Vindicated

I am not proud to admit this.  It took me a while to get over this unfair treatment.  I was terminated from my job with CPT (Community Physical Therapy).  I had a quarrel with this idiot polish coworker.  She started cursing me in polish and I lost my cool and called her a bitch.  The morons at corporate CPT decided to terminate my employment while the woman who initiated the name calling got to keep her job.  God only knows why CPT made this unfair decision.  This was my first offense and they did not even get my side of the story when they terminated me.  They claim that they do not tolerate harassment.  It is hardly harassment when the "victim" was the aggressor in the conflict.  Anyways, it was what it was.  I have no legal recourse since Illinois is an "At Will Employment" state.  Meaning an employer can terminate an employee for any reason.  And without a union or an employment contract, the terminated employee has no legal recourse.   This was my predicament.  So I applied for unemployment at the IDES (Illinois Department of Employment Securities).  I thought at least I get to have a small revenge on CPT since this means they have to contribute more to the government in the future for having an unemployment claim against them.  Naturally, CPT contested my claim stating that I was terminated for a "cause".  This means if somebody stole from their employer or physically assaulted a coworker/costumer or was given sufficient warning for a repeated offense, there is a "cause" to terminate them.  And this employee who was terminated for a "cause" are not eligible for unemployment benefits from IDES.  So IDES interviewed me and they also spoke with the representative of CPT to get each sides of the story.  And IDES judgement was to my favor.  They granted me unemployment benefits since there was no "cause" to terminate my employment.  It was a small vindication for me to win this since I knew I was treated unfairly.  Now IDES also is agreeing that I was terminated unfairly.  Vindication indeed!

Selfish neighbors.

I think most of us tends to be selfish by nature.  Self preservation is ingrained in our DNA.   I see it often and recently, I get to see it again in my neighbors.

Our condominium association has a policy that only 4 units can be rented out at a time.  This is to preserve the value of our condo.  Since the collapse of the real estate market, selling a condominium becomes less of a good idea.  Most people want to rent their condo unit as a source of income instead of selling it at a lost.  So many of my neighbors wanted to rent their units and we reached a max of 4 renters in our condo.  As a board member, I came up with a plan to make it fair for every owners when it comes to getting a chance to rent their unit.  The association board members came up with a revolving door policy to allow others to rent their unit by bumping out one current renter at a time in a rotation basis.  When this was introduced during our association meeting, there was opposition from the 4 current renters naturally.  So they were given a chance to tell us how they can make it fair for everybody who want to rent their unit also.  None of them was able to come up with a solution to make it fair.  They basically just defended their position and their source of income.  It boiled down to them just being OK with the current situation being unfair to other owners who want to rent as long as they get to keep their unit rented out.  None of them has the intention to sell their unit anytime soon cause they had it made with their steady source of renter income.  They don't care that they are being unfair.  Selfish selfish selfish!

Dog welcomes military dads back home.

Nothing is a sure fire way to make me tear up than a loyal dog welcoming back their military dads home.


 

America from the plane

During my last trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, I took some photos from the plane.


Grand Canyon

The Rockies of the West.

The Mighty Mississippi.

The Farm Fields of the Midwest.

Big hole earrings are gross.

This is a current artsy trend with some people that is just so unappealing to me.  In fact I think it is gross.  If I see a guy with this, I instantly become less attracted to him no matter how good looking he is.  Just not my cup of tea at all.

Chicago's Halloween Parade 2012 videos

Fabulous Kinky Boots

I saw Kinky Boots last week.  A new musical written by Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper.  I did love the movie version of this and I was excited to love the musical version as well.  It did not disappoint.  The cast were all good.  Their british accent were convincing.  They sang beautifully, except Billy Porter as Lola.  I thought his voice was beginning to sound like Harvey Fierstein.  I felt he was loosing his voice.  Many of the cast were very pleasing to the eye especially Stark Sands as Charlie Price.  The music were also catchy.  I especially like "The most beautiful thing",  "I come to the rescue", "Everybody say yeah" "the soul of a man" and "Raise you up/just be".  The drag queen angels that danced with Lola were fabulous and magnificent in those high heeled boots.  And on top of the entertaining song and dance numbers, the show had a message too.  We need to accept each other's differences and love ourselves for who we are.  Homophobia and bigotry are not nice.  A message that resonate in me and in our current society where discrimination and prejudice still abounds amongst the gay.  The show deserved a 4 star out of 5.

I thought I won't shed a tear...

It has been almost 3 weeks now since the passing of my friend Jasmine.  I can say I barely think of her now.  For the past year, I have convinced myself that I won't have enough sorrow in me to cry when she dies.  After all, I felt that she has abandoned our close BFF friendship for her new buddhist friends. We barely saw each other the past 5 years and she seemed to be more interested in spending time with her buddhist friends even when she was still healthy.  She got sicker the past year which made us spend time with each other even less.  So I convinced myself that I will not miss her absence at all.  I told myself that life for me will go on as it was like the past 5 years.

But I was wrong about my feelings.  I was there bedside along with our other friends when she took her last breath.  And the sudden realization that she will never be with us ever again hit me like a big brick wall and I lost it.  The anger and sorrow just came out and I ended up crying.  I still had love for  her despite of what I told myself.  It was my love to begin with that made me angry at her for "replacing" me with other friends.  Indeed my mind can not dictate how my heart felt.  In the end I felt enough sorrow and lost that made me shed tears for Jasmine.

Incidentally, today is All Souls Day in Christian Catholic calendar.  Although Jasmine died as a buddhist, she was raised Catholic.  I hope she is now in Christian heaven or reincarnated into another good person as the Buddhist believes.  Goodbye my friend.  Till we meet again.