Five months - 08:56, Friday 6 June 2008 |
| Well, I've been working for five months now and haven't been sacked yet :). Still no sign of my security clearance though. |
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Camera - 12:19, Monday 26 May 2008 |
| Just bought myself a digital camera, so I might actually be able to post some decent pictures soon :). Weather still can't figure out what it's doing; we've had 20+C days most of the last week, and now we have a frost warning tonight. Also, about half the population of Saskatoon seem to be suffering from some annoying cough/flu thing right now! |
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Not from the flat part - 11:15, Thursday 15 May 2008 |
| While I was tidying up my PC, I came across some old images from a trip to the Rockies a few years ago and thought I might as well include a few to contrast with the never-ending flatness of Saskatchewan :). These are actually stills from my old (non-HDTV) camcorder, so the resolution isn't great, but they're still rather bumpier landscapes than I've seen in quite a while.      BTW, the weather is now finally warm enough that I'm going to stop wearing my big fat winter coat to and from work :). |
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Weather #2 - 09:13, Tuesday 22 April 2008 |
| The worst of the storm missed us, but we still have blowing snow with 50+ km/h winds this morning; I'm glad it's only -7 and not -37! |
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Weather - 11:15, Sunday 20 April 2008 |
Well, the 40cm of snow this weekend turned out to be less than 10cm then 5C weather with rain and now below freezing tomorrow to ice everything up. Hopefully I can get from the house to the bus stop to go to work in the morning! The image was taken around 1AM with my camcorder in 'night vision' mode, so you can't really see much other than the snow stuck to the window :). |
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Snowy nights - 01:49, Saturday 19 April 2008 |
| After the warm weather last weekend, we've now had about three inches of snow in one night, just to remind us that it's not summer yet :). The forecast is up to 40cm of snow by Monday, though they're now predicting that the worst of the storm is going to miss us and stay more on the West side of the province. |
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Credit #2 - 07:55, Tuesday 15 April 2008 |
| Oh, Amex finally got around to giving me a Canadian card based on my UK credit record, so I now have something that I can use to buy more than the week's groceries or a couple of DVDs. Of course it would all have been a lot easier if they'd just given me the card back in December, when I first asked for it! |
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Sunny days - 05:57, Sunday 13 April 2008 |
| Well, we actually sat out in the garden today; after sub-zero temperatures some days in the last couple of weeks, this afternoon it was up to 20C and most of the snow has gone. The garden was a bit of a swamp for a couple of days, but even most of that has evaporated; given the amount of snow around the place I was surprised that it disappeared so fast and left so little behind. |
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Housing bubble #2 - 01:11, Tuesday 8 April 2008 |
| House prices here seem to go ever higher; the asking price for a house like ours appears to have risen about $15,000 since the last time I posted about it, though I've no idea whether they're actually getting that much. I guess it's still a good deal by British standards, but crazy by Saskatoon standards... quite a few people have moved here precisely because it was a cheap place to live, and it certainly isn't anymore. |
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Credit - 01:11, Wednesday 26 March 2008 |
| After the hassle with Amex refusing to transfer my British cards to Canada, I did get a PC Financial card recently, though the credit limit is a small fraction of the amount I have in my savings account with them! I suppose one downside of an Internet-only bank (OK, they have pavilions in their stores, but they're basically just sales staff and can't handle credit applications themselves) is that you can't take a UK credit report in to badger them into giving you a decent limit. Not that I really need a lot, but enough to pay for a return air ticket to Britain would be good! |
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Computers #2 - 12:17, Friday 21 March 2008 |
| Oh, I picked up my new PC a while back and now it's happily running Linux ; in fact, I'm posting this from it right now. I had to open it up a few days ago and they'd done a pretty good job of putting it all together, the inside was far more tidy than the |
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Snow is going - 11:07, Thursday 13 March 2008 |
| We've had a few days where the temperature was zero or above for most of the day, and it's actually possible to see the ground again in many areas! I was surprised by how much snow vanished the first day that afternoon temperatures got up to about 4C, but after the best part of a week there's not much left around where I live or work. |
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Security clearance part 2 - 08:10, Wednesday 12 March 2008 |
| Well, the police check letter from the UK arrived by air mail precisely 40 days after the receipt was sent! One thing to be aware of is that if you fax a photocopy of the letter, the photocopied version comes out with 'FRAUD' in big white letters across the background because of the special paper they print the letters on to stop people trying to pass off photocopies as originals :). So the original letter is heading off to the security clearance people, and I just have to wait and see what happens. |
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Saskatoon Buses - 11:34, Sunday 9 March 2008 |
| Since we can't decide what car(s) to get yet, I've been taking the bus to and from work a lot (my girlfriend has her old car, but our work hours only coincide for part of the week). So far it's been pretty good, I have the choice between either walking fifteen minutes to a bus that goes right past where I work, or five minutes to a bus which requires a change part-way. Most buses go through the downtown terminal and/or the university terminal, so there are plenty of opportunities to transfer from one to the other, and so long as you make the trip within an hour there's no extra cost. You can either pay $2.50 in cash, buy tickets for $2 each, or buy a monthly pass for about $60, |
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Security clearance - 12:41, Saturday 1 March 2008 |
| Someone was asking on the forum about security clearance for non-citizens, so I thought I might as well comment on how mine is going! The company applied for me in January, then were asked to get fingerprints from me for RCMP checks and for me to get a police check from the UK. So I sent a form off to the Met in January and received a receipt a week or so back dated the end of January; I'll see what happens after the results arrive! |
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Housing keeps on going up - 10:53, Friday 29 February 2008 |
| Saskatoon house prices continue to get more crazy. I think it's pretty clear that a couple of years ago they were typically underpriced, but today they're definitely beyond rational levels based on incomes and construction costs. In this area a house of the same design as ours but with no garage, landscaping or appliances sold with an asking price nearly 10% higher than we paid six months ago (obviously they might not have got that much, but it wasn't on the market for long so I don't think they were desperate to sell), and another is for sale with an asking price of nearly 20% higher than we paid. Add on the cost of finishing them and you're looking at a 20-30% rise in prices in six months, if the houses actually sell for what they're asking. Sales seemed to stop in December/January, but suddenly appear to have started up again with several houses that had been on the market for 2-3 months recently sold. On the plus side it's nice to know we're not losing money on our house, but on the down side a house price bubble doesn't help anyone other than construction companies and property speculators. |
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Computers - 12:26, Monday 25 February 2008 |
| Someone on the forum was asking about buying computers; if anyone needs PCs or PC parts in Saskatoon the best place we've found here is OTV Technologies . Not meant to be an ad, just that we had no idea where to go when we needed parts last year so hopefully it will be useful for others moving here; their prices are decent, there's easy parking and they're usually busy, which is generally a good sign for a retail store! |
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Eclipse - 11:45, Thursday 21 February 2008 |
 Not exactly the best picture of last night's eclipse here in Saskatchewan, but not too bad for pointing my camcorder at the moon through of our bathroom window and then capturing a still :). |
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Timeline - 07:40, Tuesday 19 February 2008 |
| Thought I might as well elaborate on my process of moving to Canada, for anyone who's trying to keep track of how long things take: August 2004: started collecting documents together. October 2004: sent off application for a Skilled Worker visa. November 2004: received acknowledgement card from CHC saying it would be processed in 18 months. April 2006: got a letter saying they'd process my application after April 2007 May 2006: got a letter saying they'd process my application after June 2007 August 2006: received a letter giving me 90 days to update my application before they processed it. November 2006: sent off letter. December 2006: received a letter asking me to take a medical. January 2007: took the medical. February 2007: received a letter asking me to send in my passport for the visa. March 2007: collected visa from CHC. August 2007: landed in Canada. September 2007: received my Permanent Resident card. October 2007: received my Saskatchewan health card. December 2007: got bored, started looking for an IT job. Interview and job offer two weeks later. January 2008: started work. So basically about three years from first looking at the forms to landing in Canada! |
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Phone fun - 07:27, Tuesday 19 February 2008 |
| So, anyway, we decided it was probably time I was listed on the phone bill here; called the phone company, only to discover that I'm 'high risk' and can't be added to the bill. Now, let's be clear on this: I'm living here, I'm using the phone, I'm paying the bill. But I'm too 'high risk' to have my name put on the bill (I'm already on the gas bill, electricity bill, etc). I'm sure that in some weird parallel universe that makes some kind of sense, but it doesn't make much sense to me! |
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