Kris Tarr

I was born in 1974, so according to the Chinese horoscopes, I’m a Wood Tiger. To be honest with you, I have never really been  superstitious or believed in anything supernatural, but after a year like this… I don’t know what to think anymore.

According to a few horoscopes I was warned to watch out for a series of things, predicted that I would have my challenges in the year of the Ox and sure enough, I’ve had my challenges this past year and it’s still not over until the new year of the Tiger which starts on February 14, 2010.

So here is a recap of all the things that have happened to me in the year of the Ox:

Early in the year I was having trouble with my oldest daughter. She’s done some very bad things that made me ashamed of being her father. We had a bad argument and to make the long story short, I ended up in the back of a police car for about an hour to calm down. Since that day though, she has been an angel, so there was something good in that bad.

Soon after this incident my youngest daughter started causing series of problems and me more than just headache. She’s done damage to others which cost me financially. She almost got expelled and was ordered not to go to school for a while, so I had to stay home with her. This was bad because I almost got fired from my job because of it, and it was good because it brought us a bit closer together while spending a bit more time together.

My ex wife (the first ex and the biological mother of my children) got let back in the country not long ago. It’s sad to see how weak our Immigration system is since she was deported several years ago due to her criminal activities. Now that she came back, she started bothering us again. She knows where we live, she knows where the children go to school and where I work. I think that the only thing keeping her away from us now is that she knows that the amount of child support she owes me (which I would give to my kids to support their education) is so much (over $10,000) that if I reported her to the FMEP (Family Maintenance Enforcement Program), she would be either broke or put in jail so she probably would not want to risk that. She tried to reconnect with the children later in the year with some success. Our youngest spent some time with her, but our first born was not interested to see her. The youngest one even got a birthday present from her this year! The first time in 8 years! And the oldest one got a phone call from her to say happy birthday! That’s something, isn’t it?!

Commuting to work is a real challenge for me because I live 30kms away from my office. Taking transit is not really an option to me, so as silly as it sounds driving to work actually saves me time and money. It still takes me a total of 2-4 hours per day to commute, which I’m not getting paid for, especially not the hard work of fighting through traffic jams during rush hours every day. It’s a job on its own! As a solution I bought a motorcycle. I figured that even if I could not cut the travel time in half each way, at least I could have fun while commuting. It turned out to be a great idea! Because motorcyclists are allowed to use the commuter lanes (even alone on the bike) on Vancouver’s only freeway, I was able to cut my travel time down to 1-1.5 hours each day. This ended with an accident in September where I broke my knee, thumb and a few ribs. Not that I got out of it even, the insurance company (ICBC) found me 100% responsible for everything which was totally unfair since I was travelling on my vehicle by the book! So I ended up with a messed up body that needed work to recover. I had to take time off from work. Spent months working from home until I recovered. The good part of all this was that it made me realized that this job is not for me because I’m not going to move my family across town just so I could be closer to work and it’s not worth for me to spend this much time away in stressful commute every day. It was also a good thing because it made me realize that large corporations like ICBC take advantage of us, average Joes, so I better watch what I spend on what so it made me focus more on my expenses and make some changes, like: not keeping four vehicles insured all year around though I’m the only driver in our 6-member family. It was also a good experience because I learned that I only live once and that I better take care of my fragile body, which I was able to cure by a line of products provided by a company which I became distributer of. The opportunity to be part of this great company is a huge plus itself, so that is the only reason I’m not going to take ICBC to court.

Before ICBC delivered their verdict to me, I had to deal with a very unfortunate circumstance which involved my child to get raped. It was not only hard on her, but a shock on the entire family and our friends. Now, try to imagine how hard it is on a father who spent the past 10 years raising his children on his own without the help of their mother. What’s worse is that my daughter made all evidence disappear by accident, because she felt dirty after the incident and because she was ashamed of what happened to her. Now the police has very little to work with. The only good thing we got out of this was that again, I had to take time off from work which I spent with her and the rest of my family.

ICBC’s decision about me being responsible for the accident was a nice little Christmas present on top of all this. Which was topped with the death of a very close family member in January. My grandfather passed away at the age of ‘75 (almost five years after the death of my grandmother) due to complications of a surgery caused by an “accident” he had to suffer because of his roommate in the care center he lived in. My grandfather was a smoker since World War II and he maintained his deadly addiction until his death. He went out for a smoke to the balcony which his roommate didn’t like. Now my grandfather was a super-light guy, weighing only 50kg, which his roommate is over twice the size of his. He went after him to the balcony and pushed him so my grandpa fell and broke his leg. Broken legs at this age, especially high up so close to the joint don’t heal as fast, he had to have a surgery where his bones got bolted together. After a week physiotherapy, he got released from the hospital. To our surprise, the care center put him back in the same room with the same guy who almost killed him. According to whitenesses, he was beating my grandpa with his cane while laying on the floor with a broken leg. The next morning, my parents got a phone call from the care center that they cannot wake my grandpa up. He died a few hours later. As soon as I found out what happened, I was on the next flight back to Europe to help with the funeral and to see what I could do to help the police prosecute this roommate my parents used to bring home made lunch while visiting my grandpa while he was still alive. To my surprise, when I arrived my family told me not to make a case about it, because the care center and the hospital both failed to report the incident to the police and now we should just let my grandpa rest in peace.

While helping my family with the funeral, the very day before the funeral we got a call from the police asking where my grandfather’s body was. Turned out the care center decided to report the incident just two weeks late, right before the day of the funeral and now the police had to order an autopsy to investigate his death. We spent a long time sitting at the police station trying to convince the cops to drop the case so we could bury my grandpa. All we were able to accomplish was to bring up the autopsy to the next morning so the funeral could go on without interruptions. Of course we had to buy new clothes for my grandpa again, because the coroner did not care much about the new clothes we just bought for him. My grandpa was my closest tie to the country of my birth. Him and my grandmother were the ones responsible for my strong personality. This sad event made me remember that some say that I could even live on the back of an iceberg. During my 35 years, I’ve been down hitting rock bottom several times and I always bounced back. Sometimes I feel like nothing could ever hold me down for long, I could always jump right up and stand on my fees strong, thanks to my grandparents.

After I returned from Europe, I found out that a series of changes are happening at work which are not too favorable to me and others in my department, so I might have to look after other opportunities soon. The good part of this is that I will be able to make a lifestyle change sooner than I thought, which I’ve been planning to do for so many years.

With the old mobile phone contracts expiring around Christmas time, I bought new cell phones with new plans for my entire family. My youngest daughter is crazy about sports. During one of her wrestling games, when she was on trying to win a game, someone from the audience went through her bag and stole her brand new phone that was worth about $400 (almost $600-$800 new without a contract.) She was told that she will not get another phone from me again in case something happened to this one. So now she has no phone and I’m stuck with a one-month-old contract for 3 years! It would cost me $400 to get out of it. The police declined to investigate and directed us to the phone company to ask them to do something about it. All they did was temporarily disabled the SIM card and marked the serial number of the phone banned in their system. It means nothing to us: my daughter still has no phone, a replacement card would cost us $40, I’m still paying the $80 monthly fee and the phone with all of my daughter’s personal information is with someone that should have no right to have access to any of that.

My step-son on his way home from visiting his father celebrating his birthday, while he was on the phone with her sister and crossing the street under a green light, got hit by a car. The driver of the car would not even care to help him up or apologize. She was calm when she told her to “come on kid, you can walk” or something like that. While his sister came down to help him at the scene of the accident, their father’s new wife basically robbed her. She took $120 and a debit card from her purse while leaving it in the kitchen. This wasn’t the first time she got robbed like that. While she lived with them for a few months, her citizenship card and brand new passport disappeared a very mysterious way. The same black hole made my step-son’s previous cell phone disappear before which he got from me for his birthday. All these bad things make us realize a bunch of things about others and ourselves, so I guess it’s not all bad.

Yep yep… And the year of the Ox is not even over yet. Not until the 14th of this month. By the way, am I the only one seeing a pattern here? It seems that there is something good in everything that happens to us. It’s good to see the balance.

I did not intend this post to be my way of whining about all the bad things that have happened to me  during these past twelve months, but an interesting observation making me think if there is anything in Chinese Astrology. I wouldn’t mind if those books about the year of the Tiger were right, because they all seem to say that this will be good year for me: promising plenty of opportunities, wealth and even health if I will take care of my body. If they’re right, all I have to do is stay strong and I will fly right through it coming out with lots of positive things at the other end while having fun during the flight.

I wish you all (not only tigers) a successful new year full of health, wealth and happiness in the upcoming year of the Tiger!

I have heard of so many horror stories about ICBC (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) I thought I’d share mine with you here. In case you don’t know who they are, this is what I found about them on their web site: “The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is a provincial Crown corporation established in 1973 to provide universal auto insurance to B.C. motorists.”

My story starts with my job in downtown Vancouver where I have to commute to from Coquitlam. Because of the traffic jams during rush hours (like so many others, I have to drive in rush hour so I could make it to work on time and back home after work) the commute takes about 45-90 minutes each way. The reason I drive to work instead of taking transit is that it would cost me the same monthly and would take me just as long (and driving gives me some flexibility in case I would have to leave urgently to take care of family matters etc.) Driving to work outside of rush hours takes only 30 minutes. It can take even less than 30 minutes if I could take the highway driving in the commuter lane, but I don’t have any coworkers living close by, so that’s not an option for me. Spending so much time in traffic each day makes my days very long. I have to leave early when my kids are still in bed and I get home late after dinner time or if I’m lucky, I get home right on time for a late dinner…

As a solution I figured, I should buy a motorcycle which I could drive on the highway. I would be allowed to ride it in the commuter lane alone. This could save me hours each day. I found a nice and not too expensive bike, got the gear for it and gave it a try. Thinks went pretty smoothly for several months, until one day on my way home from work I got hit by a car. This is how it happened:

On September 1, 2009 around 5:00-5:30pm , I was travelling east-bound on 2nd Avenue in Vancouver. It happened as I was approaching Main Street on the first lane from the curb (which is open in rush hour – meaning that there is no parking allowed there.)

As I was getting closer to the Main Street intersection (which I’ve done countless times during the years of commuting) I had to slow down due to the bend of the road on 2nd Ave right before the intersection, so I could see the colour of the traffic lights. Though the day was sunny, a few drops of rain were falling onto the pavement so I had to be especially careful (because the driver on a bike – a two-wheel vehicle with no metal cage around him could fall easier and could get injured more seriously than in a car.)

When I got closer to the intersection, I was able to see that the lights were still green, but as looking back at them after looking around only about 2 seconds later, they just turned yellow. Because I did not want to fall, I decided to cross through the yellow, just like the book says. To make sure it’s safe for me to cross, I slowed down to about 20-30 km/h and was driving through the intersection. But as I was going through I noticed that one of the drivers could not wait for his light to turn (he was probably about to race with the car on his right who I later found out from him was an old buddy of his) and jumped out early. I honked to let him know that I’m still coming through. I tried to stop, but it was too late. As his car jumped out, it hit me on my right leg and stopped almost immediately.

The 500-pound bike tipped over to its left side and my left knee pushed a dent into its gas tank; and as the right side of the handlebar got pushed under the hood of the car that hit me, the thumb on my right hand popped out. Beside the broken left knee and right thumb, I also got a couple of broken lower ribs on my right side and bruises on my right leg where the car hit me.

As people were rushing to help me, I pulled my broken leg out from under the bike and popped it back in place. I stood up, felt no pain due to the shock so with the help of others I started standing up the heavy bike. After I pushed it away from the middle of the intersection, four witnesses came to me asking how I was doing. I thanked them for their help and told them that I will be fine. They were worried that the driver of the car just left me there, but he came back just a few minutes later. As soon as he got there the four ladies (my witnesses) gave me a bus ticket with their names and phone numbers on it and wished me luck.

The driver asked how I was and asking “dude, what happened?” He repeated it several times, probably because he was in shock too. Soon an ambulance came and asked me how I was doing. I felt no pain so I told them that I will be okay. A minute after they left a police car came by as well. When the driver of the car saw them he said “oh man, we really should not involve the cops in this! They don’t like me, if you know what I mean.” I found it strange, but for some strange reason I felt sorry for the guy, so I didn’t tell the police anything about it. I told them that “…all’s good,  we’re just exchanging insurance information…”.

My bike was not drivable, so I had to call my cousin for help. He arrived shortly after the driver of the car left. After arriving home and dumping the bike on my driveway, my cousin said that because I couldn’t walk anymore and because my knee looked pretty bad, I should get that checked out. At that point I was unable to bend my left leg at the knee so I could not drive. He helped me into his car and took me to ER at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster where I had to sit in a wheelchair because I was able to move less and less as that knee was swelling up. There, they did some x-rays and called me in for a CAT scan a few days later.

There my cousin told me that I better get myself proper representation because when a friend of his got into an accident the insurance company (ICBC) took advantage of him a very bad way (the words he used to describe his friend’s case would be inappropriate on this blog.) So as soon as I got home from the hospital, I started reading up on this and found lots of complaints about ICBC handling other cases. As I was searching, loads of ads came up on Google all related to ICBC cases. Most of these were from lawyers. So I decided to give one of them a try. The next morning I gave them a call and made an appointment for the same day. I told the lawyer everything, the way it happened, just like I typed it down here. I also give him the witness information from the bus ticket those ladies gave me as well as the photos of my bike and the photos of the car that hit me which I took right on the scene as well as some photos of my injuries and a map of the intersection illustrating the accident in slides… He told me that just leave the case with him and that all I should do is just go home, report the case to ICBC and find myself a doctor that could start treating me. Once I have all that, I should just follow my doctor’s orders and everything will be fine.

I did everything as he said. I called ICBC’s report a claim line and an adjuster got assigned to my case. I told her everything how it happened and gave her the witness information as well. She said that she will mail me a pile of documents for me to review, sign and return. When I received the package from ICBC, I called my lawyer to make sure it’s OK for me to sign those documents. He said: “Do not sign anything! They already got a letter faxed and mailed from us telling them that we are representing you, so they should deal with us from now on…. You can give them the signed salvage release form so they could tow your bike away.”

A couple of days later, I got a call from Mrs. Wing (the adjuster assigned to my case from the ICBC Coquitlam claim centre) asking me about those documents, whether or not I had a chance to read and sign them. I told her that though I read everything, I found differences in the transcript of my testimony that I gave her over the phone and that I have not signed them because my lawyer advised me not to so she should be in contact with him. That second on, the tone of her voice changed. All of a sudden the nice adjuster was gone. Wow, it was shocking how suddenly she changed her tone of voice! From then on every time I talked to her she dealt with me like if I murdered someone.

In the mean time I started physiotherapy and my ICBC adjuster sent an estimator to visit me and come up with a dollar value of the damages on my motorcycle. The number was around $2000. The insurance company sent me a letter explaining that they will cover some of the physio costs. I didn’t care much about that since I wanted to get better, so I went every single time for a series of 16 sessions. Because of the massive amount of muscle loss, the therapist recommended more treatment, so I had to go back for another series of 16 sessions.

During this time, one day I received an email from my lawyer asking me to give him a call right away. I called him and he said that they talked to the witnesses and two of them said that I went through a red light. I told him “…but I didn’t! Plus, I don’t understand how those two witnesses who were friends sitting in one car were able to see my red light from the angle they were looking at while waiting for their green to go two cars behind the car that hit me?!” Another witness said that I entered the intersection slowly and then she heard someone honking. I was entering the intersection slowly to make sure it is safe to cross and to prevent my bike skidding to avoid an accident and I was honking when I saw the car jumping out in front of me.

Several months passed by, but nothing seemed to happen about my case, so I called my lawyer to find out what’s going on. After a few tries, I was able to reach his assistant who said that I should talk to the ICBC adjuster, Kathy Wing about my vehicle, since my legal case has nothing to do with that. So I called my adjuster though I was terrified to talked to her because I thought she would eat me alive over the phone. To my surprise she was pretty calm this time. Maybe it was the horrible cold she was fighting with that day or who knows, maybe she wasn’t mad at me anymore because she already figured out how to end my case. To my question about the damages on my vehicle she replied like this “Krisztian, you need to talk to your lawyer. I cannot talk to you.” Then I answered “But my lawyer said that I need to deal with ICBC directly about my vehicle, since they only handle my personal injury claim if there will be any.” Then she said it again “You have to talk to your lawyer. I have nothing else to tell you!” and then she hung up.

To my surprise, a couple of days after this conversation (way too quickly in ICBC time, based on my experience with them during the weeks and months of delay between each conversation before), I received a nice little Christmas present from ICBC in theform of a letter saying that they found me 100% at fault and that’s the end of it. The same day my lawyer called me telling me that he is sorry, but this is the end of our case, he cannot represent me any more. I asked him if there is a way to appeal this decision and he said that there might be, but that will only start an internal investigation at ICBC where they review my case again and make a decision, but in the end only one person could tell me if I was right or wrong and that’s a judge. I guess this is how he was trying to tell me to take ICBC to trial which of course would cost me tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and years waiting for a resolution of this case. I do not have any faith in the ICBC appeal process since, ICBC is a corporation in the business not to help people but to make money. I paid ICBC over $20,000 during my 11 years of relationship with them. During this time I had no accidents or claims that were happened because of my fault, though a couple of guys bumped into me from behind and I just let them get away with it since the deductibles are so high here in BC that it would have not been worth reporting. I.C.B.C. What a great business they’re in, eh? And if the rate of accidents or the amount of money they have to pay out (to injured people like myself) each year would go up, they would just raise their rates, and not only to the people who were at fault in each of those accidents, but to all of us, ICBC consumers. Since they are the only insurance company in BC that sells this mandatory vehicle insurance and deals with claims, they have no competition to deal with, so they can keep the prices as high as they want to.

So what should I do now?

Let’s see what my options are:

• Stay with my lawyer and take the case to trial?
• Find another lawyer and see if he could do better?
• Appeal the decision and trust another ICBC employee to handle my case fairly?
• Forget about the whole thing and move on?

I know that most ICBC employees would suggest me to go with the last option, since they are getting paid (I heard very very well) for keep their system going.

What’s your opinion? I would really like to know.

Thanks in advance and sorry for making you read so much.

My family found out about how much I love my new HTC Dream so each of them wanted one too.

I decided to get them each different android based phones, so I would have a chance to test phones running Android on different hardware.

One of these phones is the same as mine, the HTC Dream, but white. I gave it to my youngest daughter as an early Xmas present. She just couldn’t wait until Christmas day to open it, so I had to let her unpack this one present early. Yeah, I know… I’m spoiling her. So right after I picked up the phones from Wireless Wave and brought them home, she just jumped on it before I could start wrapping it. When she opened the box, the micro SD memory card was already in it as well as the SIM card which I found strange, but then I thought the guys at Wireless Wave just saved us some time by putting it all together for us. But when we turned the phone on, we found out that the phone was locked by some one at the store. I called them right away, but they offered no help at all, just asked me to call Rogers customer service for help. Nice service, guys! More »