Category: Retail

Repairing my leaky Suncast Hose Reel

After 2 years my Suncast Side Tracker hose reel leaked badly.

About seven years ago I purchased a Suncast Side Tracker STA100 hose reel. For the first two years it worked wonderfully and leak free. Since then it’s leaked like crazy, showering the wall and wasting lots of water. Clearly something needed to be fixed. Here’s how I fixed it.

I don’t really use my hose reel too often. After all, being in Toronto, Canada, garden hoses are really only used in the summer, particularly when the kids want to cool off by running in the sprinkler. In the fall, before winter returns, I take the hose reel off the wall and store the reel and hose in the garage.

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Growing up with Dollar Store Junk

Dollar Store toys are terrible quality that breaks easily, is unrepairable and disappoints your kids

I have never been a fan of Dollar Store* toys for my kids. They return home with plastic toys of very low quality, even by Chinese standards. The recent Toronto city garbage strike brings home the need to reduce our consumption because the city, temporarily, will not pick up our trash. I continue to press my case to both my parents and my kids that Dollar Store quality is false economy.

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Converting China to a Nation of Spenders

Chinese consumer will not easily become a nation of spenders

Please bear with me for just a moment. So the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US has precipitated a global credit crisis, where banks cease or curtail new lending and call in outstanding commercial and personal loans. Overdrawn Americans lose their houses to the banks and reduce spending. Companies cannot expand without loans, reduce their business, and lay off employees. US unemployment rates skyrocket and consumers put the brakes on spending. This effect goes around the world, precipitating reduced global spending. China and other predominantly export oriented countries get hit hard. Their factories lay off workers and close. It seems all is not economically well in the world.

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Mystery Shopping Test: Price Chopper, Nofrills

This mystery shopping test was done on Friday April 3, 2009, accompanied by my son. It was raining heavily and mad dashes from the car to the store entrance made us soaked. Still, it was +10C, and is expected for spring. Trip review: Price Chopper A, Nofrlls C.

General Notes

Toronto has a varying climate with 4 distinct seasons and significant precipitation. In the winter we can get a snowfall of 20cm in one day. Copious amounts of rain can fall, as is the case today. It has been raining hard today. Toronto is expecting 10-20mm of rain, so much so that you still get very wet running from the car to the store.

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Mystery Shopping Report: Chung Hing Supermarket

This is not Chung Hing, but has the same feel. Photo by Don Qua

While it might seem unfair to compare a local Chinese grocer to the large big box chains, our shopping experience spans both, so I feel I should review both. Chung Hing, or in Mandarin, Zhong Xing, is our local Chinese grocer. While it is an average sized Chinese grocer, it seems to serve our needs well. Trip Review: Chung Hing: A.

___Chung Hing Supermarket, Kennedy/Finch, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Objective: Minced pork, regular weekly shopping.

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Mystery Shopping Test: Nofrills, Wal*Mart

This mystery shopping test was done on Friday March 13, 2009, accompanied by my daughter. She rarely goes with me because she believes, and rightly so, that grocery shopping is boring. I try to impress upon her that without someone doing the shopping we would run out of food and therefore starve because we have no direct conduit to a grocery store built into our house. Trip review: Nofrlls B+, Walmart B

___Nofrills, Kennedy/Finch, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Objective: Sale priced tetrapack apple juice and general weekly shopping.

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Mystery Shopping Test: Food Basics, Wal*Mart

It’s always uncertain whether a shopping trip will be pleasant. Today I hit Food Basics and Wal*Mart and documented my shopping trip. Trip Review: Food Basics: A, Walmart: B-

___Sure, one can go shopping, grit your teeth through the experience and then return home vowing never to go again, but after a short while you do run out of necessities and are forced to return whence you came. At least reviewing your experience may give a reader or two a laugh. Or a cry, a shake of the mane and a sympathetic groan.

Food Basics, McCowan/Finch, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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China’s Crafty Clothes Vendors

Street vendor selling juzi

I still have vivid memories of Beijing clothing vendors on a street called “Yifu Alley”. After a four year legal battle the vendors from “Silk Market” in Beijing are getting busted for copyright violation from 5 big international firms: Burberry, Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Infuriated, they threaten to beat up the law firm that is forcing them to stop selling these goods.

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Live Long and Prosper

It is with not a small amount of irony that “60 Minutes”, the show that airs at 19:00 every Sunday, presented a drug that is reported to prolong human life. It is remarkable that this fancy marvel of scientific achievement, Resveratrol, can nearly double the lifespan of all forms of life. This chemical, present in the skin of grapes, and therefore found in red wine, mimics the effects of a caloric restricted diet.

A what restricted diet? Yes, you got it right, “caloric restricted diet”. You eat much less, feel a little hungry and you live twice as long. Even more surprising is that scientists have known about this for a couple of decades.

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What’s Your Beef?

$1.20/lb, 1.5 lbs of ground beef, browned with onions

If you are what you eat, then we are certainly not cow. At least not much, anyway. We’re not really big beef eaters, and never were. Hopefully this will bring us good luck in the Chinese year of the Cow, which starts on Monday.

It did not help when we learned of the Canadian mad cow scare, where the brains and spinal cords of cows were put back into cow feed. That’s bovine cannibalism, which is crazy when you think that cows are herbivores. Yes, mankind did lend a helping hand. The Canadian government did not even heed the learnings and warnings from Britain, where there was a huge and disastrous mad cow outbreak. Even Japan warned us. I guess our Japanese isn’t as good as it should be.

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