YUL-ORD-GRR-ORD-YUL

Well my trip went well. It started off on the wrong foot though. I had a major argument with a client on the telephone before I left on Tuesday. The contact was so agressive and venonmous O came very close to hanging up on her. She just let out a continuous cry of insults and anger directed towards our company and eventually myself for messing up an order. I tried reasoning with her but her intent wasn't constructive anger it was destructive anger... so I let her vent and tried to calm her down only to find myself getting frusutrated with her eventually letting her go without barely speaking to her in the end. I understand people getting angry and I see the need for it everynow and then but if it's constructive in nature it helps build a relationship and find solutions. This type of destructive anger though was completely pointless, detroys relationships, solves nothing, works towards further destuction and just makes everyone feel bad.

I felt awful heading out on my plane Tuesday evening... this wouldn't get out of my head. Anyways, It got worse in Grand Rapids when I discovered we hadn't released several blocked orders that they asked to be prepared in advance. There was no way to get it all ready in time and I feared the worse today when I went into work. I was expecting all hell to break loose but instead I experienced one of those rare moments in life when everything you think about yourself and what you did actually rang true. The contact called and at first seemed afraid to talk to me then apolagized profusely for everything that happened... fearing I would have just quit our partnership in this project. I tell ya, I came damed close to it. I did talk it over with my boss in Grand Rapids and suggested long term they get someone to be a sales contact and leave me to do the technical end which is where my expertise it. He agreed so perhaps in a year or so this will happen.

For the trip however... I'll do it in pictures once Flickr is up and running again. In short though, American Airlines was excellent. The ERJ flights all went smoothly. I've come to really like that plane. It's comfortable and has nice big windows. Chicago went well. It was my first time going through American's terminal which wasn't as nice as United's but it was still pretty effective. I saw employees moving around on Segways there which was really cool.

">

I arrived in Grand Rapids near midnight and got a taxi to the Baymont Inn. The taxi driver picked up I was Canadian and had a load of questions for me about Canada. It was really interesting to see how fascinated he was with us. He wanted to know about if I wa happy about the Conservative government. He, like many Americans now, felt the need to almost apologize for their government's actions around the world.. he asked about Quebec seperation and if it made sense or would ever happen and mainly if it's still an issue. Quite cool... he asked a lot more questions than I ever imagined someone like he would.

Work down there went well. Eric was nice enough to stick by me most of time and show me around a little. I had my evaluation and it went quite well. My boss seems to think more highly of my skills than I do so that was cool. Even the CEO seemed a bit more receptive to me than normal so I felt better about that although I really do find him hot and cold.

The return was a day of watching the clock... My plan was to take Friday off and a taxi back to the airport and do it all on my own pace. My boss insisted someone drive me there so suggested I come into work in the morning...sigh... so I did that and we wrapped up fast so I ended up at GRR around 9am. My flight was at 11am. My mistake was checking in luggage. The earlier flight was there and I could have switched planes and spent some leisure time at O'Hare but I couldn't... then my 11pm flight was 40 minutes late. My connection to YUL was at 11:15 and I ended up arriving at ORD at 11:40.. plus, as always, I was at the end of the pier at G16 and my Montreal MD-80 was at the end of pier H and H17... so there I was leaping over luggage and small kids as I ran to the gate...LOL... only to find out it was delayed and the boarding process hadn't begun yet.

Boarding was a but messy. First off the flight was jammed packed and there were stand by passengers who had been there since the previous night. They boarded in Groups.. 1, 2, 3 etc..which were marked on your boarding pass. I was in group 6 for seat 9A. The trouble is many passengers had tickets with no group number marked on it. Furthermore many were unilingual French Canadians who were understandably lost. However we all board only to sit there for another 45 minutes with ATC got it's act together. The weather was ominous... very low dark clouds and some rain. Downtown Chicago was spectacular with all the low skyline hanging over the city.

The flight to Montreal was uneventful. The MD-80 really nice and quiet.. quite roomy. My seatmate was an older French Canadian who I spoke to for a bit. Service was sparse... beverages and pretzels but I have to admit they were better prtzels than usual but still they were pretzels. Montreal looked beautiful on arrival... the sun was filtering down through the clouds... I saw where I work from the plane and got a picture of it. We turned at the end of island and headed back west towards 24R... passing my house and the usual approach until we landed routinely. Customs was crowded. And Air France 777, Swiss A330 and and Air Canada A330 had landed just before us... plus I think there was an Air Transat flight too... so it was quite crowded but we did the zig zag thingy and kept moving although I was dizzy by the time I got to the customs agent. My bag was out way before I got to the luggage carrousel and shortly after I was on the Met on the way home... only to be stuck in rush hour traffic.. so no real day off.

Next month... Europe.

Spring is coming

Ok it's been a while.. Nothing spectacular has happened although it's been a stressful few weeks with work and friends.

For work - we had the big bosses up here from the US and they let go of our purchasers. It was a consolidation move to centralize purchasing in the USA. What people didn't like was the two fellas were told they no longer had employment here and were immediately escorted out of the building without even having a chance to say good bye to anyone. That's rough especially since we all worked with them for over 5 years. The reason for them going though made sense and in the end it turns out they really didn't have a good grasp of what they were doing as the US has filled in and found a mess of problems that should never have occurred. So a good thing for the company but I can't help but feel bad for them. It seems strange to not see them any more and not to have at least said good-bye.

For friends - hum. I seem to be having issues with both my best friends. One a female and one a guy. For the girl we seemed to have clashed recently over world issues.. Iraq specifically. Well, actually this clash occurred right after the Iraq invasion. She took the US side, I took Canada's position and then we locked horns to a point where we really can't discuss this anymore without raising our voices. I would imagine this is not all that uncommon... Although I've known this girl all my life and we've never argued let along clashed on anything on this scale. It's kinda sad. It seems to have now boiled over to how we see everything else and we're discovering that we really are very different people at heart. She is much more conservative, right wing and pro-business... I am really much more liberal, left of centre and pro-struggles against governments and big business.

All this came to head over a discussion about Paul McCartney coming to Canada to protest the seal hunt. Now we both object to the seal hunt but I am suspicious of big celebrities making grandiose new conferences on issues far flung from their normal environment. I wasn't aware McCartney had been doing this for years however and I guess my protests over his presence just set her off. For me I ask why Paul McCartney is concerned about seals on an ice flow off Newfoundland when his own country has just bombed the hell out of Iraq for a cause that so far has proven to be non existent. Anyways, we butted heads and it then came down to how we see the world, how well we respect each other's opinions, how well we listen to each other, do we listen to each other in fact and I suppose we were questioning our intelligence and ability to decipher the events that shape our worlds.

The sad truth is the truth these days is almost meaningless. It seems our aim is to find sources that confirm our beliefs and hope that enough people support the same sources and then it becomes the truth for us whether or not it really it. Thus the huge divide in American society and for that matter all of us that judge them on their actions. God knows everyone is judging them these days.

For the male friend... I offered him and another friend to take my Air Canada points and go on a trip somewhere in the world they fly. I have enough points to really go just about anywhere so the three of us could have a good time in some far off exotic place. First they happily accepted then they hedged... then they said they were planning a trip on their own then the last time he wanted me to go to Toronto with them to see how we all got along. Ok, looking at it like that I can see this was a mistake on my part. I should never have made this offer. I'm very disappointed in this reaction and quite frankly now I'm not sure how to get out of it would hurting anyone's feelings.... or just wait until they finally say for me to go on my own... which is depressing enough as that is. Crap.

Academy Awards

I managed to get through the Academy Awards last night. I saw the beginning, a little of the middle and came back around 10:45 for the end. Overall I enjoyed what I saw. The opening was pretty good starting with the computer generated fly into the theatre passing all the great actors and moments in movie history. Very well done. The skit about their search for a host was pretty good but what happened to Ellen?

For the films - I saw three of them this year. Good Night & Good Luck, Crash & Brokeback Mountain. I thoroughly enjoyed all three. I wasn't able to say beforehand that I strongly preferred one over the other. GN&GL was a steamy look into an era I knew nothing about and found it totally fascinating. Crash was an excellent playoff of emotions and tensions in our racially mixed world... a hard topic to broach and extrememly well done and acted and Brokeback Mountain was a powerhouse of emotional repression and an expression of realities that rarely ever get played out on the big screen. It really was an excellent year in film. Capote & Munich look like they'd easily fall into the same category of quality. So for all the losing nominees I'd surely say it was the best year to not have won one because any other year they would have blown the competition out of the water in terms of quality.

Highlights of what I saw... the opening sequence, John Stewart did a pretty good job of hosting the show and Ben Stiller desperately trying to ring some humor out of a screen screen costume. I can't imagine hosting is an easy task given all the big stars out in the audience and knowing there are over a hundred million people watching you live. Egads... Everyone looked good... there were no really big mistakes... the political side was kept low key for the most part at least from what I saw. George Clooney made some good remarks though..

I'm kinda glad Crash won though. Three cheers for independant films! It was a difficult movie to watch and it sent out a message to everyone about the reasons why we are like all are... everyone is connected and even the little things we say or do has reprecussions we never see. Glad to see it was directed and produced by a Canadian too. I guess it takes an outsider sometimes to see what we don't always see ourselves and in this case perhaps it took a Canuck to help Americans see themselves in a more realistic realistic light. So kudos to him.