Print Edition: March 20, 2013
Sodexo: king of cheap curmudgeons
Well, Sodexo, you’ve done it again. You’ve topped your own record as the king of chintz.
You might not be able to charge students for the hot air they make use of whenever they wander into the cafeteria, but you sure as hell can charge them 88 cents for a cup of hot water.
For as long as I can remember, thrifty students have been able to bring their own tea, and brew it on campus free of charge with a handy little hot water tap in the cafeteria.
Now this particular tap belongs to Sodexo, and Sodexo has realized that no one was paying for the privilege. With a speed lacking in their morning till lineups, Sodexo cracked down on this like Johnny Cage cracks bones in Mortal Kombat. God forbid students get water for free!
In all honesty, Sodexo, I think I owe you one. After one too many orders of curly fries I was beginning to soften up to you. Now you’ve reminded me that you are, indeed, the corporation who has no sympathy for students – and especially not students who are trying to save money.
Beating bus stigma
“You’re crazy for taking the bus!”
Beloved New England singer Jonathan Richman took on this kind of criticism in 1990, but the stigma around taking public transit still remains in North America.
It’s evident from a comparison between the ads on the outside of the bus and the ads on the inside that certain fundamental assumptions about the demographic of bus riders still resonate for many of us.
On the exterior of the bus, ads for new condo developments and the like target the well-off automobile drivers stuck behind a city bus in traffic. Inside the bus, there’s an ad taken out by the Abby PD to warn gang members that they’ll catch them “riding dirty,” career-advancing recruitment banners from local colleges, a Crime Stoppers number and a Salvation Army shelter welcome message.
Driving a car rather than taking a bus is still a status symbol, a message to the rest of the world that you’ve got your life together. Even if regularly-scheduled routes were available, I wonder how many people in three-piece suits would be found standing in the aisles of the number three.
Until we can overcome this gap between lip service to and real use of public transit, we’ll never succeed in clearing up our congested city roads, and reducing our gasoline consumption and subsequent air pollution.
Winter is also beautiful
It’s exciting to watch spring happen.
For weeks, I have been scrutinizing the garden in front of my house, waiting. When my family moved there last summer, the garden was unruly and overtaken with grass, so I have been looking forward to this revelation: what grows here? What flowers or herbs will be born from the mystery of tiny white bulbs in the soil? Green shoots, less than a few inches tall, build my anticipation for the season to come.
Yet as glad as I am that winter will soon be over (knock on wood), I know that the joy I get from observing the tiny sprouts, and my enthusiasm when I spot the baby buds on the tips of barren branches, would not be possible or nearly as splendid without the season that comes before.
In the last tenuous grasp of the colder, greyer, shorter days it is possible to look back and see that the winter was also beautiful. The occasional snowfall blanketing the dormant earth, moisture gleaming on the frosted tips of grass, the briskness of a cold wind – all of these are full of promise. The promise of rebirth.
File your taxes, file your sanity
It’s tax season.
That time of year when my nerves are on edge. Every time I get a tax form in the mail or myUFV reminds me of where to download my T2202A form, I panic.
What if I forget something? I have this gnawing fear that one wrong move will land me in jail for tax fraud. Eleven months out of the year, I could care less about white collar crime, but that one month, as the tax deadline winds down, I am a mess.
What if somehow I insert the wrong number into the wrong box? Will TurboTax be there for me? Will H&R Block? I wonder about the possibility of becoming an Ashley Judd-esque character, wrongly accused and telling prison guards I didn’t mean to claim that income as tax-deductible. I don’t even know what tax-deductible means!
Tax season is like an iceberg. Most of us poor fools only see the tip of it. We merely scratch the surface of the ins and outs, the complications, the exceptions, the loops in the system. We furrow our brows and wait to see if the government of Canada lets us pass by or if they decide to sink us with an audit and a reassessment.
It’s the season of tax.
