Feb 9 - around the house again

I went to the grocery store ... whooo hoooo ... and to CVS to pick up our Malaria prescriptions.

Those prescriptions came to over $140 for 32 pills.  Take one pill per day starting two days before the trip and ending 7 days after the trip = 16 pills each.  The side effects list is HUGE ... the only notable thing missing is death.  I think that the pills are manufactured by Montezuma ... this is his revenge.  If you experience side effects you are supposed to notify FDA and Health Canada, interestingly enough.  Of course the effects of contracting malaria are life long ... don't want that !

So, now, officially, we've paid about the same for medication including shots as we paid for the airline tickets.  Luckily the airline tickets were reasonably priced !

... and ... Sandy went to the gym ... I didn't go biking as it rained much of the afternoon.  Hopefully I'll get out today.

I got caught up on a bunch of paperwork including some Know Your Client forms from TD that needed to be completed for our RRSP's.  All the banks and financial institutions have had to deal with these for foreign clients to stop money laundering.  My money is clean and the RRSP's haven't had any money in our out except for investment gains and losses for ... what ... 20 years ? ... but they need those KYC forms or our accounts will be frozen ... which I would think that they are anyway due to inactivity ?  Who knows.

The fellow at TD had called me last August about these forms and was going to send them to me at the cottage.  He didn't and I guess at some point the Compliance people at TD got on his case so he couriered them down to me and was going to pay for them to be couriered back.  I sent them regular mail and scanned and emailed them back, which gets the people off his back.  There's no personal identifying information on the forms so they're ok to send via regular email.  They should really have a secure dropbox for uploading stuff like this though.  For me, scanning and emailing is easier than faxing ... although theoretically I can print to a fax ... I've never tried that.

I went through a process like this with XETRADE, the currency broker.  Now in that case, I needed the account active because I move money from U.S. to Canada on a routine basis.  In that case, they needed a form completed and witnessed by a Professional (Doctor, Lawyer etc.), who in my case happened to be my dentist in Oakville ON.  That was almost like the old guarantor for passports.

The TD form was more focused on investment knowledge and expectations so that you can't come back later and say that you didn't know what you were doing when you followed their recommendations on a trade.  Since I don't do any trading ... a complete waste.  To me it was more CYA (Cover Your A$$) than KYC :).  Oh well.  Watching Border Security and the goods and money seizures that take place on that show by Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) has certainly sensitized me to the issue.  Getting accounts unfrozen and assets back after they've been seized is a nightmare.

That's about it.  Onward !