Kardie's Population

I was all excited when I saw that Karadie's official population, based on new statistics offered by CWY, was 800, roughly 400 being women.  Because of previous research, and an eyeballing of the village itself, I'd claimed it to be this number.  Other people in the group told me I was wrong, that the true population was about 2000.  So, this new statistic appears to prove that I had the right number, while there's had been wrong.

But, thinking it over, seeing that there are two statistics, one for the overall population, and the other for the number of women capable of working the fields we crafted them, brings me to a numerical problem with my own theory. If there are 400 working women, that means that there are probably around 400 working men.  Makes sense, until you realize that not everyone in the village would be working the fields.

The people left unaccounted for are children.  Little girls don't work in the fields, and therefor, they would not have been counted among the number of working women.  Then, consider that there should be roughly the same amount of male children as female, and you're left with a population of youth that must not have been looked at.

So, if you revert to believing the alternate estimate, that there are truly 2000 people and only 800 workers, some sinister perspectives are brought to focus.  Why would there be more children than adults, if the majority of a human's lifespan is spent in adulthood?  North American will be tempted to preach hard truths that they've seen in advertisements: people in Africa don't live as long, and children are likely to die.

During my time in Mali, I know of only one child death, and it happened in Sirakorola, not Karadie.  The child in question had Downs Syndrome, and as often happens with intellectual disabilities, it came coupled with some physical hurdles.  The child developed Malaria, and passed away.

The family went into the traditional seven days of mourning, in which they didn't leave their household, save for family necessities such as collecting groceries.

So, while I don't see too many child deaths in Canada, I'm not inclined to believe that more than half of the children in Karadie die.  I never saw a child's death in my village, and the only only one I did see, was kind of circumstantial.

Truth is, lots of people move away from the village to find jobs in the city, or even move to other, more successful villages.  It created an age gap, so that Karadie had a number of children and elders, but few people in the "young adult" category.

Mesage From Karadie

I got a message from my old Canadian supervisor from CWY.  Apparently, her boss was in Karadie recently, and went so far as to take some photos of the two gardens that we built while we were there.  Seems like they've been pretty successful.

The Mali program for next year has been cancelled, like I guessed it would.  The country seems to be fairly stable now, though.  Democracy is back in place, but I don't think they've really come to a solution for the North.

The first thing you forget about a person is their voice.  I think it was in one of Frank McCourt's books that someone said they couldn't remember the voice of their late mother.  I thought that that sounded like a very sad thing to happen to a person.

I worry a lot about the time when I forget the voices of the Malians of Karadie.

I wrote the Fried Green Tomatoes Review.  Here's the link:

http://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.ca/2012/04/book-fried-green-tomatoes-at-whistle.html

April Showers

Well, it's been snowing over here.  Snowing and sleeting and raining and hailing.  At one time, it seemed like snowballs were falling from the sky.  Not fluffy snowballs made from packing snow, either.  More like the ones that are frozen in the centre, from a chunk of ice that some schoolyard jerk snuck in, defying the playground rules of war.

I have a friend who does his own blog.  It's called VIDEO GAMES.  It's kind of central to one subject, although I won't let on which subject that is.  I didn't think he'd keep it up consistently, but apparently he has.

You should go over there and click on the ads a bunch of times.  Every time somebody clicks on an advertisement there, Google pays him a little.

Here it is:

http://mmmnw.blogspot.ca/

I'm going to recommend it on Google+ and Tweet it.  'Cause that's the kind of friend I am.

Certificate Expiration

Okay, so my main blog has 10267 views for 317 posts.  According to my calculations, that comes out to 32 views per post.  Not bad!  Of course, I don't know what they count as a "view".  It could count every time that I've updated as a view.  Of course, were that the case, it would only knock it down to 31 views per post, which isn't too much worse.  Besides, that's not the case.  My reviews blog... Heh... has less views than posts, so obviously it's not counting my update-visits as views.  However, this may simply means that it doesn't count my visits as "views" so long as I'm logged in.  I have this place bookmarked  to my main blog, so I visit here, and then log in from that page.  So I might be "viewing" it before I log in, whereas, when I do a review, I log in on this page, and then shift over to my reviews blog.  This means I never touch my reviews blog when I'm, not logged in, potentially cancelling the view status.

When I'm at the library, I have a different IP address and I'm also not initially logged in, since I Google my name to find my blog (my Flickr now comes up on the front page if you Google my name), so that pretty much definitely counts as a view.  In any case, I'm making over 30 views per post, which is pretty darn decent.  I don't know how those posts are distributed, though.  For all I know, there could be some that have hundreds of views, and most of my posts are well beneath 30.

After my main blog, Gryphon's Gallery has the highest view count per post, with 493 views for 12 posts.  That equals 41 views per post.  Wait... That's more than my regular blog!   Then The Migrating Gryphon has 400 views for 21 posts.  19 views per post.

Ehhh... Gryphon's Reviews has 13 views and 19 posts...  0.6 views per post.  I always suspected that!  I'm going to continue on and consider reviews as legitimate updates, though.  Pretend I didn't see this.

Today I realized that I am no longer certified to perform CPR and First Aid.  My certification expired.  I've got a wall covered in my nine certificates (and one diploma) and today, I had to take one down.  I was feeling fairly positive about it, though, because I got two college acceptance letters today.  I figured I'd file away my First Aid & CPR certificate and replace it with an acceptance letter.  Then, when I received my Ontario College Certificate, I would replace it with that, and then when I received my diploma, I would use it to replace the certificate.  Same method I used for my Karate certificates.  The higher credential, or belt, replaces the last.  But the acceptance letter was too big to fit into the frame, and I wound up filing the certificate and the letter, and felt like I came out losing.

I also got a rejection letter for the Social Services worker program at my favoured college.  It said that I had met the educational requirements for the program, but that I had failed to attend a mandatory information session.  I had received no invitation to an information session, nor did I see that one was being held during my research.  Oh well, it actually sounded like a human had written the letter, so I'll take that as a positive.  I knew that I was applying late for that program, and when I'd applied, it wouldn't have been normal for their to have still been openings.  It's possible that the information session was held before my application.  However, if that is the case, they should have not kept the program listed as open for applicants.

Infectious Disease Consultation

Well, Blogger updated. Now when I log in, I get to see how many pageviews each blog has. Talk about something I didn't want to know. Thanks for forcing that on me, Google. That company's getting spooky with how much it wants to know, how much it wants you to know, and how much it wants you to know that it knows. The other day, my Google+ account sent me some articles they thought I would enjoy. It did it based on which websites I visit, and what I do on those websites. These are not sites that are associated with Google, nor are they things I Google, so how it collected that information is a mystery to me. On their Google Maps, you can scroll down onto your own street, and many others across the world, and "walk" from place to place like a phantom visiting a previous time. I've read that Google is now more powerful than most countries.

 They're probably going to analyze this article and send me recommended articles regarding suspicion of Google that are from Blogger.

Anyway, I finally got to see that doctor. He told me what I basically thought he would. "Whatever it was, it seems to have passed. I wouldn't do anything about it at this point. If it flares up again, give me a shout." He seemed to think that it was NOT Cutaneous Leishmaniasis. He seemed to take the counter-points for that argument more seriously, and said that "Just because someone else caught it, doesn't mean that you did." Basically, he cast doubt on the one theory, and said he had no clue what it was, but whatever it was, it doesn't seem to be in my system anymore.

 I got accepted into all three colleges that I applied to, but only for Human Services Foundation. Oh well, at least that makes my decision in that regard simpler. I just found out about the other two acceptances today. Something to celebrate.

When I asked that one college about whether or not they accepted unofficial transcripts, I first sent an email and then tried by phone. The lady on the phone told me they didn't, but I got an email saying that they did... Tsk tsk.

 Edit: Okay, the first time I tried to update, it killed my paragraphs. Let's see if this works.

Double edit: They won't let me put paragraphs no matter how many linebreaks I do. They won't even let me indent. Let's try doing a makeshift indent out of spaces.

Triple edit: Nope, they killed my ability to do that, too. Didn't I just say in this very update that Google upgrades it's technology to a fault? I don't think it can survive like this, so let's hope for another modification soon.

Quadruple edit:   Okay, I think this will work.  If it doesn't, I'll leave it as it is.  The method I'm using now is still quite inconvenient.

Dreaming About Elephants

Guess what I found?



It's Mozo! Just like Hawa, he was in my list of people I wished I'd gotten a picture of. I looked through the FB account of someone who had been in the program last year, and I found him. I just need Nono, Crazy Dog Man, and Loud Ice Cream Guy now.

Last night, I had a dream. I was about 13, and walking along some railroad tracks with an old friend from middle school. I pointed out to someplace far away and said "If you look out from here, you can see it".

I've got this background image for my laptop, which is also my cover image for Facebook. It's a band of elephant silhouettes marching in single file under the sunset. This image is what I'm pointing out to my friend.

He says that he needs to get a picture of it and pulls out a camera. However, when he takes the photo, the elephants aren't in it. We look up and see that the elephants are in a new formation. I observe that they must have walked out of range of the camera, and note that they have never done this before.

Suddenly, the silhouettes turn toward us, and then take a step in our direction. Soon, they cease to be silhouettes, and we can see them in detail. Soon, they will trample us.

My friend turned to run. I stop him. "You can't outrun them. The elephants have been frightened, and will head toward the nearest terrain that won't impede their pace. Instead of running blindly, we should go to the forest."

We go to the forest and hide in a ditch. I remember that I was scared, because I couldn't see anything in the ditch, or defend myself against unforeseen monsters. But I thought to myself that sometimes you need to put yourself into harm's way in order to avoid a greater threat, and that you can't always see everything in front of you.

The elephants continued the stampede, and left the two of us unharmed. I congratulated myself on making a good estimation.

That's a pretty good dream. It was a nightmare, which I managed to turn around and make the best of. Dreams don't usually work that way.

Have you heard of Google+? It's Google's answer to Facebook. I have an account. I've had one for a while. It's not very good. Apparently, it was better when it first started, but I didn't quite find it at that stage. Since then, it's updated it's technology to a fault, to compensate for Facebook's popularity.

At first, every time I tried to add an image to an album, I created an identical album to the one I was trying to add to, with the addition of the image I was trying to add. So I had a series of identical albums, with the only difference being that each album had one more image than the last.

It kept trying to identify my face as being in stranger's albums that weren't of me. It kept nagging me to identify the names of people standing in the background of images I took.

I started it when I was in Quebec, so my account was in French. I changed the setting to "English", but it kept my "Circles" in French. I thought this would change once I started using an English computer, but it didn't. So now I have a half-French half-English account, just because I started my account on a French computer.

I feel like an old man. In my day, social networking websites weren't overly-complicated or full of unnecessary faults. Despite the constantly growing problems connected with FB, it remains the most practical networking site around.

I need to admit that I made a mistake with my doctor's appointment for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis. On my card, it says 19 April/12. I thought it meant April 12th. It comes out more simply over this blog, but it's not so obvious when you're looking at the real thing. I brought it to someone else, and they read the same as me. But it does say April 19th. I made a mistake.

Transcripts and Acceptances

I called my first priority college today, to see if they accept unofficial transcripts. Turns out they don't, but they have received and accepted my application because they do accept electronic transcripts. Remember how I said that I'd thought my application was complete when I gave them the information necessary to access my application via computer, but then I was told that I needed a certified copy, and that even then, it wasn't considered an "official" transcript unless it was sealed inside an envelope? Well, it turns out for this college, the application was complete after I finished the electronic bit.

I was also accepted into one of my secondary colleges today. It's the one that has it's Human Services Foundation and Social Service Worker courses at separate campuses, and the day after I applied, apparently there were some riots over there, and I know two guys who've gone there and dropped out. They were, however, the only college that had an online account that I was able to log into.

Well, whatever I decide, it's nice to know that I can get in somewhere. The offer expires on the first of next month, so that's something to keep in mind.

Hey, do you know what country uses the same educational structure as Canada? Australia. I was looking at options for if I wanted to turn my college diploma into University credits, and they gave me a bunch of names of Universities that do this. There were some funny-sounding ones that came from places I'd never heard of. Little research told me they were all in Australia.

Printing in the Library

Do you know how you print something out at the library? You used to do it by printing it out like you would at any other computer. Your print would come out of a machine behind the front desk. You'd go up, ask for the print, and they'd give it to you for ten cents.

They changed the way they do it. Now they have a "print computer". I sat down, logged in, and it told me that it had not received a "Print command".

I was fortunate enough that there was a nice elderly woman who stepped me through the entire process. See, to print something out, you need to log in to one of the regular computers, try to print something out, which then sends a "print command" to the print computer. You then lock the computer you're going into and go over and log into the print computer, enter some coins into the machine next to it and submit the command.

That's... unusual. There are some instructions, but they basically say "Get a print command" which doesn't do you any good if you don't know what a print command is.

I uploaded my Quebec photos to my Flickr account, and a bunch of old Facebook profile pictures. In total, I uploaded 75 pictures of Mali, 30 pictures of Quebec, and 15 profile pics. The profile pics came out weird because I cropped them on FB to best suit the format, so each one's shaped a little differently.

In total, I have used 31% of my monthly space on their website. I can pay to get more, but that's a laugh. I just uploaded almost all the photos I've ever taken, and it took significantly less than half of the amount I'm aloud to upload each month.

Everything's titled, and I've grouped them into three "Sets" but I don't have any descriptions up. Because of the way they do title images, I've got Mama's fist pose as my Mali title image, a blurry boat as my Quebec image, and the Ali drawing that Mariko did as my Gryphon Photos image.

I just used my real name as my username, because I'm not trying to be anonymous, and my actual name is unique enough that it wasn't already taken.

The soldiers in Mali stepped down in favour of a stand-in president until the next election. That's good, I think. Maybe they'll get things a bit more organized.

Flickr

Guess what I found?



Hawa Coulibaly! She's the one in the pink shirt. She was one of the people I was lamenting not having a photo of. During this shot, my camera's still on it's low-quality setting, and she's not too in-focus, but I'm still kind of glad I found this.

I found out what "Unofficial transcript" means. It means a transcript that isn't sealed in an envelope. Apparently, colleges accept unofficial transcripts all the time, but it depends on the individual college's policy on it. So I have to check with the individual colleges I applied to, and if they don't accept them, I need to to my high school and request a transcript that's sealed in an envelope.

Turns out my doctor's appointment isn't today, but next Thursday. They acted like I'd made a silly mistake, but I dunno. "Twelfth" isn't very easily misheard as "Nineteenth" if you catch my drift. I hate to be suspicious, but I feel like somebody rescheduled me without bothering to let me know.

I have a Flickr account now. It's a networking site centred only around the publication of photos. I uploaded all my Mali photos in one album, but didn't title them or add descriptions. I think I'll do another album for the Quebec phase, and another for old photos.

I got called back by the agency and asked if I was still looking for work. They offered a two day assignment, but they needed to see if the employer still needed me. They said they'd call back if he did. They didn't call back, so I guess he didn't.

Okay, I don't know how Flickr privacy settings work. I said "Available to the public" but I don't know if they consider the "public" as restricted to fellow users of their service, like Facebook does. Here's the link, anyway:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78975407@N05/sets/72157629438796588/

Unofficial Transcript

If I didn't make it clear, I rejected every request to do an Ask Me Anything. Dude, in an AMA, they could ask you anything! I don't know what I'm hiding, but I'm probably hiding something, and I just might find out what it is if I did one. I remember the first time I heard the term. It was one of my FB friends, she posted as her status "For one hour I will be completely honest, ask me anything." Her top comment was something like "Why are you being so stupid?" I thought AMEN! It's especially loaded in an environment like that, which is filled with people who know you well, and will have better ideas of what to ask, and be more deeply impacted by your responses. It's just too loaded.

I have that specialist appointment tomorrow. I already have my test results, but since I'm still around, I may as well go.

Ontario Colleges has processed an my transcript, but has processed it as an "Unofficial transcript". What the hell? I got this straight from my highschool. I'm going to have to figure out what they mean by "Unofficial".

Spoke to my CP

Do you guys know the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother"? It's about some guy explaining to his children how he met their mother. It's a really long, sitcom-length story comprised entirely of flashbacks with no determinate end. It started during the time when everyone was talking about the "death of sitcoms" when all the old ones were ending, and none of the new ones were catching on. Suddenly, a new generation of popular media took the public by storm, and HIMYM was a contributor.

I don't keep up with television much nowadays, and the only reason that I'm mentioning it now is because the one actor that I've been compared to more than any other's most prominent role is on that show.

I got these comments more often before I grew the beard, but now that I'm temporarily semi-famous, people feel the need to compare me with famous people, and it's started to crop back. Let's look at the two of us.

Me:



Jason Segel:



I don't see it.

In other news, I spoke to my counterpart over the phone today. Apparently, he's working out in the countryside, in a place without electricity. He was laughing, because he'd been a city-boy his entire life before CWY, and his first lengthy stint in the country was in Karadie. But as soon as he landed work after the program, they him back out to the country.

I voiced my concern for Mali and it's recent events, and to my surprise, he laughed! He was like "Oh, so you've heard about that, eh?" He assured me that Mali's just fine, and his family and homeland haven't been touched by the current events. He seemed to find my concern hilarious, actually. I don't really know what to make of that.

He also seemed to know that I'd sent photos back to our host family. He listed a number of Malians who'd called him and asked about how I was doing.

I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to speak French. I've been reading and writing in French enough, but when it comes to on-the-spot performance, there's a certain psychological aspect, being able to switch from "English-mode" to "French-mode". I managed it, though, and my counterpart complimented me on it. It was a bit rougher than in-person speak, too, because I couldn't use body language, and the connection was bad.

My Mom told me that I was speaking baby-French, and that she understood it all. My brother went so far as to say that I "spat on the French language." That it's supposed to be a sophisticated language, whereas I sounded excitable.

A Photo Hit It Big

So... have you guys heard of Reddit? It's like a series of interlinked forums, which are created and fueled by the public. Recently, I posted a photo to their subreddit (forum) for images of a certain girl that you guys have seen before.



This networking site is pretty huge, and if you make a submission to one of their more substantial subreddits, it will almost certainly not see the light of day. This subreddit has the highest member count I've seen yet, with 1,608,019 members.

It made the front page. Here's the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/rzyzk/just_a_picture_i_took_of_a_village_girl_while_i/

As of now, it has 640 upvotes (positive ratings) and 128 comments. Someone suggested I post it to another place where it would be applicable, and it made the front page THERE as well!

http://www.reddit.com/r/HumanPorn/comments/s0oc2/malian_village_girl_xpost_from_rpics_2592x1936/

Yes, I'm aware that that subreddit is called r/humanporn. On Reddit, "Porn" is a term for a subreddit based around photos. It doesn't mean it's pornography. R/humanporn is dedicated to photos of human beings that inspire emotion. Right now, there's an elderly Romanion woman casting a vote, and and autistic man with a portable game system standing next to my village girl on the front page. Ironically, the highest-rated photo right now is of a Tuareg, which are the people invading my girl's homeland.

Anyway, to sum all this up, my photo is now famous. People are arguing in the comments section about whether or not she has arms. I had to post another photo of her where her arms are visible. There are people arguing a bit over whether or not she's blind, and whether or not she has Malaria.

I've been asked several times to do an Ask Me Anything, which is basically a public interview where people ask me questions, just because I took this photo. I don't think this fame will last past a few days, but right now it's booming pretty good.

It's funny. All these other photos I'm posting beside were taken by these really powerful, high-grade cameras. It's funny that my shitty, ancient camera took that sweet pic.

Doing the Old Rounds

This college application process is going to be a pain to the bitter end. On the website, I gave them all the information to access my high school transcript, and it didn't say anything to imply I needed to do more than this. Since then, all three colleges have asked me to send a certified copy of my transcript to the Ontario Colleges HQ. I've done that, but on my online college account, they say they haven't received it yet. I'm not seeing this from Ontario Colleges, I'm seeing this from one college website. If I hadn't applied for that specific college, I wouldn't be able to track my application process. The Ontario Colleges website is really uninformative.

When I was being interviewed at the temp agency, the lady didn't seem to care at all about the hole in my resume. Granted, it's only three months wide, but she didn't seem to look at any of the dates. She only asked about my last two placements, too. I was a little disappointed. I was ready to throw down my spiel.

During the WHMIS test, I hadn't realized that they'd given me a sheet with all the answers. I finished the test, brought it to the woman, and told her that I wasn't confident with two of my answers (I guess it doesn't matter, you're allowed to screw up four times). She was like "Okay" and went over to the instructional sheet she gave me. I slapped my forehead with surprise at my stupidity. She was like "Wait, you were doing that without looking?" I was like "Yeah" She was like "Whoa".

After the interview, I went down to the Tim Hortons where I used to go every time before work at my first placement. I recognized the manager and one of the younger employees all the way back from the last time I was there thirteen months ago. I gave my old order, large coffee, two sugars no cream, and a chicken salad sandwich, whole wheat, don't toast the bread.

I was almost crying into my sandwich. I was like, "I've returned to this way of living!"

Guelph Katimavik

Guelph's been having a lot of articles on Katimavik. I read one recently that spoke to the people in charge of the Guelph Food Bank, where I used to volunteer. Apparently, they're a Guelph Katimavik work station.

It was funny to see people that I knew quoted in the newspaper. It was especially funny to see them talking about something that, last I spoke to them, they knew nothing about. I remember going into the Food Bank after coming back from Katimavik, telling the warehouse manager that the reason he hadn't seen me in six months was because I was off doing Katimavik. He was all, "What's that?"

Now I'm reading him in the newspaper speaking extensively on the value of the organization, how it effects both the youth and community. He said that "Without Katimavik, it opens a huge void that needs to be filled". He said that they'd take as many volunteers as the organization would allow.

Not only that, but the Katimavik volunteer had some pretty strong words to say about Guelph and the Food Bank. She said that she had never had a job that she liked as much as she like working at the food bank. She said that she would work longer hours if the program allowed her. She said that she loved Guelph, and after finishing the program, she planned to come back for school, and afterward, she hoped to stay in Guelph for the rest of her life.

These are so many worlds colliding for me right now. When I read this article, I'm thinking from a Food Bank perspective, from a Katimavik perspective, from a Guelph community perspective... I'm seeing photos of a woman in a Katimavik shirt doing jobs in the Food Bank, looking just like it did last time I was there, doing jobs I did when I was volunteering there...

Twitter Trumps

When I was in Toronto, more than one person let me know that they've been keeping up with me on Twitter. When you combine them and the people who I already knew followed me, there are more people reading my Twitter than any other of my online social mediums (except Facebook). It's kind of funny, because I barely pay attention to my Twitter. I only made it as a favour to someone else, and I've always scoffed at it, calling it an “Inferior version of Facebook's status update function”. In fact, most of my posts on there are Facebook status updates that I copy/pasted to my Twitter as an afterthought. Apparently, though, making the effort to do that copy/paste has paid off. Twitter must genuinely have some kind of appeal that I'm not getting.

While we're on the subject of networking sites, Facebook has a new layout that they invented while I was gone. It's called Timeline, and it's... It's bad. I've said before that a networking site isn't popular because it's good, it's good because it's popular. It's more about the community than the site, and the wider the audience you can branch out to, the better. But for the longest time, Facebook's been making modification after modification to their format, and for the most part, not only have they been bad, but they've been unpopular, too. I don't even understand why they'd make those changes from a management or financial standpoint.

Are they worried that people are going to get sick of Facebook? They won't. It's because people aren't relying on the Facebook staff to hold their interest. Even if Facebook doesn't change, people's lives do. Those are the changes that keep people interested. That's what makes it a social networking site. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Are they trying to find out how bad they can make the site and stay in business by virtue of their reputation and popularity earned by past accomplishments? Seems like it.

Anyway, they gave you an option if you wanted to upgrade to this new format. They're going to force the change three days from now, but you can choose if you want to change before they force it.

Lots of friends who did Katimavik had these pins that said “Save Katimavik” posted on their profile pictures. They sent me an invitation to an application that would allow me to put this badge on my image. So I went and did it. By adding the pin, it also decided to change my profile to the Timeline format. And I can't change it back. I didn't expect that to happen. If I had just made a few more days, I would have had it forced on me, but I would have been able to say I fought the good fight.

I got a message from the agricultural school representative today, saying that my letter was successfully delivered to my Mali host family. YES!

Applied for Work

I applied for work through my old temp agency today. I'm hoping to be out of this place in about a month and a half, but I figure I don't want to open a hole in my resume, so a little work in the meantime won't kill me. Honestly, I was hoping I'd never do factory work again, so I've been just dicking around here in Guelph, dreaming of Africa.

And, to be completely honest, one of the reasons that I managed to stop feeling sorry for myself and go out and apply is because of the cultural exposure element to working factory jobs. It's not something I want to say, but you don't see a ton of immigrants working higher-end jobs, even though most of them are highly educated in their own country.

Looking back, I had a number of close friends from Africa during the time when I was working factory jobs. One of them had a name that I now recognize as Malian (although I don't think exclusively) and one woman told me she was "West African". There's an African guy I used to work with that I still see semi-regularly.

It's not just Africa. As one person I knew who immigrated from Afghanistan noted, in the factory world it's necessary to "know the names of all the lands". A person who has immigrant parents, but who was born and raised in Canada, by my understanding is basically a Canadian. I don't know how proper it is to say, but I've always gotten along well with people of different cultures, and that magical time when two cultures meet has always appealed to me.

The woman who interviewed me today didn't bat an eye when she saw on my resume that I had been working in subsistence Africa. I guess it's not as notable, because they see people who worked in Africa all the time. But I guarantee you they don't see too many subsistence livers.

I overheard two employees at the agency speaking on how to prioritize who should be employed, and the consensus was to prioritize anyone with experience working in Canada. It kind of made me sad, because they were talking about a couple who were fresh immigrants from Canada, who they'd just put through paperwork and interviews. They had experience working in the agricultural field. That's the same as my CWY friends. I knew that they were probably cream-off-the-crop educated employees to have made it all the way to Canada, but I saw that a punk like me, who only has a high school diploma and a smattering of temp experience, would get prioritized above them. I almost feel like a dick just for applying for work, if I'm pushing such people down and stealing opportunities.

I have a policy of not applying on Fridays, because usually, if you're going to get called back by an agency, it will be the day after you apply. If you do it on a Friday, they have a full weekend to forget you. I applied yesterday, but they put off my interview until today. Tomorrow's Good Friday, so they've got a 3-day weekend to forget me. Oh well, I wasn't sure if I was hoping to get work or not, so let's just let the chips fall where they may.

Trudeau vs. Brazeau

Timbuktu got taken by the Tuaregs. Now every major Northern city in Mali has been taken. All we can hope for now is that the Tuaregs weren't talking bull when they said that all they wanted was North Mali, and won't be compelled to take more just because they can.

Two politicians got into a boxing match. It was a charity match for cancer research. The liberal boxer, Justin Trudeau, wore a fake Katimavik tattoo during the fight. Before the match, during a debate, he argued on behalf of Katimavik, and the Conservative guy, James Moore, instead of replying to the question, essentially said "We'll settle this in the ring! We'll settle this in the ring!"

Now, that's not how the boxing match started, but it goes to show how some people felt that political debates could be settled based on who could punch harder. During the weigh-in, the topic of Katimavik came up again, and the Conservative boxer, Patrick Brazeau, replied by making puns on political wording to say that he was going to punch Trudeau, and that he, Brazeau, had a very large penis.

Brazeau was a gorilla, too. It was like, the Conservatives got a boxer, while the Liberals got a politician.

I don't really follow boxing, but I was shocked at how artless the match seemed. It was just two guys standing in a ring and punching each other in the head. To my surprise, Trudeau demolished Brazeau! You'd think that if you match a kind of average guy against a super hulk, the littler guy is going to have to use some technique to overcome the big guy's brute force. But no, the little guy and the big guy just stood there, punching each other in the head, and the big guy went crawling out of the ring, while the little guy was barely winded.

I'm glad that the guy supporting Katimavik won, but this whole little stint seemed... kind of primitive. I know no official decisions are going to change because of a boxing match, but the way it was hyped, and the way it went down, it really felt like people were trying to solve intellectual debates based on who could punch hardest.