The loss of a pet

Loss is really difficult to handle. It doesn't matter how it happens, whether it comes unexpectedly or you have time to prepare for it. I had to make the dreadful decision to put down my seventeen-year-old cat. I stroked her head as she stopped breathing today. I've never had to do this before. I've also never had a relationship with a pet for this long before. I was only fifteen when my mom and I adopted Tigger. She was a three-month-old stray who had been found in a tree, and she was receiving royal treatment at the SPCA; while all the other cats were in cages, this beauty was kept in the administrator's office. We went into this office to fill out the paperwork to adopt a lovely orange and white, short-haired kitten, and we left the office with this extraordinary medium-length-haired tabby. My mom instantly forgot about the other cat when she saw Tigger. She also chose her name.

Tigger had a pretty consistent life until I went to university, but she was cool because she was most attached to my mom. However, I was the only one who used to pick her up and hold her. Her life was first turned upside down when a very neurotic miniature Schnauzer entered the picture. She had been replaced with this cute little puppy who required constant care and attention, and as she grew bigger, she started to chase Tigger anytime she saw her.

Then our mom died. It was so sad to watch her sitting outside Mom's bedroom, pawing at the door, wondering why no one was letting her in. And then I was back in India and she had no one who really loved her. She was left with the crazy dog and the wretched woman who only cares for herself.

When I suddenly found myself homeless last year and had to find a place to live, Tigger became the centre of the universe after many years of taking a back seat. She was very sick when I got back to search for an apartment. She had been neglected by someone who claimed to care about her, but who was too obsessed with herself to find it odd that this cat had lost almost half her body weight in a couple of months.

I got her treated for a bad bladder infection, and after that was cleared up, she was diagnosed with kidney disease, which is common with older cats. When the vet changed her diet, it led to the resurfacing of an old colon problem. So, we changed her food again, and she did really well for about a year.

She had a good year and a bit alone with me. She adjusted to the apartment in just a couple of hours--probably relieved after the previous environment in which she had been living--and we had a good thing. I treated her like the invaluable part of me life she was. And now she's gone. I keep seeing her little face. The injection took her very fast. I knew it was the right decision; I knew it was her time; but that doesn't make it any easier.

Mourning the English language

It’s hard to be an editor in the twenty-first century. The English language is dying a slow, painful death, and no one seems to care. What’s more, thanks to the proliferation of the BPO business model, the deadlines are tight and set on a 24-hour clock.

I work hard for next-to-no pay. When I started, I was okay with that because I was a trainee working in a country with a seriously undervalued currency. And when I became a freelancer, I couldn’t complain much because there were no other job offers coming, and I was living at home. But when you’re living alone and working day and night for dollars and cents, it often feels like it’s not worth the trouble. This feeling is compounded by clients who give you bad feedback, with no explanation of why they’re displeased, after you’ve put all your effort into making their barely intelligible document look like it was written by a native English speaker.

I don’t remember ever having an English grammar lesson in school. I guess I learned to write/speak properly by reading and by applying some of the rules of French grammar to my native language. I honestly don’t know. And I didn’t grow up in the computer age. We wrote everything by hand and got our information from books.

The information that is out there today is scary. The Internet has given absolutely anyone the opportunity to be an “author.” In fact, if you look at people’s profiles and resumes these days, they call themselves “authors” because they blog, or have blogged at some point. By that token, we must all be “subject matter experts” because we have opinions on things. Because all you need today are opinions, not facts. It’s an instant reaction now to google something when you want to know about it. See, Google has become such an important part of our lives that it has become acceptable to use the word as a verb! And the Internet is full of complete nonsense and unchecked information written by people like you and me.

Today, v r spsd 2 wryt lyk dis. It makes me cringe. This “language” first surfaced very innocently in text messages due to the lack of space: How R U? Soon, it developed, killing off vowels, compressing endless phrases into acronyms, negating punctuation marks, and substituting words with symbols or numbers wherever possible, all in order to save us time—not because we’re all so busy, but because we need to write the next text message, and the next, and the next... People actually have lots of time on their hands; they just don’t notice because they’re usually doing more than one thing at a time.

This is the “zero attention span” era, so who really cares about spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence construction? Sometimes I feel like it’s only me, which makes me as a professional editor kind of redundant.

Failure and success

I’ve always had this problem with failure, or perceived failure, in the sense that criticism gets deep down under my skin and causes me to rethink the path that I’m on. Sometimes, this happens for the better. Many times, I’ve lost my confidence and started something from scratch, only to have its quality exceed what it was before. For example, throughout middle school and secondary school, I was into music. For most of those years, I played the tenor saxophone. I really enjoyed it, and people told me I was good. I thought I was good, too. And then, my high school music teacher brought in some musicians to give us some pointers, and they butchered my playing: your embouchure isn’t right, and your phrasing needs a lot of work, etc. Don’t get me wrong; I’m fine with constructive criticism—when you’ve been bullied as much as I have, you develop a thick skin—but this experience had left so strong a mark on me that when I sat down to play the next morning, I couldn’t do it. It was like all the things these people had pointed out, which no one had ever pointed out before, were suddenly manifesting in a vastly exaggerated way. I was like a newbie learning to play the saxophone for the first time.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t go over well. I still remember when Mrs. Quinn was conducting our combined classes; the look on her face when my horrid notes squeaked out over everyone else was one of disgust and disbelief. And then there was my jazz band conductor, who asked me, “What happened to you?” Embarrassed does not describe how I felt. I was mortified, and I was also frustrated because I didn’t know why I was playing so badly. But after a lot of practicing, not only did I escape this abhorrent playing, but I became more skilled than I had been before the core-shaking incident.

I think something similar happened to me with my writing. All I wanted to do in life was to be a writer. And between 2003 and 2005, I tried to make that happen professionally. Well, it didn’t. I wrote articles that were never published, a novel that received many rejection letters from publishers, and applied for countless jobs for which I was never even interviewed. I couldn’t get a literary agent to take me on either. And then I got a job offer in India, in copy editing. I thought back to my school days, when my friends would ask me to look over their French assignments, and I’d happily sit with my red pen and correct their work. Yes, I thought, this is the place for me. I had some hiccups along the way as an editor as well, with some bad client feedback and low quality assessment scores; nevertheless, I decided, no, I’m not meant to write; I’m meant to edit other people’s writing. But now that I’ve been doing this for five years, I’ve honed my skills, and I’ve read hundreds of really bad authors (sorry, but it’s true), I think I’m over my mental block about writing.

So, I think this “problem” of mine is both a good thing and a bad thing. It might keep me down for some time, but I always persevere and rise again, to the top of the heap. (Never let anyone tell you it's wrong to toot your own horn!)

Open intolerance

Canada has long been a very politically correct country. We pride ourselves on our multiculturalism and celebrate diverse cultures by having events and parades, e.g., for the Caribbean and Indian cultures. We promote immigration to increase our comparatively tiny population and boost our economy. So, this must be a really warm, welcoming place for all people, right?

If you want to know what Canadians really think, look at the comments people post on Yahoo! articles some time. You would think that in our politically correct, multicultural nation, people would only be comfortable posting racist, hateful, ignorant things on sites that allow them to be anonymous, but to post these comments, you must log into either your Yahoo!, Google, or Facebook account. These Canadians are openly intolerant—and very disturbingly ignorant and illiterate.

Political correctness has fooled us into believing that we really do live in this utopian land, but you barely have to scratch the surface to uncover the ugly truth.

Welcome to the First World

The word "Canada" means "village," and we certainly do seem like one sometimes. Last night, the national and Toronto news reports devoted half their broadcast time to the weather. By this, I don't mean that they shared stories about how people are dying as a result of the heat wave, or that our electricity is being stretched to its limits with the possibility of blackouts across the country; I mean, the stories were all about telling us what we already know, i.e., that it's hot outside. You know, in case you live in an underground bunker, as so many of us do (note sarcasm), and you're completely out of touch with the natural environment, the Canadian newscasters are here to tell you for at least 22 minutes out of the hour that it's hot.

I don't want to be insensitive to the people who have respiratory problems, for whom this weather is really painful, but how ridiculous are we? You can't get much more simultaneous "First World" and villager than this. What about people who live in places where it's 50 degrees, and they don't have as much as a fan? But that's the beauty of living in North America; you can have anything you want and remain completely out of touch with how much of the rest of the world lives.

In Ontario, winter lasts anywhere from four to seven months, and everyone cribs about it. Then, as soon as it goes above freezing temperature, Ontarians get out the shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops and bask in the sunshine. And then, without fail, as soon as we get a handful of hot days—and they do tend to be a handful—the complaints come again.

I was more interested in hearing about inflation and the 1,800 immigrants who have been found to have obtained citizenship illegally last night.

Don't disturb me

Last week, Mumbai was attacked once again, and it was as if nothing had happened. I have many friends on my Facebook list who live in Mumbai, and not a single one of them had anything to say about what had happened; instead, they chose to post about their mixed excitement and sadness over the last installment of the Harry Potter films.

It seems to boil down to the fact that no one wants to be troubled. Last year, I was sitting in Williams café at Pier 8 when Hamilton, and much of Ontario, was hit with an earthquake. The light fixtures were swaying from side to side, the tables were shaking, and no one appeared to be particularly disturbed by this. After the first few seconds, someone sitting behind me said, “What’s that?” I turned and replied, “It feels like an earthquake.” She replied, “You shouldn’t say things like that!”

Huh?

War has been ongoing in Libya, and yet, the newscasters want to report about what the Duchess of Cambridge is wearing.

Has the human race become so fragile that we can’t handle any unpleasant realities? Is the truth slipping away from us, enabling us to curl up in a convenient fantasy world where the biggest problem is that there won’t be any more Harry Potter films?

There has been immense outrage over the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial. The masses have been reacting as though they know what really happened and justice failed. I wonder, would this same concern and outrage be present if the same people were to walk by a person being mugged on the sidewalk, or if they overheard their neighbour being physically abused? I suspect in those cases—real cases where they know what is happening and could have an impact—they wouldn’t want to interfere.

The less we care and want to know about what’s happening in the real world around us, the more room it will leave for atrocities to occur.

Both sides of joint tenancy

In Canada, people who jointly own property are either tenants in common or joint tenants. In the case of tenants in common, when one of the homeowners passes away, his or her interest in the property becomes part of his or her estate, whereas in the case of joint tenants, the right of survivorship dictates that the surviving homeowner becomes the sole owner of the property.

A joint tenancy agreement is generally signed by a married or common-law couple; thus, upon the death of the co-owner, the surviving spouse/partner inherits the property without lengthy and costly legal hassles.

However, it is not always couples who enter into this agreement.

I am the only child of a woman who died suddenly in 2008. She jointly owned a house with her friend—my godmother—and the three of us lived there from 1993. As I was a minor when they purchased the house, and my godmother was to have custody of me if anything happened to my mother, they signed a joint tenancy agreement to ensure that no one else could make a claim on the house.

When my mother passed away, based on conversations that I had with my godmother, it was my understanding that while the house now legally belonged solely to her, she was still keeping my mother’s interest in trust for me. It was also my understanding, based on conversations, that if she was going to sell the house, she would tell me. I continued to live in the house with her, contributed to the household expenses, cooked the majority of her meals, and even made phone calls on her behalf, as she is hearing impaired. I thought of her as my family and believed that she felt the same way, as my mother did when she entered into this arrangement in 1993.

In February 2011, I was out of the country and wasn’t scheduled to return to Canada for another five weeks. I was shocked to learn that the house I had been living in for 18 years had been listed with a realtor. When I asked my godmother why she had made this decision without mentioning anything to me, her response was simply, “It’s my right.” And when I asked about my mother’s share, she cited her rights as dictated by survivorship.

Joint tenancy gave my mother’s friend the right to more than triple her initial investment in this property. Furthermore, this agreement which was signed because there was a child who was supposed to be provided for was the same document used as a means of disinheriting that same child.

So, while joint tenancy benefits spouses and surviving partners, it can also benefit single people by providing them with the financial security that they have not offered themselves.

I lost my mother very early and unexpectedly and then I lost my godmother equally unexpectedly due to her greed for money.

Parents, please take this as a cautionary tale. Check your papers and see that your wishes are written down.