Indian summerFor all those who've only heard about the torrential rains and flooding in recent days in this corner of the country, here is a pic (it's actually brighter than this, but I took the exposure down a stop to bring out the cloud definition). The view from the balcony -- the literal one, rather than the metaphorical one -- is pretty good today. But it seems ironic to be studying sociology away from the buzz of people. If only I could figure out a way to leave my brain at home to analyze information and let my body go out and do what it would really rather be doing.
Normally this is my day with my brother's kids, but I've had to postpone our weekly outing until next Sunday. 'Tis a shame. I received the "You Must Declare Your Major" letter from SFU the other day, so at least I know I've reached the mid-point of my degree. This is the quickest yet most demanding two years I've ever had. It seems like I'm always playing "Beat the Clock"... I've got online calendars, wall calendars, text message reminders on my mobile phone to work on this and complete that, send this in, check that, follow up on this and verify that... I've got all my bills set up on preauthorized payment so I don't have to think about it, and post-it notes for the rest. I don't know what I'd do without the mobile phone, I use it for everything: reading my e-mail on 10 accounts -- work, school, retirement party, personal (my home computer checks 18 accounts), it's one of my alarm clocks in the morning, a reminder device for tasks and birthdays, SMS, and oh yes, phone calls. Thankfully I'm on a grandfathered plan from when I started on Clearnet in 1999 (which was bought shortly after by Telus), so I get a wicked deal:
- free incoming calls (no airtime deduction)!
- billing by the second
- weekday evening starts at 7pm (looks like all the networks moved to 8pm)
- free SMS/text messaging
- free e-mail retrieval
- free browser
... and I got a new phone free, too. When I returned from New York in January, I got a bill for $750+ from Telus (most of it was US roaming), and my jaw dropped to the floor. I had expected a large bill, but nothing quite that big. After a bit of haggling, I got them to write off nearly all of it. Amazing. I really learned a valuable lesson: negotiate everything. I would have had to pay about $650, since the office pays the plan and taxes and all that, which amount to about $100 a month. The Telus plan gives me more daytime airtime than I'll ever use (500 minutes) since none of my incoming calls incur airtime. After the business with the New York bill, I told Telus in January: "You've bought my loyalty!"
