Slumdog Canadian

I just finished watching Slumdog Millionaire.  It is a well written story.  It also has a powerful message.  The message did not really hit me until I enlisted Google's help.  (Let me get back to that idea.)  For those of you who have not seen the movie it as about a boy who grows up poor on the streets in India.  He gets a chance to compete on their version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  He is competing for 20 million rupees.  Now this is where the message hits home.  Find an online currency converter.  Find out how much that is in your own currency.   

Wow.  This is an unbelievable, unreachable, utterly amazing dream for people in India.  My wife and I could afford to buy a house worth that much  (with the help of the bank and 25 years worth of time).  We are average people here in Canada.  We have average jobs with average(ish) wages.  For the poor in India what the average Canadian family has is our equivalent to winning a huge lottery.  We already have their biggest dream.

Chew on that before you gripe about the cost of gas.........or maple syrup.

Follow Your Cash

Well it is Christmas and we all know that the money just seems to fly from our wallets. Why not have some fun with it and find out exactly where it goes! Yesterday I got this $20 at Walmart. The writing caught my eye so I thought I would check it out. The address led me here. It is a fun little website where people enter the serial numbers on their bills and they can track where and when they have travelled. This $20 of mine came from Quebec, a little over a year ago. There is no other entries for where it has been. After I spend this little beauty I will be waiting with baited breath for somebody else to enter it at the website. When I have a spare minute I will have some fun entering new bills of my own.

There can also be an educational aspect to this website. Wouldn't it be fun for students to see just how far across the country our money travels?

Anyways, back to wrapping presents. If you come across a bill like this in your travels have some fun and enter it in the website.