Me on the Fridays I don't take as vacation days.
* * *
By the way, I finally figured out who the actress is,
Venezuelan power house and runner-up to
Miss World 1980, Hilda Abrahamz.
Her
peleas y cachetadas (fights and slaps) are featured prominently in the
YouTube channel,
Soap Fights.
If you're happy and you know it, slap your enemies upside the head!
* * *
Cálmate, cálmate, tranquilo, tranquilo. I do not advocate physical violence against those you hate, dislike, or even just find annoying. Don't you just know that
Olimpia Mercouri de Villanueva, Ms. Abrahamz character in
Mi gorda bella, would get hauled off to an anger management program if she did crap like this in real life.
Nevertheless, let's acknowledge that I've had a tough year here in
Canada, absolutely none of it pandemic-related. As an introvert by nature, lockdown has had its perks. Besides, it's been rough and tough since I first landed here on July 1, 2015.
Since that day, I've had to survive and apparently try to thrive while dealing with a handful of malignant, venal narcissists who would tear me down and think nothing of it because I'm too this or not enough of that. Honestly, as dog-eat-dog as the
U.S. can be sometimes, when you find people who are kind at home, they are truly kind, perhaps because we know how harsh life can be in an everyone-out-for-him/her/nonbinary pronoun-self world. Things are bad enough. Why make it worse?
But here in Canada ... my goodness. Why is everyone so mean when you have so much? The sense of entitlement, the passive aggression, the jealousy, the pettiness, the smugness, the selfishness, the stinginess of spirit, the persnicketyness, the casual cruelty while patting yourself on the back for being "good" and "nice," the utter goddamned laziness. If you have so much already, it would stand to reason that you would feel all warm and generous with the world around you, wouldn't it? Well, no. The sad reality seems to be that you don't feel
generous and want to give more to the world. Quite the opposite. Instead, you just want more
and demand that the world to give it to you just how you want it, and if it doesn't, you'll definitely let them know about it.
Canada: A nation of Karens.
Perhaps some of what I see is from the vantage of being a boss, a high-profile personage in a complex organization. It's not as if I never dealt with assholes at work in the good ol' U.S. of A, that's for sure. The country is currently being brutalized by the
King of the Assholes and his toadies, after all.
There is less hierarchy here than at home, which might be a good thing if you're lower in status. You have more say--although you apparently do not take on any additional responsibility, you just have a lot of opinions. I find it difficult enough to defend myself when people don't respect my position, my ability, or my intellect--and yet I have to stay calm and measured to convey my authority because heaven help you if you show some steel and hurt someone's feelings here.
And by the way, the challengers do none of the above. They disrespect you to your face and behind your back and do not seem to suffer any professional or personal consequences, as far as I can tell. I guess I should find that liberating, but, instead, it just seems pitiful to me.
Maybe it's because I tried my damnedest for the first year or so to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe Canadian, and it has felt like I've been starving myself, gasping for air, ever since. There is just not enough there there or here here, if you will. I feel like all the country produces is a certain amount of social cohesion and a whole lot of social welfare. Art, culture, a rich tapestry of life--who needs those when you pride safety first and smugness second? Or vice versa. Safety has its appeal, especially if you're not used to having much of it (looking at you, USA). But why does insisting on your personal and professional security result in smugness?
Maybe it's this job, maybe it's
Toronto, maybe it's
Ontario. Montreal seems nicer, as does
Vancouver, and I hear good things about the people in the
Atlantic provinces. I've only been to
Halifax and
the Gaspé so far as was charmed by both, at least for the scenery and human scale of things.
And maybe it's the fact that I've never managed to make any friends here, and I've given up trying. Almost everyone I know is from work or from business, other than the friends I had made before coming here, who are either in Quebec or from Vancouver. And among those I get along with at work, they tend to be outsiders--either from other countries or other, less mainstream cultures. I seem to have only the rarest, most meager of connection with the "old stock Canadians," as the
Progressive Conservative Party likes to call them--the white and English-speaking among us.
* * *
If it's so bad, why do I live here, you say? Well, I've been asking myself that over the last couple of months. Maybe even the last couple of years. To tell the truth, I'm tired of being a stranger in a strange land. I want to go home. But I can't, at least not yet.
Love, a legal trip to Cuba, low-cost healthcare, old-age security and the Canada Pension Plan--these are the things that keep me here, at least for another five years.
It's certainly not the weather and definitely not the people.
