It might seem odd that I entitled this blog "Mountaineering" or go by the twitter handle mountaineer10 . I don't particularly like climbing mountains. Rather, the name came from a show I liked called Alias where the heroine, Syndey Bristow, a double agent, went by the code name mountaineer. Initially I used the alias to set up a twitter account to play around with that doesn't have any obvious connections to me. But fast forward to present day, I actually like and use twitter now, so I've made my twitter identity known to the general public. Thus, the name has stuck. But maybe it's not a bad name. After all, life can be thought of as a constant journey uphill, like climbing a mountain, where we all are mountaineers. I'm just another one of them.
As bank profits continue to rise--already to the tune of one to two billion dollars per quarter among Canada's big five banks--it perturbs me that they continue to make fine print changes to gouge more money from the unwitting masses. This notice came with my monthly MasterCard statement describing a change in policy that any payments made to the outstanding balance will first be applied to items with the lowest rate of interest to the items of highest rate of interest. Basic money sense knows that if you are in debt to various lenders, you pay off the high interest sums first to reduce your total payments. How do banks claim to work for us when they make illogical policies that hurt the customer and not work in their interest?
If you are able to get fresh, clean and drinkable water from a tap like I did, consider yourself lucky! Fresh clean water from a tap Many people turn on their tap and get brownish water, or worse no water. Other people don't even have a tap and must travel far to fetch water. For those who live in the first world, we hardly give any thought to the value of water and its scarcity in many parts of the world. On this day, why not take a few minutes to get more informed? Here are a few good links to get you started: World water day in pictures: http://gu.com/p/36c88/tw For Canadians, ideas on how you can take action on World Water day: http://canadians.org/water/issues/World_Water_Day/ Al Jazeera's documentary on Canada's oil sands and its effects on the nearby rivers. These should get the ideas flowing.
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