This from the IKEA website:

Who owns the IKEA Concept?
IKEA retailing, with its Swedish roots, is based on a franchise system. Inter IKEA Systems B.V., located in Delft, The Netherlands, is the owner and franchisor of the IKEA Concept. IKEA stores are operated by a number of different franchisees in 29 countries.

There is a new type of knapsack here in Ontario. It has only one strap, and is worn diagonally across the back. It is all the rage. I’ve seen it sold in Indigo as a “yoga pack” but also in Old Navy as a knapsack. Those wishing to stay hip should be alert. Also note that among the young rebel types, “kangaroo sweatshirts” are back in style.

The Jodi Foster film Panic Room is a decent night out. You won’t learn anything new, but you will be entertained. Best seen on a big screen, I think.

1. What Aliant’s website says about the company’s approach:

We’re one of Canada’s top high-tech companies with subsidiaries around the world. We have 10,000 forward-thinking professionals, each focused on creating new and better ways for customers to communicate, work and live. By combining complete and leading-edge solutions with in-depth knowledge, strong customer relationships, extensive reach and a focus on innovation, Aliant is at the forefront of the communications revolution.

Brother Steve and friend Catherine have spilled the beans on me: today, April 5, 2002, I turn 36.

Thirty-six is one of those strange non-ages, far enough from 30 and 40 to be not closely associated with either. It is three times twelve, which places me 24 years past teenagehood. It’s also half way to 72, which, statistically, places me half way through life.

For as long as I can remember (and I realize that I will sound like an idiot here), I have liked the number 36. I remember in grade 4, learning the “times tables,” feeling a kinship with the number because it was 6x6, 3x12, and 4x9 and all at the same time. So that bodes well for the year ahead.

When my father was 36, it was 1973, and PEI was the “place to be in ‘73.” Not a bad sign either.

New and different things about Upper Canada in 2002:

• There is no more music on AM radio: the AM dial has been almost completely converted to talk-radio format. The most striking and unusual example of this is Mojo Radio, the station formerly known as 640 CHAM. It now bills itself “The World’s First and Only Talk Radio Station for Guys” and its hosts address serious global issues like “Man-bags and the Wussification of Society.” Advertisers tend towards strip clubs, hair-loss clinics and sporting events. In an apparent move to counter this, venerable 1010 CFRB is coujnter-programming “Wednesday Mensday.” Really.
• Shopping malls that used to contain 100 little stores now contain 25 big stores. Yorkdale, for example, used to be a rather dowdy old shopping centre. It’s now host to William Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Eddie Bauer and Indigo, all of which are huge. There appears to be no difference between the stores you find in a mall in Peabody, MA and the stores you find in Toronto, ON.
• On television, all the sportscasters are women. This is probably true on PEI too, as we get the same channels by and large — I just notice it here more because I’m around my sports-loving brothers. Brian Williams and ‘casters of his ilk are now the minority.
• There is still strong competition in the wireless telephone market: Fido, Telus, Bell and Rogers all have kiosks or chichi stores in all the malls, and the emphasis is on small and sexy phones and gimicky rate plans (i.e. “free calling after school”)

Explain this: my Island Tel digital cell phone, which doesn’t work in digital mode in Hamilton and Toronto, does work in digital mode as you drive east up the 401 towards Kingston. Go figure.

You might think that if you have an Island Tel digital phone on PEI, you also have an Island Tel digital phone in Ontario. This is, alas, not the case for the Bell Canada digital network uses a different frequency than the Aliant network, and so you’re stuck with analog service in Ontario unless you have something called a “tri-mode” phone.

The Big Impact of this is that a phone that you might be used to charging once every 3 or 4 days on PEI has to be charged every 8 hours or so when you’re in Ontario because the analog network requires more juice to connect to.

This means that a long work day followed by a night out will outlast your phone.

I’m fairly certain that Island Tel mentions this when you first sign up for digital service, but it bears repeating, esp. because the battery drain is so dramatic.

Hey, CBC web god Mitch Cormier has a website. See pictures of Mitch’s kitchen in living colour and hear tales of his travels across the country.

First there were the “you must pay for your magazines before having a coffee” billboards in the stores, then the censored version of the Internet on the in-store net kiosks, now they’re taking out the comfortable chairs. Is there any reason left to shop at Chapters Indigo?

Their bookstores are now simply shopworn holding pens for poorly trained ill-read staff with a paltry collection of newly released books masquerading as a “huge selection.”

Now that all the fun things about their stores will be gone (stop by, read some magazines, have a coffee, buy some books), why would anyone go there? Go to Amazon.com for selection, and the locals, who still have a soul, for browsing.

Or, better yet, go local for everything. If the Bookmark wasn’t so claustrophobic and the Reading Well not so moldy, we’d be set up pretty well in Charlottetown.