Crappy Customer Service

Today's Topic: Bacteria

So I was watching Mansbridge One on One on CBC this afternoon. (Foreigners please note, it is not "The CBC".)  He was interviewing Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, about the Listeriosis disaster of last summer.  I was impressed by how McCain has always been very straightforward about what happened, and why.  He told Mansbridge that he listened to the company's lawyers, who told him to deny and point fingers and assign blame elsewhere.  He listened and then said, "I'm sorry, we're not going to do that."  He then made reparations and apologized countless times over the ensuing months, both in public and in private. He told Canadians how he was going to do his best to make certain this wouldn't happen again, and then did those things he said he was going to do.  He also told us the real truth, which is that there are no guarantees that bacteria won't ever show up in our food, no matter what we do.

Why can't more people be like that?

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While watching Mansbridge a commercial came on for Lysol.  That alone is weird enough, given the subject matter, but I found the commercial unsettling.  It depicts a boy with a teddy bear waking up in the morning and going about his day, with his mother escorting him through the city on a bus ride and to the park.  When the mother gets home, she sprays his teddy bear with Lysol.  She then sprays his shoes and his mattress.

What the blue fuck, Mom?  Are you some kind of germophobic freak?  Your kid needs exposure to bacteria to build his immune system!  You're going to destroy his liver by spraying him and everything he touches with chemicals?  You bitch!  No wonder we have superbugs - he went to the park and you practically threw him in an autoclave!  That kid's gonna have issues.

You Haven't Lived Until You've Eaten In A Chinese Bakery.

You know that saying, no food tastes as good as thin feels?  I live my life in complete opposition to it.  Thinness can never be as good as tasting food, my friends!

I have a Chinese friend whose Cantonese-speaking mother is on a mission to find me a maker of Dai Bao.  I can't really find any link-worthy articles about them that sum up the tasty experience.  I assume you're already familiar with the BBQ Pork Steam Bun of Taiwanese fame, of which I could eat a full steam tray's worth.  Dai Bao is the same dough made into a softball-size bun, designed in the Cantonese style to be a meal-sizer.  The filling consists of loose pork sausage and finely sliced onion, with a slice of hard-boiled egg and a chunk of Shiitake mushroom in the very centre (with regional variations).  I was introduced to them by a fellow machinist of Vietnamese extraction - he used to have just that for lunch.

A guy used to make them in Edmonton's Chinatown. He had a shop that was about three meters wide and two tiny tables.  He didn't really have much English and spent most of his time sitting in the back shooting the breeze with his buddies.  But he made Dai Bao that were out of this world.  That shop closed a few years ago and I've been looking for Dai Bao ever since.  I miss the steamy goodness of biting into the giant hot, sweet bun. 

Other Stuff Not Big Or Important Enough For Its Own Post

Why does every Internet ad tell me how her Wrinkles Just Melted Away?  I don't have any wrinkles myself.  That's right, I'm 36 and I don't have wrinkles.  They told us to stay out of the sun and I took their advice.  So why do I get nothing but wrinkle-melting ads?

My cats have entered their Spring Shed.  They are all shorthairs so their fur doesn't ball up - it forms haystack-like piles.  I have a friend with longhair cats and he has these little fur tubes that roll through the house like tumbleweeds.

Man, sugar-free candy is a LOT better than it used to be.  My dad got me hooked on these mint patties.  You just have to be careful not to overindulge - sugar alcohols have a laxative effect!

I started working on my garden this weekend since the quackgrass is already growing.  I found this awesome product at Canadian Tire, it's called the Mulch Block.  It's way easier than lugging around 40 pound bags and works just like they say it does.  A lot of garden experts say coir is the best mulch around for water retention.

A Couple Of Things

1.  I didn't have a Fruit of the Month for March because, well, there was apples, oranges and bananas and that's about it.  I always thought that November was the nadir of the fruit cycle but having observed it, I've discovered it is in March in Edmonton.  There is the occasional pineapple to keep me from jumping off a cliff but I feel a little guilty about them because they come from really far away.  I could've bought a dragonfruit or something like that but I want to write about things I'm already eating and enjoying.

2.  I live on the north side of Edmonton, which is really the only way the city has left to build, being surrounded on all other sides by communities who don't want to be annexed.  So the COMING SOON sign in front of steel rafters is a frequent occurrence in my area, especially since the city started giving tax breaks to businesses using infill areas.  But it's never anything COOL.  Why is that?  We could have anything in the world built here, there's still plenty of money in the economy.  One of my friends was hoping for a 7/11 - porn store - Tim Horton's combo in a new strip mall but sadly he went 0 for 3.  The only new buildings seem to house the following:

 a) Dentist or chiropractic offices
 b) Real Estate agencies
 c) Banks - seriously what is up with all the banks!  I visit a bank once every five years to renew my mortgage.  Why does my neighbourhood need another fucking bricks and mortar BANK?  There is ONE Starbucks in a 10K radius.  I know that sounds crazy but it's true, I swear.   There are no bakeries, health food stores or locally-owned restaurants for miles.  You can't swing a dead cat on the south side without hitting a hippie bakery but they feel there's no market for that sort of thing up here in the frozen north I guess.  There's only about 100 000 soccer moms driving their Range Rovers across the North Saskatchewan to kinnikinnick or Bee-Bell.