Hello Toronto!

I have finally made it to my destination – my other home, Toronto. Although I haven’t actually found my other home since this time I will be renting an apartment and not staying with my family the full time (I’m with family now), at least there is no more traveling and I can set up some nice regular patterns again – oh how I love those regular patterns and home cooked meals!

During my travels I made several observations that I’d like to share with you. I can’t remember them all but here’s a few things I that I thought about off the top of my head.

• My websites respond really quickly here. The combination of cable broadband and being closer to American servers has resulted in some lovely download speeds. Somethings remind me how far Australia really is.
• The amount of television channels here is insane. In Australia having cable is not accepted as “normal”, it’s a luxury item in general and it hasn’t really yet got traction down under. In North America it would be unheard of to not at least have some form of basic cable access which results in at least a good 30-40 channels – and that would be considered pretty low – you could get like 500+ channels if you wanted to. Not quite the same as good old 7, 9, 10, ABC, SBS and fuzzy Briz31 were I come from.
• Continuing the television commentary – when I landed in Hawaii just after leaving Oz I was saddened to learn about Steve Irwin’s death. What amazed me was the amount of coverage it received in the US. While of course I wasn’t in Australia to see the reaction of Australians first hand, and I know it was quite significant, I think the American media really really liked the guy – the 24 hour news coverage was testament to this, and I don’t think the Aussie media would have gone as far.

  I felt very humbled that a man from Australia had managed to impact the American culture to such a degree that they devoted so much attention to it. It was like an Australian version of Princess Diana’s passing, every little aspect of the event, from looking at sting rays, to Steve’s life, interviews with people he had met and influenced – everything you could think of was covered. Personally I felt mostly for Steve’s family, but the media attention in the USA is what really blew me away. It shows what one man can do, how many people’s lives he can influence in a positive manner, just by being passionate and true to his beliefs – there is a very powerful message in that.

• In terms of business and marketing I noticed little discrepancies which I always find funny when I head overseas. For example in Australia we have Lynx deodorant, but here it’s called Axe. Everything else is exactly the same, including the commercials, but the product is called Axe. The same goes for Brumby’s bakeries, which are called “Cobs” here, but have the exact same layout and design as Brumby’s. It makes me wonder what the marketing meetings were like when they made these sorts of branding/product decisions and the different local conditions that brought about these discrepancies.
• The Canadian mobile phone network is well, stupid. I’ve never experienced a system so convoluted that so poorly provides customers with what they want. The system here is expensive, you get charged for everything including checking your voicemail, outgoing AND incoming calls (yes you get charged when someone calls you!) and there is even a $6.95 per month “connection fee”. It just smells of a market that is either too heavily regulated or something dodgy where consumers are being ripped off because all the companies are working the same poor pricing model. I had hopes when Virgin came in when I left Toronto last time that it might have shaken the market up here, but it’s still just as bad.
• The recycling system is darn good here in Thornhill at least, not sure about the rest of Toronto. Pretty much everything is recycled and even compost – organic waste – is collected by the local municipality. That would be a smelly job!
• Two food ingredients are abused by many food outlets – salt and sugar. Everything seems to have had the salt and sugar levels boosted to extreme levels. Of course this has probably been done because it’s been tested to sell more food but my bland Aussie taste buds do not like it and I suspect it can’t be good for the population’s general health either.

That’s it for now. I’ll get back to some regular blogging since I’ve managed to catch up on my emails and things are smoothing out again. On a personal note I look forward to meeting the Torontonians who have kindly contacted me offering to meet up sometime. I will be in touch soon. I have few friends in Toronto so I appreciate the chance to meet the locals, especially those in Internet business. I’m also looking forward to meeting and chatting to the Toronto mastermind group I am a member of which came about as part of the Rich Schefren coaching program I joined last month.

Yaro Starak
Canadian