TD Waterhouse: Then Again, Maybe I Won't

This is another reason I use the Opera browser: it tells me things Internet Explorer can’t.

A couple of years back, I decided to dabble in investing. In doing so, I attempted to set up an online investing account with TD Waterhouse. The results…well, let’s say I changed my mind. One trusts that a national bank’s website would be secure, but one might trust too much.

Click to open the screenshot, then read the first area I’ve boxed in red, the one at the back. Now read the warning Opera gave me.

Yikes. 

Review: Las Palapas Resort Grill

We’ve been three times so far, attracted by this small restaurant’s reputation, location and décor. We’ve experienced two hits, and one unfortunate miss. 

Not much to look at from the outside (especially in winter), but the décor within is colourful, funky and unique. There’s enough in the way of Latin-American-style knick-knacks and ambient eye-candy to keep you from tuning out. This is not a place to go for quiet, one-on-one dining; in fact, it can be rather noisy for a small restaurant. Groups of friends, however, may like this, though you may sometimes have to raise your voice to be heard. Tables are grouped in the common rather than separated by dividers. It’s meant to be an invigorating atmosphere, and it works.

As to the food, it’s a somewhat Canadianized notion of Mexican food, but really quite tasty. The actual menus – a bit garish to read, but fun – are available for viewing at their website (something I wish more restaurants would do). In all, the offerings are fairly priced, and the portions reasonable. For the most part, we’ve been pretty happy with anything we’ve ordered.

The first time we went, the restaurant was full, but the service remained quite good. Our orders were correct, and did not take long to arrive. Our second visit was just for drinks, and again the service was fine. Unfortunately, the third time, we ran out of luck. Though our meal was fine for the most part, it was difficult to get attention paid to our table, the last one down at the end. We were not asked about drinks, nor did our server drop by to ask how everything was. We had to wave our arms about to snag any attention at all. In the end, while contemplating dessert and a second drink, we were left completely alone.

Receiving the bill - and then paying - proved especially challenging. By this time, our server had vanished, apparently for a chat in the kitchen. An item that had been replaced had been added onto the total. With no staff at all in the dining room, I finally left to start the car, while my wife went off to track down Houdini. Disappointing, especially since we’d enjoyed the restaurant so much in so many other ways.

Every restaurant has its off-nights, though, so we’ll likely try again—maybe in summer, when the deck (under a thatched-style roof!) finally re-opens again. The food is good after all, and this looks like a fun place for friends.

910 Victoria Avenue, Saskatoon (Two blocks off Broadway at Main Street)
http://www.laspalapas.ca/contact.php

Traffic Rant # 1

Beep.

So I’m strolling down 22nd, in downtown Saskatoon, and something strange is going on. I’m one of the few who notice.

Beep. Beep.

It’s like specks in your vision, those little transparent “floaters” that drift across your field of view unnoticed, all day every day. Only when you focus on them do you ever see them at all. At this particular moment, the speck for me most demanding attention was a sound instead of a sight.

Beep, beeeep!

All right, already, what is it? I look up, wondering if I’ve been spotted by one of my many adoring fans (yeah, right). No such luck. Instead, I see a young woman in a small car with a big horn, waiting to turn left onto 2nd. She can’t, due to the even younger man in the car in front of her.

He’s waiting for a break in the traffic, but when one comes, he doesn’t turn. Beep. What up? What’s the matter with this kid? Another gap in the stream, and again he doesn’t move. Beep! Soon the lights will turn, and the offending youth still won’t have. What’s the lady to do? Oh, the humanity!

The reason he did not turn was partly because of me.

I was, at the time, crossing the street, along with many others. Had he started his turn—as I’m certain the driver behind him would have—he would have had to stop halfway through. There ‘d be in mid-turn, blocking any fresh traffic coming the other way. And for what, exactly?

What this young man knew not to do is one of the most basic premises of driving:  you don’t turn left into traffic. That’s all traffic, including the pedestrian kind. In most cities I’ve lived in or travelled to, that’s considered obvious, common sense.

Sadly, the lady driver in question is much more representative of the typical Saskatoon driver. Many motorists in Saskatoon will make that turn, stopping only when they get close—maybe dangerously so—to the line of pedestrians before them. Then they will sit, angled before oncoming traffic, looking genuinely surprised. “What the— Where did those come from?” No kidding at all, some actually manage to look annoyed.

Good grief, Saskatoon.

I’ll not suggest that we have a monopoly on bad driving habits. In fact, I recall reading the results of a study a couple of years back, which showed the worst drivers in the nation to be in metro Toronto. By comparison, Saskatchewan drivers came in middle-of-the-road (and not necessarily because we drive there). But people, please...can we do some growing up?

Saskatoon is getting bigger, and with the provincial economy doing so well, that will likely continue. It’s time to stop behaving as if we all just tumbled in from the fields. Increasingly, every space we move through will already have people in it. That’s just the way it is;  let’s all learn to deal with it.

By holding his ground, the young man who waited to turn demonstrated just a degree of that mystical something-or-other that we seem to need more of in this town. Something the woebegone driver behind him sorely lacked.

I think they call it sophistication.

Changes

(Yes, this blog will be about more than the city I live in. It might also be about whatever stumbles into my brain on a bleary midweek day.)

I worked retail for a decade one year, and two of the wares we pedalled were books: The What’s Happening to My Body Book for Boys, and The What’s Happening to My Body Book for Girls. I’ve come to the conclusion of late that there needs to be at least one more entry in the series: The What’s Happening to My Body Book for Old Guys.

The questions would be mostly the same, although the answers might be different:

• What are these parts of my body for, and why are they suddenly getting bigger (love-handles, earlobes, boobs)?
• Why am I suddenly growing hair in places I never had it before (ears, knuckles, between the eyebrows)?
• Why am I suddenly prone to fits of depression/rage/stupidity?
• Why am I suddenly so awkward?
• Will I ever, ever have sex?

You get the picture. Speaking of which, I do envision the book with explanatory diagrams of the midlife reproductive system, if only for comic relief.

Good Luck With That

I call this one “Good Luck With That”, and you can see why. At the time, I thought the pairing of these two signs was hilarious. It’s a shot taken a couple of years ago of a window in the abandoned King George Hotel…back when it was nothing but a decaying pile of despair. If you look at the reflections, you can see the old Hudson’s Bay Company store, also abandoned at the time. I missed taking a picture of a window over there, where a security company’s sign was posted right next to the broken glass.

How things have changed.

Both buildings are now front and centre parts of the recent downtown renewal. After years of neglect, it seems all of a sudden we’ve realized that we still have a city core. We’ve a long way to go, of course…but the starts so far are amazing. Most amazing of all is the fact that these projects are being started—and finished—right in the middle of a so-called recession!

In future posts, I’ll document some of the changes. Roll on, Saskatchewan.

If Buildings Were Vegetables...

be+gin (bi'gin) vb.   1. to start or cause to start (something or to do something).   2. to bring or come into being for the first time;  arise or originate.   3. to start to say or speak.

If buildings were vegetables, would we keep our cash at the Credit Onion?

When I first toyed with the idea of writing a blog, I had a different sort of beast in mind altogether. It was maybe 2005, a summer in which grasshoppers ranged across the prairie and thundered into Saskatchewan’s largest city like buffalo from some other year. Whether they were blown in by the furnace winds that seemed to drag everything in from everywhere that summer, or whether their sheer numbers would not allow a swiss-cheese hole to form around Saskatoon’s borders, I’ve no idea. I only knew that every damn direction in which you walked downtown, these things would fly up like so much moon dust and pepper you in the face.

Gawd, I hated Saskatoon.

I hated the very sidewalks. Many of them seemed to be more suited for ankle-turning hiking expeditions than walking to the office.

I hated its decaying centre, that ever-shrinking downtown core in which I worked. I hated the abandoned Bay building. I hated the abandoned King George hotel (which I was certain could be improved only by application of a match—not that someone didn’t try). I especially hated the bus mall, that giant misstep of civic planning just kitty-corner from City hall.

I even hated its culture, those weird diamond-in-the-rough gleams of talent that seemed to glitter unexpectedly from cowpie fields. Authors, actors, musicians and artists, talented people all, so what the hell were they doing here?! For that matter, what was I?

Most of all, though, I hated the crime. Saskatoon has always been in a heat with Regina for the title of Crime Capital of Canada, though I can’t remember if that was a year in which we won. We’re # 1 this year, but we may have been # 2 back then. But it seems we tried much harder.

So I envisioned a blog, a dark, blood-stained, graffiti-coated, broken-window, burnt-out hulk of a diatribe aimed at my very own city. Aimed at stupidity. I even went about and collected photographs, to document these travesties. And I broke out the HTML.

I started the page—“SaskApathy”, I called it—loading it daily with rants and rages and shards of appalling news. Truthfully, I didn’t have far to look. One week in particular brought out headlines in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix that would have made the gangland jungles of L.A. blush. Ah-hah, I thought, evidence of further degradation. I’d listen to the police scanner online, something you could do back then, and the hair went up on the back of my neck. I realized that the daily news didn’t report on half of it.

How the hell, I thought, can a place so utterly flat go so amazingly fast downhill?!

“SaskApathy”, however, lasted only a month. It only ever existed on my own computer’s hard drive. Why, I wondered, hadn’t I published it yet? Surely I had enough to begin. Was it the work of maintaining it that made me hesitate? Was it pity for Saskatoon? Or was it something else?

The main answer: it was depressing the hell out of me. Beyond that, however, I was starting to see a change. The economy was changing, of course, and that had something to do with it. All of a sudden, the focus was shifting away from Alberta, and onto…Saskatchewan? Besides, what had I expected all this bitching and complaining to accomplish? It flew in the face of the many people in this town who genuinely strive to make things better.

I decided to do something different. I’ll not bore you right now with the path I took to that decision. I’m not even sure where it’s all going, but I’m going to try and do something nice for a change. I’m going to focus more on what’s going right. Maybe the rest will fall inline, now that we’re “SaskaBoom”.

I intend to provide some insight into one man’s view of Saskatoon. Along the way, I hope to show some glimmers of recent changes to the “ex-pats” who are still away. And for those who’ve never been, maybe I’ll throw some light on the burning question “Why would anyone want to live where the temperature falls to minus forty?”

I’ll still rant, of course. But hopefully I’ll do it about both the good and the bad.

Back in my grandmother’s day, newspaper columnists (remember them?) would throw a virtual “rose” to credit the good guys, and an “onion” to the bad. So that’s what I’ll do here.

Hence, the Saskatoon Credit Onion.