Half Shells, half life, half truths...

I'm not an activist.

Simple as that, I am a human being with interests and passions but NONE of those make me an activist.
I'm a conscientious objector at times, a permissive jerk at others, but overall I am a Citizen that wants life to be good for me, my fellow Citizens and most definitely for my son.

I am passionate about various things, tolerance being a very strong subject.  Civil liberties and the right of people to defend what they believe in, WHETHER OR NOT I agree with those beliefs.

But I am not an activist.

I will not sit down and write endless diatribes against GMOs, Healthcare, animal rights, or anything of that sort, for; while I care about these issues, sitting behind a desk and writing like I am an expert about them will not change a single thing.

I can talk to my "activist" friends about issues, I can hold my ground and sometimes sway their opinion about things (some friends are less informed than others to be honest) but that DOES NOT make me an activist.

I will though, take a stand against people that deliberately thwart the rights of others, even if they believe these are the right thing to do.

Recently in my country an assassination occurred, it wasn't just murder, that implies chance.  No, this turtle and nature Activist (capital A) was assassinated after trying in vain to save turtles, turtle nests and the nesting grounds from poachers.  He even used twitter to ask the police to be present and TRY and do something about it.

Now, a million different "activists" jumped at this outrage, they starting crying and yelling, asking for change, but these same people are what I call 'facebook-activists' they will click on "like buttons", scream their outrage in ALL CAPS while never changing their status-quo ONE iota.  They will rarely challenge the system in any way that will make things inconvenient for them.

Boycotting the eating of turtle meat or eggs is EASY if you have never in your life even contemplated doing something of the sort.

Asking poachers to stop through facebook is easy, heck they probably don't even have phones, so who cares?

Taking a stand, asking for change should not stop at a status message, it should NEVER pend on having someone die to request this.  It's in all of us to make said change, by acting in accordance with our words.

Did I ever think about having turtle meat?  NO, as I don't know, but I want to know WHY there is a market for this, why poachers are making a profit and HOW we can change THAT root cause.

The eating of the meat is only a symptom of a bigger cancer, one that no one dares approach, so, let's stop it with treating the symptoms, and look at the decaying smoldering mass of bodies our societies have become and loose the "Screen anonymity" let's make sure each voice has a face and a name to it.  We walk the streets and never really see those around us; as if WE don't exist.

Let's make a stand and let's ensure that we all know who WE are...

Early Morning musings... for a late afternoon :P

So, ever since my mom passed away, I've been trying to maintain a modicum of HER order and HER ideas at home.  It's a condition.  I don't really deal well with imposed changes I rather feel things are being changed BY me or WITH me, and not just... you know, having a hand that was dealt to me and tough luck.

So, one of the things I am doing in order to try and get a bit of the control back on it, is to sleep at my mom's old room.  Or what shall heretofore be referred to as "THE MASTER bedroom".  In caps.  It sounds like a novel.  Or special room.  Wish I had a butler, I'd call him Jeeves.  Don't care what his last name is, he WILL be Jeeves (note to self, find a Jeeves and make sure he's British, otherwise they will be rubbish).

So, after sleeping for a while in "THE MASTER bedroom", I've come to appreciate something I didn't know we had.  Dawn.

Sure, I KNOW there is a dawn everyday, I mean I assumed there was mostly because people didn't complain about the sudden lack of "transition" from night to day.  But honestly I never saw it.

My room was located to the south of the house, so, SW location made it great for sunsets, not so for whatever the space between night and day was.


But, my mom did see it daily, she made an effort, even when her health had declined to appreciate dawn. 

Near the end, she was not totally bedridden, she was an impressively strong woman, at less than 20% lung capacity, she still got up, walked around (to the best of her ability) and DID chores and drove.

I will never be able to tell her directly how amazed I am about this.  All I did back then was tell her "mom, slow down, you need to take it easy, remember slow but surely things get done".  She never took shit slow.  Ever.

Like NEVER ever.

If you met my mom, you'd know right then and there that anything but an instant response to stuff was too slow.

As annoying as that was, I loved it about her, it was never rash or impulsive behavior.  She knew exactly what she was doing.

And just like a Wizard, she was never late or early, she was precisely where she needed to be at any time.

Right now, is not the time for her to be with me, and I can deal with that, not that I wanted it to be this way though.

Queued up for a renewal - the mayhem!!

I usually don't leave very thing until the last minute. So I figured that I had to get my passport renewed before my trip to London (turns out I need a valid one to purchase to tickets, GENIUS!). So I went to the bank. Took all of 5 minutes paying the due. And now I've been queued up at the immigration offices for the better part of an hour still haven't reached THE ONLY window where they stamp passports.

No wonder there is a slew of "public parking" places around. Bet they make a fortune every day.

I know there are ways to get a new passport by just going to banks and having them do the paperwork for you. But apparently the heavy lifting of a STAMP is too much to do outside these offices.

I know the fact that there is only one window means they can't justify more salaries (overhead) for the kind of work necessary. But seriously couldn't they just do this at the same bank I was at?!

And how hard is it to stamp a passport and check a "valid through" date on it? Why does it take upwards of ten minutes per person at the window?

I tell you why. Redheaded commies!! Of gremlins. What is it we are supposed to fear now? Maybe a Backson! Something. I wish they would pull their act together though. After all my taxes pay for this bureaucratic slum where we come to just get older. Little by little. Makes no sense really to have to walk in here and get it stamped.

End of rant.

A month and counting or countdown to 33

It's always difficult to summarise lifetimes in a few words, apparently people wish that things didn't happen or how they happened be more succinct.  I have a hard time these days putting words into simple patterns and disclose a lot of information in very few ideas.

It's almost a month since my mom passed, everyday I think I will just wake up, go to her room (my room now) and hold her in a tight embrace while figuring it was just a stupid silly awful dream.

That's not the case though, I've dreamt about that myself for a few days now, but as hard as it is to not have mom with me today, it's harder for me to picture her state had she survived the night.

August 26th 2009 - Jr's Birthday

I'm happy that she's no longer suffering respiratory issues, and that above all she was able to pass on in a way that didn't leave her stranded to a bed for months.

I see my dear little boy, and I see her in every smile he has, in every gesture and in every bit of speech he uses.  They even have the same issue with pronouncing spanish "r"s.

I will be 33 in a few days as well.  This will be my first birthday ever without mom by my side.  We had some hard times when she suffered from her pancreas, but she was always there, trying to make the best of her situation she kept me from most of what she was suffering.

A stronger woman I've never seen.

I hope that at some point I get to show at least half the strength she had in her time.

I am not comfortable with celebrating my birthday this year; I may be able to do something, for a bit, but she will be definitely missed, and this will be less than adequate in the best of circumstances.

Three weeks and counting...

My mom passed away on March 7th of this year. It's been really hectic around the house. I've been faced with not only losing my dearest mother, but a companion, a friend, an Increible resource and an amazing game partner. Is something I feel I need to suffer alone as no one else can even begin to fathom what my mind goes through with every memory and sound.

She was the strongest person I know, she took on pancreatitis (doctors believed it was cancer), and recovered while her husband passed away (my step dad, one of the most wonderful people I was blessed with encountering in my life).

Her strength was contagious, having our house burn down was only a new start. Losing ourselves was never an option, a true warrior my mother gave me everything I needed to be strong as well.

And yet in missing her I am feeling weak. She was everything to me and through her memory I will keep her alive.

Mom, wherever you are this will never be a good bye, but a farewell, and a we will meet again, may the tides go in our favor and the winds push us closer.

The more things change...

Well, it's almost a week after we got the news at work, and lots of changes have been happening.  People being PEOPLE, have been reacting in some very predictable ways.

We have various "bands" of reactions all clustered around the Grieve Cycle.  We have those that are still mourning, probably in shock of the news, these people are saddened beyond words and are dealing with everything in a way that's just barely above crying in a corner.

We have those that are in denial Still (count me among those for the first few days) we probably clustered around the idea that it wouldn't touch us if anything happened and even that wasn't totally true, but at lease the belief that the first wave was ANYONE but us.

Those that are bargaining?  There's a lot of people trying to prove their uniqueness at the moment, and they are chasing the idea that if they do things well enough they can probably get "off the list".

Then, the weird ones but we couldn't leave them out, are the people that just jump into ANGER out of the blue.  They were ok minutes ago, but the moment they figured that someone else was SAFE, they shot to total denial and ager.

Quite expected really.

Last Friday, while I was thinking about this I received the news that someone very close to my family, who's trying to make a better life for her and her family was mugged.  They weren't even civil about it "cough up the money while we beat the sense out of you".

Poor girl, she was just waiting for the weekend to leave the "not so nice" neighbourhood for a better one where her kids wouldn't be in danger, or her family would be mugged, or even the break-ins would stop.

Why is it that people tend to not want others to do better?  Why is it that they take pride in ensuring that if WE aren't on a path of betterment, NO one should be?

I am sad that this happened to my friend, but I am far more concerned about the fact that civilised workers, in a very clean environment, wholesome and nurturing, would react the same way as random street scum when cornered.

Ch... Ch... Changes....

 

As a few of my close friends know (and some people that don't even like me but HAVE to deal with me daily, but that's another story) I do various things as a therapy, you know to release stress...

Writing is high on my list of those, lately running is another one, but it's late, I'm tired and right now it's also raining, so WRITING it is.

I'm a workaholic, I love my job I love my people (coworkers) and I love my industry, but I've found out that sometimes this is a codependent relationship and this is one of the times where it's not. At the place I've been working for close to a decade now, a series of changes are coming, these are all good BUSINESS changes, but do wreak havoc on some select individuals, and you know it's hard to come to terms with some of these decisions, as obviously they tend to affect people more than they do the business.

We have been recently informed that a lot of us will be re-located or released due to a change in the company structure where our positions have been removed from our current work location, and they will not be filled in my area anymore.

You know how there's always that girlfriend that tells you "it's not you, it's me... I really want to find something different in my life" and leaves you for a the weird guy at the bus stop? Even though you've cared for her and been more than supporting even in her "down" times? This kind of feels like that... At times...

Businesses thrive not ON people but on the bottom line. But they thrive THANKS to people, the links between friends, the joy of a Job well done, Loving when a plan comes together... and we can't help but attach feelings to everything we've done for the "company".

I'm happy that I am in a position to help others still, my job right now hasn't changed much, I still have to deliver results, aid my team, and provide assistance to those we are letting go. These are things that I find wonderful and fulfilling, and until the day I am told "Thanks bud, but you can't really come here anymore, this is not your job", I will keep doing it.

Until that happens, You'll be able to find me when you look closely, as you know, Hobbits never really left the world, we just adapted ;)