April 2022 Monthly Entry
A quick reminder that I will be back in Toronto for Easter weekend, April 15-18. My entry should be uploaded within the week I return. Around the GVRD weather-wise, it has been mostly sunny and overcast with some random rain thrown around. The cherry blossoms are now withering away, but some are still showing their light pink petals. The nights have become quite cold too.
The first week of spring break last month was pretty good as I mentioned in last month's entry. The second week... soon got my blood boiling. Monday the 21st was okay, my classrooms were ready for auto-scrubbing the following day. Tuesday I start auto-scrubbing the first classroom and before I was done, my co-worker Jay comes to me and tells me that our foreman was pulling me out to go work at Rosser on Wednesday the next day. No reason was given as to why my original request to go work there on Friday or both Thursday/Friday if needed was given. Also, he wasn't too happy with my general cleaning, especially the floors. I was pissed as this meant I had to stop auto-scrubbing and just do a quick mopping of the other seven classrooms upstairs, and then quickly detail clean the washrooms I was going to tackle on the last day at Montecito before heading to Rosser. This is why I need these break periods - it helps me catch up on jobs and gives me "breathing time" to clean things more thoroughly until the next break period. My other foreman who handles around Rosser came by and I talked to her about the cleaning and she seemed to understand. She also told me that my co-worker David at Rosser needed my help. I was fine with that and so the next day, went to Rosser. I spent that Wednesday cleaning my run. In the schedule, there was someone from Brentwood Park who was supposed to help David for 2 days and 4 hours each the previous week. But the guy called in sick - which meant David got NO help for that first week and management didn't bother to bring in a replacement! So this meant I had to stay at Rosser for Thursday too so I could help David catch up on a few things. Our foreman came that day to check on our progress. While we didn't make it that clear to her, David inferred that he would be okay on Friday finishing up the school and may not need me further. I was done my part of the school and even got to do a quick auto-scrub of the gymnasium that day to finish it off. Our foreman assumed I was probably going to stay at Rosser on Friday or just for half the shift but again, this wasn't clear. Before leaving that day, I asked David if he needed me to come the next day. He said no, he can handle the rest himself and it sounded like Montecito needed me more anyways. So on Friday the last day of spring break, I went straight from home to Montecito. Jay updated me on the previous two days: he had some minor help from others and one of them ranted about my floors that my foreman was getting more critical of me, and that Jay had been helping to scrub and coat my floors after he finished his. Bless him! Jay wanted me to do a better job on the washrooms and gave me a suggestion on washing all walls and stalls (this criticism came from the foreman, but what did he expect when he dropped the bomb on me on Tuesday that forced me to scramble on the washrooms?) and I'll admit, did help. But before noon, my foreman from Rosser came and had us talk privately in a classroom. She was not happy with me. My sin was that I should have told her that I was going to Montecito that day as she thought I was going to stay at Rosser. She found out because she went to Rosser that morning (David would tell me the following Monday that he said to her it was okay for me to go and that he didn't need me any further) and since I didn't let her know explicitly that I was going to Montecito, she had to reprimand me on it. Fine, whatever. She asks if I checked my email about the schedule for spring break. I reply that I didn't. I remember an email that did have the schedule of custodians -including the one who was supposed to help David- but there was nothing new from her or anything relevant during spring break. She says to check my email more often (I usually do nightly) because it had the schedule. I said I would go look at it. She leaves. I continue to work upstairs, in a saddened state. Jay mentioned earlier that a bunch of custodians will be meeting at Cariboo Hill Secondary for a prepared meal at noon for lunch. I was debating it, given I had a lot of work I needed to get done and I was very upset. He left around 11:30am to go to it, I relented and drove sometime before noon to Cariboo. It was happening in the cafeteria and had a good turn out. There was curry chicken and rice, pieces of spicy chicken, desserts, etc. The meal was quite good, but I didn't want to stay for the entire thing even if it was the first gathering of custodians about exactly 2 years ago. My two foremen were there, besides others, and even our manager came. I quietly left the school to get back to work. Jay would finish all my floors upstairs and then went back downstairs to finish off his scrub. I was done with any final stuff upstairs that I shut it down nearly an hour before the end of our shift. The last thing Jay wanted me to do was replace a soap dispenser in the downstairs boys washroom that likely the same little fucker who does his fetishistic shit has been destroying or ripping off the wall. I did so and put in a fresh soap container too. At the end of the shift, I thanked Jay for all his help and apologized that he was forced into helping my run -when he already did the four rooms that are a part of my run downstairs- of his own choice! He understood and we agreed that the one who really got screwed was David, which threw this whole second week into an angry flux. On my way home, I was still reeling about the day. By the time I reached the intersection of 176th Street and 32nd Ave and was waiting in a left turn lane, I finally broke down and cried. I wondered if I was any good at my job and my fear that it's going to get more difficult that I cannot bear it. I had this problem a few years ago, but shifted my cleaning strategy to tackle it. But the pandemic has complicated this and now that things are somewhat reverting to normal, we are in a pre & post-pandemic mix that makes things even harder. Quick example: prior to the pandemic, the majority of classrooms didn't have garbage cans and students hardly washed their hands in their classrooms. A few garbage cans are in the hallways and washing hands was done in the washrooms. Now, every classroom has one or two garbage cans for me to empty every night and students wash their hands multiple times a day in their classrooms. This means I spend a lot more time throwing out garbage compared to the little I did before. I also have to spend more time restocking paper towels and sometimes soap dispensers when I hardly had to that except in the washrooms, of course. And I wouldn't be remiss to remind people that some of the classroom rugs have returned which I didn't have to do during the heights of the pandemic for almost 2 years because they were rolled up and put away. Because of these 2-year old protocols not being taken away to pre-pandemic times, I'm locked into a cleaning war that leaves no room for extra jobs to be done or, Hell, even regular jobs to get done!
Returning to work after spring break, staff and students pretty much reset everything in under a week. One classroom was using hot glue guns and as expected, some of the excess glue gets on the floor and on a table. A week later, I would scrape them off. Also on the first day back, that little bastard destroying the boys washroom threw half a piece of a Coffee Crisp chocolate bar into the one single urinal. I found the wrapper in the garbage and fished out the urine-soaked bar with my tongs. It left some residue of leftover chocolate and no amount of flushing would get rid of it as it was mostly clogged, as usual. I took a bucket of water and disinfectant, flushed the urinal a few times to allow overflow, and poured the solution on top to cause the urinal to overflow onto the ground so that the excess chocolate could fall away. I then had to mop and pick up the flooded water to finish it off. In just one day, a lot of the work Jay and I put in those two weeks was for naught. Oh yes, about the schedule that my foreman sent out for spring break, I checked it again and found that I was not on the list! This meant they didn't have a schedule in mind for me so I was pretty much free to determine which two schools I could go to on my own terms. As I said above, my original plan was Montecito for 8 or 9 days and then end with Rosser on the last 1 or 2 days of the scrub. I gave that to the other foreman in a text message as he asked what I was planning and he agreed to it. So, I was not ignorant to the schedule as I was not on their list!
On Monday this week, Jay caught the same little fucker in his downstairs washroom destroying the soap dispenser I installed 2 weeks prior. He didn't catch him in the act per se: he walked in and saw him and two other boys, acting innocent and claiming someone destroyed the dispenser. Knowing that the fucker was trying to deflect blame, Jay escorts the three to the principal to explain to him what happened, but the principal got the confession out that the three of them collaborated to destroy the dispenser. As I suspected: the sick fucker had others doing his dirty work, but I didn't suspect a third kid was involved! At the very least, they will be monitored more closely, but it doesn't mean any of this will stop what they keep doing. Some days Jay and I get lucky and the boys washrooms are not that filthy but most others, something always has to happen.
Continuing on from the first movie I watched on Netflix last month, Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow and III: Encounters in Space finishes off the compilation of episodes from the 1979-1980 anime series. Set in the UC year of 0079 (Universal Century), the Principality of Zeon has declared independence from the Earth Federation, and subsequently launched a war of independence called the One Year War. The conflict has directly affected every continent on Earth, also nearly every space colony and lunar settlement. Zeon, though smaller, has the tactical upper hand through their use of a new type of humanoid weapons called mobile suits. After half of all humanity perishes in the conflict, the war settled into a bitter stalemate lasting over 8 months. The anime begins with a newly deployed Federation warship, the White Base, arriving at the secret research base located at the Side 7 colony to pick up the Federation's newest weapon. However, they are closely followed by Zeon forces. A Zeon reconnaissance team member disobeys mission orders and attacks the colony, killing most of the Federation crew and civilians in the process. Out of desperation, young Amuro Ray accidentally finds the Federation's new prototype arsenal-the RX-78 Gundam, and manages to beat back Zeon forces. Scrambling everything they can, the White Base sets out with her newly formed crew of civilian recruits and refugees in her journey to survive. On their journey, the White Base members often encounter the Zeon Lieutenant Commander Char Aznable. Although Char antagonizes Amuro in battle, he takes advantage of their position as Federation members to have them kill members from Zeon's Zabi family as part of his revenge scheme. Amuro also meets ensign Lalah Sune with whom he falls in love, but accidentally kills when facing Char. When the Federation Forces invade the Fortress of A Baoa Qu to defeat the Zeon forces, Amuro engages on a final one-on-one duel against Char due to both blaming the other for Lalah's death. Having realized he forgot his true enemy, Char stops fighting to kill the last surviving Zabi member, Kycilia Zabi. Amuro then reunites with his comrades as the war reaches its end. I kind of have mixed feelings on this compilation trilogy, while it's nice to have a streamlined experience of the 43-episode anime crammed into under 7 hours of runtime, there are some pacing issues. With the exception of action scenes, some parts can get boring and the plot go a little too quickly compared to an under half-hour episode. Basically, the films can be harder to digest at once compared to watching things unfold slowly. Still, the artwork for its time is very good and there was some effort put into the entire thing. I want to see the other series up until the popular Gundam Wing - but that'll depend on what is available for anime streaming these days.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 was certainly underwhelming.and we once again don't get near as many episodes as in the old-Trek shows. Remember when Star Trek would produce over 20 episodes a season? New-Trek is so lazy, and so is the writing. Once AGAIN, the Discovery crew has to deal with an anomaly that threatens all life in the universe. Is this all Discovery about? Where are the individual episodes that focus on individual problems and are character-focused? They have a ship that can teleport to almost anywhere in the galaxy! And they think not to do some space exploration while making contact with new civilizations with the possibly of Federation membership? Michael Burnham has reached Captain status at the end of the last season, and this changes nothing for the show. I honestly don't know much more about the rest of the main cast because the show still focuses so much on the character of Michael. And they certainly doubled down on female and people-of-colour representation that it's a blatant in-your-face portrayal that is both unrealistic and frankly, racist. I'll keep saying it: old-Trek did the right amount of female and racial representation that felt natural because the characters were well written, relatable, had natural flaws, and did their jobs. While still not as bad as Picard, Discovery is still a waste of potential because of it's serialized format that it refuses to drop. Guess we'll see what Season 5 will bring next year.
I'm about halfway done Breath of Fire IV, but I'm not sure if I will get it reviewed by the end of the month. It'll definitely be done by next month at the latest. While waiting for season 2 of Star Trek: Picard to finish broadcasting the new episodes, I'm going to go back to starting season 4 of Enterprise and get a small head start on it. Once Picard is reviewed next month, I can slowly finish Enterprise. I'm still on season 1 of Sailor Moon though I've watched some episodes lately. A major piss-off is that Crave TV no longer has South Park and I don't know where the show is for streaming in Canada.
Last Movie: Spider-Man: No Way Home (Theatrical), Mobile Suit Gundam III (Netflix)
Last Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - The Screwtape Letters
Last Game: Fallout 3 (Xbox 360)
Current Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Miracles
Current Games: Breath of Fire IV (PSN - PS1) & Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition (3DS)