Drinking Beer As A High School Dropout

Here I am in my mid forties, sitting all alone in my home office and drinking beer and watching old video games for the Dreamcast console. I have spent the whole day on Twitter, avoiding my chores, projects, and hobbies. The first of April is coming and a huge decision looms over me – do I enroll in a high school course towards completing my OSSD? Do I try a third time even though I had to withdraw from class the previous two times? Do I want to admit that I’m such a big loser that I couldn’t even finish high school by trying, once again, to do what the rest of you did in your teenage years?

When I was a teenager, it was the mid-’90s and life was grand. I lived in North York (Toronto) and loved every single thing I did. My hobbies included learning Slackware 1.0 (Linux), programming in C++, downloading warez (games), and composing music in trackers in DOS. High school at the time offered programming in boring Turing, biology, chemistry and physics and geography – who cares!  What a bore!  Studying covalent bonds, whatever those were, didn’t seem half as interesting as how to get LILO (pre-GRUB) configured on my 386sx-16mhz machine with 4mb of RAM.  Before long I was skipping classes.

It got to the point where my Calculus teacher asked me why I skipped 80 of 88 classes that year. I had no answer, I just told him math didn’t interest me. This wasn’t the real truth, for I loved calculus. But what was I going to say to him? Gee, learning from a blackboard and paper and pen is lame and computers are the future? Everyone who was smart knew that Linux would be the future. Back then we didn’t have Google, or books at the library, so I had to learn everything the hard way. Through trial and error. I had to use the man pages a lot, too.  There weren’t forums the way there are now, and there definitely wasn’t AI nor experts I could collaborate with. Everything I had to learn by changing one line at a time with plenty of print statements, and this held true for configuration files as well as source code compiling.

Many years later, after I had dropped out of high school and got a job in Toronto’s tech industry I would excuse my bad decision of leaving high school by saying there simply wasn’t enough time. And it was easy enough to buy into this illusion. I first noticed my faulty thinking when I explained this lack of time to my grandma. I told her my daily activities included hanging out with friends, rollerblading, coding, writing music, and playing with Linux. My grandma looked at me stunned, and she said that I was wrong in how I looked at things. She reminded me of her experience in high school during World War II! She had to take a train to school, not a subway. And at that it was a cargo train, without seating. She had to do homework, but also house work to help with the family, she had to cook, sew, clean, etc. I never did any of this. All I ever did was sit and stared at a computer screen. When I thought about it seriously, what my grandma said made sense. Except I was listening to it 25-30 years after the fact. She said I had time for both, school and personal projects, just like she did back in the ‘40s.

This was difficult for me to accept. I had always told everyone as well as myself that I was following in the footsteps of giants like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – dropouts who made it big in tech. I felt I had made it big, too. In my 20s I was making more money than those who finished university and had “wasted their lives earning a piece of paper” – as I used to explain.  This of course wasn’t the reality. When I was a teenager my parents divorced. And a way I dealt with that was by imbuing myself into computers. I would put on my headphones and stare at the screen doing work and so it was a form of escapism or avoidant behaviour. Going to school meant having to deal with realities at home, which clearly I didn’t want to do. Writing music was more fun than studying chemistry or biology or physics even, but I had time for both. I could have had my mom help me at the dinner table after dinner for an hour every day!  I could have done my home work, passed my exams, and still composed all the music I wanted. I would have still had time to hang out with friends and play video games with my sisters. My grandma was right. I lacked time management skills. I was also poorly coping with the family situation.

Oddly enough there were no councillors calling my parents when I skipped class. My parents never talked to me about my missing of classes either. I don’t recall my dad ever asking me why I was home and working on Linux instead of at school. There was never a moment when a teacher asked me why I wasn’t showing up. I did still attend high school, but only the classes I liked. I would show up for lunch hour to hang out with friends, and gym was always what I was in. I sometimes attended economics as that interested me. I naturally thought tech would lead me towards running my own business. None of it ever materialized. THe lack of organizational skills I failed to learn in school lead towards a disorganized adult life. I had plenty of success in the tech world, but whenever something complex was asked of me I avoided it and skipped out. There were moments I even skipped out on work whenever a presentation was required of me. I got fired for it, too.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that this April I’ll be enrolling in high school classes as an adult. I have to admit to myself that for thirty something years I have been living wrongly. I have been pursuing things the wrong way, walking along the wrong path. I will need maybe five or six credits to graduate. I’m not looking forward to any of this. But it is time to set things right. It is time to finish high school. I believe my grandma was right. I believe I still have time for everything.

Superman Goes To Jog

My motivation is determined, in large part, by what I foresee myself accomplishing. If it’s something small I don’t even begin the task. If it’s monumental, I immediately drop every other project and get to work. I don’t plan my days, weekends, or quarters. I just wing it – that’s my time management philosophy, it’s always worked and I’ve always achieved more than most, until now. I am in a rut, the dumps, and I’m struggling to climb back to the top of my mountain top.

About ten years ago I was quite fat, weighing close to 260lbs. I am 5’10” and generally look best at around 185lbs even without a large muscle build-out.  But at 260lbs I am wobbling when I walk, my clothes don’t fit me right, I’m wearing baggy size 42 pants, as opposed to my more usual 34 or 36 shorts. When I am fat I don’t want to move, climbing stairs to my apartment feels like a chore so I take the elevator many times. Even carrying groceries and tying shoe laces feels like a difficult task where I have to hold my breath just to bend down to the shoes.  Being fat is quite limiting as it even negatively impacts my sleep. When I am fat I don’t enjoy sitting at the computer as I always want to go and exercise, only I don’t have the energy to so it’s a constant struggle. That’s when my super achieving ego kicks in. I call it my internal Superman.

My inner Superman makes me want to exercise at three times the intensity to make up for lost time. It makes me want to go for a jog when I haven’t even warmed up. It makes me want to lift 100s of pounds of weight at the gym when I haven’t even done a few lower reps. It makes me want to jog for 3 hours on the first run day of the season. Then when I have knee pains for a month, when my back hurts, and when I have a cold, then I think some secret magic voodoo was involved against me, that the whole world hates me, and then I stop working out. My inner Superman thinks he can do anything, and doesn’t care about the process. My inner Superman thinks I can jog even when it’s winter, rainy and slippery, or muddy even though I was blessed with disabled eyes and thus stuck for life with low vision at best.

I explained my predicament to my sister Lola a few years ago. You see I have two sisters, so I get double the advice, which I sometimes listen to. And I have started to listen to Lola’s jogging advice this year. First I began by changing my diet. I have swapped out pasta, butter chicken, and burgers for lunch, for soups and a boiled egg and a small sandwich – all of which I now make at home to save money and sanity. Then I took Lola’s excellent advice, as she is into running and has ran marathons several times. She told me to take it slowly at first, since I’m not a regular, and to ramp it up as I feel good in my body. Instead of jogging for 40 minutes in the cold she suggested I limit my first runs to 15 minutes at most. And even then to run for one minute and then walk for a minute. But the Superman inside me isn’t pleased with this. This feels like a pittance compared to what I want to achieve. Superman inside me wants to be an ultra-marathoner, to run 24 hours non-stop, to be the best jogger in existence. So for a few years now I’ve put off jogging because running and stopping makes me feel like I’m not really doing anything.

This was a great mistake and one I blame Superman for. He wants to achieve world shaking things, whereas I just want to fit back into my pants in my closet that have been waiting for me ever since my Kung Fu training days.  And then I had an epiphany!  What if Superman can be happy at the same time as I’m jogging properly? But how? How to appease his appetite for speed and duration while running start-stop like? Well, by looking into the future!  If I run without limits I will incur injuries and then I won’t be able to run or do other things at all, as has happened in the past. But if I take Lola’s advice, and start slowly and then over time ramp it up as I build stamina and muscles and muscle memory, in a year or two I’ll lose the weight and garner enough time jogging to be able to jog for a full hour non-stop!  After a year of start-stopping Superman will have what he wants. But I must endure the training period. And that’s only natural isn’t it? Training first, then success.

Superman doesn’t believe in that. In the movies about him we never see him training.  Or at least this was my mistake in thinking. I recently re-watched Superman and he does go through training. He discovers his powers one by one, like when he’s running against a train, etc. He doesn’t start changing the course of rockets, or moving frozen lakes on his first day on Earth. These things come with time! Similarly the Superman in me needs time to train. So if I wish to go for a jog while listening to a full music album, which is my goal, I need to take it slowly. This is what I’m learning this year. Coupled with my new diet, I feel I am on a winning track. Much thanks to my sisters and their advice. Superman will go jogging later.

Dreams of Montreal

Burger King is a restaurant selling mostly burgers. This is obvious. Montreal is a city in Canada. This is also obvious. Today when I tasted the Angry Whopper for the first time the two became quite similar.  And now I am making plans to move to Montreal from Toronto.  All because of a chance trip long ago, and my taste buds.  Who knew something so simple could be so magical.

I have for years lived in Toronto.  And have for years eaten the Whopper at BK.  The two went together and were almost inseparable.  On Wednesday’s BK lowers the price of the whopper, and like most disabled people I am living in poverty so this burger is one of my few thrills in life.  Another of my thrills is composing music, as that’s my main hobby and source of joy, but burgers are an instant gratification sort of thing. Within 5 minutes of eating I am happy as a little kid.  Whereas music composing takes hours and hours and days of grueling technical labour in a DAW like Reason to produce just the right sounds that soothe my perfectionist ears.  But today, for the first time, I took a chance on a Friday, to go to BK and try the Angry Whopper at full price.

It was mind-blowingly better than the Whopper. I didn’t open it up to look at its contents like I usually do with new food. I trusted that it would be awesome, and it didn’t disappoint at all. BK has done an amazing culinary job I feel.  Now granted, burgers are not the healthiest of foods and should not be consumed very often for various reasons.  As well I am leaning towards a vegetarian or vegan diet these days and so burgers are a rare meat delicacy I still have, reminding me of nostalgic feels from long ago when life was much better.  You know before all this technology came to save us from paperwork, from red tape, from waiting in lines, all the things that are even more part of life than they were before the saviour arrived.

This is exactly how I enjoyed my two or three trips to Montreal. I didn’t look up on the Internet where I was going, I didn’t look at a map, I simply got on the train or in a car and went to visit my sister or when I was in high school in the ‘90s we went to see a baseball game there.  All those times I went, it was an amazingly fun experience. In fact, Montreal seems to still possess that old world magic that is lacking from the grey boring Toronto where I’ve lived most of my life, sadly.  The people seem friendlier, the language is more soothing, streets seem safer, everyone seems more laid back and relaxed.  I didn’t notice ever the kind of ugliness that I feel surrounded by in TO.  And then there’s the Montreal cafes, which somehow are charming, compared to the utilitarian ones in Tdot.  I’m not sure if it’s just me romanticizing something I’ve only ever seen three or four times, or if it’s a genuine difference.  But I trust in this difference, with my whole heart.

So just like from now on my monthly burger is the Angry Whopper, I see myself in the future living and working in Montreal. What I wish to bring to the city is my music, my art, my coding expertise, my networking, my peaceful nature, and my desire to make it a better place than it already is. I have started making plans a while back for moving there through various tasks I do at home. For one I have started brushing up on French with Duolingo.  I take it seriously and study it an hour a day at least.  I can’t yet fully understand TV shows but thankfully here in Ontario we have two fully French channels and I watch them every day a little bit, a show here or a cartoon there, just to get the ear of the language.  I believe knowing French is a very Canadian thing, along with knowing English, since Canada is a dual-lingual nation.  So it’s also one of my long outstanding goals ever since I failed grade ten French.  It was my first class that I ever failed, and I wish to make up for that ever since.

The second step I have taken towards moving to Montreal is related to the dream of owning a condo and working in the tech industry.  Montreal has a lot of tech companies, and I have spent much of my years in tech, whether coding, doing technical support, or working for an ISP.  I do know a thing or two about ‘puters!  So I’m taking courses now in programming, focusing on web development and video game design.  I am working on my own video game in Unity that I hope to publish in a year’s time.  My main hobby is writing music in Reason.  I have already published two albums and have three more that will get published this month.  I keep composing every day for an hour at least and will be publishing a new album every month this year. All this together will hopefully allow me, a disabled man in his 40s, to move and to thrive in Montreal.

I don’t really know anything about the city mind you.  My sister lives and works there, but my designs upon this dream have little to do with her. She was the enabler I suppose, by inviting me over a few times and showing me her neighbourhoods and her work.  It definitely helped me to fall in love with Parc Fountaine for starters.  There I saw a part of my future along with the Mount Real.  I imagined myself jogging to the top and then back down every morning.  Then a shower and going to work every morning.  This is my dream.  So to this effect, this summer I will start jogging here in Toronto. First I need to lose about 20-30 lbs of fat so that the jogging isn’t hard on my knees. To achieve this I’m doing Qi Gong, and practicing Kung Fu daily as well as lifting weights and going to the gym.  I am working towards my Montreal dream on several fronts concurrently and hoping that it all pans out. I trust in the process that I have designed just like I have trusted in the process of writing music for all the tracks I have completed.  And let me say that I’ve done over 1,000 songs so far totalling about 20 music albums.  You could call me a musician.  And Montreal is definitely full of artsy people like me.  I see this as a win-win situation for me and for the people of Montreal.

What Is ORANGE13?

Suppose I was to give you a simple and quick answer and say that it’s a record label for releasing music – would there be a point to knowing any other details? But suppose there is a long explanation because it’s not really a record label and it doesn’t exactly exist – would a long explanation entice you to read more? Should I be mysterious and lead you on as many writers do these days with a hook somewhere near the end forcing you to read everything? I’m honest so I won’t do that. It’s a pretend record label that has become a blog category. Nothing more. I use it to release my own music productions and I use it to explore web design ideas.

I don’t know anything about running a business. But in January 2006 I said goodbye to my team at UUNET Canada (then Verizon Business, formerly WorldCom Canada and MCI Canada) to start a music label called ORANGE13. This is what I told everyone. They all signed a greeting card – some went through the trouble of encoding secret messages in printed binary form, which I never could decode. I’m just not that smart. I wasn’t quitting to start a record label, even though everyone knew my hobby was to be a musician. I was quitting because my girlfriend was abusive and I didn’t want that negativity to in any way negatively impact my co-workers, the customers, or anyone else at the company. I was quitting to protect what mattered to me a lot – all of them!

That is sort of the birth of ORANGE13 in my life. The corporate offices were located in downtown Toronto and on the top floor was a beautifully decorated penthouse. Like any other tech business, this was an ISP mind you, they had satellite television, showers, and a pool table, a BBQ, you know, fun things for us to socialize with and build that all-so-important team spirit. I loved going to that lounge area but there was far too much work and I was an overworking perfectionist so I never took proper lunch breaks. Many of us ate at our desks. Back then we were spending much time on IRC, on our custom made servers, chatting, exchanging tips and tricks of the networking trade. But one time I ventured to the lounge after work and that’s when ORANGE13’s seed was planted in my mind. For there was on the pool table a single ball left, the orange and white ball numbered thirteen and a pool cue. I immediately came up with the name ORANGE13 in my mind and decided right then and there that it would be the name for my music projects.

At the time I never really played pool. I didn’t get the game. Not that the rules were complicated, I just didn’t see the point to putting balls into pockets you know? Like I was in that building to do work, serious work, to route packets through the network, to configure BGP communities, to setup MPLS labels even, I wasn’t there to play pool. It felt irresponsible for me to spend any serious effort on pool, even though I worked there for six years and could have played a little bit every day and gotten really good at it. Nobody else on the team did. We played with our desktop Linux machines, and later when corporate took over from the US we played with our Windows NT shit boxes. No UNIX geek loves when corporate forces NT on them do they? Why is that? Why do we hate Microsoft so much? I mean they are coders like anybody else? As a musician I don’t hate U2 because they’re different than the music that I produce – yet I disliked Microsoft.

A year had gone by and I worked on more music, and then I got the brilliant business idea. I will hire my sister as she was a designer to make me a cool logo and business cards. That’s what it takes to run a business, a great image, right? So I worked tirelessly with her through 24 logo iterations, and she did such a fantastic job that my ORANGE13 logo is better than the Apple Computers logo I think! I mean it’s only fitting considering how amazing I am as a musician right? She made business card designs really quickly and I went to the local shop and paid good money and got like 2,000 cards printed. I gave a few to people at work, everyone was impressed, and then nothing. That’s right, nothing. That was the extent of how much I knew how to run a business. I was composing music daily, but never finishing any songs either. I had no product to sell, I had no website to market, I had business cards, and a logo! It was style over substance type of deal. I was a cluebag.

Then the unthinkable happened and I got a new girlfriend. She wrecked everything that could be wrecked in a man’s life. She destroyed all my friendships out of sheer jealousy, she made me cry often, she did this and that, it’s pointless to rehash it. But needless to say I believed that in love one has to put up with the bad as well as to love the good, so I thought if I wanted to be with her I needed to put up with all of her personality quirks – I didn’t yet know about mental health. She definitely had symptoms of bipolar, but I knew nothing about such matters. I was a driven passionate coder, musician and networking guy and I thought everyone else in the whole world was as sane as me! Boy was dating her an awakening I will never quite forget. After we parted ways I even stopped writing music for a few years because that’s how much emotional harm she had caused me. You see, I only wish to write music when I’m in a good happy mood. I find that there’s too much negativity in this sad world and I do not wish to contribute to it. So I want my music to mostly project happy vibes, and to nurture goodness. But she left me feeling sorry and down and I wanted to forget all about her and her sexy American accent.

So I spent a few years back home in Belgrade hanging out with little kids playing soccer, watching TV, and helping my grandma as much as I could. I cleaned the attic, the garage, the walls from cigarette smoke (did you know that walls turn yellow from smoke?), etc. It is there in Belgrade that I started, again, to compose music, and it was my usual happy vibe. The love of the kids and their curiosity of life, even dogs barking at night, it all coalesced into my rebirth. ORANGE13 wasn’t dead! The idea of me releasing music lived on even there. I had zero income, zero resources, and still I was composing some of the best music I knew I made to that point. I had brought my Macbook from Toronto with me and an old Toshiba and using them both I was in heaven. I never needed much in terms of hardware or software to achieve great results. My start in composing was in MS-DOS using trackers like Scream Tracker 3, and even earlier ones that made MTM files and MOD files which could only play four instruments at a time. I found some ORANGE13 business cards in my wallet, sitting there in my bedroom in our Vozhdovac home, and I wished to continue on my musical journey. I had fully recovered from my ex’s abusiveness.

Then a lot of terrible things happened, which is part of the reason why we fled to Canada in the ‘90s. I should have never returned to Belgrade, and now that I am once again safely in Toronto, I promised myself I will never return to Serbia for it is not a safe place for people with disabilities such as I am. You see I was born with cataracts and after a surgery at a very young age I would be left with low vision at best my whole life.  For one reason or another, while the people everywhere in the world are nice, governments are not, and Serbian authorities are quite mean. Without going into details let’s just say that their terrible attitudes followed me even to Toronto when I once again fled Serbia and even here they pursued me and in a way still do. So ORANGE13 never really became a real record label like I wanted it to.

I registered a website, but never built any pages for it. Well I did for a time, but it was a half-assed effort. It generally had nothing of any value on it. I still do not wish for the ORANGE13 dream to die though and I wish to use the name in relation to my music. I have so far released two music albums (including on Spotify and 100 other streaming services). I have three more albums lined up for release this March, totalling five albums. It’s not amazing music like I believe me capable of producing, but this is due to the abuse this world has put me through. I no longer feel the rest of you are worth my musical gifts. This is a feeling many victims suffer with and I am working through it. I feel music is my gift and one I need to share with people. I don’t exactly have designs on being rich or famous, I would much rather prefer to make money during a regular 9-5 job and releasing music for free on the side. I want my music to be a gift and freely accessible, and not some point of exclusion and luxury. I don’t need a private mansion with bodyguards type of lifestyle. I need a hobby and music makes me happy. So ORANGE13 lives on in blog form. It is now a name of the category where I write stories such as these, where I post things about my music. ORANGE13 is my music blog. That’s the simple answer. But it encompasses all my dreams about my most favourite hobby. And I have several hobbies let me tel you, but music is my most favourite one. I am still disappointed on a personal level that I haven’t yet collaborated with Depeche Mode. But I’m hopeful that can happen if I work really hard every day for a few years. Goals are important in life and that is just one of about a thousand I wish to achieve.  As for billiards, a few years ago I spent two good years playing pool every day at a Chinatown cafe and now I get it. Now I love the art of the pocket. But hitting the orange number thirteen has always remained a monumental move for me.

A Luxurious Adventure In The PATH

Like any disabled man I long for those moments of inclusion whereby I am one with the normies. You know, when you are wearing glasses you wonder what normal eye sight feels like? Similarly whenever I feel isolated I take a walk through the PATH to see all the employed, hip, and fancy fellow citizens and I pretend I belong. I sit there in the PATH eating my Burger King and feel like others looking at me might mistake me for a daytrader out to lunch. I don’t need a suit and a tie to be a daytrader, and I can fit in, as long as I shave my man face. But then comes the problem of going to the washroom, and this is for me something very stressful. I have low vision and signage in the PATH is terrible for those like me.

Usually I only walk around downtown Toronto between five routes that I have memorized. One takes me to Eaton center, another one to Distillery, another one to the PATH, and then within the labyrinth I know two or three routes. Otherwise I can’t go for a walk on my own. I just don’t feel confident in my old age. And let me tell you, 45 is quite old. I’ve survived 33 Canadian winters and many others in Belgrade. This in itself is quite an accomplishment! I’m very proud of this fact. But I did fall once or twice on my hip so maybe I’ll pay for that in my elderly years, I don’t know. Like any man I need more muscles to defend the fragile skeleton that the meat hangs off of.

Finding a washroom would be easy if signage was large, clearly labeled, and in easy to spot places. But in Toronto’s underground PATH the big fancy business owners decided to go with minimalistic style. So much of the signage is in the corner, out of the way, hard to spot, hard to find, and is even black icons on a grey background – of all things, come on! How am I supposed to spot that? So sometimes I beg my dear mom to come with me to PATH and teach me where the washrooms are. After two or three times I have it memorized and can go there alone from that point forward. Unless I know where a washroom is I can’t go to a place. I am like everyone else in this regard. My disability is visual but that limits me to ten percent of activities that others can enjoy.

So today I went by the Hockey Hall of Fame entrance and needed to use the bathroom. Now for some strange reason the cleaning staff synchronize when they are cleaning bathrooms. They do it at peak times, around 1pm, and they clean multiple washrooms at once so that none are available for public use. I went to one, it was being cleaned. I went to a second one, it was being cleaned. But I needed to go, so I discovered a third washroom around the corner of a corridor. The signage is poor and barely visible and I entered. Boy this was something magical.

The washroom had a waterfall, there was a little pond with fishes swimming in it, it smelled like cookies and cream, and there was no smell that I am used to in normal washrooms of feces and urine. There was no papers on the floor, there was no hairs around the sink, it was clean and tidy. There was also mood lighting like at a club! There was even music playing, it was dubstep of all things. I was in the stall minding my business and wondered if I made a mistake if this was some kind of private club washroom or something. It was unbelievably clean and nice and the toilet seats all worked, even the flushing wasn’t broken! Then I went to wash my hands, and to my left was young woman prettying herself up by tidying up her hair.

This was unusual, I have never seen a woman in a washroom before. In a corner was another woman standing playing on her cell phone. I immediately left and looked at the door sign. Now it all made sense. The reason why this washroom was so much more beautiful than any I have ever been to was because this was a woman’s washroom. The sign for women and men is quite similar, only the little square is a tiny bit triangular. Who knew women had such clean and luxurious washrooms compared to us men?

I prayed and hoped nobody would notify security. But just to be on the safe side I contacted a psychiatrist and explained what had occurred. He told me that yes, indeed, women’s washrooms are much nicer and that many men in his practice have made this mistake and have accidentally once in their lives entered the wrong bathroom and to not worry. He assured me I was sane. I questioned why do women have a waterfall in their washrooms and men do not? He said he didn’t know but would inquire and let me know. It did leave me speechless that even the floor was shinny like it was brand new. I’m used to the filth and the scum on the walls in men’s bathrooms so much that I thought women’s must be the same. Boy was today an eye opening adventure in the PATH. I hope that in the future men can learn from my misadventure and learn to invest more in their spaces. I’d also like a waterfall soothing me while I am in the bathroom.

The End of All Fast Food

Just the other day I was walking past A&W, a place mostly known for burgers but now they’re expanding with some kind of cafe style sandwiches, too. Here in Toronto the current prices are about $15 for a proper meal. A basic sandwich can be had for $10 or so. And an ad caught my eye. It said two “Mama Burgers” for $8. I thought what an amazing deal and immediately went in, ordered it, ate it, and felt great.

But that’s when reality hit me, right after I gave them my hard earned money. That was a clever strategy wasn’t it? You don’t see it yet do you? They have tremendously inflated prices and then for half the price offer what appears as an unbelievable deal, two for the price of a half. I’m used to a “Grandpa Burger” costing around $15. That’s one burger, though it has three beef patties. This was two burgers, and two is more than one, and for half that price, $8 instead of nearly $16. So obviously my brain got confused. As did many of others. This is typical psychological attack on consumers and one that bothers me a lot.

One of the other things I can’t resist at A&W, despite their prices and despite my poverty being high, is their spicy chicken sandwich. Sometimes they call it Nashville Chicken. It is almost $11 for one. So one day I took it home and analyzed it. Why can’t I make it at home for cheaper? I mean I make my own software with Linux. There’s free versions of Linux tools for everything that the Windows ecosystem sells. So if that is possible, so might me cooking in my own kitchen!

The spicy chicken sandwich is basically two pieces of bread, a piece of chicken, lots of spicy sauce, a little bit of pickles, and some mayo. Nothing else! Is that worth a full ten dollars? Probably not. But they do have to pay for staff, rent, taxes, and profits. None of these aspects are my concern. I’m only concerned about the final product and the cost. So I went to No Frills and for $10 bought a package of ten chicken burgers. Then I went to the St. Lawrence market and at a gourmet shop bought my favourite hot sauce, Scotch Bonnet, for $5. Then I bought Polish Pickles from the deli upstairs in the market for $6, and I bought a whole loaf of bread for $3. Though I could have saved on the bread by buying a day old bread from the fresh bakery for $1.50! But I wanted to splurge. In total all the ingredients cost me less than $25. But it was enough to make ten burgers. That means each complete burger costs me only $2.50!

Now tell me again why I would ever step foot inside of A&W, Burger King or McDonald’s? Because their chicken is uniquely flavoured? Because their sauces are so much better? Because the atmosphere of standing in line with strangers is so enticing? Because paying nearly 5x as much is somehow saving me that much time? I don’t see the winning strategy here and I now consider myself a fool every time in the past I stepped foot into these establishments. I feel I was used and robbed. There is never going to be a time in my life when I’m going to feel sorry for a business and pay five times for the product that I can make at home in less than three minutes of total prep time. If ever I want fast food I will make it myself. Besides, tell me a place that sells chicken burgers with feta cheese! Because that’s what I just had. Game over bros.