Isn't It a Shame?

I'm down the New York again this week - the weather has been gorgeous, and I've been eating like a king since getting down here. I'm staying at a Holiday Inn, and am secretly trying to rack up enough of their "Priority Club" points in order to earn a free night stay for Laura and I back up in Canada. Normally you get 10 points per dollar( hotel room is ~$200 / night, so 2k points per night, 4 nights, 8k points) - you need about 15k points to get a free night though....so I scoured the internet and found all sorts of different "Bonus Codes" for different offers - stay 3 consecutive nights get 3000 bonus points, sign up for the email newsletter get 500 points,etc. I'm crossing my fingers ; )

I was a little surprised and confused yesterday when I was heading out for lunch with my coworkers - one of the guys in the elevator had a big black smear on his forehead. Zuh? We got out of the elevator, and 2 guys who had been waiting in the lobby for an elevator also had black smears on their forehead. What gives?

That's when it clicked - Ash Wednesday. Some of you may not have ever heard of "Ash Wednesday", some of you will be all over it, but most of you are probably like me - moderately aware of what it is, but moderately oblivious to the whole thing.

I was mildly embarassed when my friend asked me "So...what IS ash wednesday?". Easy - its the start of Lent. "Nono, like, what's the point. Why put an ash cross on your forehead?" "Uhhh...ummm....". I've gone to church for most of my life, but didn't have a clue. So I looked it up after lunch, and thought I'd share Wikipedia's blurb on it.

For me what was interesting was to see the number of people who had the whole ash thing going on at work, during the day. I always used to wash it off right after church, but I guess you're actually supposed to leave it on all day. I easily saw 15-20 people at work, and another 25 or so while on my way home from work which was new for me and not something I'd ever really previously noticed.

I head back to Toronto tomorrow night and am heading out with Laura to see Simon's sisters in action with this U of T med school musical saturday night! Should be fun.

Also, check out The Dolphin Olympics. My high score is 1.3 million - beat that Chimon San!

Simon is one lucky puppy - he landed Air Canada's North American Flight pass. What does that mean? Chimon can fly as much as he wants, anywhere in north america, for two months....for $400.

I on the other hand have had not so much luck with Air Canada. Laura and her family go to Florida in the winter to a place called Sanibel Island. Laura is going down for 5 days and, although she initially invited me down, flight here pretty expensive I'd have to take a few days off work, eating into my very limited vacation time. So, I said no.

Then, last week Air Canada had a seat sale! $99 fare each way, makign the All in cost a very reasonable $300. Laura turned up her charm, and before long I was convinced. Now I just needed to get approval from work - from the client, and then from my company which can take a couple of days.

Thursday rolled around and I was getting anxious about the seat sale ending on me...I decided to book even without approval, and was even at the part of the process where I'm typing in my credit card info - but my 'session' on air canada timed out...THREE TIMES. So I gave up and decided to wait until Friday / approval.

Well, friday rolled around and lo and behold all the necessary emails were in place. Hop on to Aircanada.com to book my tickets...whaaat!?!?! $300 each way!?!?!?! Add taxes, and now we were looking at $450 MORE than the day before!? Rather than $300, $750!? $750 is a LOT of money for a quick little pop down to florida on friday fly back on tuesday.

In a total panic(how the heck do I break this to laura!?) I scour the web - westjet has halfprice sales to everywhere in floriday EXCEPT Fort Myers. Expedia, travelocity, itravel2000....nothing. The best I could find where connecting flights. After 2 hours of frantic investigation with help from coworkers, I finally decided to cough up $250 plus an extra vacation day and fly down the Friday morning on AC, then for Tuesday night I found a $125 US airways connecting flight going through charlotte(6 hour flight vs 3 hours direct). Total cost - $460, about $180 more than the original. Needless to say I was pretty pissed off at myself.

But this is the kicker, this is what put this over the top. This is really rubbing it in. This morning...ALL air canada flights to fort myers, $99. ALL of them! Even the ones that LAST week weren't $99. So it's like there was this ONE DAY window where they tripled their prices, and that just happened to be the day I bought my ticket.

What a grift - and to think, for the same price, Chimon has cashed in 10+ flights around North America. Methink this whole airline thing is such a game - a game I'm not very good at.

This probably won't interest most of you, but I got a good laugh out of this. Walmart has apparently avoided paying approc 350 million dollars of taxes over the past couple of years by paying themselves rent.

In a nutshell, Walmart, the parent company, sets up 3 subsidiaries, A, B, C.

A is the actual store, which will pay taxes on its profits. To reduce profits(and hence taxes), A pays rent to B. B turns around and pays dividends to C, which are non-taxable because B is a REIT. C hands the money back to A, again tax free because C is a subsidiary of A.

If only I could devise such a devious plan to avoid paying taxes.

Okay, not really. But I *AM* on the interwebs.

As some of you may know, Ontario will be holding a referendum on the subject of electoral reform in Oct 2007. The question that will appear on the ballot is as of yet to be decided, but more likely than not, the Citizen's Assembly that has been chosen will likely propose some form of proportional representation.

Our man Dalton however is talking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to electoral reform. On one hand, he claims to support the idea. On the other, he has decided to set the bar at 60% of the vote in order to pass the referendum. This is not only a difficult milestone to meet, but is also a very uncommon practice - virtually every major referendum in Canadian history has had a 50%+1 threshold...if Dalton was serious about change, he'd set the bar at the lowest reasonable thresheold(50+1), not an artificially higher one.

Anyways, the real point of this post, the part about me being famous, is my submission to the Citizen's Assembly, with my recommended solution. Read It Here.

I'd encourage all of you to take a look at Billy The Ballot to find out about what types of systems are used around the world. Then think about what kind of system YOU would like to see used in Ontario.