I Hate Bureacracy

I've noticed that any company or organization that wants to set you up on a contract, or set up automatic billing, or has any reason to get your bank info, credit card number or SIN will very often make your life miserable.

Take my gym for example. Let's call them "Goal's Gym" to protect the innocent. After closing my account with them over a year ago, they continued to bill me. When I asked them to refund the money, they said no, and wouldn't give me a reason, even though I had the paperwork showing I had indeed cancelled. It wasn't until I threatened to sue that they decided to refund me.

A friend had a similar experience where after cancelling, they sent him to collections, damaging his credit over a matter of $120 that he didn't owe them.

Or the phone company. They can charge you rediculous fees that you don't owe, but you'll end up paying or they'll send you to collections.

How about the bank? An NSF fee is now $42.50. It doesn't cost the bank a dime to simply tell a company that, no there isn't enough money in your account, yet they can charge over $40 for it. If you let an account lie dormant for any length of time, they now charge you $20 for an inactive account fee. They use your money as collateral agains which to lend to others, charging interest and earning money, yet they feel the need to charge a $20 fee because you're doing nothing with the account.

So I've given up my dream of being a film maker and am opening a bank. You all owe me $20 for the "you don't have an account here fee".

The fallacy of 5%

So I bought a house a couple years ago and I'm slowly but surely paying that sucker down. One of the things I did when I bought was pay the minimum downpayment of 5%. So I ended up shelling out about 15K. If you've never bought a house, or you've never had to pay the minimum, here's what happens.

The banks buy CMHC insurance on any home you buy for less than 25% down. But the truth is the home purchaser is buying it because the bank (who makes billions a year) and will make hundreds of thousands of dollars from your mortgage) is going to fuck you for that amount. For a 5% downpayment, you have to pay 2.75%. Thats over half of your down payment. So basically, all that scrimping and saving you did is cut in half buy a really awesome Canadian agency, who according to their website, is helping you buy a home. And the bank.

So in the end, you end up putting down 2.25%, minus the 1000 or so you'll give a lawyer to print off a boilerplate mortgage contract and spend 15 minutes going over it with you.

So what do you get? Well, nothing. I mean, if you believe their website, you get a lower interest rates and can buy a home sooner. In reality, if there was no CHMC, banks would still lend people money to buy homes, because they earn huge amounts of money.

So you think, cool, the bank is insured so if I can't pay my bills they won't take my home. No, not really. If you can't make your payments, even though the bank is insured, even though they're borrowing money from the government at .25% and lending it to you at over 3%, they'll still foreclose on your house. They're cool like that. So basically they're fucking the people that need help the most.

So, how do we avoid the CMHC? Well, we can't unless we can afford 25% down. Does this system make sense? Nope. Can we fight it. Probably, but people don't realize this is happening until they have to fork over half the money they've saved. By then its pretty much too late.

I'm a naive person just trying to make my way through the world, but to me this feels like the government working for the banks, not the people. The only reasonable and viable answer is to throw rocks at bankers and the leaders of the CMHC. I suggest something palm sized with enough weight to do some damage, but light enough to get some velocity on.

Things went bad in Airdrie

I was SOME happy to get home. Seeing the family, some friends was great. My sleep is a mess, up till 11 am, sleeping till 7pm. Happy to be home though. Mom and Dad got a couple of puppies so its been fun playing with them. It's either on or off, full bore running around chewing everything, or dead asleep.

I was kinda sad when I heard about a family that lost their baby recently after it was bitten by a husky. The initial report I got was..."Baby eaten by sled dog". That kind of statement makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with people leaving their baby where it can be eaten by a sled dog. I envisioned the big bad wolf swallowing a baby whole.

But of course that's not the case. It wasn't a bloodthirsty pit bull who randomly attacked a baby in a carriage in a park on a beautiful July afternoon.It was a family pet who had bitten a crying baby, perhaps even in an effort to calm the infant. Dogs lift their offspring by the back of the neck to wrangle them. The baby died that night and the family had put the poor beast down today.

Sadly they've lost two members of their family over what is really a tragic accident. There was an outpouring interest for people to adopt the dog but its masters thought that putting him down was best for the family at this time. On the one hand it seems horrible to put a dog down for simply being a dog, but then, I've never had one kill my baby. Accident or not.

Hot Air Balloons

We were in a hot air balloon and my friend's daughter, looking down says "Hey dad, this is just like google maps, but its live" She's 23.

The Sexiest Thing I've Seen In Ages

The Sexiest Thing I've Seen In Ages was the way the British girl danced tonight. I was sitting at an curb-side bar listening to two Thai guys do some pretty impressive covers of Bob Marley and 90s Grunge. I noticed this woman dancing. She was in her late 20s maybe, she had a fringe hair cut, short on the sides, like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. She was muscular but slight as she moved in front of the band. She danced like a 20's flapper girl, halting steps, flailing arms coming to abrupt but easy stops. But she was sexier, she moved her hips more, ran her fingers through her hair, pushed her long toned  legs out from under her short skirts for miles. I don't know if it was the heat, the music or just Bangkok, but everyone in the place was staring at her, the band cheered her on. She laughed and swirled taking breaks for a smoke now and then.

Even that seemed sexy.

I had to leave, I had a flight in 3 hours and I was beat. Some german backpackers were eyeing my seat and vultured it when I stood up. But, I'll always have the memory of the Uma Thurmon flapper girl.

Drugs

The door to the editing suite was ajar. I was watching a Laos friend of mine rolling a joint when a curios looking Asian man popped his head in the door and looked around. We looked back. He popped his head back out and kept going, leaving our door open.

Frighteningly aware that, thanks to the movie we were shooting there were more than a few Laos officals running around town, men who make up their meagre salaries by obtaining 'Gifts', I suggested we shut the door.
"yeah" said my friend. He kept rolling. I got up and closed the door and sat back down thinking.

"Hey, what's the penalty for drugs in Laos?"
"Death" he laughed. I raised my eyebrows. Feeling my stare he looked up. "Well, that's the worst thing"

Yeah, no shit. However, staying in a town where just about every restaurant has a "Happy Menu" I wasn't too concerned. But maybe I should have been.

My Take On The Global Financial Crisis