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It was while working at a Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada that the author met many American contractors who specialized in nuclear contract work within North America.

These men and women jokingly called themselves Nuclear Whores and the website in which they found work was called http://www.roadwhore.com/.

According to the online ‘Urban Dictionary’, a Road Whore is defined as: “A temporary worker from out of town. In engineering and construction, road whores seek out and find massive bonuses, high pay rates, hazardous duty pay, per diem, housing allowances and any form of premium remuneration”.

These new friends taught him the ways of the contractor and he soon began a life as a nuclear contract engineer, moving from project to project around Ontario.

Soon after beginning his life as a nuclear contract worker, the author met and fell in love with a news journalist while doing improvisation at Second City in Toronto.

Three years later they got married. A year after that they gave birth to a son.

Unfortunately their love was short-lived. It ended two years into their marriage while living in Kincardine, Ontario while working under contract at the Bruce Nuclear Facility and she was home with their son.

One day, she packed everything including their son and moved to Oakville leaving the author in Kincardine, all alone.

Like many parents who suddenly find themselves inthis position, the author was surprised when told he was not an equal parent of his 1 year old son, but was what his divorce lawyer referred to as a “Secondary Parent”.

As such, he was not allowed to talk to his son whenever he wanted or to see him whenever he wanted. He had to fight to see his own son, and this took time.Without his boy in his daily life, he couldn’t eat, sleep or work. He was absolutely devastated.

After a few days, he went to his family physician who was immediately concerned for the author’s well‑being. This country doctor suggested a personal remedy of his for overcoming difficult times; he told him to concentrate all his thoughts away from the negativity of the present to the funny, happy stories of his past. He suggested trying to relive these memories, by recollecting them through painting, writing, songs, etc...

So, he wrote.

Each day, he concentrated on one funny, true story from his past. He would think about it for hours at a time, sometimes all day, and then would write it down. It took 42 days for the author’s lawyer to get visitation permission to visit his son in Oakville and in that time he wrote the stories that compile this blog.






Missing Uranus



I had just started a new contract in Pickering for an engineering company working for OPG.

Having worked a couple of years in the industry at this point, I already knew a few of the people in my new group.

The people I knew arranged for my section to take me out to lunch to welcome me. It was fun. Old memories came up of previous projects and good times over the past years.

As we were all laughing and having a good time, Abdul said to me with a laugh, "You know Max, you should thank Jamal. If it was not for him, you would not be here today!"

Jamal then laughed and got up from his seat, picked up his glass and made a toast in his broken English, "Max, I do not mind admitting that I am glad I missed your anus"

Everyone broke out into laughter as this apparently was an inside joke. They were laughing and smiling and patting me on the back and so I just smiled and nodded, having absolutely no idea at all what was going on. I just told myself to be happy I was working again.

It was two weeks before I found out that Jamal and Abdul had both wanted someone different to fill the vacant position at work. The boss hiring didn't care which person filled the job and so he left it to them to decide. Abdul wanted me and Jamal wanted someone else.

They settled this one lunch over the quiz at the back of one of the city’s newspapers, which incidentally is normally meant for kids. The question of the day was to name all the planets in our solar system.

Yes, Jamal missed Uranus and that is why I got the job.

You cannot imagine the relief that instantly washed over me.

The whole two weeks I was under the impression that Jamal had made some weird sexual joke during his toast my first day.

Jamal was completely oblivious to any other connotation of his words. Although he did wonder why I had been keeping my distance.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seeing as you're ETL, you should have understood =P

June 22, 2007 at 1:01 a.m.

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