Peut-être Les Quebecois ne Prendront pas L'offense...?

I had to work on that one a bit (with the aid of an online translation tool.) My French is not what it used to be. I studied it for six years when I was younger but if you don't use it--you lose it.

What that should say is: Perhaps the Quebecois will not take offence?

I was catching up on some reading and found an article that amused me somewhat. I say "fuck" a lot on this blog. Now to be fair, I warned everyone in my first post. In the article I read, apparently, "copulate" coupled with it's partner "off" is not really such a big deal in French-speaking Canada. Hmmm.

According to the article, it's actually used quite frequently on shows that run on Radio-Canada owned by the CBC. Now the CRTC has all sorts of guidelines, mandates and even a complaints process but I find it completely impotent in all areas. I don't think anyone gives a "fuck" at the CRTC either, be it in Quebec or in English speaking Canada because you will hear that word on English speaking channels as well. Canadian, American, if you have cable over here you can get some BBC. If you get some wild and crazy satellite operation set up who knows what else you might receive!

Now in Quebec, apparently my completely inappropriate term of language might sound like the word for seal ("phoque.") I actually didn't like this part of the article. It made me think that my Francophone friends sounded dumb? So while all the ranting and raving and swearing is going on during the Radio-Canada broadcasts, people are thinking that they're calling each other seals? Sorry, I'm picking at journalistic integrity again.

In Quebec, it seems a lot of swearing is done to curse the Roman Catholic church such as "Tabernac!" This is alluding to "Tabernacle" where the Eucharist is held. It's a very bad word. There are others but I won't bother to list them. You can get the point--the distinction of how different groups of people determine what is profane, culturally.

I've always loved words. Not just profane ones, that's very limiting. One of my most embarrassing moments occurred during Kindergarden when the teacher had to leave the room during "story time." She asked me if I could continue for the class. A lot of the other kids snickered (i.e. they didn't believe I could do it), some glared ("teacher's pet!") and some just stared kind of dumbfounded. I stepped to the front of the class and tried to hold the book open with my tiny hand, just as the teacher did, so that everyone could see the pictures as I read aloud. The book kept falling but there I sat and recited to the class, completely mortified. I had been reading since about the age of three? I can't remember but around that age--by four for sure.

I took a course in Linguistics in my first year of university and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It was an introductory course so we only covered certain aspects of the discipline. We looked at Phonetics and transcription (that was like taking words and dismantling them into hieroglyphics!) We also delved into Articulatory Phonetics a subfield of the former. This was a little funny. You get to learn all sorts of terms like "fricative," "obstruent," "trill" and "stop." Well, perhaps that last one isn't so fascinating. The articulations are all over your oral anatomy--well, not all of them in English. That was also rather interesting too. Many different languages make sounds that we, well, not that we can not make but it is very hard to do as we tried to attempt in class! We all failed. Also covered was some Phonology and some Morphology.

If you've bothered to have a look at any of those links, you will see that it's a lot more than just "sitting around and talking about words!" I didn't do as well as I thought I would. Alas.

Private Health (S)Care?

So I read today that our country's first private health clinic has opened in British Columbia. Huzzah! (sarcasm) Yes, I am a strong supporter of our publicly funded health care system--even if it is in a bit of a shambles right now and sorely in need of some "rehabilitation" and healing in it's own right.

Still, privatization is not the answer. At least not in my opinion. And I think my opinion matters as a patient and health care consumer because in the end, it's us who always end up suffering the brunt of decisions made.

Some people who are onside with, not outright privatization (believe me, I don't think that will ever happen--over certain politician's dead bodies), but maintaining some sort of "two-tiered" approach, think that it will solve some of our current problems with backlogs. They think it will allow for people to seek non-vital services faster. Uh huh. Ah, yes. You have the money, you get to move to the head of the line. But will such "queue jumping" really improve our backlogs? The system is not clogged simply with non-vital services. Oh, take a stroll through the emergency rooms. The "vital" services are looking pretty grim, also.

So here we have this new private clinic that has opened up that treats "vital" or as they say "urgent" services. But wait. According to the article, some vital services are paid for under the public system. This would make the clinic in violation under the Canada Health Act. The doctors there are also working in both systems--private and public so hmmm...dual practice? Conflict of interest? Don't like how slowly things are going at the hospital, well...why don't you come over to the clinic...for a few dollars, we can get you out a lot faster!

So this is that latest in healthcare from our Federal Government. They'll sit and watch this sort of behaviour go on, keep an eye on it and yet they won't actually invest in fixing the problems.

I don't want to be all "Chicken Little" but you know what they say: "Give them an inch..." If one or a few of these start popping up it will turn viral. Maybe the rich don't mind (you'd think they would!) but there are a lot of people that need publicly funded healthcare. We've got a great system. It works. It's just been neglected for way too long by a government that doesn't seem to care.

A Lazy Weekend

Well, most of my weekends are pretty lazy. They're my time to decompress from work, all things schedule-oriented (although I need schedule to function) and just relax. Except it's also time to do household tasks. And in this weekend's case, I'm still trying to beat this infection.

I watched the Liberal Leadership Convention on television all day yesterday. Yeah, I know. I can hear the multiple comments you must be making. They vary from to "Uber Geek!" to "Are you kidding me...BORING!" to maybe a couple of people saying, "Oh, I didn't know she was into politics."

Well, I'm not really but someone has to do something about our current Prime Minister "Bush Lite." And don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some crazy political rant or (heaven forbid!) blog because I'm really not that passionate about politics. If I was, I would be more crazy than I already am and probably need to be permanently institutionalized.

It (the Convention) was mildly interesting--when I wasn't nodding off or channel switching in between updates. But man, was it long! The problem was, we had so many candidates (a few dropped out and backed others before the final voting) so they had to do four votes. And there's all of this switching to others' camps in between and for the most part, the commentary was gruelling. I mean, think of your favourite sport and how annoying that is. Now magnify it by about 20.

So now we finally have a new Leader of the Opposition in Parliament so we'll see if anything exciting happens. Doubtful.