Changes to the Canadian Money System

Do you know what sucks about the nutritional aspect of healthy living? Eating healthy is not enjoyable. Exercise can be enjoyable. You get to exert yourself, and the act of putting your all into it can give the sense of emotional expression. It can make you feel like you're directly combating your issue. After you're finished, you feel good.

Eating healthy only feels good in a long-term kind of way that your brain never directly associates with the act of eating. Even if you can make healthy food taste as good as unhealthy food, it takes planning, and you're always limited in what you can eat. After eating a healthy meal, you feel bad. Unhealthy food gives short-term benefits that allows your brain to associate with the act of eating. Eating healthy actually makes you feel deprived of these good effects, even if you know they're false.

Jumping around on topics today. The government's killing the penny. There will no longer be any one-cent coins. Honestly, I don't feel as effected by this as I did about Katimavik. Mom's not happy about it, though. She called that this would happen, too. She told me that she was afraid that they were going to cancel the penny, because she hadn't seen any pennies from 2012.

We collect pennies, and Mom tries to get a penny from each year. She's got a calender with pennies taped to various years.

If we cancel the nickel, we're going to end up like Mali. Mali's lowest form of currency was a ten franc coin, but that was worth about two cents. I did the math.

I remember one time, this guy didn't have the right change, so instead of giving me a 25 franc coin, he gave me three ten franc coins. So I made my purchase at five francs off!

Just a few days ago, I found a little baggy of Malian change. I'd gotten one of each of the coins (they turn into bills once you hit 1000 francs) for Mom, since she's into coins. Once I got back to Canada, though, I couldn't find them. I was sure I'd packed them, and I went through my luggage again and again, to no avail.

It was in the pocket of one of my pairs of shorts. I hadn't worn shorts since coming back, because this is Canada in winter, but because of the early spring, I've switched over to shorts again.

We're also changing our bills from paper to plastic. I just saw a new plastic $50 bill today. Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. I don't think I care. It's got a transparent bit, that I found sort of tacky, because it feels like it's showcasing it's nature of being plastic. Nobody's going to be all that excited about that in a couple years, so there's no real reason to emphasize the novelty of it on a bill that's going to be with us for many years. I'm also betting that I'll feel nostalgic for paper after I've handled plastic for awhile, but that will just be because of the nostalgia factor, not because paper's better. Plastic's probably more durable and economical or something. It's probably a good overall change, but I don't really care.