Author: Lynn King

Flight Attendants Wanted

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Canada-Oxygen

There is something to be said for taking care of yourself before others. At least airlines have this right. “If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask on first, and then assist the other person.” On a personal level, many of us struggle to put us first. On a governmental level, however, this should be the norm.

I understand the difficulties of running a country must be seemingly insurmountable. People who have been wronged need to be helped. People facing crisis need to be helped. Decisions must be made on how best to hand out funding. The number of people and groups asking for financial aid is not small, and there needs to be some kind of prioritising and safeguards put in place to ensure our tax dollars do not fall into the wrong hands.

The question of whose hands are the right hands is seemingly difficult. All Canadian governments of all stripes have missed the mark, but it does not have to be that way. That question should not be difficult at all. At the risk of sounding a bit like a certain American president, who shall remain unnamed, I would put forth that any, if not most of the funding should go to helping Canadians first.

We have a long history helping other countries when called upon. We do this because we are a nation of givers, helpers and humanitarians. Helping others is entrenched in our Canadian DNA. One does not have to go outside of our borders to see what Canadians are capable of. From the train derailment in Lac Magantic, Quebec to the Fort MacMurray, Alberta forest fires, we have seen Canadians come together to aid their fellow neighbour. Even complete strangers who needed food and shelter during a massive American airplane diversion to Gander, Newfoundland in the days of 9/11 were greeted with open arms. It did not matter if you were rich, poor, or what nationality you were, you were helped, no questions asked.

As a fellow Canadian, I have no issue with helping other people of other nations. I do question helping other nations when there is so much wrong here. I am not saying to close the doors to refugees or to aid other countries. I am saying other nations can only be best served when a country’s own financial responsibilities to its constituents are met first. This does not mean Canada becomes a socialist state – far from it – this means that a nation with a healthy, prosperous population is always better equipped to help others in need.

It is true that Canada’s track record on foreign-aid spending in comparison to other countries like Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway is not that great. In fact, according to an annual report from Global Canada, Canada is in last place, but there is no requirement that Canada must keep up with the Joneses in foreign-aid spending. When you are talking about billions of dollars spent in someone else’s back yard when so many of your own citizens are struggling for all kinds of reasons to make ends meet, there is something wrong. I believe the majority, if not all, of those billions of dollars, could be better spent at home before helping people from other countries.

I do not come to this lightly or easily. I have always thought that helping others no matter where they are from was the right thing to do. I still believe this. However, because there seems to be a disconnect between our government and all people that desperately, and clearly need help right here in Canada, I question our government’s priorities when spending on humanitarian projects. There are certainly many other human issues our country could deal with before they look to help other countries in need.

Just a few questions to ponder: Why must our military veterans beg and plead to get the help they need? If someone has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and asks for help, why is it so difficult to get it to him or her? Why is it that entire villages in Canada in 2017 don’t have clean drinking water? Why is it that when a railway line is cut off due to flooding, an entire northern city and points beyond cannot get assistance to repair said line so that the flow of food and necessities are not hampered by delays that could cause death? Why is it that so many senior citizens, who have worked and paid into government coffers, are struggling and living below the poverty line? Why do disabled people have to wade through a myriad of red tape to get any assistance benefits?

Does not our government realise that these types of worries can cause undue stress and perpetuate other disastrous and chronic health problems which create a domino effect where our already taxed health care system takes more hits? Sick and poor people cannot help a country’s economy. If the disabled and seniors are left to live with benefits that securely places them below the poverty line, how can this help anyone?

Part of the problem, I believe, is bureaucratic red tape. Must we pay millions of dollars every year to have tribunals, public inquiries, Senate hearings, studies to make recommendations that are obvious to everyone? I do not think it would be too difficult to ensure that benefits for the most vulnerable of our population; our seniors, our sick and poor should be enough do not leave them in an impoverished state. I understand the need to ensure value, but when the need is blatant, any study is a waste of money.

Decisions need to be made quicker. We must stop ignoring the problems we face in our own society, and help our own people before we can step forward to help other nations. Perhaps Canada should hire their own flight attendants? I’m sure they’d be saying something to the effect of ‘Put on your oxygen mask, Canada. Save yourself first.’

 

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Practice Does Not Necessarily Make Perfect

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perfect-sax

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”      —  Albert Camus

There have been times in my life when I’ve needed to take a risk that I’ve been scared to fail. These fears often crop up when trying new things like public speaking, job changes, and, well, the list does go on. My fear of failure often stems from a constant fear of not being good enough. Although perfectionism can drive many people to do great things, it’s this incessant hum of needing to be perfect that rolls around in the back of my brain that has held me back in so many avenues of my life.

I know what you are thinking, at least those of you who know me. Perfectionist? You? When most people think of perfectionists, they often think of high achieving flawless people with type A personalities who can multitask under tremendous pressure, and who always exceed expectations and come out the other side unscathed. They probably do not think of people, like myself, who let things go uncompleted, or often seem to settle for less.

My past is full of opportunities I let go of because not only did I feel I was not good enough, I often felt that I could not get good enough at something fast enough. You see, with some perfectionists like myself, the need to be perfect is so powerful that if the perfection does not come quick enough, we let it go. For example, over the years I have tried to learn the ukulele, the guitar, the harmonica, the recorder, and the saxophone. Although I learned to read some music, and I managed to play a couple of songs, it was never good enough. My perceived lack of musical ability was enough to stop me from continuing.

Although I am still too self-critical, some things have changed. I know most things in life require practice. After all, I’ve been able to succeed at many things that needed practice. Without it, I’d still be eating my food with my fingers and forever tripping because I could not master shoe tying, let alone the ability to walk. All masters need to practice their craft. But mastery does not always equate to perfection because there is always something else to strive towards at the end of a goal.

I have learned that perfection, because it is impossible to attain, should never be the end game. Striving for perfection will most often lead to disappointment, because you will always be chasing an impossible to achieve end. So, don’t seek perfection; strive for doing, because it is in the doing where you will find growth and a healthy sense of accomplishment. You find excellence in the act of doing, the act of practising, and in the act of learning. Practice may not make perfect, but it sure allows you to be more engaged, more focused, more efficient, and, as a side benefit, it makes you a more well-rounded person.

How Not to Make America Great

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vimyToday I watched CTV’s homage to the 100th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge in France; it was quite moving. Hearing the stories of injured men and those who died under horrific circumstances was emotional. Learning the stories of men who continued, persevered, and came out victorious in the face of those horrific events was even more incredible. I am not sure I would have had it in me to do the same.

Watching the Vimy Ridge program, sadly, made me think of Donald Trump’s actions of the night before, wherein he authorized a military attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military airbase at the Shayrat airfield. If done, as Trump professes, as a deterrent to Assad’s gas attack against his citizens, then I believe this retaliation is warranted.

One would think, however, that firing no less than 59 missiles would cause significant damage. The images we see of the aftermath tell an entirely different story. The problem is the airfield is still operational. The runways were not hit. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said, “As always, the U.S. took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict.” There are reports most of the 59 missiles did not hit their targets. I think they must have also taken “extraordinary measures” to avoid hitting anything that would gravely deter the Assad regime.

I also highly doubt that the men and women of the USS Ross and the USS Porter are that incompetent as to miss so many targets. The only way an airfield could survive a retaliation of 59 missiles would be by Trump’s orders. If President Trump collaborated with Russian President, Vladimir Putin to take the heat off of Trump’s alleged ties to Russia and Russian’s interference in the election, then President Trump needs to be removed from office as soon as possible.

At first, I was not sure if Trump was sincere in his reasoning behind this missile attack. After all, when Barack Obama was President, Trump hit him with a barrage of tweets in 2012 telling Obama that attacking Syria would be a bad move and that we should just take their oil. Perhaps it is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy that he ended one of his tweets the hurtful insult, “Dumb leaders.” In his defence in not targeting the runways, President and Commander in Chief Donald Trump tweeted, “They are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)!”

Seriously? Now, who is the “Dumb leader?

Trump seems to play fast and loose with his military; using them as pawns in his bid to take the heat off his ties with Putin and bolster his standing in the polls. It is bad enough that military personnel must risk their lives as part of their jobs, as they have in wars fought at places like Vimy Ridge. Risking the lives of these brave men and women to win a popularity contest is not the way to make America great.

Money for Nothing

/ Lynn King / 1 Comment

Pay_voteI would hazard a guess that most Canadians would agree that helping a huge multi-national Canadian company survive and remain competitive is good for all Canadians. So, when the government of Canada and the Quebec provincial government bailed out Bombardier with a $372.5-million loan, and $1 billion respectively, it was a bit of a sticker-price shock, but still, it could be substantiated in the eyes of many people. What could not be tolerated, however, were bonuses for the company’s top five executives for poor performance.

I do not understand how executives can even think that they deserve raises after being brought back from the edge of the brink with taxpayer’s money. America’s Wall Street banking executives, who performed so poorly that they almost brought the entire world’s economy to its knees, also decided it was a good idea to hand out millions of dollars in bonuses after a federal bailout. In both these cases, executives cited the need to attract and retain the best executives. If the definition of a great executive is to gouge taxpayers and screw its employees, then the Bombardier top executives have easily come from the same gene cesspool of the greedy “privileged” few that have no concern for anyone below them. Money for nothing is not what a tax-funded bailout is for.

Most employees are lucky if they get an annual raise of two per cent. In the case of Bombardier, it has laid off thousand of workers worldwide to “help turn the company around.” There is no turning anything around when part of the problem is executive greed. It’s no wonder they were having financial difficulties. If private companies like Bombardier want to play fast and loose with their private money, then I would have no issue, but they are playing with taxpayer money. These funds should have come with conditions that include things like “never to be used to increase executive salaries.” What Bombardier and other companies like it are doing is a form of corruption, and should never be allowed under any circumstance.

Many Canadians are going through financial hardship. They have never received a bailout from their government. A bailout would sure help me, and it would not need to be anywhere near the amount doled out to corporate giants. When the average Joe or Josephine has financial difficulties, they cut back, scrimp, and conserve to help make ends meet. Why is it that Bombardier executives do not have to reduce their wages during hard times?

Bombardier executives do not need raises. Deferring these compensation packages to 2020 is not the answer. Cancelling these bonuses altogether is the answer. If you are an executive of any company who finds that living on $1 million per year is not enough, then you and I need to trade places for a year. Living on my pay, would, I am certain, make you better appreciate what it truly means to have to cut back or tighten one’s belt.

Canadians are a friendly bunch; they like to help out in any way they can. If that support, however, goes to line the pockets of the people that need it the least, then those people are no better than corrupt dictatorships that keep financial aid for themselves in the face of despair and financial ruin of their own citizens.

Toddlers, Dogs, and Language Acquisition

/ Lynn King / 1 Comment

parlez_vousFear of saying something the wrong way can be debilitating. There will be opportunities lost in not saying what you want, or in not understanding what has been said. In my case, misunderstandings usually stemmed from my lack of self-confidence, and my constant questioning that often took over my capacity to speak. Even after I convinced myself, or even after I rationalized that if I made a mistake, things would be fine. I am never quite sure if things will really be fine. One thing is certain: if you want to learn to speak a second language as an adult, you will have to exercise practise, patience, persistence, and engage other people.

While learning a second language, I often found it extremely difficult to express myself verbally. It was as if I was in grade school where the fear of public speaking, or the reciting of anything, while standing in front of a group, left me in a state of distress. This fear followed me into adulthood. It had followed me to Quebec, into my Françisation class, where my hopes of becoming fully fluent in French were fairly quickly replaced by a hope to be able to just get by in my new language. I had feared if I had trouble speaking in front of an audience in my own language, how could I ever be expected to do it in a foreign language?  It is with much regret that during my childhood, I never fully learned French past a level only useful to speaking to toddlers under the age of three. As limited as my vocabulary was, it expanded somewhat when I learned how to swear. When you are young, there is something very intriguing about learning how to spew profanities in a language other than your own. Although using coarse language against the Catholic Church didn’t hold any appeal for me, I was grateful that I could recognize profanity in French should it be directed my way.

As an adult, however, I was quite pleased when my French vocabulary had surpassed that of my sister-in-law’s dog. I was quite sure that Jack was not capable of understanding commands in the imperfect voice. I hadn’t tested that theory, but to Jack’s defence, and to my chagrin, he was perfectly capable of understanding the imperative voice long before I understood what that entailed.

Toddlers and dogs aside, and despite the fact that learning a new language as an adult was not easy, I persevered. It is well known that children learn communication through both verbal and non-verbal cues. It is probably not that well known that second-language acquisition by adults is also highly supplemented by non-verbal gesturing, at least in the beginning. Had anyone peered into our beginning French classes, we would have looked like an ensemble theatre troupe from the Marcel Marceau School of Mime and Gesticulation, The Quebec Chapter. Of course there is no such place, but had there been, we would have made the school proud.

A benchmark day in my evolution to becoming bilingual came when I went to see the film, The Passion of the Christ. In my personal war against bilingual illiteracy, I chose to see the film with French subtitles, and much to my surprise, I understood much of it. In my defence, I already knew the storyline and the ending, so I was able to follow it with some sense of ease.

Inexperienced users of a new language trying to broaden their vocabulary can, as I have found out, stumble into malapropism, sometimes leading to embarrassment, or at best, creating a very funny situation. Ironically enough, the word originates from the French phrase mal à propos, meaning “inopportunely” or “inappropriately.” So it was not a surprise to find out that I was not the only person afflicted with this phenomenon. Another student had broken his big toe. So when it was time for his oral exam, the easy question asked was “What happened?” Obligated to reply in French, he said pointing at his toe, “J’ai cassé mon oreiller.” The teacher started to laugh.

Perplexed, he had asked, “What is so funny?”

What was so funny was that the translation of oreiller is  “pillow.” It was hard not to imagine a full-grown man tearing up a pillow by having a pillow fight. After the laughter subsided, the instructor explained to him that what he had broken was his “orteil.”

Languages are not static; they are continually evolving entities that require constant adaptation. For example, using Google as a verb made me slightly queasy, but now it has become part of my everyday lexicon, as well as that of my dictionary’s. Inexperienced users of a new language trying to broaden their vocabulary can, as I had experienced, depend on a dictionary just a bit too much. My whole life, I have used dictionaries with no problem. I have delighted in learning and understanding a word for the first time. The same holds true for French. Although, there are times that I have searched for a meaning of a word only to find that I needed to search for the meaning of the meaning. My personal record to date is six entries just to find the meaning of one word. Ignorance is not really bliss at all; it is mostly just frustrating.

If you expect to learn a language quickly by solely buying a book or a CD, I think the road ahead will be difficult. There are many tools available that preach quick answers. There’s even a Wiki available called How to Learn French Fast. It includes ten steps with pictures. I wish I would have known about that before. Just think of all the time and agony I would have saved. My personal favourite is the Audiobook, Fast and Easy French, which has all the aspirations of being oxymoronic, or perhaps it is actually about people. Personally, I am waiting for French in 30,000 Complicated Steps Including Exceptions to come out because that would be a more accurate title.

Learning new things can be intimidating, unfamiliar, terrifying, self-doubt inducing, and downright uncomfortable. So you must trust me when I say the sooner you accept that the road to fluency may never be fully realized, the sooner your language acquisition will be—dare I say—a lot more fun. To continue in your quest to French fluency you must read more, write more, speak more, yell more, order more, and sing more, but mostly, you must be more patient, and accept that there will be times that you will make more mistakes.