and approached him. Suddenly, the man started swearing at our server and threw several wild punches at him, yelling that he was getting his "fuckin' coat".
Violent Man walked further into the restaurant, continued swearing, and started swinging at the next guy who approached him. Then Violent Man picked up a bar stool. Things could have gotten quite out of hand if one of the big guys from the kitchen hadn't stepped out, grabbed Violent Man and attempted to calm him down, causing the bar stool to fall to the floor. After a brief struggle (that I couldn't see very well), three guys grabbed Violent Man, hurtled him towards the door and threw him out.
Violent Man stood at the door and continued to yell at the men, who stayed by the door to keep him from re-entering the establishment. There was some spitting involved, and this went on for maybe five minutes. Then a huge policeman showed up out of nowhere, and the whole thing became a silent movie, as we watched the action through the front window. With lightning speed, the policeman got Violent Man face down on the snowy sidewalk with his knee in the middle of his back. The handcuffs went on, and he kept Violent Man on the ground for several minutes. More policepeople showed up, and they took him away to the cruiser. Later on, three other policepeople came into the restaurant, no doubt in order to gather witness statements from the kitchen guys. We went back to our business, noticing that the food was a little slow to arrive, but we didn't mind.
The speculation was that Violent Man was completely plastered (or mentally unstable) and had already been thrown out of the restaurant earlier in the evening. Hence the coat being left behind. My mother, who could always be counted on for being ridculous in these kinds of situations, had been holding on to my father's arm the entire time, even when the altercation had moved outside. She temporarily forgot that she was hungry.
At the end of our meal, we were surprised by a plate of chocolate eclairs that were on the house. Our server apologized for the unfortunate scene earlier, but we were more concerned about whether he had been hurt. Violent Man had punched him many times before moving to the bar stool. But thankfully our server was okay.
Although the entire event is kind of unnerving and not very pleasant, all of us (minus my mother) found it very entertaining. It seems wrong somehow to witness this kind of thing and then feel excited to tell the story later, like I had just seen a really great movie but in real life.
Look at what popular entertainment has done to me.
"This fire is out of control, I'm going to burn this city"
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Due Process
Howdy. Long time no blog.
First off, I read this today and thought to myself, that's a cool idea. That is, if you're into hockey and everything.
So, things have been pretty busy, hence the bloglessness. But I did something last week that was just fascinating to me.
I participated in due process.
I have been a member of a credit union, along with the rest of my family, pretty much since birth. The sad thing is that I never really took an interest in it. Whenever something happened, like my dad wanted me to invest in shares or something, he would just give me a blank application, tell me to sign the appropriate places, and the rest would be taken care of. Basically, I have no idea what I have in my accounts.
The credit union (currently the third largest in Ontario) has decided to merge with another credit union (currently the largest in Ontario) to become one whopping huge credit union (largest in Ontario, third largest in Canada). But since it's a credit union, all of the members get a say as to whether this merger is going to happen or not. Unlike some other major financial institutions that shall remain nameless.
After work, I hurried home and went with my parents to the special members meeting where we would have a decent convention-style meal, listen to the chairman and others say good things about this merger, and then vote. Almost everything involved making a motion to do this or that, having someone second it, then voting by holding the little card in the air. Other than in Model UN, I've never taken part in anything like this (and even back then, it was extremely marginal participation).
So, all of this sounds boring, right? Sure, except that there was some tension when the one director who had resigned due to his opposition of this merger stood up near the end of the question period and started talking about all the negative things that the chairman "neglected" to mention, including the real reason why the director resigned. You should have seen the chairman's face while this guy was making his remarks. The problem was that we had voted at the beginning of the meeting to limit questions or comments to two minutes per person, and that the question period would not exceed one hour. Of course, both of these events were about to occur with this guy at the microphone. Half the people in the room (there were about 1200 people present from all over the province) wanted him to keep talking, the other half wanted him to shut up so we could vote. People were screaming across the huge convention hall, it was total chaos, and I was strangely captivated.
The chairman finally got the room under control, and we voted. There were three categories of voters, two of which were shareholders only, and the third being all general members. There had to be a two-thirds majority in each category for this resolution to pass. When the votes were tallied, both of the shareholders results were in the 87-88% range in favour of the merger. The general member result was 67.5% in favour. This was another first for me. My vote actually made a difference.
So that was the end of our meeting. The other credit union held their vote the following night and were also in favour, so on April 1st, the merger will be complete.
We had taken a chartered bus to the convention centre (provided by our local branch), and on our way back, I was sitting next to an elderly gentleman. We were all munching on cookies, and as we waited to exit the parking lot, he leaned over and asked if the vote had gone the way I wanted it. I hesitantly said yes, since I wasn't completely sure it would affect me at all, and I didn't really have too much to say about it. He mentiond something about the weather (it was pouring rain), to which I agreed. He went back to eating his cookie, and I felt that he was trying to get a conversation out of me, and I wasn't being very co-operative. So I jumped in and asked him a question. That was all I had to do. He ended up talking for the rest of the ride, first about how he wanted to buy some property back in the day, and the credit union gave him the loan on the spot, and how people had tried to buy it from him over the years but he held out and was going to pass it on to his family after he was gone. Then we somehow got into the topic of age, how his wife had died some years before, and how both his parents and his wife's parents lived to be in their 90's or 100's, and how it's because in Poland they have good water. Then it became an environmental talk, and if they ever produced a good hydrogen car he would be the first one to buy it. I said a word or two here and there, but I basically just listened to him talk because he seemed to enjoy it so much. When we reached our stop, I said goodbye and he smiled at me and waved. What a pleasant man, I thought to myself as I got off the bus. I really hope he gets to own that hydrogen car.
"Could have been your statue, could have been your friend, a whole long lifetime could have been the end"
First off, I read this today and thought to myself, that's a cool idea. That is, if you're into hockey and everything.
So, things have been pretty busy, hence the bloglessness. But I did something last week that was just fascinating to me.
I participated in due process.
I have been a member of a credit union, along with the rest of my family, pretty much since birth. The sad thing is that I never really took an interest in it. Whenever something happened, like my dad wanted me to invest in shares or something, he would just give me a blank application, tell me to sign the appropriate places, and the rest would be taken care of. Basically, I have no idea what I have in my accounts.
The credit union (currently the third largest in Ontario) has decided to merge with another credit union (currently the largest in Ontario) to become one whopping huge credit union (largest in Ontario, third largest in Canada). But since it's a credit union, all of the members get a say as to whether this merger is going to happen or not. Unlike some other major financial institutions that shall remain nameless.
After work, I hurried home and went with my parents to the special members meeting where we would have a decent convention-style meal, listen to the chairman and others say good things about this merger, and then vote. Almost everything involved making a motion to do this or that, having someone second it, then voting by holding the little card in the air. Other than in Model UN, I've never taken part in anything like this (and even back then, it was extremely marginal participation).
So, all of this sounds boring, right? Sure, except that there was some tension when the one director who had resigned due to his opposition of this merger stood up near the end of the question period and started talking about all the negative things that the chairman "neglected" to mention, including the real reason why the director resigned. You should have seen the chairman's face while this guy was making his remarks. The problem was that we had voted at the beginning of the meeting to limit questions or comments to two minutes per person, and that the question period would not exceed one hour. Of course, both of these events were about to occur with this guy at the microphone. Half the people in the room (there were about 1200 people present from all over the province) wanted him to keep talking, the other half wanted him to shut up so we could vote. People were screaming across the huge convention hall, it was total chaos, and I was strangely captivated.
The chairman finally got the room under control, and we voted. There were three categories of voters, two of which were shareholders only, and the third being all general members. There had to be a two-thirds majority in each category for this resolution to pass. When the votes were tallied, both of the shareholders results were in the 87-88% range in favour of the merger. The general member result was 67.5% in favour. This was another first for me. My vote actually made a difference.
So that was the end of our meeting. The other credit union held their vote the following night and were also in favour, so on April 1st, the merger will be complete.
We had taken a chartered bus to the convention centre (provided by our local branch), and on our way back, I was sitting next to an elderly gentleman. We were all munching on cookies, and as we waited to exit the parking lot, he leaned over and asked if the vote had gone the way I wanted it. I hesitantly said yes, since I wasn't completely sure it would affect me at all, and I didn't really have too much to say about it. He mentiond something about the weather (it was pouring rain), to which I agreed. He went back to eating his cookie, and I felt that he was trying to get a conversation out of me, and I wasn't being very co-operative. So I jumped in and asked him a question. That was all I had to do. He ended up talking for the rest of the ride, first about how he wanted to buy some property back in the day, and the credit union gave him the loan on the spot, and how people had tried to buy it from him over the years but he held out and was going to pass it on to his family after he was gone. Then we somehow got into the topic of age, how his wife had died some years before, and how both his parents and his wife's parents lived to be in their 90's or 100's, and how it's because in Poland they have good water. Then it became an environmental talk, and if they ever produced a good hydrogen car he would be the first one to buy it. I said a word or two here and there, but I basically just listened to him talk because he seemed to enjoy it so much. When we reached our stop, I said goodbye and he smiled at me and waved. What a pleasant man, I thought to myself as I got off the bus. I really hope he gets to own that hydrogen car.
"Could have been your statue, could have been your friend, a whole long lifetime could have been the end"
Friday, February 04, 2005
English For The Non-English
Last night I went out to dinner with some friends from university. We get together regularly...well, by "regularly" I mean when the fancy-pants restaurants in the city offer fixed price menus so that normal joes can afford to eat like the other half. So that's about twice a year. But one of these days Kevin is going to move his business out of his living room and will be able to host a proper mah jong party, so then we'll probably see each other more often.
In any case, we were at Centro (which is a very nice restaurant, highly recommended by "some guy on the internet"), catching up and having a great meal. Time disappeared as quickly as our food and suddenly we had spent 3 hours there. Kevin and Sylvia had to leave to catch the bus to Vermont for the annual ski trip (dear God...I want to go skiing...). As we all entered the subway, Kevin's phone rang, and after he answered, his voice got louder, his grammar became non-existent, and it was as though he was singing a slow children's song. Sylvia smiled and informed the rest of us that it must be the Japanese exchange student on the phone, who had been invited to the ski trip but was waiting for someone to pick her up.
I know it's bad, but I have to admit that I am guilty of this kind of behaviour as well. Ron commented that it's no wonder new immigrants have such a hard time grasping the English language. Nobody ever speaks to them normally. I find that I just can't help speaking louder, slower, and using as many simple words strung together as possible to try to get the meaning across, complete with hand gestures if possible. I can understand the slower pace and the simple words, but why on earth do we feel compelled to speak louder? They're not deaf, they're just from another country, and it's not like we can force our message into their brain by shouting.
But I still laughed as we watched Kevin attempt to communicate with the Japanese girl. I'm afraid it's just hopeless, isn't it?
"Give me back my point of view 'cause I just can't think for you"
In any case, we were at Centro (which is a very nice restaurant, highly recommended by "some guy on the internet"), catching up and having a great meal. Time disappeared as quickly as our food and suddenly we had spent 3 hours there. Kevin and Sylvia had to leave to catch the bus to Vermont for the annual ski trip (dear God...I want to go skiing...). As we all entered the subway, Kevin's phone rang, and after he answered, his voice got louder, his grammar became non-existent, and it was as though he was singing a slow children's song. Sylvia smiled and informed the rest of us that it must be the Japanese exchange student on the phone, who had been invited to the ski trip but was waiting for someone to pick her up.
I know it's bad, but I have to admit that I am guilty of this kind of behaviour as well. Ron commented that it's no wonder new immigrants have such a hard time grasping the English language. Nobody ever speaks to them normally. I find that I just can't help speaking louder, slower, and using as many simple words strung together as possible to try to get the meaning across, complete with hand gestures if possible. I can understand the slower pace and the simple words, but why on earth do we feel compelled to speak louder? They're not deaf, they're just from another country, and it's not like we can force our message into their brain by shouting.
But I still laughed as we watched Kevin attempt to communicate with the Japanese girl. I'm afraid it's just hopeless, isn't it?
"Give me back my point of view 'cause I just can't think for you"