Waiting Around for "The Waiting Room"

The other day, I went to see the documentary "The Waiting Room" on an assignment for my journalism class.

Ironically enough, I spent about half an hour waiting around in another kind of waiting room - the lobby. Not only was the line simply moving slowly, but once I started getting close to the register... The till broke down. Eventually she started taking the people who had debit, so I was able to get in, but I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. Regardless, I ended up getting into the theatre about fifteen minutes late - thankfully they held off starting the movie.

Educationally, I thought the documentary was interesting and thought-provoking, though a little lacking in detail.

Being someone that doesn't know very much about health care systems (particularely the American one), it would have been nice to have had a little more information provided. Not saying that I would have liked a big, boring monologue describing it, but maybe just some woven in facts, statistics, comparisons to other states, and such would have been nice - just to give me a better idea of what was happening on a larger scale.

I think the most interesting and shocking thing I learned was with the man who had bone spurs. His wages were far, far below minimum wage, his daughter and grandchild was living with him, and he had his health problems.

What probably struck me hardest was not just the fact that he had to pay for his consultation there - which would be "free" here in Manitoba - but that he went to the hospital, waited all that time, only to find out that they couldn't do anything for his bone spurs but give him pain killers.

Also the fact that the coverage the man could potentially receive was based on income was rather sad, knowing that the man likely did not have enough income for either of the proposed options.

I have to say, knowing that as long as I have my health card I can go to the doctor for a check-up is a great comfort to me.



Film-wise, I found that the documentary was put together well, considering the material.

I liked that everything was incredibly personal - none of the patients really seemed like they were being interviewed. Rather, it seemed like they were simply having a conversation. I found this to be a lot easier to connect to, in a way. It felt more real.

Also, by having a well-balanced focus on the nurse, the film was given a nice comedic relief. Not enough to be a mockery, but enough so that it wasn't just straight depressing.

On the downside, I found some of the structure to be a little confusing. For example, near the beginning of the movie, we were shown a few shots of a man who had hip problems. But then he just disappears from the movie. Same with the man who had a bullet stuck in him. I understand that the movie could not include so many entire stories, and that it was showing the range of people that are stuck in this waiting room, but I would have had a bit of comfort in even just having a shot of them finally getting to see a doctor or something.

I also found the final scene with the man who had bone spurs a little weird. There was one shot they had of him talking to the nurse. Other shots of him just standing there looking stressed were cut in between. I liked the effect of this, except for the fact that the conversation audio just continued as normal over-top of the shot changes. I found this distracting from the conversation, as I was busy realizing "wait, he isn't actually talking in this shot". In this way, I found that the story got a little lost in the art.



Overall, I found the film to be alright considering the somewhat dry (though always headline-making) subject manner. They had a good balance to the content of the film, and I enjoyed many of their artistic decisions - such as the music (or lack there of), the stories they chose to focus on, and even some of their obviously art-directed shots.




Some sources I used ;;
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/publicationdisplay.aspx?id=2147484001
http://lois-laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-6/page-4.html#docCont

Back To Bass-ics

On Tuesdays, I normally hang out with my boyfriend - but yesterday he cancelled on me because he had homework and stuff to do around the house.

So, I had no idea what to do with myself. Obviously I had homework I could do, but to me, Mondays and Tuesdays are like my weekday relaxing time.

Some time after finishing my tooling around on the school Macs, I recalled how my boyfriend is always pointing out songs we listen to in the car that I should learn the bass line to.

This is because, as you may or may not know, I actually have a bass guitar. A Squier Jazz Bass, to be exact. Metallic blue. It's my baby.

I got the guitar for I believe my 13th birthday. Maybe 14th. I cried.

Now, don't think that I'm one of those people that gets a guitar, thinks they're going to become a master guitarist, then never looks at it again. I actually practiced on it a lot, and self-taught myself a number of pieces of songs and one full one. But after a while, I kind of fell away from it.

When I met my boyfriend two or three years later and he found out I (sort of) played bass, he began constantly prodding me to play for him. But, being that he's pretty skilled with a guitar himself, I was rather shy and embarrassed to show him my mediocre skill. So I continued to look away from my bass.

Until now.

Thinking about things I could potentially do yesterday, I decided to text my boyfriend to ask him what the names of some of the songs were that he wanted me to learn. Eventually, he suggested "Barbarism Begins at Home" by The Smiths.

There wasn't a lot to learn for the song - the same line is repeated throughout the piece, then changes slightly right at the end - but the tricky part was getting the speed. It made me really happy to be playing again, although I will really need to cut my nails unfortunately.


Today, I leave you with a video of The Smiths.

Live, Laugh, Learn!

Hello everyone!

I have a new blog, as you can see! (Here is my old blog)

My old one has recently begun falling apart on me. The initial idea I had for the blog was to have it focused on my art, and my experience in learning and teaching others about it. But it was simply too narrow - I found myself wanting to write about a number of other things instead, but then trying to refrain from it.

So I came up with this instead. A much broader passion of mine is simply learning. I've never been much of a "Yay, school!" kind of person - not many people really are - but I simply love to learn. I love experimenting with baking, I take dance classes, I want to get back to teaching myself to play my bass guitar, my drawing, and of course my schooling at Red River College.




Currently what I'm working on figuring out is how to use my fancy Canon Rebel t3i camera that I recently bought for myself. Although I'm doing pretty well with it so far, I'm still working out bugs with taking wide shots, as some I took with my friend recently turned out not-so-well. Close-ups on the other hand, I have down pat. I am also starting to experiment with the HD video feature, which I will be practicing with during my pole dancing classes.

Today, let's end of with a most-delicious photo of some vegan banana bread!