@SlowJoe

Hey I'm blue collar myself, so I get that feeling of not being particularly proud of your accomplishments in life. I've been lucky because I at least had a good union behind me (Carpenters) so the money, benefits and pension plan was good. And to boot I was a shit carpenter so even there I felt at the bottom of the rung. I couldn't imagine working in the miserable construction industry without union benefits. But I still hated every fucking second of 40 years of it. I tried to go back to school a couple times but that never worked out so I have felt like I didn't measure up to those who were more successful in life. I'm kind of over all that now and all that matters to me now is my wife and grandchildren.

It's funny. One of the things that I most desired in life was to get the fuck outta Canada and live in another country. Cambodia was my first choice but now I think that it is basically a shit hole and that there are better places. Too hot, too filthy, changed too much in the last few years. But suffice to say I never made it to live in another country and I'm almost 65. You should at least feel like you've accomplished something because you are living in Cambodia and not feel bitter about those white collar pencil pushers. Ya some can be arrogant but don't be intimidated because they're not all like that.

WRT the truckers I do trust the science behind the vaccines and the restrictions. They don't always get it right but things change quickly and science sometimes has to play catch up. And there is some validity to the notion of going too far. Hopefully we have dodged a bullet on this virus and it didn't kill more people and we can put all of these restrictions behind us.

@sammycooke

It's funny, I'm kind of the opposite. I started out in a white collar environment and hated every second of that... I was more than halfway done with medical school when I realized I would never survive if I had to make my living that way, so I quit and went to trade school to become a machinist, which I loved.

Pay was way worse obviously (my sister makes nearly a quarter million US a year, I made around a sixth of that), but being happy with work made it worth it to me, so I didn't mind.

Problem was that with each progressive step towards "big tech", it was very clear to me that regular on the ground techs like me were going to be phased out of existence with legislation, and that's exactly what started to happen. More and more certs needed, more and more regulations in place, so seeing the writing on the wall I bailed early, grabbed a small bag of cash and said screw it to Canada and went to teach English.

Cambodia was my 3rd stop actually, been here over a decade and yeah it's really shit and the people drive me nuts a lot of the time, but since the outbreak, I don't have another option since I had a massive reaction to my Hep A and B boosters that hospitalized me, so because I'm not compliant and up to date with the covid vax, the mandates from on high scare anyone off of hiring someone like me.

So I can't really go back home even though I'm not entirely happy in Cambodia, but even if I could, I'm not sure I want to deal with a society where half of those around me perpetually see me as some kind of leaper to society just because my body reacts badly to something the government is trying to force on me.

I guess I should be grateful though, because at least I can survive in Cambodia for now. If I was back in BC I'd be dead in the water with how damn expensive housing has gotten since I left.

Oh well, fresh food and warm weather in February, could be worse! Hope this shit is over for good and that you're right. It does feel like we dodged a nasty bullet that could have been so much worse.

Weapons, ammunition seized as 11 people arrested at Coutts border blockade.

Hope these guys get the book thrown at them if they don't have proper permits etc or if there are witnesses that testify that they had plans to actually resist dispersing peacefully.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8618494/albe ... on-seized/

Trudeau expected to invoke Emergencies Act to aid convoy blockade response: sources

https://globalnews.ca/news/8617952/cana ... -response/

SlowJoe wrote:

sammycooke wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:55 am I heard an interesting commentary on, wait for it MSNBC, By Ali Velshi who is a Canadian journalist with MSNBC. Some of the images of the truckers protest look like there are tens of thousands of people who are involved. However if you take away the monstrous trucks and think of the impact that the protesters would have there is a dramatic change. A few thousand protesters without the truckers would be at most national news and the impact would be of much less consequence and life in Ottawa would be at most mildly affected.

I feel like this sort of analysis is very typical of the "educated" left (wait wait, I honestly don't mean it in a scathing attack sort of way. But what I'm trying to say is that, as someone who has worked on the ground as an uneducated person but always had to deal with "smarter" people with higher degrees of education, they can't see the forest from the trees.

You could put these kinds of people in front of a tree and say "It's a tree." They would argue "NO, you don't KNOW that!!" and look at every leaf, every twig, the roots, the dirt, the bark, etc. and then come back to you an hour later and say "Wow! It is a tree, how did you know?!" And the same sentiment goes for the Ottawa protests.

It's not about the amount of truckers in terms of numbers, it's the fact that this movement even exists in the scale that it does already at all. $10 million raised for the truckers, $3 million raised by Trudeau during his campaign, that ought to tell you something.

You might hear of people (again, educated leftists who make up 90% ish of the media these days) who will shout you down saying "You don't KNOW that!! Look at our finely curated metrics that say otherwise!" but anyone who has been on the ground with truckers and logistics (me for example) already know that crap's going to hit the fan because trust in the institution at this point is rock bottom amongst them and that things aren't not headed in a peaceful direction.

-My loonie's worth of opinion here.


@sammycooke You seem much more together and level headed in your posts and recent replies. That's good to see, just want to make note of that given I called you out before on sounding childish.

If being on the ground and loud rallies was what matters Bernie Sanders would be President. It's not.

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JBTrain wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:40 am
If being on the ground and loud rallies was what matters Bernie Sanders would be President. It's not.

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Out of curiosity, what was Trump then?

SlowJoe wrote:

JBTrain wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:40 am
If being on the ground and loud rallies was what matters Bernie Sanders would be President. It's not.

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Out of curiosity, what was Trump then?

The loser in the last election??

(And Bernie typically had bigger crowds)

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I should have been clearer on my side with the Trump quote. I was thinking about the 2016 election.

I don't know why, but I keep forgetting that Biden is the president over there.