I was reviewing some transactions done in the U.S. last weekend, and it was more than a little odd to see that I pay LESS in Canadian funds than I would in greenbacks. It’s been more than 30 years since the Canadian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar. I was only a wee’un back then, when we were very new to Canadian life and my parents were still comparing the practically worthless Philippine peso to the currency of their newly-adopted country.
It’s a great time to travel south — I remember the sting of the exchange rate only five years ago, when I was in New York City and paying hefty sums for theatre tickets. As usual, retail prices have yet to catch up with currency rates, but monetary parity south of the border is something altogether new. The Canadian economy relies heavily on exports to the United States, however, so I can really only speak for importers and the tourists heading outside of Canada when I say it’s good to see the pendulum swing in our favour this time in terms of buying power.
I’ve never seen the U.S. and British measurement system called ‘English’ before, have you? I grew up with metric, so I still have a tough time converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, and even though I drive a car with gauges in miles I have to look at the odometer to get a sense of how far I’ve travelled or convert it to kilometres in my head. In fact, that’s something I do on long car trips subconsciously: whenever I see the distance on a highway sign, I try and estimate my time of arrival based on my speed (I never use the cruise control, either) and then calculate the distance in kilometres. This was also actually useful when I rented cars in the States during the time when the Canadian dollar was at its lowest, around 60 cents U.S. I could convert currency and mileage simultaneously!
One last oddity for today: I get a lot of wacky ISPs and domain names in my stats, but here’s one I thought of screen-capturing:
And yes, I tried visiting, but apparently Satan Penguin isn’t very welcoming. Heh.
