As people often do, a colleague of mine sent me what he considered a joke by email, the other day. I read it and I didn’t laugh. It painted a scenario of an immigrant who, through odd circumstances, had a lot of dependents. Eventually, the man of Arabic background requests assistance from the government. The story concludes with this response:
“I’ve arranged to start mailing cheques … as soon as you arrive in Canada,” signed Justin Trudeau. (more…)
As I do fairly regularly, I ran into the mayor enjoying a cup of coffee with friends last weekend. As we regularly do, we exchanged greetings. I asked her if she’d taken in a movie that everybody was talking about. She said, what with lack of time and the amount of work on her plate, that she hadn’t. I mentioned that I’d had the same problem trying to get some of my own writing done versus marking the writing of my students. I came up with what I thought was a constructive solution.
“Maybe if we gave half of the time we have available to do half of what we have to do… and then devote the other half of the time we have available to do what we want to do,” I said, “that might be more satisfying.” (more…)