about people..

Woke up this morning, turned to my side, woke up my computer and started typing. By noon I finally decided to get my ass out of bed, take a shower, and change the scenery...to Kits coffee.

During my 6 hour stay in this local coffee shop where they decided to serve me an ultra-low fat banana-flax loaf instead of the regular full-fat banana loaf I had ordered--I wonder if they were trying to say something--I observed some interesting people. I promptly sat down by the window to get my daily spring intake of sun rays (we Vancouverites have a lot of catching up to do), but was very quickly interrupted by a tap-tap-tap of a steady, jazzy rhythm...there was a 40-something year old man with headphones plugged into his laptop, tapping away with his two feet. Yes, kind of annoying. In fact, this man proceeded--over the course of the next 2.5 hours--to leave for 5 min every now and then to do who-knows-what, sometimes bringing back with him a case of CD's, sometimes reappearing empty-handed; and every time he would ask a neighbor to watch his laptop for him. Weird. Fortunately, I was sitting by the window so he never bothered me.

His laptop reminded me that I needed an outlet for mine. A few students were studying, and when this one girl moved out of a table near the outlet, I swiftly moved my things over. But thank god the place wasn't packed with students. During this time of the year, all the libraries are packed, all the cafes near school are packed...Al and I were saying the other day how there should be a GPA requirement for sitting in libraries. Why should people who slacked off all term and are now, with much agony, crunching a term's worth of material into their pea-sized brains, be allowed to take up space in libraries? Seriously, guys. There are people who studied and worked their ass off all term. We should get priority seating for these precious library seats, you know. You useless people.

Anyhow. Speaking of useless people. There was this Chinese man who began to argue with the cafe manager. Apparently it was about the stamp card having expired or being too old, and the Chinese man arguing that there is no mention of an expiry date on it. You know, those stamp cards that you get and for every 9 cups of coffee you get one free? While the Chinese man persisted to demand his free coffee, people in the cafe rolled their eyes, gave a smirk, shook their heads from side to side at the sight of a well-aged man--probably with shit loads of money as most Chinese people here are, and also judging from his clothing (a well-tailored suit)--arguing about a free coffee that would literally cost him $1.50. I wanted to get up and buy him the coffee just so that he would shut up and realize his ridiculous behavior. But of course, for the Chinese man it probably wasn't about the $1.50 that he would have to scramble out of his pockets, but rather the principle behind it that bothered him the most. Asian people are picky about customer service. Top that off with the fact that he was probably rich--although his car wasn't anything spectacular--and that he expected to be treated like royalty...ah, that explains his behavior.

I know that Vancouver is a city of restaurants--anyone who plans on visiting Vancouver any time soon should let me know, I have a very long list of great places to eat--but this Indian restaurant I went to this evening wasn't some place I would recommend. The food was fine, service was kind of awkward, but the food was tasty, which is often what really matters. By awkward service I mean that it was questionable as to whether this place had any notable business, there were no waitresses per se unless you count the awkward Indian man who was very kind and was impressed by how we cleaned up our dishes no problem. Sarah was hungry. And so, because they didn't have much business, the owner (?) insisted that we get more food. We settled for two specials and one samosa to share. "No drinks? You don't want anything to drink?" No, we don't. Please.

One more rant about people that truly succeed in blowing my mind: Commerce students. In fact, let me be more specific: Commerce students who can't speak English. Adrian has this group project for a commerce class that needs data about Tim Hortons and how much business they have on campus. He admits that he's put it off for a while, but seeing that it's due in less than a week, he emailed his group (who hadn't made any effort to contact each other all term) to set up a meeting time. 1 responds to say that she could meet, 2 respond to say they absolutely without question could not, and 2 didn't respond, period. Apparently, the faculty of commerce at UBC is a sort of microcosm reflective of Canadian Immigration. A reoccurring complaint about these group projects is that half the people in the group cannot speak English, and even if they did, they have poor grammar. No joke, like VERY POOR grammar to the point of incomprehension. Who let these people in??? Why are they in university?? Shouldn't they really go back to elementary school? In fact, how are they Canadian citizens when they can't speak English, and write grammatically correct papers, let alone a single, grammatically correct sentence? Blows my mind, I don't understand. They DO NOT deserve to receive the same education I do (especially when I pay more) or mooch off the health care system here. Go back to China, or wherever you came from if you can't speak English like every other normal Canadian. ESL programs in secondary schools to support these people whose families invest no effort into merging into Canadian society? Forget it. There is no need for a mini-version of your country in Canada. Canada is Canada. Leave us alone.