The Mandela Effect

Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect?

This phenomenon is named for the legacy of the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. 

However, while everyone remembers this as his contribution to history, a sizeable number of people remember him dying in prison before claiming his title as President. This presents the obvious question: How could someone who died in prison, later become the President of South Africa?

Well, people have theories, and they're not what you might assume.

The Mandela Effect is the idea that multiple dimensions exist, and sometimes merge. So, when you remember something that doesn't quite match what history claims, it's not because of your faulty memory: it's because you existed in a dimension where your memory was true, and then you were integrated into a dimension that doesn't quite match what you remember.

Despite the Mandela Effect being named after the former South African President's legacy, it's best known for the namesake of the Berenstain Bears book series.

Look closely at the name of that book series. Is it spelled correctly, or do you remember it as "The Berenstein Bears"?

If you remember an "e" instead of an "a", you might just be from a different dimension, according to The Mandela Effect.

Not going to lie, when I first ran across this, it felt a little unsettling. I, like many others, knew them as the Berensteins. However, I don't place much faith in human memory or perception, and after puzzling over it for a bit, I was able to rationalize the phenomenon and come up with an argument for my belonging in this dimension, even if I remember an "e".

Most people in North America are familiar with the sound "stein" attached to surnames. "Stain" is less common. When people read, they often use mental shortcuts, such as noting the first and last letter, looking at the length of the word and assuming what it is based on past familiarity. It's a way to speed up our reading, and it's why typos so often go overlooked. With this in mind, it's easy to mistake the abnormal "a" with the familiar "e", especially since it doesn't change the length of the word. It's also often written in cursive which makes it a little less easy to read if you're not used to it. Also, there have been instances of packaging that used the "e" by mistake. So all this contributes to the common misunderstanding of this beloved children's book series.

Another example of The Mandela Effect is Darth Vader of Star Wars' iconic phrase, "Luke, I am your father."

He never said this.

What he actually said is, "No, I am your father."

This one didn't phase me much. The former sounds better in isolation, and the latter makes more sense in context. If repeated in isolation, the phrase that sounds better that way is how it will be remembered.

There are lots of these. Remember when Hannibal Lecter said "Hello Clarice" in Silence of the Lambs? Yeah, never happened. Remember the Monopoly Man's signature monocle? He's never had one.

So in general, I feel above this idea that if you misremember something it's because you're from a different dimension. Have some humility, human memory is fickle.

Until recently. I discovered an example of The Mandela Effect that shakes me to my core.

The Fruit of the Loom logo

*Shudder*

I hate to be the one to inform you, but this classic underwear logo does not, nor has it ever, existed in the fashion depicted above.

This is the current logo.

No cornucopia.

It's not a recent, simplified design either. While the logo has been modified a number of times, there is no evidence to suggest that a cornucopia has ever been featured in the design.

However, many people have distinct memories of learning what a cornucopia is from asking their parents when they saw the logo. Unlike other examples, where a memory was replaced by something more familiar, people learned about something unfamiliar with this memory.

There is a design that was used for a time, where brown leaves backed the fruit, and some people say this design is what people remember, and replace the leaves with a cornucopia. But this doesn't make sense to me, because leaves are far more familiar to most people than cornucopias.

Also, this chart has been used to see if people are consistent in selecting the same logo from their memories:

People consistently choose the first one, which implies a shared memory. The counterpoint to this is that it's the most appealing, which causes people to choose it.

Of course it's the most appealing. Because a panel of experts designed it to be appealing. Because it existed.

While people remember the visual the same, different people have different vocabularies for it. Some people remember it as a cornucopia, but others know it as the horn of plenty, or more simply, the horn. So the subjective parts of memory that would vary between families does change person by person, but everyone remembers the same visual.

I distinctly remember the cornucopia, and everything about how people remember it makes it seem legit, unlike the cases of the Berenstain Bears and Darth Vader.

And yet, there is no concrete evidence to suggest the cornucopia ever existed. In fact, there is only evidence that it didn't.

I definitely come from the cornucopia dimension.

Floods Aren't Fun

One evening this past winter, me and Lee-Anne were home and I smelled what seemed to me like wood burning. I asked Lee-Anne if she could smell it too and she said she could. We quickly surveyed the unit and couldn't find the source. We opened the door to the shared section of the house and found ourselves ankle-deep in water.

It didn't take long to find out that water was spouting from the back of the washing machine. We'd put a load of laundry in, and after shutting the machine off, the water flow quickly stopped. At this point in time, our neighbours were still gone.

We called our landlord even though it was kind of late. He answered, and it was the first time either of us had ever heard his voice. Our tour of the unit had been hosted by the previous tenant, and all the legal stuff after that had been done remotely.

Our landlord said he'd contact the maintenance person and that he'd be by the next day. Until then, he asked us to clean up the water. He didn't really need to ask us, we were kind of incentivized to not have our own home destroyed.

It was an uncomfortable task, though. Lot of stuff in the laundry room and I'm not quite sure how they all work. We spent awhile sopping up water with mops and towels, wringing it into buckets and bailing it all out. All the while, I was vaguely nervous that one of the devices was going to explode in my face from prolonged exposure to the water.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with a house flood. Long time readers might remember that one Christmas in Guelph, we had a mysterious flood that ran through our kitchen. We spent the holiday season sweeping the water into the drain in the laundry room over there and running wet vacs, taking shifts through the night to stop it from building up. We had various professionals come through, with no one finding the answer until it was discovered that a vacated house uphill from us had a pipe burst and the water was running underground into our place. The very same day that the flooding issue was fixed and I was heading back to Kitchener, my roommate called and said my unit in Kitchener was flooded.

Anyway, this time around, we managed to clean things up. Nothing exploded in my face, and while the night was tense (we never found out what was causing the burning smell, which is just uncomfortable), everyone survived and the maintenance man showed up the next day.

He said it was likely a blockage in the pipes and he'd have to snake it out. Apparently he'd run into this issue before, when they were working on the upstairs unit and later found the basement to be flooded. He said it was because the pipes were in the form of a "T" which he personally thought was poorly planned. He'd like to check upstairs but I tell him the neighbours have been gone for over two months.

So he spent awhile on the pipe with his snake. Later on, he called me over and said that whatever it was, it was in deep, and his 25 foot snake had failed to clear the blockage. He told me he's get in touch with a plumber.

The next day, we have a plumber over. He's got a 60 foot snake. He works for awhile and finds success. No more water coming out the back of the washing machine.

About a week later, late in the evening, me and Lee-Anne heard some commotion upstairs. It's our neighbours. They'd left half a month after we gained access to our unit, and only a few days after we made our big move. It had been about two and a half months since then. I was worried we'd been spoiled by not having to deal with noise from upstairs.

The next day, we left our unit and found ourselves ankle-deep in water.

So the way we got to reintroduce ourselves to our neighbours was by telling them the basement was flooded, asking them if they'd used the washing machine since coming back, and explaining the situation last week.

They said they hadn't used the washing machine. We start to clean things up, and while we clean, it starts flooding again. We remember what the maintenance guy said about the basement flooding when they worked on stuff upstairs. We ask the neighbours if they're using their kitchen sink. They are, and we have to ask them not to. Flooding issue stops.

We contact the landlord again. He contacts both the maintenance man and the plumber. Both of them come together next time. This time, they can access the upstairs. Somehow, they resolve the issue. They tell me that they've written up an estimate to get some of the pipes reworked out of that "T" formation both of them are so unfond of. My landlord approves it. One more visit from the plumber later, and it hasn't been an issue since.

Floods aren't fun.

I know I haven't updated much this month, but I've made three entries on my Gryphood blog this month, so technically, I'm ahead of schedule. My last entry over there was that curry recipe that my mom got from a video game, which I mentioned on this blog a little while back. 25 ingredients! Probably the most intricate thing I've ever cooked. Here's a link: LeBlanc Curry (gryphood.blogspot.com)

Third Wave

Yup, I don't like to say it but it looks like we're in our third wave. Apparently, it was confirmed in early March, but a new province-wide lockdown was only called in April. Felt like an April Fools joke. We've only been out of lockdown for about a month, and I guess we were released from it right as we were confirming the third wave. Places like Toronto and Peel Region never even got to leave lockdown. 

It's kind of confusing. Awhile back, I made the prediction that Christmas 2020 would be the peak of the pandemic, as people gathered together in large numbers and close quarters to celebrate our largest celebration of the year, during our second wave which had been larger than our first. Then, as the weather warmed, I figured the virus would ease up like it did last year. We also had our vaccines distributing, and between these two figures I thought the rates would taper away, and while we might have had a third wave in the fall of 2021, I thought by then enough of us would have had the vaccine that it would be a smaller wave than our second.

And this is why I'm not a medical professional. Instead, we left our second wave and entered a third a month later. Our Intensive Care Units are apparently hitting record demand.

A big point of pride for us Canadians is that we avoided a third wave while the US didn't. Looks like we got there, though. Also, while we've done a relatively decent job at adapting to the pandemic, we didn't do the best at acquiring and distributing vaccines. Some of my US relatives have taken a few jabs at the Canadian branch of the family for how difficult it has been for us to get our shots. Oh well, after everything they've been through, they deserve a win.

The reason being given for the third wave is that the variants turned out to be really all that. They're calling them VOC's now, for "Variants of Concern". Remember when I said that it was odd that we condemned the term "China Virus" for being xenophobic, but then we had no trouble naming the new variants after the UK, Brazil, and South Africa? Well, looks like we're being consistent, because we turned away from country names again.

The outbreak zones are no longer long term care residences, likely because most of the workers and residents have been vaccinated. The University of Waterloo's residence was declared an outbreak zone.

There are more exceptions to restrictions than in the previous lockdown. For example, my work's in-person service is allowed to keep running, unlike last time.

Schools are being allowed to stay open. One way that COVID has changed our education systems forever is that, during mandatory school closures and optional home-schooling services, there was enough pressure to develop an accessible virtual option. This means that almost all children can access school from home. This means no more snow days! It was made official a few months ago, when the weather was hazardous enough that students couldn't travel to school. Instead of declaring a snow day, they called for a "weather impacted day" and students had to attend virtually. No longer will children know the immense joy of having their classes canceled.

While we're on the topic of this past winter. One big difference for me was that I had to shovel snow. Growing up in apartments, this was never something I needed to do. Even in my old townhouse, despite it being a pretty low-cost area, we had a maintenance guy come in to take care of it all. My only prior experience comes from helping a friend in high school do it, and helping a friend of the family in my early twenties. But I never did it for me or my household. I have, however, supported a number of people who use wheelchairs, and they've mentioned that there's a special place in heck for the people who don't shovel their driveways. I use this as a reminder to make sure that at least the sidewalk is cleared enough that a wheelchair could easily move over it.

I sent a Christmas present to a friend of mine through Canada Post, and he finally got it this past Saturday. Four months late! I'm still waiting on his present.

My friend who I mentioned was in the hospital a few posts back passed away.

Got Vaxxed

Yesterday I received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. On Monday, we were told that my staff team was eligible to register on the premise that we are front-line medical workers. That sounds weird, but it's kind of true in that we work with people face-to-face who are sometimes immunocompromised. Recently, Waterloo Region has opened three pop-up clinics in community spaces to increase the speed at which they can vaccinate people. So on Monday they opened registration for these clinics, one of them opening up as soon as Wednesday, the other two opening up today.

Members who receive our services, and one guardian from each of their households, are also eligible to receive their vaccinations now according to our Phase 2 rollout guidelines. Lee-Anne got her first dose of PfizerBiontech a little while back, on the premise that she's been providing emergency relief at an optometry clinic in a hard-hit area. My brother's trying to get it for having a history of asthma and working a front-line service.

Last Christmas, before they shut down the mall, me and Lee-Anne were doing some holiday shopping and saw a van with an electronic sign on it with words rotating through it. It read something like "The Mark of the Devil is here, it is the COVID vaccine. If you take it, you will become sick, and it will alter your DNA, and you will go to Hell".

I try not to use religious language on this blog, but this is the quote as close as I can remember. I guess me and Lee-Anne have weighed in on this topic, and the people in that van would have an opinion on where our decision is going to put us.

The process wasn't too exciting. I took an uber, and there was a screening person at the entrance of the parking lot. So my uber driver got screened. I gave him a good tip.

They required a letter from my boss as proof of employment, but they only asked for the consent form. I asked them if they needed the letter, and they said yes but barely looked at it. I don't think they would have looked at it if they weren't prompted, and I'm pretty sure they didn't read it.

I always imagine that getting a vaccine is going to feel like a prick, followed by a gush of liquid flowing into me, but the second sensation never happens. It always feels a little creepy how fast it is.

They didn't have a waiting room, which was my main gripe. They told me to follow some blue arrows on the floor to leave the building, and that I "could wait in my car" for fifteen minutes to make sure I didn't have an adverse reaction. I thought that was an offer, not a demand, but I followed the arrows and found myself outside, never seeing a waiting room.

Looking at the card they gave me, it literally says "Please wait 15 minutes after your injection in your vehicle to monitor for any side effects. If you are in distress, please honk your horn and someone will assist you."

I understand that keeping people inside together isn't the most COVID-safe environment, and that it would be preferrable to have people quarantined in their cars, but that's a huge assumption that everyone is going to be arriving by vehicle, especially when it didn't say we would need one in any of the registation documents.

Plus, I've had my fair share of vaccines. I've been sat next to multiple people who have passed out from side effects. Not one of them have shouted for help before it happened. What makes them think someone who is about to faint is going to be able to honk their horn before it happens? How well are they able to monitor a series of vehicles?

I'm the type of person who doesn't mind needles, but is scared of vaccines. It's not getting poked that bothers me, but the idea of a foreign chemical running through my veins. I was especially tense because of how much this vaccine has been built up and wanted to feel monitored.

It was raining heavily, and it was cold and windy. I found an overhang with a bench next to some equipment that had all clearly been tucked away for the winter. I don't know that any of the staff would have noticed me pass out through the wind and the rain, tucked aside like that.

Also, I had some documentation that they gave me which I couldn't afford to get wet, so that was an additional anxiety.

I was fine though. I couldn't call an uber from there, on account of their screening area. I had to walk out, and as I fought through the wind and rain I developed a headache. I had to wonder if it was from the weather, or a side effect of the vaccine.

We were next to an area I knew, but it was separated by like, three highways, divided with concrete walls and chain link fences. There was a Shoppers Drug Mart on the other side, which hurt because they sell umbrellas.

Eventually I found a residential area and ubered back home.

My appointment for the second dose is on July 16th, so this is still going to take awhile. It's at the same clinic, so I hope their policies get updated, or the weather is better.

So far, I haven't had any side effects, other than my arm is a little sore today. I hear that the second dose hits you harder and makes you drowsy.

I don't feel like my DNA has been altered, or that a microchip has been planted in me, or that my mind is being controlled by nanite technology. But I guess I wouldn't know if it was.

I'm doing my taxes this weekend. This week is all about vaxxes and taxes.

Brother's Birthday and Pandemicversary

Last Friday, March 12th, was my brother's birthday, as well as Lee-Anne's father's. The day before was the anniversary of the pandemic and I'm pretty sure Canada declared our initial shutdown on the 13th.

I went home for the weekend. By my count, this is the sixth time I've been to Guelph in the past year. This would mean that, if I visited an average of once per month before the pandemic, on average, my family visits have only been cut in half. I really thought it would have been by more.

My brother's unfortunately placed birthday also marks one year since he's been able to see some significant people in his life.

For the occasion, Mom made curry. This was made from a recipe that was until recently a secret (actually, it probably didn't exist until recently). It's based around a character in a video game we've all played, who owns a cafe that's known for its' curry and coffee (I guess the theme was supposed to be scent, that would be one fragrant cafe). Fittingly enough, one of the curry's ingredients is coffee, which leads me to believe that his signature coffee must contain curry.

I won't post the entire recipe, but I will say that it contains grated carrot and apple, chocolate, red wine, coffee and an eight spice mix among many other things. Pretty intricate for a video game recipe. I'll have to make it myself one day.

I brought some back for Lee-Anne, and she really liked it. She said it reminded her of a Sri Lankan restaurant that she used to go to.

Just a quick COVID update now, I know it's not everyone's favourite topic.

Last time I talked about COVID, I mentioned the new UK variant. Now we've got two new strains, one from Brazil and one from South Africa. It feels kind of odd that we shot down the term "Chinese virus" for being xenophobic, but we're okay to refer to the new strains as the "UK variant", "South African variant", and "Brazil variant". I guess it's okay to use nation labels now. It makes it a little weirder too when you take into account that while the UK variant was discovered in the UK, it likely wasn't developed there.

I've got a chance to get vaccinated a little bit in advance, since my job sometimes involves interaction with people who are immunocompromised. Right now Ontario's using a three-phase vaccine rollout plan. It's funny, we had a recovery plan that used "phases" before we swapped to the colour system.

Anyway, I belong in a stage 1.5 of sorts. I think we're in the same timeline as uber drivers. Waterloo Region's low on vaccines though, because we got put in the same size category as Guelph, which is significantly smaller. So the Guelphites who have jobs similar to mine will probably get vaxxed sooner.

We've got four vaccines going in Ontario now. There's the PfizerBiontech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson (Janson). I never know what to call that last one. Should I call it Johnson & Johnson, or should I call it Janson? Or should I call it J & J, or Triple J? Bah.

I think I mentioned the first two. The second two are newer, and I understand they only need one shot instead of two, which has been standard, and they can be stored at lower temperatures, which is better for more wide-scale distribution. However, they both have a lower reported efficacy rate, although we're supposed to keep in mind that when they did their trials, it was in the presence of the variants, unlike the first two vaccines. This would skew their results. Medical advice is to not "shop around" and just take whatever is offered. Even if you catch the virus after being vaccinated, it's supposed to make the symptoms lighter. I think everyone I know who's got the vaccine has gotten the Moderna.

What's a little odd is that the CDC still has AstraZeneca in phase three clinical trials and is not available in the States. Us Canadians are fine with it though.

Somebody that I've known professionally for a good eight years is in hospital for non-COVID related reasons. Third person I know to move through the medical system in these times.

No More Friends

Last December, I helped a friend of mine move. He was moving out of town for education reasons, and it wasn't optimal timing, as it was not too long before we went into lockdown. But it was more than a one man job, so I took the chance and me, him, and two other guys took on the task of moving heavy objects in close proximity, sweating and breathing heavily at each other. Even with masks it didn't feel very COVID safe.

He was a pretty close friend.  Whenever we were allowed to have social bubbles, he was the only one outside my household or immediate family that I kept a spot for. Before COVID, he was the only person that I really went out of my way to hang out with that wasn't a coworker.

If you've been reading awhile, he's the guy I met in Katimavik as he was leaving Thunder Bay and I was arriving there, who was the tallest in his group, had a pin hat, was the chairman of his group's Communication Councel, and kept a dream journal. All traits that we shared. Because my group arrived at two placements after his, the locals would always compare me to him, and then we even wound up living near each other after the program finished.

He's also the guy whose shorts I stole because Air Canada lost all my luggage and he had to leave some stuff behind because of a baggage limit or something. I wore those all the way until last year when they ripped. Another tragedy of 2020.

Before all this, of course I myself moved. Not as far as my friend, but it did cause my former roommate to move out of town. He'd been stressing me out for awhile, so I thought I'd feel relieved more than anything. However, other than the person I mentioned above, he was probably my only other "guy" friend, so that's a dynamic I'm lacking in my current lifestyle.

Also, for better or worse, the place I moved from had a very active community. This made me nervous, because that neighbourhood also had Waterloo Region's highest rate of community spread for COVID, and the active community was probably the reason. But in a way, it was sort of a relief that I could never sink into a fully solitary lifestyle. You couldn't help but know all your neighbours and be invested in their lives.

So, between my two friends moving, and myself moving to a quieter neighbourhood, I'm experiencing a truer sense of isolation than I have throughout the pandemic.

Obviously I have Lee-Anne. I'm kind of leaning into the solitude bit for the theme of this post, but I don't want anyone saying I didn't count her.

Did I mention that our upstairs neighbours were gone for awhile?  We moved in slowly and settled in here halfway through December. Then after a couple days they disappeared. They were gone for about two and a half months, so we've been here longer without them than with them. Regardless, even with them back, it's not like we've been able to develop any kind of connection. At first we thought they were staying in quarantine for 14 days as recommended for travellers, but it's been over two weeks and not much has changed. I know full well there's at least one person who lives up there that I've never met.

One funny thing to note is that when I was helping my friend move, I learned that one of the guys in our four man crew owned a bakery just across the street from where I live. Then later on, in a staff meeting, somebody mentioned ordering donuts from there and several people started talking about how they have a really good reputation. Later on, Lee-Anne got some stuff there and mentioned me. It was the owner, and he remembered who I was.

Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Family Day 2021

We had a little cluster of holidays a few weeks ago.

The first one was Chinese New Year, changing from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox. It's not an event with a lot of personal significance for either of us, but we did order takeout from a local Chinese restaurant that we hadn't been to before. It's right at the end of our usual walk, along a nearby trail, so we'd seen the place quite a bit. It's kind of convenient because it takes them about 20 minutes to prepare the food, and it's about a 20 minute walk from our place. It had to be takeout, because at the time we were still in lockdown, although I think we would still likely just get takeout, even though we've since gone back to the red zone.

For Valentine's Day we didn't do too much. I made lasagna, and Lee-Anne made Caesar salad and garlic bread.

Some foods taste good but they aren't photogenic. My usual go-to example for that is lasagna, but this doesn't look too shabby, if I do say so myself.  The candle lighting, and being surrounded by better-looking foods probably helps.

During the first wave of the pandemic, I was trying to reduce my diet to staple foods, but I also wanted to use everything in my cupboards. I had a package of lasagna noodles, which is good for two three-layer lasagnas. My first one was a three-cheese blend of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. It was good, but the amount of cheese that went into it astonished me. When you're not used to cooking something, it opens you to rude awakenings like this.

So I used almost all my cheese, but I needed to use the rest of the noodles. I remembered hearing somewhere that some people don't use cheese at all, substituting it with a bechamel sauce. So I learned how to do that, and it was okay... but it would have been better with cheese.

But the bechamel reminded me of the cheese sauce on a croque madame that I'd had when me and Lee-Anne were visiting one of my Toronto aunts. With this data, I was sure that if I combined what went right with each of the lasagnas I'd made, I could make a superior version. At the time, me and Lee-Anne were distanced because of the pandemic, but I told her that when we reunited, I would make this superior lasagna. I never got around to it though, until this Valentine's Day.

So I combined the three-cheese blend with the bechamel to create a cheese sauce, and this was the result. I think it was pretty good, but I'm not going to post the recipe to Gryphood, because I don't know if I would go through the effort of recreating it. I have a simpler lasagna recipe now.

Probably more interesting than learning how to make lasagna, is that me and Lee-Anne were in a panel for a Valentine's-themed session for people with albinism. We, along with three other couples, answered questions about our relationship. While someone else on the panel was in a relationship with someone with pigment, I was the only pigmented person in the Zoom session. It's a funny feeling, being a minority in a room full of people who are one 17,000th of the population. They call people like me "pigmentos".

The people running the session were friends of Lee-Anne's from NOAH (National Organization of Albinism and Hypopigmentation).

And then for Family Day I didn't do much. Called home, and me, my mother and my brother just caught up a little. No real established traditions yet for a holiday so young.

I'm reviving my reviews blog. Since one of my goals was to read at least six pieces of fiction this year, I figured I could do a review of each of them. This review is for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.

My background in blogging is rooted in book reviews. I actually had a blog on another site before this one, way back when I was a teenager, and most of it was me talking about books. It's never been my most popular content, though.

So I'm trying something new. I thought maybe the fact that my reviews are full of spoilers might turn some people off, who might want to hear my recommendation without having the plot ruined. So now I'm including a no-spoiler review before my full review. The no-spoiler review is also a little more brief, because I know I can ramble on. So check it out if you like:

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2021/02/book-review-amazing-maurice-and-his.html

My reviews are so unpopular, in fact, that of my five blogs, it's the only one with fewer views than posts. That is, until recently when my cannabis strain review recently got an influx of hits. Turns out one of Lee-Anne's brothers tattled on me to his mom for smoking cannabis over two years ago after it had been legalized.

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2019/01/cannabis-strains.html

That review also has a link to my two other posts with my reaction to Canada's legalization of cannabis.

I won't say the brother's name, but it fittingly rhymes with "nark"