Mooseheads

This past weekend, I went out with my colleagues to catch a major junior hockey league game. The Mooseheads were playing the Fog Devils (gotta love 'em names). I was looking forward to this weekend - live hockey games are great! And the home team did not disappoint. After being all tied up in the third, #20 - Voracek puts it in past the netminder with 6.7 seconds left on the clock. Can't beat that!

What excites me is seeing these guys potentially being drafted in the NHL and tracking them through their careers. In Calgary, I just caught the NHL (i.e. the Flames) news and going ons. Here, I get to see the new up and comers. The Moose was home to a couple of current high profile NHLers - namely Alex Tanugay (Flames) and Jean-Sebastien Giguere. There are high hopes for #20 Jakub Voracek who is currently ranked #2 by the International Scouting Services for the next NHL draft.

Major Junior Hockey Highlights:
1. Seeing the future of hockey
2. $14.50 tickets
3. Kids yelling like crazy for their team. Quotable for kid behind us ... "St. John's can eat my poo"
4. Kids dressing up and dancing to get the camera on them and displayed on the jumbotron
5. Timbit hockey at intermission

Just When You Thought It Would Slow Down...

... the pace keeps up. Expectations can work for you, and sometimes it doesn't - especially when you expect things to slow down in life, but it doesn't.

But it is always better busy than not.

Tipping

I had a conversation with a group of friends over the weekend about tipping and even though I wasn't totally in the conversation (I was really concentrating on driving the Cabot Trail), I had some thoughts.

I agree that tipping is a weird phenomenon in that it has morphed into an expectation that you tip servers rather than they have to earn their tip. For example, a waiter is paid by the restaurant for their service to customers. That is what the restaurant pays them for - but do customers have to pay tip for regular service? I agree that if the waiter is great and goes above and beyond the call of a "normal" waiter that you tip him/her. But when the service is bad and you leave no or very little tip, there is a cry from the waiter (and sometimes they run after you) moaning that you didn't leave a tip. Now, this personally hasn't happened to me as I usually leave tip, but there sure are times when I didn't want to. Perhaps I am too worried of what they will think of me the next time I return or of what they may paint of Chinese people in general (that all Chinese people are cheap).

So what to do? Off to Google I go and to my surprise, when I type in tipping etiquette, most sites are pro-tipping and on the side of servers (those who collect tip). Since I am not in a researching mood and only looked at 3 sites, I think I will create my own tipping rules for waiters (as they are the ones who I normally give tips to). Maybe I can try it out and see how it goes...

Start with 15%:
1) If I don't get served right away, in a normal situation, I will drop the tip by 5%.
2) If a server doesn't take our order in a timely way (meaning that I start feeling antsy), less another 5%.
3) If I get a different order than what I ordered and they don't give a discount on the bill - no tip! If they correct the order and give me a discount, add 5%
4) If they don't offer to refill my drink where the drinks have free re-fills, less 5%
5) If the waiter comes back more times than the standard, "how is your meal?" question, add 5%
6) If the waiter's attitude is totally off, less 10% (this will be hard to do as you don't want to further add to the bad attitude)

I think that is all I would do... the next step is to follow it!