Recently in Money Category

Spoke with the oncologist today. They have decided to give me the FOLFIRI protocol, which is MUCH less brutal than the TCF protocol that I had before. Instead of spending the day in the hospital, I will spend 2 hours hooked up. Instead of a large fanny pack with 500 mL of 5FU over 5 days, I will have much less of it in a smaller non-mechanical delivery system (it's quite ingenious) over less than 2 days. I expect to be at work the whole time. One funny side effect is that men often lose their head hair, but not their facial hair. Maybe I sport a Shaft look. Or maybe I should not exacerbate the Mandingo stereotype, which is pretty much what Shaft does in my opinion.

I told the doctor and the nurse that since I am in much better mental and emotional condition that I could likely withstand a stronger protocol this time around. They decided to give me something moderate rather than extreme because I reacted so poorly last time around. I hope that they are not making a mistake by giving me something that is weak because I was such a baby last time. (Well, it WAS pretty fucking brutal. It was.) I don't see why we should prolong this any longer than it needs to be prolonged.

There is another patient about my age with the exact same situation. Same cancer, same surgery, same surgeon, same protocol. His mental space was apparently worse than mine. He is also saying that he doesn't think that he can continue with the chemotherapy. He's exactly where I was at the beginning of December, but there is a difference. He's had a very negative attitude throughout the whole ordeal. He also had some complications from surgery, but by and large, our experiences have been identical. I am told, though, that the difference between him and me is that my attitude has been, over all, much better than his, but specifically it's because he's never really lived on his own, nor was he raised to do this.

I find this interesting. Does this mean that those that left home earlier are generally better able to deal with adversity of pretty much any kind? I left home to go to university when I was 17 and have only lived at home during the summers between school years. Further, I instilled in myself the expectation that I would go to university and take care of my own affairs. Maybe I would be in the other guy's position now if things had been different. He's apparently more depressed and scared than I am. He's frightened, actually. I wish I could help him. There has been lots of talk about how coddled young people are. Maybe it's true. I mean, I suppose since everyone is going to university, they are living at home longer and longer, but what effect is this having?

On another, scarier front, it seems that my superpowers are quickly evaporating. Ugh...

I am looking to make some extra money on the side this year, and am open to different suggestions. If you have anything interesting, please let me know.

1 greenback = 1 loonie (Click image)

North American currency coming soon?

But of course I'm still in the ordinary mire of low cash flow and unemployment.

I bit the bullet and went to the unemployment office to verify what's really happening with this money I owe them. Turns out that my fears were not really necessary. First of all, the dates were from 2005, not 2006. Specifically, it was from when I started at my last company coming off my previous unemployment stint, not after I finished there to start this stint. And yes, I did make a mistake: I used the date of my first pay instead of my first day of employment. I don't know what I was thinking; it seemed to make sense at the time.

Furthermore, it's not $3000 that I owe. It's about $1650. And I probably will not have to pay this back until I am established in school or a job. And I can do that in installments. And the worst case scenario? If I don't take any classes for some reason, and I don't find work, then my benefits run until around Thanksgiving (mid-October here, for you Yankees). Now, chances are I won't be needing it that long one way or another (full-time students do not have the right to unemployment, for example).

Thinking about that makes me realize just how quantum life is. I am truly creating my future. The very near future is a jumble of possibilities, which only gets nailed down when T = 0. It's actually really something.

I still am going to require a job, though, because this unemplyment stuff just isn't cutting it, you know?

Yesterday I pulled out all the stops. I identified three places where I could possibly start working soon, all conveniently located in Old Montreal. I decided to give them all a visit to possibly set up an interview later this week or next.

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Company #1

This company actually makes video games, although it's unlikely that you've heard of any of them. They do stuff mainly on mobile devices and web sites. I sent my resume to a contact that I have there, a really nice guy. He sent it off to his boss, although they needed to know what I was looking for exactly, and what they had to offer. After walking and talking for a quarter of an hour or so, it seems as though the only fit would be for me to start as tech support making $25K a year. That would be the equivalent of going back in time seven years, but then again, if they call me, I really don't have many options open to me right now. He would push for this because it may help him get out of the job situation he is in right now, which would be him doing tech support and being the web master, all for $27K. It's the situation that I would want the least, but it's the one that I could leave the quickest.

Company #2

I stopped off at zura's company to discuss with her what I could do there. She set me up to talk to one of the principal sales engineers. It was a good conversation. He thought that I could be an intelligent person working on the sales team concentrating on the business intelligence market, although thinking about it now, I think I'd rather be on his team. It fits better with what I want to do in the future. I'll have to let him know this.

I need work now. I can no longer stay on unemployment and then go to school. The government says that I was overpaid $3000 in unemployment and they want it back by June 8. They say that I lied to them about my earnings in my last job, when I definitely reported everything. If I can't prove this (somehow my documentation is eluding me, but it's here somewhere), then I am up shit's creek without a paddle.

Therefore, if you know of anyone that needs any kind of paid employee, I will consider all offers. I can forward a CV at a moment's notice. Just let me know. There are certain of you to whom I particularly would like to speak...

What's particularly shitty is that I should be doing backflips. In fact, I was doing backflips last week. I received my letter of admission from HEC and I will be starting school in August. Whether it is full or part time remains to be seen. If it's full time, then I am eligible for loans for tuition, books, living expenses and the laptop computer I need. I was even browsing COOP HEC for their Virtuose models, but they don't have them in yet. I celebrated with Rose, Suj and his photog friend, Roxane.

I would also like to thank you for the support you showed Rose. Because of readers like you (well, a reader like you), she has entered a volunteer program taht will enable her to get into the training program of her choice in August. We both found out about our good fortune last Wednesday.

However, if things do not work out in the next few months, none of this will happen. And it has to, going insane, and I mean insane, would be welcome if that all that happened. I hate to ask for your help like this, but better here than out on the street.

I think that I have identified my superpower. It is the ability to avoid creditors, not pay them and still use their services.

We'll go in reverse order.

• Back in June, I lost my credit card, so I was issued another one with, naturally, a different number. I told the relevant parties, except my ISP: I forgot. So they've been trying to bill me since then, and me, thinking that if there ever were a problem, they'd let me know as they've always done. I figured that everything was fine with them, and I didn't check the details of my credit card statement (plus I absolutely hate looking at it). Seems as though it all came to a head on Friday, though. The order was made to cut me off. But all of this seems a little strange. I remember a couple of years ago when I was about two weeks late with a payment. They suspended the service. Two weeks. But this time it was six months without a word. Now, they say that they called and left messages, but I never got such a message from them. They say that they sent emails, but I keep all my emails from companies with which I do business, and I never received anything from them. I always check my junk email filter thoroughly as well. Nothing. So I had to pay $400 this morning to save my Internet connection. Hello, world.
• Université de Montréal. I swear to God that within the French system there are two kinds of people: québécois and foreigners. I was born in the province next door, but it's like I might as well have been born in Burundi. When I made the statement under oath a few months ago, I declared that I was a resident of Quebec. Now they want me to prove that I am not a foreigner. This would not be a problem at McGill or Concordia, I'm sure. Anyway, I lost my birth certicate years ago, so I have to reapply. I'll get it in six to eight weeks if I am lucky, and then this bullshit will be over hopefully.
• Revenu Québec insists that I owe them a bunch of money. They showed me that I wasn't actually paying them money off my paycheck in 1998 (my company was sketchier than I thought), although I figured that my company was paying taxes. I didn't do my taxes that year, and never really took them seriously until 1999/2000. This means that I will be paying them in installments for a while. Look at me, I'm jobless!

I will not be crushed in spirit. If it's one thing I cannot afford, it's that. I'm not buying.

In a matter of a few days, three separate agencies have decided to make me pay them twice for things I already paid for. First, a few days ago, the HR woman from my old job gave me a call to say that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency wanted me to pay them taxes from pay back in 1998 totalling some $1400. They wanted her to give them my account information so they can garnish my pay. The problem is, of course, that I have no job. The other problem is that if they had my account information, they could seize my account and simply take all my money. Lastly, they never bothered to notify me that there was a problem. Sounds like a scam, doesn't it? Especially when I went down to the CCRA office to find out what was going on. They had no idea. They never issued an order to garnish pay.

When she first told me this story, I asked her to be absolutely certain that it was CCRA that had issued the letter. She said she was. She was fucking wrong, of course. It was Revenu Quebec, who are even bigger fuckers than the CCRA.

I went down to their offices and was surprised at how fast I was served (5 minutes, but even more surprised that the tax queen that I was dealing with was really fucking hot. I couldn't quite believe it. I mean, she was super hot. Government workers, especially tax workers who work in grey and beige offices and screw people over all day are never attractive. That's like seeing a hot bus driver (which I did see a couple of weeks ago and nearly floored me since 70% of the ones here are extremely average middle-aged French guys).