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Aug
28
Three Years
Filed Under Being Canadian, Life, Vancouver | Leave a Comment
It’s the morning of the flight to Canada and everyone’s up early. A new life beckons.
Running out of space. A dash to Maidstone for another case.
The taxi is late, the M25 is stationary, there’s a fire alarm at Gatwick, but we’re on our way.
Forms stamped by immigration, “Welcome to Canada”. A new beginning.
Week 1. Hotels, motels, apartments, bank accounts, Social Insurance Numbers, cell phones, schools and a house sale that fails.
Months go by. Kids in school, a move from Vancouver to Burnaby, networking, letters, doorstepping, discovering that being an Apple Tech is not for me.
3 weeks money left and the UK house sale finally completes. Sigh of relief.
Five former Essex schoolkids share a beach on the Shuswap. Surreal.
Invest in a house. Burnaby to PoCo. No income, but once again mortgaged.
Full time work so close yet passed over for a local despite the verbal assurance. Frustration.
Level 1 insurance agent. Relentless pace, long days. Short lived.
The big break, back in to the green world, someone’s taken a gamble on me.
And suddenly it’s 3 years.
Time to contemplate citizenship.
Aug
15
Steveston cycle ride
Filed Under Life, Scenery, bike, riding | Leave a Comment
Steveston is a quaint village in the south west corner of Richmond that has some great cycling along the sea front; and cycling was the order of the day.
What to do on a searingly hot Sunday morning? Air conditioned mall? Nope. Relax by one of the numerous lakes around here? Nope. A 3 hour round trip on the dykes to the west and south of Steveston? Check!
Steveston as a settlement has been around since the late 1870′s and became renowned in the area for its Salmon canning. There’s still an historic cannery in the village, but it seems that today the big earner is tourism and, in particular, whale watching tours from the likes of Seabreeze Adventures.
However, this trip was more about 2 wheels and sight seeing rather than getting in to the local history. Steveston is around a 45 minute drive from PoCo, so bikes were thrown in to the back of the car as I certainly wouldn’t be riding there, as much as I love cycling. Rather than head downtown Lesley and I decided to park a few Km away near the west dyke recreational route. 
Which reminds me, these British Columbians adore getting outside whenever the sun shines. Walk, cycle, skate, board, whatever it takes to get mobile, BC’ers will do it. It makes it virtually impossible to live a couch potato existence here as one is just shamed in to activity.
Our route took us along the west dyke and in to the village proper. The views are, just like most views here, pretty spectacular,.With the mountainous northern vista’s to the beautiful blues of the Gulf of Georgia to the west and south, the scenery is the complete stress buster. 
Arriving in the village, the relaxed pace changed to serious speed as we’d happened across the inaugural Steveston Sockeye Spin. A multi-lap 900m circuit around the downtown area provided some additional entertainment before the ice cream stop beckoned – it was after all, very hot work watching the real cyclists.
Our ride continued along the south dyke until we decided to loop back and take a quick wander around the street market. The market is very much a farmers and artisans affair and I’ve never seen so many local organic coffees on offer in one place.
I can thoroughly recommend the ride, it can be as vigorous or as relaxed as one wants to make it as the route is flat, very flat and even though we didn’t tackle the complete dyke circuit, it was smashing morning out. I’m certain that we’ll be back to finish of the missing sections of dyke another day.
All the pics are on my Picasa site. Sorry iPhone/iPad users, the slideshow is Flash based.
Jul
24
A chance to get out on the Ducati in the brilliant sunshine led us to Stave Lake near Mission.
Lesley hasn’t been on the back of the Ducati since last summer when we took a couple of trip to Fort Langley on the old Albion Ferry. As the sun was shining we decided to head out to Stave Lake, just to check it out.
The journey was well worthwhile as we ended up at yet another stunning lake location within 40 minutes of home.
The site is part of the Stave River hydro-electric project and is essentially a reservoir that has a dam for generation, leading in to Hayward Lake reservoir and Ruskin Dam. The whole area seems littered with these hydro created recreation areas and people take full advantage of easy access to the water towing mainly speedboats to launches and simply chilling out on the lake. With the mountain backdrop it’s easy to see why messing about on boats is so popular here.
Bike wise, the Ducati performed flawlessly and there’s power to spare even with 2 up. 
The only downer about these rides is ending up at the destination in jeans rather than shorts. Having said that, it never ceases to amaze me to see so many bikers out in T-shirts and shorts. Maybe I’m just too risk averse (wimpy) to do it, or maybe I just know my limits.
Having chilled whilst others launched and landed their boats we headed back for a delicious Gelato at Matteo’s. The Dine Here reviews say it all. Great Gelato, great people.
Life in BC – brilliant.
Sorry iPhone and iPad users, the slide show is Flash, but you can view the full set of pics on Picasa
Jan
25
Delivering the goods
Filed Under Life | Leave a Comment
We’ve recently purchased a package of white goods and discovered how inefficient some companies can be.
After a year of holding off we finally bit the bullet and ordered a new fridge, cooker (stove/range) and dish washer. The whole process really highlighted some of the differences between purchasing these types of goods in Canada and in the UK. Boring, I hear you say, but bear with me.
As a corporate eco-warrior part of my brief when looking for white goods concerns energy efficiency and water consumption. The Energy Star label in North America makes it relatively easy to identify more efficient appliances, however, there’s still a need to actually check the probable energy use as similar appliances can be a couple of hundred KWh apart in terms of annual electricity consumption, yet still both have the Energy Star label. Walking down an aisle looking at the A-G ratings in Comet seemed much easier. As for water consumption, don’t even try and identify how much will be used, and the sales staff just give you a blank “Why on earth would you ask that” look if you ask the consumption question.
Back from the digression. Having made the selections it was time to start the horse trading. What reduction could I negotiate. The answer was not paying for delivery, and that was fine as it saved $100. I even agreed to wait for the cooker to come back in stock and have all the appliances delivered in one go. Easy. Or so I thought. I received a call from the Brick delivery folks advising me that my fridge was ready for delivery. “But what about the stove and dish washer?” “They’re not in stock, we’ll call you when they are.” I’d like to take delivery of all 3 appliances at once please.” The response was along the lines of there’s only 2 fridges left, if we don’t deliver it you could lose it. Reluctantly I agreed to have the single item delivered.
On the day of delivery I received a call from the Brick delivery folks. “We have your stove in stock and would like to arrange a delivery.” “That’s good, I have a fridge being delivered today so……” “I’m sorry, we can’t do it today the earliest is…..” “Okay, I have a dishwasher as well, can the stove wait until…..” You know what’s coming!
So, having negotiated away the delivery fee I’m now taking 3 separate deliveries of appliances. I can’t help feeling that that’s somewhat inefficient and probably adds to the running costs of the Brick. Oh, wait, they charge for delivery, so that’s okay then.
I love being in this country, however, it’s these little things that trip me up from time to time. Inefficient, well, yes, I think so.
Aug
11
Canada doesn’t want my blood
Filed Under Life | 2 Comments
Despite being a blood donor in the UK for many years, Canada doesn’t want my blood.
In 1999 Canada decided not to accept blood from potential donors that had spent more more than 3 months in the UK since 1980 due to the unproven possibility of variant CJD being transmitted through donations. This precautionary approach was also applied to France and other Western European countries.
The blanket ban on Western European blood has been reviewed and renewed several times since the original decision was made and in 2004 a statement was made after a second possible transmission of vCJD was reported in the UK. [It seems that there has been at least 4 possible cases of transmission through transfusion up to 2008]
The Canadian Blood Services current information is that no donations are accepted from people meeting the criteria on their indefinite deferrals list.
Since 1997, the Public Health Agency of Canada has reported some 971 referrals for suspected vCJD with the UK reporting 2500 referrals since 1990 (which would include the transmission through transfusion cases). The figures do not seem to me to be significantly higher, especially when one considers the UK population is almost twice that of Canada.
So, I can understand why the precautionary principle has been adopted but it still leaves me feeling annoyed that despite what appears to be a very, very small risk, the blanket ban remains and I cannot give blood. Obviously I would not want anyone to be infected with vCJD, but I wonder what the odds of being infected with vCJD are next to, for example, being involved in a car crash?
Apr
16
Rip off Canada
Filed Under Cars, Life | Leave a Comment
We recently had an issue with a door mirror on the car which led to a perfect example of how “rip off Britain” can be equalled by “rip off Canada”.
Unfortunately, whilst backing out of the garage, a door mirror was snapped from it’s mounting by someone other than myself. The car, a Ford Focus, has exceptionally cheap door mirrors in the North American market. Whereas the Euro models come with a hinged fitting, locally, the door mirrors are just mounted in a single moulded piece of plastic, which of course makes them very vulnerable to any impact.
So, what would be the cost of a replacement fitting? It was time to trawl the web. Surprisingly, most of the on-line sources were from south of the border. However, with a price of $40 US, I wasn’t complaining, even after the exchange rate adjustments.
I then thought that I may as well try a local scrap yard as the prices for used parts must be even better. Imagine the shock of being told that a used door mirror would set me back the princely sum of $125 Canadian. The guy at Ralph’s wasn’t bothered that I could source them on line for around a third of the price – take it or leave it.
Having recovered from the shock I wondered what the price of a new part would be so I phoned my local Ford dealer. A brand new item would be around $175 including taxes. The used fitting from Ralph’s was obviously a bargain!
Time to head back to the virtual world. Things became a little more awkward at this point. A number of suppliers south of the border would not ship international, so no delivery to Canada. I did find a couple of places that had a work around that doubled the price, however, it would still be less than buying used from a scrap yard.
How about Canadian on-line suppliers? Having got fed up being on hold for ages and only getting through to voice mail I finally spoke to a person at one supplier who advised that the mirror would have to come from their US warehouse and would be $111 US. So, that would be $111 for the $40 part then. Great.
Hmm, back to the drawing board. I then thought about checking out UK suppliers as the replacement fitting would be hinged, but I then remembered that the concave/convex issue would mean the mirrors would be the wrong way around. Ah, we have friends in Germany, maybe that would be the way to resolve the problem – right mirrors and hinged. Prices were certainly higher than the US part, but still not as expensive as Canada.
In the end and despite thinking it wouldn’t work the damaged fitting was super-glued back together and amazingly enough it’s holding out. Should I need to replace the part, I’ll probably head south for the day as I can probably still save money even after fuel, food etc.
So, Canadian consumers, why are you letting yourselves be ripped off like this?
Jan
14
Credit Card skimmed
Filed Under Life | 2 Comments
My Credit Card has been skimmed and I’m trying to figure out if I feel personally violated. I’m also thinking about what I could have done to prevent the skimming and what I need to do to protect my card from here on in.
Despite me being very careful with my card, a copy has been made and someone has been on a spending spree to the tune of $2-3,000. However my bank noticed the questionable transactions very quickly as they were all on the opposite side of the country, in Ontario. More importantly I’m not financially liable for fraud.
So, do I feel violated? Around 15 years ago I had my wallet stolen from a zipped coat pocket that was on the back of a chair whilst I was at a motorway service area. That was the first and only time I’ve suffered that kind of robbery and it didn’t feel good. When you add in the hassle of cancelling cards, changing bank accounts etc the whole theft thing becomes very time consuming as well as leaving a feeling of having one’s personal space invaded. Something personal had been taken without my knowledge.
This time it’s different. I still had possession of the card, nothing had been taken from me, except in some ways, part of my identity. Someone was using my name to make fraudulent purchases. In some ways that’s the thing that bites, the thought of my name being used for criminal purposes. That’s where I feel violated.
Could it be prevented?
The thing that’s really irritating is that the UK introduced chip and pin to credit cards nearly three years ago and the same system is only just starting to roll out in Canada. Chip and pin would probably have prevented the fraudulent transactions on my duplicated card as the user would not have my PIN. Okay, unrelated, but banks out here routinely apply account charges, do not offer interest on current/chequing accounts and cheques still seem to be widely used. I guess that the cost of fraud has to be recouped from somewhere and that generally means the customer. In other words, I have issues with the Canadian banking system as it seems somewhat lagging the UK standards for security. However, it’s all I’ve got to work with and so it’s one of those culture shock things that immigrants must go through.
Mind you, it even seems that chip and pin security can be compromised as this article in the Telegraph discusses. Having said that, the scam was a highly organised crime.
What can you do about card fraud?
What can be done to minimise the risk of having your card skimmed? Simply keep it in sight during personal transactions. I can only think of 2 instances over the last 6 months where I let my card be taken away to process and that may have been my downfall. Other things such as actually checking statements can help identify issues, but to me the best form of security is keeping the card in sight. Okay, online transactions are another matter and all I can add there is make sure that you’re on a secure site before punching in those valuable card details and of course, keep your PC malware free, especially windoze machines.
If you want more information on how to minimise the risk of card fraud, visit the Canadian Bankers Association.
Learn from my experience, not your own
What have I learnt from the experience? Well, despite being careful, it would seem that I haven’t been careful enough. The new card will not be leaving my view when transactions are made.
