Excellent customer service!

Seems to be a rare saying for me in St. John’s, but today was one of those days. Another restaurant, this time the City Lights Chinese buffet on Topsail Road. Never been there before but it was recommended by a few people and I decided to give it a try. It’s a former Ponderosa Restaurant, so good size with four buffet tables and what I thought was a good selection and variety. I was promptly greeted by a hostess who showed me to a table, told me of the supper prices, asked if I wanted something to drink and showed me to the first buffet table. She came back once to ask if I wanted more beverage and checked in half way through to ask how everything was. She answered all of my questions in a very friendly and polite manner and ensured a repeat customer. Kudos to the City Lights!

More crappy customer service

Delightful customer experience to report. NOT!

Scene: Mary Brown’s drive through on Blackmarsh Road, about 8pm Saturday night. Female voice comes over the speaker sounding so indifferent that it was right in your face. Drive up to the window to pick up the food and NOT ONE WORD comes from the young woman supposedly “serving” me. Normally, I try to exchange at least some minimal pleasantries, but decided to see if she would say anything and NOT ONE WORD. A note to the franchise owner: you might want to remind the young woman that my purchase contributes to her salary. On the other hand, she probably could care less.

It’s such a contrast with another young woman at the same location who took my order a few weeks ago. She was friendly and polite – said please and thank you and was an excellent representative of the company. Maybe she should be the one training the rest of them how to deliver customer service because some of them obviously don’t care.

You reap what you sow

We continue to see the pictures pouring out of Pakistan as fast as the flood waters are rising … people trying to make their way through swollen rivers and fields, searching for dry land and a bit of respite from the agony they have endured for the last several weeks. Throughout this, there has been criticism from the Pakistani government and various people that western aid agencies and governments have been slow to respond to the humanitarian crisis gripping the country.

Now, today’s New York Times is reporting that the Taliban says the presence of foreign aid workers in Pakistan is unacceptable “and suggested that militants could carry out attacks against members of aid groups.”

The question becomes: why should western aid workers put their lives on the line to bring help to the suffering Pakistanis when the Taliban, clearly able to carry out its threats, is ready to attack and kill those aid workers?

There have long been substantiated reports of collusion between the Pakistani government, especially the intelligence services and the Taliban. Is it possible that the people are suffering because of the duplicity of those intelligence services?

Jerks to the left of me, jokers to the right ...

I have a few favourite rants: lousy customer service in St. John’s, young people who seem to be afraid to engage and instead text or tweet one another rather than communicating face-to-face and drivers in the capital city. Had another delightful motoring example today on the way home. Case in point: drivers who would never think of slowing down, getting behind you and then moving into your lane, but rather speeding up, taking a chance and cutting you off. It’s rather pathetic when you think about it, small minded too. They’re not going to get anywhere faster, they just want to be first. I see people racing down the street where I live, even though there are lots of small children who are out playing in the nice weather. I expect one of these days to hear the sirens and learn that one of these children has been injured or killed by a stupid driver who is so self-centered that the rest of the world doesn’t matter. Not sure what they’re trying to prove other than that they are first class idiots. They win the award hands down in that category.

Chillax cheeseball

I love language even though I don’t always use it as accurately as I should. So, when I saw a headline today announcing the Oxford Dictionary of English had some new words added to the list, I had to go take a look. I was a little disappointed to learn “vuvuzela” is now a word in the ODE. For those who may not remember (how could you forget), it was that gawd-awful one note (the B♭ below middle C) plastic horn the idiot-fans at the World Cup matches insisted on blowing throughout the matches. It was a cheap rip-off of a kudu horn made in China.

That aside, there are some great new words added to the Oxford list. Here are a few:

•bromance: a close but non-sexual relationship between two men

•buzzkill: a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect

•cheeseball: lacking taste, style or originality

•chillax: calm down and relax

•defriend: removing someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site
•frenemy: a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry
•interweb: the Internet
•wardrobe malfunction: an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of his/her body as result of an article of clothing slipping out of position

Maybe something like this. “It started out as a bromance but he turned into a frenemy whom I had to defriend after I realized he was a total buzzkill cheeseball.”

Ah, the marvel of language!  :-)

Justice tempered with mercy?

When I first heard the story a few days about a judge in Saudi Arabia asking if a hospital could damage a man’s spine so that he would be paralyzed, I thought I was dreaming. After I read it the second time, I realized it was no dream; rather it was the application of strict Islamic law which hands down punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye-for-an-eye. Reports say the 22 year old victim was left paralyzed after a fight more than two years ago and asked a judge to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker under Islamic law. The judge, in turn, asked at least two hospitals for a medical opinion on whether surgeons could render the attacker’s spinal cord non-functional.

I’m the first to admit that I don’t understand middle eastern cultures that encourage such things as honour killings, beheadings, jihads against infidels and so on … but I hope that most people would agree that this is wrong, wrong, wrong. It wasn’t that long ago in this country when we learned that capital punishment does no good and only results in state-sanctioned murder.

Surely, in the Quran where it is written “in the Messenger of Allah there is a good example to follow,” it can be interpreted as a call to move away from barbarism and towards a justice tempered with mercy.

The bubble WILL burst

When we see the skyrocketing housing prices in St. John’s and in the immediate area, it’s easy to think of other boom and bust economies … Alberta and Ireland are two that come to mind right away. In Alberta, housing prices were about the same as here in St. John’s – young people were rushing to buy seriously overpriced standard three-bedroom homes for $300k and more. Thirty-five year mortgages were the norm with minimal down payment. Now, many of those people are stuck with homes that are worth in the $100k range and they have no way of getting out of their debt except for perhaps considering bankruptcy. Similarly, the days of Ireland enjoying one of the fastest growing economies in Europe are over, at least for now. The story is all too familiar, as easy credit fueled a housing bubble that burst and damaged consumer confidence.

The housing prices in St. John’s and area are obscenely artificially high as developers rush to build more boxes made of ticky-tacky and cash in on the bonanza. I just feel sorry for the young people who are going to be burdened with these debts for the rest of their lives. What goes up so very quickly will come crashing down very fast without consideration of who gets hurt.

Misplaced priorities

I have a statistic at the top of the page that says one child dies every five seconds due to hunger. Stop and think about it for a second … in the time it took you to read this post so far, one or maybe two children have died because of hunger. Twelve kids will have died by the time this minute is up.

In 2008, nearly 9 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. 178 million children under 5 are stunted, low height for age. Of all stunted children, 90 percent live in just 36 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Central Asia.

Are the numbers too overwhelming for us? Is that why there is so little action? Is it because we value their lives less than our own? Would it be different if they were white?

Just think, the Canadian government spent ONE BILLION DOLLARS so twenty politicians could meet for a day in Toronto.

Deaf kids lose in property grab

It’s more than a bit disingenuous of Newfoundland education minister Darin King to suggest that the government did not have a plan to close the school for the deaf. Parents, family members of the children who attend the school and staff say that for a number of years, education officials have discouraged admissions in a plan to eventually eliminate the school. Now, King is saying there was no such plan. One has to wonder if he woke up on the morning of August 2nd and decided on the spur of the moment to close the school. Hardly. The least the minister can do is be honest with us.

The whole notion of integrated education is good, but we have to realize that children who are deaf have special needs, especially when they’re young and developing coping mechanisms. The school for the deaf provides that. I don’t care how well meaning a teacher in the public school system is, but with thirty kids in the classroom, a deaf child will get only minimal attention and his/her education will suffer, regardless of the presence of a well-meaning but minimally qualified (and paid) teacher’s aide.

Let’s face it, the government wanted the property. They don’t care about the kids.

True North strong and free

What is it with the Tamils? Is there some agency in Tamil-land that advertises, “give us your life savings, we’ll put you on an old boat, sail to Canada and they will be forced to take you in?” That’s certainly the way it seems. The federal government says it suspects there may be Tamil terrorists aboard the boat – just what we need, more extremists who can’t leave their battles at home. Of course, back here in our home and native land, the rest of the Tamils are saying “you can’t turn them away” and insisting that we spend Canadian tax dollars to defend their right to stay in the country.

What makes me angry is these people are jumping the queue. There are thousands of legitimate refugees trying to get into this country who can’t afford the passage that these people are paying. Those “other” refugees probably will never get into Canada because they can’t afford the price. So much for the True North strong and free. It’s free only if you can afford to pay the organizers of this “cruise to Canadian citizenship”. Perhaps the government is still trying to atone for the sins against the S.S. St. Louis.

Bottom line is that it’s unfair to those who are legitimate refugees who never will be able to afford the price of passage. Somebody needs to answer that.

How many times must the cannon balls fly?

Tom Friedman is one of my favourite columnists with the New York Times. His column in Saturday’s paper is one of those that causes you to pause and think about some things.

He’s discussing an apparent change in world opinion against Israel. The context is an Israeli film maker who arranges for a seriously ill Palestinian baby to be treated in Israel. When the baby is brought home to Gaza, his mother says she hopes he grows up to be a suicide bomber against Israel. Her apparent hatred is palpable despite what Israelis have done to save her baby.

The complete article can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08friedman.html?src=me&ref=general  

Here’s a brief excerpt:

[T]here is something foul in the air. It is a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel — to turn it into a pariah state, particularly in the wake of the Gaza war. You hear the director Oliver Stone saying crazy things about how Hitler killed more Russians than Jews, but the Jews got all the attention because they dominate the news media and their lobby controls Washington. You hear Britain’s prime minister describing Gaza as a big Israeli “prison camp” and Turkey’s prime minister telling Israel’s president, “When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill.” You see singers canceling concerts in Tel Aviv. If you just landed from Mars, you might think that Israel is the only country that has killed civilians in war — never Hamas, never Hezbollah, never Turkey, never Iran, never Syria, never America.

I’m not here to defend Israel’s bad behavior. Just the opposite. I’ve long argued that Israel’s colonial settlements in the West Bank are suicidal for Israel as a Jewish democracy. I don’t think Israel’s friends can make that point often enough or loud enough.

But there are two kinds of criticism. Constructive criticism starts by making clear: “I know what world you are living in.” I know the Middle East is a place where Sunnis massacre Shiites in Iraq, Iran kills its own voters, Syria allegedly kills the prime minister next door, Turkey hammers the Kurds, and Hamas engages in indiscriminate shelling and refuses to recognize Israel. I know all of that. But Israel’s behavior, at times, only makes matters worse — for Palestinians and Israelis. If you convey to Israelis that you understand the world they’re living in, and then criticize, they’ll listen.

Destructive criticism closes Israeli ears. It says to Israelis: There is no context that could explain your behavior, and your wrongs are so uniquely wrong that they overshadow all others. Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too. Destructive criticism only empowers the most destructive elements in Israel to argue that nothing Israel does matters, so why change?

Double standards - enough is enough

I’ve been pondering this topic for the last few days ever since I saw some pictures on the Global TV newscast the other night. It concerns our aboriginal people.

The pictures I saw on Global were of another dispute at the Oka reserve. The issues are complex and I happen to believe that the developer was at fault, trying to score some sort of deal with the provincial and/or federal governments.

It was the reaction of the aboriginal people that gives me pause. Everything is so quickly elevated to the “fight” stage with a bunch of thugs standing around with their faces hidden by bandanas threatening all sort of things. It reminds me of the thugs who dressed in black and hid their faces during the recent G20 meetings in Toronto. We called them anarchists and criminals and yet we call the aboriginals in Oka “warriors”. I can’t see the difference. A thug by any other name is a thug. They should all be in jail.  Men don't cover their faces when their intentions are honourable.

Fast forward to Chapel Island, Nova Scotia. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs has upheld the election of a convicted sex offender as chief of a Nova Scotia First Nation reserve. The decision negates a vote by five of six Chapel Island band councillors, who passed a resolution last Tuesday aimed at keeping Wilbert Marshall from assuming office after he was elected to the post in July.

Would a convicted sex offender be allowed to serve as Mayor of St. John’s. Would he or she be able to draw a public salary? Would there be a huge outcry against something like that?

Unquestionably there are some honourable chiefs among the hundreds who govern reserves in Canada but my experience has been that many of them pull in huge salaries, employ mostly their own family members while others on the reserves live in decrepit housing and attract the sympathetic attention of TV stars like Mike Holmes.

We treat the aboriginals in this country different than we treat other Canadian citizens as if we’re in some kind of perpetual atonement for the sins of our ancestors. Enough is enough.

Masato Akamatsu - Japanese wunder kid

The reigning unbelievable baseball wall leap of the decade goes to Hiroshima Toyo Carp's Masato Akamatsu on Tuesday night.   Watch and wish outfielders of the world!  :-)




EMBED-Spiderman Style Baseball Catch - Watch more free videos(Apologies for the ad which precedes the video - unavoidable)

Inter-marriages and ducks

I’ve always thought that Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg is a bit of a different duck … now it’s been confirmed.

The eldest son of Queen Elizabeth says he believes he has been placed on Earth as future King ‘for a purpose’ - to save the world. In a recent Daily Mail story, Charles says, “I can only somehow imagine that I find myself being born into this position for a purpose. ‘I don’t want my grandchildren or yours to come along and say to me, “Why the hell didn’t you come and do something about this? You knew what the problem was”.

Charles is an avid proponent of organic farming, which is easy to do when you live on huge tracts of public housing in jolly old England and have large staffs at your disposal to spread the sheep manure. He also styles himself as an ecologist, but last year he commandeered a jet to attend the Copenhagen climate change summit, generating an estimated 6.4 tons of carbon dioxide - 5.2 tons more than if he had used a commercial plane. Last summer, he and his wife Camilla visited Brunei in Asia. For the trip, he hired a private jet, leading to accusations of 'green hypocrisy' as the visit was designed to highlight environmental issues. Hmmm … ecologist you say … must have great relationships with BP officials.

Anyway, this is the lad who’s going to save the world. I can only hope his mother lives to be 110!