Halifax, Nova Scotia has had a rash of incidents where a man, described as being in his early twenties, has been found in the bedrooms of young women watching them as they sleep. He usually gains entrance through an unlocked door or window and runs off when the women wake up and are aware of his presence.

The latest incident is pure gold. A young woman wakes up at 6:30 am and finds this man in her room touching her. Well he must have the magic touch, because she doesn’t call the police to report it until 8:45 am. Brilliant. Did she make him breakfast?

A Sour Kraut.

Chapter 28

“Day dreaming again?”

Cliff spun around. “No Joe. Just thinkin’”

“Okay, it looks serious. I leave you to it.”

Cliff was trying to figure out what to do next. That was Conrad. He was here to talk to Cecil about something big and Flanagan was relying on him to find out what it was. A current picture of Conrad would also score Cliff a few points. He had to think of something and he had to think of it fast. Something subtle or Cecil’s radar would be screaming blue murder. What to do?

“Joe, you busy.”

“Nah, what do you need?”

“Come with me. Don’t ask any questions and just follow my lead. Okay?”

Joe looked a little confused. “Sure Kemosabe.”

The two of them walked back out to Cecil, Conrad and the Austin Healy. “Sorry Mr. Russell, but I had to bring Joe out to see your car.”

Cecil glared at Cliff. Mr. Russell smiled and nodded his head.

Cliff began, “See Joe, isn’t she everything I told you?”

“Err, yeah, yeah, she sure is.”

Cliff continued, “And Mr. Russell says that everything is stock. Look at the chrome. Not a blemish. I’ll bet the top doesn’t have a tear or a fade. Original snaps probably.” Cliff was walking around the car as he spoke. “You could probably loosen those knock-offs with your fist.”

Joe was getting into it by now. “I’ll bet a days salary, all seven dollars of it, that you can even drive it for two days without having to re-tune the carbs.’

“Smart guy,” Cecil hissed.

“Just kidding boss. I know the government takes most of it.”

Mr. Russell even laughed at that one. Cliff saw his opening. “Say Joe, do you have your phone on you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I would love to have my picture taken with this car. I’ll keep it in my wallet. I’ve got room if I take out the picture of my wife.”

“Watch it,” Joe chided. “Remember what I told you.”

“I remember,” Cliff answered. “Just take the picture.”

Cliff positioned himself on the top of the door. “Ready,” he said to Joe. “Make sure you get my good side.”

“Your good side?” Joe asked. “If we wanted your good side we would ask you to leave. You are taking away from the car.”

“Cecil was right,” Cliff shot back. “You are a smart ass. Just take the picture.”

Joe held up the camera in the phone and took a couple of pictures. “There, done.”

Cliff stood up and moved away from the car. He looked over at Cecil and his guest. “Would you two old friends like to have your picture with the car? After all you own it.”

“No,” Cecil answered quickly.

“Well if you’re nervous Cecil I can stand in the picture with you,” Cliff snickered. “Besides you are being rude. You didn’t let Mr. Russell answer. It’s his car.”

Cecil was about to say something when Cliff cut him off. “Well Mr. Russell? One picture on the house. Like I said, if you want company I would be happy to be in the picture with you.”

Mr. Russell smiled, hesitated and then said, “Why not.”

“Great,” Cliff said. “Come on Cecil, get in here.”

The three men lined up beside the car. “Okay Joe, whenever you are ready.”

“Ready, I’m already done!”

“Boy you’re fast. You are going to make a woman very happy someday.”

“Easy buddy,” Joe laughed. “I’ll bet Mary has a few stories to tell.”

Cecil was getting impatient. “You two clowns need to get back to work.”

Joe and Cliff looked at Cecil. “You are the boss,” they chimed.

Cliff thanked Mr. Russell for his patience and he and Joe walked back into the shop. When they got back to Cliff’s bench, Cliff took a deep breath.

“What was all that about?” Joe asked.

“I’ll tell you sometime. I need the memory card from your phone.”

Joe opened the slot and handed it over.

“Cecil may ask to see the pictures. I am sure that once he has the phone he will erase them and say it was an accident.”

Joe furrowed his brow. “Why would he do that?”

“He just might. Maybe not. Anyway don’t tell him that I have the card.”

“Cliff, what in the hell is going on?”

“Nothing, but you have been a big help.”

“Think nothing of it. I know I will.”

Cliff walked to the window to see where Cecil and Mr. Russell had gone. They were still standing by the car at the front of the shop. Cliff wondered how he could get close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation. If only they came inside, Cliff could come up with some reason to work within earshot. No matter how much he thought about it, he could not think of anything that would help. He watched Joe walk across the parking lot to a customers car. Just as he returned to the shop, Mr. Russell shook Cecil’s hand, got into his car and drove away. Cliff was still watching from the window as the Healy disappeared down the street.
Cecil walked back into the shop. “JOE!” he bellowed.

“Yeah boss?”

“Come here and lemme see those pictures.”

Cliff watched Joe head over towards Cecil’s office. Joe passed Cecil the phone. Cecil looked at each picture intently. As he was passing the phone back to Joe it dropped to the floor. Cecil’s large mass lunged toward the floor and scooped up the phone. It was almost graceful. A brief conversation followed and Joe headed back to the work area.

“You’re clairvoyant,” Joe said to Cliff.

“Why?”

“Cecil wanted to see the pictures, then he dropped the phone, erased them all and claimed it was an accident. How did you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Why do you need those pictures of the car?” Joe asked.

“I don’t need pictures of the car. What I really needed was to find out what they were talking about.”

“So why all the pictures if you wanted to eavesdrop?”

Cliff sighed, “I needed to find out what they were talking about. If I got a picture of Mr. Russell it was a bonus.”

“Hmmmmm, all sounds very cloak-and-dagger,” Joe snickered.

“Yeah, well, I wish I was a spy, maybe then I would be good at this.”

“Are you going to get a bad grade if you don’t bring an apple to your teacher?” Joe asked curiously.

“Not a bad grade, but they won’t be very happy that I wasn’t able to complete a simple task.”

“They?”

“They are some people who are trying to help with Monica,” Cliff offered.

Joe looked at Cliff’s worried face. “Three cars coming in tomorrow. Mr. Russell’s company is going to handle the shipment to and from the shop.”

“What?”

“That’s what I heard them talking about. Three cars – tomorrow.”

“When did you hear that?”

“When I walked out into the parking lot.”

“Joe, you are a genius.” Cliff grabbed him and gave him a huge bear hug. “That makes my day.”

Joe pushed Cliff away. “Go, Go and give this information to your handler.”

Cliff nodded and started walking out of the shop. He turned and looked at Joe, “Handler. What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you sometime,” Joe laughed. “Go.”

Cliff headed out the door and towards the street. By the time he reached the sidewalk he could hear Cecil yelling his name. Cliff pulled the phone out of his pocket that Flanagan had given him and pushed the redial button. He was walking briskly waiting for the line to connect. Finally he heard Flanagan’s voice, “Get in!”

“What?”

“Get in the van!”

Startled, Cliff glanced to his left. There was the van from the television station keeping pace with him. The side door slid open and a stranger motioned for him to jump in. Cliff grabbed the handle and swung himself inside. “Who are you?” he asked the man he had never seen before.

“Never mind”, Mrs. Flanagan said from the front seat., “you won’t see him again.”

“Too bad for you,” Cliff said looking at the stranger.

“What have you got?” Mrs. Flanagan wanted to know.

Cliff felt triumphant. “Well Conrad was by. I have pictures of him and found out what he is doing with Cecil.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean?” Cliff was confused.

“We know all that,” Mrs. Flanagan said impatiently. “What else did you learn?”

“What do you mean ‘we know all that’?” Cliff was getting angry. “You told me to go and find out what Conrad was up to and that you didn’t know what he looked like. I got you pictures and found out what you needed to know.”

“We took all the pictured we need and we heard the whole thing.”

“How did you do that?”

Mrs. Flanagan looked at Cliff and said slowly, “They were outside and he was driving a convertible. We took pictures and we listened in.”

Cliff stared back at Mrs. Flanagan. He felt a little foolish. “Oh,” was all he could manage. There was a brief pause. “So,” Cliff wondered, “now what?”

“Well my dear Cliff,” Mrs. Flanagan began, “it looks like tomorrow is the day we have all been waiting for. Our ship has come in.”

No offence Jackson clan, but I am really getting tired of hearing about Michael. I know he was a good father and a fabulous musician/entertainer, but there was something not right upstairs. Yes his death was premature, but he kinda brought it on himself don’t you think?

Farrah Fawcett on the other hand died on the same day as Mr. Jackson, yet I heard nothing of her contribution to pop culture in the 70′s or her amazing acting roles of the late 80′s and 90′s. Not to mention her valiant battle with cancer. If we want to honour celebrities contributions, maybe we should get our priorities right.

After all, does Michael hold the record for best selling pin-up poster of all time?

We’re thinking of you Farrah. Rest in peace.

A Sour Kraut

Stop all the consternation. Here it is. And it is simple. I have figured out the meaning of life.

There is that thing about making the world a better place. That’s not it. Believing in God and living the way she wants you to, is not even close. Having children. No, no and no. Forget the reincarnation thing. And if you think that anything that Stephen Hawking might believe has anything to do with it you are way off.

The meaning of life, better yet, the ultimate goal of life is to get other people to give something to you. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Now the kicker is that this cannot be accomplished through the use of coersion. Sure you can hang someone’s mother-in-law over the side of a building and people will… okay, bad example. Hang someone’s pet over the side of a building and people will give you almost anything. That’s cheating. You have to do this the old fashioned way – by getting inside their heads and messing with them. And what do you want them to do? Give you money of course!

So far I am doing quite well. I have reached the coffee level. People regularly drop by with a coffee for me. I can only drink so much coffee. I tell them to their face; “Thanks, but I would rather money.” They laugh, but eventually my message is going to get lodged in their brain and as they start to pull into a Timmies they are going to say, “Gee, he really would rather money.” Ha, I have won. An intermediate step would be to ask for beer.

So there you have it. Start now, because the person that does the best wins. That’s kinda the meaning of life too.

You should start bringing me coffee, or beer.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

I am begining to feel out of touch.

A lesbian couple crossed in front of my car at a stop light today. Hand in hand, they were each listening to their MP3 players oblivious to the world around them and each other. Hmmmmm, they might be on to something.

A supplier was in telling me of the time he had a cot in the back room of his business. When he didn’t feel like going home at the end of the day he would cross the street to the pub. A few hours later, and several beverages, he would return to the shop, open up the cot and phone his wife. He would tell her that he was too drunk to drive and he would not be coming home unless she wanted to come get him. Nope. She wanted the bed to herself. She was happy and he was happy. Hmmmmm.

Michael*, a man I know now as a man, was telling me that he has had his consultation with a psychologist and was approved for hormone therapy a few weeks ago. And? I asked. He’s never felt better. Well he certainly looks different. I thought he had started a long time ago, having breasts and all. Little did I know they were falsies. Good thing I told him. If I had real ones I would never leave the house. So what if you get all the way into this and find out it was a mistake? I wondered. Never going to happen, he says his partner couldn’t be happier. Hmmmmmm.

Michael, by the way, will no longer be “Michael” at the end. He has already chosen “Michelle”*. I told him that no matter what cup size he has he will always be Michael to me. He is okay with that. Michael loved to work on his own car. He doesn’t now. His French manicure can’t take it. Hmmmmmm.

Another guy was telling me that his wife swings from both sides of the plate. Really. I wondered why he would tell me this. Does that bother you? I asked. Nope. He told me that is why he married her. Hmmmmm.

And here I am thinking that a relationship is being attentive, buying flowers when your spouse needs to be cheered up, cooking eggs benedict and mimosas. Kids love mimosas. Man I’m out of it.

Until then, I remain

A Sour Kraut

* Not his or her real name. Although it wouldn’t matter much. You don’t know them.

There has been a lot of talk and nashing of teeth about the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings in Ontario. There is the fake lake, the piped in loon calls ( probably Olivia Chow ) and the one billion price tag. Very few are actually taking any notice of the big thing that is supposed to happen this weekend. The Chinese are actually going to commit to letting their currency float on the open market. Well, they are supposed to anounce this, but it will probably be something less dramatic.

The main burr in the US’ saddle over the past two decades is the fact that China’s Yuan is pegged by the Chinese government to the US dollar. As a result Chinese imports have always held the advantage due to the low conversion rate. The US and other western countries have been pressuring the Chinese to let the Yuan float. Since China is a major exported, the Yuan is in constant demand. If it was freely traded like all other currencies, its value would go up and its artificial advantage against currencies like the greenback would disappear.

So what? you yawn. Well, if the Yuan goes up so does the cost to buy Chinese goods. That makes everyone elses products more attractive. Couple that with the fact that Chinese workers are starting to understand their power. The Chinese have an interesting way of asking for a raise. They commit suicide. Really! A number of weeks ago, there was the news story of people at a big electronics plant in China jumping their deaths from the top of the factory. They were doing this because of low wages and terrible outlooks. While that may not have helped them, the rest of the work force was given a pay raise. In another city Honda employees at a transmission plant walked off the job for more money. The company capitulated and gave them a 54% increase. This was probably the equivalent of pennies an hour, but it is a major milestone in the development of the Chinese workforce. Once they start striking they may never give up. It is a lot easier than drawing straws to see who will jump off the roof for the betterment of the others.

What is happening is the beginning of the end of really cheap Chinese goods. Happened with Japan and it is happening with China. How WalMart is going to keep “rolling back” prices is the interesting part. I think I will go get that coffee maker sooner than later.

Until then, I remain

A Sour Kraut.

I just had one of my worst weeks in a long time. I didn’t feel good, business stinks and everyone around me is laying off people, I received one phone call from one government agency complaining of non payment and a registered letter from another. The first call was simple, a fax of cancelled cheques and they were happy. The second, well you know it is never good when you get a registered letter from the government. The long and the short of it was they shut us down. Pulled all our licenses. Why? Last January my partner’s wife was in an accident with one of the company’s cars. An $18,000 payout from our insurance company ( and that didn’t even include the fact that our car was written off and went to the junkyard ) set everything right, or so I thought. Apparently, our insurance information was missing or incomplete on the Police report. When some bureaucrat saw this they revoked everything. Not a phone call or nothin’ to see if this was an oversight. I still don’t know if my insurance agent and the government have this straightened out. Happy Father’s Day.

Which brings me to memories. I sat down and asked that age old question: How did I get myself into this? Well it is my own fault. The decisions I have made along the way have lead me down this path of riches. We travel the road of life and take one fork over the other and hope that it works out. When it doesn’t you fall back on the good memories you had before you came to that fork. They can kill you. The old “What if I had only…?” can cause a lot of stress. You look back over the fence and you know for sure that the grass was definitely not greener. The present can’t compete with the rose coloured glasses of the past.

There are decisions I have made that I know in my heart were wrong. Why did I make them? I don’t know – lack of maturity, lack of information, or I was misled. I have two faults (stop your laughing) that have caused me grief. The first is confidence. I believe that I can do just about anything. Put a scalpel in my hand and a book on neurosurgery, and if I am the only one who can help the person in need, my inclination is to give it a try. Sounds crazy, but I can’t shake that belief in myself. I have proven a lot of people wrong with my ability to overcome the odds. The second ( and yes I could go on and on ) is my stubborness in in doing what I think is right. If I believe that something is right, I will chose it over the thing that is best for me.

The there are the butterflys. Out of all the bad things that have befallen me over the years there are those that I would never give up, I would never give up the gift I was given in ’99 even if I was able to forgo the great cost it came with. I have met some amazing people. I have a family that is a result of my decisions. Would a different fork have given me the same children? That is a risk I don’t think anyone of us would take. That butterfly who flaps its wings in the jungle and sets off a chain of events that causes a hurricane, doesn’t know that if they hadn’t flapped as hard or waited a minute that the outcome may be different. And that is the cost we pay.

There are the decisions that I know I should have made differently. Those are the ones that sit in your heart and eat away little pieces of it day by day. I should have been a veterinary. That was my childhood dream. I got coerced to go into medicine instead. That was sabotaged by the way I see things. I didn’t “GET” Organic Chemistry until 2:00 am the morning of the final exam. I aced it, but my 98% on the final was not enough to get my mark up to where it needed to be for such a crucial course. I finished with a B+. I needed an A. I wrote the admission test and got a very good mark for a first time writer. However, you could write the Mcat as many times as you wanted and then submit your best score. Remember my stubborness? I beleived that anyone who looked at my score and factored in that it was done on my first and only writing would put that in my favour. Nope. As a result I was accepted, but put on the waiting list. Number #2. Nobody switched or dropped out. First year in history the registrar told me. Wonderful. Business school and acceptance to Law School followed ( I am not a lawyer so guess what decision I made on that one ) and here I am. Still trying to figure out what path I should have taken that would have given me the most benefits at the least cost.

Until then, I remain

A Sour Kraut.

Here we go again. The OECD, bank economists and politicians are raising the alarm bells about Canada’s and Canadian’s lack of growth in productivity. Hurray, we’re # 17!!!

Productivity, is not only a nice word, it really has a lot to do with how a country gets along. We may be #17 with a score of 78.2, but our little olympians over in Greece are way down there with a score of 58. How well are they doing? Basically, productivity is an indicator of the efficiency of your economy. If your economy is firing on all cylinders, you have the wages to achieve a higher standard of living and goverments have the tax revenue to provide the services needed. Done properly, no one has to go in debt. Done poorly and you have Greek hairdressers rioting because they are no longer able to retire at 57 with a full pension.

Anyway, being seventeen may not be so bad. It’s just that our neighbour, don’t look now, is always at the top and looking very smug with the productivity bench mark. There are a couple of things that should be noted. GDP and productivity has a lot of grey areas. For one, it covers all workers. If you are a country that has a big public sector, maybe – all offense intended – those workers are not as efficient as the private sector workers do to all of the concessions given to unions. (See reference to Greece above) You do not see a lot of heavily socialist countries at the top of the OECD list.

Secondly, there is the whole thing of economies of scale. Are we ever going to be as productive as the US? Nope. We could work our little frozen butts off and it ain’t happening. The US and other countries that have massive populations advantages have massive home markets that we don’t. If there is one company here that is making widgets for the home market and one in the States making widgets for the domestic market there, guess which one will be bigger? If the company is bigger then they can invest in bigger and better machinery. New technology makes their workers more productive and we can’t do a thing about it.

Finally, if you are hewers of wood and miners of ore, you are at the mercy of the market. When everything is corrected to US dollars, you can see your GDP rise or fall dramatically based on exchange rates. You are still working as hard, but look out for your ranking.

That is not to say we can’t do better. I am always amazed that Canadians will ship wood, ore and food overseas and then buy the finished products that are shipped back. Companies find it too easy to harvest, farm or dig up stuff and make money on it. If the government was smart they would put a tariff on raw materials leaving the country that could easily be value added here.

So much for free trade though.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Well Ringo, you have managed to kill the aspirations of another well meaning organization. And this time you were trying to help.

You have sunk the Yarmouth Ferry, saving $6 million when in fact it cost $3 million. You have thrown away $9 million in Shelburne before you realized the area’s economic development agency was a mess. You have sold Trenton Works to Daewoo, then told us you you paid them $20 million to do it. In reality it will be a lot more, when every time in the future they come to you and put a gun to your head. They will threaten to leave and you will cough up more.

Now you have committed $3 million to Soccer Nova Scotia’s Field of Dreams in Clayton Park West. Too bad for SNS. Your support could sink the whole thing. You the one who was going to make a difference. Wrong place, wrong time Ringo ‘ol boy. And it was soooo close too. Right there in your grasp. The opportunity to do the right thing. You could have looked George P. right in the eye and said NO. Yeah you could have, but you didn’t. If George was smart he would have gladly accepted the refusal and put the whole thing on the back burner for a year or two. But sport blinds. And a center peice is dazzling. You all thought that this field of dreams was going to save your hides. Sorry. The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t fly anywhere but Halifax. Cape Bretoners are apoplectic. But then when aren’t they. Mainlanders aren’t that far behind.

You see Ringo, and George, you could have come out and told the truth. This is a Tier 1 and Seniors thing. You could have said this surrounded by a very large group of under 8 children grinning at the camera with missing teeth. You could have said that now is not the time to invest in a high performance facility for young athletes and a playground for adults. You could have said that you were actually going to help sport by investing in grass roots organizations around the province so they could make it more affordable for young boys and girls to play. Instead you throw $3 million of your camera budget at a field that only a select few want. And George, pullleeze, ultimate frisbee. Your are building this so that you can share it with ultimate frizbee? Come on. You had to be able to do better than that. I played ultimate. It is a blast. We played in snow George – and loved it. There wasn’t one of us that would have been comfortable coming in and playing on your field. Where is a PR person when you need them? Go for the soft sell now and two years down the road, commit $5 million and look like a genius.

But, hey, the money is committed now. So it is just a matter of building it and seeing if the howls get to loud. Hey, Ringo, you have been known to go back on decisions. Let’s see if you give George and the rest of SNS some sleepless nights waiting for your call.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

I spoke to soon the other day. Sure enough, as soon as I complain the that Emergency Department at the Fisherman’s Memorial Hospital is closed, I have to spend five and a half hours at an emergency department with a son with a gash in his leg. At the five hour mark he and I started talking about how long it was goint to take to get seen. A half hour later we did what most people had done – we got up and left. Twenty-five dollars of gauze, bandages and anti-biotic ointments later, we were on our way home. He was seen this morning at another emerg and stitched up.

In this great system we have, people who should be seen by medical personnel get tired of waiting and go home. What the long term consequences and costs of this are, I don’t know. It is not ideal, but what are you supposed to do? In the five hours and thirty minutes we sat there, the department admitted four people and received three others by ambulance. This is a regional center, so you would think that they could handle a patient flow like that. Others had been waiting for many more hours than us. Yet no one had any idea when or if they could be seen before the day was out.

When you enter this system you soon find out that you are not the customer or client or whatever word the spin doctors want to use to make people feel good. You are a problem in their day and the sooner they can get rid of you the better. This was demonstrated by the nurse that opened the door to the waiting room and asked if there were any new people for triage. When the answer came back as no, she pumped her fist, let out a whoo-hooo and closed the door.

Something as simple as a quick update on how the department was doing would have been nice. A short, “Sorry, we are running behind, but we will get to you as quickly as we can.” An estimate of when they thought you would be seen would have been gold. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, you sit in waiting areas that are not clean, with people who are sick and probably passing stuff around to everyone else.

What’s our recourse? Squat! Who do you complain to? In a free market, money talks. You don’t like a service, you go to the competition. Here, if you don’t like the doctor assigned to you or you find the hospital lacking you can get up and leave. You have to go back, but you can get up and leave. Imagine a for profit hospital putting up with patients, their customers, leaving along with the revenue they bring in. It would never happen. They would be asking you to come back and trying to fix what was wrong. Here, not so much.

Sure you can put in a complaint to the administrators, but that will take for ever and then the unions will prevent any real change. Instead we remain prisoners of the system that is supposed to protect, advocate for us and heal us. Wonderful.

It has to be “free”. It ain’t. We’re paying through the nose for it, in more ways than one.

Until then, I remain

A Sour Kraut