The last six days I've dedicated to pursuing money. I have come home beat tired every day, aching on the subway, but I can't say I didn't enjoy myself a little.
Late last week, when my puzzle pieces just started to fall into place after nearly two weeks of frustrating and fruitless forays into the housing and job market, I got called by a telecommunications company about work. I had no experience at all in telecom (does a B.A. in Communication Studies count?) but said I was willing to work long hours, I was a quick learner and 'strong.' I started Monday and was told we would be driving off to Ottawa for the day. I had to meet the group in Dorval at 7:30 a.m.
Gulp!
Woke up at 5 a.m., hopped a bus to the airport, ran around looking for another bus to the Dorval station when I got there, found one, couldn't find the apartment I needed to get to, and eventually panicked and took a cab -- arriving at 7:31 a.m. and ringing a doorbell. And getting no answer.
Fifteen minutes later, my knocks produced a person, and I was let inside a complete stranger's house in a Montreal suburb, waiting to start a job I knew absolutely nothing about. My co-workers started filling in slowly. Turns out they all speak Spanish. What am I doing?
Anyways, we didn't wind up in Ottawa. Plans changed, which I now have come to expect. I spent most of the day driving around picking up parts with my project manager and ended the day doing some minor work atop a Jewish Hospital. My boss, it turns out, is a great guy who told me about his theories about the mafia still running Montreal and some insightful thoughts into Franco-Anglo relations in Montreal and Quebec. (Basically, it came down to, if you're not at least making an attempt to learn the other language, you're shutting yourself off -- literally and symbolically -- from a dialogue with the other group).
It's a goofy job I have, with a mind-boggling accountability structure. We're a subcontractor for a subcontractor for a subcontractor. Each day I meet a new boss, from increasingly more southern U.S. states. One guy is from Georgia and sounds and looks exactly like Freddy Roach (I think) the guy who trains Manny Pachiao. One is from Texas and has a gigantic white beard, and would have a Yosemite Sam moustache if the beard didn't exist. And these bosses tell us to do the job one way and to fit things with certain gear. Then the next day, the new boss tells us to take it apart and do it this new way, because they had a meeting the day before. Then the next day, it's the same... after a new meeting.
I help install systems for a small, up-and-coming cell phone company. The company in a nutshell -- from what I've gathered in six days thus far: we do all sorts of work enhancing this new company's cellular network, but all the bosses who co-oridinate and plan the work use Rogers.
The job requires me to pull cables, split wire, set up and install surge protectors, build cable trays to run the lines and all sorts of other odds jobs. It has been pretty overwhelming, trying to remember how everything is put together while learning the basics of electrical grids and things, but it's definitely exciting to look at something you completed at the end of the day, knowing how much work went into it. I missed the feeling of working with my hands -- and working up a real appetite.
The best perk of the job is the locations I get to work. We work predominately on roofs. It sucks when it rains all day, like it did today. Or when it's windy. Or snowing. But the Jewish Hospital had a view of the largest church in Montreal -- the name escapes me -- and endless lines of red and orange trees changing colour in the fall. The sounds too -- the horns, the laughs, the recess bells, the sirens which you can follow for five minutes -- really painted a vivid picture of the city for me. You get a really unique perspective of how things work and what's important to a place when you can look and listen to it from above. I'm finding this job has been a great way for me to get to know the city, since not only am I seeing so much of it, but every job requires me to explore a new area on the map, since I have to find a new spot each morning via public transportation.
On Tuesday, we worked atop the Church St. Zotique in Notre Dame, beside gigantic church bells, which I punched with my fist to create miniature ding-dongs. We got to climb up these really old ladders into the bell-tower, and the location provided a nice view of an adjacent park and the Montreal skyline. The whole area was steeped in the smell of pigeon shit -- one of my bosses said the last time they cleaned the bell area and attic, they hauled off garbage bags full of dead birds.
We worked some long hours -- I think I've worked near 65 hours this week so far -- and Tuesday it was neat to see the church in the dark and whistle into the darkness and hear the impressive echo. It felt kind of spooky.
During the day, there were other contractors working on the church, which is undergoing reservations -- the maintenance guy said it was being used as a dorm for international students. The most interesting reno project I'd have to say was the cross, atop the structure. A man on a crane was refurbishing it, covering it with bronze or copper panels. Of course, I had to make a few jokes about how uncomfortable, I said, I was seeing some one putting nails into a cross. I said "You know what happened the last time." But I had to have a laugh with the way the guy was working on the cross. There he was, fearlessly on a swaying crane, six storeys high, with one leg over the rail, leaning out precariously, enough that I wondered if I'd see him splat on the pavement by the end of the day. But it was like he felt there was no chance he could fall. Perhaps he felt there was no way in the world God would kill him while he was working on a cross. I couldn't tell you.
Wednesday, we worked on the 14th -- should have been 13th, but us humans and our goofy superstitions -- floor of an apartment building in McGill, just across the street from where the Alouettes play. We had an amazing view of the hospital, downtown, Mont Royal and the whole rest of the goddamned place.
Thursday and Friday we worked mostly inside, where I was given my nickname of 'hero' for my quick action in keeping a phobic woman from overloading. Me and a buddy were bringing our gear upstairs when the elevator opened on the second floor and a old, grey-haired, Coke-bottle glass wearing woman -- who I'd heard talking up a storm to herself (I swear, I've heard more people talking to themeselves in Montreal in three weeks than I have anywhere else in the world in 26 years) -- was beside herself.
"Help," she cried. "Please, young men. Help me."
We went into the hall and there was a little black creature in front of her apartment.
"What is it!?!?!" she cried.
I walked over slowly, and finally saw it was a rubber rat. Some people in the apartment, playing a trick on the lady, had placed it there to freak her out. She was a wreck and got into the elevator, saying she was phobic, talking and not making sense, completely irrational with panic.
Well, she kept on and on and on.
(I took the rat home and put it in my roommate's bed. She said it didn't scare here.)
We work in a lot of government apartments and there are some strange people. Like the guy who knocked on a door for one hour straight beside a room we were working on. Or the guy who pushes himself around in his wheelchair with his legs. Or the guy who it takes 10 minutes to drive his motorized scooter into the elevator, because once he's inside, he gets back out, because he doesn't think the door will close. It's entertainment.
The next day, an old lady, upon seeing me walk into an apartment with a box of tools, asks me in French to go to her apartment and put in a cabinet. It's too high for her to do herself and she'll pay me. My friend starts laughing.
I'm a hero to the old ladies. One guy called me Enrique.
We spent the last two days and nights on a roof on the North end of the island -- a good hour commute on public transportation. I'm getting up at 7 a.m. and getting home at 10:30 p.m. some nights. Anyways, on Friday, I was supposed to meet a friend at a concert downtown -- Broadcast and Atlas Sound (Deerhunter singer's other band) -- and I was set to leave work at 9:30 while the rest of the guys finished the job.
Well, turns out the landlord had other plans. She was getting complaints from all these old-timers in the building (at 8:30 p.m.) that all the drilling we were doing were keeping them from going to sleep. One of the guys that I work with was getting worked up, calling the people who pay little-to-no rent, lowlifes, who do nothing but complain. It was kind of funny. All the guys I work with, without exception, are from South America and speak Spanish all day, unless they are explaining a procedure or a joke to me in English. They're all really nice guys and funny, and I'm picking up Spanish more it seems than French, because I'm surrounded by it the majority of my waking day. (One guy was taking pictures like crazy when it started to snow Thursday. It was the first time he'd seen a snow flurry before. Ah, imagine that -- excitement coming from snow.)
The guy I work with most of the time has a good take on the Quebecois accent and does it sometimes and I just crack up. "Twey" instead of "toi." "Mwey" instead of "moi." And a whole lot of "la"s inserted into the sentence. "Tewy la, la, la." He did it a couple days early in the week and I was in stitches and then this landlord comes upstairs -- a lady around 50, heavier set -- and just has the accent so over the top that it hurts me to think about it even now. "C'est fini la, les gars la. Neuf heure trentre (whistling) it's done."
After some resistance, we get out of there, but not before the lady tells us to come by early tomorrow for some breakfast. A group in the apartment apparently puts on a little kitchen Saturday and Wednesday mornings. She puts her fingers to her mouth and kisses. That's her take on the breakfast.
So we assemble the next morning and the government apartment's community room, with it's flowered-sofas, and work-out bikes, is now a makeshift diner, complete with laminated, homemade, hand-written menus with clip art on them. The landlord lady who was so cold the night before is our straight-shootin' waitress and takes our orders like we were in a truck shop. It was so cute. A few of the apartment's residents -- the regulars -- sat and talked about what they probably sat and talked about all the time and me and the four other guys, ate some delicious omelettes, had coffee and orange juice. All for $3. (I'm telling my friends about this place.) The lady came and filled up our coffees and had some small talk and friendly waitress banter, and she gave us our bills on ripped up pieces of paper (I later found out were pharmaceutical papers, with someone's prescription on the back) like it was very official.
I was so charmed by how proud the band was of their breakfast and, although I don't really know the legality of their endeavor, I will definitely be hitting it up again if I'm anywhere near there. Although I'll never be there again.
So two thousand words about how I'm a working stiff again. Why?
I don't know why I wrote all this here. But have you ever had one of those days where so much happened, and so much that was new, or unexpected, and you lay in bed at night and process it and wonder if that was really you that lived that day and you start to think about your life in general because the previous day's activities didn't conform with what you have grown accustomed to? Well I've had that feeling for a few weeks now when I rest my dome before sleeping and it's exciting to not know what to expect the next day.
I think I wrote all this down just to help myself process these new things I'm experiencing.
1 comment:
i've never heard you say 'it was so cute' before..
just sayin.
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