Canadian dollar higher than US

[Märk]

LOL!!!

[Adam!]

CANADA, FUCK YEAH!

Yay, now I can stop paying for everything with prescription drugs. Quick, what cheap shit should I buy from the states?

[Lord of Oats]

I'm still in denial about this.

WTF, DOLLAR?!

[Märk]

Quick, what cheap shit should I buy from the states?

Just make sure they mark it as 'Gift', or customs will slaughter you. Which brings up a related point: I don't understand money. At all.

[Adam!]

I thought I understood money until I read the wik­ipedia article on how it gets created. Now I am more perplexed than ever.

[Märk]

Thanks. My brain just imploded, and I'm a stronger anti-capitalist than ever. But goddamn, gimmie someothat munny. Which, BTW, is worth more than the US dollar! LOL!!!

[anti-m]

I'm sad because Vancouver used to be a wonderful cheap getaway. RATS!

Stoopid money!

You should buy alcohol and cigarettes in the US. I seem to remember those items being exorbitantly expensive even in the days of the cheap loonies.

Now I'll just have to move to Canada.

[Lord of Oats]

Now I'll just have to move to Canada.

I'm thinking about that myself. How hard is it to immigrate to Canada?

[Caravan Ray]

Now I'll just have to move to Canada.

I'm thinking about that myself. How hard is it to immigrate to Canada?

Very hard. They put you in a room and blast Bryan Adams and Celine Dion records at you at high volume. Sometimes even Loverboy. If you are still alive after an hour you get a Canadian passport and a lifetime supply of maple leaf iron-on transfers to put on all your personal items of clothing and luggage.

[Märk]

Pfft. I can take Bryan, Celine. and even Loverboy with a frikkin' smile on my face. Throw some Nickelback at me, though, and I'll snap in 30 seconds. Hate. HATE.

[Lord of Oats]

Now I'll just have to move to Canada.

I'm thinking about that myself. How hard is it to immigrate to Canada?

Very hard. They put you in a room and blast Bryan Adams and Celine Dion records at you at high volume. Sometimes even Loverboy. If you are still alive after an hour you get a Canadian passport and a lifetime supply of maple leaf iron-on transfers to put on all your personal items of clothing and luggage.

I've had to endure much worse. Sign me up, eh?

[bz£]

You should buy alcohol and cigarettes in the US.

Seconded-- buy hard liquor. It's a good investment! If your money loses its value you can always drink your troubles away.

[Sheail]

I think your whole continent's pretty cheap.

[Caravan Ray]

Pfft. I can take Bryan, Celine. and even Loverboy with a frikkin' smile on my face. Throw some Nickelback at me, though, and I'll snap in 30 seconds. Hate. HATE.

I didn't even know Nickelback were Canadian. But it is obvious if you think about it. They are the Bryan Adams' of the new generation.

But it turns out I was wrong about Canadian immigration requirements anyway (the UN banned the Adams/Dion test as cruel and inhumane) - and I looked at the Canadian immigration web site:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/ ... /index.asp

Turns out it's pretty easy to get into Canada (for me, anyway) as a Skilled Migrant - I pass their self-assessment test.

My wife and I have actually been considering going to the UK next year to work for a few years (my wife can get a UK passport as her dad was born in N. Ireland, and I qualify as a skilled migrant to the UK) - maybe we can try out Canada for a while too.

[jb]

Quick, what cheap shit should I buy from the states?

what cheap shit can we sell you?

Two sides to this coin (heh). One side is that yeah, you can buy more American stuff with a Canadian dollar now. The other side is that we can sell Canadians stuff for cheaper now.

[jimtyrrell]

I saw a lot more Canadians at my NH shows this summer. It was most noticeable at The Balsams, of course; that place is about a half hour from the border. One guy at an inn down in Hampton told me they used to offer discounts on rooms to Canadians to try and offset the exchange rate a bit so they'd come down here. They're not running that program anymore.

I had three years of French in high school, and I remember very little of it. I've been thinking about picking it up again; how different is the Canadian dialect?

[bz£]

I've been thinking about picking it up again; how different is the Canadian dialect?

They seem pretty close to me. English-words-in-a-French-accent crop up sometimes instead of their "real" French versions. Everyone I know says "potate" instead of "pomme de terre," for example, though that might be a regional thing. I suppose there are all sorts of small idiomatic things but those wouldn't really show up in high-school texts anyway.

My mother is from the bilingual area up in northern Maine, right on the border. It's helpful to be able to speak French up there (it'll be easier to pronounce the names of people and places) but you can get along fine without it; almost everyone speaks English too.

[Reist]

Canada is awesome. My dad's pretty mad about the dollar though, since he works in the oil business. I think it's kind of cool though, except for how we still pay way more for stuff than you do. If something's $20 American, I usually end up paying about $26 for it. I should start a riot or something, since that totally isn't fair ... especially since our money looks WAY COOLER than American money.

[Märk]

especially since our money looks WAY COOLER than American money.

You ever looked at recent bills under a black light? I went to a pub recently where they had black-clothed pool tables and weird flourescent balls (the 8 ball was white! with a black dot on it) under a black light. Horrible idea, really, it makes everything look blurry, and gives me a headache after an hour or so, but anyway. I pulled out a twenty to pay for beers, and the invisible pattern JUMPS out at you. I mean, it GLOWS. It's quite alarming the first time you see it.

[Caravan Ray]

... especially since our money looks WAY COOLER than American money.

Are your notes plastic like we have, or are you still using paper? Plastic notes rule - especially if you are in the habit of leaving lobsters* in your top pocket when you wash your shirts

But anything has to be better than US money - all the same frikking size and colour on flimsy old paper - WTF? God knows what I was throwing about over there last year once the liquor kicked in. I can't believe they are still using those crappy $1 notes. And 1c coins! WTF is that all about?!? No $1 or $2 coins - their biggest denomination coin is the two-bob one! I ended up with about 10kg of change after just one weekend


* AUD$20

[Paco Del Stinko]

I was stationed in Germany in the 80's during my short army enlistment, and loved the currency then: Larger value=larger coin/bill. I've never understood why a 10 cent coin is smaller than a 5 cent one. Every couple of years someone here will start a "let's get rid of the penny (1 cent)" grumble, but it's obviously still around. A dollar coin was recently set loose too, but I think they have all been hoarded and thereby taken out of service.

[HeuristicsInc]

Yeah, the $1 presidential dollars are around, but hard to find. I got some from the bank on purpose and have been wanting to use them randomly... they released the Sacajawea dollars, but didn't make enough; you would have thought that they would learn from that mistake.
-bill