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Canadian Gaming "Deals" and Discussion Thread 6: Sorry, We Can't Afford a New Thread

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Anony said:
oh damn
if teachers and more technical workers such as yourself gets so welled paid, then those food and other good prices shouldnt be any problems for you.

but on the flip side, what about the 'normal' or 'regular' jobbed people? what do they do? how much do they usually get paid?
i can't see how they afford anything any less they get paid alot as well.
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The majority of people are unemployed and live off government cheques, and don't live very well if I'm honest. Lots of families go without food on a regular basis. There are a lot of reasons for that (very low income, abysmal spending habits, substance addiction among others) but of course if food was more affordable people wouldn't be as hungry. Most non-government jobs pay the same as minimum wage in Ontario, so as you can imagine it's even hard for the people who have a job to make ends meet.

One of the ways to alleviate that is the schools get funding for a breakfast program that provides a nutritious meal every day for kids that come early. It's a little disingenuous because it's also a way to actually get kids to come to school (a huge problem) but it definitely helps.


Lexxus said:
So, those jobs I see posted with 6 figures at the Territories was right all along? Wow. Though, I wonder how much the foods, services etc cost there.
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Quite expensive. I mentioned some prices a couple posts ago. The one I noticed that people find the most shocking is those Tropicana orange juice cartons. Those are 15.99 where I live.

My girlfriend and I do a huge shop once a year where we spend anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000 on groceries (dry goods) and then we drop it off with a shipper in Ottawa around Canada Day. They crate everything and load it onto a truck headed to Montreal. Then it gets put onto a ship and we get it at the end of September usually. We brought our truck up here last summer and that alone cost about $3,500.

I don't mean to crap up the thread but I enjoy answering questions about living up here. I think a lot of Canadians don't know very much about the North (we brought planters with us to plant vegetables because we didn't know if there would be a place to buy them here).
 
Funnily enough, these Nunavut discussions seem to pop up every year or so in this thread :lol

always a bunch of people who are surprised to learn how different things are up there, myself included a couple years ago
 
theRizzle said:
Quite expensive. I mentioned some prices a couple posts ago. The one I noticed that people find the most shocking is those Tropicana orange juice cartons. Those are 15.99 where I live.

My girlfriend and I do a huge shop once a year where we spend anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000 on groceries (dry goods) and then we drop it off with a shipper in Ottawa around Canada Day. They crate everything and load it onto a truck headed to Montreal. Then it gets put onto a ship and we get it at the end of September usually. We brought our truck up here last summer and that alone cost about $3,500.
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What the hell did I just read
 
Mimosa97 said:
What the hell did I just read
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I know it seems crazy when you read it but when every box of cereal costs $12, every bag of chips is $9 and every can of soup is $9 it is actually more cost effective to buy for the whole year in one shot. Especially with pop. I am not much of a pop drinker but I do enjoy some adult beverages on the weekend.

In my community, alcohol is restricted but available. (Related: This Vice video about the state of prohibition in Nunavut is worth a watch - https://youtu.be/BIhUhHbTJ_s) For me to get alcohol here, I have to go to "City Hall" to fill out an order form. Each person is allowed a maximum of either 48 cans of beer, 24 cans of beer and a 26oz bottle of spirits or two 40oz bottles. That order form then goes to the local Liquor Review Board who check to make sure you aren't trying to order too much or are banned from ordering. Then it gets faxed to another community where the alcohol warehouse is, and then cargo it to me on one of the local airlines. Total time from order to receiving it can be anywhere from 10 days to a month, and you are basically paying bar price for everything... 48 cans of beer usually end up at about $225 after paying for the cargo/freight charge.
 
theRizzle said:
Total time from order to receiving it can be anywhere from 10 days to a month, and you are basically paying bar price for everything... 48 cans of beer usually end up at about $225 after paying for the cargo/freight charge.
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So if your girlfriend wasn't there how fast would want to murder someone just to see some colour?

J/k, keep doing your thing boo, I'm sure the community is benefiting from having some good teachers there that care
 
This is fascinating. Those prices are insane, and it's sad to hear about some of the conditions.

I had heard beer and milk were expensive down East.
 
That's like all Native land up there too, isn't it? One big reservation?

So, does that mean that the Natives work for tax free?

What's the nearest hospital up there to you? They in need of Nurses?
 
theRizzle said:
I don't mean to crap up the thread but I enjoy answering questions about living up here. I think a lot of Canadians don't know very much about the North (we brought planters with us to plant vegetables because we didn't know if there would be a place to buy them here).
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Can you buy them there? How about fruit? If tropicana is $15.99, if they sell oranges there then is it like $5 each?
 
c-murph said:
That's like all Native land up there too, isn't it? One big reservation?

So, does that mean that the Natives work for tax free?

What's the nearest hospital up there to you? They in need of Nurses?
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Nunavut is an Inuit territory, and while they are a First Nations/Aboriginal people, they do not have a reservation or a Chief or anything like that. I live in a "Hamlet", not on a reserve, and we have a mayor. They do get a lot of the benefits of other First Nations peoples and actually in some cases more.

The nearest fully featured hospital is Winnipeg, although in Rankin Inlet they are now able to deliver babies and do some more advanced medical procedures. (Little known fact: The vast majority of the population of Nunavut weren't born in this territory because people are flown out for childbirths, so nearly everyone has a Manitoba or North West Territories birth certificate.) I think every community has a Health Centre which is staffed by nurses for the most part, but sometimes we are lucky to get a Nurse Practitioner.

If you have any serious or life-threatening trauma, you are likely looking at hours before you will receive proper medical attention... it really depends on how long it takes a MedEvac flight to get there and then to get to Winnipeg. If the weather is bad and the plane can't land, you'd better start praying.


Sora_N said:
Can you buy them there? How about fruit? If tropicana is $15.99, if they sell oranges there then is it like $5 each?
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Not $5 each, but I did just buy 3 tomatoes for $8. Nutritious foods get a higher portion of the Government subsidy because they try to encourage to eat healthier so while it is more expensive, fruit and vegetables generally don't get to outrageous prices. It's frozen/"junk" foods where you really get hit hard. A frozen Delissio pizza is $14.99.

We also have a semi-legit KFC/Pizza Hut counter in the grocery store. You can get KFC poutine and most of their sandwiches (Twister, Classic, Big Crunch) but for a KFC poutine and Big Crunch it's about $21 after tax. No drink included there either. The Pizza Hut has one size of pizza which I think is equivalent to a medium everywhere else and it's $36.99.

OCDChewie said:
How much was cauliflower when it was $6-8 in Ontario?
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I think I saw one for $12? We don't get cauliflower too much up here.
 
You've told us why Nunavut is rough living, maybe tell us why you like living there for a bit of balance.

Edit: interesting doc on prohibition there. I would very curious to see if legalizing alcohol fully would actually reduce alcohol abuse as some of the people in it claimed. Without additional quality of life improvements and health care, I would have my doubts.
 
Is there anyone who updated their Vita to the latest firmware (3.57)? If so, can you access the deactivation on the settings after updating?
 
theRizzle said:
I came here in 2008 with my girlfriend when she accepted a 1 year contract for a teaching position. Apparently full-time teaching jobs are basically impossible for young teachers right out of teachers college to get in this country, unless you are willing to go North. We figured we might as well try it for a year since we also moved for a year so she could attend Teacher's College in Australia. She was offered a permanent position during that first year and we both enjoyed living here so she accepted.

I eventually got a full-time job that paid pretty well (not as much as a teacher - those basically start at $100k up here - but still pretty good) and after a few years got an even better job that's way above any job I would get back in Ontario in both salary and position because I am educated (much more so than nearly anyone who was born and raised here even though I never finished any post-secondary) and had shown that the Northern lifestyle agrees with me. This is important because I have seen people who were hired to live in the North and once they arrived refused to even leave the airport and demanded to be sent home. I also know that I am pretty well liked by almost everyone in the community who knows me because I got involved with volunteer stuff like coaching sports, as well as participating in community events which helped me to connect with a lot of different people.

I actually went back to Ontario for what I thought was permanently from 2012 to 2014 because we wanted to see what the job market was going to be like and turns out we both HATED living back in Ontario. I missed Nunavut more after being gone for six months than I ever missed Toronto being gone for years. We got lucky enough to have the opportunity to come back so we did.

Now I'm the manager of the Public Housing Organization for my community. Which is a fancy way of essentially saying I'm the town's landlord. Over 80% of people in this community live in public housing so I'm dealing with about 400 units and anywhere from 1500-1800 people.
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Whats her major and Minor that also plays a role into it. The system is flooded with people that have the basic History, Science, Math, ELA etc. I have a specialised minor and have had terms since graduated and finally got a perm.
 
JK-Money said:
Whats her major and Minor that also plays a role into it. The system is flooded with people that have the basic History, Science, Math, ELA etc. I have a specialised minor and have had terms since graduated and finally got a perm.
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This guy used 1 hidden trick to become a perm.

Teachers hate him!

What's your minor? :p
 
I'm in teachers college right now with Bio / Music as teachables. I'm the first group of 2 year Ontario degrees. Plus a male and I want to end up doing primary so I think I'll be fine without going as rural as Nunavut.
 
So apparently CraveTV is not available on Playstation platforms but will be available soon on Xbox. Shomi is available now on PS4, no word on Xbox. And Netflix is available all over.
 
Shomi is garbage, don't know why I even bother signing up for it when I already have Netflix and Hulu. I heard it's a pain too cancel the service too.
 
UPS tracking not working for anyone else? My tracking hasn't updated in 2 days since it was sent and has no estimated delivery date. Also can't change the delivery location to a UPS access point.
 
Past said:
Shomi is garbage, don't know why I even bother signing up for it when I already have Netflix and Hulu. I heard it's a pain too cancel the service too.
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It's actually not bad to cancel you can do it on the website and they have a small survey you have to complete which kinda sucks and cancelling your subscription cancels your trial so you have to hold it as long as possible if you want to maximize your trial.

Shomi runs like shit though, really unimpressed.

edit: I will say though their horror section is pretty stacked, all (or most) of the decently well known horror movies seem to be there.
 
DeathByBacklog said:
So apparently CraveTV is not available on Playstation platforms but will be available soon on Xbox. Shomi is available now on PS4, no word on Xbox. And Netflix is available all over.
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CraveTV seems to be running on prayers, they didn't even announce they were launching to "everyone" (except us horrible people who want to use Visa debit) until an hour after everyone started noticing it. They said the Xbox One app is in January, but unless they can scrape it together over today or tomorrow, not quite. Plus the amount of tweets sent to them over buffering and "too many devices" and passwords not working sounds like a nightmare.

For Shomi, they were supposed to launch on Xbox One as well this past week, but some sort of delay occurred and now they're saying late February. I've been using the PS4 app since Thursday night and it works pretty well, out of the ten or so episodes I've watched only one had buffering issues; the rest ran great and looked great!
 
CraveTV works great on my BellTV box but the video quality is utter garbage. It's basically 480p. What a joke.

Tried calling Bell several times but they keep insisting it's HD.

I have the same problem with HBO btw.

I have a hard time using shomi when the video quality is really meh. I'm so used to the 1080p and crisp image on Netflix it's hard to go back to watching crappy streams.
 
CraveTV looks pretty good on my Telus box, though I would wager it's closer to 720p than 1080p (but most of that is likely due to source content on older shows). I haven't tried their app-based stuff yet as I really have no need. But for $4 a month it's a way better deal than Shomi, which streams poorly and has shit for selection.
 
Yeah, put me in the camp that thinks shomi (kind of) sucks. I mean, there's a lot of Canadian 90's/2000's cartoons on there, which is great because I haven't some of those shows in ages, but the programming in general is pretty lacking. I'm speaking strictly for TV; I haven't really looked at the film selection.

I'll probably just watch the few shows that interest me, binge watch a shit ton of Jacob Two-Two, and then cancel when the two months are up.
 
kitschykitty said:
It's actually not bad to cancel you can do it on the website and they have a small survey you have to complete which kinda sucks and cancelling your subscription cancels your trial so you have to hold it as long as possible if you want to maximize your trial.

Shomi runs like shit though, really unimpressed.

edit: I will say though their horror section is pretty stacked, all (or most) of the decently well known horror movies seem to be there.
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Glad that it's not that bad. I read some reddit comments where people had to call customer service to cancel and they would hassle you to keep the service.
 
DJ_Lae said:
CraveTV looks pretty good on my Telus box, though I would wager it's closer to 720p than 1080p (but most of that is likely due to source content on older shows). I haven't tried their app-based stuff yet as I really have no need. But for $4 a month it's a way better deal than Shomi, which streams poorly and has shit for selection.
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I'm not sure how I feel about the value of either Canadian services. Right now we've got both, because my wife demanded to get up to date on Vikings and a couple of other shows... and I wanted to catch up on some HBO stuff.

I think Crave is a decent value as a Telus subscriber ($4/mo), but less so for "outsiders," who have to pay $8/mo.

On iPad, both apps are inferior. I find we frequently have to re-log-in to Crave (that may be a Telus-side issue) and Shomi's streams tend to hang on occasion. Netflix, of course, is solid as a rock.
 
hmmm I've been trying to decide if I should cancel my american VPN and just subscribe to one of these services but it's weird, Shomi seems to have a larger and newer selection of shows plus a lot of movies but Crave has more shows I'd actually want to watch (sopranos, wire, seinfeld, broad city, inside amy schumer, south park, etc) but very few movies.

I guess I'll see how the crave app works and probably switch to that once my shomi trial runs out.
 
Just got an email from PS Store to get CoD Black Ops 3 for 25% off (44.99$), I have no intention of buying it so here is my code (quote to reveal).

 
Spotify and Shomi was included in my phone plan. So far, it ain't half bad. Surprisingly, the biggest omission to me are the Netflix series. But so many people are subscribed to Netflix, that I'm sure one of my friends could lend me their account if I felt motivated enough to ask. Got a $100 gift card and $200 off the phone too (Nexus 6P, $0 contract with Rogers). This was before the price hike too, so I only need to sell one of my kidneys to afford my monthly mobile bill.
 
Anyone want a PS4 pre-order of The Division? I'm not feeling it after playing the beta and it's preordered from Amazon with the 30% off thing.
 
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