Corner of Bourbon & Division

For today's topic, miseri asked me what the wackiest thing about New Brunswick was.

Now, there is a long list of wacky things, but I have to say that the local French dialect is really what stood out for me. Remember, my work is done over the phone, so people's voice and language are usually all I have to go on. So getting calls from people speaking Chiac (I don't even know if that's how it's spelled, but the internet tells me I'm right) was a heck of an adventure.

I am a francophone by birth. A French Canadian, born speaking la Langue de Molière and the whole nine yards. Going to New Brunswick is a lesson in an entirely new language, or at least a new dialect. Most of the time, I had no idea what people were saying. Chiac seems to be comprised of 50% French, 30% English, and 20% mashing all your words together and speaking three times faster than the average person, so that every sentence comes out as one giant garbled string of syllables.

Everyone who came from out of province had the same trouble I did, so we all commiserated with each other about the incomprehensible local dialect, and muddled through as best we could. After all, when you're working 911, you can't just shrug and move on to the next caller. You have a responsibility to find out where the caller is, what they need, and get them the appropriate help. A lot of my calls involved getting people to repeat themselves over and over and over and over. "Slow down," I'd tell them. "Say it again, please. Can you spell that for me? More slowly. No, even MORE slowly. Okay, where is that? What? No, you're going too fast again."

Obviously some callers were stressed and frustrated, but for the most part they were really great with us. Most callers knew that we were there from other provinces doing relief work, and so they were incredibly patient.

My favourite name from the region was Elsipogtog. Pronounced EL-SEE-BOOK-TOOK, more or less, and depending on who you ask. It just sounds funny. :)

Best phone call was from a man whose wife had injured herself.

"Ma femme ah fallé en bas d'la steppe!" he informed me, sounding rather concerned. "Ah enfargée dans l'chien!"

Luckily this was toward the end of my stint there, so I understood immediately that he meant: "Ma femme est tombée dans les escaliers. Elle s'est enfargée sur le chien!" Which translates to: "My wife fell down the stairs. She tripped over the dog."

As I was getting his information, he kept holding the phone away to tell his wife: "Grouille pas plus qu'y faut, là!" Which was adorable. It sounded like she kept trying to get up, and he was exhorting her to stay still, but "grouiller" is a very particular kind of verb, which I'd never heard used in that particular context.

Anyway, it all worked out. I got them an ambulance and first responders, and all was well.

The other really cool and unusual thing about New Brunswick and the areas around there are the incredible tides, but alas I didn't get to witness any of them first hand this time around. Next time I will go and blog extensively about them!

Yaaaaaaaaay!

*kermit flail*



So t! gave me the following topic: You're on a talk show. What five questions do you want them to ask you?

( Let's have a warm welcome for our guest! )

curtana asked me to talk about the places I would like to visit, or my dream travel destination.

This is going to be difficult, because I want to go to ALL THE PLACES. No, seriously, if money was no object, I would spend a lot of time travelling.

( Don't know when I'll be back again... )

miseri threw back one of my own quotes at me for June 16th's topic. So I'm going to write a probably short entry on inside jokes, because that's what that is.

( It's an inside joke. )

curtana has asked me to write about the music I love. If I had infinite amounts of time, I would never get to the end of this subject, and tonight I only have about an hour in which to write this post, get dressed and run to work. Alas.

Working 911 here has been exhausting (in a good way), because not only is it quite busy but I also have to learn everything anew, since each comm centre works differently. So instead of waking up at 14:30 or even 15:30, I've been sleeping until 16:00 or even 16:30 every day (I also finish later in the morning, which means a bit less sleep than usual), and today I had a half-hour phone call with my parents, which resulted in my having even less time than usual for writing.

( Let me sing you the song of my people! )

tx_cronopio asked me to talk about my own experience coming out. Most of you who read this LJ these days were there when I came out, but I suspect there are a handful of you who weren't, so I guess this might be new to you.

I feel like I should preface this with a few caveats. For one thing, everyone's coming out experience is unique, even if they share a few common elements. My own coming out story is even less typical than the ones you will usually find in North America, though it has nothing especially remarkable about it. In fact, my story is probably remarkable for the fact that it's wholly unremarkable, if that makes any sense.

( Out of the closet, into the fire. )

Cheese! (In 1411, King Charles VI of France granted a monopoly on the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon). This is today's topic, provided by the prolific sorceror, for the choose Phnee's topic of the day meme.

( Say cheese! )

Today marks the second day of the Tell me what to write about meme.

hells_half_acre asked: What makes a good antagonist in your opinion? What kind of "bad guys" do you love to hate?

That's a loaded question, because I don't think there's only one good kind of antagonist. I have loved to hate so many different bad guys in my time, that I'd be hard-pressed to pick just one kind. It also depends a lot on the genre of the story, doesn't it?

So let's talk bad guys.

( Villains, Bad Guys, and Antagonists, oh my! )

I don't have anything as exciting as the opera to report about today.

( In which I talk about people not liking what I like. )

Aside from having people actively rain on my parade, I received some promising news at work yesterday. It turns out that another section wants me to come work overtime for them at least once a month. This will put a bit of a crimp in my schedule, but it will pretty much solve many of our financial problems, because a full twelve hour shift at double time is a significant amount of money. It's practically the same amount of money as if I picked up a part-time minimum wage job for 3-4 shifts a week. So at this point I'll just have to take the extra commute/travel time in the name of financial solvency. It's not a done deal yet, I'll only be hearing back for sure on Friday, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm also excited at the prospect of doing actual dispatch work again. I like my current job, but it's very technical and very text-based, and I don't get to talk to people very much anymore. It'll be nice to have a headset again and to work with my old dispatching software and deal with more immediate security concerns rather than worry about what level of classification my transmissions need. :)

Tonight I am going out with the lovel sultrysong. Plans are a little up in the air for now, but I'm hopeful that drinks might be involved.