There comes a time when every expat desires the experiences he or she had back home. In my case it is highly marbled, highly expensive, dry aged angus beef. The supermarkets here seem to sell angus certified beef however it is often not that fresh, and poorly cut. So I made a few phone calls that led me to a hotel food supplier selling US prime angus beef, already portioned into steaks and vacuum packed. Unfortunately I had to buy 20 of them, costing around $300. So lets hope they are good, and my fridge doesn’t run out of electricity.

Despite this country going through a fairly severe recession business seemed to be strong at the hotel supplier, there appeared to be a number of members of the public buying products in bulk for home use like myself. One lady had purchased a rather huge wheel of parmesan cheese. She said she was going to make pizza out of it. A lot of it.

It is quite common for people to travel to Miami for the weekend and load their suitcase full of such products given the much higher price level at home. For a country with a very high CAD, and a fixed exchange rate this is not very helpful to the central bank. At least this hotel supplier made some very nice margins off me (those margins are the foreign currency that presumably stay in the country).