The Issue of Trust

This is particularly interesting to me here - the issue of trust. I wonder if people even trust anyone here. I was at an info session of CES at YWCA one day and I was completely shocked by the statement one of the trainers made. She said, and I am quoting her here: 'Most of you come from the countries where no one trusts each other. Here, in Canada you will learn how to trust. Canadian trust you easily'. I almost choked with laughter. Never heard such nonsense before. Here? Trust? Hmmm...

All those background checks, police checks, child abuse checks, child welfare checks, alcohol test, drug test that one has to go through before one starts work here is incredible. I am not even mentioning the reference checks they do when they ask for references and actually contact them.

If this happens in C-A-N-A-D-A where people TRUST, I don't want to imagine what we would have to go through if there was no trust in the country.

No one actually ever asked me for references before; most of those checks that exist here do not exist in most countries.

Yet, with all these checks and rechecks and trust you come across pedophiles and sickos who rape kids and are abusers. Not that pedophiles do not exist back home but the thing is back home and in many countries they face a much severe punishment than in Canada and US. I heard that back home pedophiles are locked for a long term and pedophilia and rape are the most severely punished crimes in prisons. Since the punishment is harsh people are afraid of committing these crimes. Whereas here commit a crime, get a good lawyer and you get a light sentence or conditional sentence or just walk away a free man. Here is the justice system for you.

My First CANADIAN Experience

I was surprised by the thing I heard when I first arrived: YOU SHOULD HAVE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE. There are dozens of government sponsored programs that give you that experience in the form of UNPAID internship. You slave for 12 weeks with a local company that pays you nothing to get that experience and someone who is much less educated and qualified than you gets paid for it. Meanwhile, you have to pay your bills, rent, transportation etc. BUT you are getting that experience. There are lots of people I know who came here looking for Canadian experience who could not afford to be a slave to gain that experience and no one would give them a job. 'Your English is great BUT you don't have a Canadian experience'......Where the hell are people supposed to get it if NO ONE wants to give them a job?!

I was lucky that I got my first Canadian experience which was decently paid. It lasted only 7 weeks but I decided to keep volunteering with the organization later although with a different department.
Anyway, apparently the culture of an organization totally depends on the culture of its leadership. The culture I encountered was totally different from the one I expected. A lot of micromanagement was going on. There is a hierarchy of relationship and a closed door policy. It was a mini communist state with high level of bureaucracy in the best traditions of  Mao Zedong. Obedience, silence, following unwritten 'protocol' that you are not aware of and that wasn't communicated to me when I came to work, constant spying, checking your desktop to see what you are up to, holy cow, I had never seen such an organizational culture in my lifetime, and I come from a very traditional hierarchical society. The boss desperately wanted to control everyone, the obsession with numbers not quality of service to satisfy the top management was crazy! The staff consisted of the 2 predominant ethnic groups in the world, and this was a bunch of 'yes'men. It was suffocating to just be there. My immediate manager (although there were so many of those who wanted to be my immediate managers, I didn't know exactly what the organizational structure looked like) walked to my door, looked into the room and walked back to her room. Sometimes, the top manager would run into my room look around as if searching for something and ran out. Then I was told that I have to follow the protocol, which is written in the air and have to be cautious when I go to another workplace.

I inadvertently created some problems for middle management because of my outspokenness. I had a chance to participate in a diversity training led by some dude from Ottawa. The guy who has never read jackshit about culture and diversity, never completed a single course on the topic was giving a session to a bunch of HR managers. The guy was so rude that if I were in the place of those managers, I would have just left. Canadians are polite people, even if you are wrong they might not tell you that you are wrong. This dude was plain insulting, he didn't even want to introduce me and my colleague to the audience. It was only after one of the HR managers asked him to introduce us, he unwillingly asked us to introduce ourselves.

The whole workshop was bullshit from the beginning. I didn't stay till the end because I had to go to an interview. But I made the dude uncomfortable. It was a lecture to start with and it promised to turn into a disaster. I then interfered. Having completed my thesis in Culture, I remember the theory and could make the conversation on culture much livelier. The dude couldn't answer a simple question of what a Canadian culture is. He said there wasn't such a thing as a Canadian culture. Bull....! OF COURSE THERE IS! I interfered at this point and started talking about what culture is in general and how cultures differ from each other. Dr. Bryant's efforts paid off. I remembered Hofstede and his good old theory of culture and the people were interested at least. The presenter was infuriated. He couldn't say a sentence without me interjecting something after it. I did it on purpose. I can't take other people's crap and I am convinced that if you are paid you MUST do a good job. His arrogance, insistence on things that he was saying wrong and that was clear to others, rudeness and stupidity I just couldn't take. He later told my colleague who was a moderator how much he enjoyed my presence in the workshop. Later he complained to the boss that I ruined the workshop for him by interfering with it. My immediate manager got reprimanded for NOT following the invisible protocol.

Such organizational culture is definitely not mine. I cannot believe it is a Canadian culture either. I wish Canada was a melting pot like America and imposed its own culture on newcomers.

Most of the people I met were from the same cultural background as the middle and senior management and didn't have much say in what was going on. Most of them would slit your throat to keep their jobs.
I was surprised when I saw that at my farewell party today only one person who I have been working for only a week said nice things about me. Well, I didn't do much work before this last week because I was constantly excluded from work. They wouldn't let me do what the other staff were doing. I was supposed to be glued to my chair and keep silent. Because the organization had extra funding that they had to spend in order to apply for more funding next year, they hired me and my colleague. As a result, we were excluded as staff members and were mere furniture there. I wouldn't have minded that if they had allowed me to communicate at least. I feel so bad that because my social nature some colleagues of mine were told off. I befriended a nice girl who had worked for Child Welfare Services before. I absolutely enjoyed talking to her and listening to her stories. After all, it was a learning experience for me, I was expected to learn as much as I could and I tried. So we would spend lunch time together talking about the job she had done. Well, someone didn't like that and she got told off. We stopped talking altogether. I totally understand the girl, her practicum depends on this organization, she paid for it not to be reprimanded by General Mao, who is a complete failure at giving feedback and is on a fault finding mission all the time. I personally didn't have any encounters with him but I knew he was a control freak and demanded complete obedience. I couldn't care less though. I am not a yes man and if I have to stand up for myself, I can do that better than anyone.

But I enjoyed the last week of my work working with a different manager, who was Irish and definitely knew how to manage others, not control them. She made the last week such a pleasurable experience for me that I loved working with her. Wish more people were like her.

Well, I found it hard to work with immigrants tho. But I made very good friends and I can say that overall I learned more about diverse populations in Calgary. Good or bad, it was an experience! My CANADIAN experience......whatever that is............

Almost 4 months in the Land of Eternal Cold

It is hard to believe that it has been 4 months since we came here. I am still trying to figure out what brought me here. I meet different people, talk to them, observe them and I still feel I do not see a clear aim of being here. I desperately wanted a change, now I am desperately coping with it.
I had a temp job in one of organizations and had a chance to work with other immigrants. I am not sure I liked it much although it was a great experience that I learned from. The information I got from this experience. i got a glimpse of immigrants' life in Canada and most of the experiences I saw were not the happy ones. This country never stops surprising me. A. keeps attending English classes and more than English he is taught LIFE SKILLS. At his level he already knows how to read and write and has quite good speaking and does shopping on his own. Why would he be taken to a grocery store to learn how to read prices and the names of fruit and veggies?! I understand that some people might need that but not at his level. People in his class have already been here for ages, they surely know how to ask 'how much something is'.

 Sometimes I feel people here think that those who come from overseas are dumb and need to learn essential things here. I remember a friend of mine from work was asked to attend a presentation by Alberta Health on reproductive health and they were teaching the participants how to wear a condom. That is just hilarious! They were actually showing how to wear it and had an artificial d...k they put a condom on. I would be so embarrassed!!!!! I wouldn't even attend that show. I thought this country was suffering from the opposite problem and they would teach people how to encourage people to multiply not prevent birth. Another thing that surprises me is the courses they offer. I recently saw a certification course on FUNERAL EDUCATION!!!!!!!!!!! A Director of Funeral services and an Embalmer. WHAT A DEGREE! I am sure one day they will require people to get certified to offer these services. It is an invaluable degree for the job, which costs $8585 with Mount Royal University. I almost peed my pants when I came across that degree. This is something that people do for FREE in many parts of the world. In Judaism and Islam this is something that is encouraged and people volunteer to do it. I wonder if they have a class on how to not take advantage of the corpses and not violate them as morticians are known to do. I read an interview with a mortician from California who violated corpses.

Another degree that is just ridiculous is Certificate in Janitorial Services. People who come here certainly need that when they want to work as cleaners. You surely need to have a degree in it. One woman told my friend that this certificate actually helped her to get into cleaning business and get a job as a cleaner. They had a class where they were taught how to MOP FLOORS......She thought it would be some magic mop but it was a regular mop from dollar store. This is a paid certificate course. Soon I am sure one will have to be a licensed cleaner to get a job as a cleaner.

Of course, it is clear this is one of the ways of making money. They offer certificates in everything to make more money.


Another thing that I find shocking is how people here think how great this place is and it is the best in the world. Nowhere else did I see so many homeless people that are so dirty. This state has so many shelters and so much help is being poured into eradicating poverty that I can't imagine why anyone would want to live like this. I often heard Canadians say how shitty other countries were and how great Canada is. I am not denying the second part but I have a big problem with the first part. I used to have a complex back home when I saw garbage dumps and dirty buses and thought how dirty everything was. Public transport here is no better in terms of cleanliness. The buses are so filthy that I have to clean my bags with a disinfectant every single time I use the bus. On the C-train you see footprint on every seat, I have to carry wet wipes to clean the seat. I know, I am OCD but even back home I have never seen this dirt. People touch the sole of their shoes and then touch the handles. I carry a sanitiser with me wherever I go, I am too squeamish.  The only smell I haven't smelled yet on the bus was garlic, which I am sure I will one day. Why I am mentioning that is because when I saw Canadians abroad I felt like they all belonged to royalty and this dirt could exist ONLY in 'underdeveloped countries'. This is actually the term I heard on CTV (Calgary TV) - 'underdeveloped countries'!!! I actually met a couple of people who took buses in Saudi Arabia and complained like hell about the buses being dirty. I did take a bus too and it was no different that anywhere else, to be honest. Those people who complain need to take Forest Lawn buses...I do admit thought that public transport in Europe is impeccable, even in overpopulated London buses and metro were much cleaner. It is just the superiority complex that this country has that gets to me...........Just don't think this a perfect place just because you get people who never saw electricity and shat in the streets, not all people that come here are the same....................

Calgary has nice things as well and I am slowly discovering them. I don't feel lonely here anymore. I met nice people here who we became close to. We met a fantastic family from Georgia and visited them twice this month. We had great discussions and fantastic food. I met some other that are worth mentioning. I was invited to a Pakistani lady's house one Saturday and had a great with her and her friends. I love that woman, she is so genuine, hospitable and sincere, which I thought would be hard to find here. Another girl is my coworker too who I invited to my Friday pizza. I realized that I keep meeting the nicest people and I absolutely enjoy their company.

My only concern at the moment is getting a better job that will pay the bills. Otherwise I will leave before I become a financial burden on this country......