So today marks the first anniversary of my arrival in Canada.
Wow. It doesn't feel anywhere near that long.
If you're keeping track, by the way, in order to maintain my Permanent Resident status, I need to renew the visa every five years. (I know - it's not the definition of permanent I use, either.) I need to be present in the country for 730 days in each five year period. My current visa started on the 3rd August 2011, and I'm currently up to about 355 days, thanks to my brief stay then and a couple of trips outside of Canada. To apply for citizenship, it's 1095 days over a four year period.
After this long, there's still a couple of things that catch me by surprise:
- when a car is on a red light, they can (generally) turn right still. This helps a lot with traffic flow, but as a pedestrian, when I have a Walk sign, I really don't want to see cars driving in front of me. They're supposed to give me priority, but you don't really want to trust that they're going to.
- paying tax at the till. Of course, it doesn't help that it's not a flat rate - that just makes it harder to work out in my head. The current rate is 13%, so when you buy most things, the price you pay is going to be 13% more than the price on the tag. From experience, it looks like the tax rate on food you prepare yourself is zero - I know, it's like they're encouraging healthy eating using the tax code - and books is 5% (I'm imagining your surprise that I know that.) But even after a year, I'm still not used to seeing something on the shelf for $4.99 and not being able to pay for it was a $5 bill.
Monday, 10 September 2012
Friday, 7 September 2012
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Demon internet
I've had an account with Demon since 1994 or so; these days, I'm mainly holding on to it from habit - I don't think there's many people who can say that they've had the same email address for eighteen years.
They've been having some Issues recently, alas - in January, they announced that they're updating the way they deal with email by moving over to new servers. I noticed over the last couple of months that the spam level has slowly been rising (well, I say slowly; their record was 52,000 spam in 12 hours) so I asked them about it.
My account was on the old servers. They'd stopped updated the spam filters on the old servers. I'm assuming that this was for sound technical reasons, rather than because they're too cheap to pay for two licenses, but I have my doubts.
Anyway, on Monday, I stopped getting emails at all, even the test ones I sent through. I was told this time that I'd been migrated to the new email system. Which was nice of them. Except that all the settings are different, and since I'd not known about this, I'd not changed the settings. So I'm still getting email, but it's going to a server I can't access, because no one at Demon has given me the new password.
The chap was very helpful, though. He sent me a copy of the information I need to log on to the new server. He sent it through to my Demon email address.
Can anyone spot the slight flaw in his plan?
They've been having some Issues recently, alas - in January, they announced that they're updating the way they deal with email by moving over to new servers. I noticed over the last couple of months that the spam level has slowly been rising (well, I say slowly; their record was 52,000 spam in 12 hours) so I asked them about it.
My account was on the old servers. They'd stopped updated the spam filters on the old servers. I'm assuming that this was for sound technical reasons, rather than because they're too cheap to pay for two licenses, but I have my doubts.
Anyway, on Monday, I stopped getting emails at all, even the test ones I sent through. I was told this time that I'd been migrated to the new email system. Which was nice of them. Except that all the settings are different, and since I'd not known about this, I'd not changed the settings. So I'm still getting email, but it's going to a server I can't access, because no one at Demon has given me the new password.
The chap was very helpful, though. He sent me a copy of the information I need to log on to the new server. He sent it through to my Demon email address.
Can anyone spot the slight flaw in his plan?
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Back to school
Not for me, you understand; I'm finished with school, unless I crack and go back for either an MBA or a PhD. They're both equally unlikely, though.
No, today marked the day that the students of Ottawa returned to school. And boy, could you tell - the bus journey took an extra quarter of an hour, and I was standing up for a good chunk of that. The traffic was terrible - hopefully it'll calm down a little over the next couple of weeks as people settle back into their routines again.
In what I'm sure is a coincidence and no kind of metaphor at all, the weather was also terrible all day - we had rain pretty much the whole of the day. Luckily, I always pack an umbrella, just in case. I think it was. I think it was the tail end of Hurricane Isaac.
It still feels odd that it might be slinging it down with rain, and the wind strong enough to blow your umbrella away, but it's still t-shirt weather...
No, today marked the day that the students of Ottawa returned to school. And boy, could you tell - the bus journey took an extra quarter of an hour, and I was standing up for a good chunk of that. The traffic was terrible - hopefully it'll calm down a little over the next couple of weeks as people settle back into their routines again.
In what I'm sure is a coincidence and no kind of metaphor at all, the weather was also terrible all day - we had rain pretty much the whole of the day. Luckily, I always pack an umbrella, just in case. I think it was. I think it was the tail end of Hurricane Isaac.
It still feels odd that it might be slinging it down with rain, and the wind strong enough to blow your umbrella away, but it's still t-shirt weather...
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