The U.S. Military prepares Overseas Cost of Living Allowances data on a regular basis. They assign cities around the world a COLA index relative to a COLA index of 100 for the cost of living in average U.S. location. These numbers are used to determine how much they pay foreign-posted personnel; they’re also an interesting tool to get a quick feel for how much it costs to maintain a western-style standard of living overseas. Here are some example COLA numbers from the March 2007 report:

• Canada
  • Calgary - 130
  • Montreal - 130
  • Toronto - 136
  • Halifax - 138
  • Vancouver - 148
• Havana, Cuba - 132
• Lisbon, Portual - 138
• Tokyo, Japan - 152
• Finland - 154
• Copenhagen, Denmark - 168
• London, U.K. - 170
• Paris, France - 182
• Geneva, Switzerland - 188

Take a look at Worldmapper (Link from [[Pedro]]). See especially fuel imports vs. fuel exports.

During our vacation last week in Lisbon we stayed in this apartment, which I found through the holiday-rentals.co.uk, the same site we used last year to find the cottage we rented in Porto.

This was our fourth European house or apartment rental, and I can’t say enough about how nice an alternative to staying in hotels this is. Not only do you have “all the comforts of home,” but it’s usually less expensive, you’re living outside of tourist ghettos, and because you’re likely to rent for a week or two, you can experience a village or city in a way that a short “arrive by train, book a hotel, stay for a day or two” kind of trip would.

While I’m sure there are those with negative experiences, we’ve had no trouble at all with the financial and logistical end of things. This time around we did a bank transfer of 200 EUR to the apartment owner as a deposit (Canadian banks do get a little confused about European wire transfers, and it did take a little doing on this end to pull that off), and then simply gave her a call on her mobile from the airport when we arrived in Lisbon and she met us at the apartment, gave us a quick tour, took the balance of the rental fee, and left us on our own for a week.

The holiday-rentals.co.uk site is just one of many similar sites that list homes, apartments, cottages and castles for rent. We’ve also found that craigslist is a good place to turn (look in their housing / vacation rentals section in the country or city you’re interested in).

This Programmer Analyst position at the Robertson Library at UPEI is only the latest in a series of local programming jobs that colleagues and friends have mentioned to me. It appears that there’s a local market for versatile programmers with a LAMP skill-set and some experience building systems. While I don’t have any immediate need for programmers in-house here at [[Reinvented]] it would be nice to have some names to be able to pass along to those that do; if you’re such a person, feel free to pass along your coordinates to me.

When I was 18 years old, I left home for the first time to spend a semester studying at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. I needed a place to live, and my mother’s friend Heather Elliott, with children of her own just off to university, opened the home she shared with her husband Don to me, and I lived on the top floor of their place near Mount Pleasant and Eglington for five months.

Don and Heather — our family quickly applied the collective noun HeatherDon to them — were extremely nice to me, giving me free reign of their home, and letting me unfurl my adult wings for the first time.

Don died late last year, and in yesterday’s Globe and Mail my [[Mom]] spotted a tribute to him by Heather in the Lives Lived section.

As I wrote Heather when Don died, my late-night conversations with him over tomato soup in their dining room were among my first conversations with a real live adult who wasn’t one of parents or teachers. He was a good man, and Heather’s words reveal much about him that I never knew.

What news to come home to: the CBC is reporting that Charlottetown to warn about lead in water. While the City of Charlottetown appears to be taking some responsibility for the problem, the article closes with what appears, on first blush, to be a shocking abrogation of duty:

But the city says it simply can’t afford to replace all lead pipes. It recommends that if people have concerns, they should take other precautions, such as buying a water filter or running the water for a few minutes first thing in the morning before they drink it.

If the city is running water through its own lead pipes, and if that is posing a health risk, then the city simply must do what’s required. Water is a basic necessity; we all have a right to a clean, healthy source of it.

When I saw the headline Nominations for new Primate open in my newsreader this afternoon I got really excited — a new primate! Then I realized it was an Anglican Church of Canada primate, not a new variation on the monkey, ape, chimp circuit.

One last café com leite here in the Lisbon Airport before we board our flight to London. Overnight in London tonight, then back to [[Prince Edward Island]] tomorrow.

We had lunch with [[Dan]] and [[Becky]] today, converging in Lisbon for a brief moment. We ate at the same place that [[Pedro]] and I ate on Friday, a buffet where they weigh your food. Ate outside on the patio one last time.

My love affair with Portugal has only deepened this trip; after chatting with Pedro at lunch I’m convinced anew that there are important similarities between the Island experience and the Portuguese one, and I’m already plotting ways of bringing our two worlds together.

Catch you on the other side of the ocean.

Okay, let’s see if I can post from my mobile phone. If you can read this then I guess I can. I’m writing this in the Notes application on my Nokia N70, then cutting and pasting into Opera.