Chez Louise

On Saturday, I somehow managed to surf myself onto the PassionPuzzle site, which is basically supposed to help you find what your passion is and help you apply it to finding a career. I do like my job, but I was actually thinking more along the lines of a side business I could start up, to help increase job security a bit. I still have a job, but now I'm close to the stage of buying a house and in these unstable times, who knows what might happen job-wise.

Anyway, so I'm on PassionPuzzle, and before I started the puzzle, I was thinking it would be cool if this would reveal what my passion is, but I didn't think it would generate anything clear-cut. After all, I'm pretty wishy-washy. I'll try something, try something else, but I haven't found anything where I'm like, wow, I would love to do this 24/7 for the rest of my life.

I did the puzzle, and what surprised me was that while I didn't think I had any obvious passions, it was awfully clear-cut when I answered the puzzle. What do people say you are good at? Writing. What did you love to do as a kid that you still do now? Writing. Which part of your job do you lose yourself in? Writing. (Noticing a trend?) The funny thing is, I do like to write, but I'm not the Steve Irwin of writing, i.e., I don't really idolize very many writers, and couldn't be bothered to even take a university-level English class. I guess the key thing is I just want to write what I want, when I want, i.e., be able to get up at a sensible hour and actually see the sun shine for a while during the day. And, more and more, I would like to be more in charge of my own destiny. I'd like to start a business. Not sure if it would be a writing business exactly though.

In short, PassionPuzzle told me I'm supposed to be a writer, but I just want some of my own time, freedom, and sunlight back. And, I need a topic to write about.

That said, today I did finally manage to sit down and reverse-engineer the outline out of my two NaNo Novels which I'd like to merge into one good novel. I've discovered a few things along the way:

• This novel will require a total rewrite. Virtually none of the text is salvageable.


• There are some good ideas in there, but some 'what was I thinking' ideas as well. Will need some serious re-plotting.


• Serious re-plotting would be needed anyway, since there are some galaxy-sized plot holes...

Oh well. Time to finish my draft (A draft, ANY draft), so that I can edit the tar out of it for the remainder of the year, per my 2009 New Year's Resolution.

It sucks to live in Ottawa right now, thanks to OCTranspo (Ottawa's transit system), or, lack thereof. Let's look at a bit of chronology for a moment.

December in general: Exam season for the 3 universities and 2 colleges in the city.

December 4: Chaudière Bridge (one of 5 bridges between Ottawa and Quebec) closed down due to structural concerns. Traffic jams ensue as people try to find a different route, and it backs up into the downtown core. Lots of people live in Gatineau and work in Ottawa, or vice versa.

December 9-10: Big snowstorm dumped a foot of snow on the city.

December 10 (while it's still snowing): OCTranspo went on strike.

Friday, December 12, suppertime: Brother (who gives me a ride in to work since I have no car) announces he has vacation to burn off so he's taking Monday, Tuesday, and from Friday onward off. Thanks for the advance warning, dude. Next time, let me know sooner so I at least have a hope of finding a carpool with someone at work!!

Today: OCTranspo still on strike.

To make matters worse, my house and my workplace are at extreme opposite ends of the city. December 10, the first day of the strike, it took three hours to get to work. On average, it's 1.5 hours if the roads aren't full of snow. This week is going to be... interesting.

So you'd think that all this trouble replicated by hundreds of thousands of people in Ottawa would mean there is a good reason for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, no. OCTranspo's union is apparently unhappy with the city's contract offer, and the city thinks OCTranspo is being unreasonable by rejecting a perfectly good offer. (I think the city is right). The terms are:

• Salary: 3% raise in 2008 (retroactive to April '08); 2% in '09, and 2% in '10, for a total of 7% in 3 years.


• $2000 lump sum payment


• 6 days sick leave (up from 4)


• Scheduling still done by seniority (people with more seniority pick first)


• Schedules per day come in "packages" rather than in pieces. This is already true on weekends; to be extended to weekdays

So that last point is where the union is having a fit, and I'm not sure why. Quite frankly, this is a cushy deal. If this were offered at my workplace, I'd be leaping for joy. I don't think OCTranspo's union has the public support they think they do. Just look at these gems from the union leader:

Gem #1

and

Gem #2

So, from this info and the above videos, my stance at the moment is:

1. The union leader is an idiot. The sooner they get rid of him, the better off they'll be.


2. They should have accepted this offer. It's pretty darn nice if you ask me.


3. Since neither party is willing to budge on this whole scheduling issue, the people of Ottawa are going to be in this for the long haul. The only way to order them back to work is by the federal gov't and since they are prorogued til the end of January, we're SOL.


4. They are externalizing their costs onto the people of Ottawa while the city saves money and the Union thinks it's saving the world.


5. I'm seriously pissed off. As are most people in Ottawa.

Instead of punishing the people for something they didn't start and they can't do anything about, I think the solution is to lock the leaders (the ones responsible for the bargaining) into a room, their pay put on hold until they can agree on something. Kind of like sending squabbling kids to their rooms without dinner. Otherwise, this ridiculousness is going to go on forever. They're not even willing to talk to each other at the moment, never mind come to an agreement.

I'm so mad.

So I decided I wanted to learn a little bit of Danish, and I just downloaded a (luckily) free program, for now, to learn the very basics. This would be my first crack at any Scandinavian/Nordic type of language, so I thought this would be interesting.

I figured it shouldn't be too bad. After all, it can't be worse than Gaelic (both Irish and Scottish), where one sound is pronounced for every 10 letters on the page.

Well folks, I've officially found a language which sounds even less like it appears on paper, and that's Danish. Oh. My. God. For example, in the recording I'm listening to:

On paper: Det er jeg ked af. [= I'm sorry]
Sounds like: Day-eh-kizzay. (and imagine saying it with your mouth half frozen from a root canal, after recovering from a stroke.)

On paper: Jeg hedder... [= My name is...]
Sounds like: Yeah hillah (Um, where are the 'd's? If it sounds like an L, why not spell it with an L?)

Ah, the mysteries of language...