At the beginning of this week I wrote here about the different attitude toward children here in North America and in Thailand.

Apparently people actually read this page (something that always comes as a shock to me), and Catherine has caught some heat from her friends and colleagues along the lines of “hey, we like Oliver…”

Please note that my comments weren’t meant to be a “hey, you don’t love my son enough!” plea. Oliver gets plenty of attention, love, regards, waves, etc. in his regular everyday life here in Charlottetown, from our friends, family, colleagues, and sometimes even from the people that you meet while you’re walkin’ down the street.

So you can stop complaining.

In other cold hearted news, an anonymous friend — let’s call her Libertà — called me today with a story: she was in the bank, at a wicket beside a woman with small child. The woman was struggling to balance dealing with the teller and dealing with the child. By way of trying to be helpful, Libertà tried to engage the child in conversation, which prompted the woman to pick up the child and move him to the other side of her.

Libertà commented on this to the teller after woman and child had left, remarking that in other cultures she might have picked up the child so the mother could bank in peace. The teller recoiled in shock, and said she would never do that lest she be accused of molesting the child.

Which explains a lot about a lot of things.

Another friend emailed to say that our experiences in Thailand echo those that he and his wife experienced in Mexico with their son. This was reinforced tonight for us when we ate at Mexico Lindo for this first time, and found the Mexican chef doting on Oliver in a way we’d only ever seen at the wonderful Lobster Claw out in Brackley Beach.

Libertà, by the way, remains undaunted, and will return to the playing field with as much determination as ever to do right by the kids of town. More power to her.

Somehow in the last week I have become a fan of both Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond after having found boths shows essentialy unwatchable previously. Have I changed, or have the shows changed.

Also, after two episodes, Watching Ellie is growing on me.

The National Post has published an editorial coming out against PEI’s so-called “can ban.”

So I feel it only appropriate that I publish the contrary opinion. I have always thought the prohibition against selling pop in cans was a Good Thing. I don’t care whether it’s a anti-litter move, an economic assist to local Seaman’s Beverages or an aesthetic decision, it’s always made sense to me, from every angle.

The Post editorial’s main criticism of the law is that because other non-carbonated beverages are allowed to be sold in cans, the anti-litter, pro-environmental arguments for the ban must be false. Frankly, I don’t see the reasoning here; just because the law is incomplete doesn’t mean it’s ineffective or that the reasons underlying it aren’t genuine. Indeed it would seem to make more sense for the Post to argue for a complete ban on cans instead of an end to the partial ban we have right now.

Pop in bottles is one of the things that makes PEI a special place. I stand in full support of the current and former governments who, for whatever reasons, agree with me.

Every Tuesday afternoon the friendly folks at Yankee Publishing, my western affiliate Johnny and I have a transcontinental conference call.

As related on his website, Johnny recently switched cell phone providers, and his new service with Bell Mobility appears to have some quirks: twice during the call Johnny lost his connection. Wasn’t a battery problem. Didn’t appear to be a signal strength problem (has was standing still throughout). He just disappeared.

The first time this happened, he called right back and I conferenced him back in.

The second time this happened, he called right back and I conferenced him back in.

Except the second time, it wasn’t actually him that called, but rather Irene Renaud from the PEI Crafts Council calling for Catherine. I didn’t notice the caller ID was different, and I didn’t say hello, assuming it was Johnny and he just listen in where he left off.

Irene patiently waited for a break in the conversation, and then chimed in, sounding somewhat bemused, to express her confusion at being included in a conference call about the minutiae of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and Yankee Magazine. She left a quick message, and disappeared again.

Lesson: always say hello when you answer the phone.

There is only one Internet provider on Prince Edward Island powering its webserver with wind power, and that’s Island Services Network (we power our server here with the wind too, but we’re not an ISP). Kudos to ISN for their forward thinking attitude.

As I related here many times during our sojourn to Thailand, we discovered that Oliver’s role in Thai society was completely different than his role here.

In North America, Oliver is a 15 month old infant, revered by his family and close friends but otherwise pretty well completely ignored, sometimes even resented, by everyone else.

For example, 9 times out of 10 when we go with Oliver to a “please wait to be seated” restaurant here, we get seated in some horrible back of the restaurant kid ghetto, far from everyone else.

In Thailand, Oliver is a 15 month old infant, revered by everyone. Monk, police officer, scraggly looking guitar player, waitress, riverboat driver. Everyone.

In Thailand, we get seated in excellent seats in the centre of the restaurant, and the wait staff take personal responsbility for Oliver’s happiness. If Oliver is crying, they pick him up and walk around with him. If Oliver needs a distraction, they distract him. And everyone in the restaurant waves at Oliver, and Oliver waves back.

And I’m starting to think this isn’t just a Thai thing. Oliver and I were at a Chinese grocery store in Halifax over the weekend, and he received the same sort of attention: I was struggling with a collection of grocery items and Oliver all at the same time, so one of the customers — I’m guess she was Chinese from her language and look, but that’s just a guess — picked up Oliver and squired him around. A good time was had by all.

I have anecdotal evidence from others to suggest that this attitude towards children, while perhaps amplified somewhat by the fact that Oliver is a rare white smiling baby in Thailand, reflects a general difference in the way children are regarded in other parts of the world.

If nothing else, it makes the Canadian “seen and not heard” attitude towards children appear cold hearted and mean.

When was the last time you picked up someone else’s crying baby to help them out? I certainly know I never have.

Most people have to wait until at least they’ve won an Olympic medal, or been elected President, or have developed a new way to purify water before they’re written about in the Bangkok Post. Not wee Oliver, though. In an issue of Harold Stephens’ travel online travel column Oliver gets top billing. Take a look and see pictures of our Sunday afternoon along Silom Road with Harold and his wife Michelle.

The only thing you might safely take as an exageration is Catherine’s statement that “back home nobody notices Oliver.” That’s not true of course. But compared to the attention he gets here, it’s not too far off!

Those wacky folks at the CBC are at it again. After the folly of Arts Canada comes CBC Infomatrix, described as “a fun and informative environment for children aged 8–12.”

Like Arts Canada, the CBC Infomatrix uses non-standard metaphors for navigation; indeed it hijacks the entire screen with a giant orange window. It doesn’t work like the rest of the web works. And I have no idea why. Isn’t the web good enough for the CBC?

Worse, though, is that it trys to be a “cool” website and in doing so is so obviously dorky as to be insulting. Why doesn’t anyone realize that when you try to talk to kids by adopting a thin veneer of “with-it-ness” you almost always come off looking like a boob?

There are a lot of smart and interesting people employed by the CBC (some of them are related to me); they can be equally as interesting to 8 to 12 year olds as to adults, and to do this doesn’t require a big orange window and faux hip. What an unfortunate waste of time and resources.

How quickly things work on the Internet. Trinic responds:

Thank you for your response. One of the problems with e-mail communications, or even instant messaging is the inability to convey tone. We now understand how our standard response to multiple identical messages could be interpreted as a negative or chastised tone. Although our intent was not to convey it in this sense, it is obvious that it has been interpreted otherwise, which is indeed our fault.

Thank you for your suggestions regarding a modification to our standard response regarding the issue in question. We will take it under advisement when we rewrite the standard response message tomorrow.

Thank you. I appreciate (a) your quick reply and (b) the tone of your quick reply. You will retain my business, and in future I will address me email to only one destination. Problem solved.

Here is Trinic’s response to my castigation for sending me what I took to be an insulting email:

Peter,

We have a very extensive e-mail system to handle our e-mails to ensure no single e-mail is ever lost or not responded to. Subsequently, it is inefficient for multiple departments to be responding to an identical inquiry. Whenever we receive identical messages at multiple e-mail addresses, we place the first paragraph you are inquiring about into our response.

Please also note that you were indeed in violation of our General Service Agreement. Section 5 of our General Service Agreement states:

“Please be aware that we have a strict policy on duplicate inquiries. If you submit an inquiry to us, please do so only once so we are able to respond in a timely fashion to your inquiry. Multiple inquiries slow down our efficiency and response time. If multiple inquiries are submitted regarding the same issue, your account and Services will be subject to termination.”

You may review the agreement in its entirety at:

http://www.trinic.com/legal/general.shtml

This agreement is bound to every customer whenever they register, transfer, renew, or purchase any service offered through us.

For future reference, if you are unsure which e-mail address to utilize when submitting our inquiry to us, please use the ‘General Inquiries’ e-mail address listed on our ‘Contact Us’ page which is ‘trinic@trinic.com’.

Sincerely,
Customer Relations
Trinic

Dear Trinic,

Thank you for your quick reply.

I certainly appreciate the need for you to maintain an effective email reply system; I know only too well how difficult it can be to deal with hundreds of incoming email messages on variety of topics.

I’ve no problem whatsoever with the spirit of this system. My only criticism is with the tone of your original message: you chewed me out, and that’s not, as a customer, something I see as a Good Thing. There are plenty of ways you could have asked me to refrain from doing what I did that would have been fair, reasonable, and had the desired effect.

In other words, it’s not your intent, your General Service Agreement or your technical services policy I have issue with, it’s simply your tone. Life is stressful enough without being castigated by your domain name registrar.

Here how I would suggest you approach this issue in future when emailing customers who do like I did:

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your inquiry about the CGI Timeout issue.

Before addressing this issue, I’d just like to point out that you sent your email to both customer service and technical support here at Trinic, and we’d ask that you refrain from doing this in future. We get a lot of email here at Trinic, and trying to make sure it gets to the right person is confusing enough without duplication like this! If you’re uncertain about which addresses to send email, just use the general trinic@trinic.com email address.

…and so on. I think you’ll agree that my version of the text contains the same content, but is slightly less heavy on the “you have sinned” tone.

Regards,
Peter