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Friday, January 13th, 2012,  1:35 a.m.

Hey, I just realized it is Friday the thirteenth....maybe this is a day to stay home if you are superstituous.

From cradle to grave....

There is something to be said about euthanasia when the prospects of a good life ahead have come to an end. My sister’s mother-in-law went that way in the Netherlands when she was told she was dying from cancer and there would be no recovery. She picked her granddaughter’s birthday as the last day on this earth…It was an honour for them but .I don’t think it was a very appropriate way to be remembered. Then again, I am not Dutch nor did I grow up in that culture. I believe it is tolerated as a way to end a terminal life there but I do not know all the rules. I preferably would like to go quietly in my sleep around the age of a hundred after having just run a marathon, but I know from my medical history, that won’t happen. At the same time, there are issues that plague us here in our own world that would be greatly helped by allowing euthanasia. I have seen them time and again going into hospital while I was there for one of many appointments with various doctors or for one of several operations. Sometimes, sparing a life is just not feasible when there is no known chance for recovery. After all is said and done we always leave this world and someone sad behind. It is what it is. Sure, we cannot give a shot of a needle to beef and then eat the meat, nor gas them or chickens, or other forms of human food sources in the way of animals but we seem to accept that it is the decent thing to do to put a non-edible animal down when it is suffering. We also don’t allow people to eat horsemeat or human flesh but it is all food to indiscriminate hungry wild animals. I guess we just have to identify what we are willing to accept in the food chain. Things that are forbidden in one culture are considered food items in another. Well, I ask you, “aren’t you and I animals”….well, I have been known to be an animal at times, but I don’t mean that kind. I mean, we are part of the animal kingdom. It is just that we are at top of it. We make the rules, we pass the judgements and we decide what is real and what is imaginary, each one of us, depending on our place in the hierarchy of mankind or the beliefs we have grown up with or acquired along the way. Some countries are more tolerant than others when it comes to such things as euthanasia, whether or not it is legal. In other countries, people are put in jail for even the thought of it.

Technology is changing the world and bringing cultures closer everyday. Once we were divided by class distinction but now more that ever, technological advancement has saved more lives, brought us closer together and allowed some cultures to experience drastic changes. I remember receiving a Chinese delegation in Toronto in the early 1980s, there on a trading mission. The people came in three levels which I later understood to be the guy, I spoke to and heard from, the next level up who understood the conversation but did not speak to me at all and then the top guy who got and gave everything in a Chinese dialect. He did not speak English at all. It was the way they conducted business back then as they learned about foreign trade and introduced English into their world. Gaining back Hong Kong, made the transition more rapid and today, China is a lot different from what it was in my day dealing with them. My only problem dealing with China was that when then decided back then that the quality met the Chinese code of standards, it was shipped regardless of what we agreed to. Often those shipments did not meet the original standards agree upon so we learned by experience what to expect just as they learned how to improve their trading methods. Nowadays, with English becoming a world language, many cultures teach it in school and encourage their own children to go to university in foreign countries to acquire different experiences than exist in their own world. My Dutch nephew now speaks English better than her Canadian born mother….at least I think so, since she does not remember the English words sometimes.

As far back as I can remember the various cultures of the world have evolved at different times, always with one sitting on the bottom and exporting the poorest of qualities. After World War II, it was the Japanese, then the Taiwanese, then the Koreans after their conflict was over. Today these countries are becoming or have been, during their turn, the biggest suppliers to the world. There was a day when we laughed at the Russian car that the USSR was trying to sell into Canada and I remember a marketing case about a manufacturing system in Russia that paid the workers for making mistakes because they found the loopholes but increasing productivity at the expense of quality.. We also laughed at the first Honda motorbikes shipped to Canada, until they became top motorcycles and began to produce automobiles. The Korean cars were the same and now have a large share of the market. As well, India is beginning to export as the former third world moves up the ladder. In fact, today I watch a lot of great Bollywood films because I enjoy the cinema and it is one of many disciplines in film that attract my many creative interests. I earned a degree in film and worked as a movie extra at times over the years just to see how films are actually made. It was an interesting experience but now late in life, something I can no longer do physically.

So, while this blog has wandered all over the place along the way, my message is simple.

The world is changing faster than most of us realize and coming so close so fast that we will suddenly find ourselves wondering what happened to the last twenty-five years. I know I do….and then it will be gone…..just like I will be gone to bed shortly. Have a great day when you get up tomorrow, life is so very short.