R-r-r-roll up the rim

One of the best things about living in Canada is Tim Hortons.

Tim Hortons is basically a donut store chain, that also has hot drinks, sandwiches, bagels and soups, and it's a Canadian chain (Tim Horton was a hockey player).  Part of its awesomeness stems from the awesome hot chocolate and the tasty donuts.  The Canadian Maple donut is one of my favourites:

That's maple syrup on top, and it's filled with vanilla custard.  Delicious.

Another part of its awesomeness stems from its ubiquitousness - there are 3,040 stores in Canada and only 33M people, so there's one on nearly every corner. The final part of its awesomeness is the price - for a combo including a hot chocolate, some hot soup with a bread roll and butter and a donut (or muffin or tea biscuit or danish - anything you like in the store) it costs me $4.20. Considering that at Krispy Kreme or Donut King in Australia, a donut will set you back $2 and a hot chocolate will set you back $3, I am a big fan of their pricing.

Tim Hortons is having a competition at the moment - apparently it's an annual competition that they've been having for the past 25 years, and it's called "Roll up the Rim". The deal is, you buy a hot drink and you can roll up the paper rim on the side of the cup (which is actually really hard to do) to see if you've won anything (it's printed on the inside of the rim).  

Some Canadians have told me that the competition is run every year when it begins to get warmer again to keep people buying hot drinks - not a bad ploy.  

I thought it was a bit of a joke when I first heard about it, but I didn't count on the Canadian Tim Hortons-mania - not only have multiple different people told me about the competition and asked if I'd played yet, but stories of previous legal troubles resulting from the competition are being printed in the local newspaper.

Perhaps it's time to invest in some more hot chocolates.  And maybe a few Canadian Maple donuts while I'm there...