Down to Business

Report: Oct 13, 2010

It was time to get down to business. The day began with an extensive internet search for:

• Post Office Box
• Cell Phone options
• Bank locations
• Apartment locations

We decided we needed an address first, so we zeroed in on a UPS store that could give us a physical address rather than a P.O. Box. We fell in love with the southern portion of Halifax and picked a UPS store close to a bus stop in that area. It doesn't hurt that it's also near a European bakery called The Gingerbread Haus that serves the best pastries. I volunteer to get the mail every chance I get :)

Next we were off to the cell phone store since opening a bank account would require a phone number. Plus we wanted the option to call apartments using a local number that would be much cheaper than the roaming charges AT&T would hit us with if we used our US phones. The cell phone options were a bit...well...antiquated to say the least. Most places we shopped at said to purchase an iPhone we would have to sign up for a wait list that was more than 40 people long! We asked how many phones they get per shipment every week and the answer was 2 to 4. What the heck is this? They have a huge demand for smart phones and yet their supply chain sucks. It seems living in Cali has spoiled us with instant gratification concerning electronic devices. Goose was on a mission to locate a decent phone so we searched high and low around Halifax. We stumbled upon a small local vendor that happened to get 20 phones in that day but was already taking calls for reservations and had other stores swooping in to take their stock. We signed up for a plan as fast as we could and secured two smart phones before they were gone. Cell phone packages are similar to the USA so cost seems about equal to what we paid before.

Goose had done business with the Royal Bank of Canada last summer so going back to them was easy. I must mention that when you open an account here they inquire as to your retirement plans, savings habits, real estate plans, account usage, and anything associated with your future financial goals. Goals? Yikes! I knew a few things I wanted to do but felt extremely unprepared to answer their questions. We were relieved to find out we could come back and learn to establish credit, figure out how the real estate market worked, set up retirement programs, etc. 

Ok! We had an address, a phone number and a bank account. Time to find a place to rest our heads. By now it's late afternoon but we figured we could hit a few apartment complexes that were on our hit list from this morning. We learned the hard way thanks to all the college kids in town that finding an apartment would be more time consuming than we realized. Most smaller apartments had been taken and ones in a decent price range seemed a bit shady. After a few stops we called it a day but not before I took a picture of these huge towers that are in the harbor. We haven't found out what the port uses them for yet but you can see these from just about anywhere in Halifax:

On a side note, they have an interesting way of checking folks for proper vehicle registration and safety inspection. While driving around we came upon a vehicle checkpoint where traffic was narrowed down to one lane in each direction. At first it felt like a sobriety checkpoint. Approximately 5 officers on each side of the street look at your car while one checks a sticker on your windshield to make sure everything is current. We didn't know what was happening so we pulled our driver's licence out and the RCMP was kind enough to let us know it was just a routine check and no licence was necessary. The process took 5 seconds but they sure caught a lot of people with safety issues or lack of current registration. There was a line of cars on either side of the road that were being ticketed. Being in a rental car meant our information was current but woe to those who thought they could get away with not paying.

Eagle Out