Archive for

May, 2008

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May 30, 2008 3:07 PM

Give what you can

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by    in General

Giving to charity is usually a good thing but there are times when I’m weary to donate. I’m all for giving to a good cause but I don’t know if my donation is going to be used for the right reasons. I don’t want to have to worry about donating and finding out that the money is going to pay for some guy’s new car. I want to have a peace of mind knowing that my donation is helping out someone.

Bad charities are giving the charity sector a bad reputation. There are always people out there who will take advantage of the generosity of donors. It’s sickening to hear that there are charities out there that will retain eighty percent of the donation for themselves to help pay for fund-raising.

Charities should be run by volunteers whose time is valuable yet should not need compensation. They should enroll people on a voluntary basis to ensure that there’s no corruption. Give them a certificate of recognition or a pat on the back or something. Giving them something of monetary value is a bad idea because it could possibly lead to them getting greedy. I would like to give most people the benefit of the doubt and believe that most of them are not corruptible but they’re only human.

There are a lot of people in Canada that donate to charity, so much that there should be some sort of agency that will look after the charities. In the US, they have charitywatch.org to help them weave out bad charities. They are the watchdog who research and evaluates charities from across the country to ensure that the money donated is being used wisely.

In 2006, Canadians donated $8.5 billion which is a lot of money. Donors would hope that their donations are going towards a good caused but if charities are using part of that money to pay their workers, how much of it would go to the people who actually need it. Money can corrupt a lot of people and it takes a strong willed person to not get sucked in.

I’m not immune to it either. I don’t donate to charity out of the goodness of my heart. I donate to charity because it means a higher tax refund. Does that make me a bad person? On one hand, I’m helping those who are in need but on the other hand, I’m only doing it because it benefits me. I don’t donate to just any charity though. I actually pick the one that I think will have a greater impact on the needy. So far, I’ve only donated to a few charities: Make Poverty History, the Terry Fox Foundation, and the Canadian Red Cross

I plan to make more donations this year but I haven’t set a specific amount. I tried to contribute $20 per month if I can afford it. It might be easier if it was deducted from my pay cheque before the money gets deposited into my bank account but as it stands, I’m already losing a large chunk of my salary to taxes.

Money is tight these days so not too many people are able to donate. I hope that when they do donate, it’s for a good cause. I’ve heard of people donating but they’re not actually donating anything but on paper it looks like they are. So in the end, they’re not actually doing any good.

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May 28, 2008 4:06 PM

Star of Bethlehem

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by    in Nature

1/200 sec | f10 | 55mm

I found these flowers in my backyard. I didn’t even know they were until they started blooming. They were growing out from a plant that looks like green onions. Their stems looks similar to those of the daffodils so I assume that they were daffodils at first but they’re too small. They could be from the same family but I wouldn’t know.

Edit: I found out the name of this flower is Star of Bethlehem. Thanks Bob!

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8:07 AM

Popcorn ceiling

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by    in General

The renovation of my bedroom is still an ongoing process. My friend and I managed to get the drywall up and screwed in place. Now, it’s just a matter of taping the seams together and patching up the wholes. After soon I get that part done, the quicker I can start with the painting. But there’s still another obstacle in my path, the stucco ceiling. It’s taking a long time to do it but fortunately there’s a little trick.

The trick to removing stucco or “popcorn ceiling” is to spray it with water. I was searching every for this trick but I was looking up the wrong term. I thought the term for this type of ceiling texture was “stucco” but apparently, it’s called “popcorn.” As soon as I started searching for popcorn ceiling, there were a lot of hits.

I found one video where someone was just scraping off the stucco and it didn’t look like he was applying a lot of force. In another video, there was a female person scraping off the stucco and she too wasn’t applying a lot of force. I’ve been working on it for a couple of days and it took a considerable amount of force to scrap it off. And another thing that I noticed was that no one was wearing a face mask. From the looks of things, they didn’t need one because everything that they scraped off was falling straight to the floor instead of floating in the air.

When I was scraping off the stucco, the larger chunks fell to the floor while the smaller particles floated in the air. After watching the video, I knew that I was doing something wrong. I searched around to see what exactly they were doing to make their job seem so easy. I read the description of the video and it said that they sprayed the ceiling with water and vinegar.

At first, the water and vinegar solution didn’t quite make a lot of sense because I had assumed that the ceiling was painted on and didn’t think you could water down the paint to help make it come off easier but sure enough, the water did the trick. It took me a couple of days to get a small section of the ceiling cleared but with the water solution, it took only a matter of minutes.

After removing the stucco from the ceiling, I found that there were a lot more cracks than I had anticipated. I assumed that there would be cracks behind the areas that were cracking but it was worse. One part of the ceiling was so badly cracked that a chunk of it fell off as I was scrapping the stucco off. I’m not sure how this piece managed to stay on this whole time. It’s a good thing that it didn’t fall and hit me while I was sleeping.

I had to cut out a 2′ square piece from the ceiling and replace it with drywall. Since I’ve had so much experience with drywall already, this procedure was a piece of cake. After sealing the edges with drywall compound, the hole was as good as new. Once I get on a fresh coat of paint, you wouldn’t even know it was there.

I’ve also managed to finally put up the drywall to replace the wall that I took down. It was a bit of a pain because the originally was slightly curve. When I screwed the wall in place, I could see that the wall went off in an angle. This caused the baseboard to be slightly off as well. In order to fix that problem, I’d have to remove the baseboard and have it replaced. The next problem that I’ll run into is finding the exactly same design. This is an old house so it’s going to be pretty hard finding pieces that will match.

So far, I have run into any problems that I couldn’t find. I just had to make sure that everything is planned out so that I won’t have to do extra work in the end. I’m about done with everything and there are some minor details to work out. I’m hoping that I’ll be ready to paint by the weekend so I’ll be spending a lot of time sanding down the walls and prepping it for paint.

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May 27, 2008 7:46 AM

Dandelion clock

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by    in Nature

1/320sec | f5.6 | 200mm
I’ve never know what these things were called but apparently they’re called Dandelion clocks. When I was a little kid, I found it fun to grab a bunch of these and blow on them or run with them so that the little pieces fall apart and float around in the wind.

But this particular plant looks slightly different. It’s more cotton like then most of the Dandelion clocks that I’ve seen. I’m not even sure if they’re called the same thing.

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May 26, 2008 8:12 PM

Webster’s Fall: Revisited

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by    in Travel


The last time that I visited Webster’s Fall, I had a 2MP digital camera. This time around, I’m equipped with a much better camera and a better understanding of photography.

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May 23, 2008 8:31 AM

Stop your whining: Price comparison

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by    in Rants

When I got home today, there were some flyers waiting at my door. I get them every week and sometimes I’ll go through them to see what kind of sales they have one. But today, something else occurred to me. I decided to see how much other things are compared to gas. So we’ll start by having gas at the same rate as I saw them this morning, $127.3/L.

I’m going to try and find things that aren’t on sale because gas is hardly ever on sale so it’s only fair to have the playing grounds leveled. I’ve selected a few liquid items from various of stores and compared them to gas and the results are pretty interesting.

  • Bottled water $1.29 – 591ml = $2.18/L
  • Large coffee $1.45 – 473ml = $3.07/L
  • Heinz Ketchup $3.69 – 750ml = $4.92/L
  • Listerine $4.79 – 500ml = $9.58/L
  • NyQuil $11.99 – 295ml = $40.64/L
  • White out $1.61 – 20ml = $80.50/L

After seeing things from a broader picture, it kind of hard to complain about the price of gas since it seems a little cheaper than most of these other liquids.

2 comments!
May 22, 2008 12:23 PM

Stop your whining

3 comments
by    in Rants

As gas prices continue to soar, commuters will continue to bicker and whine. It’s kind of obvious that gas prices aren’t high enough since people are still driving when prices are supposedly too expensive. I drive when I can walk but I’m not complaining that the price of gas is up. I simply make an observation about the price and note it down. There’s no point in complaining about it because the gas companies aren’t going to do anything. It’s the commuters that will have to make a stand if they don’t want to pay.

In my opinion, driving around is a luxury but at the same time, it’s also a necessity. If you need a car to get you from point A to point B, that’s a luxury. If you need a car because it transport not only yourself but also your tools, that’s a necessity. If the thing that you’re doing has an alternative to driving, it’s a luxury for you to drive. But nothing is black and white here. It’s all in the gray area. You can argue that one thing is a luxury but someone else will argue that it’s a necessity. It all depends on where you stand. For me, it’s not always necessary to drive to place and I can easily walk or take the bus.

At the moment, the price of gas has jumped to $127.3 which is the highest that I’ve ever seen it. There’s a good chance that the price will continue to climb as we get closer to summer, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve come to the conclusion that whining or complaining about the price of gas will do nothing to lower it. For me, price is getting pretty expensive and I can’t keep wasting my money at the pump. The only thing for me to do is to stop driving and start walking.

There was an email that was circulating the internet informing people of how to get the gas companies to lower their price. It said something like, don’t go to the major gas station like Petro Canada or Esso but instead go to the smaller gas stations. Obviously that’s not going to work. The smaller gas station cannot handle the amount of demands there are for gas. I think that people go to certain gas stations for convenience rather than price. If Esso has gas for $1.20 and a smaller station has gas for $1.18 but is located a little further down the road, there’s a chance that the Esso station will get the business.

At the moment, I don’t think that the price of gas is expensive enough because if it was, people wouldn’t be paying for it. There’s a certain price that people are willing to pay for something but that price for gas hasn’t been reached yet. People who drive gas guzzling vehicles don’t’ care how high the price of gas is since they can afford it. And people who can’t afford it will have to make do with what they’ve got. The government isn’t going to help with lowering the prices. We have oil fields in Alberta that gets sent to the US to be refined which the US sells back to us. Why not get rid of the middle man and build a refinery in Alberta and avoid extra costs.

A coworker of mine was in Egypt for vacation and he told me that gas prices were as low as $0.25/L. It’s so low over there that drivers don’t even bother to turn off their cars when they stop to get out. Leaving the car on rather than turning it off and then on again is better for the car anyway.

There are projections that the price of gas can go as high as $1.50/L. When that time comes and people are still driving around, that tells me that they’re will to pay even more for gas. So in the end, nobody has the right to complain about gas if they’re not willing to do anything about it. And people who are doing something about it, have no need to complain at all.

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May 21, 2008 10:37 AM

Road trip: New York

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by    in Travel

My trip to New York City was an exciting but long trip. Our plan to stay up and drive to NYC over night wasn’t such a good idea. Everyone was tired by the time we got there and we didn’t have much time to do anything. The weather was great for the first day but then it rained a little on the second day. Other than that the experience was a great and it’s one to add to my books.

Our trip started at late Friday night. We wanted to leave town and get to New Jersey before Saturday afternoon. According to the directions that my brother received from MapQuest, it estimated that we’d arrive within seven hours. That’s the estimate if we didn’t stop but we had to stop every two hundred kilometers or so to switch drivers.

My brother drove the first part of the trip then I drove the middle part and my friend finished the last part. During the night drive, most of us managed to stay awake but it didn’t last long. I tried to get some sleep because I was scheduled to drive next but the back seat isn’t that comfortable. It’s especially not comfortable when you’re sleep with your neck tilted and your head up against the window. I felt every bump we drove over. The highway of New York was fairly smooth until we reached certain parts of the state.

The nice thing about our trip was the fact that they had rest areas situated every hundred kilometers or so. Basically, it’s a parking lot where you go to take a break from driving. There wasn’t much else there but some benches and a washroom. They don’t have that here in Canada but most of our cities are close to each other. In New York, there was nothing but farm land in between the major cities.

My friend was kind enough to lend us his GPS navigator for the trip. We found it to be helpful during certain times but during other times it was just a headache. We typed in our destination address before we left and we drove off. It took us to the border just fine but there was a quicker way that it could have taken us. Just to be on the safe side and to avoid getting lost, we followed the GPS. It took us to New Jersey but it took us the long way and made our trip almost ten hours long.

My brother used MapQuest to get directions to New Jersey but it gave us something different than what the GPS had suggested. The GPS suggested that we take the Peace Bridge into Buffalo but my brother’s map suggested that we cross the Lewiston Bridge. Apparently, the direction that the GPS gave us was the scenic route which meant a quieter but longer ride. If we had taken the route that my brother had planned, it would have meant a more direct path. We would have been driving east on I-90 and then south I-81. That path would have taken us just under eight hours but instead our trip took about ten hours to complete.

After driving all night long we finally reached Jersey City, New Jersey. Our next task was to find the place where we’d be staying. The streets of Jersey aren’t like the streets of Hamilton. One major differences is that they don’t warn you when your lane is about to end. You find out when traffic slows down to a halt and cars starts getting into a single line. My friend wanted to signal the car behind us to let him know that we’re merge but the guy just kept driving forward. When we got to the end of the merge, another lane was merging with the merging lane. Three lanes were merging into one lane and there wasn’t a single sign telling drivers of that. Out of towners can easily be intimidated by all of this.

We drove around for another hour before reaching our destination. This place was a little hard to find because it was on the street that was connected to an on-ramp to the highway. We basically had to make a U-Turn in order to get there. After making the U-Turn we still had a problem finding it. The street split into two with one going to the highway and the other going to some other highway. From our point of view, it looked like we had to continue on Highway 440 but we actually had to stay on West 63rd but that street looked like it was merging onto another highway.

After we checked into our room, we decided to get a little sleep before going anywhere. The sun was up so I couldn’t sleep much. We were a little hungry though so my brother ordered two medium pizzas from Domino’s to split between three of us. I think I ate one medium pizza to myself because the other guys kept going for the pizza with the olives but I stuck to the pepperoni pizza. I was hope that eating all that would get me a little sleepy but it didn’t help much. As soon as we were done with the pizza, we left for New York.

New York seems to be such a busy city that they prohibit people from standing around. I’m not sure who came up with that idea or why it’s not a good idea to stand around but we decided to break the rules anyway. What are they going to do to us? Tell us to keep moving?

Our first stop was to visit Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty. The boat ride took us to Ellis Island first but we weren’t interested in that island. Getting onto the board felt like boarding an airplane which was totally unexpected. They made us go through the same procedure as if we were about to board a plane. They’ve ask us to take off anything metallic and place it into a box. I had to take off my belt but I never had to do that before when I flew to Hong Kong. When I walked through, they asked me to take out my wallet and put that into the box as well. I didn’t have anything metallic in my wallet so I’m not sure why I had to take that out. I’m sure that they have a valid reason to do all of this but I think it was a waste of time.

The boarding process to get onto the ferry felt like it took forever as well. There was a long line up but it wasn’t much of a line. People started walking towards the exit but there was only room for a few people to go through it at a time. So people were cutting in line and when they got out, they were cutting in line again. It was like total chaos.

When we go to the front of the line, we were delayed because people with wheel chair wanted to get onto the ferry so the workers had to walk down the ramp and pull up the wheel chairs. The stupid thing was that the ramp was pretty steep. Someone with a motorized wheelchair probably couldn’t drive up the ramp. Whose stupid idea was that? And they were boarding people to the upper floor. I don’t’ know why they didn’t make the ramp go onto the main floor since it would have made more sense.

From the time we go in line to get onto the board until the time we actually board took almost half an hour. In Hong Kong, it takes less than five minutes to get all of that time. With the amount of time that it took me to get onto the ferry in New York, the Hong Kong ferry would have already reached another island already.

Getting off the ferry took just as long. The person who was driving the boat obviously didn’t know how to steer the thing because it took forever just to dock. He kept driving forward and backward and wasn’t going anywhere near the dock but once we’ve dock, the guy working inside the ferry was yelling at people to hurry up and get off. It’s bad enough that the driver can’t dock the boat on time and it’s even worse when they tell the passengers to get off in a hurry because they’re behind on schedule.

I was eager to get off the boat since the ride took a lot longer than expected. As I exited, I could hear people complaining about the ride. People who work in the service industry should not make their customers upset especially if they haven’t done anything wrong.

Liberty Island was packed with tourist. There was an option to go into the Statue of Liberty but that was an extra $6 and we didn’t know that the pass meant we could have gone up the statue. By the time we go onto the island, it was close to closing time anyway so we probably wouldn’t have had enough time to do that. We ended up walking around and taking pictures and then going into the gift shop. Even the workers at the gift were giving people attitude but I’ve done enough ranting about New York for a day so I’ll save the rest for later.
Picture was taken at Liberty Island

I forgot to bring my remote control with me so I had to set the timer on the camera to take a picture of everyone. I wasn’t willing to lend my camera to another person in case they run off with it. Not like there’s anywhere they could go since we’re on an island but I didn’t want to risk it.

The first day in New York was a pretty good one with the exception of bad services here and there. The city offer tourist many sites to see and things to do. If they worked on their attitude, I’m sure it’ll make the visit a lot more pleasant.

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May 14, 2008 9:25 AM

New York, New York

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by    in Travel

The long holiday is just a few days away. Normally, I don’t do much for that holiday other than staying home but this year I’ll be doing a little site seeing in the big apple. Must like my trip to Hong Kong, I’ll be bringing along my trusty camera to take photographs of everything.

So here’s the game plan. Currently, my brother is in the process of bidding on a hotel room in hopes of getting a room for two nights for $100 or less. If he’s able to find one for that price, it would make the trip a little cheaper. We’ll be renting a car for the weekend which will cost around $80. I’m not sure where he’s getting these prices from since they sound so cheap. The last time I rented a car, it cost me $150 for the weekend and that’s at a special rate of $19.99/day. Somehow, that translated to $150 for two days. Go figure.

At present, my SD card for my camera appears to be a bit slow so I decided to buy another one. I have others laying around the house somewhere but I can’t find them. Luckily, Best Buy sent me an email informing me about a sale on for a couple packs of 2GB SD card for $29.99 which sounds pretty cheap.

I wanted to buy it online and then go pick it up at the store but the Best Buy in Burlington was out of stock. I didn’t have a choice but to order it and have it delivered. The other option was to go pick it up in Oakville but I wasn’t willing to drive 30km to the nearest Best Buy just for a couple of SD cards.

I’m hoping that the cards will arrive before or on Friday because we’re thinking of leaving Friday night and get into New York City by the afternoon. The drive from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to New York, New York, USA is over 700km so at an average speed of 100km/h that will take us about seven hours. We’ll be in New York by sunrise so we might be able to put in a little site seeing before having to check into the hotel. The hotel is located in Jersey since it’s cheaper to stay there than in New York City.

There are a few places that I’d like to visit while I’m in New York. The Statue of Liberty is one of them. Central Park is probably another place that I’d like to see although I’m not too sure that’s special about it. As far as I know, it’s a park in the middle of a big city. But around the corner from that is the site where the World Trade Center used to stand. I’d like to see what they’ve done with the place since 911. There’s also Time Square, the Empire State building, Grand Central Station, Wall Street, the Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building. I’m sure there are lots more to see.

I’m hoping that everything goes well and we don’t get stopped at the border. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about border guards and it’s likely that I’ll have a story of my own. I’m sure that going into the US isn’t going to be a problem but we might run into some delays when trying to leave.

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May 12, 2008 11:41 AM

R.E.S.P .etc

3 comments
by    in Finances

No, that’s not a typo and I wasn’t trying to sing the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” song. Back in January, before I left for Hong Kong, I opened up a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for my two youngest brothers. I don’t want them to take a student loan from the government because it’s too expensive and I didn’t want my parents to have to worry about extra savings. I have a bit of extra money at the end of the month so I decided to do the savings for them.

Tonee and Kevin are 16 and 12, respectively and it won’t be long before they’re done with high school. Tonee has two more years before he’s done and Kevin will be done high school around 2015. I can make deposits into Tonee’s account for two years and Kevin’s for seven years. The amount in Tonee’s account isn’t going to be that high since it’s such a short period of time but it should be enough to get him started. Kevin is the youngest and always gets spoiled and it looks like he’ll get spoiled again.

I’ve decided to make monthly deposits of $100 per account. I’ve set up an automatic withdraw to deduct $50 from my account every other week and deposit it into each RESP account. At the moment I have an RBC Target 2010 Education Fund and an RBC Target 2015 Education Fund.

I’ve decided to go conservative with Tonee’s Target 2010 because I don’t want the money to fluctuate too much. When it comes to money, the less time you have, the less of a change you want. I don’t want to put this portfolio into a higher risk category and end up having nothing by the time Tonee graduates. Tonee’s account is at $655.22, a positive gain of $5.22 which isn’t bad. Maybe he can use that extra $5 to buy a pencil case or something.

Somewhere down the road, I decided to top up the account to $500. I was informed by the account manager that if I have more than $500 in the account, I could start making deposits myself but as it turns out, I can’t deposit anything into this account unless I call in. It had something to do with mutual funds and securities. Every now and then I would like to deposit an extra $25 into each account and I thought it was a waste of time having to call in and ask someone at RBC to do it. But if that’s what the rules are, I don’t have a choice but to follow it.

Kevin’s account is more aggressive than Tonee’s because I have more time to save. His account is up at $663.57 which is $8.35 more than Tonee. The cost of Kevin’s portfolio is a tad more than Tonee so he’s getting fewer units. By the time Kevin starts college, he should have about $8400 in this account whereas Tonee will only have about $2400. That’s probably enough to cover a semester or so.

On top of my monthly deposits, the government gives me a 20% grant. For every month that I deposit $100, they will deposit $20 into each account. At least, that’s what I thought it was but after looking at the history, it looks like I’m only getting 15%. I don’t know if it was changed somewhere during the years but it’s better than nothing.

If you have kids, I highly recommend that you start an RESP for them as soon as possible. I tell my friends who has kids to do the same but they’re not doing it. It doesn’t matter if you can’t put $100 a month away as long as you put something in there, it will help. A deposit as low as $20 a month from the day they were born until the day they graduate will save you about $4000. You can either use that $4000 to pay for part of the tuition or take a loan from the government and worry about paying the interest on the loan.

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