We were on a mission, phone, bank account, tax number. We learnt the lesson from aussie that the phone is the first on the list, so off we went assuming that this would be the easy part.
Turns out Canada has the world most convoluted mobile phone system in the modern world and it is not cheap like we were expecting. Let me see if I can expain this.
Imagine your cellphone is just a mobile landline, like you have a cordless phone with unlimited range. Our cellphones have local Vancouver numbers (so there is no way of knowing if a phone number is a landline or cell), and local calls are free, but long distance are not. Just like a landline. If we go to another city (lets say Toronto) then we can call anyone in the local Toronto area for free. But if someone standing next to us in Toronto tries to ring us, they are ringing a Vancouver number so it is long distance. And if that wasnt bad enough, in Canada both the caller and recieved pay for the call at the highest rate.
The nice man in the phone shop helpfully pointed out that for $20 a go, we could just change our phone number to a local one each time we changed cities. Right, thats useful. And of course caller ID and voicemail are an extra $6.00 per month each. And because we didnt have a canadian credit rating we got to pay a $200 deposit each. None of the plans include long distance minutes, so we basically cannot answer our phones in case someone is ringing us long distance - and we will have to fork out for caller ID.
All in all we spent 4 hours getting our head around all this. But the phones themselves were cheap. Not not much of a consolation really.
The bank account was not so bad, we couldnt open an account at the branch without proof of address, but the nice teller pointed out that if we applied online we didnt need it. Only drawback is we have to wait 3-5 working days to get it up and running. Still waiting.
Tax number, or Social Insurance Number (SIN), was too easy, 10 minutes and done, although we do have to wait 2 weeks until the official card turns up.
Next step, and the one we were a bit nervous about after our Queensland experience, was buying a car. So we jumped on the Skytrain and headed off to look at some used car yards to get an idea of prices and available models. We were looking for 4wd, enclosed eg Toyota Surf. Turns out surfs are worth their weight in gold so we settled on the ford equivalent, the Explorer.
Generally the cars are all big here, large engines, not overly fuel efficient, petrols about $1.09 per litre. We have seen some monster trucks driving around. Luckily buying a car is much the same as in NZ, no proof of adress, or licence, or 10 forms of ID required, but there is the matter of the compulsory third party insurance/rego. For our hypothetical 1995 ford explorer we are looking at $2,400 per year. Yes thats right, over $200 per month, unless we can prove our impeccable insurance record back home then maybe a 40% discount and only maybe $100 per month.
We went to look at a 1995 explorer advertised for $3200 and were pretty happy with the way it looked. The owner seemed genuine, and was obviously keen to sell as he had three other cars in his driveway and needed the space. Just as Jarod was going to make an offer of about $3000, the guy offers it to us for $2500. Goes to show what a good half hour of umming an dithering over a car can do to an owner who wants to sell.
After it was all paid for and we drove away, we hadnt got more that a km down the road when a light pops up on the dashboard - 'check engine'. Here is the point where that sense of dread sets in and you fully expect the engine to die with a rush of steam and heat, a wheel or two to fall off and go rolling down the road, and the steering wheel to break off in your hands.
Luckily none of that actually happened, when we rung the guy who sold it to us he said that it had been coming on and off for a few months now and didnt seem to mean anything. Semi-reassuring I guess, and the electrical gremlins became more obvious as the various lights on the dash come and go without any apparent consequences. At the end of the day it seems mechanically sound, hopefully thats the main thing.
