Alberta vs. Berlin · 8 November 07
I received this email from my buddy Geoff Berner yesterday and thought I needed to share it with the 3 of you who are still reading my blog from time to time.
I just came back from Alberta, Canada. They’re using 5 barrels of fresh water to get every barrel of oil out of the ground, but at 100 bucks a barrel, by God, they’re gonna get it. There’s money to be made, and jobs to be had, if you can find a place to live, which you can’t. Nowhere for the homeless to go, and winter’s coming on. Fun!
Meanwhile, because there’s so much demand and nowhere to live, there’s a huge labour shortage there. This means that nobody will come to fix your plumbing or electricity, because the tradespeople are all busy on the rigs.
This has led to the revival, in Alberta, of jokes about the unavailability of electricians, like the ones I first heard told about Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I always loved those jokes about how the electrician never comes, and to think I’d hear them in 2007 in Canada, for entirely different reasons!
The best part is the fact that it’s probably the same East German electrician, now emigrated to Canada, who’s still not coming.
Good old Geoff. When he is not talking crazy, he only speaks the truth.
[ File under: Polictics & Foolishness ]