A call that never came

Ahhhhh, what a let-down! The phone interview for the job in Dubai I mentioned earlier this week didn’t happen. After all the planning, daydreaming, excitement and fear, I feel pretty deflated. I spent a couple of hours by the phone which never rang. That reminds me of the really annoying habit of business people in Canada—well, obviously, not only in Canada: when they want to get rid of you, they promise to call you later, and they never do. Why is it so much easier to be a total deceiving asshole, rather than being frank with someone and just say openly that you’re not interested?
However, I don’t think that’s what happened today. If Dubai didn’t want to have anything to do with me, they’d never set up an interview after seeing my resume. Which makes the whole matter even worse, because I simply can’t figure out what is going on. No matter, life goes on, we are back firmly on the ground. Maggie is planning to plant a little garden in the front yard. I am training for a marathon to run before the year’s end. As wild and exhilarating as the whole Dubai thing was, it’s a relief of sort to be rid of it.

Speaking of running—I went 15.26 km yesterday, most of it in farmland around the neighborhood. Little by little approaching the half-marathon distance.

Canada’s national hockey team lost to the Russians in the final game of the world championship. It was 5-4 for Russkies in overtime. Tomorrow will be a day of mourning in the hockey-crazed nation.

Our neighbor has drums in the basement! How do I know? Well, every evening around 10 pm someone is banging quite savagely on them. Although, after living next door from the drummer for over a year, I can hear the improvement. Occasionally, it even sounds like a purposeful rhythm. Though, more often than not, it’s still just a noise with no particular beat to be discerned. Luckily, it ends by 11 pm, but my growing fear is that one day the drummer will find the rest of the band. Considering their ethnic origin—they are Indian—I fear high-pitched female whining which they like to call “singing”. Imagine, living next door to a Bollywood outlet in Markham, Canada!

Victims of the earthquake in China are being shaken and stirred by aftershocks. Or, rather, after-shake. Most of the victims are children who were in school when the earthquake hit. Schools were either too old, or too new, and collapsed easily, burying hundreds of students under the rubble. Apparently, supercharged Chinese economy developed many side-effects, like so called “tofu architecture”. The new developments are being built too fast and with such a low-quality material, they jiggle and collapse like a tofu.