Me, The Egoist

On July 20, 2007 I fulfilled one of the key elements of the American Dream. I became a homeowner. I purchases an 100-year old 2 and a half story house just outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. It is in excellent physical shape. The wiring, however, is in need of some work.

My parents have come to town to help me move in and to help me get started on some of the construction work which I needed to have done. I’ll be posting here about the changes and events which occur, and any little bits of wisdom I come across.

The Declaration of Independence is a very moving document. It is both a forceful document stating that people do have rights, and part showmanship designed to gain popular support. The most well known sentence, the first line of the second paragraph, reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is very moving to me. Independence day is the day each year used to remind people of this amazing document and the events surrounding it. Sadly, it’s not viewed that way across the board.

I was listening to the radio the other day when a commercial came on which said that I should “declare independence from finance charges”. Yup. One of the most important documents in human history has now been reduced to a commercial jingle. This both makes me sad as well as reaffirms my suspicion that people will do anything for a quick buck. Ah, well. Read the Declaration of Independence this Independence Day. Try to understand what it was that happened over 200 years ago to cause a people to rise up against their masters. Keep that close when you hear political discussions today.

There are a number of things which are difficult to get used to living in the US. The first is finding a brand of something you recognize. Most of the brands that I was familiar with in Canada are still sold down here, but not all of them. It’s rare enough that I’m not hopeless in a grocery store, yet it occurs often enough that I’m reminded I’m in a different place now.

Next is the banking system. I pay ~$15/150 cheques down here where I was used to ~$25/1000. At the same time, debit card usage is free, ATM usage (at my bank’s ATMs) is free, cheque writing is free. It’s different, but I can get used to it. In Canada the banks want you to pay them ~$12/month to waive transaction fees, up to a certain limit, anyways.

Saving for retirement. The principles remain the same - put money in an account and watch it grow. The more and the earlier, the better. However the differences between 401k and IRAs is confusing. I’m still not certain how a rollover works, or why I even need to worry about one in the first place. Shouldn’t *I* be picking who will manage my retirement money?

That’s it for now. i’m certain I’ll come up with more later.

I’ve been asked by a number of people why I was so interested in leaving the US. After all, I resided in Canada and my entire life was Canadian: driver’s license, education, credit history, much of my family. So what went wrong?

I’d been toying with living in the US for a long time, becoming a citizen of the world (or at least North America) as it were. However, my desire was brought about by a chance encounter on the city bus. I’m the kind of guy who likes to talk to other people, to understand what their life is like, just in passing. So, given half an hour to chat with a lady who was a nurse at one of our local hospitals, I asked her something along the lines of “what is the biggest challenge in your field” or some such thing. The answer that I received was some sort of screed against government funding cuts for medical care, a wish for more money ending with the question “do you agree?” I didn’t, and told her so.

The responce that I gave her was “No, I prefer a private system.” I was prepared for the usual rhetorical ‘but think of the children’ bit, or something about not caring about other people. The responce I received I still remember to this day was “you want a system like they have in the ‘States?” She proceded to tell me how bad health care was in Canada. My head spun trying to figure out what she meant. I did not bring up the US, she did. And, no, I don’t want a health care system like is currently in the United States - I want something better. That’s right, private and BETTER.

Unfortunately, the only options she could comprehend were the US system and the Canadian system. Not even an acceptance of the British dual-system. It was one or another. That opened my eyes. After all, if something as simple as the state of her own profession in our major trading parteners was too difficult to understand, what could I possibly hope every-day people to understand? “American” is to Canada the way “Communist” is the United States - it shuts down conversation and makes discourse impossible. Labeling such as that provides a great way for people to not think about possibilities. After all, everything American (or Communist) is automatically bad.

The next issue revolves around the coddling attitude of the Canadian government. There are countless examples, but my personal favorite is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC for short. This is the equivalent to the US FCC. Most of their job relies around ensuring that communications equipment conforms to technical specifications and doesn’t cause harmful interference. However, one little area of responsibility does irk me: content quotas. You see, and TV of radio station in Canada is required to air a certain amount of ‘Canadian content’, roughly 30% in total. What this means in practice is that there are Canadian versions of all of the big US channels. A good example is the Discovery channel (also known as the Jay Ingram full-employment channel). The Canadian discovery channel shows much of the same programming as the US version, except that in order to fulfill content requirements they show several hours of Canadian content which largely amounts to not-quite-brilliant people talking to researchers about there most recent discoveries. It’s not bad programming, its just that it’s not good. It looks budget, and for a reason. It’s their to fulfill content requirements. It’s good enough that they can sell commercials to cover production, but that’s about it.

When Fox news wanted to come into Canada, they were told that they could not without sufficient Canadian content. They said no (CNN was already grandfathered in). So Fox news wasn’t shown in the country, except for one feed at parliament. I started to get the feeling that we were in soviet Russia - the government will view and “protect” us from harmful ideas. How wonderful. I’m not particularly a fan of Fox News - I think the O’Reilly factor is compelling, even if I do not agree with all of the views expressed. Nonetheless, there is a difference between likeing something and thinking that people should be able to access something. Needless to say, I was not impressed with the government at that point.

Next up is the issue of Canadian identity. The United States models itself in spirit after the phrase in the Declaration of Independence “life, liberty and the persuit of happiness.” So I ask, what is the Canadian version. What uniquely defines the Canadian spirit. The most popular version refers to the Canadian Constitution residual powers clause which states that the government is responsible for “peace, order, and good government.” Not only does it lack pizazz, but in mind wind translates in diplo-government speak to “sit down, shut up and do what you’re told.” Even my political science professors were at a loss. Certainly, there are a lot of descriptive options available, such as “from sea to western sea” (read: pile of dirt surrounded by water). There is also “bi-national country” (read: just like Czechoslovakia - oh, wait). Unfortunately, the real definition is far more obvious; just ask any citizen. Canada is not the United States. In fact, more time is spent pounding that point than actually any real discussion of ideas that you could run a complete second country on the time used.

Which brings me to the most flamboyant reason for leaving Canada. Guns. Yes, I’ll say it again. Guns. Specifically the ability to carry a pistol. It brings a new meaning the the phrase “isthat a rocket in your pocket?” As a matter of fact, yes! I view self-defense as a corolory to the right to life. This must further be extended to the right to posses the means of self-defence required. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. However, in Canada this is not possible.

When I speak to people, they believe that I am a homicidal manic for desiring such power. But worse than that, it makes me an American. Which is technically true, but once again shuts down debate. Argue with me over the point if you don’t agree with me, just don’t ignore me. But it gets worse. I decided that I should give the government of Canada and opportunity to make right wrongs. I phone up my member of parliement and asked what I would need to do in order to have a law passed which would allow for concealed carry. I was told that the Minister of Justice did not want any such action as it could endanger police officers. Who are the police officers there to protect? The people. Suddenly the people can’t be trusted with anything dangerous because it makes their job more difficult. This isn’t being protected by the police, this is becoming subservient TO the police.

I have left Canada not because it doesn’t offer what I want, but because I can’t argue in favor of what I want. Firearms are the most obvious example. I can’t do what I want because it’s American. Because it’s dangerous. Because I might poke someone’s eye out with it. So, instead I take the only reasonable recourse. I left. And now the United States is going to get a healthy, well educated engineer at no charge (we’ll even throw in a set of wiper blades). I’m not going back. At least not until there is a major culture shift. Then, maybe just then, I might go back.

My first day at work was somewhat odd. I woke up at around 7:00am. I’d planned on getting up later, but the sun was up much easier than I’d expected - moving 600 miles east will do that to you. Anyways, after sorting out much of my clothing that I hadn’t had time to do the night before, I put on my dark blue suit, my ring, grabbed my briefcase and set off to work.

The corporate housing in which they’d set me up was right on the North shore of the Allegheny river in Pittsburgh, Pa. I was only about 4 block away, or so. It made for a great, early morning walk. I decided to be a little early. Well, early for being early. This was Thursday, but I wasn’t scheduled to start work until Friday - I’d given myself a spare day for driving on the off chance that something came up. I made my way across the Ninth Street bridge. It’s 4 lanes wide, plus two very wide and separated sidewalks for pedestrians. Oh yeah, it’s also yellow. The three bridges of which this was one were also suspension bridges. However, instead of suspended metal wire, they apeared to be made from overly-large suspended metal chain. I’m not sure the technical term, but they do add and atmosphere.

The next thing I noticed on my way to work was that pedestrians ignore walk signs. If the road way is clear, walk. I’ve been told that the police don’t mind, and I’ve never been bothered.

I made it to the office building at about 8:25 in the morning. I knew that many office buildings in Minneapolis started at 8:30, so I wanted to be on time for that eventuality. I was worried when the building wasn’t on the cornier of Liberty and 9th avenue, where I’d been told that the building would be. Actually, I think I was told that my housing (just off of what turns into 9th street) was just down the street from the office. Their address was on Liberty, so I assumed that the office building was indeed on the corner. When it wasn’t there, I went into panic mode: was this just a crue practical joke? It wasn’t - the office building was just down the street a few doors.

My next obstacle was that the building was controlled access. I computerized locking system on a glass door seems to be a little pointless, but I’m certain it keeps the riff-raff out. I did what any good student of Bruce Schneier would do - I waited for somebody else to walk in and tagged along behind them.

I took the elevator up to the forth floor and stepped out of the elevator. The outside perimeter of the white walls were a hive of roughly 10 private offices. In the middle sat around 20 cubicles. Not the cheep Dilbert cubicles, but nice, spacious, and semi-permanent cubicles. I walked around and saw only one person, a guy from sales. He told me that the HR manager would be in rought 15 minutes from now. So I took a seat in the overly plush couch with my corugated metal breifcase and proceded to read trade publications.

The HR manager walked in, right on time. She and I sat down and started filling out all of the paper work which I did not understand or fill out correctly. I also needed to choose a bank. Unfortunately, none of the banks which I was familiar with from Canada or my time in Minnesota were popular here. I obtained advice from a few people and went out in search of my future business partner, my bank. When I came back in, it was nearly lunch time. To my luck, I made it in for the yearly chili cookoff. This was a sign of things to come.

I was quickly introduced to a slew of people, most of whose names still escape me. I was told to take off my suit jacket - I truly was out of place in it. Even the CEO only wears a dress shirt and dress pants - no suit jacket. I was immediately welcomed as a colegue by a group of people far smarter than I. I’m still afraid they will find out I don’t know anything and fire me. I received offers from two gentlemen to drive me around the city and show me neighboorhoods, to aide in apartment searching. I discovered where most people leaned on the political spectrum. I also picked up the phrase ” by nice to people who don’t tuck their shirts in” - they’re likely to be carrying concealed firearms, and indeed, some of my coworkers do.

I was assigned my cubicle office spance and began to set things up. I set up email accounts and started with familiarizing myself with out product. At the end of the day, I went home. It’s as simple as that. In many ways, it was anticlimactic. Just like this post.

One of the reasons that I have not been writing much of late is that I had to move. A long ways. A really great company that I’ve been negotiating with for some time decided to make my a great job offer. I accepted. From the moment that I received the good news, I raced to get ready; I had three weeks to pack, move and get ready for my first day at work.

I’d suspected that something like this was going to happen for some time, so I’d been carefully going through my precious posesions carefully collected over my life (also know as junk) and elliminating as much of it as possible. From there came the packing of goods.

My new employer, TimeSys Corporation kindly decided to pick up my moving expenses. However, since I was moving across the boarder there was an issue of paying duty or taxes if they were shipped. My parents and I decided to pack up my stuff into our combined two cars and take it across the border to a wonderful little town called Grand Marais and ship everything from the UPS outlet there. This meant that the shipping would be easier, but that everything would have to fit in our combined two cars. And so it began.

After two weeks of packing in the morning and working at the hotel in the afternoon, we had two completely stuffed cars. And I do mean stuffed. I’ll put photos up later., once I get them from my mother.

My parents and I decided to drive from Thunder Bay down to Grand Marais where we would all have breakfast together. It was great, although I was afraid that I might somehow get trapped in endless goodbyes, so I tried to move the conversation along. We drove up to Buck’s Radio Shack and UPS outlet to ship my collection of 14 boxes. I said goodbye to my parents, hugged my mother and shook my father’s hand, and left. I bought gas up the street and headed down the highway. I looked back.

That day was simply hell. My drive that night was to Milwaukee, Wi. I have friends there who offered to put me up for the night. One of them made the foolish comment that I ” am always welcome.” Who knows - II might just decide to test their patience some time. But I digress. I drove down through Duluth, Mn,. At about the Wisconsin Dells (a tourist destination popular in Wisconsin) I was getting tired, so I stopped at Wendy’s. That woke me up. From there I continued my journey, much refreshed.

Now, I’ve always been a fan of Wisconsin. After all, where else can you buy in one store beer, gas, guns! and cheese! But please! Oh please! Learn how to contorl your speed! Just North of Madison I noticed that I was trailing 10 feet behind a semi-transport trailer. Now the usual thing to do at this point is to take your foot off the accelerator and slowly back off from the vehicle in front of you. Not this time! I have another transport truck on my tail, just 10 feet behind. At this point I glanced at my speedometer - 85 miles per hour - the speed limit is 65. I nearly converted to some form of mysticism.

At the point in time where I got into Milwaukee, I was quite simply wasted. Except that I’d downed two chocolate bars and a bottle of Pepsi and I felt great! I chatted with the son of the household who I consider to be a junior friend - not old enough to be a peer,but showing quite a bit of promiss. At that point, the parents came home and I took them out to dinner to show my thanks for putting me up for the night. And so ended that night.

The following morning, I woke up to the two parents leaving - their son once again played host - he didn’t need to be to school until later in the day because of some testing program going on. My desination that day was a little town in Illinois called Eureka. It was a short drive - only 4 hours or so.

I immediately discovered that Interstate freeways in Illinois are extremely poorly marked. I missed one exist due to poor signage, and took another exist because of incomplete signage. If you say that a freeway if off of a certain exit and don’t specify wether the exist is for North or South direction, I assume that it eventually branches out further down. Not in this case.

The secondcase was an exit off of the toll freeway which has at best two signs. Now these might be sufficient if you are the only person on the road, but when you have a transport truck on your left, don’t expect to be able to read exist signs on the side of the road. At least put them above the road where they can be seen by all.

Anyways, I get to my freinds place, and they are nowhere to be seen. There is note on the door which stated that they went into town and that they’d be back in about 15 minutes and gave me directions if I wanted to follow. I decided to wait around, finish up some paper work and stretch after 5 hours in the car. Finally they arrived back I was somewhat underwhelmed. You see, I known these two people for about 8 online only. In fact, I nearly flushed my grade 12 math down the toilet spending so much time gaming online with them. They were kind, courteous and incredible managers of talent. And here they were - people- just like you and me. But great people and I enjoyed their company greatly. I also bought them dinner at a newly opened Italian restaurant. I was somewhat hesitant as all of the food where I come from is Italian, but it turned out to be excellent and the two of them, their five children and I had a great feat watching Star Wars III. I hadn’t seen it. It was worth the time of my life spent watching it, but not the price of a rental. But I digress.

The following morning I gave my thanks and left early after being prodded into eating a morning meal. I wasn’t too hungry, but they insisted. I headed out for the long drive across the plains into Pittsburgh. At first glance, it’s a pretty straight drive. It’s also miles and miles of miles and miles. I wish that I’d had a digital camera to take photos with - photos of America. It would have made a great book and also great memories.
Here’s what I can tell you. Driving into Indianapolis from the west looks just like driving in to Minneapolis from the North on I-35W, except that the bubble sport stadium is on your left instead of on your right. Oh, and never try to drive *through* Columnbus, Ohio, if you can. There is a bypass there for a reason. Use It!

Finally, the last leg of my journey was coming up - Eastern Ohio, West Virginia and Pittsburgh. I will tell you that this is some of the most beautiful country that I have driven through in a long time, especially for Interstate freeway. But don’t try this at night. This section of terrain is, um, hilly, to put it mildly. You spend 2 minutes going up steeply and two minutes going down. My general experience with driving freeway is in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the road goes in one direction for 5 minutes, and then curves a little, going straight for another five minutes. Not in this case. 30 seconds of straight road was a luxury rarely offered. Instead, sharp corners and hills are predominant. Also, the road lanes tend to be narrower by about 2 feet or so - enough that you notice and get scared driving under such conditions. To make matters worse, it was night and there was a Winter weather warning - nice assonance, but poor driving. I took the required exists and too my surprise didn’t get lost. The drive is quite pretty at night, although scary if you aren’t prepared for it.

The fun thing about coming in the way I did into Pittsburgh is the tunnels to downtown. You travel through about a half-mile tunnel and have about 1000 feet to choose your exist properly. After making that navigation at 55 miles and hour you suddenly find yourself downtown. No graceful transition, just break and THERE YOU ARE.

I drove down to where my temporary lodging was and had difficult getting in. I missread the directions and failed to notice a few things which led me to make a panicked call to a contact number that I had trying to get in. Needless to say, it was a stupid mistake and I managed to get in alright.

Here ends my little tail for tonight. I will continue later with more details of My First Day.