Stick 'em up!

Today was so weirdly random, I don't even know where to begin.

I am currently staying at my buddy Maureen's place in Edmonton because I am scheduled for laser surgery tomorrow at the Gimbel Eye Center. Today was my assessment day, so Maureen dropped me off at the clinic and I had my eyes poked and scanned for a couple hours. In the end I found out that I have asymmetrical corneas (there goes my eye model career!), which means I can't get the fancy instantaneous lasik surgery but must opt for PRK which is cheaper but with more recovery time. That's all fine with me because I still get to toss out my glasses at the end. After my appointment I hung around Kingsway Mall for a while and then decided to walk downtown because I was pretty wound up and excited about tomorrow. It's a decent walk, but it was so gorgeous out and I was in such a good mood I figured that if I tuckered out I could always call a cab or catch the bus. My eyes had been dilated for the assessment but my hat did a decent enough job of shading my eyes so off I went.

A couple of blocks down from the mall I came across a Royal Bank- I had intended on stopping there tomorrow morning to get a money order for the surgery since the eye people didn't take cheques (I suppose it is pretty hard to repossess freshly lasered corneas if your cheque bounces). I went in and since it was about 2:30 in the afternoon the place was pretty quiet, with only one person ahead of me. I chatted with the teller a bit and when her manager came over to authorize the money order we visited a bit too since she was also thinking about laser surgery and was wondering about costs and such. I glanced over to my left and two tellers over was a man wearing dark sunglasses and a white ball cap- I remember thinking that he was a bit of a tool for wearing is glasses indoors, and then thought that maybe he had his eyes dilated too, since the Gimbel clinic wasn't that far away. I finished my transaction and then went off to the side to try and cram all my stuff back in my purse in a way where the $3200 money order had no chance of falling out. As I headed for the door the manager was pulling the metal curtain across and dead-bolting the door. I asked if I was allowed to leave and she just said no and walked away. Turns out sunglasses man had handed the teller a note that said he wanted all the money in her drawer and to act normally (I learned this by eavesdropping on the bank employees because no one told the customers anything other than to sit in the waiting area). I never heard whether he claimed to have a weapon on him. The police showed up within 5 minutes and took statements from everyone and then I was allowed to leave. According to witnesses in the parking lot he took off on foot so I am guessing it was probably for drugs, if he didn't have enough money for a getaway car. All in all, probably not the most exciting bank robbery story you've ever heard, but I am pretty happy about that. Tomorrow: LASER EYES!

All the better to see you with my dear...

In exactly 2 weeks I will enter the Gimble Eye Center in Edmonton and come out a new woman. For the low low price of $3600 I will be the proud owner of some new and improved laser(ed) eyeballs. While I am hoping for better than 20/20 (just because it seems very bionic woman-ish) I will settle for being able to see my alarm clock in the morning.

Many folks these days have a "Bucket List" of stuff they want to do in their lives- I made one when I was sick and before the movie came out so mine was called "Shit I Get to Do Because I Didn't Die". Not quite as succinct, but it gets the point across. Laser eye surgery was in my top 5, along with scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef, climb a mountain, run a marathon, visit all 7 continents and stick my toe in all 5 oceans. I think some revisions will have to be made soon because my top 5 will soon be my top 2.5 I have been scuba diving at Great Barrier Reef, my eyes will soon be fixed, and I've been to all but one ocean. Damn Arctic Ocean, with it's limited road access. As far as continents go, I have technically been to 4, though I feel like South America deserves more exploration than just Trinidad (which may or may not be part of the Caribbean, depending on who you ask) and the airport in Caracas, Venezuela.

Normally I am not partial to checklists as a way of traveling: ie. go to country 1, see landmark a, b, c; go to country 2. repeat. But in a grander sense, I feel like my list is just a rough framework. A blueprint to encourage me to get off my lazy butt and shut off the xbox and go DO something. Anything. It's certainly worked so far.

Batten down the hatches, me hearties, it's ethical quandary time!

I am completely aware that if you give the average person anonymity and a forum to express themselves, sometimes they morph into a strange mutant internet beast that tends to be either extremely hostile, vulgar or completely nonsensical. There are certain places on the web that this phenomenon tends to be harsher or more benign. For example, I tend not to read the comments on popular you tube videos because it simply isn't worth the effort. Same goes for a lot of gaming forums.

One place I thought I might be alright is the Thorn Tree forum on the Lonely Planet website. I have been doing some research on a trip to Europe in the fall and posted a question about whether I should bother with a working holiday visa for Ireland to find casual work. If you just want to pick fruit for a couple weeks or help out on a farm, the $500 in fees and registration is probably not worth it. The replies ranged from unhelpful to downright hostile. One poster said that anyone who was working without a visa and from a privileged country was scum and that the only excuse for working illegally was if I had to to feed my poor family. Another said that there were many other people willing to work way harder and for less pay than me so don't bother. A third said I had two hopes for finding undocumented work, Bob Hope and no hope (which doesn't even make any sense). Disregarding the fact that these people have no idea how hard I am willing to work (I cleaned gas station toilets in the desert for minimum wage, after all), these people really pissed me off. At first I felt that the forum members were just being judgmental elitist jerks but I thought I would get a second opinion.

If a farmer is willing to hire me to do a bit of shoveling for a few euros, does that make me scum? Am I taking food out of the mouths of some poor EU family by supplementing my adventure with casual labour? . Am I missing something? Ireland isn't exactly El Salvador, after all. In

the end I will probably be going through WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), volunteering in exchange for room and board, but my sister travelled in the 90s primarily by getting random work along the way and to me it seems like a great way to absorb the culture of an area and meet people. Thoughts?

-A.