Our home phone went dead on a weekend so on the follow­ing Monday in the office I phoned the Telus customer service. After the usual automated steps (which was supposed to make such calls painless but actually causes more pain), series of verifications and holding for the “next available agent”, I finally got a live person at the other end. Hmmn, sounds like a Filipino female voice so I asked where she’s at - and says she’s in Manila. Most people may not be aware but almost all calls we do here in the Northern Hemisphere - may it be Telus, the Bay, or looking for a plumber nearest you - actually goes across the globe, lands to someone in a call center in Ma­nila, who then makes another call back to here. So the electrician that you called for may actually  leave next door to you but his dispatch really came from Manila. Isn’t that amazing (or scary) technology or what?

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Another convenient piece of modern gizmos today is digital television broadcasting, which al­lows us to delay watching or re­cord live programs. I love to do this cause I can delay watching then fast-forward to skip com­mercials, specially that one that has been causing me a lot of heartburn - that BC Liberals’ tv ad showing strings of dominoes fall­ing and collapsing until it reaches the white piece with the Liberal’s logo, and a voice-over that says “British Columbia is standing strong by controlling government spending, low taxes and investing in skills training”. I’m not so sure about controlled government spending and skills training but definitely “low taxes” is incredu­lously a big lie.

And think about this - it was reported that particular 30-sec­ond spot cost $15 million. Again, fifteen whopping million dollars! And just very recently Translink wants to increase everything again - fuel tax, property tax, etc. because it needs the money. It’s a no-brainer. Fifteen million dol­lars given to Translink instead of a silly self-promoting hypocritical ad would have saved us poor suf­fering ordinary people from addi­tional taxes.