Adventures in Ottawa...

I am 26 years old, and I haven't been to the nation's capital yet. That is, until a week ago, when I finally visited family in Ottawa, and I was surprised at how beautiful the city is! We saw the Rideau Canal, went up in the Peace Tower, and had a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint. It was all fun, but the tour was a bit cramped, what with all of the people who weren't wearing any deodorant who crowded around the windows, hogging the view of the fascinating coin making process!

After spending way too much money in the Sugar Mountain Candy Store (I felt like a kid again!), we walked for an unbelievably long time around downtown Ottawa, seeing the sights, some very "interesting" people, and getting very painful blisters on my feet from the wrong choice of footwear. Never wear flip flops for walking in - unless its a 15 minute walk...

Cheap night still applies in Ottawa, so we went to see Post Grad. It was pretty good - one of those different movies, the kind that I usually enjoy the most. HOWEVER! We couldn't help but be distracted by the overly affectionate couple who chose to sit in the middle of the theater, making out throughout the whole movie!! I thought they couldn't get any closer together, until she moved to his lap and stayed there...wow..we tried to take a picture of them for my blog, (I would've posted it on here too!) but unfortunately I didn't think of it until after the movie started and it was too dark to get anything. :(

I spent too much money (as usual!) but I really enjoyed the time with family and seeing Ottawa was great, so I would do it all over again! If you haven't seen our country's capital, go see it - it's worth it. We meant to get up early one morning and see the changing of the guards, but we never made it - actually we never made it to bed earlier that 2am...that's what you get when you put 3 Davis cousins together!

It was probably better that we didn't make it to the changing of the guards anyway - I definitely would've embarrassed my cousins by saying something to the guards, or shouting "BOO!" to try and get a facial expression out of them! As it was, I embarrassed them a bit, and they had to stop me from a few other things - apparently something happens to me when I'm with my cousins. I seem to lose some rather important inhibitions and stop caring what the public thinks of me when I'm with my cousins, and I'm not sure why, but it sure makes things interesting!

Why Don't They Just Ask Us?

Health care seems to be the "hot topic" now, probably ever since Michael Moore had the guts to make a documentary about it! If I recall, America's health care system came out under Cuba's!

As a Canadian, I am proud to say that we are number 2 in the world in regards to our health care. True, on a government sponsored health care system the waiting time is a LOT longer, but as a Canadian citizen, I can feel good knowing that no matter where I am in this country, I will be taken care of if something happens. There are many people who would never be able to afford health care if it were to be privatized. If it ever came down to a hospital bill of thousands (or hundreds of thousands. as it is in a lot of cases) of dollars, or a 2 hour wait, I've got a lot more time than money!

I've been hearing the discussions and debates about Barack Obama's plan to reform America's health care system, and to be honest, sometimes it just makes me laugh. They are so scared of this plan being put into place! Do they not know that public health care works in a lot of countries? Don't they realize that they have a neighbour that has done it successfully for years? They could call in a favor and just ask us for some advice - I'm sure we could help them out quite a bit. And I'm sure we would as well. Even if they asked rudely, we are nice people! We would still gladly help out.

But...like most big brothers, they are too used to helping the little brother, and probably think that little brother can't help them...

Hopefully they do eventually reform their health care, so that millions of people can afford to go to the hospital when they are ill or injured. (Americans are well known for being proud to be Americans, but when that guy in Michael Moore's film "Sicko" found out it would cost him $72,000 to sew two fingers back on, I'll bet he wished he had been born somewhere else!)

Please get a grip America...let's move onto something else. The only people fighting the reform are the rich anyways, because they are scared of being treated just like everybody else.

What's Up With the Foonie?

I've been hearing little snippets every now and again for the last couple of years about Canada getting rid of the five dollar at bill. Now, this alone wouldn't be that bad, although I would miss the pretty blue color... However, I keep hearing that they are going to replace it with a five dollar coin!

Really? Do they think we need more change weighing our pockets and purses down? Who makes these decisions? We have the Loonie - classic Canadian dollar, then they surprised us with the Toonie, which has worked out well. However, the only name I am hearing for this supposed five dollar coin is the "Foonie." Now this is just taking things too far in my opinion! America already thinks we're geeky enough without adding this to the mix... (not that I really care what they think of us, but still!)

Since I've been hearing about this for quite some time now, I don't actually think they are going to do it - at least I hope not! But who knows? Maybe it's all part of the plan to "go green." I don't know how many trees will be saved by replacing thousands of bills that have already been made, and I think that minting coins is more expensive than printing bills, but I'm sure they will make only good and wise decisions when it comes to how to spend our money.

So here's to the Foonie - our tax dollars, hard at work!