A hands-free world for workers on the road – The Globe and Mail.
So the guys whose cars are their offices are frustrated because of the new rules. What’s interesting in this article in the Globe and Mail, is that some businesses have put stringent rules in place to prevent employees from working en route. Productivity is rising, and employees have reduced the time spent on electronic devices while in the car on their personal time.
When did the car become an office? Was it the invention of the Blackberry, or the first “car phone” wired in, and connected to a mobile operator sometime in the seventies. And what were all these people doing while hurtling along at 100km plus – sending e-mails, faxing, consulting with clients? Take a person who manages other people’s money. Out of the office, travelling to meet one client, talking to three or four others on the way, faxing off documents on his way home, he seems not to need an office or an assistant with all the attendant costs. But how secure are you in the advice you’re getting from someone who can’t even take the hour he’s in the car to listen to music, or the news, or just to think. I hope its my account he’s remembering, not someone else’s.
Or the real estate broker, making the big deals by the side of the road-itinerant, ungrounded and insecure.
Or, and I’ve been here, answering a call from the hospital and trying to sort out complex medical data and give advice, all while controlling a dangerous machine in the midst of other dangerous machines.
I think we need to return to a more civil way of life, with business conducted in offices, giving the man in the story in the Globe, and the rest of us, a few minutes to think and reflect on our way to appointments, and perhaps arrive alive.
Economists
Eight weeks left until I see my last patient. Every day brings a new goodbye.
Yesterday I submitted my CME for 2009. Because we are going to keep our licenses active, that means more CME in 2010. It’s difficult, but I think it would be harder to just stop and never read a word of medicine again.
Oh and the stock market has fallen again. Yet another reason to keep the license active, at least until next year.
Review: How Markets Fail, by John Cassidy – The Globe and Mail. An interesting review of this book about economists and their inability to predict, control or explain the markets.
This week was a good example of the emotional irrationality the rules those who buy and sell. Obama wishes to regulate the banks. A good thing, right. As far as I can see it was regulation that save the Canadian economy from the depths others have reached. But no. The young men in red suspenders have apparently learned nothing, and think the sky will fall if bankers aren’t allowed to pillage economies, paying themselves outrageous salaries as they play with the lives and money of others.
By the way, the US economy has made 5.7% increase in the GDP in last quarter, but the economists don’t expect it to last. Tell me why I should believe them.
Retirement
I’ve been away from the blog for a few days–a combination of a vicious cold and retirement planning. Before we started this retiring process, I had little idea of the complications, or the number of phone calls I would have to make.
We started with the managers of our RRSP’s and were reassured(we think) that there is enough money to last– always assuming we don’t live to be a hundred.
But that was only the beginning. Then came the decision about license to practice. To keep or not to keep? And so another round of calls to organizations known by their initials– the OMA, RCPSC, CMA, CPSO and so on.
What to do about the office charts, and referrals to other specialists? And then talking to the patients. Conversation after conversation. How to get followup care? Where will the charts be? What about the medications? And what are you going to do in your retirement, Doctor?
Reviewing the charts, writing or dictating letters to other doctors, deciding what to keep and what to shred. that last led to another round of calls. How long must we keep the charts? The answer to that is ten years, unless the patient is a child, and then until the child is twenty-eight years old. I have seen babies this year, so those charts will be in the facility in Toronto until 2038. I will be eighty-two years old in 2038, and still paying someone to provide access to those charts. Amazing.
Some days I think it would be easier to just carry on.
New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail
New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail.
The Globe and Mail reported this morning on the new rules for small magazines in this country. Small means fewer than 5000 circulation. That criterion leaves only Macleans, Chatelaine, and perhaps one or two others. Oh,and those, mostly from the west, such as The Western Producer, which specifically target the farming population. No other niche in our culture is important to the Tories. In fact, judging by their approach to anything cultural or historical, if the book or magazine or film or painting or photograph or music doesn’t involve business, it isn’t of any importance what so ever.
This present legislation recognizes the needs of only the farmers, and western farmers at that. I imagine the polls show that they are Tory supporters.
What’s next? Are only those museums devoted to the history of the Hereford, or wheat, or oil going to get support?
And one last thing. The final decision on who gets funding rests with the Minister and his decisions are irrevocable. No wonder Harper thinks we don’t need Parliament. He’s turning our government from a democracy into a quasi monarchy, with himself as king, giving his ministers total power and leaving us with no recourse. He’s started with the arts. Where will it end?
That First Page
A commentator on this blog suggested Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel to help with revision on my new novel. As always, Amazon suggested another, Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages. I started with that one, because it didn’t come with a workbook, as Maass’ does.
Ha! The work comes at the end of each chapter, when he assigns exercises to be completed before venturing on to the next. First, remove all adjectives and adverbs, he says. Secondly, make a list of all the nouns and verbs, checking for the tired, or cliche. Then revise. Does he know how long that takes? Three hours on Sunday morning, and that was on the first page , which had all ready been revised countless times.
But it’s a much better first page now. Removing words from context showed me where I had duplications or commonplace words.
I long to drop this novel now, moving on to the revision of the one just written, which lies dormant in my computer, waiting for me to work on it’s first page. I won’t though, because this one is a sequel to my first published novel, and I want it to be the better book.
I’ve started Maass’ book as well, curious to discover if a breakout novel is something I can aspire to, and how to improve my writing to achieve it.
I started late at this craft of writing. I’m grateful to Donald Maass and Noah Lukeman, and others for helping me learn it.
Elites
The government says only the elite object to their ant-democratic action. Elite is code word for educated, I think, coming as the comment did on the heels of a statement by 100 professors against the prorogue. So let’s do the math. In 2007, university completion rates for those 24 to 64 was 24.6%. Almost 51% of the population had post-secondary qualifications, trade, college or university. The percentage of people who objected strongly to the Conservative action was 58%. So, does that mean that only uneducated people support the Conservative action? Or is there a strong objection in all segments of the population.
I think the Canadian people know when their leaders don’t respect them, and I think that is what is happening now. Elite, indeed. It doesn’t take a university degree to understand when a leader is hiding from the people paid to question him and his policies. The people will hold him to account as they did Brian Mulroney.
Revision
The revision of a novel can take years, as it did for my first one, or fewer years, as it has for the one under review now. Somehow, I’ve managed to have one published, one being revised, and one sitting in my computer, percolating.
Revision is mainly rewriting, in my hands anyway. The worst is deleting a big chunk of prose, as I did this morning, because I felt it was telling, not showing. I replaced it with a much shorter piece of dialogue. If I keep cutting, i’m going to end up with a novella!
This proroguing of Parliament has irritated me more than almost anything Harper has done, and he has done a lot that I objected to. I think he has shown a contempt for the people that is astounding. And I’m not the only one. True blue conservatives, of the non-Reform Party variety, are also taken aback by this abuse of power. There was no real need, after all, except that he didn’t want to answer the questions in the House. Or maybe he and his minions just wanted a long winter vacation. The rest of us are at work, and want to see the M.P.s at it as well. Besides that, we want him to answer the questions, about Afghanistan and the budget, and whatever else comes up, and answer them in the House, where the people we elected to ask him questions, can do so.
Oh, and don’t tell me he needs the time to consult about the budget. I don’t believe for one minute that anything the people say affects him one whit. Again, that’s what we pay the opposition M.P.s for.
Spain and security and fear
We’re going to Spain in the fall. At the airports, in Toronto and in Madrid, we will endure enhanced security, some of it very intrusive. Will it make us safer, prevent some young man, in love with the idea of violence, as young men have been in other generations, from triggering some destructive device? Perhaps. But it seems to me that these young men need a more hopeful future, with rewards in this world, not the next. There are too many of them, these young men, as there have been in previous times. The solution in the past has often been war, and their deaths, as they follow old men who fill them with myths of honour and sacrifice, as they do now. People are framing the conflict in terms of religion. I see it as a lust for power in the men behind the violence, safe in their secret lairs.
More Spain
The new year has arrived, very quietly for us. It will be memorable, though for several reasons, starting with our retirement in March, going on to our fortieth anniversary in May, and then our trip to Spain.
The trip arrangements are going well. I found a terrific website called Inns of Spain, and booked hotels in Madrid and Seville. Nick, at Inns of Spain has offered to help if I can’t sort out the trains!
We also booked a villa at Ronda, where a nice lady called Caro will cook us our dinner the first night. Looking at the hotels on Google Earth, especially the street level views, is a lot of fun.
My story, Clarice is up at Gumshoe Review http://www.gumshoereview.com/. It’s a great site and I am very pleased to have Clarice accepted there.
Last year’s writing goal was to get something published, and I have been very happy to have reached it. Looking forward to 2010!
Our trip to Spain
Now that the holidays are almost over, it’s time to plan a trip to Spain in the fall. This will be our first holiday after we retire, and our third to Europe, travelling with the same friends. I’ve started to study some Spanish, putting Italian on hold for the time being. Our tentative plan is to fly into Madrid, fly on to Granada, take the train to Seville and then meet our friends in Ronda. The flights will be easy to arrange. Air Transat flies open jaw into Madrid and out of Malaga. The train is another story.
Rick Steves has a very helpful brochure on trains in Europe which is available as a pdf download, but even with its help I remain confused about taking a train from Granada to Ronda or Seville. http://www.ricksteves.com/rail09/pdfs/09_RailGuide.pdf
I have just now found some helpful information about the white villages of Spain.
writingthoughts 