Karate: You need to learn it from someone who knows how … Sensei Kiyohide Shinjo instructs a young student in his Okinawa dojo. And you start by learning how to tie your own belt, without any help from the premier’s office.A little bit of travel can really put Alberta in perspective for a student of politics.
Consider this: When your faithful blogger departed Okinawa for his home in Alberta yesterday, it was already today and Ken Hughes was still the unsuccessful Progressive Conservative candidate in the Calgar
y West riding.Now that the Alberta Diarist is back where he belongs and it isn’t tomorrow any more, for a few more minutes anyway, Mr. Hughes is the successful PC candidate in Calgary West, just as God and Alison Redford intended. (Enough talking about yourself in the third person – Ed.)
Talk about stepping through the looking glass! Is Shiraz Shariff still the nominated Tory candidate for Calgary West in Japan and Australia?
There wasn’t much Canadian news in the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan, not as I noticed anyway, being busy practicing karate, eating raw fish and drinking awamori, as I was a lot of the time, including on one notable occasion at a police station with a large group of cops. (Interesting departmental factoid: you can’t get a job as a constable in that jurisdiction without a black belt in judo or kendo, but you can train for your karate black belt in the station gym.)
The only Canadian political story of any note on the Internet was about how some federal political party, by coincidence also called the Conservatives, apparently stole the last federal election by redirecting Liberal voters in provinces other than Alberta to new polling stations in North Dakota or somewhere.
I’m not clear on the details, because either my leg or my head was hurting or I was out of breath. But I’m sure that if it had happened in a country that didn’t have the stamp of approval from Foggy Bottom, Minister John Baird over at the Apartment for Foreign Affairs would already be announcing sanctions and getting ready to yank the ambassador.
When I’ve figured it out, I’ll probably have more to say about this.
In the mean time, just be thankful that we live in a place where, if the wrong candidate happens to win, everything can be made right in the blink of an eye, and where the wrong party never loses an election, so there’s no need for electoral fraud, no matter what.
4 comments:
Welcome back. Time travel can have a disorienting effect (no pun intended), especially when combined with raw fish and high spirits.
I like the fact that the Okinawan police force are all black belts, especially if the philosophy of the discipline is adopted too.
Get some sleep. The robocall, non-robo misdirecting calls and a couple of very interesting in-and-out and harassment of senior citizens incidents reported by Le Devoir in Quebec are just starting to ferment and mature. They should be just about ready for tasting by the time you've recovered from the time warp effect.
Welcome home Karate master.
I know Filostrato means well but I doubt that you will be able to recover from the time warp once you look at the the Robocall event now in the theaters near you.
As tempting as it is to initiate a debate as to whether or not "black belt" is an actual rank in kendo, I will leave that and also welcome you back.
The saddest part of what you missed was that all media outlets equated the vicileaks matter with the robocalls.
That telling the truth about someone (truth known and talked about by all media elite, but deigned too delicate or salacious to let hoi polloi in on) would be considered as evil as telling lies is a sad state of affairs.
Mr. Harrigan is, as usual, correct in the matter of black belts and kendo. In fact, regardless of rank, everything those guys wear is black, even their weird big pantaloons. But you can only make fun of them when you're not in range of their razor-sharp swords, or even the bamboo ones. As for Mr. Beca's kind words, alas, the quality of my karate abroad proves I am no master.
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