19-ma darim yakh mizanim!!

Hi everybody,

I just wanted to say hello and happy New Year and put some words after a long time that I could not find some time to update the weblog.

The amount of precipitation especially snow is unbelievable here. The temperature is usually around -20 and sometime that we have windy days you can feel it like -30. We already have experienced -40 once but with all of this, the life has its beauty here. I am not panicked because I have experience all of this in Tabriz too. Of course I have to say that here is colder and the amount of snow is much more.

I bet you cannot feel how freezing is -30/-40 degrees (in Celsius). Today we took some photos and you can see frost on eyelash of my friend. Today was -10.

We have heavy snows here but the service of municipality is really great. Let’s say: it is awesome buddy! Once snow starts they get ready to clear streets and sidewalks and you really never get into any trouble when you circulate in the city. They dump snows in some parts of the city that is plain. I have taken some photos from dumps and you can see the amount of them that sometimes it’s like a hill.

They use specific equipments and machinery to clear the streets and sidewalks that is very interesting, I’ll try to snap some pictures later on.

25 December was Christmas and the next day all of the markets started their great discount. I bought some cloths and a digital camera:

SONY Cyber-shot

Resolution 7.2 MegaPixel

High Sensivity iso 1000

Optical zoom 3x

Long life battery

Price: 184 CDN = appx. 165,000 tomans

You can see the amount of discounts in some of photos too. I am really satisfied of pricing in Canada. Always if you live with a plan, you can manage and handle every thing in your life. Remember the quality of stuff in here is really very high and goof of Iran is different from good of Canada. Today I found T-shirts for starting 5 dollars and Jeans starting from 10 dollars. It does not mean that they are not good, it’s just season discount. I list some prices for grocery stuff below that will enable you to compare the prices in here and other cities in the world:

Pineapple: regular price=4 CDN but you can buy for 2 sometimes; some times it’s 6 per one. I bought one for 3 CDN today.

Meat (beef): regular price=6 CDN per kilogram, I have bought for 4 too sometimes it’s more expensive, say 8-10 CDN per kilogram

Banana: regular price 1 CDN per kilogram, some time you can find for 50 cents per kilogram and it is utmost 2 dollars.

Milk: range 1.3-1.7 CDN per liter. It’s almost fixed

Orange Juice with pulp:[Tropicana: this is very known brand, you can see it in HOLYWOOD movies very much] regular price 6.5 CDN per 2.84 liter. I have bought for 4 too. I bought one some days ago for 4.5 CDN.

Cheese [Philadelphia]: 3.5 CDN per 250 grams, I buy sometimes 2.5, I today bought for 3 CDN

Potato: range 50 cents-1 dollar per kilogram, I bought 4.5 kilo for 2.5 dollars some days ago.

Yogurt: range 3-5 dollars per 750 grams I bought one for 2.5 dollar some days ago but I say that it’s 1.5 today. (It seems to be expensive compared to others but the quality of yogurts here is perfect.)

Bread: it is very different. There are numerous types of bread and cheese here. Regular price for bread is between 2 and 4 dollars per 500 grams. It’s too expensive compared to Iran but there is a point that I’ll talk about it at the end.

I strongly believe that home appliance is very cheap here. The range of prices is unbelievable. I have bough an iron for 10 CDN and a hair dryer for 15 CDN. The former is Black and Decker and the latter is CONAIR that both of them are much known. There was some stuff like 150-200 dollars too.

I bough a clipper and once I used it I felt that it’s not good enough and I just took that to the clientele service of the market and they gave back my money without any hesitation. It’s called no question money back guaranty. NOW you can figure out why manufacturers pay attention to quality and clientele service. WITHOUT any QUESTION they reimburse your money after 2 weeks for home appliance (electrical stuff) and one month up to three months for cloths and other stuff. This is why everything is good here, even a 5-dollar T-shirt.

We planned to stay in Montreal in holidays but unfortunately we had to postpone it. We’ll go to travel agencies to get some information for excursions around here and register if it was possible. I’ll try to get some more photos of city center too but I prefer to do that it in summer time as everything is covered by snow now.

I think you have received a link to see some photos online, I hope you enjoy.

Sincerely,

Ebrahim