Here It Goes Again

I found out this morning when I get to do my English tests. Having applied on the 7th, I was beginning to get worried about the lack of a reply/notification, especially considering the next test date was this coming Saturday. Imagine the flutter when an email landed at 10am this morning entitled 'IELTS Test Date', and the temper outsburst when it revealed I am scheduled for September 25th. Given it takes two weeks to process results, it means I can't submit till mid October, roughly 3.5 months after I wanted it done by. This also means that my police certificate will be invalid and now I'll have to shell out for a new one. I should be really annoyed, but there have been a couple of very sad things happen in the lab in the last week that put bureacratic arsery into the proper context in the grand scheme of things, and that it's not worth getting too wound up about.

So instead, another musical interlude, and an attempt to turn a negative into a positive; the video amuses me, and the song contains the lyrics "just when you think that you're in control/just when you think that you've got a hold/just when you get on a roll/here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again" which fits the moment.

Living in Glass Houses

Another demonstration of the power of nature on the prairies. Monday lunchtime was developing like just another monday, though with the forecast of thunderstorms after a week of hot weather. And then at 1:45pm, we started getting hail the size of golf balls. 'You exaggerate' I hear you say. I'll just point you here, first. In those photos are a couple of the greenhouse on top of the building I work in, lying in ruins. At the time this is happening, I am on the floor below in one of the instrumentation rooms. Here's a video showing just how quickly it happened.

Mile High Club

September 19th, 2010. I shall be spending my Sunday afternoon here. I booked my flight today, and my friend who now works in Denver has bought the tickets, for somewhere behind the goal to the left. All that remains is to buy the jersey and I'm all set, and I'll be doing that after I've finished this post. I'm like a small child at Christmas, after 20 years of watching games at anti-social hours on a Sunday night, or more recently on a Sunday, I now get to see one in the flesh. EXCITED!

Photo from bradleygee, flickr

Four More Years

Well, as far as World Cup finals go, that was almost predictable. All too often the final of a tournament features two sides who are trying very hard not to lose, rather than win the game; it was desperately poor to watch, although I think the 1990 final was marginally worse than this one. Ultimately, the Spanish deserved to win because they were at least trying to win (when not diving), rather than the Dutch who seemed content, as they have been through most of the tournament, to hack the other side down and persistently foul. And dive. 'We wanted to play beautiful football' said Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk. Yeah, right.

Referee Howard Webb has borne the brunt of criticism from both sides tonight, but what else was he to do? He was put in an almost impossible position by two teams who were out to bend the rules to breaking point. The non-sending-off of Nigel De Jong was inexplicable, but that aside he did well to get to 110 minutes before sending a player off, so frequent were the yellow cards in the first half. I'm amazed that Mark van Bommel managed to go the whole way through the tournament without being sent off, such was the persistent foul conduct on his behalf.

All in all, I'm slightly disappointed by the World Cup. Granted, I've only seen games at weekends and highlights in the evenings. I've seen very few memorable games. though that could be for reasons just mentioned. England started indifferently and got worse, France and Italy were pale shadows of themselves. Ghana apart, the African sides disappointed. The standard of free kicks and dead balls was nothing short of appalling. On the plus side, the tournament has been well organised and generally well attended, thus debunking the patronising fears of the 'quality press' back home. I even got used to the vuvuzelas.

Electric Shock

Continuing the generally cantankerous theme for the week, it's now for the monthly gripe about my electricity bill. Living in a large building means everything is metered. So the actual electricity used this month: $6.20. Meter reading fee: $4.00. Administration charge: $9.75. Tax: $1.00

Less than a third of my bill is actually what I use. Grrr!

Media Matters

On the way home last night I had to get some more passport type photos for my application to take various English tests. Having done that in the local equivalent of Boots across the highway from where I live (into the bargain the worst photos of me you've ever seen, and goodness knows they have some competition), I popped next door for some odds and ends in the supermarket. In doing so, I was accosted by a reporter from CBC local radio who would like to ask me a few questions.

I duly obliged for 90 seconds worth of answering questions about mosquitos, do I think about them when I'm going out in hot weather, do I think about the West Nile virus and malaria and so on. Several variants of 'no, not really' and 'I'm from the UK and we don't have them so I don't think about it' later and I was on my way again, thinking nothing would come of it.

The guy who I watch football with twittered me this morning to tell me I had been on the radio as he was driving to work. I wonder what the people listening thought? "Ignorant johnny foreigner" most probably!

Moving the Goalposts

It's been a while since I've posted about the permanent residence application. Safe to say that today I'm not a happy camper about what happened today. Over the last few weeks, items have slowly been arriving, and last Thursday I photocopied most of the Canadian related documents; a nice thing to be doing on Canada Day. The last things I needed were letters from bosses past and present describing what I do/did for them, a statement about competence in English, and the money for the first stage of the application.

Canada Post managed to completely fail to deliver the letter from Warwick; so much so that it ended up back there today, four weeks later, marked 'undeliverable'. Odd, considering that although the building management don't accept items on your behalf, Canada Post leave a card for you to go to the nearest post office to pick it up. I have checked the email I sent with the address in to my old boss and it's just as it should be. I had declared said letter lost a week and my last boss was sending another today by courier so not so bad. It had been my intention to send the application by now but a week's delay was nothing to get worried about. My current bosses' letter was on my desk when I arrived at work this morning. So it was time to check the website once more before picking a lunchtime to go into town to get a bank draft for the money.

And there, writ large on the CIC website was the proclamation that ALL candidates now have to take an English test, irrespective of whether it's your mother tongue and whether you've spent 21 years in the English education system. Or more, if you consider where I work. Digging around on the website revealed the following: I must pay $280 for a day of testing where I demonstrate my ability to read, speak, listen, and write (stop laughing at the back). The tests are once a month, so the earliest I can do it is the last of the month. Results arrive two weeks later. That would be a six week delay, except I am in the UK at that time and I won't get back for another 10 days. Add in time to check the application etc, and it'll be the end of August before I send it; that's a matter of days before the Police certificate that I spent weeks waiting for becomes invalid (it must be less than 3 months old when submitted). All told, it's a delay of nearly 2 months.

So from a situation where I was submitting with what I thought was plenty of time before my work permit expired, I am now possibly in the situation of either a) having to ask for a short extension or b) leaving the country at the end of February and then hanging on in the UK till the application was approved. I feel reasonably confident the former would be doable, because the logistics of the latter (leaving furniture/belongings at friends places, etc) would be a thorough pain. Almost as much of a pain as this confounded application.