The View

There is a fair bit of complaining goes on in this neck of the woods about the weather. Snow in the last week of March gets a bit wearing, and a couple of weeks ago it looked like the accumulated winter snow had just about gone, after several days of +8, +9, +10 degrees. It was pleasant out. 

Last Saturday's 'snowmageddon' came and went, though the evening in having dinner at friends and Wii bowling/golf/tennis (and more karaoke) made up for that, but it made a delayed appearance on Monday/Tuesday. However, to give credit where it's due, on days like today I have to share the scene out of the window here at Beige Towers. We've had a combination of freezing fog, hoar frost and very fine snow for the last two or three days. And it looks fantastic.

Welcome In

In the act of being busy with work over the course of the last couple of weeks, and the PR-related news below, there's been no opportunity to reflect on the passing of another year over here. This year, with March 5th falling on a Saturday, there was a fun evening in town. It could almost have been the other side of the Atlantic; drinks, curry, bowling. Only the unannounced snow would remind you it wasn't. I did myself a comical injury at the latter, and the scar still hasn't gone nearly two weeks later. It got me no sympathy. So here's a little musical something, off pretty much one of the last albums I bought in the UK, along with others to pass the flight. It was also performed on the TV a couple of weeks in advance of leaving. I think that while the situation was slightly different, the lyrics were generally appropriate to moving half way round the world. Well, except the 'we are barbarians' bit. That's about the last thing you could describe Canadians as. And 'only here for a while' will hopefully be a bit longer than that...

Confirmation

And so to follow up the post below, when I got home this evening there was a very mixed mailbag:  the obligatory junk, my TV/internet phone bill, this month's When Saturday Comes, and a white envelope marked 'Citizenship and Immigration Canada'.

So here is the confirmation.The paper receipt is the receipt from my bank draft, which was apparently cashed on December 8th. That means that was the date my application was deemed complete, and then sat a further three months on someone's desk, or in a cupboard, or whatever. Three months! The instructions (click to enlarge) are fairly simple. My redaction skills are also enough to suggest to me that if I get bored of the chemistry malarky, that I could have a career in the intelligence services instead....

It Begins

Been quiet on here the last couple of weeks, since I've been busy finishing off the longest manuscript I've ever written. It had sort of distracted my attention from permanent residence, but Monday saw the 150th day since I sent the application without any contact from them;  a bit annoying to consider that when I began this escapade, whole applications were being processed in that sort of timescale. 

I was looking at that tracking website again this early afternoon and saw that a new person had added his details and had found his application in process via their online tool that lets you see what stage your application is at. This only works once it has gone into the system proper. It's only updated once a week, on a Tuesday. So once again I tried using my client ID number from my work permit. As I entered my country of birth as the UK, no dice. When I changed it to 'England', lo and behold it changed to show me my name, and 'processing began March 11th'. Good. News.

I can no longer be completely paranoid that the application had got lost in the building in Buffalo, or worse still, that they had found some sort of mistake, and had sent it back months ago for Canada Post to have lost it. No such worries now. A rough prediction for when this will be done by might be late September or early October. We'll see whether they become infamous last words...