The Life of Brian

Interest Rate Hike by the Bank of Canada

2010-06-02T11:52:00.003-05:00

The Bank of Canada increased the interest rate by 25 basis points on Tuesday, which was expected after it was revealed that the Canadian economy grew by 6.1% in the first three months. However, there was considerable caution injected into the announcement due to the uncertainty surrounding the global recovery from the financial crisis. This move is widely seen to be more symbolic than anything else. There is doubt as to whether interest rates would be hiked for the rest of the year and if so, would probably be modest. See the following article:

Interest Rate Hike

Much depends on how the crisis in Europe plays out and the recovery in the US.

Household Debt in Canada

2010-05-29T09:42:00.003-05:00

While Canada has a sound banking system and generally avoided the subprime mortgage meltdown that nearly brought the US to its knees, it is not without its' problems as revealed in a lengthy article in today's Toronto Star: According to the article:

"Canada ranks first among a list of 20 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development — including the United States — when consumer debt-to-financial-assets ratios are compared. That’s just a taste of the dour revelations in a report released earlier this month by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada."

This article is at this link: Canadian debt

As alluded to in a previous post, there has been speculation as whether the Bank of Canada will increase the interest rate next Tuesday. If it does, it will increase the pressure on those with considerable debt. There is still some mixed signals as to whether it will happen or not. Stay tuned.

Canadian Economy

2010-05-26T19:35:00.001-05:00

It’s been interesting to read the paper articles regarding what the Canadian government should do during these interesting economic times. While the Canadian economy has been doing relatively well, it is not totally insulated from the volatility of the world economic and market conditions. The condition was neatly reflected last week when, on the same day, two different papers had different opinions with respect to what the Bank of Canada should do. The Toronto Star opined that the Bank of Canada should raising interest rates in light of the fact that inflation increased by 1.8% in the month of April. On the other hand, the Globe and Mail opined that, due to the Greek debt crisis and its effect on the rest of Europe, the “chances of an interest rate hike has dramatically decreased.” I’m guessing that the world stock markets have essentially delivered their verdicts in the past week, reflecting a lack of confidence in the Euro currency and financial and economic conditions in Europe. As the papers have pointed out, the Chinese and the North Americans have a fair percentage of exports going to Europe. A slowdown in exports naturally will have an effect on world economic conditions. Call me a pessimist but I think that the current recession is far from over. With regard to interest rate hikes, we shall find out on June 1st as that is when the Bank of Canada will decide whether to raise the interest rate or not.

Overview

2010-05-21T17:17:00.002-05:00

So a lot has happened in the past couple of years, foremost is the financial meltdown, resulting in the "Great Recession." It will have been two years this coming fall when the crisis hit full force. As a few writers have pointed out, the roots of this crisis go back further than 2008. I got a sense of foreboding in the summer of 2006 when Mary-Anne and I start readying the Columbus home for sale. From the time we decided to put it on the market to the time we actually sold it, the value of the house dropped substantially. To be sure, I thought that it was a localized phenomenon. In hindsight, it probably was not.

In any case, we are still feeling the effects of the global financial meltdown. They range from the unprecedented bailout of Wall Street, the emergence of the Tea Party movement, the worst unemployment statistics since the Great Depression, a hung Parliament in UK, the crisis among Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Greece, the threat to the euro, wild fluctuations on the stock market and many other things. It is pretty clear that the effects of the Great Recession will linger for many many years.

The recession has not been as severe here in Canada, largely due to a sound banking system. It was recently ranked as one of the soundest in the world. However, there are troubling signs. There are worries up here about the debt load taken on by the average Canadian household. One would think that, during these tough economic times, folks would retrench, cut down on spending and reduce their debt load. Instead, Canadians have assumed more debt than ever before. The irony is that the low interest rates have made it easy for people to justify racking up debt. So Canadian economists are voicing some worries about the effect of a rate hike on the debt load of Canadians. Who knows where this might be going?

More to come as I get back into the swing of this particular blog!

Update

2010-05-19T11:51:00.002-05:00

I know I know, I've been such a slacker with regard to this particular blog and I plan to post more regularly here as well as my Bamboo Spirit martial arts blog. I'm going to tinker with this blog and change some of the looks and make some other updates as well.

On to our lives: we are now well settled into the house in Oshawa and all is well. The martial arts business has progressed since I started teaching up here in February 2008. The growth has been slow though, owing to the fact that I had no professional or social network in Oshawa when I started teaching. In addition, the economic recession of the past two years didn't help matters either. Still, I'm teaching a class in Ottawa, four hours from here on a regular basis and may have a possibility in Barrie, which is about one hour from here. As for Oshawa, we are slowly adding a student here and a student there. It's taking time.

My contract job with the Law Foundation of Ontario comes to an end on July 31st and I have been looking for employment to start soon thereafter. I had a good run at the Law Foundation as my original assignment was for 4 to 6 weeks and they ended up offering a contract to me. I'd like to think that I did well by turning a 4 to 6 week assignment into something that last almost 2.5 years. Not too shabby.

All the while, I've been taking hearings on a part time basis for the City of Oshawa and that is challenging. As of this juncture, I am unsure where this is going to lead. I'd like to work in Oshawa or at least in the Durham Region, which is basically the part of Ontario where we live.

Will write more as I ease myself back into this blog!

I'm Baaaaack!!!!

2010-05-18T11:56:00.002-05:00

It's been far too long since I've posted here on this particular blog as I have devoted most of my blogging energy on my martial arts blog. But there are many things that I'd like to say and post on here that doesn't quite belong on the Bamboo Spirit blog. Therefore, I will soon be posting on here again. Alot of it is just sheer laziness and some of it is that I don't have a lot of time. Really, it comes down to more efficient time management and coming up with timely topics for this blog.

See you in a few days!

World Economy

2009-04-02T07:55:00.002-05:00

There was a nice article by Time regarding one of the underlying causes of the current economic recession (other than the subprime mortgage problem, the banking problem...the financial industry problem) and that is the world trade imbalance. In summary, too many countries adopted an economic strategy that was heavily reliant on exports. As a result, when the U.S. economy tanked, their economies tanked as well. See here for the article.

It’s evident that this recession is much more than a short term problem. It’s more than injecting liquidity into the financial markets. It’s much more than enacting tighter regulation of the financial industry. As the article points out, it also means re-jiggering much of the economic thinking of the past 30 or 40 years. The Chinese apparently have come to realize that reliance on exports to grow their economy is not a long term sustainable strategy and that they will have to pursue policies that encourage their own people to spend. Like wise the US will have to pursue policies that encourage more savings and less spending among the populace. It’s no secret that Americans have been terrible at saving their money. That has to change.

As the U.S. is waking up from the awful, wasteful, profligate spending spree of the past 25 years and start adopting policies (more savings, going green, higher fuel efficiency standards for cars, and less spending), the world is going to realize that they cannot depend on exports to the US to grow their own economy. I think that this transition is going to take decades.

I’m interested to see how this transition affects three areas:

(1) China: the conventional wisdom has been that the Chinese economy needs to grow at 8%. Anything below that means layoffs and unemployment. Millions have already been laid off from factories that make products for export to the U.S. and other countries. The increasing number of unemployed people is going to pose very difficult challenges to Hu Jintao and the Chinese Communist Party. Pretty ironic that just a few months ago, the world was marvelling at the show China put on during the Beijing Olympics. It seems such a distant memory.

(2) Oil from the Middle East: the past week has seen moves by the Obama administration that is unprecedented, unusual and necessary. I’m speaking of President Obama’s decision with regard to GM and Chrysler. In particular, what he was telling them “your proposed restructuring plans are not enough” and conditioned further government aid on revised restructuring plans from GM within the next 60 days and for Chrysler to complete merger talks with Fiat within the next 30 days. In a stunning and bold move, Obama proceeded to sack Rick Wagoner, the CEO of GM. The message is loud and clear: mediocre performance and failure are not options. GM had lost $80 billion under Wagoner. Abysmal performance indeed. Implicit in all of this is the administration’s desire for the Detroit manufacturers to produce more fuel efficient green vehicles.

This leads to the question of how that will affect the oil markets. Probably not much in the short term. However, if the auto industry can improve their mileage efficiency, say, 3 or 4% per year, the numbers will surely add up over the long term. That is bound to have some effect on the oil markets.

As Thomas Friedman of the NY Times and many others have pointed out, major oil producing countries such as Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran, and Middle Eastern countries are (a) corrupt; (b) authoritarian; (c) anti Western or some variation thereof. These countries are so awash in petro dollars that they don’t feel the need to impose taxes on their citizens. That means that they are not responsive to their citizens. Most often they funnel the money to state or internal security organizations.

What would be the long term effect of reducing the U.S. reliance on oil through the pursuit of green technologies ? That is going to be interesting to watch.

(3) Canada: The Canadian economy is heavily dependent on the U.S. economy and the effects of the recession in the U.S. is being felt up here, particularly in the auto industry here in Ontario. The ironic aspect of the global downturn is that Canada and the US may become more interdependent than ever. As has been noted, Canadian banks now occupy the list of the 15 largest banks in North America, due to the spectacular flameout of the financial industry in the U.S. Indeed, the Canadian banking industry has been rated as the soundest in the world by Time Magazine recently. PM Harper has been hailing the soundness of the Canadian financial industry in interviews with US news outlets (CNN and Fox). As a result, Canadian banks such as TD (Toronto Dominion) and RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) are poised to move into the U.S. and acquire or merge with U.S. banks.

At the same time, as noted above, the auto industry is hurting up here. A good example is the GM plant in Oshawa and its uncertain future in light of Obama’s recent moves. The Canadians are moving in the same direction as Obama as far as conditioning further government help on a sound restructuring plan. In any case, many GM plants manufacture vehicles for export to the U.S. and naturally, they have been hurt by falling demand in the US, starting last summer. I think that it’s safe to say that the manufacturing sector of Ontario is going to suffer a long term decline as it did in Michigan and in Ohio.

To be continued in next entry.

Border Security

2009-04-01T07:50:00.001-05:00

One issue of concern to Canadians has to do with the security of the US/Canadian border. Increased regulations and requirements for crossing the border has come into play in recent years due to policies implemented by the Bush Administration. Due to bureaucratic momentum the Obama administration is likely to implement the Bush policies (such as the requirement to have passports in order to cross the border etc) but will find ways to alleviate the burdens imposed by those policies.

Naturally, the Bush administration implemented the border crossing policies in response to the events of 9/11. However, many Canadians point out that none of the 9/11 hijackers entered the US from Canada. Every 9/11 hijacker entered the U.S. through a port of entry in the U.S. This may well be an overreaction by the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as was the case with the decision to go into Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.

It should be noted that this is an economic concern of Canadians as well as several news reports have indicated that the new regulations have had a significant impact on cross border trade and economic ties.

In any case, sufficient momentum has been created with respect to the implementation of new border crossing requirements that the Obama administration, as noted above, will likely let the policies go forth but will try to find ways to alleviate them, especially in the area of trade. It should be interesting to see what adjustments the Obama administration makes in this regard.

On a personal front, things are going well up here and I continue to work downtown for the Law Foundation of Ontario and my contract is on an indefinite basis. The hearing officer position with the City of Oshawa has been placed on hold due to shrinking resources. I will have to go with the flow. In the meantime, I’m forging ahead with the martial arts business, which is a tough tough business as it is entirely dependent on marketing and advertising to attract customers. It’s been made even more tough as folks have, according to news reports, drastically reduced their discretionary spending. It doesn’t help that Oshawa is a GM town and of course, there is a great deal of uncertainty with regard to GM.

Also, I had cataracts surgery on my right eye last week and I’ve gotten very good results from it. No surgery needed for the left eye as it’s perfectly normal.

Fox News Controversy

2009-03-24T07:49:00.002-05:00

In the past day or so, Canadians here have expressed outrage at comments made by a satirical show on Fox News that played up inaccurate stereotypes of Canadians. See here:

Toronto Star

While this show is supposedly satirical, I find myself sharing the opinions of Canadians with regard to the asinine “jokes” at the expense of the Canadians. One comic on that show confessed that he did not know that Canadians were fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan. On a per capita basis, Canadians have lost more troops over there than the U.S. have (remember, Canada has a smaller population than the state of California).

The display of Canadian patriotism in honoring soldiers who gave their lives in Afghanistan is quite impressive. There is a “Highway of Heroes” procession that takes place every time a fallen soldier returns home. The procession proceeds on Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto and is lined with multitudes of citizens paying tribute as the procession goes by. There are 50 bridges over the highway from Trenton to Toronto. Every single one of those bridges are packed with folks, firefighters, and policemen waving Canadian flags in tribute to those fallen soldiers. That kind of display should put those Fox News guys to shame.

I recently received an e-mail containing a 33 picture slideshow of this procession and it is VERY impressive. If you’d like to see it, just e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.

I’d like to take a moment to point out that there is much that binds Canada and the U.S. historically, linguistically, economically and geographically. There is far more similarities than differences between the two countries. Yes, there are some political and cultural differences The reality of life is that one country cannot do without the other. That is why, historically, the first foreign trip taken by a U.S. President has usually been to Canada as President Obama did last month.

Unfortunately, there is some degree of ignorance on both sides of the border and that contributes to misunderstandings or mistaken assumptions about the other country. To cite a couple of examples, I remember a co worker of mine in Columbus (and who has travelled to Canada frequently for summer vacations) telling me that a mutual friend of ours once asked her “do Canadians use the same money ?” Fer crying out loud !! What was amazing about that is that Columbus is just 3.5 hours from the US-Canada border (through Detroit). Another example is when a friend once asked me “do they ALL speak French up there ?” Uh, no !!!

The Fox News guys may have been operating from long held inaccuracies about Canada in general even if they were “joking.” On the other side of the coin, I have encountered some ignorance and some anti-Americanism up here. Fortunately, they are in a very small minority.

Update on Canadian Politics

2009-03-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

It’s been awhile since I last posted due to a breakdown with my old laptop. The logic board on it died an untimely death and it was a while before I got around to getting a new laptop (a MacBook) and I’m happy with it so far. I’m still in the process of re-loading and installing some stuff onto the laptop. However, I’m well on the way.

To follow up on the political situation here in Canada, the crisis has passed as many had expected. In the period between the proroguing of Parliament and its resumption in late January, the Conservative government under PM Harper responded with a stimulus package that placated the Liberal party enough to stave off the threat of either a coalition government or new elections. It’s safe to say that all now recognize how serious the present economic situation is and it’s becoming more and more clear just how dire the situation is, compared to November and December. In addition to placating the Liberals, I suspect that the Harper government recognized that the political landscape in the US had changed as well and that they needed to foster a good relationship with the new Obama administration.

The fact that Obama decided to make Canada his first foreign trip as President was received quite warmly here in Canada, even if the trip lasted for a mere 24 hours or so. Let’s face it, the US and Canada need each other more than ever, especially during this global economic crisis. So it should be interesting to see how the relationship between the Harper government and the Obama administration develop over the next few years.

On Hold

2009-02-08T20:53:00.001-05:00

In case you are wondering, I've been having computer problems lately and that has put my blogging activities on hold. Hopefully, things will be resolved soon. Stay tuned !

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T12:54:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year to all those who read this blog ! I'll be making some changes to this blog in the spirit of renewal that greets us at the beginning of each new year.

Stayed tuned !

Charlie Weis and ND Football

2008-12-11T22:10:00.003-05:00

Earlier I had posted a rant about Tyrone Willingham on the week of the ND/Washington game, a game in which the Irish thoroughly dominated and embarrassed the Huskies. The game was not necessarily an accurate barometer of how the Irish were progressing due to the sad state of the Huskie program. However, at that time, I thought that the young Irish team was making reasonably good progress. How wrong I was.

To back track briefly, I had thought, prior to the season, that the Irish would finish 7-5 on the season, with an outside shot at 8-4. My prediction was based on the fact that the Irish were coming off an historically bad season coupled with the extreme youth, especially on the offensive side of the ball. What I did not anticipate was that the Irish would regress after their 4-2 start. That’s the alarming part....instead of improving in the last 6 games of the season, they appeared to backtrack.

After a week of speculation, Notre Dame decided to bring Charlie Weis back for another year. On balance, it’s probably the right decision considering the need for stability in the program and considering how young the team was. In the past week or so, I’ve gone over the pros and cons of whether Weis should come back.

Here are the pros:
(1) He has done a fantastic job of recruiting. Under Weis, the Irish has enjoyed some of the best recruiting since the late 1980’s under Lou Holtz. The recruiting efforts by Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham pale in comparison.

(2) The deck was stacked against Weis last year in terms of personnel, as noted in my earlier entry. This forced Weis to throw players into the fray before they were prepared. This year, the stars on the offense were either freshmen or sophomores. The QB, Jimmy Clausen, is a sophomore. Robert Hughes and Armando Allen, both RBs, are sophomores. The starting TE, Kyle Rudolph, is a freshman. Golden Tate, the speedy WR, is a sophomore and Michael Floyd, the other starting WR, is a freshmen. I don’t recall such a young outfit as this.

I think that it’s fair to see what Weis can do with this group and see if they can develop further. If this group had been all seniors and juniors, then I would be very disappointed.

(3) Weis is a great fit for ND. Being a graduate of the University (1978), he understands the values, culture and history of ND like very few coaches can. Despite a reputation for arrogance, he has represented the University quite well.

(4) HIs coaching ability was evident in the first two years at ND when he took the Irish to two consecutive BCS bowl games. I don’t think that he became a bad coach overnight. The appalling recruiting under Willingham greatly impacted the Irish and really showed up last year and to a lesser extent, this year. Remember, Brady Quinn did not blossom as a QB until his junior year, which was Weis’s first year. Clausen is only a sophomore and let’s see if he can explode next year as Quinn did in his junior year.

(5) More and more programs are discovering the virtue of stability and that includes ND. Starting with the fall of 2001, ND has gone through 4 head coaches (Davie, George O’Leary, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis). That hardly augurs well for a program in terms of stability and especially in the area of recruiting. If ND were to fire Weis now, that would disrupt yet another promising recruiting class.

Okay here are the cons against retaining Weis:

(1) Offensive line: despite the youth of the skill position players, the offensive line are composed of veterans. One senior and 4 juniors make up the starting unit. By the end of the season, they should have played like a veteran unit and dominating opposing defenses. Yet, it has not worked out that way. ND has not had a great offensive line since 1993. It all starts with the offensive line. In terms of the running game, the offensive line has been lackluster under Weis and this has led to increasing the burden on the youthful skill position players and a certain amount of predictability to Weis’s offensive scheme.

While the hiring of John Latina, 4 years ago, was initially hailed by ND fans, it has become clear that he has not done the job. It was thought that, since he was a protege of one of the great offensive line coaches ( Joe Moore) in college football history, he might restore the reputation of ND offensive lines. When Joe Moore coached the offensive line during the Holtz years, every single offensive lineman, under his tutelage, went on to play in the NFL and that’s over a span of 8 years. That’s an incredible track record. Some coaches have the touch and others don’t. Joe Moore clearly did. It was hoped that some of the Joe Moore magic would rub off on John Latina and, judging from the track performance, it appears that has not happened.

Since ND has made the decision to retain Weis, he should replace Latina.

(2) Over reliance on clever.complex offensive schemes: That might work well in the NFL where the talent is pretty much evenly spread out and you can devote unlimited time for practices, meetings and film work. In contrast, NCAA rules dicate that players can only spend 20 hours per week in practice. This should be taken into account in deciding how complex an offensive scheme should be. More emphasis should be placed on fundamentals and developing toughness in players.

One of the shocking confessions by Weis last year was that his practices were not physical. He was taking the NFL approach (which encompasses a preseason, a 16 game regular season, plus the playoffs) in conserving his players’ energy and reducing the possibility of injuries. He needed to change his approach in light of the fact that he has more players (85 vs the 50 players on a typical pro squad) and the fact that the college season is shorter than the pro season. To be honest, I couldn’t believe it when I heard Weis’s confession that the Irish needed to be more physical in practices. When one hears stories about legendary ND coaches such as Leahy, Parseghian or Holtz, almost always you will hear about how “brutal” practices were.

I say more physicality and less reliance on complex offensive schemes, especially with regard to the offensive line.

(3) Player Development:

Some have questioned whether Charlie is doing well enough in this department. This area goes hand in hand with the offensive line situation. On the one hand, several Willingham recruits blossomed under Weis when he first arrived at ND....Quinn, Stovall and Samardzija. They had been underperformers under Willingham and then really blossomed with Charlie’s arrival.

On the other hand, there is some concern due to the fact that the Irish appeared to have regressed in the last half of this season instead of progressing. Is this indicative of whether Charlie is weak in the area of player development ? There is a fair amount of debate on the internet regarding this issue. To be honest, I’m not sure how I see this issue but think that we will have a better idea next year.

In summary, I think that bringing him back for another year is probably the best decision. There will be considerable pressure on Weis to produce next year for two basic reasons: (1) There will be no more Willingham players on the team; and (2) the 2009 team will be, on paper, the most talented team fielded since 1993. It’s fair to say that ND fans will expect a 10-2 season and a BCS bowl game win or it will be history for Weis.

Further Developments in Canadian Politics

2008-12-11T08:25:00.002-05:00

In another quick development, the Liberal Party here has now chosen Michael Ignatieff to take over as the Liberal Party leader. This happened much sooner than had been anticipated for this was not supposed to happen until next May when the Liberal Party convention takes place. It had been anticipated that Stephane Dion would remain the leader of the Liberal Party until then. The game changed somewhat when PM Harper received permission to prorogue the Parliament.

It is evident that this change in leadership is an attempt by the Liberal Party to put forth a more appealing face than Stephane Dion to the Canadian public well before Parliament comes back into session next month.

Parliament will re-convene on January 27th at which time two things are expected to happen:

(1) an attempt by the Liberal/NDP/ Bloc Quebecois coalition to call for a no confidence vote in the hopes of toppling the Harper government;
(2) coupled with an attempt by PM Harper to offer an economic package designed to placate some members of the coalition in order to stave off a no confidence vote.

Going back to the Liberal party situation, there was negative reaction here in Canada to Stephane Dion heading the coalition and potentially becoming the next Prime Minister (albeit on an interim basis) in light of his disastrous performance in the most recent Federal election in October. It appears that the Liberal party is addressing this issue by getting Dion to step aside in favor of Michael Ignatieff.

There will be a fair amount of politicking and maneuvering between now and January 27th. Stay tuned for further developments.

Parliament Prorogued

2008-12-08T08:31:00.002-05:00

Today was the day that the no confidence motion was scheduled to take place in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. However, Parliament has been “prorogued.” As it turns out PM Harper asked the Governor General of Canada (head of state of Canada and appointed by the Queen of England) for permission to prorogue the Parliament, which essentially means to adjourn it. He had three choices:

(1) face the no confidence vote; or
(2) ask the Governor General to dissolve the Parliament and call for new elections; or
(3) ask the Governor General to prorogue the Parliament.

Options 1 and 2 were not politically palatable to Harper. He would likely have lost under the first option and the Liberal/NDP coalition would have taken over as the majority government. Option 2 was not politically feasible as an election was just held on October 14th and Canada has had a number of federal elections in the past 4 years. So that left the third option and that was probably viewed by the Governor General as the least harmful option available.

So Parliament has been prorogued until January 27th. It appears that, at that time, two things will happen. One, there will be another no confidence scheduled by the Liberal/NDP/Bloc Quebecois coalition (assuming that it’s still together as of that time and that’s kind of iffy). The second thing is that the Conservatives will likely submit a budget that will attempt to address the major concern of the Liberal party members, i.e. a stimulus package to address the economy. The Conservatives hope to peel off enough votes to avoid a no confidence vote.

So there will be a fair bit of politicking between now and then. In the meantime, the stability of the Canadian Parliamentary system was called into question by an interesting article in the Economist. See this article:

Canadian Politics

More on Canadian Political Situation

2008-12-04T08:35:00.002-05:00

In the last entry, I focused on Stephen Harper and why his minority government may not be viewed as a reliable partner by Washington. The focus of this post is on Stephane Dion.

(1) Stephane Dion is the leader of the Liberal Party and has shouldered much of the blame for the disastrous showing by the Liberals in the Oct 14th Federal elections. According to polls, Canadians rank Dion behind Harper and Jack Layton of the NDP. He is widely seen to be a weak and ineffective leader. Think of him as a Canadian version of Michael Dukakis. In the aftermath of the election, Dion agreed to step down as the leader of the Liberal party by next May, when they have their convention and will elect a new leader.

The Coalition agreed to by the Liberals, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois will put Dion in charge as the Prime Minister until next May, presumably when the Liberal Party elect a new leader and prime minister.

As some have pointed out, there are several problems with this scenario. First, Dion is widely disliked and the idea that “the loser becomes the winner” appears to be distasteful to a fair number of Canadians. Secondly, Dion will only (assuming that he abides by the agreement) be PM for a few months. This doesn’t exactly bode well for the stability of the coalition. Thirdly, assuming that the Liberal Party finds a new leader next May, Canadian voters may decide that they don’t like the idea that the new PM will largely have been unvetted by the electorate. In the most recent election, there were a series of debates among the leaders of the various political parties such as Harper for the Conservatives, Dion for the Liberals, Jack Layton for the NDP, Elizabeth May for the Green Party and Gilles Duceppe for Bloc Quebecois. Some voters may resent a new PM who has not been vetted by the electorate.

(2) The next problem for the Coalition (the term being used up here) is the sight of Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe being included. Layton is viewed as being to the left of the Liberal Party and the fact that his party is getting some cabinet seats in return for supporting Dion as PM is raising some hackles here. Secondly, while Gilles Duceppe and his party are not getting any seats in the proposed Cabinet, they are going to get some unspecified “respect” as part of the deal. A number of English speaking Canadians are not too keen on the notion of Duceppe having any role to play in the proposed government for the reason that his party has a long term goal of Quebec secession from Canada.

So this coalition is being met with a fair bit of skepticism here in Canada. Due to the make up of this coalition, I doubt that the political environment will be any more stable than a minority Conservative government. Dion will be PM only for a short period of time. Canadians may not be happy not having a say in who becomes the next PM.

The other factor is that, historically, these three parties have not always gotten along well, particularly in the case of relations between the NDP and the Liberal Party. While they are presenting a united front, it is doubtful whether this can last. Duceppe and his party are perceived to have interests that are different than the NDP and Liberal Party and will likely demand concessions from the other two parties favorable to Quebec as a price of remaining in power. Those concessions will likely be unacceptable to a majority of Canadians.

In light of the above, it’s very doubtful that the Coalition will be any more stable than a minority Conservative government.

Therefore, from Washington’s perspective, Canada’s reliability in terms of being a partner on the international stage will be dimmed until a clear majority party takes control. This may cause the Obama administration to look more to Europe for support in its foreign policy.

Lest this be misinterpreted, Canada is a very stable country with a sound economic and financial footing. Indeed, its’ banking system has been declared by Time Magazine to be the soundest in the world. Canada is blessed with great natural resources, including oil and is very attractive to immigrants. The political system, however, has become shaky and it remains to be seen if this is a short term or long term trend.

The Canadian Political Situation

2008-12-03T19:21:00.001-05:00

An update on the Canadian political situation: a Coalition consisting of the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Quebecois Party have entered into a written deal where they agreed to serve together in a coalition government for the next couple of years. As a result, they are going to put forth a no confidence vote in Parliament next Monday. In effect, they are attempting to topple a minority Conservative government, headed by PM Stephen Harper.

There are a number of maneuvers available to PM Harper to avoid the no confidence vote. One is to “prorogue” the Parliament for a month with the permission of the Governor General of Canada. This is essentially equivalent to adjourning Parliament. With the holiday season coming on us, this may be the likeliest course action Harper will chose, assuming that the Governor General of Canada accedes to Harper’s request.

The other course of action would be for PM Harper to ask the Governor General of Canada to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections. In light of the fact that Canada has already had a number of Federal elections in the last few years, including one that just took place 7 weeks ago, this does not seem likely to happen.

All of this wrangling makes for quite interesting political theater, newspaper fodder, and water cooler talk. However, I think that this may possibly impact, at least in the short term, whether Washington wants to deal with Canada on NAFTA and on the issue of Afghanistan. I think that until a political party has a clear majority in the Canadian Parliament, Washington will be wary. When you consider personality and political factors, Washington, under an Obama administration, will be even more wary.

Let’s start with PM Stephen Harper.

(1) Currently, he is the head of a minority Conservative government. That fact alone may give one pause. On Oct 14th, when the recent Federal elections took place, the Conservative was seen to have strengthened their position by increasing the number of seats in Parliament but still falling short of a majority. Due to the fact that the opposition on the left end of the political spectrum appeared to be disorganized and at odds with one another, many assumed that Harper’s minority Conservative government was safe and could do pretty much what they wanted, as long as they were able to make deals with opposing MPs to pass legislation. That assumption was safe until last week when Harper and his Finance Minister released an economic plan that was viewed by many as very partisan. This had the effect of enraging and uniting the left end of the spectrum. Together, they would form a majority. Harper’s course of action with regard to the partisan economic plan has left many people scratching their heads. He’s only the head of a minority government during one of the worst financial crises since the 1930’s. What was he thinking ?

There are reports that members of the Conservative party are unhappy with Harper’s political misjudgment. It remains to be seen whether that unhappiness translates into action.

This is not the first time that Harper has shown bad political judgment. If he survives this current crisis, Washington may very well ask themselves “considering that he heads a minority government and his track record, what will be the next political misjudgment that might endanger his government ?”

(2) That leads to another political misjudgment by PM Harper. Earlier, he had, for political reasons (having to do with Quebec), appointed Maxime Bernier as the Foreign Minister for his government. By all accounts, Bernier was not qualified for this job and events would borne this out in the aftermath of the Julie Coulliard scandal. To put it mildly, Couillard is a buxom stunning looking woman that Bernier had fallen for. She also had ties to Hell’s Angels. While dating Couillard, Bernier evidently left sensitive documents dealing with NATO strategy in Afghanistan laying around in Couillard’s apartment. Of course, this was a serious breach of security as well as a stunning lack of judgment. Bernier was dumped from his job. Still, one has to go back to the roots of Harper’s decision to appoint Bernier to this job in the first place. Again, what was Harper thinking ?

As a result of this episode, Washington could say to themselves “Can we trust Harper’s judgment here ?” In light of his political misjudgment of last week and the Bernier affair, it’s hard to say.

(3) Then there’s Harper’s public pledge to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan by 2011. This runs contrary to Obama’s intention to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Afghanistan is deteriorating due to the incompetence and inattention of the Bush administration. The Mumbai terror attacks of last week adds more urgency to the situation. According to news reports, the Pakistanis may react to India’s post Mumbai moves by shifting troops from the Pakistan/Afghanistan border to the Pakistan/India border. If that happens, that will relieve the pressure/stress on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the hinterlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This will make Afghanistan more unstable.

So, Washington will probably conclude that they will need more troops to battle the Taliban and will need to turn to more countries for help. Can they count on Canada in light of Harper’s pledge ?

(4) As recited in the previous post, there was the leaked NAFTA memo by associates of Harper’s that attempted to embarrass Obama and probably contributed to his defeat in the Ohio Democratic primary.

Conclusion: If Stephen Harper survives the current political crisis, I would expect relations between the Obama administration and Harper’s government to be very cool, at arm’s length and with some mistrust mixed in. One cannot know if Harper will make another misjudgment that will endanger his minority government once again and therefore, it would make it difficult for Washington to work with an unreliable government.

However, things are not that much better with Stephane Dion as the head of a proposed Coalition government. More in the next post !

An Extraordinary Turn of Events

2008-12-01T08:26:00.006-05:00

The economic crisis and a failure to learn from the mistakes of others have resulted in an extraordinary turn of events up here since Thursday. As you may recall from an earlier post, elections were held in Canada on Oct 14th which resulted in a strengthened minority Conservative government, headed by Prime Minister Steven Harper. It appeared that the other parties such as the Liberal Party, New Democractic Party and Bloc Quebecois were too fractured to ever come together and form a majority coalition government. As long as they were divided, it appeared that Harper's Conservative party would control the agenda and hence his status as a Prime Minister appeared safe.....until last Thursday.

Let's backtrack for a second. One of President George W. Bush's mistakes (among many) was to govern as if he had a mandate, despite two extremely close elections in 2000 and 2004. That governing style led to significant losses in the Congressional elections of 2006 and a thumping at the polls this year.

It appears that Prime Minister Harper may not have learned from the mistakes of Bush. Last Thursday, he released an economic plan that essentially ruled out deficit spending into address the ongoing recession. In addition, he proposed to take away public financing of political parties. This was seen as an attempt by others to strangle other political parties financially and produced a backlash that now threatens to produce a different Prime Minister. In addition, the economic plan is deemed to be insufficient to address the current economic climate. Harper and his finance minister have backtracked over the weekend both on the issues of deficit spending and the public financing of political parties.

As a result of this, the various parties on the left end of the spectrum are trying to work out a deal to form a coalition government. There are doubts as to whether they can do that. For one thing, they will have to decide who will be the new Prime Minister. Will be Stephane Dion, who was lambasted for his electoral strategies in October ? Will it be somebody else ? That remains to be seen.

In any case, a no confidence vote in Parliament is scheduled for Monday December 8th. We will get a better idea of what will happen then.

What does this mean ? For one thing, Harper and his aides got involved in the Ohio Democratic primary when a memo was released in an attempt to embarrass Barack Obama on the issue of NAFTA. Hillary Clinton went on to win that primary on the NAFTA issue. It was believed that this was a clumsy attempt by Harper to influence the Democratic race in an attempt to derail Obama. The conventional wisdom is that a relationship between Obama and Harper might only be cool and cordial, due in part to the leaked NAFTA memo. A different Prime Minister might lead to warmer relations between the US and Canada. Who knows ?

The link below is an editorial from today's Toronto Star:

Harper

A Rant about Tyrone Willingham, the national sports media and ND Football

2008-10-22T07:35:00.000-05:00

One of the more interesting games coming up this weekend is between the visiting ND Fighting Irish and Washington Huskies in Seattle, setting up a battle between Charlie Weis, the head coach of ND, and Tyrone Willingham, the head coach of Washington. As many of you know, Willingham was fired after three years at ND amidst a lot of controversy.

Before I continue with my rant, a light hearted observation of this. This game will be televised on ESPN2. It has been reported that Bob Davie may do the play by play of Saturday’s game. I wonder if Lou Holtz will do the studio analysis ? Maybe we can top this off by having Gerry Faust do the coin flip ???

My rant is directed at the national sports media and their continuing belief that Willingham was not given a fair shake at ND and that he “should have been given more time.” Willingham has added to this with an interview with John Saunders of ABC, back in 2005, in which charges of racism on ND’s part were floated by Saunders during the interview and, which Willingham did not directly shoot down. This led to an uproar among ND fans which has basically not subsided to this day, in large part due to the disastrous 2007 season. The national media has never really bothered to examine Willingham’s inept management of football programs. His program management, game preparation, game management, in game adjustments, and, most tellingly, his recruiting have been colossally inept.

Let me say right off the bat that the paltry number of African American head coaches on the college football is an outrage. It’s absolutely appalling that the NCAA has not really addressed this issue in an effective way. Willingham often makes reference to this issue in his defense.

However, let me also say that “racism on ND’s part” as the reason behind Willingham’s firing is an absolute piece of crock. If anything, Willingham’s performance at Washington validates ND’s decision to terminate him. At that time, ND was staring into a recruiting abyss as a result of Ty’s lackluster recruiting.

Let me explain: After his second season at ND (a losing season), he signed one of the worst recruiting classes in ND history. A class that had zero (if memory serves me right) offensive linemen. I remember the uproar among ND fans on the internet...”how can you not sign one single offensive linemen in this recruiting class ?” Knowledgeable ND fans started to pencil in the 2007 season as a potentially lost season.

In his third season (the Irish finished 6-6), his absymal recruiting continued. Recruits were de committing. There were only a couple of offensive linemen who verbally committed. By this time, it became evident that Willingham’s recruiting was severely lacking. He was fired in December of 2004. Weis came in and salvaged what he could from Willingham’s last recruiting effort.....only 15 players were signed.

Fast forward to last year’s disastrous season. As we all know, the Irish finished 3-9. Weis bears some of the blame. However, I believe that 90% of the problem was the fact that the deck was stacked against Weis in terms of personnel. Until last year, he had depended on the Brady Quinn class (the only decent recruiting class put together by Willingham and that was after the first season). Once that class graduated, there was really nothing. To be specific, last year ND had only 12 juniors and 8 seniors. Only two offensive linemen between those classes. How the hell can you compete with those numbers ? As a result, Weis was forced to throw players into the fray before they were ready.

In the meantime, let’s look at Willingham’s recruiting track record at Washington. He has only 6 players left from his first recruiting class. Furthermore, he has just 12 players remaining from his second recruiting class. He had a decent recruiting class last year. Currently, he has only 5 verbal committments for next year, which ranks last in the PAC-10 and 86th nationally. Through his lack luster recruiting, he has effectively put Washington in a deep hole for years and years to come. This may be as bad as the death penalty imposed by the NCAA on SMU back in the 1980’s. Ty has only himself to blame.

And what about Weis during this same time span ? He has been able to pull in three consecutive top 10 recruiting classes and it is starting to pay dividends. ND is still lacking quality and quantity in the senior class (and you need a great senior class, for the most part, to succeed in college football...if you have a mediocre senior class, the chances of winning a NC is slim to none). Weis pulled off one of the most impressive recruiting jobs in the history of ND football last year. Despite a disastrous season of epic proportions, he was able to sign a class that was ranked #2 in the country. There’s still work yet to be done in terms of filling some holes. But judging from the play of the young players, the future appears to be very bright. 14 out of 16 touchdowns have been scored either by a freshman or a sophomore.

What about Stanford, where Willingham coached before taking the ND job ? One blogger noted that Willingham did precisely the same thing there. When he left Stanford for Notre Dame, he left behind a recruiting black hole as well. The successor, Buddy Teevens, had only two upperclass offensive linemen to work with in his first year. As a result, the Stanford program cratered in the two years under Teevens.

In other words, Willingham has shown the same disturbing pattern when it comes to recruiting at Stanford, ND, and Washington. And yet, there is still a great deal of sympathy in parts of the national media for him. Ty’s failures are the result of his unbelievable ineptness.

I can predict, with a fair degree of confidence, that the national media (or some portion of it) will pontificate this week that ND did Willingham wrong and that he should have been given more time as Washington gave him. Never mind the irony that Washington, by giving him an extra year, may have inflicted further damage on their own football program, judging by his recruiting results as of now. In his 4th year at Washington, there is no demonstrable progress being made. In fact, the program is fading into obscurity under Willingham. If he had pulled in three good consecutive recruiting classes, it’s a fair bet that the program would be in better shape than it is now. Alas, that is not the case.

Finally, with regard to the notions of racism implicitly floated by Saunders and Willingham in that infamous interview of 2005 and with regard to Willingham’s continuing references to the appallingly low numbers of African American head coaches at the college level, Willingham needs to take a look at the mirror. What has he done to promote African American coaches in the college coaching profession ? More precisely, how many African American offensive and defensive coordinators has he had at Notre Dame and Washington ? ZERO. Both of Weis’s offensive and defensive coordinators are African American. What’s up with that ?

As noted above, the national sports media will continue to insist that ND should have given Willingham “more time.” So mediocrity in all aspects of running a program is a reason to give him more time ? Give me a break. One writer said that ND lowered their standards when they fired Willingham. No, ND lowered their standards when they hired mediocre coachs such as Faust, Davie and Willingham. What is wrong with striving for excellence ? Clearly, Willingham was not meeting that standard. The facts are there. The proof is in the pudding. In other words, we are watching the “Ty-tanic” in Seattle. And no, Leonardo DiCaprio is not starring in this one.

As Charlie Weis would say “It is what it is.”

Interesting Conversation

2008-10-21T07:30:00.001-05:00

I had an interesting conversation yesterday morning while commuting downtown on the GO Train. Before I describe that conversation, I came across an article on the online version of The Atlantic Monthly on the recent Canadian Elections:

Canadian Elections

Okay, the conversation. Yesterday, while on the way to work on the GO train, a gentleman in his mid 50’s, sat in the seat across from me. He had jeans, a denim jacket, a Toronto Maple Leafs baseball cap, and a duffel bag stuff with books. He looked somewhat like a Jack Kerouac literary type of fella. I had not seen him on the GO Train before (as I usually see the same folks day after day) and assumed that it was a one time trip to the Union Station.

I had on an ND windbreaker. More specifically, it says “ND Irish” on the left side of the windbreaker. The gentleman spotted it and pointed to it and said “Notre Dame eh ?” I said yes and expected him to make a remark about the football team. Not having too many people up here to talk college football (and I’m dying to talk college football with ANYBODY!!), I thought that here was the rare opportunity to talk about one of my passions, college football ! Yeah, let’s talk college football !! The greatest thing since sliced bread !!

I stoically anticipated his football remark. Instead, he said “hey, they’ve got a pretty good hockey program.” I was taken aback by this unexpected comment and I froze for a split second. It occurred to me that was true. The ND Hockey team had made it to the Final Four in the past couple years and has turned into a powerhouse under Jeff Jackson, who has done one of the most impressive coaching jobs in the history of ND sports. So I responded in the affirmative and we talked about that. Only a Canadian would bring up hockey first instead of football in reference to ND sports !! I got a chuckle out of that. He went on to talk about the history of Irish people in Quebec and about an Irish bookstore that was in Montreal. A pretty interesting conversation. Alas, football was only briefly mentioned....he did know that Joe Theismann and Joe Montana had graduated from ND. That was the extent of the college football conversation. Oh well.

Canadian Elections

2008-10-20T18:43:00.001-05:00

The Canadian Federal Elections were held on Oct 14th and resulted in a strengthened minority Conservative government. That means that Stephen Harper will continue as the Prime Minister of Canada. He called the elections based on the belief that he would get a majority government and polls did reflect. However, the global financial meltdown and the resulting bailout package in the US had an effect and caused the Tories’ standing in the polls to slip. However, they did increase the number of seats in Parliament which strengthened their minority government. The other story is that the Liberal Party suffered the worst losses in two decades. The fallout is that the leader of the Liberal Party, Stephane Dion, is stepping down next May. From what I can see, while the winner of an election may have a more appealing agenda than the loser, the winner often benefits from a well run campaign. Conversely, the losing campaign is often not well run. That appears to be the case for Stephane Dion. He has come under a lot of fire for refusing to listening to his internal pollsters and running a bumbling campaign. The other problem for Dion is the widespread perception of him as a weak leader. Think of him as the Canadian version of Michael Dukakis and you’ll get the idea.

Adding to the difficulties for the Liberal Party is the fact that their end of the political spectrum is crowded. There is the NDP (New Democratic Party), the Green Party and Bloc Quebecois. This allows the Conservatives some flexibility in their campaign planning. Still, like any other campaign, they have to run a good campaign.

Attention in Canada has now shifted to the US elections with two weeks to go. A lot of interest up here.

Debates (Canadian and American) and Elections

2008-10-06T07:35:00.000-05:00

Let’s play a hypothetical.....what if you had a debate between Senator Biden and Governor Palin conducted entirely in Spanish (as it is the 2nd most commonly spoken language in the US) ? I mean a debate where there were no translators or interpreters and where the candidates stood on their own with respect to their linguistic abilities.

This is actually not a silly question. The night before the Biden/Palin debate, I watched a roundtable debate between Prime Minister Harper, and the leaders of other major political parties of Canada. Elizabeth May of the Green Party, Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Stephane Dion of the Liberal Party, and Gilles Duceppe of Bloc Quebecois participated in the debate, along with Harper. A short background is in order. PM Harper called for Federal elections to take place on Oct 14 (remember, Canada is a parliamentary democracy and elections can be called....a similar system exists in Great Britain among others) in a bid to gain more seats in Parliament. The other parties, particularly the Liberal party, see this as an opportunity to try to unseat Harper.

Further background: PM Harper is from the province of Alberta and is an English speaking politician. Both Jack Layton and Elizabeth May are English speaking politicians from Ontario. The other two, Stephane Dion and Gilles Duceppe are from Quebec and speak French (actually, Quebecois).

I have learned that if a Canadian politician, whether “English” or Quebecois, aspires to a position of national prominence (such as Prime Minister or leader of a political party), it is a virtual unspoken requirement that person be fluent both in English and French. For a political party to capture a majority of Parliament, that party needs to win a sufficient number of seats in Quebec in order to achieve this. This is what PM Harper has been trying to do the last several years. He is attempting to grow his Conservative party by appealing to the Quebecois. Some of his words and actions have been somewhat controversial due to the nature of the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Last night’s debate was the French language debate. I couldn’t fathom all 3 English speaking politicians (in addition to Stephane Dion and Gilles Duceppe ) speaking French. I had assumed, in my American naivete, that the English speaking politicians would be speaking through interpreters. Imagine my surprise when all three English speaking politicians spoke French on their own throughout the entire debate. As indicated above, this is dictated by the nature of Canadian politics. It was fascinating to watch as all 5 politicians were jostling for an advantage and appealing to the French speaking voters. I should note that there are a good number of French speaking people in the eastern part of Ontario and other parts of Eastern Canada. It will be interesting to see how the elections turn out on Oct 14th.

The next night, Canadians did a fair bit of switching back and forth between the Biden/Palin debate and the English language debates among the same 5 participants. My impression, based on the newspapers and in conversations, is that Canadians were more captivated by the Biden/Palin debate.

Canadians have been quite captivated by the US elections due to a variety of factors....the historic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Who was going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party ? Was Hillary going to make history as the first female nominee ? Or was Obama going to be the first black nominee for President ? The closeness of the primaries was fascinating up here. Not much attention was paid to the Republican side, until McCain chose Palin. That added an interesting mix to the conversations up here. Then there’s the meltdown on Wall Street and the bailout package right in the middle of election season. Naturally, a lot of people are wondering what else could happen between now and Election Day.

In the midst of all this, as noted above, the Canadians are having their Federal Elections just over a week from now. Based on the current polls, it appears that the Conservatives will probably do well enough to form another government. I’ll keep you posted.

Follow up on Death in the Mall

2008-09-10T07:36:00.001-05:00

This morning I received an anonymous comment to my last entry and which I appended to, indicating that the woman was resuscitated. It is not known what her condition is. Still, I will never forget the surreal scene of the look of death on her face while the mall was packed with frantic shoppers on lunch time.

A Death in the Mall and a Comeback

2008-09-08T18:21:00.001-05:00

I can’t think of any other appropriate title for what I witnessed today at the Eaton Centre during my lunch hour. It ranks as the most surreal scene of my entire life. A brief background........ my current job is in the Cadillac Fairview building which abuts Eaton Centre, a downtown shopping mall. I often go to the food court in the mall and to walk around after eating lunch. Very often, I will go to the Indigo Bookstore (which is the Canadian equivalent of Border’s and Barnes & Noble in the States) to browse.

As I rounded the corner, I saw a well dressed 55 to 60 year old Asian woman on the ground in front of the entrance to the bookstore. It appeared that three people had just gotten there to assist her. I walked up to see if there was anything I could do. I immediately saw that there was nothing I could do as the three people appeared to know what they were doing. I figured that I would only get in the way. Secondly, the woman was dead. Her eyes were open/staring straight at the ceiling and mouth slightly agape as if she had taken her last breath. There was no life or soul in her eyes. No movement whatsoever. No soul. Just death. Her shopping bags were next to her, strewn on the floor. It looked like there was an element of shock in her expression that her death would occur right then and there. I have to admit that I looked at her face for awhile, hoping that her face would flicker with life as CPR and mouth to mouth was being performed on her. Paramedics arrived very quickly and they worked on her feverishly. They were still working on her as they wheeled her out of the mall. As of now, I do not know if they were able to revive her. But there is no doubt in my mind that she was dead. I asked a couple of bystanders if they saw what happened. Neither of them did. I looked at the floor to see if the floor was wet and slippery. It wasn’t. Completely dry. I would guess that she probably had a massive cardiovascular accident resulting in instant death.
All the while, this was occurring during lunch hour and the mall was packed with shoppers, some of whom walked by and rubber necked as the paramedics were working on her. The scene ranks as the most surreal of my entire life......a seemingly public death in the midst of a packed shopping mall and in front of a bookstore entrance....vacant, soulless eyes staring at the ceiling of the mall, while folks were shopping frantically during lunch hour. The timing and place of her death seemed random. Right in that moment, all that shopping and consumerism in that mall appeared totally meaningless. It served as a stark reminder as any that any one of us can go at any moment. All the more reason to seize life and make the most of it while we’re at it.

Then a few hours later, while I was working like hell to put the image of random death out of my mind, I received an e-mail from Cindy in Columbus, one of my former co-workers, informing me that Lance Armstrong, one of my all time favorite and inspirational athletes, has decided to come out of retirement to take part in next year’s Tour de France. He had retired from competitive racing in July 2005. To win the TDF after a 4 year absence would just be a phenomenal achievement, considering that he will soon turn 37. If there is anyone who can pull this off, it’s Lance. This comeback is going to be very very interesting to watch, especially in light of Lance’s well known training fanaticism. One of my favorite Lance stories is the time he went on a 6 or 7 hour training bike ride on Christmas Day one year. During this bike ride, he whipped out his cell phone and called a few rivals and asked them “why aren’t you training today ?,” trying to play mind games with them. No doubt in my mind that if he is making this comeback, it’s all in. In any case, he is the personification of one who has squeezed every last bit of his potential and pushing himself to the limit. I believe that a vast majority of humans waste their overall potential.

So what am I make to make of today’s events ? Two things.....don’t take life for granted. You can go anytime. You never know when the grim reaper will come for you. Secondly, while you’re living, don’t waste your life and your potential. Look to someone for inspiration. Mine is Lance Armstrong and a few others.

A Small World

2008-08-25T18:17:00.001-05:00

My parents were at my house this past weekend, visiting, before leaving for the St. Lawrence River cruise. They left yesterday by train to Quebec City (which is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year) and will be back in Oshawa on Labor Day. They love the house !

Over the weekend, I had a conversation with Greg, the next door neighbor, who mentioned that he briefly met my parents while Mary-Anne and I were out on errands. He told me that he was somewhat familiar with Columbus. He indicated that his best friend had gotten married and moved to Columbus. Greg said his buddy “lived in an area of Columbus called the Short North or something like that.” I said “oh yeah, that’s right downtown and not too far from where I worked before moving up here.” He said that he could not believe the fervor in Columbus for OSU football ! Greg indicated that his buddy had moved to another part of Columbus but wasn’t sure where. In any case, I’ll try to find out. So, it was nice to run into someone up here who was familiar with Columbus.

The Olympics and the Ghost of Ben Johnson

2008-08-18T18:16:00.000-05:00

There is a fair bit of angst up here in Canada over the Canadian performance in the Beijing Olympics. Going into this Olympics, the Canadians were hoping to place in the top 16 in the medal count standings, after a disappointing 19th place in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Thus far, the performance by Canadian athletes in the Games have been deemed disappointing. Most Canadians would prefer to point out that they will surely do better in the Winter Olympics to be held in Vancouver in 2010.

It is in this context that you begin to realize the brief burst of pride Canadians had when Ben Johnson beat Carl Lewis in the 100 meter race in the 1988 Seoul Games, setting a world record. Although this is far from a scientific poll and, based on my conversations with a few Canadians, it appears that Canadians are still smarting over this. One told me that he lost any interest in watching 100 meter races after that. Who can blame him ? It’s easy to cast a suspicious eye on the track and field world given how many people have been busted over the years (Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Maurice Greene, Andrew Pettigrew, Tim Montgomery etc). Look at Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters finals on Saturday. I’m sure that it’s difficult for many track fans to look at that performance and not wonder if Bolt had any help, given how easily he broke the record and especially in how he coasted to the finish line. The fact that some may never have failed any drug tests is basically irrelevant today. Marion Jones is a case in point. She won 5 medals in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was deemed to be America’s “darling” with her winsome smile. Despite the company of a husband who failed a steroids test prior to the Syndey Games, she pointed out that she had never failed any drug tests. She emphatically denied for years having taken any performance enhancing drugs and even sued people who would dare to allege that she was on the juice. Yet, she was still busted as a result of the BALCO inquiry in the States. She finally came clean and admitted that she was had taken performance enhancing drugs during all those years.

Some have said that the fact that Ben Johnson got caught in 1988 has not deterred any track stars. Instead, they looked at the time he posted (9.79, which is still extremely competitive by today’s standards and would have been good enough for the silver in this year’s Olympics) and saw that as proof that steroids did work. They have just become more careful in how to use them and avoid detection.

The US Presidential Race Comes to Toronto, Sort of.

2008-08-15T18:34:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I was somewhat startled to see several people outside of the Union Station (as the train station in downtown Toronto is called) carrying Barack Obama placards. I thought to myself “what are they doing here ?” Turns out that the other side of the placard was an advertisement for US/Canadian dual citizens and American citizens living in Toronto to apply for absentee ballots for the coming Presidential election this fall. Given that Obama and his organization had taken care to set up campaign organizations in every single state during the primary season (unlike the Clinton campaign and which may have cost her the nomination) and have taken advantage of the internet in ways that no presidential candidate has in recent memory, it perhaps should not be surprising that the Obama campaign is reaching out to American voters living abroad. In all fairness, I wonder if the McCain campaign is doing the same thing. Canadians are watching this race quite closely as evidenced by extensive coverage in the papers up here. In any case, I have sent in a request for an absentee ballot and hope to be able to participate !

Tribe Against Blue Jays

2008-08-10T16:33:00.002-05:00

Yesterday (Saturday August 9th) My wife and I went to Tribe-Blue Jays ball game at the Rogers Centre (as the Skydome is now called these days) with Chris and Sue. The weather wasn't the greatest as it rained most of the day. Fortunately, Rogers Centre is a domed ball park. The Tribe beat the Blue Jays 5-2.

Sue is a long time friend of my wife. She and Chris are both real estate agents and helped us sell my wife's house earlier this year. Chris and I hit it off immediately when I first met him. Turns out that he’s a football and baseball fanatic and he invited me to join a fantasy baseball league, which has a total of 8 players. Unfortunately, like the Tribe, my fantasy team is in last place and is going down in flames. In any case, we had a great time at the ball game. Chris and I made a deal with regard to this game. He would buy the tickets for the ball game in exchange for me buying food and drinks. Fair deal in my book and turned out great.

ND Football

2008-08-06T07:28:00.003-05:00

Okay, I’m going to stray from US/Canadian topics and talk about something near and dear to my heart- Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football !! Football will soon be upon us (the CFL here is already underway) and it’s time to get excited !

I will pull no punches and say that last year had to be the worst year in the history of ND football. There’s no two ways about it. Charlie Weis must be mortified to know that last year’s team was worst that any of Gerry Faust’s teams or Bob Davie’s worst teams or Ty Willingham’s last ND team. It was just plain awful. Being an avid follower of ND football, this was colossally painful.

A consensus formed among ND fans (particularly NDNation.com, a particularly well informed audience with a bent for sophisticated statistical and personnel evaluation analysis) that 75% of last year’s problems can be traced back to Tyrone Willingham. I agree with that analysis. He had only one good recruiting class, which occurred after his first year at ND. The ones that followed were historically awful.

It is well known in college football that one bad recruiting class could, if properly managed, amount to only a hiccup. Two sub par recruiting classes, on the other hand, is quite damaging and it would take quite a while for a program to recover. Unlike the NFL, the option of free agency, trades and draft are not available. You are stuck with what you have.

The other truism of college football is that, in order to have a top 10 teams on an annual basis, you need to have great senior classes. There is nothing like the combination of talent and experience. A good or great junior class would help too.

Going back to last year, ND had only 14 juniors, 8 seniors and 5 fifth year seniors. Given that 85 scholarship players are permitted per team, the fact that ND had only 22 players between the junior and senior classes spelled trouble for the Irish even before the season started. The vast majority of the talented was concentrated in the freshman and sophomore classes (both highly touted recruiting classes).

Bottom line, ND just did not have the personnel. However, I was not prepared for how absymal they were going to be. Just awful.

What is amazing is that after such an awful season, one would think that ND’s recruiting would suffer accordingly. There is precedent for that belief. During the Davie and Willingham era (often referred to as the “Davieham” years) a down year often resulted in correspondingly weak recruiting class. Imagine the amazement among ND fans when Charlie Weis and his coaching staff were able to pull in a top 5 recruiting class after last year’s disaster, making it the third year in a row that the Irish were able to pull in a Top 10 recruiting class. Just unbelievable. All the signs are for the Irish to pull in another stellar recruiting class for next year.

There is no doubt among ND fans that Charlie is pulling off the best recruiting job since the days of Holtz (specifically the late 1980’s).

Going into this season, ND will have considerable talent in the freshmen, sophomore and junior classes, a situation that is much improved over last year. More importantly, the young players will have experience.

What do we expect ? I would expect a 7-5 or 8-4 season, a substantial improvement over last year. But we ain’t looking at a National Championship caliber team here. There are a few reasons for this:

(1) the senior and 5th year senior contingent is quite weak. As I said above, the great college teams are those who have great senior classes. Nothing like experience.

(2) Question marks remain with regard to ND’s offensive line, which was historically terrible last year.

(3) As talented Jimmy Clausen is (and I thought that he was impressive last year, given the swiss chess OL, and less than stellar arm strenght due to preseason elbow surgery), he is only a sophomore. Gaining more game time experience will be key for Clausen.

I mentioned above that 75% of last season’s problems were traceable to Willingham (it should be noted that his recruiting at Washington has received mixed reviews). Obviously, the remaining 25% is Weis’s fault. One thing that stuck in my mind was his admission that he did not have the team hit each other in pre season practice and therefore, were not prepared for the hitting at the beginning of the season. ND fans were understandably upset at this as I was.....”what in Frank Leahy’s name is going on here ?” I’m sorry but you gotta hit in preseason practices. True they may not hit as much in NFL practice due to the long season and limited numbers and yes, Weis may have had quite valid reasons due to the thin depth chart, but you gotta hit. Hopefully, he will have learned his lesson.

The other big error was installing a variation of the West Virginia spread offense for Demetrius Jones and then junking that offense in favor of his offense; essentially re-installing it after the second or third game. Not real good there either.

So let’s hope that the improved talent, a more palatable schedule, and Charlie Weis’s learning curve combine for an improved season. A National Championship does not look likely for this year but it will definitely be a foundation for what appears, on paper, to be a bright future. He still has a margin of error for this season....but it will be fading fast and the pressure will be on him and the Irish in the 2009 season.

Neighbors

2008-08-05T20:45:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the recent radio silence. The logic board on my laptop recently went belly up. Fortunately, even though it was out of warranty, Apple agree to replace it at no cost. The reason being is that the logic board was just replaced last August, while the laptop was still under warranty. Given that situation, they readily agreed to cover the new logic board. If they had not, the cost of replacing it would have been equivalent to buying the lowest cost Apple laptop. But it’s all good.

The neighborhood/subdivision is really starting to shape up. While it will probably be another 6 months before construction is completed and everyone moves in, there are preliminary signs that this is shaping up to be quite a diverse area. We have seen a number of Muslims, Hindus, African Americans, Caucasians, an interracial couple (a couple houses down) and a French Canadian couple next door, who just recently moved in. They have a definite Quebecois accent (from what I understand, the French spoken in Quebec is distinguishable from European French). In the meantime, my wife and I are making an effort to learn/memorize the names of everyone we meet.

In recalling the neighborhoods I grew up in the States, I can’t recall living in a diverse neighborhood like this one. Lemme see, Park Avenue in Barberton (1964 to 1968), was all white. Ditto for the neighborhood in Elmhurst, Illinois (1969-1970) and Robinson Ave in Barberton (1970 to 1977). The same can be said for the neighborhood on Dahlia Circle in Barberton (where I lived from 1977 through 1990). The two apartment complexes I lived in Columbus for a total of 6 years (Harvard Square Apt and Governor Square Apartments) were essentially all white as well. The neighborhood on Saddlehorn Drive (1996 through June 2007) was the same story. So, living in this new neighborhood in Oshawa has been an interesting experience. Thus far, it appears that we have been blessed with great neighbors. I will give an update regarding my impressions of the overall makeup of the subdivision once it’s filled up.

In other news, we now have sod in the front and back yards. Prior to the installation of the sod, we were given instructions to water the grass frequently. Fortunately, it has been raining frequently lately. As a matter of fact, the Toronto area is on the way to setting a record for rainfall, following on the heels of a near record setting seasonal snowfall.

Hoser

2008-07-23T20:41:00.002-05:00

I've learned that this Canadian term refers to the era of hockey before the advent of the ice making machine known as the Zamboni. According to legend, "hoser" refers to the fact that the losing hockey team had to hose down the rink. Thus, the connotation of "hoser" can be loosely interpreted to mean "loser." From what I understand, the term "hoser" also pertains to a certain stereotype and that concerns white English speaking beer guzzling Canadians. According to this stereotype, they are primarily from the lower to middle class and are die hard hockey fans (gasp!)

Ya hoser !!!

Elvis is back in the building !

2008-07-16T18:35:00.001-05:00

Whoa !!! It has been awhile since I last posted here. There’s been a lot going on here between work, the house and martial arts. Starting with the house, we are done with the staining project of the two staircases. We just have to put the varethane on it and that will take awhile as well. In the meantime, topsoil has been laid down on the front and back yards. Sod should be laid down any day. We just don’t know when. However, as soon as it is down, we will have to water the yard right away. I have seen some neighbors who have failed to do this in a timely and their new sod are already ruined. We don’t want that to happen. Our driveway was finally paved earlier this week. So things are taking shape here. The neighborhood is not yet full. I would imagine that, by fall, we will start seeing more and more people moving into our neighborhood.

In another development, I have accepted an appointment to a newly created hearing officer position with the City of Oshawa, adjudicating disputes regarding Oshawa business licensing by laws. Currently, the City of Oshawa is working on setting up the hearing process and procedures. It is currently contemplated that I will be taking hearings every couple weeks in the evenings. For those of you who are wondering, this position does not require admission to the Ontario bar as the powers of the hearing officer is derived from the Statutory Power Procedures Act of Ontario. I think that this position has the potential to become a full time position. We shall see. In the meantime, I’m still doing temp work with the Law Foundation of Ontario in downtown Toronto and am enjoying it. I’m also still quite actively engaged in networking down there. Who knows where that will lead to ?

Will write more later !! Really ! :-)

One Year

2008-06-09T20:30:00.001-05:00

Hard to believe but yesterday (June 8) marked the one year anniversary of my resignation from the Industrial Commission in Columbus. It’s hard to believe that a whole year has gone by so quickly. I’ll never forget leaving the William Green Building for the last time on that day and leaving behind great friends and memories of the 15 1/2 years that I worked there. A week later, I closed the house on Saddlehorn Drive and drove up to Canada to start my new life.

A lot has happened since then and while I am far from being settled here, things are moving along. For one thing, I had zero social or professional network (except for martial arts buddies, Mike and David as well as my wife's family). I have made considerable headway since then; though I am not yet satisfied with the network I have thus far built up. I did a fun project a while back, assessing the size of network in Columbus built up over the years through work, martial arts, and my social life. The total came just under 1,200 people. I was astounded. So I have been fairly aggressive with the professional and martial arts networking up here since arriving here. I have been working downtown Toronto as a temp in the legal field since the beginning of the year and it is certainly a change of pace from what I used to do in Columbus but it beats not working. I have had a number of interviews, all of which have gone well but no luck yet. As someone once said to me, each “no” is merely a step closer to getting to “yes.” Very true. Along the way, I started teaching a Filipino martial arts class here in Oshawa and have 8 core students just after 3 months. I’m pretty pleased with this since it is difficult to attract people to Filipino Martial Arts. I plan on growing this as much as I can.

Do I feel settled in Canada ? Not by a long shot. The more I expand my social and professional network, the more settled I will feel. It will certainly help once people start moving into the houses in our part of the neighborhood and we start forming networks in there. Quite a few houses still remain unfinished and, consequently, unoccupied. It just takes time.

More on Toronto and Sundry Items

2008-05-24T12:14:00.002-05:00

Okay, I learned something new about the size and diversity of the city of Toronto relative to other Canadian cities this past week. If you were to consider only the immigrant population of Toronto, it would constitute the third largest city in Canada (Toronto followed by Montreal). Amazing, isn't it ? As noted in an earlier post, 50% of residents of Toronto are foreign born. I guess that I qualify since I was born in the US ! :-)

We are slowly making progress in our new abode. Sod will be laid down in our subdivision in June or July. So there is not much yardwork to do for the time being. We don't have mailboxes either. A supermailbox (a community mailbox) was just constructed. I imagine that we'll soon be notified. In the meantime, we are picking up our mail on a weekly basis at the post office until further notice.

Will write more later !

Victoria Day

2008-05-15T21:05:00.005-05:00

There are two long weekends coming up....one here in Canada (Victoria Weekend) and the other in the USA (Memorial Weekend). There was an interesting opinion by a columnist, in today's Toronto Star regarding Victoria Day, which itself explains the origins of this holiday. Read it at:

Victoria Day

A Look Back at the Winter

2008-05-14T19:29:00.008-05:00

A brief look at the near record setting snowfall this past winter via pictures !!

The top picture is my wife's house, which we lived in from last June (when I arrived in Canada) through the end of April. The next two pictures are representations of the kind of snow fall we experienced during this past winter. This was the day after the last big snow storm of the season. As one can see, the day was remarkably beautiful when I took these pictures.

Easter Weekend

2008-05-04T13:28:00.007-05:00

This is long overdue ! I went out to Seattle over for a special Easter Weekend as 5 of my nieces and nephews were baptized, had first communion and had confirmation all in a single Mass called a "Triduum Mass" on the Saturday before Easter. It was a beautifully conducted Mass by the presiding priest. One concern that we had was the length of the Mass (approximately 2 hours) and whether any of the kids would have a meltdown. Never happened. All of them were behaved incredibly well and made all of us proud. My wife and I are on record as Andrei's godparents although only one of us had to be present. As this was the weekend before we closed on our new house, she stayed behind to take care of things and in case anything house related required immediate attention. I had a great time hanging out with Andrei over the weekend and he made me awful proud to be his uncle. It goes, without saying, that I'm awful proud of EVERY one of them !

On a final note, Happy Birthday to my niece, Elizabeth !!

Yabba Dabba Doo !!

2008-04-30T18:19:00.012-05:00

My wife and I finally accomplished the task of moving out of her triplex into the new house last night. We had done most of the exhausting work, taking numerous trips between both houses, culminating in a last weekend frenzy on Saturday and Sunday as we had to be out of the house by today. The movers (Two Men and a Truck) came on Sunday to move the major items and that was accomplished relatively quickly. Now we can finally focus on unpacking and organizing the furniture in the new house. As you can see by the pictures, the sod has not been laid down in our subdivision. We have been informed that will not be done until June or July. So given that we will not be able to do yardwork on the weekends for awhile, we will have time to work on the inside of the house, including resuming the staining of the staircases. As of now, we have only one neighbor but expect that the neighborhood will fill up in the next few months.

The first picture was taken in front of our house, facing north on our street. Note how dusty and dirty it is.

The second picture is our house. The house on the left side contain the only neighbors that we currently have.

The third picture was also taken in front of our house, facing south on the street.

The last picture was also taken in front of the house, facing east. No one is currently living on this street.

More pics coming up !

The New Abode

2008-04-16T11:06:00.001-05:00

Just a short update on the house. We have been extremely busy moving from my wife’s house to the new house and simultaneously doing the staircase project. We have decided to suspend the staircase project and shift our focus to moving the rest of the stuff from her house over to the new house. We have made quite a bit of progress but have more stuff to do. We’ve also had to deal with delivery of my Columbus stuff out of storage, delivery of new appliances,. installiation of satellite tv, installation of security system and other miscellaneous chores, all of which is taking up a lot of time. However, we are knocking off the “to- do” list bit by bit. We have until April 30th to vacate her house. Right now, the new house is just a mess but we don’t mind. I suspect that, after we get everything moved into the new place, it’s going to take time to sort out and organize the household items. For example, we need to sort through some of the pots and pans I brought up from Columbus in conjunction with her stuff and figure out what to keep and what to donate to charity. Just a small example. However, we are looking forward to the challege. Sorry folks that I haven’t had time to take pictures but will do so soon as the weather has gotten a lot better up here recently.

In the meantime, as a way to relax through all of this, we have become big fans of the tv show “Lost” and have been renting DVDs to catch up on the show. We had never watched it until a co-worker of hers urged her to check it out. We’ve been catching up since and are currently watching Season 2 DVDs. Great show ! I’ve commented to her that we are in a situation somewhat similar to those on “Lost” in the sense that we and our new neighbors are going through the same experience of moving into new houses at more or less the same time. There is a young couple next door we are starting to get acquainted with. The house on the other side is not yet complete and so it is vacant. Quite a few houses on our street are not completed. Consequently, there aren’t many neighbors. We have a subdivision map and are going to try to list people’s names in the corresponding lots; easier to remember names that way. It would be very awkward to say “Hey, we’ve met before, what’s your name again ?” Ugh.

So that’s the latest on the new abode. More later !

Miscellaneous Facts about Canada

2008-04-13T08:50:00.002-05:00

(1) Mailboxes in the US are blue; those in Canada are red
(2) Mail is delivered six days a week in the US; here it is delivered 5 days per week.
(3) “Checks” is spelled “cheques” here
(4) Stephen Harper is the prime minister of Canada.
(5) Canadians occupy only 2% of the total landmass of the country
(6) Hockey is big here...surprise !
(7) So is curling :-)
(8) Kitchener was formerly called New Berlin and has the second largest Oktoberfest in the world outside of Germany.
(9) The top elected state official in the US are called governors; here it is “Premier.”
(10) The Premier of Ontario is Daulton McGuinty.
(11) Ottawa is the capital of Canada.
(12) Catholic schools in Canada are publicly funded by government and this is perfectly constitutional under the Canadian constitution. This funding, no doubt, has a lot to do with the issue of Quebec. Such a scheme in the US would be a clear violation of the 1st Amendment of the Bill Rights of the US Constitution.
(13) The most populous province is Ontario.
(14) Canada has ten provinces; they are British Columbia, Alberta, Sascatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador. Canada also has 3 territories (Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon).
(15) According to the Economist magazine, Alberta is estimated to have the second largest reserves of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia. However, it is in a form that is difficult to extract and requires expensive technology. Some have suggested that if the US would be dumb to try to reopen NAFTA as Canada would be in a very good bargaining position considering the price of oil these days (having reached a record $112 per barrel last week).

More later !

The Satellite Guy

2008-04-07T12:31:00.002-05:00

A few years ago, Jim Carrey starred in a movie called “The Cable Guy” in which he played a deranged technician for a cable company who ended up stalking a customer. It was a dark comedy. In any case, we had a similar situation on Friday when a guy for Bell Canada came to install a satellite dish on our house. My wife was out at the time the doorbell rang. I went to answer the door and a young man in his late 20’s/early thirties was peering in the front door, which I found odd. He had a knit cap on pulled low over his eyes. I answered the door and he indicated that he was there to install the satellite dish. He was very flat and sullen. He went into the basement to do the necessary technical installation. After coming back up, he indicated that he would install the dish at the southwest side of the house. He first tried to install the dish at the back of the house next to the windows of the family room. The dish would have been only head high. Not exactly an optimal position to be getting a satellite signal. After not getting any signal (according to him), he then tried the southwest corner and drilled holes. Again no signal (which he later informed us). He then proceeded to the front of the house, where he began drilling holes on the northwest corner of the house at head height.

By then, it was evident that the guy was not doing his best to do his job. At that point, my wife came home and was not happy with what she saw. Neither was I. So a call was made to Bell Canada where she was able to reach a customer service representative, who asked to speak to the Satellite Guy (who, all this time, maintained a flat, sullen, assholish attitude) and instructed him to get up on a ladder and install the dish at an acceptable height. When she handed him her cell phone so that the Bell Canada customer service rep could speak to him, it was a very awkward moment. He listened with his back turned to us, and then handed the cell phone back to my wife with a semi dirty look on his face. By this time, we just wanted that guy to get the job over with and get the hell out. He did install the dish at an acceptable height and hooked up the tv. We were glad when he got out. It was obvious that the guy didn’t care about doing his best and didn’t know anything about customer service. It was one very unpleasant moment during a fun time moving into this beautiful house.

Update on House

2008-04-04T14:14:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted a blog entry; it's been crazy busy up here lately. We closed on the house last week and started the move in process over the weekend and have continued it throughout this week. Fortunately, we do not have to close on her house until April 30th. So we have time to move the stuff from her house over to the new house. We are going to try to move as much as we can and then move the big items with the help of a friend. In the meantime, we are working on sanding (which is done) and staining the two staircases, which is a lot of work. We have already decided that we'll never do this again for the rest of our lives...but is saving us some bucks in the process. It's going to take some time to complete this particular project. In any case, we are very pleased with the house, particularly with the hardwood floor and the kitchen area.

Things are being done in stages:

(1) We had appliances (fridge, range, dishwasher, washer, dryer) delivered last Saturday.
(2) My stuff from Columbus was delivered out of storage on Monday.
(3) We worked on the staircases Tuesday and Wednesday
(4) I worked on various administrative stuff related to the move yesterday (Thursday).
(5) Had the fireplace glass replaced today (more on that below) as well as having a satellite dish installed. Phone and internet access are supposed to be done later today.
(6) Home security system to be installed on Monday (which apparently is a 4 hour job). Also the dishwasher will be installed.

In the meantime, we are just busy keeping up with everything !

As for the fireplace, we were enjoying take out Chinese on the floor in front of the gas fireplace on our very first night here. The fire had been going for approximately two and a half hours when the glass suddenly shattered. Fortunately, there was protective film to keep the glass from exploding outwards. It was pretty loud....sounded like the crack of gunfire. We immediately shut off the pilot light and the gas line. No doubt a manufacturer's defect in the glass. So we just had that replaced today. What a way to start our life in this house !

So we are headed into a busy weekend, focusing on finishing the staircase.

Will take some pics and post them up soon !!

More Modern Arnis/Self Defense Classes in Oshawa

2008-03-17T19:10:00.000-05:00

The Modern Arnis/ martial arts/ self defense classes have been going well here in Oshawa and so I'm pleased to announce more classes at the Legends Community Centre here in Oshawa through the end of June. The Community Centre is located on N. Harmony Road. We've been having a blast ! The classes will be held on the following dates:

(1) Thursday, April 3, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(2) Friday, April 11, 2008, activity room 2, 7pm to 9pm
(3) Thursday, April 17, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(4) Thursday, April 24, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(5) Thursday, May 1, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(6) Tuesday, May 6, 2008, activity room 4, 7pm to 9pm
(7) Thursday, May 15, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(8) Thursday, May 22, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(9) Tuesday, May 27, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(10) Thursday June 5, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(11) Thursday June 12, 2008, activity room 4, 7pm to 9pm
(12) Thursday, June 19, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm
(13) Thursday, June 26, 2008, activity room 3, 7pm to 9pm.

For more information about these classes, please contact me at ontariomodernarnis@gmail.com

Thanks !

Record Snowfall in Toronto

2008-03-09T16:46:00.005-05:00

What a welcome I've had to Canada ! In my first winter here, we've encountered record snowfall and the Toronto area is fast approaching the total snowfall record set in the winter of 1938/39. The snowbanks are just unbelievably high. We were hammered over the weekend by two snowstorms. We spent quite a bit of time shoveling the sidewalks and the driveway. I have to say that today was just absolutely gorgeous what with the sun shining down on white pristine snow and high snowbanks. I took several pictures with my 20th century camera and will get them up as soon as I get the roll finished. In the meantime, check out the Toronto Star article below:

Record Snowfall

In the meantime, in an ironic note, I see that Columbus was hit hard by a record setting snowstorm (20 inches). So it seems that, at least for this weekend, it would not have mattered if we were living in Columbus or in Toronto !!

The house is coming along. We are still scheduled to close on the house on March 28th. We are scheduled to go through the house "pre-inspection" on March 19th (just 10 days from now !). We are getting quite excited about this. We took a walk through the new neighborhood and ran into some people who have moved into their houses, including a couple who have been living in their house for close to a year. They were very happy with the developers. They said that if there were any problems, the folks from the developer did not have any problems coming out and fixing whatever needed to be fixed. That confirms the good reputation of Great Gulf Homes. We'll keep you posted !!

Weekend at Cottage

2008-02-27T12:21:00.005-05:00

I was invited by Mike, one of my friends here in Canada, to join him and a few of his friends for the weekend at his cottage by Sand Lake, which Mary-Anne and I had visited last fall. According to googlemaps, the cottage is located 205 kilometers north of Oshawa, which is about 128 miles. It is not too far from Algonquin Park. It can be fairly cold up there. The weekend before, Mike went up there with his family and it was -32 C, which is about -20 F, on the day he arrived. The cottage is located right next to Sand Lake. Luckily, the weather was rather mild this weekend as it was 0 degrees C/32 degrees F, with temperatures dropping to about -10C at night.

The ice on Sand Lake is, at this time of the year, very thick. At this time of the year (as I learned over the weekend !), there is no running water at the cottage....that means no shower, no tap water, and no toilet. So that meant that we had to use the outhouse and draw water from the lake. The guys had to use an auger to drill a hole in the lake in order to draw water. While I did not take any measurements of the thickness of the ice, I did eyeball it and it looked to be more than 12 inches thick. Mike told me that in the years gone by, the ice would be 24 to 28 inches thick. Anyway, we had plenty of bottled water and used the lake water for dishwashing (after heating it up on the wood stove) and washing our hands.

When I got home last night, my wife said to me “did you learn that there is no running water up there ?” I said “ugh, yeah !” LOL. I also learned that while my boots were okay for the weather this past weekend, it would not do for the cold weather that Mike experienced the weekend before. What passes for good boots in Columbus would not necessarily pass muster up here.

There were a total of 4 of us up here....myself, Mike, Steve and Andre. We spent a great deal of time talking about various things and watching a ton of movies, walking and hanging out on the lake. It may not be a big deal to these guys but I appreciated seeing a slice of Canadian life this weekend and learned a few things. Despite the name of the weekend, it was actually quite a tame and relaxing weekend.

Standing out on the lake was somewhat reminiscent of some of the scenes in the movie “Fargo.” And no, we were not saying “ja” over and over as the characters in “Fargo” did !!

The pics were taken by Mike and shows a frozen lake covered by snow, the cottage and other scenery.

Canadian TV

2008-02-26T12:23:00.001-05:00

There is a tv series up here called “Murdoch Murder Mysteries.” It’s a Sherlock Holmes/CSI type of tv series, taking place in Toronto in the 1890’s and the turn of the century. One of the themes of this show is the emerging field of forensics in solving murders and police resistance to this new fangled method of investigation.

A couple of weeks ago, we watched the two hour tv movie upon which this series is based. The story centered on the murder of a prostitute in an alleyway. What was notable about this tv movie (on a channel similar to ABC, CBS or NBC in the US) was the full frontal nudity. I noted to my wife that this would be edited out if it were being aired on the Big Three US networks as well as most mainstream cable channels in the States. She noted that Canadian tv has become more “European” over the years, particularly in the past 5 to 10 years. I have observed that you generally see more nudity on Canadian cable channels and tv shows than on American tv.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Canadian tv is not overrun by images of nudity. It just pops up more frequently than on American tv. Just throwing out another cultural difference between the two countries.

Workers' Compensation

2008-02-18T11:17:00.002-05:00

For my friends, co-workers and colleagues in the workers' compensation community in Columbus, here is an article from Saturday's Toronto Star, highlighting the issue of temporary agencies:

Article

Modern Arnis in Oshawa, Ontario

2008-02-11T21:44:00.001-05:00

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching Modern Arnis classes at the Legends Community Centre on Harmony Road in Oshawa. The schedule, for the next 6 weeks, is as follows:

(1) Wednesday Feb 20th, activity room 3 7:00pm to 9:00pm
(2) Wednesday Feb 27th, activity room 3, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
(3) Wednesday March 5th, activity room 3, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
(4) Wednesday March 12th, activity room 2, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
(5) Wednesday March 19th, activity room 2, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
(6) Thursday March 27th, activity room 3, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Please note that there are different rooms on March 12th and 19th. Also note that March 27th is on Thursday as opposed to Wednesday.

I am excited to be introducing the wonderful art of Modern Arnis to the area and will be covering the basics of this art in these first 6 weeks.

I hope to be able to teach more classes at the community centre beyond the initial 6 weeks. For more information, please contact me at: ontariomodernarnis@gmail.com

Till later !!

Six Degrees of Separation

2008-01-23T08:27:00.001-05:00

It's been said that we are 6 degrees away from Kevin Bacon through our network of family and friends. This has actually been studied by social psychologists for many years and has been proven over and over. It's probably even more true in the internet age.

Ever since I moved up here, one of the things that I have done is to look back at my 17 years in Columbus and think about what I could have done differently. When I first arrived in Columbus in June of 1990, I did not know anybody and it wasn’t until a few years later that I had a decent social and professional network. In looking back, I’ve come to realize that, outside of professional life and martial arts, my social network wasn’t what it should have been and, in retrospect, I realize that I did not network enough, either socially or professionally. I passed up a number of opportunities to get to know some fantastic people and in doing so, probably missed out on other opportunities as well. Now, it’s a bit easier since the internet is around us. In looking back, I have decided not to make the same mistakes that I did in the first few years in Columbus. I’m networking much more than I did in Columbus. I have applied for a position on the Board of Directors of the local Golden Retriever Rescue group. I’m also looking for a Toastmasters’ meeting in downtown Toronto close to where I work. They typically meet once a week during lunch. One of my Canadian friends has invited me to the “15th Annual He-Man Weekend Getaway” and I have accepted that invitation. Just a bunch of guys getting together in cottage country and hanging out for the weekend. Don’t know if they are going to egg me into a Polar Bear Dip or not ! :-) Also, I will be an instructor at a Filipino Martial Arts Workshop on April 13th in downtown Toronto and that should be a fun opportunity to meet some people. In addition, I’ve been training with a few people in the martial arts and hope to substantially expand that group. And in addition, there are the opportunities of meeting people through my wife's family and friends.

I've also joined LinkedIn, a business networking site, and Facebook in the last few months.

So, yes, it might be fair to say that I've done a major reassessment in how I meet and network with people. Besides, it's just fun meeting and getting to know others. I'm learning to become more of a people person like my sister, Nancy and my Dad.

I would highly recommend a book called “Never Eat Lunch Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi, which touches on the issue of networking. While it may be somewhat mercenary in some respects, it’s a great book and stresses the value of expanding your network and building relationships in this day and age of the “open source” society.

See you later !

US Elections and the Economy

2008-01-10T11:43:00.000-05:00

Canadian newscasts and newspapers have shown a great deal of interest in the presidential races in the US as both races appear to be wide open...with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama duking it out on the Democratic side and God knows who is going to prevail on the Republican side. I have had some interesting conversations with Canadians up here explaining the various aspects of the presidential primaries and the upcoming election in November. Canadians are very attuned to what goes on in the US for the reason that much of Canadian economy is quite dependent on the state of the US economy. Recent talk of a recession in the US have sparked concerns here in Canada and has led to the highest level of pessisism, in almost a quarter of a century according to a news report, by Canadians regarding the 2008 economy. They have kept a close eye on the enormous U.S. federal budget deficit, the mortgage credit crisis, the rising number of foreclosures, the rising price of oil, and the exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollar and trying to figure out what all this means for the Canadian economy in 2008. Hence, there have been a sense of pessisism in the Canadian media regarding economic conditions.

Downtown Toronto

2008-01-08T12:00:00.002-05:00

Last week, I started working as a temp at the Ministry of the Attorney General in downtown Toronto. It’s time to get out and start working even if this temp job is clerical. In the meantime, I have a couple of possibilities in the next few weeks, which hopefully will bear fruit. In any case, the Attorney General’s office is located on Bay Street, just up from the financial district. Bay Street is to Toronto what Wall Street is to New York City. All the major Canadian banks (such as Toronto Dominion, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Bank of Montreal and the Nova Scotia Bank) are located in the financial district of Bay Street as well as the Toronto Stock Exchange.

I’ve been taking the GO Train into downtown from Oshawa and getting off at the Union Station and taking a 20 minute walk down Bay Street, through the financial district, to work. When I arrived to work at the Attorney General’s on the first day, I had a sense of deja vu. The front lobby, while smaller, was remarkably like that of the Industrial Commission in Columbus, Ohio, right down to the same exact color floor and marble. I did a double take when I walked in and wondered briefly if I had somehow been transported back to Columbus ! In any case, this temp assignment is supposed to last a couple of months. As I said above, further developments may be in the offing in the next couple of weeks. However, I do not want to get ahead of myself and want to see how things turn out. I’ll keep all posted.

In the meantime, the construction of the house is proceeding nicely. The siding has been put up. My wife and I are very pleased with the combination of the brick and siding. My parents spent a few days here in Toronto and they liked what they saw of the house. We are looking forward to entertaining them as well as friends in the house in the near future ! Will try to take some updated pictures soon.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2007-12-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

I hope that all of you have a great holiday season and travel safely if you are doing so. I will write more regularly after the New Year. Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !

Immigration in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)

2007-12-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in today's Toronto Star reveals some surprising statistics regarding the immigration population in the area. According to this article, half of the residents of Toronto are foreign born. 20% of the overall population of Canada are foreign born. I can attest to the amazing diversity of people that I have seen in downtown Toronto, whenever I've gone down there during my current job search. According to the article, a majority of the immigrants are either from China or India and immigrant services are being strained. I think that it's safe to say that Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world. As it turns out, Canada needs these immigrants due to the fact that the workforce is aging and they will be facing a shortage of skilled workers in a few years. Anyway, check out the article and an editorial comment at:

Immigration Story

and

Editorial

Pics of House and Neighbourhood

2007-12-01T11:09:00.002-05:00

Here are the last pictures of the house from the last roll of film. I have included a couple of shots of what the neighbourhood looks like down the street from the house. As you can see, it's a bit of a mess. The brick is starting to go up. Right at this moment (and I just took more pictures today), the front of the house has been bricked and we actually have a house number now ! So we are getting closer and closer !

The Latest on the House

2007-11-30T15:21:00.001-05:00

Okay, here are some of the latest pictures of the house. Keep in mind, we don't yet have a digital camera and so these pics are a few weeks behind and I will be posting more in the next few days. The bottom pic is, obviously of the front of the house and is looking very nice. The middle pic is the back of the house. The top picture is of the backyard. I took this picture standing as close to the back of the house as I could. So as you can see, we have a fair amount of space in the backyard, which will narrow toward the fence line. We are getting excited here.

The job search is coming along and I had two interviews yesterday and an information interview this morning at the TD Bank. So some movement is occurring here.....the more of a network that I build up here, the more that things are happening. Will keep you posted !

Milk in Canada

2007-11-27T10:28:00.002-05:00

Milk is done differently here in Canada. While you can find milk jugs, it is rare (at least here in the Toronto area). Most Canadian buy milk in liter bags, as depicted in the bottom picture. The liter bag is then placed into a pitcher as can been seen in the third picture. The final step is to snip a small hole in the bag with a pair of scissors as my wife is doing in the top picture. It's one of the cultural aspects of Canada that I've had to get used to.

For those who like iced tea, for all practical purposes, you will never find unsweetened iced tea. I remember the first time I ordered iced tea, thinking that it would be unsweetened. I poured in a packet of sugar. Imagine the look on my face when I sipped the extra sweet iced tea. So be warned, all iced tea is sweetened up here. I prefer the unsweetened version to start with and then add in a dash of sugar. Imagine my pleasure when one of my friends, David (who lives in Stouffville with his wife, Kris and both of whom are from California) served me unsweetened iced tea at his workout after a Modern Arnis workout. Ahhhhh!!!! :-)

Thanksgiving Weekend

2007-11-26T16:29:00.001-05:00

Spending Thanksgiving at my brother's in Stow, Ohio was just great. My wife and I drove down on Thanksgiving Day. Our departure was delayed by an ice storm that really tied up the traffic on the 401, the main expressway running through the city of Toronto. It took awhile to get out of the city but the rest of the drive was uneventful. We arrived in Stow at 7:30pm and promptly had Thanksgiving dinner. The food was just superb. We enjoyed the company of Marty, Mary, Elizabeth, Daniel, Carol (Mary's mother), Aunt Barb and Carol. The next day, we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland along with Aunt Barb and Carol Q and had a blast there. Later that night, we visited Mark and Kelly, Notre Dame friends I had met in Columbus back in the 1990's as well as Kerry and her husband Jaime. It was great to catch up with them and for my wife to meet some of my friends. We drove back on Saturday, stopping in Niagara Falls for a couple of hours to catch dinner and walk around. Niagara Falls is a favorite spot of ours, for many reasons. We got home around 10pm or thereabouts and were glad to be back.

On another note, I got a roll of film developed today and so I'll be posting a few pics over the next few days. :-)

Back to the Future

2007-11-21T10:28:00.000-05:00

An update on the house: scaffolding has been erected around the house and brick is being put up. I have three pictures left to take in the current roll of film in the camera, which I will finish today. Hopefully, the pics will be posted on this blog fairly soon after I get back from the Thanksgiving trip to Stow, Ohio.

Those to my friends and family in the US and to Canadians travelling to the States for the holiday, HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!

Travel safe !

A look back

2007-11-18T15:51:00.002-05:00

These two pictures were taken a few days before I closed on the house and drove to Toronto to begin my new life. I have many good memories of that house. I moved into the house in May of 1996. Among the memories of this house are the following:

(1) Having Spencer, Libby and Mario around. Great golden retrievers who filled the house with lots of fun and love.
(2) Training and working out with various martial artists in the basement of my house; the vast majority of whom were graduates of Notre Dame.
(3) The many times I had my parents stay there and having Mom and Dad's cooking !
(4) Some of the work that Dan and Maureen McConnell did on the house; they did fantastic work with it especially with the wallpapering of the dining room and the upstairs bathroom. I don't have those skills ! The leftover green paint for the dining room was used for the office and front wall of the Hilliard Martial Arts Center ! So there was a certain comfort to walking into the office of the HMAC anytime I went there !
(5) The Thanksgiving dinner in November of 1999 when Mom, Dad, Ted, Nancy, Marty, Mary, Elizabeth, and Daniel were there. Of course, Spencer and Libby livened things up at that time as well. That's the only time we had Thanksgiving dinner in my house. Every other year, it was in Florida, Stow or Seattle.
(6) Watching ND football games with my co-worker and fellow ND grad ('78), Jack ......lots of fun downing shots of whiskey every time ND scored a TD ! Too bad that they sucked this year.
(7) Then, there are the times that my wife visited me while we were dating and when she lived in Columbus from July of 2006 through the end of December of 2006.

So when I stood behind the sign with my parents, there was sadness at leaving a house that I had lived in for 11 years and leaving my Columbus friends (lawyers, neighbors and martial arts buddies) behind. But there was happiness as well as I would be with my wife in Canada and the exciting prospect of starting a new life up north !

Links to the Right

2007-11-16T10:12:00.001-05:00

I've added a few links for those who have time on their hands. First, you will notice a hit counter ! Should be interested to see how the numbers add up over time. Secondly, there are links to two Canadian newspapers (The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail). Due to the historic exchange rate between US and Canadian dollars, I have also included a currency converter website link. Thirdly, I have linked to a Thomas Friedman article entitled "The Power of Green" and it talks about the problem of oil dependence on the Middle East and the benefits of shifting to green technology. I also put up a link to a website by Fareed Zakaria, a contributing writer for Newsweek and who provides quite good insight into the problems of the Middle East. I hope to add more features in the future. Lastly, there is a link to a website called "ND Nation" which covers Notre Dame Football. Back to the job search/networking process !! :-)

Looking forward to Turkey and Stuffing !!

2007-11-15T17:58:00.001-05:00

While it's been great adjusting to life here in Canada, I miss the States and that is one of the reasons that I'm looking forward to going to my brother's place in Stow for Thanksgiving. We plan to leave on Thanksgiving morning and drive down to Stow from Oshawa. It should not be more than a 6 hour car drive but well well worth it. I'm looking forward to seeing Marty, his wife Mary, my niece Elizabeth and my nephew Daniel. Aunt Barb and Carol are coming in from Detroit and we are really looking forward to seeing them. Long time family friend, Ted, will be there as well and so this is shaping up to be a great time for us. I imagine that Mary's mother will be there as well. I wish that Nancy and the Seattle clan as well as Mom and Dad would be there. If it were not for Mom's health issues, my parents would be there. So, I cherish every family gathering that we have, especially considering that the Johns family is pretty well dispersed (Toronto, Seattle, Detroit, Stow, and Ft Myers). So we depend quite a bit on phone calls and e-mail. In the meantime, I'm thinking about the food ! :-)

Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day

2007-11-13T16:52:00.000-05:00

What is known as Veteran's Day in the States is known as Remembrance Day up here in Canada. One thing that I have noticed up here is that the wearing of red poppies in the Toronto area appears to be far more prevalent than what I saw in the States in the last several years. I have no idea why that is but it is interesting to see. I have noticed that every time a Canadian soldier loses his life on the field of battle in Afghanistan, the national flag is lowered to half mast. Interestingly, while Canadians and Americans largely agree on the issue of whether the invasion of Iraq was probably not wise, they diverge on the issue of Afghanistan. The mission in Afghanistan is not popular here in Canada and as an American, that is difficult to understand. I have to admit to a difference of opinion with the Canadian newspaper writers and columnists who are increasingly calling for a pullout of troops out of Afghanistan. There are two reasons that I oppose this short sighted call for a pull out. The last time we disengaged from Afghan politics (particularly after the Soviets were defeated), the country descended into chaos and ultimately became a failed state, setting the stage for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Secondly, we all know that led to 9/11. To paraphrase Santayana, "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." I think that this is an appropriate warning to those Canadian writers. We need to stay involved in Afghanistan and ensure its stability.

Unfortunately, this is all complicated by the current shortsighted US policy with regard to Pakistan and which is making the Afghanistan mission increasingly difficult. That's for another post.

A Weekend at Sand Lake

2007-11-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

A couple of weekends ago, Mary-Anne and I were invited by Mike to spend the weekend at his cottage on Sand Lake with his wife and two children. It took approximately 2.5 hours to get there as it's north of Toronto. For those who want to find it on GoogleMaps, get the directions from Toronto to a town called Emsdale and that will give you a good idea of the location of Sand Lake. I met Mike through Modern Arnis and we have become fast friends. He and his wife and two kids are just terrific people. The area is just absolutely gorgeous and the fall colours were out in full force. Mary-Anne and I had a great time up here.....she was kinda like Aunt Mary-Anne to Mike's daughter and I hung out with Mike's son, who is a big New England Patroits fan. To my surprise, football, not hockey, is his favorite sport and the kid just loves to watch NFL football on Sundays. Anyway, included in this blog are some snapshots of the area. In other news, the shingles have been installed on the new house. Hopefully, I'll post the pics here soon.

The Loonie- Again

2007-10-30T09:21:00.002-05:00

As of yesterday, the loonie was at a 47 year high against the US dollar, reaching $1.05 US. This has led to a number of problems (and bonuses) for Canadians. Complaints have increased about the retail prices of many items here in Canada. For example, books are often priced in US dollars and Canadian dollars. Very often, the Canadian price is higher than the US price. Given the present exchange rate, many Canadians have wondered why they should have to pay, for example, $15 CAD for a book that will sell for $10 in the US. Bookstores (such as Chapters and Indigo....the Canadian version of Borders and Barnes and Noble) to blame the publishers and the publishers to blame someone. Another big issue is the pricing of automobiles. Cars are often priced $10,000 to $15,000 higher in Canada than in the US. What makes things worse is that Canadians are not permitted to buy automobiles (by the automakers) in the US and then export them to the US. That has led to the recent filing of a multi billion class action suit in Canada against the big three automakers. This will probably drag out for years. One way around this is for Canadians to have American relatives to buy cars for them.

What is a "loonie" ? It refers to the Canadian dollar coin and the term derives from a common Canadian bird called a "loon." This bird is depicted on the back of the coin (with Queen Elizabeth II on the front). Here is a Wikipedia article on this (with pictures of the coin on both sides):

Loonie

Will write more later !

Our New House

2007-10-30T09:02:00.001-05:00

Here are the latest set of pictures of the house (the one with the van parked in the driveway). Due to the presence of construction on the site, I did not feel comfortable getting out of the car, getting onto the site and taking pictures. In any case, as you can see, some progress has been made on the house. Except for a couple of things, this is pretty close to what it looks like right now. I have a roll of film in the camera and so will be taking pictures over the course of the next couple of weeks and will get it onto the blog ASAP. The rest of the neighborhood has houses in construction in varying phases. As of now, however, none are completed. There are a few that have been bricked. But, most of the houses are at the same stage as ours. Will post more pics in the near future !

Not Quite in the Digital Age

2007-10-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, a confession to make here. We are not quite in the digital age as far as cameras are. We are still using 20th century technology, using cameras with actual film. Gasp ! That means that there is going to be some time lag between taking the pics, getting them developed and posting them on this blog. Consequently, that means that the pics that you see here are a couple weeks behind. In any case, here is another set of pictures of the house. I will post the most recent ones tomorrow. These pictures were taken from a different angle and distance, just to get a different look. As you can see, the structure for the roof has been put in place. Till tomorrow !

House Update

2007-10-26T12:40:00.000-05:00

Here are the latest pics of the construction of the house. It's really coming along. Notice how close the next door house is to ours. As noted earlier, we close on this house on March 28, 2008. Hopefully, I'll be working by then ! Enjoy the pics and I'll post more in the next few days.

Canadian and American Football

2007-10-23T14:13:00.000-05:00

I've had the opportunity to watch some Canadian football up here this fall. I've known this for awhile but there are some differences between American football and Canadian. Some of the obvious differences are that the field is wider and longer in Canadian football. In addition, there are 12 men on each side on the playing field as opposed to 11 in American football. Another obvious difference is that, in Canadian football, it is legal for multiple players to be in motion, prior to the snap. In American football, only one player can be in motion (and that motion cannot be toward the line of scrimmage prior to the snap). In Canadian football, there are three downs as opposed to American football which has 4 downs.

There is a very good article delineating the differences between Canadian and American football and includes some history behind the differences. Check out:

Canadian and American Football

Enjoy !

Pics of House

2007-10-19T08:45:00.000-05:00

Hello all, it's been crazy here lately what with the job search and everything else. I'm still getting settled into life in Canada. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I've been in Canada for just 4 months and I'm still in the process of getting to know the area and establishing relationships up here. As many of you know from my earlier posts, Mary-Anne and I are building a house and construction is coming along. The foundation has been laid and it's taking shape. Here are some of the early pics of our house. I have to confess that I'm still in the analog age as far as cameras are concerned. However, Mary-Anne and I are strongly considering getting a digital camera as a Christmas gift for ourselves so that we can just upload the images. Anyway, I hope to post more pics of the house construction as it moves along.

Go Tribe ! Hope that they can finish the Red Sox off tomorrow night....hoping that Fausto Carmona can close the deal in Fenway Park.

Till later.

More on the Loonie

2007-09-21T12:41:00.000-05:00

While on break from my job hunt, I spotted this timely article on the loonie/US dollar situation:

Canadians find bargains

Back to work !

The Loonie vs. the US Dollar

2007-09-21T08:45:00.000-05:00

The term "loonie" is the Canadian vernacular for the Canadian dollar. Throughout the course of the year, it has been steadily creeping closer to parity with the US dollar. As of now, it practically reached parity, being at 99.87 cents per US dollar. Truth be told, the Canadian dollar has been doing very well against other currencies as well. In any case, with respect to the US vs. Canadian dollars, there are pros and cons for Canadians, as noted by the Toronto Star.

The pros:
(1) US goods and holidays cost less for Canadians.
(2) Properties in the US will be cheaper to maintain.
(3) Will cost less to send kids to US schools.

The cons:
(1) Canadian exports are more expensive.
(2) Visitors from the US stay away. There has been particular concern that the tourism industry has been hurt by the currency situation.
(3) As the Toronto Star notes, local stores suffer as shoppers head to the US.

Interviews with the "man in the street" have expressed frustration as to why retailers in Canada have not lowered their prices accordingly. In other words, items are cheaper to buy in the US than in Canada. Two interesting quotes in the paper:

"I purchased two novels recently at a known bookstore. Selling price: 7.99 US/10.99 Canadian and 9.99 US/13.50 Canadian. Absolutely ridiculous."

"I shop mainly in the US due to our high taxes. With no sales tax on clothing in many states, and a moderate sales tax, huge savings to be had ! Plus, better retail service and selection."

Will keep you posted as to the currency situation.

I also see that the price of oil has now reached $83.32 (US) per barrel, which I believe is an all time high. We are not far off from reaching $100 (US) per barrel.

Hooray for Thomas Friedman and other Sundry Things

2007-09-20T13:59:00.000-05:00

The above refers to the fact that I had missed reading the op-ed columns by Thomas Friedman of the NY Times since leaving the US back in June. For years, I had looked forward to reading his twice weekly columns and enjoyed them. Since moving to Canada, I had searched in vain throughout the internet for his columns. The reason being is that the NY Times online had a "NT Times Select" program where you had to pay a certain fee per month in order to read their op-ed columns, Thomas Friedman included. I was on the verge of asking my parents in Florida to cut out Friedman columns and send them to me here in Canada. However, I heard the news that the NY Times had decided to cancel the NY Times Select program. Talk about wonderful news ! I got onto the NY Times today and was able to read Thomas Friedman columns for the first time since June ! His columns on the Middle East and climate change are incredibly well informed.

In other news, the foundation for our house has been laid and I will soon be taking pictures and will post them here !

In the meantime, for those who are wondering about my job hunt, I have been busy. I have engaged the services of an employment consultant at the Canadian Hearing Society as well as a career coach, Barbara Kofman. Barbara has been terrific and I have learned much from her, considering that I am testing the job market for the first time since 1990. It's a big change for me, especially after having been in the cocoon of my job at the Industrial Commission for 16 years. So, we are in the process of restructuring my resume and polishing up my rusty networking skills. To that end, she has encouraged me to get into Linked In, a business networking site. I had never heard of it until Nancy, my lovely sister in Seattle, told me about it a few weeks ago. Check out Barbara Kofman's website:

Career Trails

Till later !

Follow Up on Muskoka Weekend

2007-09-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

I had promised to follow up and write about the day in Muskoka. To say that the area is spectacular is an understatement. The drive up was a great way to see the beauty of the Ontario countryside. To get to Muskoka from Oshawa took approximately 2.5 hours and it was worth every minute. There's no doubt that I would love to go up there. When we got there, we met Gerald at the dock for the boat ride to the lakeside cottage. The boat ride to the cottage was approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring cameras along....not real smart as I would have liked to have posted a picture here. Is there a way to transmit a picture from my memory to this blog ? Anyway, we spent much of the afternoon relaxing next to the lake. At one point, Mary-Anne and I enjoyed a paddle boat ride out on the lake. As the night came, we ate dinner inside the cottage, which is bit of a misnomer. It is actually a large beautiful house with wide open spaces. I was able to see the ND - Penn State game. I was disgusted enough by the performance to turn the tv off with 7 minutes left in the game. The dinner was just great. Mary-Anne and I had to leave around 10:30pm or thereabouts because we had an invitation to Joan Boswell's house the next morning.

When we arrived at Joan's house, we were greeted by her son Matthew and three dogs. Two of them were flat coated retrievers and one was a golden. The breakfast and company was just terrific. Mary-Anne and I really enjoyed talking with Joan, Matthew, Amanda and Chris. Matthew is a lawyer here in Canada and so we spent some time talking about the legal profession and in particular about the articling process, which he felt was a scam. Very interesting to hear that. Naturally, Joan and I caught up on the current news of my parents and her plans to go to Florida for this coming winter. I enjoyed talking about football with Chris. All in all, it was just a great time. Mary-Anne and I hope to see them again soon.

OHIP

2007-09-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

The above stands for Ontario Insurance Health Plan, a provincial health insurance plan that covers Canadian citizens and qualifying immigrants. In most cases, immigrants have to wait three months after arriving in Canada before becoming eligible for OHIP. In the meantime, immigrants can purchase a three month stop gap insurance from private insurers. In my case, my three months coverage was through CAA, the Canadian Automobile Association. I became eligible for OHIP coverage on Saturday Sept 15th.

Some friends of mine in Columbus have clucked over the system of "socialized medicine in Canada." Canadians would cluck just as equally at the 47 million Americans who do not have health care coverage. They would point out that this number is larger than the population of Canada itself. There are merits to both sides of the argument.

I should mention that health care coverage is on a provincial basis. In my case, I'm covered by the Ontario health care system. If I were to travel to another province, say Quebec, or to the US and need emergency medical treatment, I would not qualify for coverage under OHIP. So it is recommended that traveler's insurance be obtained to cover that eventuality. If one were to move to another province, such as Alberta, one would have to switch provincial health care coverage.

To be sure, there have been some controversy over the issue of OHIP here in Ontario. For example, the Toronto Star newspaper reported a couple of weeks ago regarding a couple of cases where people were diagnosed with brain tumors but they were put on a very long waiting list. They felt that they could not afford to wait and so traveled to the US at their own expense to have the brain tumors removed. They applied for coverage from OHIP and that was denied. Legal action has been instituted against OHIP regarding these specific situations. It should be interesting to see how this turns out. In the meantime, there appears to be a growing movement to allow privatization of medicine to address some of the structural deficiencies of OHIP.

Canadians are quite proud of their medical system as it provides universal coverage but more and more appear to acknowledge that the system needs to be upgraded.

I think that it's a shame that 47 million people in the US have no health care coverage and that it continues to be a hot button issue among the politicians down there. It would appears that viable plans have come from the left and the right regarding this issue. The real issue is there is any backbone to do anything about this problem. As someone once pointed out, the fact that that 47 million people have no coverage could very well mean a national security or national health threat. Studies have shown that those without health care coverage are more reluctant to seek medical care (pretty obvious eh ?). Think about the implications of that.....what if a bird flu 1918 style pandemic breaks out and touches a portion of those who do not have health care coverage ? It will not be pretty. I think that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the larger the number of people without health care coverage, the worse the potential pandemic could be. I could be wrong.

To Canadians reading this post: any inaccuracies regarding OHIP are mine and mine alone. I will make the necessary corrections once they are brought to my attention.

Video Clip of Model House

2007-09-09T16:32:00.001-05:00

My clever Aunt in Detroit was able to find a video clip of a model of "The Crystal" that Mary-Anne and I are building. Aunt Barb put the link to this video clip in her comment to my last post. But, in case you missed that comment, here is the link:

Crystal Model Home

Keep in mind that this model home has $120,000 worth of upgrades. We ain't getting anywhere near that !!!!!!!!! In any case, this is the exact model we visited here in Oshawa before we decided to go with the Crystal.

Till next time !!

In the Middle of the Street.....OUR House !

2007-09-07T08:52:00.000-05:00

Remember that song in the 1980's by the Australian band..Men at Work ? Catchy tune and I was thinking of it when Mary-Anne and I decided to build a house here in Oshawa. Yep, you read that right ! We are building a house. Long story short, it's going to be 3200 sq feet and will be built in a new development here in Oshawa. It is a 40 foot detached home (two story) and the style of the house is called "The Crystal." The closing for the house is scheduled for March 28, 2008 and construction normally starts 5 months prior to the closing. The builder for this house is Great Gulf Homes and you can check out their website at:

Great Gulf Homes

This site will give you a good idea of what their homes look like. I could not find the specific home we chose (The Crystal) on the website.

One of the differences that I have noticed between new housing subdivisions in the US and in Canada is that the new homes here in Canada are built much closer to each other. As I said to Mary-Anne one time, "this is amazing considering that the population of Canada occupies only 2% of the total landmass of the entire country." Not sure why they are built so close to each other. Not only that but the backyards tend to be quite small. Fortunately, Mary-Anne and I ended up with one of the larger lots in this subdivision and will have a sizeable backyard. And so we are excited about that.

Why such a large house ? We decided that it makes sense considering that both of our families are pretty dispersed and we wanted to have the space in order to have guests. For example, Mary-Anne has a sister (Angela) who lives in London, England with her husband (John) and two children. In addition, she has an older brother (Joe) who lives in Memphis with his family. On my side, my parents live in Fort Myers, Florida. My sister lives in Seattle with her husband and 6 children. My brother (Marty) lives in Stow, Ohio (about 5.5 hours from Toronto) with his wife and two children. Then there's Aunt Barb in Detroit.

Then there are my friends in the States who would be welcome to stay at this new house. So from this perspective, it just makes sense to build a house of this size.

We have already gone to the Decor Centre to pick out the design aspects for the new house. That was very time consuming. We just heard from them the other day and they wanted to know the dimensions of the stove we intend to get. So, we'll have to get going on that.

We intend to take pictures of the construction of the house as it progresses. The last we checked, they have not started digging the foundation yet. But there are signs that they are preparing the lot. Will keep you posted !

This Coming Weekend

2007-09-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

It appears that Mary-Anne and I will have quite an interesting weekend. First, we have been invited by her brother, Gerald and his wife, Paula to spend the day at their cottage in the Muskoka Region. It's apparently a beautiful area and a playground for the well to do. Hollywood stars have apparently been sighted in this area. Check out this New York Times article:

Muskoka

I will post more about this after this experience. It's about two hours north of Toronto.

Then on Sunday, we will be visiting with an author named Joan Boswell. She met my parents while vacationing as a snowbird in Fort Myers, Florida. If I recall correctly, she met my mother through the book club she belongs to. Naturally, since Joan is Canadian, my parents told her about my marriage to Mary-Anne. Joan and I have exchanged some e-mails which resulted in an invitation to have brunch with her and her family on Sunday. If e-mails are any indication, it appears that Joan is very witty. In one e-mail, she was recalling how she misses her homeland anytime she goes to Florida and how she cries when she crosses the border into Canada and "then head to the nearest Tim Horton's." How Canadian that is !! I will have to find out if she plans on going to Florida again this winter. Anyway, she does have a website:

Joan Boswell

Till next time !

Leaves Turning Color

2007-09-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

On Friday, August 31st, as I was driving to Stouffville (about 30 to 40 minutes north of Toronto) through the back roads, I noticed that there were a fair number of trees starting to turn color. I was mildly surprised by this considering that, in Columbus, it generally does not start till mid September or thereabouts. I commented on this to one of my martial arts friends in Stouffville. He informed me that many trees near his cottage had turned colour and that this was not unusual for this time of the year. Mary-Anne indicated that one of things that she enjoyed about Columbus was the fact that the leaves turned color later than she was used to. So here's to the fall !! Colored leaves, apple cider, and pumpkin pie !! :-)

On to another topic, along with many ND fans, I am recovering from the disastrous shellacking at the hands of Georgia Tech on Saturday. I had privately predicted to a number of people that I thought that ND would finish 6-6 for the year. I still stand by that prediction. Why ? The answer is simple: the extreme youth of the team. As somebody pointed out, ND has more assistant coaches than they do seniors (8 total). That means a tremendous number of freshmen and sophomores will be getting playing time this year. I think that it's safe to say that this may be the most inexperienced ND team in a long long time. I like the foundation that Charlie Weis is laying in terms of attracting top notch talent to South Bend. However, I was not prepared for the kind of beat down that the Irish got on Saturday. I see that he has already decided to go with Jimmy Clausen as the starting QB for Saturday's game against Penn State. Should be very interesting. Also will be painful to watch the growing pains of this squad.

Hockey in Canada

2007-08-30T16:38:00.000-05:00

Let me tell ya, the Canadians really take their hockey seriously up here. It became evident to me when Mary-Anne and I first visited the new community center in Oshawa (right off Harmony Road). In addition to an impressive public library (which has free wi fi and which I have been using on a daily basis in my job search) and a gym, there are 4 ice hockey rinks that are constantly being used by hockey teams already practicing. There are various scrimmages that take place throughout the summer. On our visit here, Mary-Anne and I saw a fight break out on one of the hockey rinks and this was just a scrimmage in mid August !! Women's field hockey teams also practice in this community center as well. As I said to one of my Canadian friends "you guys are just passionate about hockey as lots of Americans are about college football."

Ah yes, my sporting passion....college football !!! The season basically gets underway on Saturday. No season like football season !! :-) More later.

The Price of Gas in Canada

2007-08-30T15:59:00.001-05:00

For the American audience who might wonder about the price of gas in Canada: Gas generally sells for about 96 cents per liter. Knowing that there is 3.8 liters per gallon and taking into account the current exchange rate, the price of gas, expressed in gallons is $3.44. I understand that the price of gas in most places in the U.S. is approximately $2.75 per gallon. So, yes, gas is a bit more expensive here in Canada than in the U.S. Still not as bad as the price of gasoline in many European countries due to high gas taxes. In the meantime, there has been much attention in the Canadian news papers on the activities of the Russians in laying territorial claims to the Arctic Circle due to its potential oil and gas reserves. The Canadian government is starting to make some moves in response to the provocative moves on the part of Vladimir Putin. All of this ties into the fact that energy security may be the overriding foreign policy concern of many governments. Of course, in the background is the spectre of climate change.....but that's for another day.

Cottage Vacation

2007-08-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've been lackadisical with regard to keeping up with my blog; I've been busy with the job search and doing research into starting up a martial arts business. More on that in a future post. But I'd like to report on the cottage vacation that I went on with Mary-Anne's family at the end of July. Her family first vacationed at the Fifth Depot Lake in 1959 and have gone back there every year since then. It's an absolutely beautiful area; no phones, no internet connection and no tv !! The nights were cool, which alleviated any concern that I had about the lack of air conditioning. Mary-Anne and I did a good deal of canoeing during the week. I have to admit to being nervous about canoeing for the first time since I was a teenager. I'm happy to report that there were no problems and enjoyed the canoeing quite a bit.

The Fifth Depot Lake is located in the Land O' Lakes region of Ontario. To get there was approximately 145 mile drive (232 kilometers) from Ajax. This required driving on the 401 to the town of Nappanee (where pop singer Avril Lavigne grew up) and then drive about 45 minutes north of Nappanee. Pretty much out of the way. Since Mary-Anne's family is quite large, we rented 5 cabins. Daily activities consisted mostly of just hanging out on the beach, reading books, magazines, eating, and conversing. It was quite a good time. The weather was very cooperative. I think that we had only one hot day; otherwise it was quite pleasant. As noted above, the nights were cool. It rained only on the last day we were there.

One of my concerns was poison ivy. Fortunately, I got only a minor case of that on my right shin and on the back of my right knee. In any case, I have to admit that it was nice to get away from tvs, phones and the internet for an entire week and am already looking forward to going back up to cottage country !!

Here is a pic from the vacation. It's only a glimpse but still....

Newspapers and Cottage Country

2007-07-18T11:03:00.000-05:00

I have noticed one difference between U.S. newspapers and Canadian newspapers. In the U.S., the Sunday papers tend to be the biggest one of the week with Saturdays traditionally being the smallest issue of the week. Here in Canada, it's the reverse. The Saturday paper is akin to the U.S. Sunday papers. The Sunday papers here are the smallest of the week. Just something to pass along to the U.S. folks.

On Saturday, Mary-Anne and I will be going "to the cottage" a term used by Canadians. It refers to the national past time of camping out or renting cabins in the wilderness. Very often, you will hear a Canadian say "I'm going to the cottage this weekend or next week." Wikipedia even has an entry on this. Check out:

Cottage Country

In any case, it's a long time tradition for Mary-Anne's family to go on this cottage vacation and apparently, it's supposed to be a beautiful area. I will post the details on this when I get back on the 28th. It appears that I will have to do without tv and internet connection for a week !!

YouTube Video

2007-07-16T12:59:00.000-05:00

At the Hilliard Martial Arts Center going away party, Steve and Chantal were kind enough to give me a CD of still photos and short video clips of events in the dojo over the years. Chantal must have really worked hard at putting this CD together. The final product was just unbelievable. Here is a short video clip of Steve and I doing tapi tapi, a central aspect of the art of Modern Arnis. The term means "counter for counter." This clip occurred during Steve's black belt test in April of 2006. Enjoy the clip !

tapi tapi

The Immigrant Experience

2007-07-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

Since arriving in Canada on June 16th, I've been going through the process of getting settled into Canada. Among the things that I've had to do are the following:

(1) Getting a social insurance number, the Canadian equivalent of the social security number;
(2)Obtaining an Ontario driver's license. All I had to do was pass a vision test, which was breeze.
(3) Obtain the Ontario health card. Health care coverage kicks in September. All are required to carry this card. In the meantime, I have stop gap health insurance from the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA).
(4) Taking my Toyota through the federal and provincial inspections (as required by the Registrar of Imported Vehicles)to insure that the car meets Canadian automobile standards. There was the possibility of modifications in order to meet those standards. I thought that I would be required to obtain metric speedometers and odometers. Turns out that I don't have to.
(5) Obtaining Ontario license plates as well as an Ontario title for the car, which I accomplished this morning. It felt strange taking the Ohio plates off and putting Ontario plates on. It also felt good since I now can blend in better. I felt like the Ohio plates stuck out like a sore thumb ! :-) The next thing that I have to do is to switch auto insurance from my American auto insurance to a Canadian auto insurance company.

So, the above process has been akin to a scavenger hunt !! However, it's all necessary to get settled into Ontario.

In the meantime, I've quickly been familiaring myself with the Oshawa area, the town where we are living and started a job search. Will keep you posted on that.

On Sunday, Mary-Anne took me to Port Perry, a stunningly beautiful area about 25 minutes north of Oshawa. Port Perry is located next to Lake Scugog and the area is very reminiscent of the Lake Washington area in Seattle, Washington. Just absolutely beautiful and I would love to go up there again soon. I can't imagine what the area is like in the fall. For those of my co workers in the Industrial Commission and friends in the Columbus workers' compensation community, there is a monument to Dr. David Palmer, the founder of chiropractic medicine in Port Perry. It appears that he was born in the Port Perry area. Up to that point, I did not know that the founder of chiropractic medicine was Canadian. Something new to be learned every day, eh ?

:-)

Canada Day and the 4th of July

2007-07-04T11:03:00.000-05:00

Sunday July 1st was Canada Day here. One way to look at it is that it is the Canadian version of the 4th of July. Canada celebrated the 140th anniversary of their nationhood, officially becoming a nation on July 1, 1867. As noted in an earlier post, Canada gradually gained their independence from Great Britain, culminating in 1982 when they gained full independence. A more full explanation of Canada Day can be found at this wikipedia link:

Canada Day

I have noticed that Canadians are a bit quieter about their patriotism and flag waving than Anericans are. But, as pointed out in a recent Toronto Star article, more and more Canadians are expressing their pride in this country. I noticed quite a few of them flying the Canadian flag on their front porches and from their cars as well. Like the 4th of July in the States, there are fireworks shows and barbecues.

As I sit in front of this computer on this 4th of July, I have to confess that I miss my home country and yet am happy at the same time to be here in Canada with Mary-Anne. It is strange to see folks working up here on this holiday....yet another adjustment for me to make up here. However, I think that it is fitting that both countries' most important holidays are just a few days apart, given that they are neighbors with much common (and some differences).

Will write more about my immigrant experiences in the next post !

Welcome to Canada !

2007-06-20T10:49:00.001-05:00

The day after I arrived in Toronto, my wife's family hosted a party at her mother's house to welcome me to Canada. It was incredibly nice of them to do that. They jokingly vowed to "canadianize" me ! We had shish kebab on the grill and cake. In a nice touch, it was a red, white and blue cake....strawberries and blueberries providing the appropriate colors. Ah, it should be spelled "colours." :-)

It has been hectic since I arrived here Saturday. I've been busy unpacking and doing various projects around the house. To those of you who are aware of my sorry handyman skills, you might be shocked to find out that I actually installed a window air conditioner last night. It took a couple of hours and I made sure to follow the instructions to the letter. I'm proud to say that I succeeded.

There are a fair number of administrative type matters that I still need to take care of....such as cancelling my US cell phone account, getting car insurance (I'm still within the 30 day grace period of my current car insurance), and getting one or two Canadian credit cards. Lots of things to do to get settled into Canada. It's been hectic but exciting !

One of things that I have been keeping an eye on is the exchange rate....economists predict that the Canadian dollar will pull even with the US dollar by the end of this year. Apparently, the Canadian dollar has been doing very well relative to other currencies as well, such as the pound, the Euro, and the yen. Should be interesting to see what happens.

The Longest Day

2007-06-19T12:49:00.001-05:00

There was a WWII movie back in the 1960's called "The Longest Day" and it was about D-Day in 1944. Friday, June 15th felt like such a day to me ! I closed on the house in the morning and then went to the bank to take care of some business, after which I left Columbus around noon.

I encountered two traffic construction delays on the way to Detroit. The first was on Route 23. For some reason, traffic to Powell Ohio was backed up on this day and it took quite awhile to get past Powell. I then hit some major construction on Route 75 in the Detroit area, which caused traffic to come to a standstill. Fortunately, the standstill was only brief. Still, I did not get to Detroit until 5 to 5 and a half hours later.

I had to take my car through US Customs (because I was exporting the car out of the US) and the Canadian Customs (because I was importing the car into Canada. It took me quite some time to find the US Customs inspection office in Detroit. As it turns out, my car was the only passenger vehicle in the entire parking lot, which was full of trucks. After making sure that I was in the right place, I walked into the customs office to present the title to the car. I had to stand in line for quite some time before I was processed. It took quite some time to get out of there and drive across the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor.

The car process was much shorter on the Canadian side....approximately 20 to 30 minutes. All of this is necessary to make sure that my car is okay and is not hot property and furthermore, meets the Canadian auto standards. I am supposed to get a letter from the Registrar of Imported Vehicles (RIV) in the next couple of weeks, with directions as to what I have to do next.

In any case, the drive from Columbus to Toronto is normally about 8.5 hours. On this day, by the time I hit London, Ontario at 9:30pm, I was still 3 hours away from Toronto. My wife urged me to get into a hotel in the London area and crash for the night, which I did.

I got into Toronto the next day around noon. I was very happy to be with my wife....FINALLY !! Since then, I have been busy getting settled in and helping her with a couple of projects around her house. Some of the stuff from the Columbus home was delivered yesterday and, at first, it looked overwhelming. But we managed to unpack things in fairly quick order. I still am unpacking the wedding china today but am making quite good progress.

Will write more from the north later !!

Last Post from Saddlehorn Drive

2007-06-14T10:26:00.001-05:00

Well, it's really happening. Things moved at warp speed over the past few days. The original schedule called for the packers to come to the house to pack the stuff and for the truck to come today. As it turns out, the driver was scheduled to pick up a load in Cleveland yesterday. So the schedule was moved up so that he could stop by my house yesterday afternoon and load the truck up. Took all of two hours to clear out the house. So the house is empty for the time being and I'm taking advantage of the fact that I still have internet access (until the cable company comes by later to shut down service). So, I'm staying at a co worker's house.

Tomorrow morning, I close on the house and then will be on the way up to Canada via Detroit. It's going to be a long day as my car will have to go through two inspections, the first by US Customs (because I'm exporting the car out of the US) and by Canadian Customs (as I will be importing the car into Canada). A long day but worth every bit of it to be with Mary-Anne. We've been apart for far too long.

I have had many farewells with many many people here in Columbus, both in the legal community as well as the martial arts community. Those farewells meant a lot to me and will always be remembered over the years.

Just because I'm leaving Columbus does not mean that I'm disappearing ! I will try to keep in touch with as many people through e-mail and through this blog.

Farewell to 3912 Saddlehorn Drive and Columbus. Toronto, here I come !!

:-)

The Eagle has Landed !!

2007-05-31T19:04:00.002-05:00

I spent the Memorial Holiday Weekend with my wife in Toronto, celebrating our one year wedding anniversary. I cannot believe that one year has gone by so quickly since that beautiful day. Fortunately, events are moving very rapidly and I will be in Canada in just over two weeks. I have sold the house and have handed in my resgnation from the Industrial Commission, effective Friday June 8th ( a week from tomorrow !). The closing is scheduled for Friday June 15th. There are still a few things left to do but things seem to be under control for the time being.

The phrase “The Eagle has Landed” refers to the fact that I am now a “landed” immigrant of Canada. Yep, you read that right. I formally presented the immigration papers at the border crossing on the trip to Toronto this past weekend. The process took approximately 45 minutes and went off without a hitch. I had to present documentation to Canadian Customs of what I was bringing into Canada in my car as well as a list of items the moving company will be bringing. Not sure that I will relax for awhile!! In any case, the new life will begin shortly and it’s with a lot of excitement and possibilities, eh ? :-)

Will write more shortly.

Sold !!

2007-05-12T12:07:00.002-05:00

After a good amount of work on the house, I put it up on the market in the last week of April. Believe it or not, I got an offer on the second day it was on the market. Price wise, the offer was quite fair. However, the buyers wanted to include a home sale contingency clause into the proposed contract. Unfortunately, they were located in a section of Columbus where it takes an average of 6 months for a house to sell. I countered by accepting their price but requested the deletion of the home sale contingency language. They rejected the counter offer. So that was the end of that.

Shortly after that, a second couple came along and made an offer on the house. Fortunately, they are living in an apartment and are ready to move. Negotiated a final price with them. Just had the house inspection two days ago. I have not heard the results of the inspection. Going by the cliche that "no news is good news," I'm assuming that the house passed muster.

With that in mind, there is a lot to do between now and the closing date of June 15th. I'm having a garage sale today and it has been moderately successful thus far. I'm probably going to donate a fair portion of the furniture in the house to charity, in part to offset the last paycheck that I will be receiving from the Industrial Commission.

So each day is a step closer to being with my wife in Toronto !!

Coming out of Hibernation.........

2007-05-12T11:12:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, I know...."where the hell has Brian been ?" I've been very busy in the last few months, readying the house for the market (more on that in a separate post). I usually had one major house project per weekend and I'm proud to say that I accomplished nearly all that I set out to do. Still, I wouldn't be here if not for my wife's handy man skills in the 6 months she was down here. She possesses handyman skills that I can only dream of having !! The stuff that I was doing around the house was easy compared to my what she did.

A short synopsis of what has transpired since my last post. I have been cleared by Canadian immigration. Sold the house last weekend and obtained information on what I would need to do to get admitted to the Ontario bar.

First, the bar situation....the other topics will be addressed in separate posts.

To assess what I needed to do in order to be admitted to the Ontario, I had apply for a "Certificate of Qualification" from the "National Committee on Accreditation" at the University of Ottawa. This required that I submit my law school transcript, various materials from the Ohio Supreme Court, and a letter from the Industrial Commission (my current employer).

Based on my law school education and my background, the NCA recommended that I be issued a "Certificate of Qualification" upon passing examinations in four law courses: Constitutional Law, Evidence, Corporate Law, and Tax. I have basically two options. I can either take these courses at a Canadian law school or order self study materials.

Only upon passing these 4 examinations, would I then be permitted to sit for the Ontario Bar. Should I pass the Ontario Bar, it appears that I may have to go through the articling process, which is the legal version of an apprenticeship. I believe that this is common among the Commonwealth nations. The US does not have this. See Article.

So, will have to think about this.......

Martial Arts Influences

2007-02-10T18:39:00.000-05:00

There have been a number of people and organizations who have influenced my martial arts over a number of years. Their influence will continue as I move to Canada.

The first place to start with is the Notre Dame Martial Arts Institute. While a member of this club during my undergraduate and law school years at Notre Dame, I learned Chung Do Kwan Tae Kwon Do and Vee Ju Jitsu. More important is the number of friendships that I developed that continue to this day. This club was started in the fall of 1982 under the direction of G. Rogers Cooper and still thrives to this day under the instructorship of Brookes Ebetsch. I have recently reconnected with these folks and was invited up to Notre Dame a couple of weekends ago to teach a seminar. Had a great time up there. I hope to be able to stay connected to these roots as I move to Toronto. A number of folks from this club have passed through Columbus over the years and trained with me. Check out this website, which contains information on a lot of people who touched my life such as G. Rogers, Professor Robert Cooper, Drew Sandler, Jim Hoff, Brian McCarthy and many others:

NDMAI

To read more about Chung Do Kwan Tae Kwon Do, read the following:

Chung Do Kwan TKD

To learn more about the founder of Vee Jiu Jitsu, check out this article from Wikipedia:

Prof Vee

The next big influence on my martial arts journey was meeting Dan McConnell right here in Columbus. To backtrack, in the fall of 1989, I visited Professor Florendo Visitacion along with Drew Sandler. While visiting Professor Vee, he recommended that I study Arnis, not really recommending any particular style. He said to take advantage of what I could find. When I initially arrived in Columbus in 1990, I could not find any Arnis or Filipino Martial Arts school. In 1998, I noticed a post by Dan on the Escrima Digest announcing the first Annual Remy Presas Seminar in Hilliard, Ohio. It noted that the seminar was taking place at the Norwich Elementary School, which as it turns out, was only a couple of minutes from my house. For those of you who are not into martial arts, Remy Presas was a Filipino martial arts Grandmaster who founded a martial art called Modern Arnis. He is one of the all time great martial artists. Sadly, he passed away in August of 2001. In any case, as a result of that post on Escrima Digest, I started training in Modern Arnis with Dan and have had a great time for the past 9 years. Through Dan, I have been able to meet Professor and many people such as Ken Smith, Dr. Schea, Chuck Gauss, Brian Zawilinski, Jim Ladis and Datu Kelly Worden. Dan and I traveled to many seminars and camps over the years and have had great times. Check out the following site and Dan's blog:

HMAC
Dan's Blog

If you are ever in Columbus and want to train in martial arts, check out the above two websites.

For a description of what Modern Arnis is about, check out this Wikipedia entry:

Modern Arnis

I became more and more involved in the IMAF (The International Modern Arnis Federation) over the years and am on the Board of Directors of this organization. I have been to a great number of camps and seminars sponsored by this organization and I cannot say enough about the people in this organization, particularly the Masters, with whom I have developed good relationships. They have encouraged me to start teaching Modern Arnis when I move to Toronto. The organization's website is as follows:

IMAF

I should also note that Guro Dan has brought a martial artist from Seattle, Washington by the name of Kelly Worden in for a number of seminars. He was bestowed with the title of "Datu" by Professor Remy Presas in the late 1980's. Datu Kelly is definitely a top notch martial artist and has a lot to offer in terms of Modern Arnis, Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's art) and various other martial arts styles. Kelly has his own website and is as follows:

Datu Kelly

I should also note that, over the years, I have bought a number of DVDs over the years from Master Ken Smith of the IMAF and they really do an excellent job of explaining the concepts of Modern Arnis and breaking down the techniques. Keep up the good work, Ken !

Ken's Site

I would be remiss in not noting the influence of Master Chuck Gauss in Michigan. He has had a huge influence on me in terms of the understanding of the elusive concept of tapi tapi, which means counter for counter in Tagalog. This material was being taught by Professor Remy Presas in the last few years of his life and Chuck learned much from Professor. I have been fortunate to have been uke (demonstration partner) of Chuck's at many many seminars and camps and it's been a great opportunity to feel these techniques. I was honored to be a demonstration partner for Chuck in his "2 vs. 1" DVD illustrating Modern Arnis concepts of two sticks vs. one stick fighting. I learned a lot from that experience. I hope to be able to continue to work with Chuck in the future.

Lastly, I will end this blog with a clip of Professor Presas on Youtube. Somebody posted this clip of Professor demonstrating disarms in a late 1980's video. Enjoy:

Professor Presas

In closing, these are the martial arts influences that I will be taking with me to the land of the Great White North...i.e. Canada !! :-)

Till next time !!!

The Dogs of Columbus

2007-02-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

While living in Columbus, I had the fortune to own three incredible golden retrievers, who were lots of fun and gave me lots of company over the years. They will be missed and will always be remembered as part of my life here in Columbus. In pictorial order, they are Spencer, Libby, and Mario. They were 10 1/2, 13 and 13 years of age respectively when they passed away.

Insights from Canada

2007-02-02T18:44:00.000-05:00

A friend from Canada, who I shall name MC, sent me a funny private e-mail regarding additional insights into Canada. See below:

Don't forget......everything is in metric. Imperial is only used if you're talking to someone "ol' school" or if you're working in construction, then inches, feet, tons are acceptable talk. Use miles and everyone will look at you funny...

Temperature is measured in Celsius, not Fahrenheit. If you tell someone that it's 20 degrees out (Fahrenheit) they'll think it's 68 degrees out, only to be rudely awakened by minus-20 degree Celsius weather, something like that will get you beat up in hurry! Distance is how many "Klik's" it is to your next destination.

Also, newcomers must of course take an inaugural Polar Bear dip in their first winter. This will give you perspective for when it's just cold out and really freakin' cold! (by the way, coldest to date I've experienced is -44 Cel.. Froze my truck solid in northern Ontario, had to wait for my dad to drive 2.5 hours with BBQ briquettes and a steel pan so that we could start a fire under the oil pan and rad to warm it up).

Then of course there is ice fishing......snowshoeing....snowmobiling....

How about that eh ? :-)

Random Facts about Canada I've Learned

2007-01-28T17:09:00.000-05:00

I admit that I have much to learn about Canada but here are some things I have learned.

(1) The state of California has more people than all of Canada. According to Wikipedia, California had 33,800,000 in the 2000 Census. Canada has an estimated 30,007,000 people in 2001.

(2) Did you know that Canadians occupy only 2% of the total landmass of Canada ?

(3) According to the British magazine, The Economist, the province of Alberta is estimated to have the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia ?

(4) Did you know that the one dollar coin is referred to as a “loonie” and the two dollar coin is called a “toonie” ?

(5) Canadians pronounce the last letter of the alphabet as “zed” rather than “zee” as we Americans do ? Apparently, this is due to the British influence.

(6) I've learned that the Canadian Constitution, in its current form, was adopted in 1982. The first Canadian Consitution was adopted in the 1860’s, during the American Civil War. It appears that the definition of the relationship between the federal government (located in Ottawa) and the provincial governments was influenced by Canadian views of the cause of the American Civil War. It appears that they perceived that the states were given too much power to secede from the Union. Based on this, they set up a constitutional system that consisted of a strong federal government and relatively weak provincial governments.

(7) Canadians use the British version of spelling. For example, honour, colour, neighbour, humour etc.

(8) Canada gained independence from Great Britain incrementally from 1867 (with the passage of the British North America Act by the British Parliament) through 1982 (The Canada Act, signed by Queen Elizabeth II), when it became independent.

Ciao !!

Wedding Pics

2007-01-25T17:57:00.000-05:00

I figured that I would provide a link to our wedding pictures on our wedding photographer's website. So here it is !! Enjoy !!

Wedding Pics

I'll write more later on various thoughts with regard to Canada.

Memories in Columbus

2007-01-23T17:37:00.001-05:00

We just got last supporting documentation (which was requested in the first week of October of 2006) required for the immigration paperwork in yesterday’s mail. Finally, we will be able to send in the immigration application to the Canadians. This process will take quite some time.

In moving from Columbus to Toronto, I will be leaving behind quite a few good memories. Here they are in no particular order:

(1) Passing the bar exam in spring of 1991. The sense of relief of passing the bar on the first try was just huge and allowed me to get the job at the Industrial Commission.

(2) Watching ND football games and various movies with Mark, Kelly, and Mary, fellow ND graduates. Those were fun times.

(3) Training with Herb Lamprecht at his Kenpo Karate school on West 5th Ave. I gained a lot of insights into the martial arts through Herb.

(4) The numerous friends that I made as a result of my job as a hearing officer in the Industrial Commission, not only among my co-workers but also through the workers’ comp legal community. Lots of great people in that community.

(5) Moving into the house on Saddlehorn Drive in May of 1996. My parents came down here to help with the move and it was a very hectic weekend, not only for me but also for them as they would depart for Jakarta, Indonesia the next week for three years.

(6) Being an owner to Spencer, Libby, and Mario....three great golden retrievers. They infused the house with a lot of life and happiness. All time great dogs ! They will be missed.

(7) Training with various people from Notre Dame Martial Arts Institute here in Columbus. I was able to keep up with my Chung Do Kwan Tae Kwon Do/Vee Ju Jutsu background by working with Laurie McNeilly, Stuart Tyner, Jennifer Kovass, Kate Noll, Dan Westmeyer, Brendan Burns and various others who have stopped in Columbus for a visit. I learned as much from these folks as they have from me !

(8) Meeting Dan McConnell and through him, meeting Remy Presas, various folks such as Ken Smith, Chuck Gauss, Dr. Randi Schea, Jim Ladis, Brian Zawilinski, Karen Callahan, and many others in the IMAF (International Modern Arnis Federation) and Datu Kelly Worden. The friends in the HMAC were a lot of fun. Thanks to Dan for the great memories.

(9) I can never forget the times I hosted my parents in Columbus. I always looked forward to Mom and Dad’s cooking and help with various things around the house. Never being the handy man type (and my wife knows this !) , I had to rely on my parents for a lot of help. It saddens me that they will not be able to stop by in Columbus like they used to.....but I surely hope that they can visit Canada, as it’s only 5.5 hours from my brother’s (Marty) in Stow !

(10) Who can forget the one and only time that I had Thanksgiving dinner in my house ? That occurred in November of 1999 when I had Mom, Dad, Nancy, Ted, Marty and Mary and their two kids. There was Spencer and Libby (who I had adopted just two weeks earlier). What a great weekend that was !

(11) Thanks to the many folks, both from the martial arts community and my co-workers, here in Columbus who generously gave wedding wishes and gifts to my wife and I. We very much appreciate your wishes and will never forget your kindness and thoughtfulness.

(12) The Bender Family, one of my neighbors, are among one of the best neighbors anybody can have. They were incredibly helpful with the three dogs and watching the house whenever I had to go out of town either for work, vacation or camps ! Much thanks to them !!

(13) Hanging out with Marty, Mary, Elizabeth and Daniel anytime they came to Columbus. The two kids are a hoot !

Lastly, the first 7 months of my marriage with my wife were spent down here in Columbus and it was a great start !! We surely created some memories of our life (albeit brief) in Columbus that we will never forget for the rest of our life.....such as cooking dinner together, going to movies, renting movies, going to the Y, hanging out, hashing out our future plans, going to museums, fixing up the house (she did more of this than I did !) traveling to Toronto and to Florida (to spend Thanksgiving with my parents).

To my friends in Columbus, I surely hope that we are able to keep in contact, especially through e-mail, which seems to be available everywhere !!

First Post

2007-01-15T08:50:00.001-05:00

Following the 21st century trend of blogging, I have decided that this would be the best way to keep friends and family abreast of what's going on in my life relative to my move from Columbus, Ohio to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I feel that I have been remiss in a lot of respects in trying to keep as many people up to date as to current events in my life and feel that e-mail falls short in this respect. Hence, the purpose of this blog is update you on what's going on in my life.

In addition, I will likely blog on my thoughts regarding various topics such as martial arts, current events and Notre Dame Football.

Moving on.....

I got married on May 27, 2006 to my wife, a beautiful woman from the Toronto area. After a lovely honeymoon in Hawaii, and many discussions later, we have decided to move to Columbus to Toronto. This is a big challenge and certainly a big change in my life ! Columbus has been home to me since June of 1990 and I have made many friends here. This decision was not made lightly. Yet, at the same time, I am looking forward to the move and its many attendant challenges.

The Canadian immigration process is taking some time as various supporting documentation is required. Once all of that stuff is gathered, I will mail the stuff in to my wife, who will then mail the application in.

In the meantime, I have sent in my legal credentials to the Accreditation Committee in Ontario in order to evaluate what I need to do to be admitted to the bar in Ontario. I have been informed by them that I will hear from them by the end of February as to what their recommendations are. So that should be interesting. Bear in mind, the possibility of practicing law in Ontario is just one possibility. I may be exploring other options.

I have also consulted with a CPA in town with regard to cross border finances so as not to be surprised by any tax implications of a cross border move. So if you are moving out of the country, be prepared !!

Also, a lot of work has been done on the house here in Columbus. As a matter of fact, as I'm typing this, I am waiting for the carpeting folks to get here and replace carpeting in the entire house. It's going to be a two day job. Hopefully, the house will look better after it's done.