Newcomer finds the right word
Anubhaw Anand on Pexels
By Mridula Goyal
Watching the television series Homecoming recently, I was reminded of an incident from our early days in Canada. Finding it hard to land a job in his field, my husband Satish had taken up part-time employment at a coffee shop.
An engineer by profession, this was not something he’d imagined he’d find himself doing in Canada, but like many newcomers, we found that one does whatever it takes to pay the bills and put food on the table when savings begin to run low.
It was not an easy period for any of us and made particularly hard for him by a mean supervisor who seemed to delight in picking on him for no reason.
One evening Satish came home looking really upset. The supervisor had yelled at him on the floor in front of other employees.
I consoled him as best as I could but was very upset myself and burst into tears while describing what we were going through to our neighbour Wendy when she dropped in with a plate of freshly-baked cookies the next morning.
She put the plate down and gave me a hug. “Oh, honey, the guy is a tool,” she said looking equally upset.
I had heard that the word for crisis and opportunity is the same in the Chinese language. Wendy is of Chinese origin, but was she really trying to tell me this was an opportunity?
I was even more upset at myself for breaking down in front of someone who could only come up with platitudes.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re saying the horrible supervisor can be used to lead to better things?”
Wendy looked surprised.
“No, how? What do you mean? How can you use him to fix things?”
“Well, you just said he was a tool, didn’t you?” I said, thinking this conversation is going nowhere.
“I did. But tool – jerk, not a tool that you use.”
Wendy was looking very worked up now.
I had to tell her I hadn’t known that meaning of the word.
So why did Homecoming remind me of this?
In it, a character is upset with her colleague. Her friend describes him as a tool.
“Yes, yes, I know he’s a jerk,” says the character.
“No, he’s tool that you can use to change things,” says her friend.
I called Wendy the next morning to tell her to watch the series!
What’s your story? Every newcomer, no matter how savvy or where he or she comes from,
has a story to share about their early days in Canada. Do you want to share your story? E-mail it
to us at canadaboundimmigrant@rogers.com.