BB and RP. Same old, same old travel places.

RP, sounds like all your exotic travels took place when you were already working in SE Asia. So big deal if you traveled in your back yard when you were younger.

Its like a Vancouverite bragging about seeing the glaciers at Banff, the Grand Canyon, or the wilderness of Alaska to someone in Istanbul. It sounds exotic, but anyone here were would shrug it off.

Come back and tell me when you have been charged by a Silverback gorilla in Rwanda, flown a plane solo through the Andes, escaped a rebel attack in the Congo, or hunted big game with Masai warrior. Those are just a few of my real travel adventures.

Save real traveling to the big boys, and keep your childhood “adventures” and European tourist wandering rants to yourself.

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Apartments get turned into condos, and vice versa on occasion……Boardwalk REIT buys anything in those two categories that makes sense and fits their business model. Either an entire condo complex, or an multi-unit apartment building. But you got my point about the numbers not making sense for the biggest landlord in Canada to not want to acquire any more real estate at this time……I seriously doubt John Q.Public will though…..

FWIW this very salient news tidbit had a small C/C sized placement buried on the 5 or 6th page of the Calgary Heralds business section last week….and never made it to the TV stations owned by Canwest. Imagine ‘dat.

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Call the burn unit.

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Been there done that when jumping off for most interesting areas. Ever sailed the South China Sea across to the Spratley Group and ridden turtles the size of a Volkswagon? you can’t backpack there though or fly in? Trekked Borneo yet up the Kuching River by canoe? What about the Xingu River, or did you ever float down the Negro in a dugout? Been to the North Pole Yet. Trekked Nepal? How about that 4 day ride from Mumbai to Chennai? Freaking Awesome . Horseback across Afghanistan ? Tiruchirapalli?

Don’t give me your Lonely Planet Backpacker crap. Do some real travelling. Don’t make me tell you about landing on Kata Beach before Phuket was discoveredby tourists. Or what BKK was like before the backpackers got there. Any idiot can buy a discount ticket, a guide book and go where every other douchebag has gone a billion times before him, thats strictly the goon show of travel.

Try again my petulant pet, and try something challenging next time, without the youth hostels and bonehead ease of being ‘another stupid tourist’.

Bwahahahahahahahaha , amateur.

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Ever been in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul?

I have.

Floated in the Dead Sea?

I have.

Been to Wat Po?

I have.

So there. Now get lost.

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Who wants furniture to hang around THAT long?

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On Garth’s site there is a poster who keeps mentioning the grow op premiun in Vancouver. There could be some truth that grow ops add to the average income in the city.

So why aren’t rents higher?

It’s the fundamentals, stupid.

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#97 Lily, how do you know that custom work is being done in Canada? We have so few trained craftsmen in this country that it would be difficult to manufacture furniture of any quality in sufficient quantity to make it profitable as an enterprise. So whats the bottom line. Maybe people are paying way too much for crap made in China or Indonesia (where they also have a huge furniture manufacturing industry) or perhaps even Egypt, and its being marked up to rediculous prices for Canadian suckers.

Let me give an example. When I was a kid I was in the import buisness. One of the items I handled was womens fashions. I manufactured dresses in Indonesia for distribution to boutiques here in Canada and elsewhere. One simple dress which would cost me under $5 dollars landed ( simple poly cotton cut work sundress, typical of the time) would wholesale for $35 CDN and retail at over a hundred at the tony west side boutiques I supplied. They’d sell like hot cakes when we would put them on sale at $75. My point being, many people have no idea about value and its very easy to pry a buck loose from a fool.

I also imported wholesale coloured gemstones and the mark up is so astronomical it could be referred to as ‘obscene’ to see what a ‘precious’ sapphire or ruby sells for here in Vancouver jewellery shops as opposed to what it costs when persons like myself buy them by the pound in buckets from the mill. I’m talking 1000′s of percent mark ups. Wooooooops, I let another secret slip. Theres another industry that hates the truth.

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#95 BB, this isn’t the only blog I haunt nor am I a stranger to old cathedrals. Travelling was the catalyst to starting my first business. There are few places I haven’t been and places I still lust after. Quite frankly I can’t get enough,it’s become like blood and oxygen ; I recommend it to everyone.

For one thing access to a diversity of information opens your mind and really helps one cut through the bullshit streamed through the media to local populations due to geographic isolation. For another, its life affirming and fresh. I have a lot of fun travelling and it seems to make life have the appearance of being worth living. I keep in mind that this was the same thing Sitting Bull said when he was asked why he drank so much. Life is what you make it out to be.

I form a lot of interests, associations and opinions while travelling. I am a fairly hardcore photographer and adventure travel addict. So please don’t restrict me to cathedrals when there are so many other things to get involved in. I did recently visit Bristol where I found some very interesting 11th century cathedrals, like RedCliff. Amazing to walk on the gravestones of people buried in the floor a thousand years ago. The original site was pre Christian Anglo Saxon. Leeds is also interesting and predates the conquest.

Access to information and other peoples perspectives is important to understand the truth rather than the bias fed by a local media for propaganda and misguided nationalism purposes.

When people are poor, frightened , ignorant and isolated the government has more effective control than they would over a population that is healthy, well educated and world savvy. People like me are considered dangerous by the government. People like me don’t take crap ; we know things, and aren’t afraid to speak out.

If you feel disonant personally because I have a life then perhaps you should cut yourself out of the funk you’re in and get yourself one too?

I just got back from a month in Europe. It wasn’t the first and only I have taken this year and it won’t be the last. My last trip was for business though. The next will be to refresh myself somewhere tropical to recover from the ‘hard work’ I had to do in Europe over the past month.

I guess if you were qualified to do anything you would also be in demand and being sent to rep your profession or skill set for a company/organization willing to pony up the approx 20 grand it takes to send a businessman to Europe for a month AND you’d be able to have a more interesting life AND perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation or IT WOULD BE OF A DIFFERANT TOPIC?

Hate the game, not the player dude. But please feel free to loose your slings and arrows. I have a few bolts in the quiver myself.

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And for the first time since getting here, I thought: damn. This city is more money than it is worth for so much more than housing. I even *like* snow.

My only issue is that my friends and family are all here. Now, if we did a mass relocation of, hm hm, 60 people, I’d be out of here in a jiff. Sadly, it’s unlikely to happen.

So, we’ll rent. For now.

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For someone who’s touring around Europe, you sure spend a lot of time on this blog instead of visiting old cathedrals.

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Well, la di da.

A lot of it looks good and it’s CHEAP!

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#91 P, the mania we are witnessing right now will go down in a future ‘McKay’ compendium ala ‘Extraordinary delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ as one the all time greats. We are watching the circus parade by without getting the most out of the entertainment value. Consumer idiocy is, after all, the greatest show on earth. Feel free to laugh until you puke.

Its not often we get a front row seat to history. I have my popcorn bucket filled and a bag of confetti at the ready for when the Christians ( real estate bag holders)begin to stampede out of the (Pacific) Coliseum and realise the doors are barred and the lions are very hungry ( it is announced that its over) and the Emperor has no clothes. I can hear the screams now. How delightful.

#91, Lily, tomatos, tomatas. The snob edition of an IKEA knock off has little intrinsic value in the second hand furniture market. For those who have paid multi thousands for ‘designer’ furniture and such must find public auctions very distressing.

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“One in four American mortgages that are “under water”, meaning they are worth more than the home itself, are in California.

In a few years you will be able to substitute “Canadian” for “American”, “BC” for “California”, and quite possibly “one in two” for “one in four”.

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