Time Pays

While watching a program using a panel of age twenties and thirties folk, I was not amused by the "old gaffer" jokes. The audience laughed, being an audience and expected to do so, but they were not a thinking audience. First of all, using abusive terms against growing old is stupid since we all, without exception, will do so, and second of all, you speak of your own people, the elderly ones you say you love. Most children adore their grandparents because they are the ones who give them ice cream and candy when their parents won't allow it in the house. They are the ones you feel safe hugging and cuddling up to, because they are fatter and happier and more indulgent. Even better, they're in no rush to get kids out the door because they have to get to work so Mommy and Daddy can take them to Disneyland next year. Not pretty, but a truth. They also are always there to talk to, and they are never in a hurry to do anything but listen. So what is the point of old people being made into jokes constantly? Even old people, make fun of being old, so no wonder the rest of the world does also. The realities of funning of elderdom  are perhaps one of the downfalls in our Western society. Other cultures, historically, respect their old persons. They live with them, and when they have to rush out the door to work, Gramma or Grampa are there to pick up the slack. They are treated with respect for what they do and are needed for. They are not in assisted living homes, but with their families, and wisely, too, they know how to behave in that place. They are valued in the home. They tell stories about the past that children are eager to hear. I remember asking my pioneer grandparents, can you tell us what it was like in the olden days? And when we listened, their eyes would glow and their mouths smile as they described what it was like back then. It was our back then, too. Other societies honour their elders by asking their advice and sorting through it to select what might work for them, and thus, they may use it to make decisions in their own lives. For some reason, our ways lean foolishly to re-inventing what we all think is something new and better. It is not always better. Youth is youth and yes, it's adorable, but it isn't always something to pattern a whole life by. What's missing is the wisdom of reflection and solid planning. The technical gizmos of our lives are popping out new and flashy all over, but depth and perspective is not. It appears that the whole of our vibrant new world makes us all test animals. If it's new, we grab it. There is little thoughtful long term background  witnessed in the electronic field. Over-night billionaires are made of those who invent games and toys that really don't make the world a better place; they simply make it faster. And who needs faster? The hearts and bodies we have die abusively early because of the "faster is better" thought. That's because there is little long-wisdom behind our lives. Speed is not better. It kills.  If you want an example, pass by a building with a glass front in the city and you will see great long rows of "spinners" pedaling stationery bikes going absolutely nowhere fast. They are told it's good for the heart. So is not snorting and shots all weekend. You will see rows of desks with hot looking men and women, duded up to look like Hollywood right under our noses. Speaking of which, you won't see a single nose that hasn't been "adjusted" to the latest shape. Other body parts, too. Maybe we should eschew making fun of elders and begin to plumb their knowledge as in the "old days" when kids knew where milk came from and how to climb trees, not concrete walls.

Wait-loss In Weight-loss

There is a current sort of creeping social disease called weight-loss. Every magazine you pick up or side-ad on your computer, reeks of ways to lose weight. Most of them are termed "miraculous result" solutions. There are pills and programs and worst of all, clinics with so-called medical personnel, that promise to have you lose weight if you enlist in their businesses. The key word is "business". Hard cash is taken by these people who tell you that they guarantee weight loss. They say they provide support and advice or your money back. I would love to see some statistics on the truth of that! Almost every person I know of, or have read about, fails to keep the weight off. And please do not show me pictures titled Before and After. The truthful ones, rarities, show you the stars of their customer rosters, the stars who actually lost the pounds. One wonders, however, how long this hiatus took and how much Photo Shop went on. Even the famous K family do a lot of the latter before allowing their pictures to hit the page. While businesses do hope to achieve their goals, most of their clients are lured in by promises that neither of them can keep. In spite of medical advice and professional help, the best you can do for your body, is simply to watch what you eat. And you know what that is. Unless you want to make weight loss your life-mate, your body will thank you for accepting its normal self and happy that your mind follows along. For those in the stage and film business, their bodies are their work in part, and we all like to look at the ideal, in our minds when we are being entertained. It seems we most admire prepubescent forms that are lithe, lean and little. But we, as adults, are not naturally that way. We  fill out according to our genetic patterns. We may have wider, broader frames or abilities to put on fat in certain places that don't fit the ideal, or we may not be able to exercise as others, due to a disability. While our doctors harp on those extra ten pounds, we forget to remember that happiness begins in the mind, not the body. Our eating choices have to be sensible if we want our minds and bodies to be happy together. Unfortunately, there are those whose every waking moment is a mad drive to lose weight as the answer to all of their personal problems: finding or keeping a lover, burying their hurts in a bottle or a sugar bowl, getting the job by being bone thin, becoming a dream wonder in the gym. There is nothing wrong with choices, but sometimes they are obsessive, and take away the pleasure of other things that are worth much more as someone who lives in a society, rather than being a number on scales. One individual I think of,  spends most of her leisure time on her chosen hobby of weight loss by sweating. She is more than thin already, but goes outdoors running before dawn and  when she comes home, spends hours, off and on, riding her stationary bike. She also goes to a gym and does yoga. To me, she looks the same as ever. Then there are others, I see, who have never "slimmed down" but persist in extreme efforts in conversation and the kitchen on making meals that are as close to zero calories as eating sand. I had a friend many years ago whose body was thigh heavy, as was her mother's. My friend spent her life obsessing on diets. Finally, and sadly, she had her stomach stapled, and after that, suffered many painful years.  Was it worth it? Those thighs stayed larger than she liked, to the ends of her days. It's the life happiness in the wait, not the weight, that matters.

Diffs-US and us

There are lots of differences between us and the US. In the fifties, these seemed tantamount to shopping US "down there" and off we high schoolers went to buy our clothes and shoes before classes began. Those were the days eschewing today's sneaker craze, when saddle shoes were the rage. At my high school, however, we went for the tan kind, not the black and white ones of our thought-to-be -lesser cool rivals across town. Yes, it was a snob school without a doubt. But we loved, as did the other kids, our schools, and basketball rivalries were fierce with cheering hoards turning up for games. These days are different. There seems almost no border between us. When crossings are filled weekends, with long wait times and brands are no longer something we can't get at local malls, cross-visits for other reasons are common. Little shopping is exclusive to Canada or the US. Global times are upon us and that's a good thing in many ways. One of the cross border happenings is the movie business. Our dollar costs are low for the Los Angeles film makers, and Vancouver makes an ideal location not only for its setting amongst the sea and mountains, but also its friendly, moderate climate. Also, the West Coast has, along its sea front, a convenient "slide" down to LA for those Statesiders wanting to plane off home conveniently southward on weekends, too. Those in the business call it, "the four hour rule". Best of all for the West, are its growing facilities to accommodate the film business. These physical and personnel advantages, have become radiantly amenable and evident in the hopeful market of making series pilots. This branch of the business, works desperately, hoping to snatch a major place in the small screen streaming stratosphere. Our rapidly growing teams of technologists and rising studio facilities, make filming opportunities very tempting to producers. Not only that, we are not as a society, crazed about making film stars our heroes as happens elsewhere. We don't haunt the privacy of our actor residents, be they temporarily or permanently living here. For example, if I happen to spot a star daring to stroll along a city street looking to have a coffee, I am not about to scream, slam on the brakes and ask the poor soul, for a twoie shot on my cell phone. So, I saw a film star, so what? Nice, and something to talk about in the staff room, but not for full-blown hysteria. These guys, the actors, are just people, too. Or is that naive? In the US, it's a society built on heroism: it's the person and not the action that draws all the media attention. Gangs of camera freaks pester actors to death literally. The big draw, there, seems to be that everyone wants its face to be someone, and that means getting it into view on camera. Here, we are more concerned with what someone has done or is responsible for, and not their image, necessarily. Our history is not built on heroism as is in the country southward. Take their leaders: presidents, wild west figures, movie stars and generals for example, that fill the annals of US history. It's the face that one thinks about. Their movie business makes it so. Yes, we have Canadian heroes but their work is what we most admire, not their faces and bodies.  Just another difference to make us not smug, but contentedly Canadian.  

Got Your Robots

If you are a robot pooh, pooher, think again. Consider your car, your home appliances, your phone; it goes on and on. These are all roboticized machines. If you don't believe me, take a look at your dashboard and know that it tells you when you need an oil change or have a tire air problem. Then there's your washing machine that performs the programs you punch in. It's automatic, and what else is that but a robot of a kind that does the work, but has no semblance of arms or legs. Even R2D2, a film robot, doesn't have legs! While the word "robot" was introduced by a Czech playwright in 1920, it's meaning is not just machines that look and do as humans, but also ones that perform tasks remotely. Ergo our humble washers and stoves as examples. We "tell" our machines what to do and how, and then we turn away trustingly, and go on about our business. As to our robots, like anything else we own, we expect them to complete what we want them to do, and no less or more. But a machine, like a person, sometimes breaks down and can't, or won't do, what it's directed to do. And that, sadly, is what happens when crashes harming humans, take place. Unlike Hal of sci-fi film, robots are not able to change what they are programmed to play out. They do, invariably, unless broken, what they are programmed to do and hopefully, those who use machines that are potentially dangerous, understand them thoroughly. Transportation crashes are the worst and the immediate investigations do not always find "human error" as the fault. The more complicated the robot, the more difficult it is for we weaker humans to understand. It's that simple. When I first started learning how to use a computer decades ago, I felt overwhelmed until I saw how very simple it really was, if you took small steps at a time to become familiar with the processes. It was just like any other human learning such as  reading or walking or driving. It takes time and patience. But being human, we, while the machine is all set to go, we may not be. Our minds are wonderful and contain potentials we can't even predict, but we are not as "smart" as computers that have gargantuan memories far bigger than ours can ever be. They do not forget. What we have over computers, is our senses. Our senses are built in, and if robots are deemed to "have' them, they have to be implanted first as "reactions" to their data, one supposes. A robot is a machine that can't think creatively, using similar human senses, which form the apex of  human intelligence. Some robots are being developed to "think", but none have the combination of sense and feeling and mores that make them human-like entirely. Robot choices are not based on feelings, as ours are. Your car, if roboticized and in proper working order,  will do exactly as it has been told, and recent studies show the choices it makes, can sometimes have the potential of disaster. The more trust in the robot, the higher, the risk. A recent air tragedy is thought to be a miscommunication between robotic devices and human interaction. The humans were not in error. Nor was the robot, but the two interactions did not mesh. I hope that somehow, robots will never be entirely trusted, and that always, we retain a fail-safe: the importance of being in human control of machines and never the reverse.

Pews Out

Stepping out of my own beliefs or not, I think it is sad that churches are, one by one, disappearing. They are having to give up their struggles to maintain buildings that were built for hundreds and now barely fill a few rows of pews. They are having to take their followers to smaller venues or shared ones. The days of socials, prayer meetings and child religious education are being replaced by church use, as rental concert space, grandiose wedding parties and lecture hall seating. Some churches  are sold and become restaurants and bars with many of their accouterments intact and used in ways they were not made and intended for. There is a new order in this world of scientific advancement with electronic activity that not only controls our lives, but also allows us little free time for contemplation and other forms of prayer or meditation. And while this big change is happening, there proves a huge need for human peace and relaxation among the "machines" that dominate our lives.  Yoga, massage, retreats and environmental sites that people flock to do, indicate this. And it's not really a bad thing. You don't need a big, classy looking building to enter your inner space. While you may need to seek a mentor of some kind: a friend, a counselor, a group session, your family, your spiritual adviser,  the help can be found with  solutions such as: in the forest, a park, a house, a gym, a small room. It's more what's going on and not about how it looks. The matter of science versus soul, is not for me to argue because we all have our own thoughts, and they are deep and difficult, and often in the process of being searched and sorted out. Then again, there are others who are firm and solid in their concepts of the spirit, and they find their locations to practice them in, no matter how much it costs. A very long time in the past, the great stone places of worship, were built to shelter all the people in surrounding areas. They were built by the upper echelons to offer their supporting people, protection from their enemies. The buildings were strong; they were fortresses. They were places to store life giving goods if there were a seige. They are now tourist attractions. We humans are constantly changing, but the changes in our century lives, forgets that this is so. We want it all done during our relatively brief times on earth. We rail and rant against changes and in fighting them, often cause our own grief. Patience and understanding of what happened in the past, and that major change to occur, is always but a step, not a trek, in time. It takes the patience of more than a lifetime to accept that kind of change and a willingness to apply calm thought rather than anger and violence. If our lives are too much for us to find peace, perhaps we ought to slow down and give some deep consideration before running out with cardboard signs and yelling in public places. The media loves it, of course, because it sells, but a pile of letters written by individuals, not so-called general surveys and polls, unless every single member of the public is polled, is what really matters, and counts, in making changes. But moreover, it is individual patience, and a search for knowledge in the truths, that makes for the right and lasting, changes. As the spires go down and the cathedrals bow, perhaps it's time to think about what it is, we really need.

Icing On

Seems that the emphasis now, is on the visuals, the"icing" and not necessarily, the cake. In city condo towers, the main draw, isn't space, but the "icing" of the outside appearance of the structure. Some tall towers look pregnant, others have a twist, still others are bridged from one to another and yet others are festooned with trees. Condo living, once regarded as starter homes, has become a lifestyle to people who live alone, couples who have careers and dogs instead of children and seniors who find life in them, with assistance, the way to go. There are few units that don't offer steel, stone and stingy space. When you look at the interiors in the ads, there is little sign of actual human  habitation. Or at least the messy, normal kinds of people I know. When you step through the door after your elevator trip, you gasp. The ceiling reaches to the clouds. In the great room, another term for no walls at all, there are a few pretty vases with a stick or three of something green, a set of en tone pillows on a fragile looking couch and more on an even skimpier artsy chair. The eating area is a bar without shots but with backless stools and a bevy of stainless steel appliances snicked into stretches of gleaming stone. ( Believe me, keeping the glow on these things is work, if you buy the place.) The bedrooms hold an ultra neat looking multi pillowed bed beside a night table with a gumball lamp. And that's all the little room can hold. The smooth bathroom is a match for the kitchen sans fridge and stove, but with a combo tub shower affair in white acres of more stone. It dazzles. The clothes closets are for minimalists. They have 2 pairs of designer shoes, an LBD and a leather jacket. ( My home closet bulges but don't tell anyone or I'd be named a hoarder.) Back to the living room area, turn around and one step off, you might find a TV. It's plastered on the wall like a black picture frame.  The book shelf holds five books and three ceramics en tone.  These don't look a bit like my book shelf that is cluttered with memorabilia and whose books refuse to cooperate into their stalls.  I am ashamed to say, they are completely off the scale as to colours that fit the room. But enough of that, and let's move on to the cute little fuzzy rugs. There aren't many.  And no one should step on their hairy selves. Engineered wood means a skinny coating of real wood, the others are plastic photographs of it. Can't win. Then meet the taps and door knobs that are so elegant, you could hang them around your neck. Colours are muted which means they say absolutely nothing. The art painting, the size of a sheet, is evidently done by mad toddlers. They're mad because they've been given only one colour: grey. Then we come to the cabinets. These will hold, as my son who lives in a condo tower says, exactly three of  spoons, forks, knives, a pot and a fry pan. The expensive big items are the Samurai knife, the cappuccino machine and the cocktail shaker. Don't even ask about a laundry. You won't need a comb either. The price will make your hair rise from every follicle. It's all icing, but you have to consider the cake, the city turf it sits upon.

Fancy Sales

Selling isn't true lying but it's very close in some ways. In the real estate sales business, it's more what my dad used to call fancy dancing. You can no longer see a For Sale sign and stop, knock on the door and ask to see the place having the owner as your guide. If there is sign out front you must, and the owner must, adhere to the law. Never forgetting that selling and buying of real property isn't done with a hand shake or any fancy dancing other than what the law dictates.  Almost all present selling is done on-line with photos and printed information on the property of your interest. It's likely the best and most protected way to market since buyers can explore to their hearts' content. When you're selling, same thing. No one comes to view your sale property unless you approve of the time and date. You work closely with your realtor on what may be the largest amount you spend in your life, therefore, you must have complete trust in the person who will guide you through the ins and outs of selling and buying. The fancy dancing begins when the "stager" enters the scene and the photographers arrive. I have to admit that  this is one area that might need change. The stager takes charge in trying to make your place look its best. And while that is important, don't be foolish about it. I know one seller who actually had a mover come in and take away a ton of furniture etc and store it. Now why a buyer can't see past what's in someone else's home and mentally put their things into what they are looking at, I don't know, but it does happen. My advice is that you are the ultimate boss in this situation and you can say yes or no. Up to you. What you want and perhaps should have as the selling price is usually a myth or yet another fancy dance. Bets are you will reduce what you would love to get, which in time will wear away until a sale is imminent.  I have a quibble  with the photos aspect. You will find when you see the pictures of your abode, that you sometimes don't recognize what you see. Your sale becomes  enhanced. Most of the time, rooms look larger and brighter. Part of it is, that camera lenses, being what they are, are not human eyes. We have the miraculous ability to see reality but camera lenses can't. Photos are worked to make rooms look longer, larger and prettier. That isn't quite fair. It runs in the face of "what you see is what you get". Then comes the serious part. The signing of documents. What most people don't know, is that there is no dickering allowed with price. You aren't in some colourful market place where you can argue price. When you sign on the dotted line to make an offer, you don't  get to make flippantly another one on top of it. The seller controls the issue according to the contract of offer. It is their choice to whom and when they will sell according to the agreement. There is no fancy dancing here.  Something else that matters a lot, is that if you make an offer on a place and you see another one in the meantime, you can't just call up the realtor and say, oops. You are in a contract and what you sign is what you must do.  And in a time and conditions frame.Be aware that, when the contract is satisfied, you have to have a pile of money for a down payment in and out of your pocket immediately. It's held in trust. And is before you will see any actual money from the deal. It usually runs to about ten percent of the money you offered.  The whole matter of buying and selling is complicated and to do it yourself, is like a non-swimmer jumping off the high board. Good realtors like mine, will be there to guide you along and answer any and all questions. He or she does it for free until the sale is complete. I used to berate their fees but no more.  These are educated folk in their fields and no cute hairdo and photo smile or designer suit or Rolex watch are reasons to hire your realtor. You have a large, serious deal to work through. Buying and selling is a fancy dance and hopefully, you've have an agile professional partner.