Week Four: You Do The Math

Well Hello!

Canada is a country of hidden costs. Say what you will about the deceptive small print littering the UK, but at least the price displayed in a supermarket is the price you pay at the till. Unfortunately, that is not true in this place.

Apparently Canada is one of the few countries in the world where tax is not included in the price advertised. This is a real pain as $3 does not mean $3 – it means $3.21 or something silly like that. As a result, I find myself being weighed down by a pocket full of 1 cent coins and finding it increasingly difficult to get rid of them. Aside from tax, there are so many other things that you need to fork out for that you would not dream of doing so in the UK. For example, you are strongly obliged to tip anyone working in the service industry (including coffee shops, pubs and restaurants), you are charged for depositing/withdrawing money from your own bank account and charged to receive incoming mobile phone calls.

Just to illustrate this... If I went to a cheesecake shop and purchased a big slice of cheesecake; the amount I would end up paying would probably be about a dollar more than the advertised price:

Cheesecake display price: $4.00
Provincial Tax @ 7%: $0.28
Federal Tax @ 6%: $0.24
Obligatory tip @ 10+%: $0.40
TOTAL: $4.92

Also, if I paid for it using my TD Bank Card, I would quite possibly have to pay an addition $0.65 transaction fee.*

As well as all that, if I happened to take a shine to the cheesecake-waitress and discretely slipped her my mobile number; I would get charged whenever she called which presumably would be loads. Incidentally, there is a really irritating advert for a Canadian mobile phone tariff being displayed around Vancouver. The poster shows a stereotypical English policeman crying his eyes out in front of the Houses of Parliament. The accompanying quote reads “Unfortunately, you have to live here to get it!”. Oh yes, I'm sooo upset that I'm not being charged for people to ring me. Boo Hoo.

Canada's one saving grace in terms of money saving is a shop called Dollarama. Dollarama is a magical place, at least I thought it was magical until a few days ago. The store is the Canadian equivalent of 'Poundland' in the UK, except everything (obviously) costs a dollar and not a pound. At the current exchange rate, this would actually be '47p-Land'. I wonder if you can imagine what that would be like? Think about it – that's 2.13 times better than Poundland!

In Dollarama you can buy everything from cups to hangers. Sorry, that wasn't a very exciting sentence – I bet you were expecting something crazy like “You can buy everything from Antelopes to Xylophones!!!” But things like that are going to cost more than 47p.... Craziness has a high price; that's just the way of the world.

Anyway, a few days ago I popped into Dollarama to buy some shampoo (a detail which has nothing to do with the following story) and could not believe the offer I saw before me. In felt-tip pen on a scrap of old cardboard, I was informed that all the old Halloween candy was being sold for the ludicrous price of ten items for one dollar. And each item of candy was big – we're talking entire bags of chocolates, two foot marshmallows, variety packs etc. It was truly overwhelming. Just to do some quick number-crunching, it works out at $0.10 for each bag of candy. If a bag of candy contains 10 sweets, then that's $0.01 per sweet, in the UK, that works out at a half a penny per sweet! Wow wee!

I quickly filled up my shopping basket and took it over to the checkout. I had to double check with the grubby looking girl on the till that there hadn't been some huge misunderstanding. “You can't beat that value” she knowingly responded, but as she said it, I could have sworn that that there was a distant glint in her eye. It was very subtle but it was definitely there... a far off look, something lurking behind the blank stare of depressed tedium that I guess is required for the position of cashier at Dollarama. The customers in the queue behind me would not have noticed, I only saw it because I was looking directly into her eyes as she handed me a handful of 1 cent coins as change. Very strange. It wasn't until later that day that I realised what that look had actually meant; it was the twinkling of pure evil.

So, I took my ten bags of sweets back home and began eating. It was a long hard process. After two bags, in a display of uncharacteristic generosity, I offered to share my stash of sweets with Greg, my roommate. Fifteen minutes later, after he had polished off his first bag, he said “These are shit aren't they?”. But still we kept on eating.

I had to agree with him completely. The development team at the Halloween Candy Company had clearly put little or no effort into the development of flavour. Come to think of it, smell touch and texture didn't really have much going for them either. The only aspect of the product that satisfied me was the look. As much as I hate to say anything positive about them, the sweets did at least look like Halloween sweets; I mean there was a vampire, a ghost, a pumpkin etc. But to come up with those designs didn't exactly really require much thought or effort by the bone-idle employees in the Halloween Candy development team.

It was one of the most miserable periods of my life. After 5 bags had been demolished, I consciously acknowledged the fact I wasn't enjoying them - I was feeling bloated, sick and desperately needed to get a glass of water, but still I kept on eating. After another bag, I hesitantly had a look at the nutritional information on the back of the pack and guess what; 35 f**king calories per sweet! That's around 350 per bag, and after about 5 bags that works out at 1750 calories; 70% of my recommended daily calorie intake! And as if that wasn't bad enough, the list of E-numbers read like a record of car number plates registered in the UK in 1988 (thanks Wikipedia). As the evening approached, I found myself eating my way through dinner and on into the night...

On the second day, as we neared the end of our binge, Greg and I made an executive decision to throw the remaining two bags of sweets into the bin. Possibly one of the most important decisions I've made since moving here. The look in the eyes of the cashier at Dollarama made complete sense; these Halloween-themed sweets were capable of turning two normal people into fat greedy monsters (the irony of which, I hope was not lost on her). The lesson to be learnt here is that, yes, the best things in life are free, but the worst things in life are very cheap.

As usual, there are a whole bunch of photos in my photo album. Most of these were taken on a trip to Victoria (the capital of British Columbia) on Vancouver Island...

Fourth Week photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/chrischivers/TheFourthWeek
All photos so far: http://picasaweb.google.com/chrischivers

Take care

Chris

* Just to clarify some boring details - in a Canadian bank, you have to pay a monthly fee (about $3.75) and they kindly give you 10 free transactions per month. Once you have used up all these transactions, you are charged $0.65 per transaction. There is an account you can open where you have unlimited transactions, but of course you have to pay $12.95 per month.