House Work

 

As I sit here listening to Mendelssohn and Beethoven, at the same time trying to ignore the sounds of work being done downstairs in the kitchen, I reflect on the things that are important in life.  Boy, is that last statement a bit pretentious!  But there is some truth in it.  Such goings on, as are happening in our kitchen during a major renovation (by someone else, I wouldn’t dare try myself), do allow time for some thought.  They make you appreciate some of the things you have taken for granted for a long time.

I miss my kitchen, or at least the use of it.  The kitchen table is still there, but it is covered in a tarp and covered with work-men's tools and drawings.  There is no place to prepare meals or place small appliances. But the new kitchen that is taking shape does look interesting.

I miss my living room.  Oh, it’s still there but it is now the home of a fridge, a microwave and a patio table to eat on.  It’s kind of crowded.  We can still sit in there, but it feels kind of crowded and you get confused why you’re there.

I miss my dining room.  It’s still there too, but you can’t dine there.  The dining table is covered with all of our dishes, some of them even clean.  There are no chairs in the room, but there is an extra desk that used to reside in the hallway.  The table is moved to one side of the room, so I now have to try and avoid, not always successfully, the light fixture that usually hangs over the table.

Our laundry room is now the pantry.  The powder room is now for the workmen.  So, I hide out a lot in my den which, at least for now, is still my den.  It is much quieter here than listening to the power tools being wielded downstairs.  That’s why you are getting light works of literature from me such as this piece.

I miss our stove.  It is hard to devise a menu when everything has to be cooked either on a barbeque or in a microwave.  There are such meals available and as people have said, “You can always order in”.  But as much as I like pizzas from Louis Pizza Express, you can only do that so often.

But I miss most the dishwasher. Humping baskets of dirty dishes down to the basement so they can be washed in the set-tub, which is the only sink big enough to wash them in, is just going too far.  Not only that but you then have to hump the clean dishes back up again and try and find places for them on the dining room table.  By the way, don’t forget to look for my next book, “The Advantages for Hand Drying Dishes with an Old Beach Towel versus a Dish Towel (A scientific study).”

Some Current Oddities

Friends

During periods of lockdown and isolation, you find out that is better to spend it with a partner that is your best friend rather than with a great lover.

Sports

If major league baseball is any example, it is unlikely that any of the sports leagues currently trying to salvage a season will actually succeed in that.

WE objectively

Let’s look at the WE situation in a more objective light.  Despite naysayers who say that “volunteers” shouldn’t be paid, the idea of the student program was a good one.  The people who it was aimed at were not able to find summer jobs but in many cases need the money to be able to continue with their education.  So, the idea is good, now how to manage it to benefit students this summer.  If the government had tried to do it themselves, it would have taken weeks if not months to gear up staff and facilities to do it.  The government therefore had to find some organization that was ready to get started right away.  The first thought would have been a competitive procurement project.  The first thing on the agenda would have been the preparation of a Request for Proposal (RFP).  Now suppose that the work on that had started on the 1^st of March (a wildly optimistic date since the pandemic was not officially announced until over a week later, but let's just assume that date).  At a minimum it would have taken three months to prepare the document including the rules of the competition and evaluation criteria.  That brings us the end of May.  Then there would have been the time allowed for the bidders to respond.  That would probably be at least 2 months (we’re talking about a $900 million enterprise here).  That would take until the end of July.  Now we have to evaluate the bids, optimistically one month.  Now we’re at the end of August.  The decision must now work its way through the approval process of the responsible department, Treasury Board, the PCO and finally get on the cabinet calendar; one to two more months.  We’re now at the end of October, and still no contract has been awarded for a student summer program.  Doesn’t look very promising for the student for this academic year, does it?  The only way this program was going to fulfill its mandate was to find a willing partner right away and award a source contract. WE is a well-known Canadian organization with a presence across the country that appeared willing to get this program moving in a timely manner.  A good candidate to turn to. Until, that is, people had to make it an ethics and political issue.  I wish the students who would have benefited from this program the best of luck, but I think that there is going to be a lot of empty seats at colleges and universities this fall.

The threat

In my opinion the biggest threat to managing this pandemic is those people who plead that they have a constitutional right not to wear masks or physically distance.  They have no more “right” to such an excuse than I have to kill or rob someone.  Where it is required, it is required by law, the same as the prohibition against killing or robbing anyone. 

Be Patient, Seniors

The current coronavirus pandemic sure is getting people down.  Having to stay home or wear masks in public places is a drag.  But we must be patient.

Everyone is hoping that a vaccine will soon be found that will end the current situation and make everyone healthy again.  We are told that work is going on all over the world on such work.  We are told that clinical trials, that important step to determine the efficacy and safety of promising products, will soon be underway.  But in the meantime, be patient.

I am confident that a vaccine will be found, probably next year, hopefully early.  There then comes the challenge of producing over 8 billion doses.  Hopefully, it will be available for labs all over the world to make.  But you can be sure that if the US has it first, they will only allow it for their own population first, and when it does become available to others, there will be a huge price tag.  If China or Russia get it first, they again will restrict it to only their own people first.  I found it interesting the other day when a man, supposedly a business executive, told the US Congress that they would have all the vaccine they needed in only a few days after approval.  That will not be the case.  Production facilities will have to be geared up to make the particular strain of vaccine that is finally approved. 

The vaccine will be made and delivered at a steady pace, but not fast enough to have everyone vaccinated at once.  Some sort of priority system will have to be developed.  Where would you start for the first priority?  Health care workers should be the first including care givers in seniors’ homes.  Where to from there?  How about teachers and children so that schools can be opened with no fears.  Next will probably be parents of those children.  Somewhere you must make room for politicians and senior bureaucrats. Next will be other workers who can get the economy working full time again.  So, who is left?  Non-essential workers?  Notice that we have not yet come to senior citizens.  We will be the last.  We have no priority.

On a cynical note, you must remember the problem of the retiring baby boomers who were going to overwhelm the health care systems as these people aged and got sick.  Health care systems were going to collapse by 2030.  Now imagine some bean counter in one of those health care agencies rubbing his hands in glee because so many seniors have become victims of the corona virus that the risk of bankruptcy of the health care budgets is less likely.  Oh well!  

So be patient seniors and try to stay well.  Let’s try to beat the bean counters.