Innherently lazy noise filters

I've been working my new job for about a month now and it turns out "prospecting" is just a synonym for telemarketing. This is not all bad news though. The company I work for is young and small, as far as companies go, and everyone seems to be under 30. This makes for a nice environment, even if the work is not Christmas.

My job concists of tracking down phone numbers of people who have ugly or old websites, working out who is in charge of the website, calling them, convincing them try a demo of our cheaper better system (I make my job easier by only calling people if I genuinly think we can makes their lives better). So I don't actually sell anything myself per se.

It is amazing how hard it is to give away free websites.

As you can probably guess, people are numb to strangers on the phone. To them, I am the equivalent of a billboard on the side of the road that they glance at and quickly ignore, except I'm talking to them, so they have to work out how to hang up on me as quickly as possible. This is exactly why humans do so well; we are noise filtering machines, we don't have energy to pay attention to everything. Most stuff we run into is irrelevant to us. Also, most of us are inherently lazy, and subconsciously run on the knowledge that avoiding new things seldom leads to trouble. I counter these obstacles by cunningly only asking "how" questions (you can't give a one word answer to a "how" question). Also, I find out there name, and use it a lot like we're old friends. Also I get their email address before I propose anything. My boss says "you'd only give your email to someone if they were your friend". Once we have established the friendship, I let them know I'm going to do a favour in the form of setting up a free website for them. I make 6 friends each day, who I never speak to again.

It turns out people from the auto industry are generally the friendliest to talk to. People who own pet stores are generally the rudest and the most hostile to "them internets".

It has taken me about 3 weeks to stop taking no for an answer. I was so timid and took everything so personally at the start, but lately it feels more like a game.

Squirrel-fish fishin'

Hook, line and sinker? More like peanut, shoelace and awesome.

ZOMG new apartment!

The first week in our new apartment has been great. We had previously spent the longest 2 weeks of our lives living in le ghetto, in a Mexican family’s basement. We never really met Jose, our "landlord", but he reassuringly let us know he was home by stomping around his house from 3-5am every morning. The place was in the suburbs of the suburbs, and it took an hour to get to town. We didn’t take any photos there but here’s an artist’s impression:
















Now we’re in our real apartment and it’s pretty sweet. Mostly because of the amazing view of Montreal from our balcony. We’re on the 25th floor of a huge apartment building beside Parc Lafontaine:

























From the outside, the apartment building is not much to blog home about, in fact it's pretty ugly:
















But it has a gym:

and a swimming pool:

and saunas:


Parc La Fontaine is one of the nicest places in town. In winter the lake freezes over and people go ice skating. We can watch tennis, football and baseball games from our balcony, and go squirrel-fish fishing (you'll see).

We are good. Matt is still prospecting. I got a similar job but it turned out it would take at least a month and a half to process my work permit. So now I'm going to have to find a job where a work permit is not essential.

Montreal is a wicked city, there's always some festival or something exciting or weird going on. Our current hobby is going to watch our 10-year-old friend, Thomas, fight in medieval battles in a park alongside a horde of hippy drummers and tightrope walkers.

Gotta have a montage

This is one of the reasons we haven't posted for a while, have been making this movie. The music is ELO, which is why it is disco sweet.

Too much of a good thing/Be careful what you wish for

So I managed to get a job a couple of weeks ago. Testing video games no less.

I had been writing a post about how awesome my job is and had even made a picture.

My toolbox:



But it's funny what a difference a few days make. I would not have be able to comprehend how playing video games could be so torturous if someone had told me, so I suspect others may struggle with this: it sucks. Well some days, and then occasionally it is like "I can't believe they're paying me to do this".

The downsides to the job:

• they make you play the same game for weeks on end, 9am-5pm
• the games are not finished so are not very good and crash all the time
• the supervisors (or my one at least) act like the comic book guy from the Simpsons, if he were competing on the Apprentice
• I am not allowed to discuss any of the games outside of work
• They exercise collective punishment: they stopped email (?) at work for several hundred people "until further notice" because some guy looked at porn
• the pay is very low
• I am nothing more than a pair of thumbs who can use a spreadsheet to them
• the chairs (no couches) are awful
• it is of little value on my CV
  

The job was way better in my imagination.

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I have spent so many days writing this post, that I have now organised a new job to start on Monday. The position is "lead prospector" at a website firm. Hopefully my imagination hasn't ruined this one for me too.

Montreal and our golden ticket

Before we left Wellington I didn't really want to get travel insurance. My thought process was:

1. Insurance consists of you paying a relatively small amount of money which covers you in the case of a rare thing happening (gambling)
   
2. If one of these rare events happens, you win, and they pay you.
3. This is a worthwhile gamble if you cannot otherwise afford the cost of the rare thing, and it the event is possible. The rare bad things can never be completely avoided, but if you are young, healthy and travel smart, you can cut the risks.
4. The house generally wins. This is displayed by the simple fact that insurance companies exist.

Anyway we ended up getting insurance as a license to not worry. It turns out we got a winning ticket.

Upon our arrival at Montreal airport, we were informed our bags had not made it (from Ottawa, which is a two hour drive away). Air Canada took our details, and said they would be couriered to us within hours. It was 10pm. The delay caused us to end up at a motel (not the plan), which pissed me off, until I remembered our golden ticket. We read the policy to see that we would be entitled to replace $1500 worth of essentials if the bags took more than 12 hours.

We went to bed excited like it was Christmas; was Santa really coming?

Never have I been so happy to get back into dirty clothes. The bags arrived at 5.30pm, and we all lived happily ever after.

So anyway, turns out Montreal is totally sweet:

Marché Bonsecours - Montréal
Originally uploaded by Nino H


Gare-Hôtel Viger - Montréal
Originally uploaded by Nino H

Notre-Dame Basilica 1
Originally uploaded by Shutterscript

And the day bid a candy-colored farewell
Originally uploaded by IrenaS

The most wonderful time of the year
Originally uploaded by IrenaS

Round the bend
Originally uploaded by IrenaS

Bucky's dream
Originally uploaded by IrenaS

We have found ourselves a temporary apartment, and some groovy wheels. The trick now is finding jobs to pay for them.

The Belyea Bunch

In Vancouver Alana got to meet Mum's side of the family:


There were a lot of us the last time we met up in 1997, and the bad news for the world is that the clan seems to be expanded (in my cast not so much vertically as horizontally). Exhibit A: For the first half hour the whole thing was really quite overwhelming. For me, my extended family are kind of similar to fictional characters; I know their names, I know what they look like, I know what they've been doing, but I really haven't met them much. I cannot imagine what that must have been like for Alana.

As it turned out, Alana must have got her hands on some CliffsNotes or something, because she seemed to know everyone as well as I did. In fact, I think she might have had a better time than I did. Exhibit B: It turns out my family is filled with friendly, talented and interesting people. Almost all of my relatives are involved with some kind of artistic or design orientated career/study (exhibit C, D and E). As well as artistic stuff, one of my cousins is a game tester for Electronic Arts (totally sweet). I mentioned in an earlier post, Mike is a host for VIPs at LA clubs. Another cousin is an expert in indigenous rights in law.

I also found my long lost cousin/sister Vic:Awesome.


After the reunion was over, Alana and I stayed on in Vancouver. We spend a night with Dad's brother Fred and his partner Diane. Fred had the same twinkle in his eye as my dad does, same humour, same hand gestures.

Fred and Diane took us up Grouse Mountain where Alana got to cross her number one task of her list:These grizzly bears live in a habitat enclosed with just the number-8 wire in the photo, and an electric fence at waist height. Grizzlies can open heads like coke cans and some think could beat a mako shark in a fight.