Print Edition: June 3, 2015
Curse of the loonie cart
I have always had a problem with the infernal loonie carts of shopping markets. Am I to bear the curse of lugging my groceries around in baskets because my memory doesn’t extend to such trivial things as having a loonie prepared each time I shop? What purpose does inserting a loonie into the cart even bear!? It might be some sort of anti-theft mechanism, but I sure as hell feel like a dollar a cart is a heck of a deal. Regardless of how lugging around groceries has done wonders for my biceps, I’m starting a movement to de-loonify the shopping cart and end the persecution.
A different kind of internet scam
In the past year, I’ve paid $600 more for wireless internet than multiple friends have from the same provider. Unfortunately, when I moved into my apartment two years ago and needed internet, the price was $80 per month — just for wifi.
I just found out in conversation that, for at least a year, more than a couple people I know receive the same services for $30 per month. I’m a student, I work, and I hate junk mail; I don’t have the time or energy to keep a keen eye out for special offers on a service I already have from the company I’m signed up with, nor to cancel and restart service or finagle on the phone. And I shouldn’t have to.
I’m happy for my friends who were able to procure cheaper internet. But if my service provider is able to sell a product for a full year at a certain price, I should be getting that price — especially as a long-time customer in good standing — over or as well as someone who just signed up. Shelling out almost three times the amount a newer customer pays feels like a scam, not a service.
Keep the SUB bathrooms clean
The SUB is a new building with new bathrooms, and those bathrooms are wonderfully clean. As hard as cleaning staff around UFV might work, public bathrooms tend to accumulate filth — but not these! Obviously not enough people have been in the building for the bathrooms to get too drenched in piss and wads of wet paper towel, but I think they should be this clean always.
I propose we, as users of these public spaces, work to keep the bathrooms as clean as possible. Let’s make a focused effort not to pee on the floor, not to get water and soap all over the counters, and not to wad up several piles of paper and just leave them in the corner right beside the garbage can. I understand it will be difficult, but we are strong people with strong minds. Together, we can keep our SUB bathrooms as tidy as they began!
Don’t advertise to drivers
It’s not like Highway 1 has ever been beautiful — it’s six lanes of roaring, 24-hour traffic — but the last thing it needed was a giant electronic billboard.
The neon monstrosity that towers over Exit 90 beside UFV hits a special nerve for me. Day and night, it draws the gaze as irresistibly as the Eye of Mordor, wrecking the vista of Mount Baker and the Cascade Range — one of the few beautiful sights we can enjoy in Abbotsford. It’s infuriatingly inescapable.
But worse than being a blight on the landscape, it’s potentially dangerous: the screen is so bright, it’s practically impossible not to glance at it as you’re driving. Considering the laws we have against distracting oneself with electronic devices while driving, which marketing genius thought it would be a good idea to deliberately distract drivers with a giant, glowing sign on the side of a busy freeway, right where they need to merge into traffic? And who at the City approved it, especially considering the plans to turn the U-District into an attractive neighbourhood?
