Snowmageddon?

Just a quick post to illustrate how quickly the weather goes from agreeable to less so. Wednesday saw temperatures of +11, the warmest day since November 14th. Yesterday was +13. The chinook was in full force both days, drawing in milder air from the other side of the Rockies. 'Snow eater indeed', as a friend said on facebook yesterday. 

And today? A city-wide snowfall warning and temperatures about 20 degrees lower. We don't get large snowfalls all at once; typically 3cm here, 3cm there, but because it's so cold it hangs around and eventually becomes quite a covering. But because people are obliged to clear their pavements outside their homes/offices etc, it's never usually a problem to clear a centimetre or two. Except, today, we're due for anything up to 25cm from now till Saturday evening. And when that happens here, everything grinds to a complete halt. I've picked a great day to go into town for birthday celebrations!

Immigration Watch

So here's an update on the Permanent Residence Application. Looking back at the summer months it's all I seemed to post about and I've gone a bit quiet on it again. It's three months ago today that the application was submitted. I haven't heard anything yet, but I wasn't expecting to, given how slowly the wheels of government departments turn. If you look at the screengrab you can see on the right, a tracking website that you can enter your details confidentially shows that the Acknowledgment of Receipt letter/email is now making its way to August 2010 applicants. 

Given I applied in mid October, it's getting closer to me (I am on the previous page). There was a distinct lack of updates of the spreadsheet in November; it looks like processing staff were assigned to other duties, but there was significant movement from early December onwards. Applicants from February 2010 are now landing as PRs, and those from March and April are now into the latter stages of processing Extrapolating those dates means that I might in theory (if all went well) land as a PR in September/October, which would be OK seeing as I am now potentially employed as late as August, meaning I might get a few weeks off to rest, recuperate, and attend job interviews. It will be easier to apply for jobs because I could tell would-be employers I am close to being a PR; they are seemingly very averse to giving interviews to temporary residents due to excessive amounts of red tape which I am exempt from for working at a university.

The weeks either side of Christmas were always a bit twitchy as I got home; I was half expecting to see my application returned in my mailbox for blank spaces or incorrect responses. My Christmas presents - in large brown parcels - scared me to death in that regard. It seems from the spreadsheet, people's notes and the associated forum, that the process is this: 

1) Pre-inspection after approximately 3 weeks for obviously missing items (English test results, police certificates, photos, payment,  missing parts of the form, etc). Application is returned if so.

2) Closer inspection to make sure the forms are completely correct and filled out, and that all documents are  inside the requisite maximum age. Blank boxes are not OK.

3) After 7-8 weeks, if 2) is OK, the bank draft for the processing fee (a cool $550), is cashed and the application is readied to be put into the system proper.

4) If not, send it back to the applicant to correct. Applicant returns it, and it goes back into the queue at the appropriate place.

5)  Some time afterwards (ca. 6-8 weeks) it goes into the electronic system proper and processing begins.

6) Acknowledgement of Receipt  and further instructions follow shortly after that.

So looking at a number of people's details, it looks like applications received on Oct 11th-15th had 3) or 4) determined on Dec. 10th. Those on Oct 18th-22nd were decided on Dec. 17th. Oct 25th-Oct 29th were done on Dec. 24th, Nov. 1st-5th were done on Dec 31st and Nov. 8th-12th were done on Jan. 7th. Each of these days is a Friday which makes some sense if applications are processed in batches. So if my application arrived October 19th, the application has had the better part of a month to get back to me. So either Canada Post has lost it completely - which isn't beyond the realms of possibility - or it hasn't been rejected/returned. [touches wood]. There is one form I may have to send a corrected version of once I receive my file number, but that should be easily done.

For someone who is very much the glass half empty, I'm feeling cautiously optmistic at the moment.

Beating

A belated first post of the year, since the present laptop has been somewhat ill of late. Not so much of a problem if the service contract was worth the paper it was written on, but their offer of fixing it over a period of 3+ weeks was never going to fly. An invalidation of the warranty, $375 worth of computer people, and a new fan later we're good to go again. So here's the outcome of a scrabble game this evening. I didn't think it possible to lose by 400 points, but in the words of Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, 'that just happened'