Today Pat received one of those vacation scam phone call. A representative from Ramada Plaza Resort (RPR) claimed that she had won a luxury cruise vacation through lucky draw at the Vancouver food festival. Pat get suspicious when the caller asked for her credit card number and decided to hang up. Later on she searched the web on more information, it turn out that this RPR is well known for scam people and the US government is filing law suits against them. Instead of getting a free vacation, you will end up paying thousands of dollars for unexpected charges and upgrades. The caller had purposely misled you to believe you are getting a vacation for several hundred bucks of administration fee. But what you really got is an option to purchase a discount tour package at a marked up price and a promotion video. Since they taped only part of the conversation to their advantage, it is not easy to get refund from the credit card company. Beware of this kind of telephone scam, if it sounds too good to be true, it is very likely something is wrong. Only greedy and dumb people will fall into their traps. Lastly, think twice before entering any lucky draw by source without credibility. They may simply use information you gave them to scam you.
Category Archives: Daily Scribble
My random thoughts of the day.
single
For a person almost at the age thirty still remaining in single seems a bit unusual these days. A friend of mine at work unfortunately falls within this category. When the group get together and run out of topic, the focus will somehow always shift to this poor guy’s lack of girlfriend. We had tried to offer helps and advices to hook him up with some girls. Normally, a single person would show at least some interest to those girls or reflect the question by claiming he already has potential dates. However this friend of mine always dodge those conversations, that makes us even more curious on the true reason behind his single status. If his claim of being a straight normal man is is true, I couldn’t understand why he never show any interest to any girls. Too bad that the relationship between him and one of the two other single female coworkers doesn’t work out. Either (or both) of them should be quite a perfect match for him. Ar.. somehow this just reminds me the first song of Miriam Yeung’s latest album.
first goal
I had my first goal in the soccer game tonight, quite an accomplishment. However I lost 5 chances to have my 2nd goal. Too bad that it will be the last indoor game for a while. Starting from next month, we’ll try playing outdoor field which is free. The only bad thing about playing soccer late at night is I couldn’t sleep right away as the body is still in adrenaline rush. So I have to relax my mind a bit before going to bed.
surrender to God
Today is the first faith session organized by the Archdiocese of Vancouver for everyone going to the World Youth Day. Out of my surprise, everyone form our parish team went to the session, and we were probably the biggest group there. The session start off with ice breaking function, which it’s a good way to know more new friends that you may have to depend on in Koln. During the event, the MC tricked me to think that I have the chance to meet the new Pope representing Vancouver. I was over joyed and jumping up and down, then really let down after knowing it’s just a gag. The event is followed by a sharing from a guy, Paul, who walked from Vancouver to Denver as part of his pilgrimage in 1992 WYD. In his talked, he mentioned about how he learn the lesson of surrender to God and have to react upon surrender.
The 2nd part of the message about reaction to God enlightened me most. Usually the message about surrender to God stopped after the first part, only saying you have to listen to God and be glad on whatever he gave you. I never agree with the idea of predestination. It happened during his trip to Denver, when he and his friend rested in a national park and to prepare their spirituality, it was raining non-stop for the whole week. At first they pray for good weather, later they realize the heavy rain must be God’s will, so they started to accept it. They vowed to take everything God gave them gracefully without a question. After a few days, they finally able to start a fire to get warmth, somehow the wind just suddenly change direction and blow all the smoke to them. They try to accept the smoke at first, but realize they will be choked to death if they don’t move. Here the lesson of surrender to God take a new turn, after surrender and accepted what had happened is not enough, you also have to give a response to God. Suffering itself is only a mean to an end. The key is to find out what God really prepared for you, so you can skip or shorten the suffering part. Blindly take suffering as a gift per se is plain silly.
Car wash and BBQ
Contrary to last night, I went to BBQ at Jackson’s place with a big group of colleagues tonight. I arrived a bit earlier so I also washed my car using Jackson’s fancy car washing equitments. He got everything a car washing shop has, like the pressure wash, special rinsing hose, waxing machine and blow dryer. The food tonight is mainly leftovers from last week. In addition to just eating we played a few games of pool, watched two Stephen Chow’s old movies at the same time as playing boardgame and poker. I found I enjoy spending the night in a house party more than going out to clubbing. I’m really getting old.