Traffic is Canada’s 5th Season

My day has been long. I’ve been doing errands all morning, and what I hate about that is the traffic. Is everybody doing errands? And when is a good time to do errands? There’s construction going on everywhere and a traffic jam on every corner. And will my car make it through the winter? It’s a miracle the thing has made it this far.

Results

Since last year few of my clients were able to pay and this year the economy is in a full downswing, I’ve been giving away some of my services for free and taking equity or commission instead. This way if my clients do well, I do well. If they don’t do well, I don’t do well.

Results? 1,800% more. That’s how much more money I’ve made so far this year than in the same time period in 2007. It’s almost unbelievable but I did up the numbers today and double checked them. To be fair, my income was almost zero this time last year hahaha, nobody was paying me. But hey 1,800% is 1,800% and I’ll take gains over losses any day.

Gurdee gurdee gurdee

The superintendent of our building (a man who doesn’t speak English) let some Bell Canada tech into the building. The Bell Canada Tech (an Indian man) accidentally disconnected our phone and internet. So again, I’ve had to go to the library and my work is suffering because of it. Have you ever called Bell Canada tech support? Not 1 English speaking person in the whole damn department. Gurdee gurdee gurdee is all I understood them saying. It’s been 2 more days and the same Indian Bell Canada tech shows up to fix his mistake, and I watched him like a hawk while he fixed it. He actually pulled out our service wires in the utility room to hook up someone else and forgot to reconnect ours. In my opinion, if you don’t speak English you shouldn’t be allowed to work in Canada.

Of Course

Doh. This happens every year, my internet has been down for about 3 days, causing me such a headache, I can’t get much of my work done and I’ve had to compromise on which work actually gets done. When I call tech support, I only get people with heavy foreign accents, English isn’t even their second language it’s like their 4th.

Finally

This week, I made more progress at my work projects than I did in all of 2007 and 2006 combined.

Almost

I’m almost there, almost at that tipping point where progress starts.

Everyone Can Give Birth

You know that feeling when you are about to give birth spiritually to something and you are so excited, frustrated, anticipating, anxious and happy and sad all at the same time? That’s where I am right now. I have the biggest business project I’ve ever done in my life sitting in front of me, and I’m trying my best to do everything at once. If it was all I had on my plate, that would be fine, I could focus, but I have so many other things going on. Time for a few more pushes.

A Good Foundation Was Laid Today

I feel invigorated this week. A major work project is finally started and I feel good about it. I haven’t felt this good about a work project since 1995 so I’m putting all my energy into it. Like it’s a time for new good things.

Disappointed At Myself

Disappointment. I sit here at my desk and stare out the window. I can see the Westwood Mall, Petro Canada gas station and hundreds of people going about their lives. Around 9am, 11:30am and 3pm I see thousands of school children of all ages walking by, talking, laughing, fighting, crying. Black kids calling each other n****** and drug dealers trying to gain new customers.

I’m also trying to gain new customers which isn’t easy in a hurting economy. People are trying to scale back not scale up.

Anyway I’m just in a state of limbo in some important areas. I feel like I’m moving along really well in some areas like my spirit life, my schooling. But my work life is the same old crap. I’m the most frustrated with myself I guess.

Different Kinds of Tanks

The economy is really tanking. So many people and companies are going bankrupt. Telephones numbers are disconnected, websites are down. Employees no longer on site. The news is bad everyday.

The Circumcision of Asif Zamir

I remember it vividly. I was 4 years old. It was Guyana, South America. I was living at my grandmothers house which was built in the 50’s for $500 USD. The house sat upon tall stilts because the rainy season would bring floods that would wash away houses and farms. Several of our neighbors houses were washed away and were simply piles of sticks they lived in. You could walk clearly under the house, which was dirt floors. Red ants would crawl up your legs and bite you hard, it would hurt. I like to ride my tricycle which was from the city dump. My uncle made 2 wooden rear wheels for it because we couldn’t find the wheels when we took the trike. We had lot of chickens and a goat. Once in a while the neighbors cows would break into our property and scare me, mooing loudly. Wild South American foxes and dogs would get in our property and kill our animals. More than one were killed with an ax.

One day I was minding my own business playing, and I was invited inside and asked to lay on the bare floor, which I did with a giggle at first. Then 2 cute ladies held me down, each one holding both an arm and a leg. The doctor (I would hope he was a doctor) removed my pants and underwear and grabbed hold of my wiener. That’s when I started to panic. I mean I really started to panic. I tried my damn hardest to get free and run away but they had a good grip on me. I even threatened to beat the women up. I tried making up an excuse that I needed to go relieve myself. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what this guy was trying to do to me. Living in Guyana, in our town, part jungle, part farmland, you had to become street smart fast. People would be killed in the street and bad things would happen all the time. Kids would be killed or go missing walking to school in the morning.

You could pay a hit-man $200 USD to kill someone, far cheaper than the rates in Canada. I saw a lot in Guyana. But I had never seen anything like this. The doctor (I really hope he was a doctor) circumcised me. I felt the initial cut and screamed probably as loud as I ever remember screaming.

No pain medicine, no anesthesia. Not even a comfortable bed to lay on. When he was done I was to tired to fight. I went to sleep or fainted or something. When I came to, I got up and walked around in severe pain. What the hell just happened? I was minding my own business, living my life, doing what I do and all of a sudden I’m in this brand new situation.

Fast forward to today and I don’t remember the circumcision as a negative event, but a positive one. The doctor (I no longer care if he was a doctor) did a really, really great job. I remember the pain, and the suffering and lack of hope and it helped to mold me into a man today. This is exactly how I feel today. I wake up, have my bible time, prayer time, worship time, I go to work, run my errands, go to church, come home and eat dinner, do my prayers and go to sleep. I’ve acted with good will and in good faith towards everyone and yet all of a sudden, I’m in this brand new situation. Everything that can collapse has collapsed in 2007. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for me in 2007.

This year I worked everyday. I pushed myself harder than ever. I put in at least 1,000 hours of useful volunteer work. I reached hundreds and maybe thousands of precious souls for Jesus and participated in a small handful of quality missions projects that saved lives. I did the best I could, but it wasn’t enough. Church ministry went well, but work was a nightmare.

If I told you every bizarre event that happened to me in previous years, you might believe me because there were logical explanations for each situation.

But this year there are no logical explanations. Everything that can go wrong in life has gone wrong. Loss of money, friends, even self respect. In December of 2005 I had less than $400,000 in debt and a decent income. Today as I write this I’m in $3,000,000 of debt and my income is almost $0. None of my clients can pay me, there is talk all over about a deep recession worldwide. I’m suffering from a slight depression that I’m sure will catch up to me and kick my ass.

And yet in a way, I’m moving forward as planned.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. – Exodus 14:15

I need $1

I need to backup my files but I don’t have $1 to buy a blank CD. I need a new toothbrush. I need a haircut, I need to buy a razor, I need to add money to my prepaid cell phone account, I need to pay about, 100 (no exaggeration) bills, totaling about $2,800,000.00

But for right now my concern is that $1 to buy a CD to backup my data. Whether it’s $1 or $1Million, if you don’t have it, it’s all the same.

Multiplication Has To Start Somewhere

I got $10 for my broken computer a few days back and I used the money to ship out a router which I got $28 for. I used the $28 and loaded it on my prepaid credit card to buy some online advertising. The online advertising has generated $300 in business so far. I only need a few more million, lol. Seriously though I’ll use the $300 (minus bread and margarine) to earn some real money so I can get myself together. Also my short term lease here is just about over, I have to figure out where to go soon.

Margaret is getting married. She told me last night. She’ll come back from South Korea in December, live on the West coast for a while, then back to the East Coast to live with her bro for a few months, then in May 2008 she’ll be a wife. Congrats my friend!

Billions of Little Problems

One thing that bothers me – is the billions of little problems that come along during the day. They take up the whole day. For instance I’ve been staying at this motel for about 3 months and I can’t get internet for more than 5 minutes at a time, so I have to time exactly what I’ll do for those 5 minutes.

I need to send some faxes, but since I no longer own a fax machine, this has become a chore. Sending them isn’t tough, I just walk a few km’s to the store when I have enough pennies. Receiving them, that’s a whole other story. I actually sent out an important fax, walked home only to find out that it wasn’t received and had to walk all the way back. I’m using a prepaid cell phone because my regular phone was cut, and I don’t always have money to fund the phone, so I’m missing calls and lack the ability to return calls.

Losing a few inches off my waist is good news

The thing about helping the poor is that they can never really help you back.

I had a meeting with a new potential client and I realized that 1.) I don’t have enough bus money so I’ll be walking for about 6 hours today 2.) I lost my beautiful ties when I lost my home but I do have enough for a $1 tie from the dollar store.

The tie I purchased feels like it’s made out of paper, lol. The meeting went okay though. I’m really hungry and I’ve been drinking a lot of free coffee. I’m living out of a suitcase and a bunch of garbage bags, and the garbage bags are starting to tear.

The Hills Have Eyes 2

On April 5 I treated myself to the movies, The Hills Have Eyes 2.

At this stage, I’m helping so many kids with college, and doing so much missions work, I’ll be bankrupt in short order. I’ll have to cut back on this, and at the same time I have to be careful how much I cut because I’ve been working with some of these kids for 10 years promising to one day help them with college. It’s just a lot of pressure on me during a very tough time.

My income is still dropping rapidly this year, I thought last year was bad but this year is several times worst. Last year I barely barely broke even, this year I’m so far in the red it’s insane. I’ve lost over $1,000,000 so far this year. A lot of the payments I’m receiving are bouncing, and for the first time in a long time one of the cheques I wrote bounced. I couldn’t believe it and I was so embarrassed when I found out. For the first time in a long time, I’m borrowing money. The last time I borrowed large sums of money would have been 1997. My credit cards are almost completely maxed out and few of my clients aren’t paying me on completed projects because they themselves are struggling.

Out of control – that’s what this year is so far. Very few things are working right no matter how hard I try and every time I get a nice big success it gets taken away a few days later with losses.

My camera store is turning sour. It was sour when I bought it, and I thought I would turn it around but I’ve made things worst. One of my courier shipments came in completely destroyed. The courier handed it to me like nothing was wrong. The box was almost completely smashed. He told me to file an insurance claim. Another shipment I sent out is gone without a trace. Yes there’s a tracking number but the system just shows that it’s been stuck in transit for some weeks. I’m at my wits end.

February 2007

We all went to mandarin to celebrate. It was awesome and it’s one of my favorite places. Last night on Wednesday I had a great day of work and a great day at church. That’s a perfect combo.

My camera store is bleeding money, I’m running into trouble after trouble. I have a case of cameras here sent to me packaged in the wrong boxes, brand new, that I can’t sell, so I’m just giving them away at way below cost to at least bring in an income.

I realized a customer was tricking us by purchasing, using and then returning camera equipment for a refund. One of my employees realized that he was ordering under slightly different shipping addresses each time. Loss of $15,000 total. Sigh.

If you like burgers, check out Lick’s.

$1 Million Cash On My Coffee Table But I Rather Have Jesus

Overall, I didn’t make a profit this year. One business made money but the other lost, one investment went up and the other went down. When everything is all said and done, I lost money. I won’t know how much until an accountant preps my books but I’m sure it’s at least 5 figures. I worked like a dog. I worked all day. I took only a few days off. I pushed and pushed but it just seems like things didn’t work out. I’m exhausted.

Some of my notable 2006 expenses:
– $4,054 food
– $3,259 travel
– $3,086 banking
– $5,078 phone

Add that all up, multiply by 10 and I gave slightly more than that to outreach, evangelism, missions and new churches this year. Unfortunately I didn’t save anything, and I have a bad feeling about that.

So lets end this on a super happy note.

As I started driving out to Guelph for Dana’s wedding, it dawned on me again how fast life flies by. I met Dana online in 2002. We’ve become the best of online friends since then and met in real life in 2006. We only spent a little bit of time together in person, but hundreds of hours chatting online.

Dana’s dad and mom are pastors and missionaries. They’ve been all over the world saving lives. Their family and friends are missionaries as well. This kind of thing means the world to me. Dana grew up on the mission field and it’s molded who she is today.

The long drive to her city was a bit tiring for me, and I’ve done the drive many times to visit my sister at school. When I got to the church my jaw dropped, partially because from the outside it looked like it was sinking into the ground, partially because it looked like it was 1,000 years old. It was covered in beautiful wood and stone.

I met J for the very first time but I heard about him from Dana a lot. J’s family are also missionaries and J has been all over, especially Indonesia where he tells me his hobbies included swinging from vines in the jungle like Tarzan. I setup my camcorder and camera equipment and recorded the short and beautiful wedding ceremony. After, I gave Dana and J their hugs and went about my life for a few hours while the professional photographer took photos.

The reception was in a beautiful updated community centre. When I got to the reception we did more videotaping, we ate the most delicious foods from all over the world (seems like almost everyone was a missionary so they knew about all the different kinds of foods from all the different cultures). It wasn’t catered, people from all over the world cooked food. I had some delicious basmati rice with red curry. Most of the people there were white but collectively they had done church ministry work everywhere worldwide. The food was beyond amazing. The fact that a white person made curry better than brown people made me think.

I walked around and talked to men and women, children and adults, young and old. Many people were simply on break from a 2 year mission trip. Some were heading back to the airport in a few days to start a new mission trip or continue one. One young man told me he won’t be going into missions. “I’m going into business, someone has to stay here and pay for these missionaries to go do what they do, someone has to provide the money, it doesn’t grow on trees you know.” hahahaha! A man after my own heart. He was currently in business school and everyone in his family were full time missionaries. I had a good conversation with him. I talked to teen girls who weren’t into the latest pop music or celebrities but instead talked endlessly about 3rd world villages being transformed by the salvation message of Jesus. Can we trade some of these teens with our spoiled brat teens?

After the reception was over, I helped pack away the reception hall as is my custom, and to my shock all of the young people helped as well – without being asked. They were picking up and packing the folding tables themselves and doing it more efficiently than me. I was amazed and remembered again that missionaries have a lot to teach us. These kids aren’t concerned with what they can get for Christmas, but what they can give. I work with teens everyday and I’ve been trying and trying to teach them these values.

I said my farewells to everyone after it started getting late and I drove home that night in amazement of God. Even right now as I type this, I’m just floored. All those missionaries, in one room at the same time. If we could get them to stay in one city of Canada for 2 years they would transform the city. It’s one reason I’m happy to go overboard funding missions work.

On a silly note, while at the reception I was also honored to be the only colored person there. Everyone was white except for me. That is until 4 of Dana’s friends from school showed up late who were brown and black. After everything was finished I sat down with them and we all laughed about how cool it is to be a minority sometimes, especially when everyone else is so nice.

You know what, I can’t stop talking or thinking about this. I met over 100 amazing missionaries, yes I counted over 100 and talked to almost every one of them. I walked around the room shaking peoples hands and introducing myself. Dana’s whole family are missionaries for life and so are J’s. People of all ages, all educations, all kinds of skill sets, who have collectively been to almost every country in the world representing Jesus. Countries I’ve never even heard of! It was one of the most amazing experience for me to be in their presence.

Let me explain this better:

I was 17 years old. Summer. It was approaching evening. I had a home office packed with regular customers. The doorbell rang. 2 large black men came inside. They didn’t say a word. Both were carrying a Price Chopper grocery bag in each hand. 4 bags in total. They emptied the bags in front of me, on my fake wood coffee table.

$100 and $50 bills, Canadian, American and Euro currency. I stacked that money into separate piles of $30,000 each. It was so much I had to call my friend Steve to help. Steve was in the other room (my home office) dealing with some of our clients. When he saw the pile of money he was literally speechless. I mean literally. I thought he was going to faint. He stuttered a few words and then started counting. Steve’s been my buddy since grade 3.

We made over 30 piles, and counted almost $1 Million in cash. We sat there, looking at the money like it was a super hot girl. After we finished doing that, we packed the money neatly in a suitcase and rolled it over to the bank. The lady at the bank snapped at me saying “this line is for business only.” When we opened the suitcase a bit to show her, her mouth opened up so big I thought I could fit my head inside. Because of the sum of money some paperwork had to be done to make sure everything was in order, then we deposited the money just like we were depositing a paycheck for $400. Most of the money was then wired to Germany. When I got back home I logged into my dial up internet access, using my Cyrix 686 with 32mb of RAM and sent an email to a German company: “Hi, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Asif Zamir, and I’ve just wired you $XXX,XXX.XX Please send the shipping container(s) to this shipping port and address…”

I should take a moment to mention the following:
– the whole thing was completely legitimate and fully legal
– nothing illegal was going on
– i never have that kind of cash in my home
– the cash wasn’t mine
– the shipping containers were filled with food-commodities going to a developing country to be sold at retail.
– cash was being used because the business owners involved were used to dealing with only cash. Later on they switched to more updated payment methods.
– it only sounds very shady when I talk about it

Needless to say, that was an interesting day for me, a 17 year old boy. But this day, this wedding of my great friend Dana and the reception where I met and talked to and prayed with 100 missionaries, and having some of them pray over me – and hearing about hundreds of thousands of souls being won for Jesus, about communities being changed and lives being completely healed, about the expansion of the faith and hundreds of new church plants doing well – this is truly more amazing to me than all the money in the world.

My Sis is Roommates with Roaches

Sunday Sept 3, we woke up, drove gramma home, packed up Freddy’s SUV, and then drove sis to school for year 2. Her apartment (which she described to us as gorgeous with dishwasher and amenities) was a disgusting dump with roaches crawling everywhere. The poor girl apparently saw several apartments, and one was gorgeous but she signed the lease for this one. I feel bad for her.

We unpacked her stuff, setup her desk, chair, bed etc. We spent a few hours there, ate at pizza hut and then left. She slept over at Katie’s that night, and I suspect she’ll be sleeping over at Katie’s many more nights.

The next day (labor day) I worked and then went over to visit Mason and Eggbert, who had just moved back.

Mason and Eggbert and I visited sis to see how she was doing. I was disappointed that her apartment was still not cleaned or organized, and that her roommates seemed to be party animals. My sister had broken the mirror I made in 1994 shop class (grr), and she said Freddy did it. That’s what made me more angry. Is there anything I can do that my family won’t destroy and then blame on someone else?

Any way. I dropped out of high school to work so we could have some money, and I started college without getting a high school diploma. I realized that I need to get a GED in order to get my bachelors degree. So after a few years of talking about my GED (high school equivalency) I signed up for it 2 months ago. It was being held at 2180 Young Street in Toronto – the TVOntario office on the 7th floor. When I saw the big TVOntario logo on the wall I was reminded of some of my favorite childhood tv shows, and wiggling that tv antenna around so I could watch them clearly. Cucumber Club, Polka Dot Door, Today’s Special, Read All About It, Dear Aunt Agness, Elephant Club with Sharon Louis and Bram and what else…I can’t remember but there were more.

On Friday I left one hour early, but because of traffic I was one hour late for the exam. I pleaded to take the exam instead of re-scheduling, because I really didn’t know when I would have the time to come back. They accidentally put me down for the French exam so I was a bit flustered by that. Luckily I wrote my answers in English and I was able to use an English question book even though the rest of it was in French.

I did my exam and left about 1.5 hours early that Friday nite.

The next morning I woke up and left at 8am to get there for 8:45. I did my portion of the exam, finished early and then left and ate breakfast at McDonald’s. I then came back and did the next portion. There were breaks in between portions. After I had 1.5 hours to spare so I walked around downtown. I then came back and did the final portion of the exam. Leaving about 3 hours early. I thought I did pretty well, I’ll find out in a few weeks.

I drove home and then showered. I purchased a super cheap guitar at Walmart and I hope to fill another goal by it – to learn guitar.

Now honestly, this was really just half the stuff that happened these past 17 days.

Miscellaneous Happenings

My stress is through the roof. I think I’ve been set back about 12 months behind schedule. Some clients are paying, others aren’t. The camera store is 50/50. My investments are STUCK. This is very frustrating for me.

Sis has moved home after her first year of school and for 4 months she’ll be working at a call center. It’s nice to see her in her first professional job and making money, managing money, etc. Last Sunday night we had dinner at moms and watched King Kong. Half way through we went and played squash, then did some weights, then did some cardio machines. I’m still sore! LOL.

Kontroll

I watched a fantastic Hungarian film (English subtitles) called Kontroll (1993). The storyline was about a group of friends who worked in the Hungarian subway systems as ticket checkers. In Hungary there are no turn-styles or official way to verify someone has paid for a ticket other than to have someone else check. Well it’s a very dangerous job, they get poked with needles, beaten up and at least threatened by people who have not purchased a ticket or who simply do not want to show their ticket stub. (sounds like a typical night walking around Malton) I told a bunch of my friends that we could all go and work there for a while to have adventures. They reminded me that they should go, but that I should stay here because my life has already had too much adventure. I agreed.

Then today I thought up of another fun adventure we could all have: If we had a large cruise ship it could double as a treasure hunting ship. I heard there are more than 1,000,000 ships that sunk and have not been discovered. I wish I could leave for this job tomorrow. Things at work are really unstable.

I hear that every month, 1500 pastors quit their job in North America. Burn out being the number one reason. I’m there. I want to help save everyone around me and in return I myself will need saving. I’m there.

Welcome 96, I mean 2006

I remember my sister and I watching tv on January 1 1996, singing along with the Indian tv hosts “welcome 96, welcome 96”. It’s been 10 years since then. Time flies by so fast.

My consulting work is really up and down, it’s so different from the stability of the past few years. Everyone’s saying that the economy is turning sour but it’s too early to tell. I partnered up with a really neat camera store in Mississauga that is going out of business. They already have a shaky reputation so I have a lot of work to do. I’ll take over almost every aspect of the business and hopefully it will turn a good profit when I’m done. A four paged contract, that’s all it took to buy the place. It’s got 450 or more really great regular customers who regularly buy but also what seems to be 175 unhappy customers with unresolved complaints. I’m trying to save the thing. Moving it online, getting away from the brick and mortar store to increase the profit margins. I’m doing the emails, the phone calls, the buying, and sometimes the shipping. I’m focusing on core products instead of all the other stuff that simply takes up space. This is going to be a challenge but I’m sure I can make this great.

Daydreaming in Art Class

When I was 16 years old I sat in the office of this newish company listening to one of the founders going on and on about what he was going to do. He used to call me up and ask me for business tips. I would give him the best tips I could think of. I had nobody to call and ask for help. I was on my own from day one. This is why it’s so important to use a business consultant. Today I saw in the news that his company generates sales of over $350 Million. I don’t know if he makes a profit from that, but if he kept to his plan, he could be earning upwards of $35 Million after taxes every year. Wow. I went to his brand new building which is along hwy 401 going towards Toronto, it’s almost unbelievable to me. He’s only leasing it but still, I remember his old office with stained up drywall and old carpet and now this gorgeous little glass building. Again when I was 16 years old there was another company in Markham that used to boast to me about how they made $500 Million in annual sales at the time. I told them that they were so mean to people that they probably won’t last. This month I found out they went bankrupt and lost their beautiful building.

Mason visited this month, I met him at a mall and we watched The Corps Bride. I’ve become concerned about my prostate health. Art classes are going well. The class is small, but a lot of fun. It’s like a mini vacation for me. My teacher is a full time artist, he earns his income from art. When I was a child, my teachers thought I would earn my income from my paintings. So did I. But those dreams were dashed, and probably for the best. Although my teacher says his cheapest painting is $1,000. Hmmm.

I sit in art class and I daydream about everything. Which is the same as in high school, I daydreamed during art class then to. My childhood, my current life, my future. Important people in my life, possible wives. My art teacher in high school was super awesome, she liked to listen to the Cranberries on cassette tape and she let me have my own personal tape player so I was always in my own world. My friend Steve lent me some of his music, a style of music called Jungle, and then Nirvana. Another girl gave me an REM tape to borrow. My friend Tony gave me his old radio that had AM, FM and shortwave. This whole month has been about me daydreaming the “what if’s” of life.

Bye bye $5,000,000 it was nice knowing you

The first day of my college internship was rough. I had the flu. I showed up at 830am and my job was to phone 750 people and ask them to attend a special event featuring a popular Canadian celebrity. I was coughing, sneezing, and just generally didn’t even feel good. I did my job like a man though, I did a good job. I did a great job. Every day. It was tough because I was working full time and the internship took up 3 full days a week. I still don’t know how I pulled any of that off. But at the end of the internship I had several new job offers from impressed people.

I’m taking an art class in south Mississauga, in a community centre. I’m watching a great new show called Veronica Mars. When I come home from art class my routine includes broiling rainbow trout, with my secret ingredient (mayonnaise).

Today I feel like a big fat loser.

The consulting project I started in 2003, the one I busted my butt to make a big success, has been bringing in regular pay ever since early 2004. Nothing big, just enough to live off of and give generously and reduce my debts little by little. Around that same time in 2003 I met an up and coming player in the industry, and we struck up a written deal where I would receive a royalty for customer acquisition which is the most expensive kind of project. We wrote a solid contract and I signed it, and today I realized he didn’t sign his portion.

I amassed several thousand customers, contracts signed and delivered, and acquired tens of thousands more potential customers contact info and handed it all over to seal the deal. I worked like a madman for what, 2 years straight. I put everything I had into this. I would earn at least $5,000,000 over the course of 10 years, possibly more. I was going to use the first $400,000 to become completely debt free. Heck I even prepared 25 gift baskets for people in anticipation.

After I turned in my hard work, my associate had a change of mind and decided to keep my work, and all the money to himself. His newly formed company will do very well. Of course I didn’t find any of this out until I got a phone call from a large, international corporation telling me about this new direction.

I was in a meeting at Derry and Goreway with my head hung low, and the lady in charge
approached me and tried to encourage me to sue. She was more upset about the whole thing than I was. I don’t even know how she knew about the whole thing. Maybe I’ll get upset about this later on, it’s just that right now I don’t have the resources to fight it. How do you fight a big corporation. How much does that cost?

It’s not the first time I got played. Back when I was 18 a man in Burlington claimed to be a potential investor in a project I was leading, he requested a detailed business plan including a list of suppliers and partners, which I happily personally delivered to him. Turns out he was the father of one of my main competitors and the project fell apart immediately after.

Whiskey business is risky business

My first drink was beer, I was probably 6 years old. My guardians were having one of their wild parties where the police would usually be called and there was booze everywhere, so I had some beer. I was surrounded by drinkers from day 1. There’s a photo of me having my first drink, sitting in my red kiddy underwear smiling, holding a beer bottle. In front of me is a coffee table with several empties. That photo is usually on my fridge for me to laugh at every day.

Then in grade 8 I went over to my friend Steve’s house after school and I tried a sip of whiskey. In high school once or twice some girls spiked my soda with hard liquor. That’s basically it. That’s the drinking that I’ve done up to this point in a nutshell. Hardly anything.

Today I purchased one of those mini bottles of whiskey for $4, a single shot serving. I don’t know why, I was just at the mall and saw it and thought “maybe I can use it for cooking.” Except instead of cooking with it, I drank it. I’m in my mid twenties now so I figure that’s not so bad. I honestly consider this to be my second real drink.

My cell phone bill this month was like $850.

Mason and I walked over to the east side of Malton to pickup some furniture and an area rug, to take it over to M’s, who does not live in the east end. On the way to deliver it people would stop and chat with us, there would be little detours, and a piece fell and broke when we finally we got there. The area rug was the toughest because it would sag in the middle. We were so tired we didn’t even care. We didn’t drive this stuff over, it wouldn’t fit in a car so we carried it all over. After I took pictures from her high balcony of Malton. If you get rid of the bad people in this town, it’s actually a super beautiful town. But I guess you can say that about anywhere. To add insult to injury, M’s mom didn’t want the carpet, which was the biggest and heaviest item to bring over hahahahahah.

A few years back in 1999 or 2000 M’s mom was walking down Etude Drive in broad daylight and a black young adult beat her up and robbed her, she had $5. He probably used the money to buy drugs. Well I don’t know but I doubt he used it to buy books.

I’m enjoying the rainy weather a lot. Listening to music on my cd player, which was super cool when I bought it in 1997 but starting to age.