We made a trip to Canada/Seattle/Detroit/Chicago starting september 17th september 2010 ending on 26th September 2010. It was great and memorable. While I can always do a pattern match with the cities of the developed countries, but there are very subtle differences among them. For example Vancouver adorned all Indian taxi drivers and as we hear, the taxis there could be extremely expansive (somewhere in the range of .4-.6 million USD), unbelievable, yes that is right!
City of Vancouver is not any different from any other American cities, just the same road, same mode of driving, same population thickness etc. We lived in a "days in" hotel in Kingsway street owned by an Indian. We were trying to exchange our currency to canadian dollars at the Seattle airport, but the last minute decision dissuaded us from doing so. Reason - the lady was offering 450 Canadian dollars in exchange of 500 USD. If anyone plans to make a trip to Canada just don't get into this, everywhere in canada they accept USD in lieu of Canadian dollars at the rate of 1:1. So, no problem. But if you are travelling in a bus always make sure you have changes. In some shops and some bus stop/Amtrak joints you can buy a days pass for 7 Canadian dollars, that will be good for travelling in any public transportation system, be it water taxi, buses, sky trains etc for the whole day. One good thing I have noticed in Canada was; at every public transportation system, walls, there are good sayings written. For example one of the writings said:
"Don't wash your hands in anti-bacterial soaps, instead use regular soap. Regular soap removes greases and bacteria; while anti-bacterial soap causes antibiotic resistance in bacteria and also kills the good bacteria in your hands". So true, I completely agree with this. In US, most of the hand dis-infect-ants are based on antibiotics, which could be harmful.
The next saying was on baby's crying. It said: "Crying is normal for babys, don't shake them when they cry". Wow, so much truth is there. Usually people shake the baby when they cry - the result, when the baby wants shaking - will start crying.
The third and most important saying was: "Handful of people can't change the world - But, in the history of mankind, only a few thinkers have brought about great changes". I can't agree more on this! It is especially true when we think what can I do alone? How can I change anything, but the truth of the matter is; you can indeed make a great difference if you really wanted to. Throughout human history, it is always has been that way!
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