Canada, like anything in real life, is complicated. There are things I like, things I tolerate, things I enjoy, and things I despise.
Warning – Coarse language.
Vehicle obesity
I am not a person driven to extreme opinions and I am often willing to meet people where they are. On one subject in particular, I am an extremist, a missionary, a jihadi, even. That is auto obesity.
The top ten best-selling vehicles in Canada in 2024 were pickup trucks and SUVs. These are vehicles that are needlessly large, impractical, inefficient, but immensely profitable for the American automakers. I tend to view most US residents as gullible, low information yokels, but the capitalists who run the United States are the literal exact opposite. Opposite to the point of evil, and the auto industry is the perfect example. Look under the hood of one of these monstrosities and you will find plenty of empty space. Space that does literally nothing. The US automakers spent billions of dollars in market research and lobbying efforts to make this nonsense legal. Empty space so cars can look more aggressive, manly, and, intimidating. The space inside cars means that the occupants are safer, and motor vehicle mortality data shows this clearly. However, that comes at the expense of people outside these fucking SUVs and “light” trucks.
This is so bad, that Canada is one of only seven countries to see an increase in pedestrian fatalities. One among the others is the United States. The CBC found that some of the most aggressive drivers tend to drive more expensive cars, lending credence to the belief that these drivers are assholes. The #1 selling vehicle in Canada is the Ford F-series pickup truck, ostensibly used by the hard-working, rural Canadians who work in the trades and regularly use the four-wheel drive system to negotiate unploughed snowy roads. Fuck no. These suburban assault vehicles are driven by Brad and Becky, mostly on grocery runs and while carting their progeny to and from “sports”. US data from Edward’s shows that three quarters of US pickup truck drivers tow something once a year or never. More bluntly, these vehicles are almost never used for their purported purpose. That is about as absurd as seeing Justin Trudeau walking around 24/7 in ski gear because he loves skiing. These vehicles are idiotic devices, sold to gullible consumers, all with the goal of signalling virtue. The size of your pickup determines how much of a man you are. The spacers you put on the wheels signal to women that you have a long penis, of great girth. Funny, how the lack of pickup trucks in India and China does not affect their reproductive abilities. This obsession with size and “practicality” is so pervasive that I’ve seen Punjabi and Tamil Canadians driving around in these monstrosities. Brampton and Scarborough have black pickups with AK decals on the back. Some even have the flag of the LTTE. It is absolutely wild seeing Diljeet and Thushaan joining this ass-backwards trend.
If you are a politician reading this and can promise me that you will mandate commercial licenses for any vehicle with a height over 2 meters, I will vote for you. I will even allow you a little racism and homophobia if you reduce the number of pedestrian deaths, especially via cunts like this man, who killed the mother of an infant with his morbidly obese pickup truck.
Road signs
Canadian roads have signs, just like any civilized country. Canadian roads, though, swing between extremes. On one end, you have places like Toronto and Montreal, where you need advanced degrees in mathematics to determine whether or not parking is legal at a certain time. On the other, you have long stretches of rural highways with scant signage, sometimes to the point where the cops exploit that fact to issue fines. Some of these signs are at head height, around 1.5 meters above ground level. I often wonder how many people have smacked their heads into the signs or have been left bleeding after colliding with them edge-on.
The nature
People from around the world come to Canada to experience the great outdoors. And great they are. The provinces and the federal government operate a world-class system of parks and nature reserves. I highly recommend visiting them because they truly are a sight to behold. The pride extends deep and I’ve seen brown immigrants picking up random bits of trash so as not to spoil the experience for the next person. Around 22 million people visited the federal parks in 2023 and around 12 million visited the Ontario parks system in 2024. These parks are popular. So popular that the camping and parking reservation websites are regularly swamped.
In Spring 2025, I bought an electric car. The clutch in my old Ford Focus was on the verge of disintegration. The Americans, clever as always, stopped manufacturing “small” cars and now focus exclusively on suburban assault vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks, driven by suburban owners of assault rifles and connoisseurs of freedom. A Marxo-socio-communist like me has no option other than to buy a bulbous “crossover” vehicle. These vehicles combine the impracticality of SUVs with the small footprint of a sedan car, producing a true combination of the worst of both worlds. Ah, the American auto industry, truly the most intelligent people on the planet.
Anyhow, I now drive a 2022 Hyundai Kona EV. It is very cheap to operate and has slashed our petrol spending by 88%. It has buttons, knobs, glass mirrors and is for all practical purposes, just a normal car. I repeat, it is just a car that you drive. There are, however, several niggles that I do not like.
One obvious difference is in the weight of the car. My old Ford focus weighed around one tonne. This Kona weighs around 2.2 tonnes. The difference in inertia is instantly obvious when braking. The EV takes longer to slow down and the brakes are very aggressive. Something to be aware of, but something that familiarity will fix.
I like to watch the heads of my passengers as I drive. The forward and backward movement of their heads is a reliable indicator of how much acceleration is happening and I like to minimize acceleration. This means changing speed slowly and consistently. In a combustion car, if you accelerate to highway speeds and then idle the engine, friction makes the car decelerate, but slowly. You can bring the car to a complete stop from 120 km/h in about 200 meters. This is safe and comfortable. In our Hyundai, if you stop accelerating, the car starts braking. This is the action of the regenerative brakes and I appreciate their ability to capture wasted energy. Comfortable, however, they are not. Traffic speed constantly changes and sometimes, you want to stop accelerating but not start braking. You want to coast. That is not easy to achieve in a Hyundai EV. Yes, you can disable the auto regen braking but it has an annoying tendency of turning itself back on. This means that your passengers are quite uncomfortable after a while of constantly swapping between braking and accelerating.
On the plus side, Hyundai’s adaptive cruise control is very adept at varying engine power to reduce speed and maintain a safe distance to the vehicle ahead. Varying engine power via the accelerator pedal is not as easy.
On the negative side, cruise control also enables lane detection, which, isn’t always the best. I learned to drive in the Netherlands where skidding on wet and icy roads is a risk. You learn how to drive using a racing line, not for speed, but for safety. Put simply, your car’s tires have finite grip. Changing speed or direction uses grip. In slippery or wet conditions, your aim is to keep the car moving as straight as possible, while also planning for the worst. The racing line starts on the outside curve of a lane, moves to the inside apex and then returns to the outside. You never drive beyond the lane limit. If there is ice, it tends to accumulate on the inside of a banked turn. If your car is already pointing where you want it to go, losing grip on the inside of a turn is less dangerous, you just keep moving ahead safely. Hyundai’s lane assist system will not allow this. It keeps beeping and bonging that the car is too close to the lane edge. Oh and many exits on Ontario highways do not have marked exit lanes. Instead, the right lane becomes wider, with one side becoming the exit ramp. My car keeps trying to force me to exit. You cannot disable lane assist in my car and there is no speed-only mode for the cruise control. Both are linked.
Hyundai’s “crossover” design for the Kona means that the car is higher than it should be, and so is the hood of the car. In that additional height, is a great big void so the additional height is purely for cosmetic reasons. My strong preference is to not drive into pedestrians, especially children. To maximise front visibility, I use a booster seat. My head now touches the roof of the car and I cannot adjust the rear view mirror at this height. Obviously, this is also a problem if you are tall.
Hyundai’s software for the car includes scheduled charging, allowing you to minimize your charging costs. This works well. What does not work well is Hyundai’s scheduled departure feature, which is supposed to heat or cool the cabin in anticipation of a fixed departure time. Bizarrely, the scheduled heating/cooling only works if the car is still charging when the departure time arrives. This means that if you depart at 07:00 in the morning and your car just happens to finish charging at 03:00, the departure time is meaningless because the heating/cooling will not run.
The car includes a liquid cooled battery but there is no way to turn on battery preconditioning. If you are on a road trip, you want the battery temperature to be around 20 C for peak charging speeds, which are already low on a budget car. There is no way to do this. A software update should fix it, but alas. Hyundai appear to be infected by American capitalism.
The car’s software is also full of beeps and bongs. So many that they are actively irritating and occasionally a safety hazard. Sometimes, the cruise control disengages. That’s a bong. If you use your turn signal in anticipation of a turn and there happens to be a car next to you, that’s a series of beeps. If the outdoor temperature drops to zero Celsius, that’s a bong. If the car ahead of you turns onto a side road, the car’s collision avoidance system thinks that a collision is imminent. That’s a series of bongs. Sometimes, if you brake too hard, the car chides you for dangerous driving. That’s a bong. This is a cultural thing and is evident on other Korean-designed devices like Samsung’s phones, also full of beeps and bongs. I have to try very hard to not train myself to ignore these sounds.
To be clear, I love an electric car. It does take some getting used to but, nothing time cannot fix. Hyundai have some cultural quirks and some capitalist quirks but give the state of the car market in 2025, I can live with those. I highly recommend the Hyundai Kona, especially if you can find one used.
If you live in Ontario, Canada, the electricity regulator – the Ontario Energy Board – sets
your electricity rates and plans
. Electricity rates are based on two factors – how much electricity you use, and/or when you use it.
Each electricity plan offers different options for both factors. You have three options in 2025 – tiered rates,
time-of-use rates and the newest option – the Ultra-low overnight rate (ULO). The ULO rate could be cheapest
if you own an electric vehicle and drive a lot. The exact EV usage amount when the ULO rate is cheapest depends
on how much you drive and your charging requirements, i.e. when you need to charge your car. Most of my charging
is overnight and the ULO rate offers a significantly cheaper option for this period. However, the ULO rates include
periods during the evening when electricity rates are higher.
What this page does:
Use this page to estimate the cheapest electricity billing option for you. You must
provide at least one week of electricity usage data in a CSV file. The calculations below
use your hourly energy usage to calculate two typical days of electricity usage – a weekday
and a weekend day.
In my case, I own an EV and am trying to determine whether the ULO plan is the cheapest
option.
⚠️ Important:
The input file is NOT the Green Button format. Please use a CSV file.
⚠️ Privacy Notice:
All calculations are carried out on your computer. No data is sent either to me or to
anyone else. This page uses CSS from UNPKG.com.
The chart uses the Chart.js library. If you do not recognise these words, don’t worry.
No data leaves your computer and you can use this script entirely offline.
I created this page using AI (MS Copilot). I verified that the calculations for the
Tiered rates are correct for summer and winter. I did not verify the calculations for
TOU and ULO rates but the cost estimates do appear plausible.
Instructions:
Visit your electricity utility’s website and download your usage data as a
CSV file. Make sure to download at least seven days of data. Save this somewhere on your computer.
Below, click “Browse…” and find the energy usage CSV file on your computer.
Click “Calculate”.
The chart below will update and show your average energy usage for a typical
weekday and for a typical weekend day. Note that both lines in the chart represent one day each.
Select the season – either winter or summer rates.
Select your pricing model and click “Calculate Cost”.
I designed these calculations for Ontario’s electricity rates. The CSV file you download from your utility should start like this:
Date
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 3
2025-09-01
0.42
0.38
0.45
2025-09-02
0.40
0.36
0.43
⚠️ Not working yet:
The sliders for hourly energy consumption do not work. The values at the moment are from
your electricity usage file. The eventual idea is that you can modify these values to see how
your electricity bill changes. For example, these should allow you to answer questions like
“What if I charged my car starting at 11 PM instead of 7 PM”. At the moment, these sliders do nothing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had my first taste of working from home. I did work remotely in the past, but this was my first sustained stretch working from home. I realized a couple of things very quickly. One, that paying for a quality chair is a good idea. Two, that paying for a quality sit-stand desk is a similarly good idea. Finally, that if you are not physically in front of people, having a quality image of your face on their screens is an excellent idea.
I’m old enough to remember film cameras. I vaguely remember my parents owning disposable point-and-shoot cameras as well as a couple of cheap Nikon film cameras that eventually broke. I don’t actually remember much about the cameras themselves but I was intrigued by the batteries. I do not remember the exact model but they were definitely not AA or AAA batteries. They were something different. I also remember the photos after they returned from the studio – soft focus, often washed out colours, grainy. At the time, that was the best we had so I just accepted it.
Eventually, my dad bought a Sony Cybershot DSC W-55 digital camera. This was the mid 2000s and was during the brief interval in my life when I didn’t read product manuals. I had no idea this was a mirrorless camera. I also had no idea what W and T meant on the zoom rocker. In my defence, zoom in and zoom out make more sense. W and T stand for Wide and Telephoto respectively, but the average person will not make that connection. Anyhow, the camera manual did describe this, as I recently discovered in the year of our Brahma 2025. I would set the camera to auto and hope for the best. It survived Mumbai’s trains, Rajamundhry, Baroda, Helsinki, Stockholm and finally Utrecht. Often, this camera did a pretty good job. I kept this camera between 2007ish and 2014, when the battery died. It was a pretty good camera, certainly producing better photos than any phone camera I had at the time. My phones were cheap Nokia models and eventually, a Nexus 5. I just abandoned the camera one day, deciding that I was better served with my phone.
That changed. And how. During the pandemic, I realized that the tiny webcam in my laptop produced horrible quality video. I also realized that the lack of focus meant that too much of the scene behind me was in focus and that the webcam software made me look white. In fairness, pardon the pun, I would love to navigate the world as a white man, but I am not a white man so a camera making me look whiter than I am is insulting. This led me to buy a cheap webcam – a 1080p Logitech model that was incredibly popular during the pandemic, when everyone realized that laptop webcams are terrible.
There is a reason I studied engineering and that reason soon came to the fore. I had to know WHY my laptop camera was so bad, WHY the webcam was better but not better than the streaming setup of some Twitch streamers. I also had to know what a DSLR was and how I could achieve that beautiful background blur on my video calls. I started reading camera manuals and soon discovered the reason I started but stopped reading the manual of my first Sony camera – these manuals assume that you already know the jargon of photography. If you are reading this, do you know what an f-stop is, what aperture is and what focal length is? Do you know how each of these interact with ISO and exposure length to produce a certain image? I did not and even now, I barely understand these terms. I have read extensively about them and I do know a few things but I am far from an expert. Camera manuals were written for experts.
The answer to why certain cameras are better than others boils down to physics – the physical area of the image sensor. A real camera has an image sensor around an order of magnitude (10X) larger than a typical phone camera. Similarly, a phone camera’s sensor is larger than the webcam sensor, which in turn is larger than your laptop’s camera. That’s it. Phone cameras do try to compensate for smaller sensors with software trickery, a process called computational photography. There remain, however, laws of physics that cannot be broken hence why a picture taken on a phone looks nice on the tiny phone screen but as soon as you print it out, it looks terrible.
This motivated me to invest in a real camera and to repurpose it as a webcam. The Indian in me scoffed at spending thousands of dollars on buying a new camera so off to the used market it was, specifically, Facebook marketplace.
I did my R&D and discovered that something called “clean HDMI output” was desirable so I bought the cheapest Canon camera I could find that provided clean output, a Canon T3 from 2011. I bought this in 2021 so, at ten years old, it was already obsolete. This camera came with the kit lens, a term used for the cheap lenses that manufacturers bundle with the camera body. It also came with multiple batteries and chargers, neither of which I needed. I needed a way to get video from the camera into my computer. At the time, Canon provided free software called EOS Connect that used the USB port on the camera to stream 720p video from the camera. This was already much better than my tiny Logitech webcam and I was thrilled.
Soon, however, a new problem emerged – my audio came from an external mic, not from the camera. The dated processor on my camera meant that the video and audio were out of sync. Worse, this was not an easy problem to fix in Zoom or Microsoft Teams. What to do?
I decided that the solution was a USB capture card. Essentially a device that took the HDMI video from the camera and streamed that to my computer, without Canon’s Japanese trickery in between. This worked well until I realized that I did not want people seeing my Shinkansen model trains behind me, lest those same people think that I was a transit-loving Socialist (I am).
I went on the inter webs and to YouTube this time. Dear reader, YouTube is not a reliable source of information at the best of times, and relying on it for nuanced technical information is a bad idea. I surmised from several videos that I needed a better lens and a lens that let in more light would make me look like a video game streamer on my video calls. So I bought a lens with a focal length of 50 mm and a wide aperture that let in a lot of light. I plugged that into my camera, placed at arms length in front of my face… and realized that I now had a very high quality image of my nose with a blurry background. You could choose between seeing one of my eyes or my nose or my misaligned front teeth. The knowledgeable among you already know the problem – the higher the number attached to the focal length, the more zoomed in the image is. This was my first mistake.
No matter, back to the inter webs I went and discovered that I needed a lens with a smaller focal length, ideally around 18 mm. At this time, I finally decided that I needed a better camera, ideally with autofocus in video mode, so I went back to Facebook bazaar and found a Canon SL3 for $ 400. This is a 2019 model and among the last DSLRs that Canon made. Found hundred Canadian dollarydoos was a lot of money for a webcam but I decided that if I was doing this, I would do it the right way. I then embarked on a quest to find an 18 mm lens and I eventually did find one, an older Canon zoom lens rated for 10 – 22 mm. Good enough for a webcam. This is the set up I still have and it works well. So well that I never move the camera or the capture card or the camera arm. It just sits there as I work. The only thing I do is switch the camera on or off as needed.
You likely noticed the list of equipment in the penultimate sentence there. Yes, I now owned a tripod, a camera arm, an HDMI capture card, two DSLR cameras, four lenses, a dummy battery for each camera. And this was only the start. Eventually, I decided that I liked photography combined with my hobby of fixing things so I bought a “broken” zoom lens, technically a telephoto lens but that word sounds esoteric. Like the word esoteric. The lens wasn’t actually broken, only one of the communication contacts was rusted. I cleaned the rust, cleaned the glass and I had a new lens. I used this to take pictures of birds and my mortal enemies – rats in trees, more commonly known as squirrels.
By this point, I decided that I liked taking pictures that would stand the test of time so I needed a travel camera. I scoured Facebook marktplaats for months, scoffing at the thousand-dollar price tags of used mirrorless cameras. Ah, the mirrorless craze. This meant that many amateur photographers, convinced that the mirror in their camera was the only thing standing in the way photographic greatness, were looking to sell their old camera gear. This is how I found amazing deals on my existing cameras and older Canon lenses. This time, though, I was in the market for a mirrorless camera myself and I was unwilling to pay the high prices they commanded. Eventually, I found a cheap Canon R100 for $ 450. It was small enough that I could carry it everywhere and that is exactly what I did. The internet will tell you that this is a cheap camera for a reason – Canon cut too many corners. No articulating screen, older processor, and so on. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I primarily set this camera to auto mode, let it do the maths and I just take photos. On Canon’s own website, this model is the #2 or #3 best selling camera.
Later, I decided that I wanted to take pictures of the sky (the aurora and the milky way) so I needed a proper lens. “Proper” implies expensive and I eventually bought a Sigma lens for $ 500. The price tag when new was $ 1,300 Canadian dollarydoos. This remains the single most expensive piece of photography equipment I have purchased and I expect that record to hold for at least a few years. When I stood at the CIBC ATM withdrawing cash, I cried a little inside. This lens, however, produces some stunning images. A pity that I don’t know what I’m doing and so I rarely take any stunning images. Still, I can photograph the night sky and a lot of stars, and even the Andromeda galaxy! This brings me joy.
I will conclude with this – yes, your phone can take some pretty amazing images given its compact size. Yes, the best camera is the one you have with you in the moment. But, if you want images that you can print and frame as memories, ones that look like real moments, with real people, with imperfect faces, you should buy a real camera. I have many images saved over the years. When I recently printed a few, every single image from my various phones looked like rubbish. Why? Either the resolution was too low or the “computational photography” produced weird skin tones, strange patterns or just a blurry mess as the computer tried to guess what reality looked like. I don’t care if the Google or Apple engineers produced an AI model that guesses accurately. I don’t want a guess, I want reality. My skin isn’t perfect, neither are my teeth and my photography skills are far from good. But I don’t care. Auto mode is good enough, but it is only good enough on a real camera.
PS – the table shows the cost of every single piece of camera gear I’ve purchased over the past three years. It adds up to $ 2,095. I am certainly not happy with that amount but I must remind you – Canon will charge you double that for a single RF-mount lens. Not the camera, just the lens. Yes, a very good lens, but still, that’s over $ 4,000 for just one lens. All said, I found some amazing deals and am happy with my purchases. I encourage you to buy a real camera, but buy used. Let someone else take the hit on depreciation.
Canon T3 plus batteries, a camera bag and kit lens
$250
Camera tripod
$20
HDMI capture card (Elgato, 1080p)
$120
Camera arm (desktop)
$35
Canon EF-S 10-22 mm lens
$200
Canon SL3 with kit lens
$400
Canon 55-250mm EF-S zoom lens
$60
Canon EF 50 mm lens (f1.8)
$60
Canon R100 camera with kit lens
$450
Sigma Art lens 18-35 mm f1.8 with an EF-RF mount adaptor
I live in a part of the world with four distinct seasons. One season is winter and winter in Canada is cold. Winter in Ontario is often quite cold. Our house has two halves, one is the original brick structure with terrible insulation (non existent, actually) and the other is an extension built to standards of the 90s so it has some insulation. The extension has insulation but poor HVAC design – there are not enough supply and return lines for air.
The result of this is that my bedroom remains uncomfortably warm in the summer and is too cold in the winter. In 2024, the Feds ran a home retrofit program called Greener Homes and we participated. We received a generous amount of money to swap out our 30 year old furnace and 20 year old AC with a new furnace and a heat pump. This is a dual-fuel system, similar to a Toyota Prius, but without the limit on battery capacity. I can choose to heat my home with either electricity or methane depending on conditions.
This is certainly more efficient than our previous situation but the truly efficient solution is to properly insulate the house. I asked around and the cost was six figures. Not something we could afford easily and we were not keen on investing so much money into a seventy year old house. The solution was obvious – a more efficient heating system and so a dual-fuel system it was.
I did my research about which systems NRCan would accept and finally bought a 2.5 ton heat pump from Dettson, which is a rebadged Chinese unit. The internet suggests that Midea is the original brand. The furnace is a standard high-efficiency Trane furnace and we kept our smart thermostat. We run the heat pump in non-communicating mode so it has three operating levels – zero, 50% and 100%. The image at the top is our heat pump in the dead of winter. You can see weeks of ice accumulated under.
All information I had access to said that a heat pump is so much more efficient than a gas furnace that it is often cheaper. Many of these calculations assume a consumer carbon price so they tend to favour electric heating. With the consumer carbon price at zero in 2025, did the heat pump really reduce our gas consumption? I decided to run the numbers and was shocked at the difference it made.
The results are below. Notice the red arrows showing the fall in winter gas consumption. I removed the vertical scale (m3) for privacy reasons but I will repeat – our house has terrible insulation so our gas usage in the winter is relatively high. Despite this, the heat pump put a massive dent in our gas consumption. The winter of 2025 was colder than the winter of 2024. On average, by around 5° C in January and February. Despite this, our gas consumption was down by approximately 60% and we even raised the temperature by 0.5° C indoors. I hoped for a lower bill, but did not expect this reduction. On the coldest days, our heat pump struggled to raise the indoor temperature but it did manage to compensate for the loss of heat through our walls. The gas furnace essentially served to raise the indoor temperature every hour or so, running for about 15 minutes. In years prior, the furnace ran for almost the entire hour, turning off for only about five or ten minutes.
2025-09-06 – Updated to show that the temperatures indicated are mean outdoor temperatures.
I should not be astonished but I still am. I understand how heat pumps work but this still feels like magic. A heat pump is literally an AC with a reversing valve. That’s it. Anyone who tells you that a heat pump doesn’t work in Canada is lying. Ours is rated to – 30° C and I can confirm that it worked well on the coldest day of 2025 – a full 25 degrees Celsius below freezing. A heat pump may not work well on the coldest days in the Canadian prairies but a simple resistive heater will get you through. Better still, keep your gas furnace and do what we did – get a dual fuel system. If the furnace fails, I still have heat. There is a lot of fear mongering from HVAC sales folks who will sell you oversized furnaces and pretend that heat pumps are some magical technology that is bound to fail. Nonsense. Heat pumps work extremely well.
Our heat pump worked so well that we decided to buy a second one. This time, a 1.5 ton ductless system for our bedrooms with two indoor units. This model is from Moovair, also a rebadged Midea unit. It is rated down to – 25 C and works extremely well in the summer. So well that it regularly operates at 30% capacity and keeps our bedroom at a steady 24° C. We will see how it fares in the winter, but I have no doubts that it will work well.
Get a heat pump. If it works in our home, it will work in yours.
2025-09-06 – Update – Added a callout to show when we bought an EV. This is what explains the jump in May 2025’s electricity usage.
I live in a household with two cars. Not by choice. I would prefer to live with zero cars and have excellent public transit but Canada is not the country for that. Not yet. Even in cities like Vancouver or Montreal, transit will only get you so far and you will, eventually, need a car. According to StatCan, 90% of Canadian households own at least one car with over half owning more than one vehicle. That statistic is shameful and I am ashamed to be part of it.
I view a car as a tool for a job and I will only pay as much as I need to be comfortable. I am not concerned with “dominating” the road or feeling “safe”, hence why my first car in Canada was a four-door Ford Focus sedan. This car had a problem with the dual-clutch system where the clutch would eventually fail. And yes, this was sold as an automatic transmission i.e. a manual transmission where the computer shifted gears. Ford, true to their American capitalist roots, cheaped out on quality and the warranty and only reneged when these issues were taken to the American and Canadian courts. Nonetheless, I owned this car for eight years, between 2017 and 2025 and drove it a lot. So much that when I sold the car, the odometer read over 240,000 km. That is roughly 60% the average earth-moon distance.
In early 2025, Ford announced that the extended warranty was ending in June 2025 and I decided that the time was nigh. I was in the market for a new car. Since we have two cars, replacing one with an electric car was cheaper in the long run. I had a bit of luck and bought a 2022 Hyundai Kona for 21,000 Canadian dollarydoos, taxes included.
I’m documenting here the costs of operating an EV. The primary cost is fuel. The chart at the top shows our approximate (incomplete, but mostly complete) spending on fuel. On average, my wife’s commute is long and we spend about one hundred dollars per week on fuel. This amount varied over the years as she changed jobs, had a few work-from-home days, etc. but the general trend holds. Our 2024 monthly average spend on fuel was $ 337, including several weeks when we were away from home and holidays when we drove minimally.
$100 a week on fuel is a lot, certainly more than the average Canadian. After we bought an EV and switched to using it full time, we went two months with zero visits to a petrol pump. Between May and July 2025, I visited Costco Gas once to fill the tank of our second car, a small Toyota Prius.
Ok, so we did not consume petrol but an EV still needs “fuel” i.e. electricity. How did that affect our electric bills? The answer – our electric bills increased by about $ 15 per week or approximately $ 60 per month. I will simplify the maths for you – our spending on petrol dropped by $ 100 per week (to zero) while our electricity spending increased by $ 15 per week. A net savings of $ 85 per week or $ 340 per month.
Yes, a newer car is more expensive to insure and my insurance payments increased by approximately $ 40 per month but despite that, we still came out ahead i.e. we spend less on the car!
This brings joy to my Indian heart but in true Indian fashion, there is one more variable – the cost of lost interest on the purchase price of the car. At current interest rates (ca. 5% / year), the monthly interest payout on $ 21,000 is just under $ 90. Call it $ 90. This is less than our monthly savings on fuel and insurance.
Yes, if you account for every expense, an EV costs me approximately $ 250 less to operate each month than my ten year old Ford Focus. On top of this, the old car ran the risk of breaking at any point, possibly while I was far away from home. That’s a risk that is difficult to price. The EV is also cheaper to maintain because I will only pay for tire changes twice a year while the combustion car needed tire changes plus engine oil, oil filters and other fluids that the EV does not use. I do not have that data yet but if you factor it in, the savings are even higher.
Switching to an EV required some investment such as a new electric panel (not a service upgrade) to accommodate a new charger, and the installation of the actual charger (technically, the EVSE). This added up to approximately $ 3,000, but given our rate of savings, we will cover those costs in one year.
For anyone interested, we have a smart meter that shows our power consumption in kilowatts. This is important because electrical contractors often claim that 200 A service (48 kilowatts at 240 Volts) is required for an EV and a heat pump. Well, guess what? We operate an EV and TWO heat pumps adding up to 4 tons of capacity. Our maximum power consumption in the summer was 12 kilowatts i.e. half the rated capacity we have now. We have 100 A service which converts to 24 kilowatts and this is more than sufficient. Yes, we cannot run all the burners on our stove and simultaneously charge the car and run both heat pumps at maximum and run the clothes dryer… but is that a realistic scenario? I would much rather encounter the temporary inconvenience of not doing one of those things than have to invest thousands of dollars into a service upgrade that I will never use.
There are still some unknowns. How long will the EV battery last? I do not know but assuming the battery capacity drops to 90% of the advertised capacity in five years, the drop is not meaningful enough to matter. We will still be able to cover our commutes comfortably. There are unknown benefits as well. We are largely unaffected by the cost of fuel. Our carbon footprint dropped. The consumer carbon price in Canada is zero at the moment so that last benefit does not have a price but it is liberating.
Should you buy an EV in Canada? Only you can answer that but I will tell you that it is a hassle. The question is how much of a hassle you are willing to accept. You will learn that an indicated range of 300 km is almost always sufficient. You will learn that regenerative braking can be annoying for your passengers. You will learn to deal with the various public charger networks. You may even learn that you do not need a Level 2 charger and that a standard electrical outlet is sufficient for your needs. Does an EV save you money? If you buy used, almost certainly. New EVs are too expensive and too many are needlessly large, have too many “luxury” features and are needlessly complex. Hopefully that changes soon as the Chinese manufacturers will likely show the Americans than consumers do not “prefer” large, aggressive vehicles but instead want practical, value for money cars.
This is a topic with has lots of excellent essays and lots of thought. This is my humble effort.
Public events in Canada generally begin with a land acknowledgement. People acknowledge that the land on which Canada sits is often unceded treaty land. Email signatures include these acknowledgements. Sports games sometimes start with them. Are these just words?
Words can be meaningful. Has the British crown ever issued a full and unconditional apology for the rape, loot and plunder of India? Oxfam estimates that the United Kingdom extracted 65 trillion dollars (in 2025 value) from the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj. Has the British government or crown ever admitted to and accepted responsibility for this? Not to my knowledge. Even if they did simply acknowledge the act, will that be enough? Here is what would be enough for me – acknowledging that the horrors of colonialism happened, accepting that the British government and crown were responsible for it and, finally, asking for forgiveness. These are but words, but they can have an impact. The prosperity of the modern UK is built on stolen wealth. Will that be acknowledged?
A land acknowledgement in Canada, though? Sure, one could argue that it spreads awareness, but awareness of what, exactly? That the land I live on is stolen? But then what?
A fantastic parallel is the caste system in India. I have a caste, every brown person does, but my being Catholic with a Portuguese surname erases one of the most prominent markers of my caste. There are ways to find my caste but my name is not one of them. Caste in India has strong overlap with economic class. Generally, the wealthy are from the upper castes, or maybe a few rungs down, but are rarely from the lower or the disrespected castes. This power has become solidified over generations and is difficult to erode. For example, if I lose all my money, I will be broke. I will never fall into poverty. That, right there, is caste privilege manifesting as an economic safety net. It is likely that the majority of Indians are not upper castes but the upper castes run the country. They have the power.
Imagine a world where caste Hindus acknowledged that their power and influence was built on the exploitation of the lower castes, but that’s it. They simply acknowledged this fact before every public event and then went about their lives exactly as before. Will that demolish the horrors of the caste system and return everyone in the विश्वगुरु (vishwaguru) to a utopia? No.
Caste persists today. It is alive and well despite the feverish denials of many Indians. Land acknowledgements in Canada are similar. Yes, the Indian state has tried to undo millennia of caste privilege by academic reservations for lower caste folks. Has it worked? To an extent but this is not a long term solution. Has the Canadian government made progress towards restoring the rights of indigenous Canadians? Sure, but is it enough? I don’t know. What even is enough?
The way some land acknowledgments are phrased is confusing. I’ve heard some start with “as a visitor on this land…”. I am not a visitor, I live here. You cannot be a visitor and resident at the same time. Maybe I am a visitor in the sense that I will one day be dead?
The settler colonialism phrasing also bothers me. I’ve heard some white people profess a guilt, a feeling of responsibility for colonialism. In my view, there is only one party that bears the full responsibility for Canadian colonialism – the Crown of Canada and therefore, the Canadian government. This, however, is where I differ from crazy people, usually on the political right. White people benefit greatly from colonialism. This is not something in the past tense, it is alive and well today, just as caste is alive and well in India. Just the act of acknowledging caste is difficult for many Indians. Similarly, we cannot simply wish away the colonialism of the past that led to the colonialism of today. Acknowledging it is a good first step but that does not take away from the fact that many land acknowledgements are simply performative, empty gestures. You may benefit from something but you are not responsible for it. The most I ask for is an acknowledgement that a certain system exists.
This brings me back to where I started, is the acknowledgement enough? I don’t know.
I cannot comment publicly on whether I am a digital pirate but I can tell you that I condone it. I fully support piracy, especially software piracy.
To quote Gabe Newell, cofounder of Valve, “…piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue”. I hate software subscriptions with a passion. When I want to buy software, what service do I get? Subscriptions. Everything is a subscription.
I hate that the capitalist Americans drove the global software industry to adopt predatory subscriptions but I am certain that investors love their sight on a balance sheet. Microsoft will sell you Microsoft Office, the de facto standard office suite, for 169 Canadian dollarydoos. Alternatively, you can rent MS Office for $ 11.50 per month. Approximately fifteen months into this rental, you have paid the outright cost but own nothing. Cancel your subscription and the Microsoft financial boffins deny you access. Meanwhile, if you bought the software, as I did, you can keep using it as long as you desire. This very blog post was written using the 2016 version of MS Office. I bought this copy for 25 Euros and I see no need to upgrade.
Microsoft at least allow you to buy MS Office. Adobe, the original thieves behind this practice, no longer allow you to buy Photoshop. You must rent something called “Creative Cloud”. Setting aside the fact that clouds on earth are too dispersed to create anything tangible, this renting means you never own your software. I encourage you to pirate Adobe’s software because they are bad people. MBA-types are likely responsible for this situation but I will save my rant about MBA-types for another time.
This is why I encourage piracy. MBA-types deny me the option to purchase and own my software. I do not want to pay rent to American rent seekers. Instead of delivering complete and working software, these clowns have “pivoted” to a model where they sell you broken software and are then perpetually “fixing” it.
I encourage you to pirate music as well. You can buy a CD of Metallica’s album 72 Seasons for approximately $ 25 and own your music. You can also buy the digital version from iTunes for approximately the same price but you are not buying the actual music, you are renting a license from Apple who can take it away at any time. The exact same problem exists with video games which is why I will continue to buy used consoles and used game disks. Gabe Newell’s own company – Valve – also use this exact model of licensing, not ownership. It is very frustrating that I cannot run games with Valve’s launcher software Steam. My own views on Steam are more complex. I buy and own video games where I can but that’s not always possible. My computer has no disk drive and most games are digital only i.e. you cannot buy physical media. Prices on Steam are often close to the price of games on physical media, even including inflation!
I encourage you to watch sports streams via illegal streaming sites. They are almost always free and can deliver any game to you, live, without the nonsense of wondering whether Fubo or Dazn or ESPN own the rights to the Champions League in Canada. Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure. If you love ice hockey and the NHL, you are likely familiar with this problem via certain teams signing exclusive streaming rights for their games. If your NHL stream comes from an different provider, bad luck. Why worry about that? Simply expend your effort in finding an illegal streaming site.
Digital ownership is a complicated issue and it does not help that the lawmakers with the power to fix this situation have only a tenuous grasp on the complexities. Worse, the average age of 52 in the Canadian parliament means that most of these folks are not digital natives. TechBros have us convinced that convenience is a sufficient trade-off for their preferred model of renting everything but I disagree. I spoke yesterday to someone selling software to electricity utilities. Rental software. I do not want my electricity company to rent their software.
There is one more annoying aspect of many modern software – the “cloud”. The cloud just means someone else’s computer. If that entity ceases to exist, the “cloud” ceases to exist. If your software relies on validation via the “cloud”, you’re screwed. If your “smart” thermostat relies on the manufacturer’s servers to work, you are entirely dependent on that manufacturer existing to use your thermostat. Think about how absurd that sounds. That, by the way, is how the Canadian thermostat manufacturer ecboee runs their business. To access your own data, you must obtain it from their servers. Yes, a thermostat in your own home cannot make your own data available locally. Everything must be a subscription.
This infection has also spread to the automotive world. BMW wants you to rent the ability to use heated seats. Yes, the hardware already in your car requires a rental fee. Tesla, whose CEO is a Nazi, tie their cars’ features to owners meaning that if you sell your Tesla, you sell the car but not the software licenses. This is also why so many modern cars require a constant internet connection. The day is not far when your car will refuse to work without an internet connection, obviously for “safety” reasons.
I encourage you to jailbreak your cars where possible and your phones as well. Disconnect your car from the internet. You don’t need random weirdos in the USA viewing the camera output from your car. You need a car, not a two-ton computer on wheels. Don’t trade control and privacy for convenience.
Smash the subscription model. Return TechBros and MBA-types to their rightful place in the dustbin of history.
During the Christmas period of 2024, I decided to spend some money (something I try to avoid, in a very Marwadi manner) and bought a scale model F1 car.
Why do I like F1? It is one of the only sports that combines human skill and engineering excellence in equal measure. Pure driving skill will never win a race. Neither will engineering excellence. But combine the two and you have a winner! I’m drawn to the engineering side of the sport. The sound of a V6 revving at fifteen thousand rpm. Yes, FIFTEEN THOUSAND. My paltry road car manages 2,000 rpm but my car is designed for efficiency, not power. The acceleration of a piston to forty meters per second. The aerodynamic efficiency. The science of fluid flow. I love all that. I don’t care as much for the drama that has come to dominate coverage in recent years but the engineering is still there, in the background.
I also particularly like Lewis Hamilton. The only Black driver on the F1 grid and the only person who did not come from money. I admire his grit, his perseverance, in the face of the sheer odds combined with the racism and the abuse. I also admire his willingness to speak about racial issues, especially discrimination, racism and the persistent trend of police abuse.
The model I bought is a 1:18 scale model of the 2020 car that Lewis drove to first place at the British Grand Prix. The race was notable because of how it ended. Pirelli – the tire manufacturer – came under criticism for the performance of their tires. Three drivers faced punctures, and Lewis’s front left tire was the last. This was also the last lap of the race and hence there was no time for a pit stop. Instead, Lewis’ 30 second lead over second place Max Verstappen was steadily eroded as Lewis continued on, slowly. He eventually won, only six seconds ahead of Max. Hamilton drove across the finish line with a flat tire.
The good
This model is large enough that you can marvel at the details and aerodynamic engineering of the car. The accuracy is on point and all the sponsor logos are there, if you care about that sort of thing. The DRS spoiler does not move and the rear tires are mechanically linked. The front tires are not. This is a display model and is not meant to move. The small details are well done. The helmet is accurate, the driver model is good. The angle of the case is excellent, allowing you to view more of the car from the front.
The bad
Some parts are flimsy and poorly cut. The communication antenna on the nose is a flimsily attached piece of plastic. One misplaced touch and it will either bend or break entirely. The display case itself leaves a bit to be desired. The cardboard at the rear feels cheap.
Would I recommend this? Sure. I bought mine from Toronto Motorsports for $ 200 plus taxes and shipping. Full price is closer to $ 300 and I would not pay that price. Lewis moves to Ferrari next season and I wanted to buy a scale model from his time at Mercedes.
Oh and my Christmas present was a bobble-headed figure of Lewis. Much delight.
For reference:
Link to the minichamps website – https://www.miniatures-minichamps.com/gb/f1-2010-2020/915148565-mercedes-f1-w11-eq-performance-44-f1-winner-silverstone-2020-lewis-hamilton-damaged-tyre-minichamps-110200444.html
Geography of Mumbai, as relevant to this story. Note – map not to scale. Some liberties taken with accuracy.
This story involves geography. Some fantasy books like The Lord of the Rings include maps at the back of the book. Even some Winnie the Pooh books include maps. For that very same reason, I included a map here.
(Some details are embellished for dramatic effect)
Stage One – Boarding the train at Vashi
In the past, I was an engineering student. I lived in the Bombay suburb of Kandivali and commuted daily to the suburb of Vashi. This involved a ninety minute journey including three trains on three different train lines. Bombay’s local trains generally run north-south and Kandivali-Vashi is an east-west journey. Not ideal.
In my final year of engineering, we were all forced to participate in an industry project. This involved trying to solve real-world problems without the appropriate tools or training, as is the norm in the great nation of Bharat. The end of this process is the “presentation” where you cosplay as a professional, dress formally and speak about your work and achievements. This is usually a shorter day at college and most people leave at around 13:00. A typical day ends at about 16:00.
These presentations require presentation software and software requires a laptop. Back in the late 2000s, laptops in India were expensive and difficult to find. Through privilege, I had one. A bulky Toshiba model, but still, I had a laptop. That day, I had two bags with me. My backpack and my laptop bag. This will be important later.
Vashi is not a terminal station but it does have a few trains that start from there. Vashi is on the VT (Victoria Terminus) – Panvel line and is the first station outside the city of Bombay, just across the creek. I refuse to participate in the Sena’s great renaming project and refuse to acknowledge the sex change operation they performed on train station names. I have no sympathy or love for the British or especially the British Raj but the name of the station was just fine. If it was a real problem, that name would have changed sooner. Anyhow, I digress.
Victoria (F) Terminus, now C Shivaji (M) Terminus
If you board a train that starts at Vashi, the train is nearly empty. You have your pick of the seats which was the only motivation my three Gujarati friends and I needed to make a mad dash for the train station. Our presentations ended around 13:00 and we knew that the next train was at 13:14 or such so we hailed a rickshaw and made haste. We boarded the train just one minute before it left. The First Class compartment was empty. This being Bombay, the weather was tropically warm and oppressively humid. The solution was to stand near the doors (Mumbai local trains do not have automated doors) as the train sped across the Mankhurd bridge across the creek. This is what we did and when we arrived at the other side, we returned to our seats. Before we stood up, though, I placed my laptop bag on the overhead luggage rack. This is not something I usually do and always have my bags on me or on a seat.
View from the train, looking south, crossing the Mankhurd bridge to Vashi.View from the first class compartment. I held my camera out of the door. I DO NOT RECOMMEND hanging your body outside a moving train!
The train crossed the creek and we were seated again. The weather and the swaying of the train lulls one into sleep and sleep soon overcame us. Our first change was as Kurla, about thirty minutes after leaving Vashi. Kurla is a busy station as it is on the Central line as well as the Harbour line. Trains from Vashi to VT use the Harbour line. The din of humanity and train horns signalled the arrival of Kurla and all three of us woke up and hurriedly gathered our belongings. We hopped off the train just as it was leaving and I counted the bags we had. Three.
We boarded the train with four between the three of us and there were now three bags. Which one was missing? Oh crap, it was the bag with my expensive laptop.
Stage two – Panic at Kurla
I panicked. My two Gujarati friends also panicked but they did not have skin in the game so their panic levels were lower. This was handy because they hatched a devious Gujarati plan. The plan was that we would board the next Harbour line train to VT and follow our train with my laptop.
Here is one more piece of important information. The three of us had train passes from Borivali to Vashi. This route had two possible train changes, one via Wadala and the other – the one we used – via Kurla. Our train passes were valid on only that specific route, nowhere else. The journey we were about to embark on was literally illegal.
The Gujarati duo did not consider legal issues in their mild panic and so off we went on the next train. On this train, we debated our options and made a plan. The first problem to solve was communication. We were three people with two mobile phones. One Gujju bhai’s phone was broken so we needed a solution.
That solution was for one Gujju bhai to take my phone. We reached this conclusion before working out the plan.
But we needed a plan second. That plan was for me to alight at the next stop and to watch the trains returning from VT. But how to communicate? Ah, we did not consider that. I got off at Sewri and the two Gujju bhais sped off with both phones.
Stage Three – Panic at Sewri
At Sewri, I hoofed it across the bridge to platform one, where trains arriving from VT stopped. I located the First Class markers and waited fo trains to arrive. I hastily boarded the first and looked up at the luggage rack. Nothing.
I did this twice more and the resident ticket checker – the enforcer of the law – noticed what I was doing. Here was a curious young man hopping on to trains and then hopping off, almost as if he was confused. The TT asked me for my ticket and I showed him my 100% invalid train pass. He noted that I was technically not allowed to board trains at Sewri and so asked me exactly what was transpiring.
I explained my predicament to him and he – surprisingly – understood. He took me to his office and asked me which train I was looking for. He consulted his charts and told me the exact time when that same train would arrive. It did and I checked the First Class compartment.
Nothing. As far as I knew, my expensive laptop was gone and I would have to explain this to my parents. They would be livid.
Stage Four – Gujjus at Masjid
The title of this stage is a pun. Meanwhile, on the train heading south, the two Gujju bhais were in furious conversation. They were also travelling illegally but this time, the first class compartment was not empty. There was a third Gujju, eavesdropping on this conversation. He realised he could help and help he did. The story was that his buddies worked in the suburbs but lived in the city. There knew about the train starting from Vashi and usually boarded it together, in the first class compartments, and played cards. Or ate snakes, which is what Gujaratis are well known for doing. Anyhow, on this fateful day, he missed the train and his buddies and so was on the next train, in the same compartment as my Gujju buddies. The solution was for him to phone his buddies. He phoned, they looked for my laptop bag, they located it and planned the rendezvous.
This was to be at the station of Masjid Bunder, the penultimate stop before VT. The meet happened and five Gujju bhais went off to drink falooda. At the end of this, after much relief, my two Gujju buddies realised that they had my laptop but had no idea where I was. At this point, the realisation hit that they also had no way to contact me. My phone was with them. Two people, travelling together, had the two phones we had between us. They also realised that neither of them remembered which station I got off at. Oh my, what now?
Stage Five – Panic at VT
These two debated their course of action and concluded that my course of action was to head to VT. How they reached this conclusion, I do not know. They headed to VT, again, without legal tickets and proceeded to check the station for me. I was not there, of course, I was panicking at Sewri.
What next? Head to the station master’s office, skip the fact that you don’t have tickets and ask for help. This is what the Gujjus did and the station master sent out an announcement asking for E Rebello to approach the station master’s office. E Rebello was too far away to hear this message. The Gujjus then repeated this at Masjid Bunder and when they received no response, they concluded that I had killed myself due to social shame. They had no way of contacting me and did not know me well enough to think like me.
Stage Six – Realisation and Communication
Back at Sewri, I proceeded to panic. The train with the highest chance of containing my laptop departed, there was no laptop and I had no solutions. My solution was to check every train arriving and at this point, the TT dismissed me as crazy and so left me to my devices. I also realised, mid panic, that I had no way of contacting the Gujju duo. I could not remember either of their phone numbers and so a public phone was useless.
I considered calling home and reporting the day’s events but soon realised that would be counterproductive. My mom would also panic and besides, she did not have the Gujju duo’s numbers either. So I waited in a panic, for about three hours, my mind racing.
Somewhere in that panic, I had a brainwave, an obvious solution even. CALL MY OWN NUMBER.
I knew my own number and I knew the people with my phone. I was surprised that this obvious solution to the communication dilemma had eluded me for almost three hours. I found a phone, dropped in a one rupee coin, dialled my own number and POOF! Communications established.
I learned of the days happenings and that the Gallivanting Gujju Duo were on a train headed north. I waited for them, boarded the First Class compartment, illegally. We all headed home, laptop on my shoulder, disaster having been averted.
After this event, I resolved to never store my luggage where I could not see it.
This served me well up until I took a train from the Netherlands to Belgium, where a skilled thief snatched my bag from the luggage compartment and walked off at Mechelen station. Bad luck for him. All he found was a worthless Indian passport and some used clothes.
