If you’re a parent (or grandparent) of young children, the first two items in this week’s column might interest you, as both involve that Christmas superhero: Santa Claus. Old Saint Nick or “shèng dàn lǎo rén” as they call him in China (the source of most of the manufactured gifts in his sleigh) will make his first appearance at the DRA Hall, 19053 County Road 24, on Saturday morning from 10:00 to 11:30.
An annual hit with the young’uns in the region, this free DRA event features Christmas-themed children’s games, refreshments, a story read by Santa and lap time with the Big Guy to reinforce those Christmas wishes. The DRA elves will even preserve the Kodak moment for posterity by taking a photo of your child with Santa.
To top off the morning’s fun, each child will receive a little Christmas present from the Dunvegan Recreation Association — thanks to the hard work of volunteer Mona Andre and the generosity of Maxville Home Hardware’s manager, Kelly Dickson-Zollinger. While there’s no formal charge for admission, a donation jar will stand sentinel by the door if you’d like to contribute to the DRA’s Children’s Park Fund.
St. Nick returns Sunday
In keeping with the venue, Sunday’s return engagement of Sinterklaas is a bit more subdued. Held at the Kenyon Presbyterian Church in Dunvegan, the Children’s Christmas Pageant will focus on the birth of Christ, celebrating the joyous event through music, readings and song. Following the service, refreshments will be served in the church hall and Santa will put in an appearance to wish young and old alike a very Merry Christmas. The service, and post-service fellowship, is open to all. It starts at 11:00 AM and usually winds up around 1:30 PM.
M&M… incroyable!
For the second year in a row, the DRA’s Christmas-themed music and comedy revue — “Music & Mayhem” — has virtually sold out. As of this writing, there are only ten tickets left! And that’s for the 2:00 PM performance on Sunday, December 10th. However, it’s expected these will be gone by the time the curtain rises. To inquire about the remaining seats, call 613-525-1336.
While I thoroughly enjoyed one of the dress rehearsals, it didn’t hold a candle to the premiere performance last Friday night before a live audience. The audience’s obvious delight with the show fed the cast and crew’s enthusiasm and, as a result, they delivered their very best. I envy the 300 folks who still have to see this year’s production for the first time. You are in for a real treat. As for the rest of my readers who were unable to find a ticket, I wish you better luck next year.
Thanks to the show’s director Rosemary Chatterson… her very talented cast and crew… and the Caisse Populaire Desjardins which sponsored the event. Together, they will have had a major funding impact on the St. Vincent de Paul Food Bank and its annual Christmas Hampers project.
A “crafty” fundraiser
If you wondered about all the parked cars at the DRA Hall this past Saturday and Sunday, they were there to ferry their owners to the Historical Crafter’s Fair. Jim Mullin, who organizes the event with his wife Shelley, reports that the little one-of-a-kind craft fair was a great success. “We had shoppers who drove from Ottawa, Manotick, Morrisburg, Chesterville, Perth, Pierrefonds, Hudson, Montreal, L’Orignal, Hawkesbury, Vankleek Hill and, can you believe it, Texas.”
As I mentioned last week, this gem of a craft fair is a fundraiser in support of the Dunvegan Recreation Association and, towards that end, the Mullins and their artisan friends raised an impressive $450 for DRA’s Children’s Park Fund.
Going forward in reverse
Because of challenges with two of our laser printers last week, I spent countless hours in customer support hell… that special place where every call is of the upmost importance and may be recorded for quality and training purposes. Right.
There was a time in this fair land when you called a technical support number and had a fair shot at speaking with a Canadian, or at the very least an American. The representatives at the other end of the line also used real telephones connected to the Trans Canada Telephone System by copper wires. So, even if they had a Texas twang or spoke in Newfie slang, you had a better than even chance of hearing what the representatives were saying.
Not so today. In addition to outsourcing the vast majority of manufacturing to the Far East, corporations have also shipped the customer support functions there. And to squeeze every last penny, they equip these ESL speakers with VoIP phones. That stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol”, a marvellous technology that takes us back in time, acoustically speaking. Past the crisp quality of the 1980s, past the lesser dynamic range of Bakelite phones in the 1920s, and the marginal tonality of wooden, wall-mounted crank phones… all the way to the tin can and string phones we played with as kids.
I challenge the people who dreamt up that “recorded for quality assurance” line to prove that this has ever once been done. If I had my way, I’d sentence the chief executives of these international corporations to three hours a day on the phone trying to converse with one of their CSRs in Kuala Lumpur. Just like I always wanted to pass a law that compelled the engineers who designed Montreal’s Metropolitan Expressway, or the Queensway in Ottawa, to drive it a hundred times a day… at rush hour.
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