With an abrupt call to attention, Monday morning began an immediate descent upon ritual hardware; that is, early rising, cold water ablutions, elemental breakfast, statutory cycle, mandatory car wash and – finally – securing a Smart Advantage checking account from BMO Harris in the United States of America. And even more substantially we successfully transferred funds from our Canadian checking account to our Canadian US$ account to our Smart Advantage checking account. The process – as preposterous as it appears – is in fact de rigueur on the global financial platform. It is no doubt a reflection of the constitutional mandate to confine the transfer of money to the legislative body of the territory to which it is transferred. This means the requirement for a direct local connection.

Involvement in this heavyweight banking has dissolved our strength and curiosity for any further detail regarding the international exchange of currency. The entire irritating enterprise began ten days ago with my mistaken use of a US$ credit card when paying an otherwise inconsequential charge of for an espresso (US$6.04).  The first resolution to my inadvertent error was to create an online banking arrangement called Wise® from which we subsequently transferred funds to retire the outstanding credit card balance. We did however pay the balance in 2 instalments (just to investigate).  The second payment, though showing as a payment on account, hasn’t yet been applied. We gratify ourselves to note that if the 2nd payment isn’t processed in time, we have available the new checking account.

These unbalancing details did not entirely contaminate our day. The weather was divine. The air, balmy. The sky an image of white and blue; the farmlands, verdant. Though momentarily heated by our related opinions and speculations, our cool plate of bean salad was the ideal summer meal. Afterwards we lingered on the balcony deck, listening to the gleeful exclamations of young boaters on the river.