February, Wednesday 4, 2009

A day I will never forget:

"Shopping with Denise is Deadly!!!"

You can quote me on that! After shopping with my wife for winter boots, we came away with a total of 6 pairs of shoes!! I know that women love their shoes, but this was a bit overboard I think... considering that half the shoes were mine (he he).

The spoils:
Denise: 2 winter boots + 1 hiking shoes
Colin: 1 winter boot, 1 dress shoes + 1 matching hiking shoes.

With all these new shoes, one would think that we're ready for some serious Christmas mall walking... but we didn't buy any running shoes!

Are you in the Medical Field?

Sunday was not a very good day for us. My uncle who had come all the way from Scarborough by public transit to visit us had a very unfortunate and bloody accident.

Here's a breakdown of what happened:

- Around 3pm, a neighbor (I did not know it at the time), was frantically ringing our doorbell to tell us that an old man fell around the corner from our street and that he was bleeding pretty badly. Since my dad had gone to pick up my grandmother by car, I kindly dismissed her and pointed to a few other Asian households in the area.
- After closing the door, it clicked that typically when my grandmother comes to our house, my uncle would as well. It was too eerie of a coincidence to not go take a look, so I dropped what I was doing, put on my shoes and ran out.
- I was surprised how many people were out on the street, even if the weather was great. As I rounded the corner a few other neighbors tried to explain the situation to me and how the old man kept saying he was going to the end of the street (my street). Then I saw him, sitting on the cable box, with another good Samaritan holding a towel to his head and applying pressure.
- I arrived at the scene, a bit shocked at the amount of blood. After getting updates from the the good Samaritan (the neighbor who rang our doorbell), I calmly asked to borrow a cell phone to call home to tell them to gather my wallet and keys so I could go with my uncle to the hospital in the ambulance.
-The ambulance people arrived, bandaged my uncle up and off we went; the ambulance staff were pretty quick, but I think they could have done a better job trying to stop the bleeding. all they did was put some gauze on and put a tight bandage on his head. The bandage wasn't very effective on stopping the bleeding.
- Next 5 hours were spent mostly in the triage room at Credit Valley Hospital. While for the most part the staff were kind, they were probably not very effective/diligent at their jobs. For the most part, they gave me the vibe that they were blue collar workers who were waiting to punch out (their time cards).
- Other thoughts that I had while I was waiting with my uncle:

• How can they let someone with an open cut to the brow, visibly still bleeding sit in a triage room for so long?
• How can a hospital that big have only 3 emergency doctors on staff, and worst of all, how can all 3 be in the same emergency room?!
• Why did the nurse who took us to a room clean his wound, then tell me to hold the the gauze to his cut? I wasn't even wearing latex gloves and have no medical training. I waited for about a minute till the doctor came, and had to wash my hands of blood.
• Nurse: "Do you work in the medical field?" Me: "Nope; I work in telecommunications." Nurse: "...". Maybe I should have been freaking out instead of being so calm? Blood doesn't bother me at all.
  
• Why did the doctor keep fumbling with the stitching? At one point me dropped the scissors!! That's when he told me to call the nurse (to get a fresh pair of scissors). The nurse (the same one who hold me to apply pressure) was just sitting at the reception desk!!! WTF?!!

The whole turn of events were very unfortunate; hopefully my uncle will have a full recovery soon. I really appreciate the help that our neighbors provided and I will write a letter to the city to cite them for a citizen's award.

Call me Cheapskate

I have been contemplating unburdening myself from my monthly cellular telephone bill for a long time now, and moving to a different area code was the perfect catalyst for switching to a prepaid plan.

The reason to switch to prepaid was to save money, and the requirements were GSM and WNP. I already had my mind set on switching to Petro Mobility for its minimal cost (only monthly cost is $0.99 for E911), ease of topping up, long balance expiration, and features included. Also, the purchasing the prepaid phone (perhaps the only negative, as you cannot simply buy the SIM card), comes with a starting credit of $5.

As I did with my parents, who rarely use their cell phone, it was a simple cost benefit analysis.

They had a monthly plan with Telus, 200minutes for approximately $30/month. I analyzed their last six months of bills which showed that at most 15 minutes were used (including accidental calls when the keypad was not locked). Assuming that their phone usage doesn't change, this amounts to a monthly cost of 15minutes * $0.20/minute + $0.99 = $3.99!! That's a $26/month saving! When I actually purchased the phone, it came with another $20 airtime bonus as well.

In my case, my monthly bill was at least $90/month, and while I typically did not exceed my monthly allowed minutes, I did rack up quite a few long distance minutes. I also love to send SMS. Now that my living situation is different, I expect a significant change in my LD habits. Assuming in prepaid terms that I will spend $10 on SMS and $80 on local calls, I can talk for 395.05 minutes (6.5 hours) and send about 200 sms.

So far, I have topped up with $20, and we'll see how the savings come along over the next few months.

So why call me cheapskate? Well, since I switched to prepaid, My fiance has caught me rejecting her cell phone calls (she's on Petro Mobility too, so I effectively wasted her 20 cents), and penny pinching at the takeout counters.

I'm well on my way to becoming a grumpy old man :)

"This is your Captain: Our plane has crashed!"

... pandemonium ensued, followed by a free-for-all the escape the firey wreckage. I lived to tell the tale.

Okay, so the sequence of events for my return trip back from Calgary didn't quite happen like that, but the fact is, our plane did crash.

We had just backed away from the terminal when all of a sudden, there was a complete loss of power. We were calmly informed that due to the outage, we would have to return to the terminal and repeat the start up sequence all over again. That's right, our plane crashed and had to be reboot. Well that would have been okay, as the airline industry is laden with protocols for our safety. What is unsettling is the fact that the reboot attempt resulted in another error, and the solution was to reboot again?! WTF. Were they using an operating system that shouldn't be used in a mission critical vehicle?!

The kicker
The pilot returns to the airwaves: "Thanks for your patience, we had to program the plane." Scary.

2-Bagger... cool

Lately, I've been trying to be more serious in my investments and have been reading up on various financial magazines and sites. I'm happy to say that I've finally managed to find some multibaggers. All I have to learn now is some good profit taking techniques.

Faith in Mankind Restored

Once in a while, something happens to you that revives your soul, and your views on life are renewed with the crisp morning dew.

Such an event happened to me this morning, a morning that started like any other: groggy. As I prepared to rush off to catch my morning train to work, I noticed that one of the last things I usually put on, my watch, was not where I expected it to be. Atypical of normal scenarios where I misplace less important things, it quickly dawned on my where I had left my watch... AT THE GYM THE NIGHT BEFORE!! I went through a roller coaster of emotions, thinking it was exactly where I had left it, pondering if anyone had actually reused the very same locker as me, what it would cost me to buy a new watch, having to toss out the manual for the now lost watch. As fast as possible, I had made my way safely to the gym and parked my car in a 15 minute parking spot near the entrance. I ran in and quickly flipped through the locker (that I had used) and the adjacent ones... gone. It was gone. Sadly, I had succumbed to the fact that it was meant to be, and it was my fault for leaving it behind. As I walked past the check-in counter, I hopelessly asked the attendant if there was a lost and found. I think the conversation went something like this:

Me: Is there a lost and found here? Any chance that anyone turned in a watch...
Attendant (with a strange degree of alertness): Sure, what are you looking for?
Me: A Casio watch with a silver band.
Attendant (walking over to a drawer, making some indiscriminant searching noises... then I hear a familiar rattle of my watch band has he turns around): Here you go; someone turned it in this morning.
Me (in a wildly relieved voice): Wow... I can't believe this... its amazing! This is amazing!
Random Patron: Yeah, that's pretty amazing!

Well, there you have it. Sometimes, people have goodness in their hearts and a $250 watch will not sway their honesty.

I'm forever grateful to the honest patron. I will remember to do unto others...