Altruism!

I am giving free tutorials, and met a new counseler at the school I teach at. During our brief chat, she couldn’t believe I was doing it to help out! For you information, most of the tutors are in the Faculty of Education at the University of Toronto, and need a certain number of teaching hours to graduate and be able to teach as a real teacher (being in charge of a whole class, right now we are not allowed to be with students without a real teacher being in charge, so we are pretty much helping only).
Another type of people are those who want to use it in their resume as community work that will eventually help them (one guy is planning to apply to Medical school, and these guys need to prove their empathy through this kind of work).

When she asked me what I was studying, hearing I was doing an MBA made her even more surprised.

I think this is the kind of mentality that causes the kind of economical downturn we are experiencing; by only looking after ourselves we end up making decisions that have negative effects on society while hoping we will end up as winners… Why not simply help out, just during our free time whenever we can, just to remember that this is how we can make the world a little better (not as a full time job, but just giving a few hours of our spare time). Simply treating others like you would like to be treated (and everybody needs help sometimes)…

Mistycal

Nothing new in my life to share. Toronto’s weather has been changing dramatically within days (as usual should I say). Going from somewhere in the -20C last week, to a record +11C today. What has also surprised me is the amount of mist we got; I guess the temperature differential in a portuary region (huge lake Ontario down South) can explain part of it. Today when walking out of school, I saw some kind of thick mist that I thought was light rain… You could feel condensation on your skin, let’s say humidity has been unbearable today.

On another note, I’d like to share something that came to my attention a couple of weeks ago and that disturbed me. You probably have heard about this statistic saying that about 70% of people don’t wash their hand after using the washroom; to be honest I never believed it until very recently. But for some reason I have noticed that people that people who wash their hand with soap are a small minority of people I cross in the washroom! On the other side, it is rare that people just walk out without stopping at the sink, but the big majority barely rinse their hand with water, and some take the time to dry them with some paper towel… I would say 50% only rinse their hand with water and run out! Is it really too hard to put some soap, rub your hands for 10 seconds, and THEN rinse?!?! It is funny because these guys probably think that people would see them as dirty if they didn’t make the water pit stop; but to me it is not any better AT ALL! Disgusting!

My friend the Sheep

In this holiday season, I want to share a funny anecdote (it’s been a while).

Abody (my girlfriend’s little brother), an 8 year old boy who in previous years was too scared of the sheep bought for Eid El Kebir, was courageous enough to play with it this year. He was happy, and called it his friend, and when came time for slaughter, he started crying and yelling, saying he won’t touch his meet and was opposed to the cruel destiny that his father would inflict on his “friend”. He even swore not to eat meat anymore. My girlfriend told me that the same thing happened with her younger sister, and that in her case it took many weeks (almost months) to get over it and accept eating meat again.

Well, little Abody might have a world record here! Within 5 minutes he stopped crying, and the curious little boy watched the slaughter and even helped holding during the skinning!

This reminds me of my cousin. She had a goldfish that died when she was really young (something like 5 or 6 years old), and since she doesn’t eat fish. She can’t stand the cooking, the smell… Fresh fish I should say, because guess what: CANNED TUNA IS JUST TOO GOOD TO GIVE UP! Yes, she refuses to eat fresh fish, but she eats quite a bit of caned tuna! Go figure!

Eid Mubarak

Eid Mubarak to all!

The International Festival of Films Against Exclusion and for Tolerance

Just a heads up about an upcoming film festival between December 5 and 13 at UNESCO (in Paris). Anybody in Paris with an interest on subjects related to Discrimination should take a look at this website: http://www.fifet.org (projections schedule: http://www.fifet.org/file/horaires.pdf).

There will be a number of Film projections on the subject of Slavery (including “Amistad” by Steven Spielberg), followed by discussions with scholars and different personalities (football great Lilian a  Thuram and actor Danny Glover among others).

Unfortunately I won’t be in Paris before December 16th, so I will not have a chance to attend this great event. Of course, I encourage everybody who can attend a screening to go, or share the information with anybody who might be interested (in Paris or anywhere).

Those stupid rules!

This morning I went to the gym at 7am (as I do at least 3 times a week), and today I was actually the very first person in the gym (only a staff was there). I stretched and as soon as I took out my jumping rope to warm up, the staff member came towards me saying that jumping ropes weren’t allowed in the gym. My initial reaction was to think that this was simply another stupid rule; the guy continued explaining politely that it was a dumb rule and had nothing to do with the activity itself but rather other people wandering around very close (he referred to them as “dumb”), and apparently there had been an accident which started that rule. He was very nice and given the fact that we were only 2 in the gym he told me it was fine to continue (as an exception)…

So I continued thinking that this was just another dumb rule with some random justification. The gym is quite large (probably over 100m2) with not that much machines, and not dense enough to have anybody bumping into another… I was actually at the back of the gym where you can find wide stretching spaces and even more space around wooden platform (for powerlifting); so I thought it was safe to assume I would be left alone.

Within less that 5 minutes (literally the third man in the gym), came to the back of the gym to take some stretching balls. And you guessed right, came walking right in front of me! It is not easy to visualise and I wish I could illustrate some more, but imagine wide spaces where you can basically take at least 2 different paths, and the man actually decided to come right in front of me! First I jumped back thinking he might just not come too close or just take another way, but he actually came so close I had to stop to avoid being too close or bumping into a machine behind me. The staff boy then came to me and told me: “see, that’s exactly why; because dumb asses like this just feel like wandering…”.

Some “stupid rules” and not all that dumb after all. In an ideal world, they would be, but stupid people make sure they’re here for a purpose!

Let it snow

Finally by November 19th we got our first real snowfall in Toronto. I say real because earlier this month (and even in October), the weather had been changing so much that snow melted within hours. Yes, you didn’t have a whole day of cold or warm, it kept changing. Since last Friday, the real cold has come in and today’s snowfalls seem to be here to stay!

Weather roller coaster

It is late October, and if I remember well, at the same time last year it was already quite cold. I almost wrote a post last week to announce that winter was coming (when we reached 3-4°C and that the winds reminded us of what we could expect), but these last days have been quite mild with rain…

I miss Libya! Not only for the weather, but I just wanted to share with anybody reading from there. I wish I spent an extra couple of months there! Who would have thought two years ago when I started complaining hard on this very blog…

University of Toronto graduate residences

Just wanted to shout out about University of Toronto Graduate Residences. Since I arrived in Toronto, I have been looking for proper accomodation at reasonable rates, and have had little help in the subject. After a year off campus (over paying for the quality and location), I have moved to Grad House. A lot of graduate students are there and seemed to be happy about it. I must say that it might have put my expectations a little high and I was disapointed. No matter what, I must say that have had extremely bad experience with the administration! The architect just seemed to have forgotten that students were supposed to live in it. Some rooms literally look like prison cells with no access to natural light!

Recently, I have discovered Massey College, and wonder why I never hear about it before. Every room has huge windows (thus lots of light), and you only share bathroom with 1 or 2 other students (compared with 2-3 at grad house). It is very selective, and a little more expensive, but considering that 3 meals are included, it is definitely worth the effort and the money.

My advice to any prospective or continuing UofT grad student looking for campus housing: forget about Grad House and spend some time to apply to Massey College!

Korean restaurant

Yesterday I went to a Korean restaurant with some friends and witnessed some kind of stupid decision that caused to waste food for the stupidest reason!

We were 3 at the table, nut as only 1 of us was really hungry, we decided to order a meal for 2 (not for 3). Unfortunately, the waiter made a mistake and brought a meal for 3 (the plate was huge, so I asked if this was really for 2 people…). It was his first day, and he was really nice and felt very bad about the situation. As he worried, we asked him if he would have to pay the difference from his pay, and if it was the case not to worry; he wasn’t very sure, so we continued as if everything was fine. Only a minute later, the head waiter came up to us and asked politely: “what is the problem here?”, to which we answered there was no problem and explained the situation; he apologised and instead of offering us to pay the price of a plate for two (which seems reasonable), he offered to take back the plate and bring a meal for 2. Concerned we asked if he would throw the food, to which he answered that they would! Trying to make sense out of it, my friend explained why it didn’t make sense to throw away food for no reason, but on the other side it wasn’t our fault and we shouldn’t pay extra, but the man was inflexible…

In the end, we took the meal for 2 and asked him to make sure someone takes the food home…