Feedback in Unexpected Places

And he sang from his heart
and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang;
It just made him whole.
--- Harry Chapin, Mr. Tanner

Whether your hobby is singing/dancing/writing, there's value to creating in solitude. But there's not much joy without interaction. To my surprise, I've been getting more feedback by email than from comments to posts. I didn't know.

I generally post once a week, which makes visiting Riscario Insider daily of little value. So you're best served by subscribing for updates by email from Zookoda. If you reply, your response comes back to my sending email account. Who knew? To my surprise, I've been getting emails. I didn't know because I wasn't checking those accounts ... until today.

How Many Email Accounts?
How many email accounts do you have? To organize and reduce spam, I use the following email accounts

1. work-related (2 accounts linked to my Blackberry)
2. personal (Gmail)
3. blogging (one per blog, using a commercial provider since Gmail only allows 500 outgoing emails per day --- think big!)
   
4. junk (Gmail)
   

Gmail's great because of the space, permanence, spam filtering and ease of finding messages. There's one problem: you can only sign into one account at a time and I have three. So I was only checking my personal account. My blog email addresses are now forwarded to one Gmail account, which I'll check regularly.

So I'm catching up with belated replies. You may also have emails waiting for you unexpected places.

Live Comments
By the way, your comments now go live without moderation.

Hidden Costs of Air Travel

I bought some batteries, but they weren't included - so I had to buy them again --- Stephen Wright

Hidden costs are annoying. The "nickeling and diming" can really add up. We know that most prices in Canada are subject to Goods & Services Tax (GST) and Provincial Sales Tax (PST). We're used to that.

Airline Tickets
Some prices have unexpected add-ons. Take airline tickets. I normally use a travel agent when travelling on business or internationally on vacation. So I focus on the total price, not the components. Next month, we're vacationing in Banff. So we decided to book online through aircanada.com. The process is simple and easy --- almost enjoyable.

The surprise came at the end. Each ticket had the following unexpected charges

• $46.00 for Navcan and Surcharges (no further breakdown)
  
• $40.00 for an Airport Improvement Fee
• $9.34 for a Security Charge

That's $95.34. Add $32 for GST and the total is $127.34 per ticket. The disclosure is good, except for "Surcharges", but the total was unexpected.

My wife says "That's not right" and my son asks "What're you gonna do about it?"

Be thankful there's no PST ;)

Did you know ...
Life insurance premiums already include provincial premium tax (which varies from 2% in most provinces to 4% in Newfoundland). There's no GST or regular PST.