Rob Ford: The Toronto Star’s Creation

The Toronto Star has been breaking stories about Mayor Rob Ford and his fitness to lead the city for quite some time now, but Gawker scooped them on the latest one. They immediately responded near midnight last night and detailed the video of Mayor Ford allegedly smoking crack cocaine. But while they’re the ones questioning Ford’s fitness to lead, they’re also the ones who are primarily responsible for this mess – them and our arcane electoral system.

In the last Mayoralty election, the Toronto Star wanted George Smitherman to win. They campaigned to make it happen, writing up stories that seemed to help push Smitherman’s competitors out of the race. I well remember how they reported on rumours that Sarah Thomson was going to quit the race long before her announcement. To me, it was like if they reported on rumours, then they could make them reality. I was livid. I was livid at their rumour mongering and at her quitting, leaving us with two crappy choices. It’s no wonder so many of us either didn’t vote or seriously considered not voting.

The first past the post system made it harder for the non-top two candidates, like Thomson, to stay in the race. If we’d had a ranked ballot method of voting, they may have stayed in, figuring that they may not be number one on the ballot but they could be number two and thus have a chance of winning. But first past the post means whoever had the most votes, even if it’s only seventeen percent of the votes, wins. The Toronto Star was able to achieve what they did because of this stupid system.

It’s all very well for the rest of Canada and partisans to lament those who voted for Rob Ford, but look who his competition was: an admitted drug addict who’d made a total hash of ORNGE and eHealth, and had a wonderful reputation for being a bulldog who couldn’t care less about working with others. Toronto City Council requires a mayor who knows how to work with others, how to persuade and seduce rambunctious and fractious Councillors. Instead, we were faced with a choice of a rogue Councillor who understood the deep need of citizens not to be fleeced and to finally have subways so we could, you know, get somewhere and a bulldog who hadn’t shown much interest in fixing Toronto’s problems before. What a choice!

And by the way, the previous two mayors were nothing to write home about either: the first one for the amalgamated city was ill and past his prime, which we didn’t know until after the election; the second ran roughshod over those of us who weren’t healthy or wealthy enough to fit in with his plans for making this city more unlivable and uglier. Those garbage bins former Mayor Miller dumped on us symbolize what’s been done to our city. And I am mad.

I hope that Toronto City Council will pass the motion to have the next election use the ranked ballot system, that the province will okay it, and that the biggest newspaper in the land will not bully every candidate but theirs out of the race again. Only then will we have a chance of voting in a mayor for Toronto that we deserve and need.

Rising in the Kobo Neurology Ranks

This is a nice thing to see on a cold and rainy Friday morning:

My book Concussion Is Brain Injury is number three in Neurology and number four in Neuroscience and surprisingly number seventy-six in the large Reference/Biography & Memoir category, for ebooks listed on Kobo. And surprisingly in Neurology, I’m ahead of a book by Oliver Sacks. Not bad!

Snow Day in Toronto Means Economic Slowdown

They warned us. They began with a storm is coming, then day after day they increased the snow totals. First it was 5 to 10 cm, then maybe 10 to 15. Then a whopping 20 and even hints of up to 40, although on Thursday night when they could see how the two storms headed our way were converging, they dialled it back down to 30. Still, it was the biggest storm Toronto has seen in 5 years.

Many of us cancelled our plans for the day and stayed home. In winters past, when snow was common and blizzards known, when streets were cleared quickly and efficiently, we may have continued about our day. But in the 21st century, the city isn’t used to winter, doesn’t clear back lanes, doesn’t clear side streets until the storm is over, and couldn’t even get Queen Street East – a major artery that should have had a subway line built underneath it by now, safe from blizzards and wind storms -- cleared soon enough and well enough for the streetcars to be able to run. I saw lots of tweets on how the TTC got stuck on that busy route. In the 21st century, cars are built low to the road and so need, more than in previous decades, every alley, every side street to be cleared just so people can leave home. It doesn’t matter if main streets are plowed if you can’t get out of your block.

If public transit was up to the task, as it was until the Mike Harris government killed it over Toronto envy, it would have mattered less if you couldn’t leave home by car. People could have slogged through the snow to the nearest subway stop (very important it be a subway with buses and streetcars sliding and stopping and hitting things). But with so few lines, that’s an impossibility for many, many Torontonians. Our lack of public transit isn’t just a commuting nightmare, it also compounds the economic effect of storms, events that with climate change is apparently going to happen more and more often.

If the Prime Minister is so hot to trot on the economy, why on earth does he neglect one of the biggest drains on Canadian worker productivity: public transit? Maybe the Senate should make itself obviously relevant by making a ruckus on this issue.

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Yes, it’s been awhile since I last blogged here. :( I have been blogging weekly on my website, and I hope to get back into it here.

Happy New Year!!!

 

The clock struck midnight. And the second hand ticked past. Fireworks exploded in city-lit skies. And people yelled, "Happy New Year!" Fingers tapped out texts to far-flung relatives, and phones rang everywhere with exclamations of joy and promise to come. Some twittered their resolutions to each other, and older somes with a smile, avoided making any.

It is customary on this bright first day to look forward way into the year, to make life goals and year goals, but I advise: live in the moment. The moment is peace. It promises nothing and disappoints not. The moment leads to another and another, and soon it leads to another midnight of glittering stars in the night sky, of Happy New Year!!!


 

Boxing Week Ebook Sale

Get my first five ebooks for FREE, only during Boxing Week 2012! All available in all the main ebook formats: ePub, Kindle, PDF.

 

Enter coupon code SA96J to receive Lifeliner for free on Smashwords.	Enter coupon code MK92E to receive She for free on Smashwords.	Enter coupon code VX88P to receive Eleven Shorts +1 for free on Smashwords.	Enter coupon code XV56Q to receive The Job Sessions for free on Smashwords.	Enter coupon code GG46W to receive A Nibble of Chocolate for free on Smashwords.

Check out major online retailers for Boxing Week sales for Concussion Is Brain Injury, my latest book in print and ebook formats now.

Kobo

Chapters Indigo

Amazon.ca: Print and Kindle.

Amazon.com: Print and Kindle.

Amazon.co.uk: Print and Kindle.

BiblioCrunch and Twitter

When having trouble with a company, go to Twitter. So it was with BiblioCrunch when I had a tiny problem: no response to my support request email within the 24-hour window they had promised on their site. I tweeted my plaint and expected nada, for it was on Saturday, usually when all but the largest companies are off.

Within a very few minutes, I received a reply -- an apology and a request to email her directly. And I received a DM with the email address and another apology. I hopped to it and sent an email. But as swiftly as I emailed, they were swifter in reply and in helping me sort out my problem.

And then they went further: they offered to post my book cover and links on their Facebook and Pinterest pages, and they had noticed my book launch tweets for my soon-to-be-released book Concussion Is Brain Injury and offered to send some tweets my way too. Now that's a company that understands customer service! No wonder they sponsored National Novel Writing Month and were one of the NaNoWriMo winner goodies (yup, I had another winning November; though for the first time ever, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this novel). I now look forward to using their site!

 

A New Direction Post Concussion

It’s not real yet, not in my mind anyway. Maybe when I crack open the tome, or more likely read the first email, I'll realise I have actually taken a step in a new direction.

To backtrack: way back when, I obtained a B.Sc. in psychology. I made it tough for myself by doing a specialist in it (more course requirements than a major) since I was really interested in almost all the courses offered. But by the time I graduated, I was sick of university and never wanted to see the inside of a school again.

After a year, I felt like my brain was atrophying, and I missed university. Since then and till my brain injury, I took a course a year, either at University of Toronto, George Brown, or Alliance Française. My brain injury put paid to that aspect of my life. Oh sure, I tried. I chose a 6-week course with no reading or tests or essays. All I had to do was show up. I was toast long before it was over, and I remembered not a thing from it.

But this year, I’ve had leaps and bounds of improvement. I’ve had some setbacks, but since I began gamma brainwave biofeedback, I've been brightening, perceiving my physical environment clearer, feeling my mind expanding, and despite my energy levels being nowhere near normal, have been able to do more cognitively speaking and even a bit physically.

I’ve had a goal for a long time that I haven't talked about much except maybe briefly with one or two people, and even then as in a rolling-eyes, no-way kind of way. But...

When three different people in a row talk to me on this as if I can do it, and one brings it up out of the blue, one I never spoke to about it before, I start to pay attention.

I'm still hesitant.

But I’ve dipped my toe in. No going back now.

I’ve signed up to take Oxford Continuing Education online course "Philosophy of Mind." It’s going to tax my reading skills, and I'm quite nervous. I’ve accepted the fact that in order to do this I'm going to have to give up some stuff. None of the medical because they’re my ticket to better health, better functionality. My blogging though will have to take a leave of absence. I will blog once a week on gamma brain biofeedback. But that’s it (theoretically speaking).

The course ends at the end of November. Wish me luck!

City Life Water Woes

As my friend put it, this week was a hassle I didn't need. But at least it wasn't like that long-ago day the water pipe broke. That happened the day after we moved in to our "has potential" house.

The basement had boulders and soil and measly attempts at cement for a floor, and here and there thin, narrow slats covered the beams of the low ceiling. You could use two fingers to snap those slats. The basement needed work. We dived in with gusto, pulling down those slats as chore number one. One landed on the main water line coming into the house.

Crack.

Water everywhere.

A swift call to the city, and we had no water. Nope, not a drop. But not to fear, we had a plumber because of all the plumbing work we had planned on doing (just not replacing a rotten main water line). There was a bit of a problem with the plumber though. It wasn't that he wasn't available that day. It wasn't that he had to buy the parts. It wasn't that he didn't know how to replace the water line and connect it to the city line. Those were all givens, not problems. We had yet to learn the plumber's problem. We resigned ourselves to borrowing our neighbour's hose to fill buckets of water as our water supply and getting to know our local doughnut shop real well for the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, while we waited for the work to be done, we continued with the basement destruction in preparation for its reconstruction. Finally, I was told I could call the city to turn the water back on. Yay!

Not so fast.

That was the day I learnt the big problem the plumber had.

The two city guys and I approached the hole where the new connection lay exposed to our eyes. We blinked in disbelief. We looked at each other. One of them gamely said, "Maybe it'll work." I gamely replied, "Yes. Let's try." The second guy shook his head mournfully at our silly hope.

City water guy number one turned the water back on, and we went back to the hole and watched the expected happen.

Water spurted out from underneath all the duct tape wrapping the pipe connection. Yup. Duct tape. Only Red Green or a drunk plumber would've thought of using duct tape to secure our new pipe to the city's pipe. Since it wasn't Red Green, we had a very drunk plumber on our hands, well practiced in hiding his alcoholism.

Water guy number one turned off the water. And apologized. I nodded resignedly that it was not his fault. They left, not to be seen for another two weeks. We fired the plumber. We found a new plumber more sober than coffee.

 

Final Thoughts on London 2012 Olympics

I love the Olympics. They're like life in a swift-moving microcosm.

Each Olympics reminds me of things I used to know and had forgotten in the detritus of life and teaches me new things I can use in my own battles. Canada's Olympics was rich with lessons and inspirations this time round.

Every Olympics, people back home and reporters on the scene moan about when Canada will get their first medal. By Day Two, everyone is sure that our usual suckage will last all 16 days in a total medal drought. That really came to the fore during the Beijing Olympics when we waited 8 days for our first medal. This time around, our first one came quick. No time for the whining to really get going. But you could already feel the impatience beginning as soon as the first medal of the Olympics was awarded (in a sport Canada is not known for excelling in, which is kind of strange with all our eager rifle owners who like to shoot sans a license). Stoking impatience is our Olympic sport.

Unlike the audience on the couch, athletes must exercise patience. It takes patience to learn and master a new skill. It takes patience to soldier on through the inevitable plateaus. It takes patience to try and try again until they reach the Olympics. Once there, it takes patience to wait for their competition to start, especially those male marathoners. While everyone else is partying around them, they must maintain focus and disciplined training. The athletes who excel at patience achieve personal bests, and sometimes those bests equal medals.

Patience definitely is a virtue.

People hate to fail. It's embarrassing, humiliating, and for those with low self-esteem, like a personal indictment of who they are. But Olympians fail in public, in front of millions, not just a few family and friends. The hardest are those built up as gold-medal winners and then come in ninth or fourth or last. And so I have been amazed at the complete vulnerability some of our Olympians have shown us. Although they must've felt like crawling under a rock, they wore their failure for all to see, expressed their sorrow to Mom and country, and apologized. But they didn't seem to personalize it -- they didn't turn it into a failure of who they are as a person but kept it where it belonged: in a lack of training, a lapse of judgement, being bested by a better athlete. In other words, success wasn't going to be about changing who they are but about finding a better coach or improving a skill or patiently waiting for an injury to heal or strengthening their mental prowess -- once they had worked through their grief and rage (a matter of days for some). And for those at the end of their career, it may be about taking the lessons into the next leg of their life or nevertheless enjoying their past successes as they transitioned into a new career. Failure is grievous but a launching pad to renewed vigor and achievements.

Only after an athlete has failed, do we get a full view of how responsible Canadian Olympians feel towards Canada and her people and how committed they are to do their best for us. It's that sense of responsibility and commitment that is part of what drives them to excel. From personal experience, I would say it's when the going seems insurmountable and the sacrifices about to kill you is when that sense of responsibility and commitment keep you going. If the Olympians didn't have that then we wouldn't see their best performances, and I would bet it's those who don't have it who don't reach the Olympics. Too often what is behind mediocrity and doing as little as possible is a total lack of commitment and responsibility to those one knows and to the larger corporation or institution or boss man or nation. It's like you can see their thought bubble: "So what if I've cost you an opportunity, I don't feel well and it's Monday. I don't need to apologize." Maybe because life is rife with uncommitted people that's why we're astounded when we see it in our Olympians who've just failed before our eyes and apologize.

Resilience is a hard thing to pin down, but you know it when you see it. Canada's women's soccer team -- wow! To go from the grief and anger of having been cheated by, at best, an incompetent referee, to feeling pumped about winning a bronze in only three days without a lick of that grief in evidence is...well, it's astounding. And it makes one think.

When I saw the French and Canadian players lining up before walking out onto the pitch, I noticed a marked difference. The Canadians were excited, moving about in their eagerness to begin. The French looked unhappy and were very still as they stood waiting. The Canadians looked like winners, and the French as if they'd already lost. Sure, the French may've outplayed the Canadians, but the latter in their heads were winners before they began, eager to play and compete. That's why they won. Mental resilience equals great performances and celebrating even those achievements you would only days earlier have considered less than.

It's a lesson easier to see than learn for oneself without a great coach, whoever that coach or mentor be in your life. I can see why the team reveres their coach.

You can't do it alone. It may seem like those gold medals were won solely by the athletes, but every athlete talked in some way about others who helped them, whether a parent or a community who raised funds for them or a mentor in the sport or a great coach or their teammates (even if they were in an individual race). And they particularly talked about the sacrifices others had made for them when they'd crashed and burned and how awful they felt for having all that support be for nought.

Is sacrifice for another to help them achieve their dream worthless if they fail? Or is it beyond price in and of itself?

When the triathlete Paula Findlay came in dead last, those who supported her saw her failure unite and lift up a nation. She didn't achieve what she had set out to do, but she achieved something much more valuable: she energized a somnolent couch potato nation to reach out and become involved. And she may achieve something more: a needed analysis of how Own the Podium oversees bad coaching and bad medical advice, as well as how it teaches athletes patience as they wait for injuries to heal.

London 2012 has given me a lot to think about, as well as giving me much-needed moments of respite from the madness of my life. Thank you athletes!

Happy Summer!

While the flowers and bugs get busy blooming and buzzing, I'm going on a political blog vacation. What better time than during the dog days of summer when the heat slays dogs and humans alike, when thoughts prefer to dwell on hard decisions like which book to read next, when politics and misogyny and wars seem to overwhelm the overheated brain. After all -- and unfortunately -- the latter will still be here -- the endless TTC yak, the federal Tory government's continued drive to secrecy, the unreal reaction to women expressing opinions about how they're portrayed, the killing of citizens by their governments -- come September.

Everyone needs a break.

Sometimes though a break comes in the form of doing something else. Instead of blogging this summer, I'll be editing and publishing my book Concussion is Brain Injury, and I will also be a guinea pig in brain biofeedback for gamma brainwaves, a frequency that hasn't received much attention and may be implicated in brain injury. I will be blogging on my website at http://jeejeebhoy.ca about this exciting and exhausting experience. Come and check out this something different.

Meanwhile, I wish you all a happy summer, and when the bugs slow down and flowers turn deep, I shall return.

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