The UK... What's the point?

I had thought we'd managed to ditch all baggage associated with the UK business and general UK approach to business by the time Kath had got out here.
But no.... for weeks now we've been plagued by incessant hassle from UK companies that simply cannot facilitate anything worthwhile and over complicate even the simplest thing like putting on your socks, which nowadays requires written (yes with paper and ink) approval from 2 individuals who must reside within the same house and one of whom must use the same toilet as you. Upon approval you must fill out some more forms.
Once you finally put on your socks, you will no doubt find out that that northern bint did not actually give you the correct information, and that in fact both the aforementioned housemates MUST use the same toilet as you and you must get the 2nd roommate to actually visit the London office between the hours of 4:58am and 5:00am on a Sunday.
Until said individual can do this, you will receive letters informing you of the imminent death of your mother unless you take off your socks immediately.

Well....

Without needing to go into details of how terrorists might like to place false adverts in Auto Trader... clearly as a recruitment technique of course, it makes perfect sense that in the modern age (this being the two thousandth and ninth year of our Lord), that all communication in the world must be done by postal, recorded delivery. E-Mails are not an acceptable form of communication anymore, neither are Web Sites, telephones or anything electronic. This is a very tidy way to stop another 911 from happening.

I can tell that UK businesses are now being run by the type of imbecilic 16 year old dossers that I used to teach who now see business and IT as the new Art College.
The meek, have indeed inherited the Earth and turned it into a pile of steaming turd.

Suffice it to say, Jo - you're heading to the Falklands soon, anyone else reading this who ever tries to leave the UK a word of warning.... Sever ALL Ties.
If you don't you'll end up feeling like the sort of pointless drunk teenager who wanted Independence, but got ditched by their friends at 2am and had to call your parents to pick you up!!

We were supposed to come out here and relieve our parents from worries, instead, because of inadequate UK businesses we find our selves almost daily in the past month or so Skyping them so that they can call these idiotic companies and sort out the problems.... reason? Well the companies will put you on hold if you call from Canada, and make you wait 15 minutes, which costs and absolute fortune. And if you try to use a UK website from Canada (including Play.com).... you can't, they block your IP in case you are a terrorist... ordering the latest Red Dwarf DVD... 'can't have these terrorists getting thier hands on our humour!'
Place a car ad on Auto Trader?... no, you're clearly recruiting.
Pay your Microsoft XBox Live account renewal?... no way you terrorist scum!!
How about pay taxes?...

Taxman: "No need, you don't live here Mr Rajamanie - you don't need to pay us taxes... "
Me: "Oh.. that's very kind... anything I have to do?"
Taxman: "Just fill out this form sir :)"
Me:"Tum Te Tum............ ok there you go... is that all?"
Taxman: "Yes, have a great life in Canada sir... I love you... "

... 6 months later ....

Taxman: "If you don't pay us £50000 in the next 5 minutes we shall travel back in time and mix your families primordial soup with bleach!"
Me: "WTF!?? Why... you told me you loved me?"
Taxman: "You are a terrorist and a lying, thieving scum bag, and you must be dealt with!"
Me: "But we filled out all the forms... I could have e-mailed them to you, that would have been quicker, and I would have had a backup... and your server could easily have verified your receipt... but it had to be paper based, and I relied on the UK postal service?... Please, don't kill us!"
Taxman: "The UK postal service is wonderful and delivered your forms to us - do not try to mock them now or I will kill you, then travel back to yesterday and kill you again!!!!"
Me: "So... if you received the forms.... what's the problem?"
Taxman: "Only one form was received with your signature only Mr Rajamanie... we did not receive the required blood sample from your wife or your left nut! Which you should have supplied... or filled out form 64-8!!"
Me: "Oh... can I fill out the form now?... why didn't you tell us sooner.. I mean we supplied you with our address, our phone number and our e-mail... if you'd noticed we needed a form.. why didn't you e-mail me the following day... why leave it 6 months... and come to think of it - you told me that everything was fine, and only ever told me about the 1 form?... you F&%$$! %£ *^(((((((( )))))))))!!!!"
Taxman: "Well... I cannot speak for whoever you dealt with and can only apologies for the mistake but ... the computer says... 'no'.... so either pay up now? Fill out form 64-8 or face annihilation... it's your choice sir - but I've done all I can. I'm 15, from the north. I've spoken to my supervisor, and my colleague and they would like to say that they do not sympathise with you, you make us sick, and we cannot all wait to fart on you... besides it was a clerical error on our part, completely our fault.. but - there's jack you can do about that because you'll have to send a written letter of complaint which will be binned by our 16 year old masters"
Me: "Oh.. OK... where do I get the form from?"
Taxman: "Our website, we're very technically advanced here, our vice president made our website for us when he was here on work experience.. he's very good... or is he a she?.. not sure... it wears very tight jeans though, and covers half it's face with straightened black hair... so hip!... All hail Vicey"
Me: "Oh... erm, ok - well I'm on the website, but every time I click on the .PDF it bombs out... is the link broken?"
Taxman: "Hmmmm... where are you trying to access our WORLD Wide Website from?"
Me: "Canada...?"
Taxman: "MUUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA you are all going to DIEEEEE!!!!"
Me: "........"

......

Me: "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The Beach

Taking advantage of the car we travelled to the beach after work two evenings this week.

On Wednesday we went down to Tea Hill Park on the south of Stratford - only about a 20-30 minutes drive.

The water was really warm, like the Maldives, because this side of the island has only about 15 miles of water before it hits the New Brunswick coastline. But the beach was small and near to trees and grassy/marsh land and had lots of sea weed washed up - as a result lots of mosquitoes were on it at around 6:30pm and it got quite annoying.

On Thursday we went to Brackley beach my first proper beach trip. This is a national park, so it's kept clean and has facilities nearby.

The beach is large and proper with dunes, so no mosquitoes - the downside is that being on the North of the island there's nothing but open water for hundreds of miles up until Newfoundland and the icy North, so the water is much colder. I guess it will warm up a bit by true summer... I hop.

We climbed a mountain... but some jobs worth told us off for standing on the dune grass... apparently we'll kill it, and then the dunes will fall apart and the island will be sucked into oblivion!

I pretended I couldn't hear him due to the wind and stayed for my photograph with Hayden at least :)

After taking Hayden's trunks off to dry him, he escaped and ran free...

Reminded me of the opening scene to Bay Watch :)

As you can see below, the wind started picking up at about 8:00pm, and the sand started to sting!

Just a cool shot of the wife, sun and... the son.

It seems much more peaceful when Hayden is at this range.... ;)

Packing up time, we headed off at about 8:30pm. Awesome, just really nice to finish work and then spend the evening like this - we must do it more often.

En Route home.

Car

Found a Nissan Pathfinder 4x4 on UsedPEI.com for $1000 but the appealing thing was that it was inspected (MOT for you UK types ) until April next year - good, no need to spend anything on it unless it goes wrong. So I asked JR if he could take me to look at it today. The ad said 'needs a little TLC' - to which JR and Owen were like... "what does that mean?". They advised to not bother with it, but I wanted to take a look anyhow, a bi SUV would be nice and we can throw our camping stuff in it and use it for a year without worry.

LOL

It was down in Stratford and we went after work, these two kids came out of the house to greet us and let us have a drive.

ROFL :)

The windscreen had a crack the entire width, there was a fair amount of rust underneath, it had an oil leak, which the lad said you had to fill up about a litre of oil every month, the electrics were blown and the two passenger side doors were locked fast, no windows could open as they were all power windows and the Air Con was knackered... hah ha
I got in it and closed the door to drive down the road (this thing had been in the hot sun all day and it was really hot outside - inside it was unbearable). To give it it's due it was powerful - a V6 oh, oh oh, oh.
These lads could not help but laugh every time we found something new -they knew it was totally shagged and they'd be lucky to get $500 for it.
Anyway JR seems to have good intuition and had found another $1000 car a Mazda Protege, so we left Stratford and went to view it.
Sweet, hardly any rust, looked in really good shape - it was inspected just two weeks ago so has a full year on it and this was done by Canadian Tire - who apparently are very scrupulous with inspection 'if it passed with them, it must be worthy' I was told by many.
At least that's what Mick said, the old boy who was selling it - but he was a genuine old Islander and these folk don't know what lying is.
JR got him down to $850, and I grabbed it.

And here it is, I drove it home, a bit worried about the cops, but what are you gonna do :)

Totally unlike buying a car in the UK, when you have to fill out that god awful blue, red and green confusing form, hand over and show log books and history. I got three scraps off folded dog earred paper and 2 keys for my $850 :)

But that's it I just take it along to Access PEI, pay them some Tax and some other fee, and then it's ours. We plan on doing this tomorrow.

Hayden was immediately eager to climb in to our new car which he named 'Super Why' :)

It came with a non-working CD player and some nice seat covers ;), very clean inside and out.

Automatic... now automatic cars... they ain't got a clutch... I think that's right?!

It drove fine. I really hope nothing goes wrong with it as then, like my Walmart TV stand, my Walmart gaming chair, BBQ and garden furniture set and my lobsters - it'll be yet another insane bargain on this Island. $850 (that's just £459 today), for a car that's MOT'd until June next year.

'Super Why' we salute you.

TV

Well, as you know our TV broke again, and this time Gallant (the only guy in PEI who can fix TV's said that he couldn't fix it :(
We've been toying with buying a house, a car, holiday, getting back tot he UK next year, permanent residency - everything! And now we need a new TV.
Well, today we decided that we would not buy a house until next year, we'd sort out permanent residency next year, and the UK is next year - so we'll buy a new decent TV and a car.

I went for (what could be considered mid0entry), however to me it's the mama-jama of TVs.
120hz of Pure West!
Future Shop had a display of a 240hz brand new 40" TV side by side with a 60hz one, and the difference was unbelievable!
Now when HDTV first came out we bought one, a 720p one, and although I could recognise that the picture was indeed better (clearer), it was only of any real use for the Xbox 360 - movies weren't that much better unless you had Blu-Ray/HD-DVD (which nobody could decide upon until last year) and the whole HD thing kind of disappointed me, with just BBC HD being available and the occasional On Demand movie from Virgin.

However, NOW I understand, 1080p is definitely a huge improvement over normal TV and is a massive leap compared to normal vs 720p - but running at 120hz this thing is awesome.
It completely ruined Star Wars Episode 2 (my test movie), making the entire opening sequence look as bad as a really cheap TV series. It was comparable to Red Dwarf. You could really see the green screen issues, the terrible props and the actors jjust looked stuck on and the smoothness was too uncanny - like the cheap daytime soap opera 'Days Of Our Lives'.
Once again HD had disappointed me... but then I found the 'cinema' mode button. This softened everything (not make it blurry), just soft, a warmer feel to it and blending and the whole thing just looks awesome! The smoothness when running at 120hz and getting a proper 24 frames per second (the way it was meant to be seen) is really nice.
I discovered that I had in fact had the mode in Sports mode - when watching the Golf and Nascar the picture quality and smoothness was 'well wicked' and I am just chuffed to bits with the TV.

Here it is, 42", 1080p and 120hz of awesomeness atop my other awesome TV stand (that I managed to get from Walmart for the ridiculous price for $99 :) )



Never able to do this thing justice, I have taken a photo of it anyway - because I can!

I was just about to tell you to go to your local Electronics shop and take a look at the 120hz for yourself, but then I remembered that everywhere I go in the UK that show off TVs (including the Sony Shop etc.) seem to be using the foil of a chewing gum wrapper as an antenna for most of their HD TVs, not able to demonstrate it at all, unless it's hooked up to a Blu-Ray player (which they only have their £6000 55" LEDs rigged up to).

But if you're thinking of getting a HD TV, definitely go for 120hz or above (I say 'above' - but the the difference above 120hz is marginal compared to the jump from 60hz -120hz).

Anyway, my TV RoXXors, and I cannot wait to watch the World Cup on it next year ;)

Traffic!

Have you noticed the lack of cars, driving about on roads that are in pictures?
That's because it really is like that - the roads are almost always empty here :)

Time Off

Weekends seem to have been really busy for one reason or another. We had our birthday's last week and went to Jax and Wendy's for the football, and played Talisman. I think the week before we had a Talisman night, Kath was working in the daytime and other stuff. We seem to have had people round for BBQs or gone to places and it's been pretty hectic weekends.

Looking back over my blog it's been pretty devoid of photographs - and therefore I apologise, but it's just been a lot of Talisman, BBQs, Drinking with friends, Work and trying to get our finances in shape.

But this weekend we had no one round and it's been pretty lush.

I looked after Hayden yesterday morning and we went to the park to play football and then we chilled and watched TV and The Apprentice (downloading it from the UK) - no spoilers please!.

Today Kath did not work in the morning and we all went to the park, walked the boardwalk and went through the woods.

The weather here has gotten really awesome and the springtime greenery has put everything in place for the summer.
Here's a small part of Victoria Park - this is where we play football.

Tourists are out taking Horse and carriage rides and the Hippo bus is also out - an amphibious vehicle that tours both the town and the coastline... from the water :)

Here we are playing football - no not Soccer.

Although these Canadians sound American in 'much' of the accent, I was told once that referring to Hockey as Ice Hockey would be like 'them' referring to Football as Soccer - they know the difference, and it's quite popular here.

I'm glad that, after last weekend's FA Cup final, Hayden has gotten much better at kicking the ball instead of picking it up with his hands and really looks forward to going for a kick about... sorry a kick aboot; )



He also likes to be spun around and then tries to get to the ball and kick it.

Usually ending in an epic fail, as dizziness and gravity force him in completely the wrong direction... LOL

Here's the boardwalk that is extremely peaceful at the moment. The odd jogger, power walker or blade roller scooting by. The sea was calm and the air fresh with a nice light breeze.

These are my new rocks!
I had some rocks in Caister when I lived there, Me and Dave claimed them. Me and Hayden have a rock here just to the left of that bottle in the above picture, which we have claimed and will write our names on one of these days.


When we follow the boardwalk all the way around it leads to a big playground and park. There's even a free swimming pool, but it's not quite open yet to the public. It all overlooks the bay and the water - it's very serene.
There was also a very large man here!

Hayden went to play with the bigger boys as usual.


Kath commented on how the two of us NEVER get photographed together, we're always taking picture of friends and other couples, but nobody ever seems to take any of us together, so we normally get posed, out of focus shots taken by passers by.

Which reminds me...

/RANTMODE = ON;

Why IS IT exactly that in 2009, with Digital cameras in their 12 Mega pixel Epoch, and the majority of the world owning digital cameras, does NOT ONE SINGLE passer by EVER know how to half press a digital camera button to focus, and then press fully to snap. I mean it's been around for years!! Everyone has one, are everybody's pictures out of focus, blurry and crap?

Please tell me if you've EVER found a passer by who knows how to operate a digital camera... I'd love to hear about it.

100% of the ones I've met always ask me ' Do I just press this one?'... I mean.. ??? REALLY!!

Is it like saying 'Good morning'?, is it a pleasantry to ask such a thing... 'do I just press this one? ' Come on!!! 2009... I always feel compelled to tell them,

"Yes that one, press it halfway to focus it, and then press it fully... and by the way you don't have to jerk your forefinger down as if initiating a nuclear attack!... just apply a little amount of pressure, otherwise if you push too hard the camera will end up pointing downwards , possibly cutting off our heads, and the motion will make the image blurry... ok?... actually perhaps I shouldn't let you hold such an expensive item!!"

/RANTMODE = OFF ;

Anyway, not wanting to run the risk of a blurry, pointless picture I decided that now Hayden is old enough he could take control and start taking pictures of me and Kath properly.

OK... that didn't go as planned... but he is very short and it was his first ever photo.

Take: 2...

Take: 3...
Much better... no need to ever worry about those passer by quality photos again.

David Bailey Jr is in the house.

As we travelled home, I'm pretty sure I managed to snap a photo of Sasquatch!!!

The Flood!!

OMFG!!!

Our TV has broken again!, and so last night I went down into the basement to get a cable for a TV I borrowed from work....

The basement was a foot deep in water!!!

All the houses (well many) in PEI have these sump pumps in the basements that kick in every now and then to drain away water.
We live on Spring Street, aptly named because it's on a spring. As such the spring pushes water up through the earth and into our basement, the sump pump keeps it drained - this happens all the time. During the cold and snow it was less often, and I guess this was because the water was frozen and therefore didn't seep so much, but now, with hot weather and rain this thing is getting filled quickly. The pipe that drains things away broke a few weeks ago and we were nearly flooded then, but Glen came and we though it was fixed. This was over a week ago, I've not been down in the basement since he fixed it, and to my horror, the sump pump had somehow fallen and the ball thing was stuck on the earth, so the switch never kicked in and the water kept rising!!

Thankfully I caught it just as it was lapping the boards that I have our stuff on - I never quite trusted it, and the ground is constantly wet so everything is raised off of the floor on paint cans an board or whatever. This time however the water had made it over one of the boards.

Panic, struck in as we thought about how we'd have to evacuate all of our stuff.
The buggy was deep in it and one box was destroyed which had our tent and camping stuff in it. Luckily I guess it's only been wet for a couple of days and so we unrolled it and aired it and it dried today fine.
It took over an hour to drain the basement which was easily a foot deep at one end, and I apologise for not having a picture but in my panic and work effort to evacuate things it wasn't until all was calm that I said to Kath, 'I should have taken a picture of that for my blog!' :)
So nothing got damaged, but given another day of water rise and we would have lost many things that are too much to store in the house.
This house has not loft and so the basement is the only place to store stuff + we brought a 3 bedroom house and stuffed it into a 2 bedroom, so you can imagine how cluttered it would be without storage, and any of you who read my blog back in February when my stuff initially arrived would know.


So now we have decided to keep our stuff out of the basement altogether, but this means stuffing it into every available space.

It's not ideal really :(
But we spent £4000 bringing our stuff over here, and I don't want it wrecked because of this damned sump pump business.