Life

The ant count this week looked like this:

Sunday – 1
Monday – 1
Tuesday – 6
Wednesday – 0
Thursday – 0
Friday – 1
Saturday – 0

This is through meticulous scanning of the kitchen counter area several times a day, especially late at night when they seem to be more active. I feel like there are, or were, still some straggler ants that are completely lost without their home colony that come by following the pheromone trails now and then, as I’m not sure where they come from, but they’re certainly not organized or headed to any particular place. Just trying to get some water, I think. They all look exactly like the same type of ant whose colony I quashed last week too, so they probably are leftover remnants.

It’s like playing a Red Alert game and having to take some time hunting down the remnant soldiers hiding around a map to completely wipe out an opponent even after you’ve crushed their base and taken out their command center and barracks so they can’t build any more new troops.

Outside of ant news, the local municipal elections were this week and I was glad to see that all the people I voted for won. The results were encouraging since most of the party-affiliated people lost this time, but more so than that, as a chronicler I wanted to make sure the numbers were noted down for the future, so here they are (local). It looks like the Edmonton Elections website itself has pretty good election data retention records though, but hey, you never know. That snapshot above can be compared to see if they ever change the numbers of the “official results”.

On Tuesday, the 21st, I decided to go out on a whim as I wanted to get some more Jolene’s Tea House (local) tea before the winter chills set in, since I had finished my two prior boxes last week. Besides the flagship tea house all the way in Banff that I visited in person earlier this year, the only other place that I know sells it is Sunterra Market, and that store has two locations in Edmonton — one of them somewhat near where I stay, within walking distance but still something like 20 minutes away, and the other one downtown in an office building named Commerce Place, near our University’s downtown work location. Hey, the boss’s boss wanted us to be on-site two days a week right? This technically works right? So I planned out my day to swing down there after our morning meeting and have a nice stroll through the area.

There were a couple of surprises waiting for me though, starting with this one on the train ride there. For the first time since probably 2019 or 2020, I ran into transit officers on the train who were actively checking people to see if they had paid the transit fee, since Edmonton uses a stupid honour system that doesn’t actually involve physical fare gates, but instead some machines that you can tap in and out of as you enter and leave the station.

I don’t always end up “tapping in” at every single instance of me using the train, because sometimes I’m just running for the train to try to catch it since the next one can take forever to arrive, so I end up tapping the fare card while leaving the arrival station instead of at the boarding one, and because when they changed to our current system, they got rid of the flexibility where you used to be able to go slightly over the 90 minute mark without paying a second fare as long as it was within reason, for example if you were standing and waiting at a bus stop and the bus is very late in arriving or the driver just plain decides to skip a route, pushing you over the 90 minute transfer window.

That one applies more to buses than trains, but the point is that there’s no way to check how long is left on your 90 minute transfer window since it’s just a digital card that isn’t linked to any sort of app, and in addition even though tapping out after arriving at your destination is not supposed to charge you even if it’s after the 90 minute mark, I’ve had the system think that that was me trying to tap in again, possibly since an earlier tap-in didn’t register or something, and thus charge me for that last tap out as though it was a new 90 minute transit ride. The system is pretty infuriating.

But since this one was the first transit usage of my day, I had thankfully tapped in without thinking much about it before boarding the train, and thus avoided an incident with the transit officer, who scanned my card and moved on. I’m pretty sure some people further down in the carriage were caught for fare evasion instead, but I didn’t pay too close attention out of respect for their privacy. Though I did snap a picture of the officer anyway:

On the other side of the train was a lady who was seated and not restrained, but who was flanked by two other peace officers and obviously being escorted somewhere. They also ended up taking the train from the same starting station, Southgate, to the same ending station, Churchill, as me, and there were a swarm of officers waiting for her at the disembarking station. They arrested her there as I ascended the escalators.

I feel like nine officers to handcuff her was overkill, she could have run from the two officers that were accompanying her on the ride here if she wanted to by slipping out of the closing doors, especially at one of the more “open” stations like McKernan-Belgravia

Anyway, once I was at Churchill, I walked over to the Double Greeting Won Ton House restaurant that I had visited late last month, as I had missed their food and wanted to try out some other dish that they had. This time, I ordered their “Abalone Mushrooms, Kai-Lan and Chicken on Rice”, and it ended up like this for $16.30 after tax (and again, no tip, since it was cash only!):

This one was.. okay. It was a good-sized helping for its price, and the food and chili sauce were both nice, but it didn’t leave me still tasting the food and craving more of it hours after the fact, the way that their Shanghai Noodles from my last trip did. I do like the restaurant though. I’ll probably be back again at some point soon.

After lunch, I cut through some office buildings on the way to where the Sunterra Market was. I took these pictures of the inside of Manulife Place, the building adjacent to Commerce Place, which was apparently undergoing some serious renovations:

And then I came to the actual Sunterra Market itself. But this was where I ran into the other surprise of the day — while it was open, this market was not actually a grocery store in the same way that the (only) other Sunterra Market in the city was structured. This one was just a deli selling mostly sandwiches, salad, coffee, and other western snacks (overpriced bread and grass do not a meal make) like that, with a couple of weird extras like a liquor shop bolted on. No fresh produce or meat, no weird, eclectic local products, and certainly no tea leaves section.

So anyway, there was no Jolene’s Tea for me to be found there. Instead, I just went home and went down to the *other* Sunterra Market, the one in Lendrum Place that’s within walking distance of where I live, the next day instead. I didn’t take any new pictures of that place, but the route there does involve going by a castle house that I’ve already taken a couple of pictures of in previous blog entries, and I took an updated one circa Oct 25 2025.

I ended up walking out with around $85 worth of tea, basically one of every house-shaped tea box that I didn’t have yet — so now I own at least one of every Jolene’s Tea house box.

I’ve tried all of them now and I like the savoury ones better, Alberta Rose Sencha is still the best one by far, Golden Chamomile, Creamy Earl Grey, and Banff Breakfast are good, Masala Chai is surprisingly interesting but I haven’t decided if I love or like or dislike it yet, and Alpine Peppermint and Maple Black are decent but would go better with honey for me. Wild Blueberry Rooibos is.. well, blueberry. Berry teas are very mood-dependent for me.

I really like fancy tea boxes. I have quite a small collection of them now. Someday I’ll have my own house and will sort them onto bookshelves in the house.

I also bought a loaf of bread from Sunterra, and I made some curry for the end of the week. I ended up having (a little diluted) curry with bread and/or rice for Wednesday’s lunch and dinner, and then Thursday’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that was nice and economical. And those were the days where I didn’t find any ants at all. Maybe they hate the smell of curry?

Another fairly lengthy thing I did this week was to try to rectify an error that I had been receiving with my blog site (this very one!) — it was being blocked by Edmonton’s Open City Wi-Fi (local), the wireless internet system available at train stations, among other facilities around the city. Mostly I’ve used it to get internet while at underground train stations, since for some reason our trains and buses themselves (besides the 747 airport bus) do not have public internet attached to them. Anyway, I had noticed a couple of months ago that my own website was being blocked for “pornography”:

Seriously. What’s pornographic about this site? Tigey‘s mug?

The error message (and resolution) made no sense anyway, there’s no such thing as a DWP portal that I could find, and what is this nonsense about “Regarding Generative AI sites, only Google Gemini is allowed in the City”? I assume they mean this to be an internal City of Edmonton thing maybe, as there sure as hell is no legislation saying that ChatGPT is banned in Edmonton or anything like that. The general public is probably not supposed to see that error message, but it surfaces when you surf to an “inappropriate” site on Open City Wi-Fi.

Anyway, I had to go digging into how to unblock my site. From the Open City Wi-Fi webpage above, I first tried to open a ticket on the 311 website, but it was closed without a reply 12 hours later. Rude. I then went to call 311 itself, and a nice lady named Myra consulted with her colleagues and told me that Shaw manages the Open City Wi-Fi for the City of Edmonton, and to go contact them instead. I went to their website next, which shoved me to a Rogers site as Rogers had taken over Shaw back in April 2023 (local).

I tried to open a chat with someone there, but got shoved through a horrible AI chatbot experience on their website with their AI assistant, Anna, and when I finally managed to talk to someone, it was a tier 1 specialist named Mouad who barely spoke coherent English. This was how our conversation went:

Anna – Virtual Assistant 05:11 PM
I’ll get a specialist to help you with this.
It appears that you’re not signed in. Your session may have timed out.
To save time and identify your account details, please sign in to MyRogers

Anna – Virtual Assistant 05:11 PM
Success! You are now signed in.

Customer 05:12 PM
Requesting: Technical support-Mobile

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:12 PM
Hello, my name is Mouad from Fido/Rogers Thank you for your patience. Can I please have your first and last name?

Customer 05:12 PM
Hello. My name is Jessica.

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:13 PM
(Requested Customer Details)
Please complete the authentication steps so we can move forward. Let me know if you need any help with that.

Customer 05:13 PM
This question is not actually about my account, so can I skip that?
Your bot did not give me a way to talk to a specialist without signing in.

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:15 PM
sorry but i need to complet the request to authenticate your identity before proceeding.

Customer 05:15 PM
Ok let me go get the info.
There, hopefully that is correct.

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:17 PM
are you with rogers?

Customer 05:17 PM
Yes. Well, I use shaw internet.
I dont use rogers for my mobile but again, my question is (sort of) about mobile internet but not about my account.

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:19 PM
are you with shaw?

Customer 05:19 PM
Your bot forced me to pick one option from a list that did not fit though and this was the closest option I could find.
Yes.

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:19 PM
thank you for the confirmation!
For this request,you need contacting Shaw team directly.
Shaw : 1(888)-472-2222

Customer 05:19 PM
What?
You haven’t even heard my question though. It’s not about my account or shaw’s account

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:21 PM
sorry but i can proced with you without the authentication!

Customer 05:21 PM
I did authenticate!!!!!

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:23 PM
Since you’re a customer of Shaw, you’ll need to contact them directly for assistance. We’re Rogers technical support, so we don’t have access to Shaw account details or services.

Customer 05:23 PM
This is not about Shaw account details.
well maybe it is, let me ask the question and you tell me if I need to contact Shaw
(I went to Shaw’s website and got redirected here)
I’m looking for information about the City of Edmonton’s “Open City Wifi” program. I called 311 (Edmonton’s city phone number) and they sent me here for help. So I picked “Mobile” on the bot’s option because it was the closest option. But it’s not about Shaw or Rogers services.
Who do I talk to for that?

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:28 PM
Appreciate you sharing the details!
but that it’s out of my scoop!

Customer 05:29 PM
Ok.
I’ll try Shaw then, thanks for the info and for trying!

Mouad – Rogers specialist 05:30 PM
you welcome!
if there anything else?
have a great day!

Customer 05:31 PM
No, that was it, thank you and have a nice day

Some English as a Second Language level of support here. What an embarrassing exchange. Out of scoop indeed. With that plus their AI chatbot, Rogers is obviously involved in a race to the bottom in terms of enshittification in customer support. I did surmise from the conversation though that even two years after the merger between Rogers and Shaw, “Rogers” support and “Shaw” support are still more or less two separate entities altogether. I tried the phone number, but got put on hold for over half an hour — this was on Wednesday, and I ended up finishing the entire preparation for my aforementioned curry lunch/dinner/etc while on hold with this stupid company. After about 40 minutes or so I gave up and hung up and went to watch some group watch anime with Nak and Satinel instead, who were waiting on me with varying degrees of patience.

I did actually kind of get somewhere in the end with this issue though, because I also submitted a request on this page (local) out of frustration. A manager actually contacted me later on in the day (from an Ontario phone number…) and apologized for the mess, and then confirmed that Shaw did indeed manage that but that the Cisco block might be something on their end or might be actually something on Cisco’s end, which would involve an unblock request to be made from Jah‘s website host instead. He said that it was likely that someone had reported the website to somewhere or other in the past (possibly maliciously), although I also wonder where that was done as I had so much trouble trying to find out where to UNblock it. I wouldn’t even have been able to fathom where to start blocking an illegal site. It’s not like there’s a form or a report button that you can just use, and I have no idea what system Cisco uses for filtering.

Anyway the manager said he’d consult with his teams and get back to me, either with confirmation that they’ve unblocked it or with further instructions as to what to do if necessary to try to get it unblocked, but so far as of the end of the week I’ve received no further replies yet. I also had to email him the link to the site as I tried dictating it to him over the phone and he kept mistaking my A’s as E’s when I was spelling it out, even when I was saying “Apple! Apple!”, and that was distressing. The site apparently was blocked for him too though.

Oh well. In more positive news, the Rosyth WhatsApp group that was formed (and that I joined) back in August, consisting of people form my Primary 4-6 GEP class, had a meetup back in Singapore this week and they also invited Mr. Grosse, our old English teacher that I’ve previously written down some memories about here as well. There was a Zoom link for those of us that were overseas to attend too, but it was at something like 4am my time or something so it wasn’t happening. Regardless, the event ended up with him joining the WhatsApp group chat as well, and that was cool. Though it did mean that I had to go make introductions to him introducing my gender transition and all that.

I submitted my PSA claim for the year to try to get $1,250 from my workplace benefits. I used my Surface Pro purchase back in May to claim the entire sum, since that alone cost more than the amount that I could claim. I submitted it on Friday and haven’t heard back yet but don’t foresee an issue with it.

I haven’t really used that Surface Pro much, but it is one of the things that will be seeing a lot of use when I go overseas next February and March. I’ve still been feeling a nagging sense of guilt and danger on that for not having finished my planning and finalizing my hotels and tickets yet though, besides the very first and last plane flight. And added to that are things like not having fully prepared and tested the laptop for remote use yet. Instead I’m wasting? time playing games and such since this month has been such a bumper month for games. And I have so many other projects I want to get done before I go too.

Again, oh well. Forget all those worries and have some sky pictures instead, I say. Things will work themselves out in this case.

Thursday Oct 23, 5:39 pm. I thought I fancied seeing a hole in the distant orange clouds, and wondered if a swirling vortex leading to another dimension might spawn there.

Saturday Oct 25, 11:14 am. This one was bright and early in the morning (okay, I was up late last night, and wandered out onto the balcony with a toothbrush in my mouth) and the ground was still wet with rain as a nice wind buffeted my balcony door.

I noticed that Southgate Centre had again put up barricades at the bottom of the ramp leading up to the second level of this eastern parking lot, and I wonder why they do that. It seems to be a seasonal, or perhaps annual, thing. Very few cars even park up there normally though.