Arrived around 1:00 am yesterday, after driving from Vancouver and University of Washington at Seattle.
Will post some pics of the excellent Cherry blossoms and the magnificent campus of UW.
My oldest son is now most inclined to study at UW from amongst the many universities he has applied and got accepted. And indeed, UW is one of the most beautiful campuses we have visited.
Was hoping to meet with GregN in Vancouver, and left him a message on his phone but he never called back, most probably due to Holy Week vacation. Was hoping to give him a bottle of AZ41 for his citruses. So we just stayed overnight at Canada, visiting my aunt and uncle. Was also trying to contact Chong in Seattle, but I lost the contact info and ran out of time
Most people I talked to at Vancouver and Washington are into organic and they are very receptive to AZ41. Will have to sell some AZ41 so that I can deduct the expense of the trip from my taxes,
Well, Washington has about 50,000 total acres planted to grapes, about 34,000 acres of it to known wine grape growers alone, so definitely, there is potential there for the business. If they used AZ41 first, before the people in Napa Valley does, then they would lay claim to marked improvement in the aroma of their wines by getting rid of nasty fungicides.
But aside from my "business" trip, here's some interesting info that I'd like to share:
The trip was pleasant as my son and the missus took turns at the wheel. No much trouble, people in other States are generally more well behaved than Californians when it comes to driving. No accidents observed during our entire trip and stay.
Well, going into Canada, crossing the border takes an agonizing 20 minutes. Going back into the US from Canada, is a torture 2-hour wait time at the border. While we were at Canada, we feasted on giant-sized guavas (aka apple guavas ), fresh Philippine mangoes on sale, longan and mangosteen. The mangosteen costs about $7/lb, and the palatable portion inside, half were excellent but half were damaged, perhaps due to the irradiation treatment, nonetheless, the portions that were good were really good, enough taste to remind me how mangosteen should taste like. We did not find Lanzones, another one of our tropical fruits.
And the GPS wanted us to go to the truck route while we passed by Portland, and I knew that it is a good 10 miles longer for no gain in time. But hey, the GPS worked in Canada very well.
As soon as we got near Canada and our cell-phones switched to Roger (Canada's monopolistic cell phone service providers ), I instructed everyone to turn off their cell phones and use them only for emergencies. A couple of years back, we got billed for $1,400 or more just for the Text messages sent by our kids for a period of one week while we were at Canada. Text messages are not sent instantaneously and I know very well that servers batches them out along with everyone else's every couple of seconds, costing the providers only less than a penny per batch of 1,000,000 text messages and they charge $250,000 for that plus Roger's charges of about $4 million to unknowing Americans who have no clue about it. That is truly one huge profit making machine that fleeces out tourists over there, Roger literally earns $4 million for batches of text messages that costs no more than a penny. At least, over at the AT&T side of the US, the profits are only in the $250,000, that's about 25 cents per text message that costs the servers less than a penny to send for batches of 1 million text messages. If the bill comes to us and they charge us an arm and leg for the few text messages that got through, we can argue that along the US side of the border, there is no clear air tower boundary, and there are overlapping coverage areas between AT&T's, and so Roger's charges could be argued as illegal.
I'm still amazed at the eternal "Road Work" signs spread evenly the entire length but practically occupy half the total length of I-5 in Oregon! You know, Traffic Fines are doubled in construction zones, so maybe, this is a ploy to balance their budget especially that the State of Oregon doesn't charge any sales tax. There's always extra-ordinary amount of Road Work sections at I-5 in Oregon since 1991 when we first came to drive over it, and still true to this very day. Tax dollars at work? At least, the roads are better in Oregon compared to that in California. Still the same, we got full service and free windows cleanup everywhere we fill up in Oregon. The price of gas is cheaper than that of California's and still it is a full service fill-up.
And to think we were whining at the increased sales tax in California, compliments of Arnold? Well, the sales tax at the college bookstore in Seattle is a whopping 10%! But then again, I'd rather pay 10% sales tax in Washington than pay State Income tax in California on top of an already exorbitant sales tax!
People from Oregon just show their ID's at Washington and avoid the local sales tax, something that is not allowed in California. And I know of some people (my relatives obviously,
) from Canada driving all the way down to shop tax-free at Portland, and wear 5-layers of pants, jackets, shirts or dresses on their way back to avoid the tariff. Whatever happened to NAFTA?
