May 16, 2013

• Report # 1002

  After a two month search I was finally able to get a job, which I’ll start on Tuesday, May 21. I’ll be working in the office of a company that deals with bankruptcy and it will be a Monday to Friday 8:30 am until 5:00 pm job, with an hour lunch. Though the wage isn’t very high, that’s ok, as I just wanted to find something while I wait out this visa process. It’s a place all be able to get to easily by bus, so it will be pretty convenient. Hopefully now I’ll be able to work for a while and get some more money saved up again before I would have to go back and start working in Monterrey.

  I had a pretty easy day on Tuesday and I only applied for one job. Some days I would see many jobs that interested me, and other days not so much. I ran with Parker and Molly and just had a relaxing day at home. On Wednesday morning my grandmother drove me to the office for an interview, and we got there just a few minutes before 9:00 am, as there was a lot of construction going on. I was given a letter filled with errors which I had to find and correct, and also some simple math questions as well as a section where I had to put names into alphabetic order. It was just a general quiz to see how I would do I guess. After waiting for about 15 minutes, the guy returned with another guy, who was one of the partners at the office.

  At first he seemed very surprised that I was applying for the job seeing as it was just a simple office job, and he was explaining to me what they needed there. He looked at my resume and went over the fact that I’ve been through a few jobs since I finished university and asked what I really wanted to do. I explained to him something in a marketing/ad agency, and he told me they did none of that there, which of course I already knew. So I was getting the impression that they weren’t going to hire me thinking that it wasn’t the type of position for me. They told me they had some more interviews to do, though they’d make a decision pretty quickly.

  After the interview I went for lunch with my grandmother at Rickys and then I helped her with her grocery shopping, before stopping at her house for a while. I walked home, stopping at Tim Hortons on the way, and later went out with the dogs. In the evening I started French lessons, and while I won’t be studying to the extent that I have with my Spanish, it will be great to pick up all the French I lost over the years, and eventually start with German as well, so if I can devote a little time to that everyday, while continuing watching my Spanish telenovelas and talking with people, I think I can pick up some other languages too !

  At around 4:30 pm yesterday I got a call, and it was from one of the guys who had interviewed me at the office in the morning and he said that they would like to offer me the job, and of course I said I would take it. Originally he asked if I could start on Monday, but called me back when he realized that Monday would be a holiday. So I’ll be starting work on Tuesday morning at 8:30 am, and it will be the start of my first job in 9.5 months….. about time ! So I should definitely enjoy these next four days, as they will be the last group of four days off in a row I get for a while. That is ok though as I’ve had more than enough time off. I’m ready to get back and get used to working again.

  So thinking to the reason of why I think they hired me, even though they wondered why I was applying for the position, I think what I was able to say about the company they were impressed with. I had checked out the company online and read about the company, and I was able to tell them what I had learned from reading the website and their blog, so I definitely think that helped. I can’t be sure or not whether that is why they chose to hire me over the other people, but it certainly would have been a small part of it I believe. It’s so important for people going into interviews to have already researched the company and be able to talk about it during the interview. Anyone who has not done that and goes to an interview is just not properly prepared.

  So I am super thankful for the opportunity, and no matter how long I’ll be working here, I’ll definitely do my very best every single day and try to learn everything that I can learn. I’ve already been out with the dogs today, and I’ve vacuumed the house. My grandmother will be coming over for dinner, and I’ll probably be helping her with that. Speaking of help, the British Columbia New Democratic Party could have used a lot more help than they got on Tuesday evening, as their party stunningly lost the election to the BC Liberal Party, who has been in power in British Columbia for twelve years. I had voted for the NDP, and I was pretty certain that they would be able to win, but they lost and did actually worse than they did in the previous two elections of 2009 and 2005.

  The first thing to take for this is that all of the major polling companies were very wrong. All of them predicted an NDP victory. Some of them had the NDP in front by as much as 20 %, and while in other polls the race was much closer, no one thought the NDP were going to lose this election. So I’ll be the first to admit that I among with many other people believe the polls too much. This has got me thinking, do we really need to know these polls ? I would say no. While political parties should be able to conduct their own polls to find out how they are doing before an election, the public really has no need to know. As it’s been said by so many politicians, the only poll that matters is the one on election day…. the actual results from the voters.

  The BC Liberals said all along they believed that they could win this election, but what else were they going to say ? No one in politics is just going to admit defeat without fighting to the end. I could say that the pollsters were all incredibly wrong, and that the liberals ran a much better campaign, which both may be true to some extent, but I think the real issue here was voter turnout. From what I have read, not even 50 % of eligible voters bothered to vote ! So I am guessing so many of those people that wanted change and have been complaining for the last 12 years, just didn’t bother to show up to vote, and that is what I think the main reason that the NDP failed to win the other night.

  There is no question that the pollsters screwed up somewhat, and that BC Liberal Party leader Christy Clark was able to run a better campaign than BC New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix, but those two things alone wouldn’t have been enough for the BC Liberals to come back from the brink of supposed electoral disaster and not just win the election, but rout the NDP to an extent. So I will assume that a lot of the 52 % of the eligible voters who didn’t bother voting, would have voted for the NDP, though they have only themselves to blame if they are unhappy with these election results.

  It’s horrendous that over 50 % of the potential voters decided not to even bother voting. Are these people truly that ignorant and/or lazy ? If they truly don’t care and really think voting is stupid and pointless, they should be forced to live in a communist country or under a military dictatorship to see how much they like living in a place where people don’t have the opportunity to vote. Quite frankly, people who don’t ever vote don’t really deserve to live in a democracy as they are just taking advantage of the quality of life that was won by others over the years and not even putting in a few minutes of their time to bother and vote every few years.

  Now I know some countries such as Australia have mandatory voting laws, and while they certainly work in ensuring that elections have almost full voter participation, I really don’t think it’s a good idea. If people are forced to vote by law, they will do so grudgingly and not really caring about what the election is about, and just making an uneducated vote in selecting anyone. So I don’t think the results of an election would be so nice if we have like 40 % of the voters, not even wanting to vote in the first place, just voting for any random person…. that is not a very reliable way of doing democracy either.

  So really all that continue to be done is having politicians engaging youth in the political process, doing things that will interest them, and getting the young people interested into politics at an early age. As for the rest of the potential voters, it’s up to politicians to do a better job in meeting these people, and truly listening to them and getting a sense of what issues are important to them, and truly bringing those issues to the light when they get down to work. A lot of people don’t vote because they feel like politicians are all the same, or they just lie and are only in it for themselves. So it’s up to the politicians themselves to show voters that this isn’t the case, and truly represent the voters… not their parties !

  And while I know a lot of people really have almost zero interest in politics, and that’s fine, we should all be able to find at least a little amount of interest to care about the places we live and actually learn about who is running, and what they stand for, and casting a vote for who we believe the best person is. The BC NDP will now spend the next four years waking up as the opposition party, just like they have everyday for the last four years, wondering how they managed to let what just two days ago seemed like an inevitable victory turn into a complete mirage and excruciatingly painful defeat. And all of those lazy and ignorant people who didn’t even bother to vote better keep their mouths shut for the next four years, because they have not given themselves any right to complain !

  As for the victorious BC Liberal party, they did win, though they did so with taking under 45 % of the the votes, and far less considering over 50 % of the people didn’t bother voting. So really only about 22.5 % of British Columbians who were eligible to vote, voted for the BC Liberal Party. So this party will have to be super thankful they have managed to win a fourth term, and they will certainly have to do better than they have the last four years, else chances are they won’t be able to pull of a miracle victory again. As for the pollsters, those companies should stick to helping the parties see where they are at during the election…. people don’t really need to know !

  And chances are a lot of people who didn’t vote saw the polls and just assume a victory was imminent for the NDP and didn’t bother, so it’s a lesson learned for everyone here. Polls don’t decide elections, voters do, and when over 50 % of the people didn’t bother voting, that would decide an election as well. So to finish up, we all need to do better. Politicians have to do a better job engaging voters, focusing on issues important to them, being honest and not corrupt, and just doing the best job they can do. Pollsters need to take a back seat and stick to working for political parties, not announcing poll numbers to the public every three months each year. And most importantly, people need to stop being so lazy and ignorant and spend the small amount of time necessary to actually learn about what is happening in an election and vote for someone !

  So the ball is in the court of the politicians to do a much better job engaging people. If they can manage to do this, I can see voter participation going up in the future. If they fail to do this however, voter participation will continue to drop, and elections will be decided by not even half of the electorate and that is just unacceptable. If the politicians do their part of engaging with people, learning what issues matter to people, and providing efficient and honest government and the majority of eligible voters still decide not to vote, well then these ignorant lazy people taking advantage of our democracy should be given the boot and sent off to live in a communist country or a military dictatorship. Maybe then, just maybe, they will learn what life is like for people who don’t have the option to vote, and that could finally remove some of their ignorance.

  For the next question:

  Does the public need to know about poll numbers before an election, why or why not ? Do you always vote, why or why not ?

  I hope that everyone has a wonderful next couple of days. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Sunday, bye for now.

   

  • 6:31 pm
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