Riddle of the day

Are some people born with the power to write? Is it a gift? Or something nurtured through years of study and practice? Is the act of writing a plain reflection of thoughts and imagination on recordable media? Are individuals who are inclined to write the ones that spend more time thinking? Can you write and still be a moron? Can you be unable to write and still be smart? If one can speak eloquently and debate well, will that person be a prolific writer? Why is it that the most prolific writers are eloquent speakers too? What side of their brain is stronger? How does writing compare to the creation of music? Isn’t music just another form of writing? That instead of words and letters we just use notes and keys? Is good punctuation the only common denominator between literature and music? Why can’t everyone write novels? Doesn’t everyone have a story to tell? Isn’t everyone’s story different? Do we imagine things or contemplate thoughts every waking moment? Is relaxation the switching off of our brain? Does music help us switch off our thoughts? Is that why it helps us relax? Do we stop thinking when we are engrossed in absorbing -- be it a book, a movie or a song? Can some of us only relax when we are sleeping or taking part in a vigorous physical activity like sex? Can some people switch off their brains more easily than others? Are there brains that get more rest than others? Can you think profoundly and yet be shallow? What makes one shallow? Is it the formation of opinions with lesser information? Or is it the narrower focusing of one's thoughts? If I feel my brain is starving does that make me an idiot? Why do I feel better when I feed my brain? Are there people who feel worse when they feed their brains? Is there a limit to how much a brain can absorb? Can that someday be expressed in gigabytes? Would this vary depending on individuals? Do people with larger skulls have more brains? Are they able to think more thoughts and store more information? Why is the word "thick" associated with stupidity when a thicker brain is likely to contain more neurons? If the brain is a neural network, wouldn’t the one with more neurons be capable of storing more information? Is it then a problem of retrieval and not one of storage? Will our brains ever interface with digital media? Will some humans opt for it while others denounce the idea? Why would some see it as progress and others see it as tampering with God’s creation? Has the evolution of the human brain come to a standstill? Is collective thought destroying creativity? Are we too connected? Are we preventing the next technological leap by huddling ourselves into organizations, teams and groups and constantly having to exchange mundane information? Where will we go next if we don’t have folks to ponder? Is there room left for daydreaming? Was Isaac Newton daydreaming most of the time? What about Einstein? What about Van Gogh? Why is there so little patronage of creation and thinking? Will not the kings and queens of the day support the likes of Da Vinci to frolic? What are the aristocrats born into wealth doing? Why aren’t they wandering like Tagore, feeling, thinking, and absorbing the world? Why aren’t we getting masters anymore and instead are being ruled by the mediocre? Is it any surprise? Is this how evolution ends? That we learn to rule ourselves to our doom? Or could it be that the next stage of human evolution is causing the brain to think, react and absorb differently? Could it be that the status quo is triggering the next human evolution? Is it possible that such changes are popping up as little anomalies across the world? Are we failing to see through these anomalies and instead are trying to correct them using our conventional means? Will we have mass panic and hysteria when the anomalies occur in larger numbers? What lengths will we go to preserve the status quo?

I see rude people

I am sitting by a large window at Tim’s sipping the dregs out of an empty coffee mug. Outside, it’s a glorious day. The sky is a hue of genuine Alberta blue and the only clouds are a few streaks of high altitude cirrus and vapour trails left by jetplanes. After a couple of days of thunderstorms and overcast skies, people are back in their summer attire – especially the femme. The little bit of Borat in me quietly mumbled “I like – thanks much” a number of times. I’ll have to take the kids out to the beach later today for a few more Borat moments. Once I get home that is! I am stuck here as the mechanic tries to fix the broken window in Monika’s car at the nearby Canadian Tire. I brought my laptop expecting a long wait – everything’s a long wait in Calgary with a labor shortage and all. I am glad there’s no wireless signal to steal – because that forces me to work on my book. But an hour has passed and I can only work on that damn project an hour at a time. After that my ADHD kicks in and the lack of concentration becomes evident in the quality of writing – or so I have surmised. I’ve trained myself to stop at that point and move to other activities. What do I do now?

Those of you who that have read any of my other notes will realize that I do like to rant. It helps release pressure that builds up in my head – and I like my head however ugly it is and don’t want it to explode. Debating is another means of discharging negative energy but hardly do I find anyone tenacious, energetic, and sarcastic (and with a voice loud) enough to persistently hammer me with opposing views. If I wanted to, I could possibly find some targets inside the restaurant here to start a quarrel with. All I have to do is begin to put down Calgary for the shitty driving habits of its inhabitants! Then again there are too many over-sized men, women, and things (let’s not leave out the transgendered) here – and several that look very Albertan. The concern I have is for my personal welfare. When you are in Rome, you be a Roman – not piss on their faces – unless you are just dying to meet the lions. So here I am, thumping on this keyboard, trying to find something to vent about.

What about all the inconsiderate people on the C-Train?

For those not from Calgary, the C-Train is a light commuter train that ferries suburbanites to and from downtown during the morning and afternoon rush hours and rest of the time is largely occupied by bums. Whether I am a suburbanite or a bum on any particular day depends on how much I have had to drink after work. Bum or not, I just cannot abandon my old-fashioned habit of offering up my seat to people that need it more –pregnant women, parents with small children, and the geriatrics. Am I really just old-fashioned or is the average C-Train commuter in Calgary an impolite buffoon?

I am baffled by a simple observation that women are the last ones to offer up seats to pregnant women and ladies carrying small children. If I am standing already (which means I have no seat to offer) and see a woman that is visibly pregnant or struggling to keep her two year old from getting crushed by the crowd, I will bark out “Is there someone here who would like to give up their seat to a pregnant woman (or this mom – whatever the case may be)?”. You would be surprised how quickly most people shift their eyes away from me. I keep looking around the cabin and try to establish eye contact – the idea is to make the first person that looks at me feel terrible shame. It’s a tactic that works every time – and invariably it’s a guy that will offer his seat – never a woman! Come on ladies!!! Let’s give pregnant women and those with little kids a bit of a helping hand! When you are 70 and can’t even put on your own diaper, someone’s kid is likely going to do it for you. Why not be nice to that someone today?

Rant done. Time for my next cup!

J’ai voudré un café

I admit ... I am a caffeine junkie. Without my mandatory dosage of several glasses of watered down Canadian coffee (in Europe and the Middle East I drank espresso shots), I find it very difficult to kick-start myself in the morning and to stay awake during the mid afternoon carb-assault (also known as the graveyard shift). Of course the other two reasons for taking frequent coffee breaks are (a) checking out the women loitering in the plus fifteens (for non-Calgarians, these are covered inter-building walkways and mezzanine floors that are lined with shops) and (b) getting out of my office, which, given how the powers-that-be react to the intensity of my vocal chord, is in an isolated corner where the sun doesn’t shine and my friend EH’s office acts as a sound muffler for the rest of the inhabitants (poor EH!). I should not forget to mention that even this well-conceived sound barrier fails miserably when I sneeze and objects that match the wide frequency of my nasal explosion reverberate for a good fifteen seconds from one end of the office to the other. Guzentite!

Back to coffee -- I prefer Tim’s. This is not me trying to convince Citizenship and Immigration Canada that I am adjusting to the local culture and putting more of my money behind local business. FYI, Canadians tend to think they own a business as long as their shareholding exceeds 2% and the company was started off by or bears the name of a famous Canadian. That put aside, I honestly like the freshly brewed coffee at Tim Horton’s. The trouble is that the queue at Tim’s is as long as the breadlines in Soviet-era Moscow, the glazed donuts on the shelves say “I would love to be teleported to your love-handles”, the servers are slow (and generally unattractive), and the odds of encountering a couple of demure good-looking women in the queue are worse than Canada’s chances of earning more gold in Beijing than Michael Phelps.

Some of my co-workers brew (what should not be called) coffee in the machine in the office kitchenette. Occasionally I will go and grab a cup of that stuff if I really need to stay awake at a boring meeting and it’s about to start in 30 seconds – which means that there’s not enough time to go downstairs to buy one. But one can drink rat poison only so many times before developing stomach cancer, or worse, losing one’s mojo, so I generally try not to consume the office-brewed concoction more than once per week. I did forget to mention that the office supplied coffee is free. I also forgot to mention that whoever is in charge of procuring the beans gets an annual bonus based on how many cents were saved per gram of coffee purchased.

In the end, for the other eight to ten coffee-breaks in a work-week, I am left to choose between Second Cup Coffee and Starbucks. Second Cup brews decent coffee, the staff do not exactly increase my testosterone secretion but nor can they be confused with krill-eating marine mammals, and their policy of not customizing fifteen different types of bagels with eight different types of condiments means that the queues are relatively fast-moving and short. Also at Second Cup I am not tempted by fattening sweets (theirs are disgusting), all the cups have the same-sized lid (they have a smart logistics manager who knows how to control SKUs), the medium-sized coffee is larger than Tim’s large cup, and the clientele is certainly more chic than Tim’s (I am talking about women).

But I struggle with monotony – especially with my hyperactive brain (if had I grown up in North America in this day and age, I have little doubt that I would be receiving multiple meds for ADHD and possibly even schizophrenia and bipolarity disorder). So even though Starbucks’ black coffee (which is the only stuff I drink) tastes like dog piss, I still end up going there occasionally. There are a few more reasons why I get coffee from Starbucks. I’ve observed that all the senior managers in my department drink Starbucks. Dog piss must be an acquired taste! When I don’t have time to sip my coffee in one of the +15 lounges, I intentionally buy Starbucks coffee so I can waltz into my office past the managers’ offices boldly holding the trademark white cup with the Starbucks monogram. Anyone who has watched an episode of “The Office” knows how important it is to copy the habits of your superiors, especially if you think of yourself as upwardly mobile. Another hint for the green – at your first meal with your boss you order whatever he or she orders!

Back to my coffee chronicles. Occasionally I will also visit Starbucks to sit at one of the super-comfy leather armchairs that are laid out on a spacious lounge next to some wall-to-ceiling windows that afford you a nice view of the riverside park and some of the buildings of Calgary’s scant Chinatown. When I am being especially cerebral (my work requires a certain degree of critical thinking) and need to come up with a devious scheme (I cannot state the purpose of it or else I’d have to kill you) I like sitting and gazing through these windows. This is part of my work routine – I am not slacking off. A few days ago while I sat on one of those sofas and peeked outside, I could see two very fine looking Asian babes being photographed by a homosexual gentleman. I do not mean to sound like a homophobe, but there was a lot of naughty touching and giggling between the two girls (that made me squirm in my seat) but no sign of excitement from the photographer. I bet he even told them what to wear (which I, as a photographer, struggle with when asked by female clients). I swear I am becoming near-sighted as I age because if my vision were perfect I would have read “Fook Mi” and “Fook Yu” on the girls’ matching t-shirts.

Comfy sofas and the sight of playful Asian babes aside, often I go to Starbucks to get a view of these two baristas – both beautiful young Rachel-wannabes in their early twenties. My friend EH initially thought it was the same girl but his notion was dispelled very quickly when we saw them in tandem. These are Caucasian versions of Fook Mi and Fook Yu and the main difference is that they are a little more horizontally endowed above the waist. Each of these girls has excellent merchandize for display and one of them prefers to throw her Starbucks apron over her unbuttoned black shirt. Every time she leans to pick up something, we men (and lesbian women amongst the clientele) are tilting our head sideways to get a better view. On returning to an upright position, occasionally one of the girls will give me the “I know I have great breasts but dirty old man, please look at my eyes -- they are beautiful too”-look. We (straight) men never get it why girls show off wholesome cleavage and then expect us to look at their eyes. I think it is their way of weeding out the gays from the perverts.

Starbucks often spells disaster too. There are occasions when none of my favorite baristas are there and instead the stations are manned by various combinations of three gay men. I am doing my best to refrain myself from describing these fine gentlemen in any derogatory way. I get enough crap from friends for not being as culturally aware and politically correct as the average North American gentleman.

The first of these three men is an Asian dude who is yet to shed generous quantities of baby fat but he still insists on wearing the tightest t-shirt that he can possibly squeeze his over-sized neck through – I bet he bought it from the girls’ section at Lulu Lemon. He wears an ear-ring in his right ear and has an impeccable hairdo. If a single strand of his grotesquely gelled hair rebelled against the direction it was brushed, you could tell this guy would discipline it with firm conviction.

The second guy is a six foot six stocky black man with short-cropped hair and a goatee. When he talks he shakes his head more than any Madrasi accountant I`ve come across but what really gives away his gayness is the thick layer of mascara around his big droopy eyes and his beautifully manicured nails. In my mind I was thinking, if this man giveth, Lord helpeth whoever that taketh!

The last of the threesome is a young lanky Indian man who wears a mohawk, fashions not one, not two, but half a dozen different earrings and tattoos, and one can tell that he frequently waxes the hair off his arm. If not for the mohawk, at about five foot three or four he`d be barely visible behind those machines that brew your Americano (somebody please explain to me what the hell an Americano is!). Did I mention the tips of the Mohawk were dyed blonde and that he wore four or five of those stringy friendship bands around his wrist?

I must say here that I have nothing against gay men except that I always feel that they give me this “you’re an ugly straight guy and I wouldn’t even ask for your number if you were gay”-look. I think they can tell that I probably have a tinge of homophobia – the same way that my wife MC and I can sense a tinge of racism every time we find ourselves amongst hicks in rural Alberta. I should add, if anything my wife MC is the real homophobe. The last time we met a visibly gay man at a party, she was about to kick his teeth in for photographing me from various angles every time she went off to powder her face!

A couple of days ago I asked my friends what prompted Starbucks to be such a gay-friendly employer. According to EH, any company that originated in Seattle and thrived in Vancouver was likely to be gay-friendly. My other friend JW thinks that any guy that describes a coffee as a Grande Latte for a living cannot be straight! I have my own views. Attractive women are indispensable for any establishment that charges three times as much for a shittier product (look at the hip downtown bars!). Having a combo of hot women and heterosexual guys in tight quarters (almost rubbing bodies as they pass each other) is just bad business judgment. There would be more spawning and less brewing!!! So hence get the cute girls and gay men to run a hip coffee shop.

Getting back to my coffee breaks, of late, the two female Starbucks baristas seem to have been promoted, because they spend more time in the office room with their backs turned towards me -- unless of course they are just tired of me staring at their breasts and have a camera hidden somewhere between my office and Starbucks to tell when I am coming. Either way, I am stuck with the three homosexuals.

But things are looking up. There’s new coffee in town. Between our building and the one immediately south, a dainty and remarkably cute Asian girl is serving coffee for a local hotel – and the best part is that a coffee is only one buck! She likes to converse and yesterday she was nagging on about how much she’d rather be on a golf course instead of being stuck at her station – and in my head I am thinking “Damn I’d like to give you some putting lessons – is your name ‘Fook Mi’ and do you have a twin sister?”!