Double Blind

Another quick vacation post.

The Sahara desert is very, very, very hot in the summer two hours after sunrise to an hour before sunset. It is so hot and dry that whenever you breath in, the mucus in your nose dries up instantly and it clogs up your sinuses. It makes for a good air filter since the air is typically sandy.

I found it rather funny that the only establishments open in the towns late at night are the internet cafes. It appears that teenagers all across the world are addicted to it. I think the one way for peace advocates to achieve their goals would be to make sure that the internet is everywhere – if people are too busy chatting with each other on MSN or Skype or whatever, they can’t be doing worse things.

Other than that, still having a good time although unfortunately this holiday is about to end soon.

I’m at an internet cafe in Taghazout, Morocco. I don’t have access to an SD or Compact Flash reader so I can’t post any pictures but rest assured that some will come ahead. Might even try doing a confluence during an inland excursion.

I have been forced to recall most of the French that I learned from Grade 6 to 11. The people here speak French very well – as in they have the “accent” that French speakers have but apparently otherwise it isn’t the best. So it’s difficult to tell whether they’re speaking in Arabic or French but I think I’ve gotten used to that now.

Economically, in terms of purchasing power and that kind of stuff, its as if we’ve returned 40 years in the past, but with the technology of today (Internet and cellular access). For example, a SIM card costs 4 bucks Canadian-equivalent here. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the fresh fruit here tastes a hell of a lot better than in Vancouver – a lot more tasty and sweet. There is excellent access to locally-grown produce here at the local marketplaces and if you like that kind of stuff, there are a lot of base ingredients that you can make things with. It’s a nice place.

A couple more observations – there are police everywhere here. On roundabouts on the streets, there are typically one or two police officers watching the traffic. Apparently the King was around this area recently so that’s when they clean up their act (putting on fresh flags, and cleaning the area, etc.). The other observation is that I saw an ad for 20MBit/s ADSL here – why can’t we get that in Vancouver??

Bon voyage and I likely will not be posting until the end of the month.

I will be away for the next little bit, and will not likely be posting until the end of the month. See you then!

Once upon a time, ING Direct was just about a place where people could park their cash for the highest short-term rate that any financial institution could offer. Then they got involved with mortgages and offered good rates in that area. Then about a year or two ago, the competition started to get smart and ING stopped being competitive.

Now they’re starting to milk their customer base which is exactly what they should not be doing to keeping their customers. Their recent offering is to offer 4.25% on cash above your deposit balance at May 31, 2007. Any cash below this will be offered the standard rate of 3.5%.

As a customer, this tends to piss me off. It means that in the future, I should be keeping my money out of that institution and only shift cash into them when they offer a promotion like this.

While ING Direct thinks it will enable their customers to start dumping additional marginal savings into their accounts, what will happen as a consequence is that it will take their existing customers and alienate them since they realize that they’re not being offered the best rate with their cash. For example, PC Financial is ING-like and they offer 4%. The extra 0.5% doesn’t seem like much, but it’s 14% more than 3.5%.

Once the promotion is over, rate-sensitive customers will pull out their money and EFT it (which is a mouse click away) to the accounting giving them the most interest. This is not going to build the deposit balance at ING; in fact, it will decrease it.

Instead, if their goal is not to alienate their customers, what they should be doing is offering a consistent rate to all customers and stick with it.

I noticed on Garth Turner‘s increasingly partisan page (which makes it hardly worth reading for any content as it was a much more objective site when he was a Conservative) that the young (federal) Liberals made some ads in the style of the Windows vs. Mac ads that are going on.

It’s pretty evident that the Liberals, young or otherwise, still have no idea why they lost the last election.