And, we're back

I real­ly should just install Ecto, my blog­ging client on my lap­top, because I dis­like using the online (web) inter­face to post to my blogs. The result is that when I’ve been on the road I haven’t done much in the way of updat­ing this. And boy, has there been a lot to update!

Yes, we were on the road, back in Van­cou­ver for a final vis­it before the move, and Seat­tle to vis­it with my broth­er’s fam­i­ly (even though my broth­er was in Brazil for most of the vis­it, but I did get to vis­it with my Sis­ter-in-law and my niece) and for Pam to attend the STC (Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) 52^nd Annu­al Con­fer­ence. While I was there, I also spent a day in the mar­velous Seat­tle Pub­lic Library, and I also did some win­dow-shop­ping at IKEA and Fryes for fur­ni­ture and elec­tron­ics that we’ll ‘need’ after the move.

But aside from all that, Mur­phy’s Law (which I remem­ber from old Lar­ry Niv­en books, could be expressed as in engi­neer­ing terms as “The Per­ver­si­ty of the Uni­verse tends toward a Max­i­mum”) deter­mined: Dur­ing the 6 or so hours that we would be rel­a­tive­ly dif­fi­cult to reach, i.e. while we were in flight — that would be the time when an offer to buy our house would come in. After fran­tic calls and mes­sages left on our cell phone accounts and var­i­ous voice mails, we man­aged to com­mu­ni­cate and accept­ed the offer. Also, although I don’t want to jinx any­thing or count any chick­ens before they are hatched, the prospect of me hav­ing employ­ment as we arrive in Van­cou­ver appears to be get­ting brighter. No details yet; there are still many hoops to jump through. Nev­er­the­less, I’m becom­ing more and more opti­mistic that the key items we’ll need to start a new life in Cana­da are lin­ing up.

Speak­ing of items need­ed to immi­grate, now is as good as any oth­er time to list the things we’ve need­ed to get in order to immi­grate to Cana­da, just in case any­one else out there is think­ing of the same thing (and I know you are, lib’rals!)

1. First there are the forms to fill out. You’ll need to list every­where you’ve lived since you were 18, and every job you’ve ever had since you were 18. You’ll need let­ters of ref­er­ence from the jobs you’ve held in the last 5 years or so, ver­i­fy­ing your start dates, end dates, if applic­a­ble, your job title, and your salary.
2. You’ll need a cur­rent pass­port and…
3. An offi­cial copy of your birth cer­tifi­cate,
4. An offi­cial copy of your mar­riage cer­tifi­cate if you’re mar­ried,
5. Spe­cial ‘res­i­dent cut’ pass­port pho­tos, which have to have been tak­en in the last 6 months or so,
6. Offi­cial FBI and State Dept.- accept­ed Fin­ger­prints. There are places that take them.
7. Also, proof of 6 months worth of liv­ing expens­es (hope­ful­ly not a huge amount depend­ing on where you are mov­ing)
8. If you’ve ever lived abroad (like as a stu­dent), proof from the police depart­ment of that area that you have no record. I actu­al­ly still need to pro­vide this one.
9. Did I men­tion you can’t have a police record? That includes your native coun­try as well, while you’re at it. You don’t have to pro­vide proof of it, but if you have any record, you’re pret­ty much out of the run­ning.
10. For a dri­ver’s license, it real­ly helps to get the last 7 years of your dri­ving record. Oth­er­wise you have to get a learn­er’s per­mit and then take the Cana­di­an Dri­ver’s test

That’s about it. We hired a lawyer to help us out, so that adds some, but hope­ful­ly it will help expe­dite our work. He’s already helped us head off some prob­lems when we did­n’t fill in the cor­rect ‘fam­i­ly’ mem­bers on that part of the form — turns out you need to include all of your imme­di­ate fam­i­ly, liv­ing or dead, and their cur­rent address­es (if alive). So if you have a sib­ling or par­ent who has a record with the State Dept., then you’ll prob­a­bly run into trou­ble was well.

So this was a good trip. We got lots of stuff done with nail­ing down the apart­ment that we’ll be buy­ing when we get there (it’s real­ly a con­do, but there’s no word for that in Cana­da — actu­al­ly, they call it a ‘stra­ta’, but that refers more to the res­i­dents who man­age the over­all prop­er­ty — kind of like a coop, I guess).

I’ll have more lat­er. Plan on upload­ing some pho­tos to Flickr, so that will prob­a­bly end up mak­ing an appear­ance here, too.