Antony’s Personal Opinion

Today I bought a 1-liter box of orange juice in a big supermarket. When I buy a food product, usually I check the expired date. I don’t what was wrong with me this morning. I didn’t check the expired date of my orange juice. Guess what…. when I arrived at home and check the date, it is written “05-Sep-05″. So the product has been expired for more than 4 months already. Unbelievable…. isn’t it?

Can you imagine that? A very big supermarket in Canada sells expired products. What would happen if the person who bought it didn’t check the expired date?

Anyway, since my first day in Canada, I have been a little bit frustrated with “expired date”. I have visited many supermarkets in Vancouver, Canada, and I have seen many food products that don’t have expired date. Yeah, I am not kidding…. Sometimes, I have to spend a couple of minutes, looking for “Best before…” sign. In some cases, I simply couldn’t find the expired date. There are two possibilities when I am stuck in this situation: 1) trust the supermarket that they won’t sell expired products; or 2) don’t buy the product.

The following picture shows a food product that don’t have expired date. It is a pork luncheon meat sold at a supermarket in Vancouver, Canada. Can you help me finding the expired date?

I am very interested to know, what the policy of Canadian government regarding of “expired date” is. Do they require all food products to have expired date? I don’t believe if a country like Canada doesn’t require expired date on every food products.

Update (30-Jan-06): Yesterday, I would like to buy a cough medicine (I’ve been having cough since three days ago). Guess what… I went to a big pharmacy and they sold expired cough medicine (the expiry date was 2005). Interesting, huh? Even a big pharmacy sell expired medicine. What happen if the buyer don’t check the date? I am not going to publish the name of the pharmacy, but they are one of the big players in Vancouver, Canada.

Vancouver is voted as the best city to live in year 2005 by EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit). Read also the news from CNN and BBC. The second place and third place are Melbourne and Vienna respectively. The study was mainly based on the political climate, so the cities with lower perceived threat of terrorism will be ranked higher.

I have been living in Vancouver since 6 months ago. Well, actually I am not living at the heart of Vancouver, but in Richmond, one of Vancouver’s suburb areas. Vancouver is definitely a very nice city (I think everybody agrees). It has spectacular natural scenery on the one side and a busy metropolitan area on the other side. Unfortunately, I don’t really like living here for some reasons (read also my blog).

A long time ago (in a galaxy not so far way), one of my best friends told me there five factors that make us enjoy living in a city (or country). What are they?

• Language. Language is very important because you can’t live in a country if you don’t speak the language. I had this experience when I came to Germany for the first time. It was a very though time since I don’t know German language at all. It’s true that you can learn the language while living there, but it is not as easy as it sounds. Some people, like, me, cannot learn a new language so quickly.
• Weather. You don’t want to live in a city that has extreme temperature, do you? A city with very high temperature during summer and very low temperature during winter is not nice. For you who live in a tropical country may not consider weather at all. However, I can tell you it is very important factor. I have lived in a tropical country for almost 25 years, and I never checked weather forecast when I was there… Now, I realize that weather forecast is an important thing to check before you go out.
• Career. Of course, all of us need a job no matter in which city we are living. However, there are some cities (and countries) where it is too difficult to find a job. Even if we can find a job, sometimes the salary is not good enough to live comfortably. In some other cities, the living cost might be very high, so even if you receive a high salary, you still cannot live comfortably. So, we should have a balance between our salary and the living cost.
• Friends. Do you want to live in a city where you know nobody there? You won’t have a social life living in such condition. It’s true that we can make new friends while living in a new city. Sometimes, it is also not that easy because of culture differences and some other factors.
• Entertainment. We all have to work, but we need entertainment too. It can be watching movies, sports, reading books, window shopping, or many other things. Don’t laugh when I say “watching movies”. My hometown in Indonesia doesn’t have a cinema at all. I do like watching movies, but I can’t do that in my hometown. We did have some cinemas more than 10 years ago, but all of them have filed bankruptcy.

Of course, there are still some other factors. Each of us may have our own lists too when considering a city to live. Some people may say Vancouver is the best city to live, but some others might say it is not….

I have been living in 7 cities in 4 different countries so far, and here is my version of the best city to live.

1. Singapore
2. Vancouver, Canada
3. Yogyakarta, Indonesia
4. Jakarta, Indonesia
5. Stuttgart, Germany
6. Magelang, Indonesia
7. Bochum, Germany