Trick by Tridel --- Beware of builder's tricks

Several years ago, I decided to buy a condominium for investment. It was still not built yet and I had to pay some installments of down payment as described in their schedule. The plan was that I just wanted to rent the property after the building was ready, so it would pay itself without further investing on this.

Now they call to say the closing date was coming up. This is actually not a real closing date as the new building was not yet registered. Any new building in Toronto won't be registered with the government for a while and anyone who purchased the property will basically pay a monthly rent to the builder until the building is registered. So this interim closing is the date you can move in but not yet own the place.

Since I have my own place to live, it doesn't really make sense to me to have this closed before the registration, but that is something expected to do in case of the new building. So I was fine to have this interim closing done and I was planning to rent the place to someone.

Then, they tell me that "as in the document, you can not rent the property privately. You have to go with our rental office". Really? When did I sign such an agreement?

The builder is Tridel, reputable builder. I bought their building instead of other building because they make luxurious high quality building. I was informed about their rental service, which you have to pay one month rent as the registration fee and pay 6% every month while the renter is renting. This is quite expensive service and of course, it is a good alternative in case you can't find anyone, but as long as you find a good tenant, you can easily manage by yourself. After all this is a new unit and any major issues within first 7 years are covered by Tarion.

So I asked my lawyer where did it say that I can't rent privately without going with the builder's rental office? The lawyer explained to me that there was no place that explicitly says that I have to pay such fee to go through their rental office before the registration, but  it says that I have to get "approval" by the builder in the document.

So now "getting approval by the builder" can be interpreted in many way and the builder can take advantage of this to bully the purchaser to impose the condition of renting through their service.

Of course, I don't want to spend more on lawyer's fee to fight for this for a bit of fee, but it just makes me feel that this is really a dirty trick on builder's side. They should have put more explicit clause about this instead so that I understood the meaning of this before signing the document.

So, if you are buying the new property for investment, beware of the tricks they use. Make sure that you have a choice of rent your own before and after the registration. You don't want to be stuck with paying high fee for their management.

Italian Leather Jacket? Be careful with scams!

A couple of days ago, my husband brought home two jackets. He was excited that he bought two suede Italian jacket that is worth $900 each for a very good price. He said that he met two Italian men who were showing Italian designer jacket in the convention wanted to go back home and they had 6 jackets left with them that they wanted to sell them off for cheap price.

So these were nice looking brown jackets, in nice plastic cover. It says "Italian style" all over inside the jacket and there's some tag with replacement button. It has size tag, but there is nothing else. There's no tag saying where it was made in, what materials were used, nor washing instructions. It only says "EA collection". If the jacket costs $900 each, this must be some kind of known brand, so I looked online.

To my horror, the similar looking jackets were sold on eBay for $0.99 to $30.00, but then the listing says "faux leather", but ours should be real suede as the guys say, but is it? Looking further online, I found a few people posting about the scams by two Italian men who showed 6 leather jacket saying "EA Collection" telling people that these were expensive jackets but they can sell them for good price for one reason or another and they all found that these weren't leather nor made in Italy, but just some fake jacket that doesn't worth more than $30 each. Well, these people were reporting the scams happened in U.S., but looks like these guys are now in Canada. In Toronto last few days.

So I figured, that the jackets weren't real leather. They were still nicely made, but the material feels fake and it has such strong smell. They probably sprayed hard to make it smell like leather. Oh, well, it is too late.

If you encounter anyone selling you Italian leather jacket, please check if there are any labels saying where it made in or what materials are used before paying money to them. Maybe you want to buy a fake nice looking jacket, but if you do, make sure that you pay not more than its worth.

Be careful and don't be scammed!

American Idol Season 12

Since "American Idol" first started in 2002, I watched every year until season 8. I couldn't watch season 9, 10 and 11, because I was busy. This year, I started watching the show again. When I think about the first show when Kelly Clarkson won, there were many shaky performers in top 10, but as the popularity of the show grows, the level of singers in the competition went up. Yesterday was "sudden death" of first group of 10 male singers, but cutting half of these great singers must be a difficult thing. I guess they have to consider the style, looks, stage presence and performance, so not every good singer could get in, but I was surprised to see that they let J'DA go. I thought he was the best overall performer in yesterday's group. Well, I'm not a musician, so I guess I didn't see what they saw. My guess for this season is "Angela Miller" to win. We'll see.

Over the years, there are many people who won the competition. I don't know why some of the winners are kind of gone and you never hear again. They got so much votes from people in order to win, so they must be popular, so why? Some of my favorites that I don't hear about are Fantasia and David Cook. I don't hear about Kris Allen either. Probably they are doing fine as artists, but they are just not that much "out there".

Let's see how this season goes and if the winner or any of top 10 would become someone to be remembered many years later.

Selling on eBay

I have been using eBay for buying things for a while. First time I bought something from China or Hong Kong, I was afraid that shipment might not arrive on time or I was afraid that the seller could cheat me. Of course I checked the feedback rate and most of them are over 99%, but then I read about a few people who didn't receive the item. Now I have quite a few sellers who are my favorite and I buy from them repeatedly.

Recently, I decided to sell on eBay for the first time. I was afraid if they would charge me a lot and I could lose money instead of making. It says "first 50 auction style listings are free for each calendar month". So I decided to list 50 auction style items at the end of January. However when I listed 10, it says "you have reached the limit for this category for this month". O.K., so you can list 50 items for free, but if you list items in more than one category they would charge me, so basically I could only list 10 items for free each month. So I waited until February 1st, to see if I could list another ten, but unfortunately they still say that your maximum for the category is reached. It was because my items aren't ending yet. Then I waited for my auction to end. My auction just ended on February 4th. I sold three of them, and not sold seven of them. Now I thought I could list another ten, but it let me list only 7 items. Somehow they count "sold" item as listing.

So basically you can sell ten auction items on eBay in a month at the most for free. You have to pay for the paypal fee for receiving a payment, and you have to pay the final value fee to eBay, too, so you will lose quite a lot of money by selling on eBay. Since only ten items are allowed, you should list something a bit more expensive than 99 cents. The problem is that when the price is higher, less likely to be bought by people, unless what you are selling is very good price.

I guess you can't make a business selling on eBay.

Cuteness and Agression

The other day, I read an article from popular science (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/science-says-adorable-animals-turn-us-aggressive) that looking at cute animal pictures causes human to react aggressively.
I'm surprised that this wasn't a known knowledge. I always had an urge to bite cute animals in their nose, but of course, I wouldn't really bite it. It is just that cuteness triggers some kind of insatiable reaction to squeeze and bite. It is also interesting that everyone has slightly different taste for cuteness. Of course, if you own the pet, you would love your pet the best, but for example, when I see a cat with extreme flat face, the cuteness factor goes lower for me. However that kind of face is very cute for my daughter. She loves animals with very flat face.
In this article, it says that "... seeing something cute, like a baby, drives us to want to take care of it. But we can't reach through a photograph to cuddle it, so we get frustrated -- and then aggressive.", but in my opinion, that is not exactly true. I do want to squeeze and bite real animals in front of me if they are cute. I don't think frustration of not being able to cuddle would cause the aggression, but the frustration comes when I can't actually do that to the animals. I might kiss the animal, but not really bite.
I am not sure what it is, but I guess this might be some type of natural reaction. I heard about Panda mother eats her new born baby, or sometimes some other animal mothers eat their offspring. I think that might be the aggression to cuteness gone bad. 

Image by seasideshe on flickr

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a condition of people who have mixed senses. For example, when you hear a sound, you see something. Or you see something, and that triggers you to taste something. This condition hasn't been studied for a long time and they thought such condition was rare, but as internet became accessible to everyone they noticed that this condition is not that rare after all and reported by many. Most common of this condition is number to colour association. People with this type of synesthesia has colours for numbers.
I saw a TV program about synesthesia about 15 years ago. When I saw this, I realized that this thing had a name. From then on, I could read about this condition. My strongest synesthesia was people and colour. Not everyone has a colour, but many people had a colour. Some people have very strong colour, and some people have weak colour. When I was in elementary school, my good friend had very strong dark green colour. It was true that she often wore green, but my association of the colour was so strong that I asked myself why there was such a strong green with her. I haven't seen it in my eyes, but I had such a strong green feeling about her. I also have colours for many things. School subjects always had a colour, so when I make a time table, I always coloured the right subject colour. Sometimes I couldn't find the right pencil, or more than one subjects had similar colour, but as much as I could, I used the right colour for the subject. I also tried match colours of notebooks with the subject, too. I have colours to numbers, weeks, month, and many other things. However this association had weakened over the years. It was very strong when I was younger, but not any more. I also noticed that loud music bothers my visual. When I was in a car, if the radio or music is on, I feel that I can't see very well. It is not that I can't really see, but I just have this feeling that noise interferes with my viewing.
I took different synesthesia tests online. Today, I took one at http://synesthete.org . I didn't remember I ever registered there before, because I took many different tests online in past several years. It turned out that I took the test on this web site in 2009. I recovered my lost password and I took the test again. For number/letter colour association test, I got the score of 0.82. They say that if you get the score of less than 1.0, you are synesthete. I could also see the score I got from 2009. My old score was 0.72. I took a look at the colours I made association in 2009. Most of them are the same, but some are changed. As I said, my synesthesia isn't so strong now, and my strongest association was people to colour. For some symbols, I have stronger association of a colour, but for some other symbols, I don't have strong sense. I have to think and feel which colour the symbol could be. Sometimes I can't say exactly which colour it is because I get more than two right colours. For example, Y. Y is either green or yellow. I think it is green, but sometimes I think it is yellow. When I look at the test results, both 2009 and today, I had associated with both. Many of other associated colours are shade of brown and hard to describe. Some have more reddish brown, and others have more yellowish brown. To feel the distinction between different browns aren't very easy. For today's test, there were more tests than 2009. I tried week, months, sound, Chinese characters tests, too and all were under 1.0 except Chinese character test.
Apparently, this condition could be inherited. My daughter has some form of synesthesia, too. First time I noticed was that she told me that when she hears a word "fish", the back of her foot becomes ticklish. She didn't have any other words that made her feel differently, but then, a few years ago, she reported that she has time lines. Time line is that some people have time ordered in space. I don't have a such thing and when I read about it, I didn't quite get this, but my daughter described me exactly like what I read. So we have totally different types of synesthesia but we both have some.
If you want to try the test yourself, register at http://synesthete.org and go to the synesthesia battery test. Although it makes you tired, it is fun, too.

Image by twitchcraft on flickr

Lumosity

The other day, I saw the commercial of lumosity on TV. It says that by playing games, you can improve your intelligence. So I visited the web site www.lumosity.com to try out. It is free to register, but if you don't pay, you get to play limited types of games every day. You can play the same game over and over, but I noticed that if I play more, my score often gets lower. Unless you didn't know how to play, usually the first few games get the best score.

There was this software for Nintendo DS called Brain Age, that was some what similar. As you play more, your brain works better. Of course, when you play more of these games, you can do better. However I am not too sure some of the games are really that helpful in increasing mental intelligence.
My favorite game from lumosity is called Penguin Pursuit. You will use four keys, left, right, up, down arrows to move your penguin inside the maze to get to the fish in the middle. While you move the arrows, the screen turns around and make you get confused. When I tried for the first time, I got totally confused and couldn't move the penguin properly, but as you get to used to it, this is actually a lot of fun.

To me, some games don't really have much benefit. For example, they have this game to remember the name of the character on the screen, and give them the right items as they order you. If you recall the names of the character from few days ago, your score gets higher. I am not sure if remembering some character face and name from the game would improve anything. They always wear the same clothes and comes with same expression on their faces, so I think this is far from real situation. Well, maybe they just want us to remember something, not necessarily a face.

If you want to try, you can register it at www.lumosity.com for free to start.

Image by By Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta on flickr