Catherine and I were up at the Credit Union arranging for our 2006 RRSP contributions. They were busy, so we had to leave our names and wait in the waiting room for a bit. When they asked me for my name I said “Rukavina” and they apparently they took this to mean that my name is “Ruka Vina” because when someone came looking for us 15 minutes later, they came into the waiting room and asked for “Ruk.”

Air Canada’s Daily Deals for today are very cheap flights to Asia including Toronto to Beijing or Shanghai for $365 each way. Oddly, the fare from Vancouver, where you have to make a stopover on the way to either, is $410. Which means, I think, that the fare from Toronto to Vancouver is minus $45. Weird. Anyway, if you’ve ever had a hankering to visit China, this is a very inexpensive way to get there — high season fares are in the $1300 range each way.

Meanwhile, the current Websaver fares from Halifax are equally “all-time low” with Halifax - London at $179 each way. You can even fly Halifax - Port Au Prince, Haiti for $150 each way.

As usual, there are only a couple of sale fares from Charlottetown: Lima, Peru ($440 each way) and Sydney, Australia ($827 each way). The only rhyme or reason I can make for the difference between Halifax and Charlottetown sale fares is that availability on the Halifax to Charlottetown route is non-existent — even Moncton is showered with super fares.

The International Chamber of Commerce publishes a Weekly Piracy Report. Just in case problems with the food system aren’t enough to keep you up at night. It appears that we don’t get much piracy up here in eastern North America.

Posting with hopes that someone can tell me why Technorati thinks I haven’t updated this blog for 73 days. Help.

If you were a regular at the now-defunct uptown Formosa Tea House in Ellen’s Creek Plaza, you’ll remember Kenny and Winnie, its amiable hosts. Last summer they left the Formosa, bought the building formerly occupied by Theo’s Thai Food on Pownal Street, and began renovations.

Over the past 9 months they have completely transformed the building on the inside, opening up what used to be a cramped first floor into a very open area with huge windows onto the street. They’ve carefully crafted the space into a new restaurant, opened 5 days ago, which they’re calling Tai Chi Gardens.

Oliver and I dropped by, completely by chance, yesterday after our weekly visit to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market and were pleasantly surprised to find them open. Oliver had his usual hot chocolate (prepared with ice cube, per his earlier arrangement established over many visits to the Formosa) and I had a lemon iced tea (excellent). We shared a stuffed bun billed with turnips and leeks which was also very good.

They’re making a tentative stab at opening on Sundays — from Noon until 3:00 p.m. — and so we’re going this afternoon for lunch by way of encouraging this idea (they would be the only tea house in town to be open Sundays).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts page that’s also available as an RSS feed.

I’ve been subscribing to the feed for the past couple of weeks, and it has provided me with an interesting (and somewhat disturbing) look into what can go wrong with food; for example:

Product testing by several states has now confirmed that Peter Pan peanut butter and certain Great Value brand peanut butter are the sources of the foodborne illness outbreak of Salmonella Tennessee that began in August 2006. To date 329 individuals have become ill from consuming the contaminated peanut butter, and 51 of those persons were hospitalized.

and:

Castle Produce, a subsidiary of Tropical Produce, Inc., a wholesale importer of fresh fruit and vegetables announced the recall of cantaloupes in California due to potential health concerns. Some cantaloupes delivered on or after 2/16/2007 have tested positive for Salmonella, although no illnesses have been reported.

and:

Americas Kitchen of Alpharetta, GA, is recalling its 32-ounce packages of “Wellsley Farms” Green Bean Casserole sold from September 1, 2006 through February 22, 2007 because they have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause illness, mild, moderate or even severe.

and:

The American Italian Pasta Company (AIPC), the independent manufacturer of Giant Eagle brand Egg Free Pasta Ribbons, has notified Giant Eagle that a recently produced shipment of the product may inadvertently contain eggs.

And those are only from this week.

A story in the Hamilton Spectator about the gender balance in the Ontario Legislature caught my eye this morning, specifically the note that “[o]nly two provinces, Quebec (28 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (26 per cent), have higher percentages” of women in the house than Ontario (which has 25%).

Given that more than 50% of PEI electors are women, 26% isn’t something to be proud of in any absolute way, but it is interesting to note that PEI, which is seen by many as a bastion of old school ways, is, with Quebec, leading the country relatively speaking.

Elections PEI has an overview of women in politics in Prince Edward Island; the PEI Coalition for Women in Government has a similar overview.

Catherine has started uploading photographs of interesting doors from around the world to her Flickr.

I arrived early this morning at the Air Canada check-in area here at Halifax International Airport to find about 200 people in the line. Despite the fact that they’re pushing people to the automated check-in kiosks, there was no dedicated bag drop-off area, so checking my bag would have involved a wait that looked like about an hour. So I dumped my “liquids in containers of more than 50ml” and decided to carry-on instead.

I found some hidden check-in kiosks out in the main departure lounge, printed a boarding pass, breezed through security, and was cappuccino-laden 10 minutes after airport arrival.

I’m mindful of the fact that this is probably exactly what Air Canada’s vision of heaven is — passenger check-in with no need to actual staff. I suppose if they continue to decrease the number of counter staff, this is what we’ll all inevitably be pushed into. I just pitty the single parent traveling with 2 kids and 4 bags who has to wait in line.

I haven’t even flown on Delta to Halifax, and they’re already impressing me. A few years back I remember reading about a Delta initiative to improve the quality of their in-airport passenger information. It’s working:

The top screen is a large plasma display hanging near the gate. It lists everything from the names of passengers on stand-by to the weather at the destination to information about the nearest washrooms. The bottom screen is the “departure information” screen; pretty standard except that you’ll see that my flight to Halifax at 8:10 is listed as “At Gate,” which is a helpful little bit of information (especially in light of the many Air Canada flights I’ve taken that are listed as “on time” when the actual airplane is 500km away).

Delta obviously understands that flying is frustrating and stressful, and every little bit of information you can provide can help to mitigate that.

I’m flying out of Delta’s new Terminal A here at Logan: it’s beautiful and bright and well laid-out, with many eating and shopping options. I just polished off a very good plate of pasta and chicken from the “Legal Seafoods Test Kitchen” around the corner.

Delta to YHZ tonight; Air Canada to YYG tomorrow morning.