Monday, November 20, 2006

Consoles, water, what's the diff

Like the PS3, the Wii sold out this weekend. Unlike the PS3 however, the Wii apparently sold out rather peacefully... with no violence. PS3s are going for insane prices on Ebay right now.
Speaking of scarcity of goods, associated violence, and price gouging, in Vancouver we haven't been preoccupied with consumer electronics but something rather simple and pertinent--water. For those of you keeping up with Vancouver news, you know that we have a 'boil water advisory' due to all the Noah's Ark-type rain causing mudslides and excessive 'turbidity' in the water. Born and raised in Vancouver, I grew up with boiled water all my life even though tap water was generally safe to drink straight out. If it wasn't bottled, it was boiled, end of story. Once a year around this time it has always gotten 'turbid' but admittedly not to this extent where people are literally fighting over bottled water (as in the case at the Grandview Costco on Friday). With all the businesses who typically provide drinks (like coffee, tea, or other) I was pretty surprised to see just how many consumers and managers were not ready to deal with water they had to boil. Normally in our yoga-utopia, simple filtration is merely a precautionary and aesthetic measure. Well, doesn't matter now. If you can't get the stuff hot enough (like many coffee places who serve drip)... they say no dice. People have been calling into radio stations with their stories of Montezuma's revenge, left coast style... Stores everywhere are mitigating the 'water fights' and imposing a 'Limit 1 per customer' restriction for packages of water.
Someone was saying the other day, with how spoiled we are at times (when the city goes nuts over the prospect of adapting to boiled water....) we are only really 24 hours away from being a third world country. The storms knocked out power... our water is 'undrinkable'... woo... time to get two of each animal into the boat and stock up on weak beer. :P

Technorati Tags: Consoles, games, PS3, Wii, Ebay, Water, turbidity, Costco, Vancouver, bottled, boiled, beer

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