Jason's Notes About Stuff

You may have noticed that we tend to apologize a lot in Canada. Much to my benefit, this has led to Canadians being viewed as very kind and polite, all around the world. As a proud Canuck, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You see, "sorry" in Canada may not always mean what you think it does. Imagine the following: You're visiting Canada and shopping for groceries in the local store. A woman ahead is blocking an entire aisle with her shopping cart. Another woman walks towards her, stops, looks at the cart and says, "Oh, I'm sorry." The first woman realizes she is in the way, and replies, "Oh, I'm so sorry," as she moves the cart. The both smile at one another and continue shopping. You think to yourself, "Wow, what a kind and decent society. These Canadians are so polite!" Now, the secret translation: "Oh, I'm sorry," actually means, "Oh, I'm sorry that you're blocking the enti...

"My job is not to make you happy." "I'd appreciate if you talked less with your hands. I find that very irritating." "Maybe if you talked less we'd get along better." These are some wonderful quotes from Daryl Ashby , a local Pemberton Holmes real estate representative in Victoria, BC, during our final move-out inspection. As we pleasantly greeted Daryl, he gave us with a scowl, telling us how this type of inspection  "wasn't his job."  It seems that through a scheduling mishap, they had forgotten about it until the last minute. Our moving day, already a difficult time, was made infinitely more stressful by his sour demeanor. I found his attitude and statements both astounding, and confusing. Real estate is typically a field that relies on referrals and references to survive. 8 months earlier, we had a similarly rude , aggressive experience with his real estate agent daughter Cheryl Ashby . The place was in horrid...

My fiancee Melissa and I recently moved from Victoria, BC, Canada to the island of St. Kitts and Nevis . This small island of about 30,000 people is in the Caribbean aka. the West Indies in the Lesser Antilles , and more specifically, the Leeward Islands . What's different? It's hot. Hotter than when we visited Cairns, Australia. But perhaps not quite as hot as when we lived in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand. Things move slowly. As with most hot places, people are in no hurry. Posted business hours are only a rough suggestion of when people may  be in the office. Accomplishing anything requires multiple trips. Keep left! Similar to the UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, they drive on the left side of the road. What's the same? The language. Sort of. The official language is English, and everyone is fluent, but most people also speak a local Kittitian dialect . Colonial origin. St. Kitts was once a split British and French colony -- the same as Canada....

The first time I sold everything I owned was 2009, when I moved to south Texas for four months as an experiment to see if I could run my consulting business remotely. The second time, Melissa and I knew that we were only staying in Toronto for a year, so we bought things cheap and knew we'd be unloading them soon. This time was a bit different. We had planned to stay in Victoria many years, so we were buying the "good stuff" -- things we planned to keep and enjoy for a long time. That made selling everything a bit more difficult for us. Not to mention, It's always a big inconvenience, of course :) I'm working from a coffee shop today because I sold my work desk and chair yesterday. That said, we've been given an absolutely amazing opportunity that we'd be crazy to turn down, so onward and upwards we go :) Nearly everything has been sold now, and we're counting down the days until our week-long stopover in Kitchener to visit friends and ...

Before moving somewhere, I always do a lot of research into the geography, climate, politics, etc. Today I found an interesting fact -- according to the CIA world factbook , Saint Kitts and Nevis has one of the highest public debt to GDP ratios in the world. It's right up there with Greece, Zimbabwe, and... Japan? It's also interesting to note that the top 25 on this list include usual suspects like Iceland, Portugal, and Belize, but also some more surprising entries like Singapore, the UK, and Canada.

Note: This is a guest blog post from GrumpyOldMan123. Dear younger generation, As many older generations have done before, I humbly offer you some sanctimonious , unsolicited advice. When you encounter a minor obstacle , never, ever make any effort to find a solution by yourself. If you can't immediately find someone else to solve a problem for you, don't even consider researching it on your own. Instead, amuse yourself with distractions . Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all great resources for this. If anyone asks you about the problem, complain loudly that you "just can't figure it out," and ask "why is this so hard?" When you suffer the inevitable consequences, be sure to explain how you were "going to do it eventually," and say: "It's not my fault!" And rest assured, this attitude has no adverse impact whatsoever on your career and personal life . You're still entitled to the best of everyth...

Dear Toronto, Your streetcars have always caused me a lot of grief. First, their schedules are so inconsistent . You don't see any for a half hour, then there's like 3 in a row. Second, they're slow. Like, really slow. The east-west routes on busy streets are often much slower than walking  at times. Third, they're dangerous . You often have to cross a lane of traffic to board and disembark, so you risk death quite a lot. These problem have existed for decades, and nobody seems to care. Meanwhile, the main east-west routes (ie. King, Queen, Dundas, etc.) could be fixed tomorrow in 3 easy steps. 1. No street parking on main routes. Toronto is not (supposed to be) a pissant little rural town where you just drive in and dump your car on Main Street to visit the General Store. The never-ending stopping and parallel parking causes so many problems, it's ridiculous. This is supposed to be the downtown core of a "world class" city. Park t...