Winter Blues and Updates… January 22, 2009

This past Monday was Winter Blues Monday… I guess such national day does not exist anywhere else in the world! Of course anyone living under the sun, surrounded by palms, does not go through what we Canadians go through every year. One would think that the second Monday of January is kind of too early in the season to start feeling winter’s negative effects… well… although on the calendar winter officially begins on December 21, reality is quite different! Usually by the second week of November we are right in the middle of winter which normally lasts until the end of March (when it does not drag into April with some big final snow storm). I know… pictures of Quebec City under a blanket of white snow might look pittoresque and romantic in many people’s eyes who do not have a clue of what winter is like.

Québec au clair de lune... So beautiful... on a postcard!

I often hear comments from immigrants (from warmer countries) who are surprised to find out that we dislike winter “But… you’re Canadians, aren’t you supposed to like and embrace winter?”… Such remarks always make me smile… Nope, we were not meant to like winter… we just happened to be born in Canada: actually, none of us is here by choice… Here is a reality check (and those snapshots were taken more than one month ago):

Nice ridge... compliments of the City of Ottawa plows!

Thanks to my snowblowing contractor who always clears the way in a timely fashion!

Yet count on the City plows to come back 10 minutes later!

After several complaints, the City finally gets rid of the snow banks before someone gets killed! Until the next time!...

Now that you have a better idea of what winter is like around here, you understand why Canadians, by mid-January, got the blues! They are fed-up with shoveling their driveways… they have to pay their Christmas bills… they cannot hold on to their 2009 resolutions… they suffer from a lack of light… they are stressed out with driving in bad weather conditions… It is time to book a trip down south, except that this year’s recession is preventing many from escaping… But somehow we all manage to survive! Life goes on… and there are things that do not change, especially civil servants’ second language training and evaluation.

The PSC is still lost in its paperwork… Back in November, Susan had asked for her January 19 oral exam to be postponed… finally in early December, a new date was confirmed: January 5!… Do these people know what the verb postpone means? Post… after, maybe?… Anyways they finally got the message and gave her March 30. Monday January 19, she received an email from HR… the PSC had to cancel her 1:30 pm appointment that very same day and her new date was January 22! Duh!!!… She then kindly reminded them that this appointment had been changed a long time ago. Incredible, but true!…

James got his results… as expected, he did not pass his B, he got an A… actually he was kind of happy because he thought he had performed so poorly that day… he was expecting an X… After having discussed with his manager, it has been decided that he had to move on with his language training… he then has to find a school able to send a teacher to his office (a remote location and since most language school teachers are on foot and using public transit – currently unavailable due to the ongoing bus drivers’ strike – good luck!) so he can have a few weekly part-time sessions… Change might be good for him: perhaps another approach will put his grinder at rest… and someone else will succeed where I failed. Yet for the time being, his training has been put on ice…

Dave finally heard from the PPC regarding his accommodation request (submitted in August 2008)… believe it or not, they wanted him to review his formatting request! Therefore nothing has been done… and in addition, they made another mistake: he never asked for being re-tested on his reading comprehension skills since he already obtained his level in June 2008… yet, in the email he received, they were giving him the specs for this test! Oh la la!!!…

I have not heard from Alice lately… I guess she is well settled in her boot camp’s routine by now… Hopefully she will meet her objective at the end of March : get her C  level…

On the weekend, Susan met with one of her colleagues who joined the same boot camp Alice is attending… They did not talk about her first week experience… all Susan knows it that her friend is overwhelmed. I guess this word says it all…

Seema is in another boot camp located downtown… we both believed it would be better for her sanity! At least, she can go out at recess or lunch time to breathe some fresh air and get a real cup of coffee (not a cup of lukewarm dish water usually served in office building cafeterias)… It was barely 1:00 pm Monday when she sent me her first email… she had met with her morning teacher (French from France) and chatted for four hours (I admit I am a bit skeptical here… my guess is that the teacher did most of the chatting). She wrote she had learned how to say “Thank you very much for having shown me the place” in French… “Merci beaucoup de m’avoir montré la place”… I was horrified! This is literal translation! And I know for a fact that it could not come from Seema herself (who tends to stay as far as possible from anglicized forms)… First of all, place in French refers to space… “Il n’y a plus de place” is used to translate “There is no more room”… When we talk about a location, we use the word endroit… Useless to say that what she wrote scared me a little… what will be next? Besides that, she was eager to meet with her afternoon teacher who apparently does not speak a word of English! Interesting indeed, yet not surprising at all…

That very same evening, she called me at home but I missed her call… early Tuesday morning, she wrote me another email saying that she would keep me posted… then… silence! Would the honeymoon already be over? I do wonder… I guess I will eventually hear from her… but right now, she is probably like Sally: unable to talk about her first week experience because she is overwhelmed…

Voilà… that is it for the updates! Little change indeed… Right now it seems only Susan is truly happy… always so energetic and enthusiastic about her French lessons… Oh! and Frédéric shaved his hair!… What a shock it was for me on Tuesday!… I am not sure I do like his new looks… for a second there, my heartbeat stopped: I had the image of a young guy under’going chemotherapy treatments! I know… it is trendy among young men to go bald… but still… unless winter already took its toll on him and he needed some change (like the rest of us)!

As for me, I have some exciting new projects in the grinder… it certainly keeps me busy…

And last night LOST has returned – season 5 – on TV… but it is now playing on a cable channel… and since I do not watch television, except for the news, I will not suscribe to cable only to watch this series (although I am an addict!)… instead, I will wait for the DVDs to be released next Fall… I truly believe I will survive without it…

“Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays… c’est l’hiver!”

Gilles Vigneault

Quebec City photo credit by: http://www.worldphotolocations.com