Work Tomorrow

I got an email from my new boss that he thought it would be better for me to start work tomorrow (Tuesday), so I have one last day to prepare. No more sleeping till 8! Up and at ‘em! It’s very appropriate that my first day of work is the 13th. For those who don’t know me, it’s my lucky number, having been born on that date, same as my brother.

In the meantime, I’m going to take the opportunity to iron all of my clothes, get some last tasks finished in the home office, and write a few emails. I’ve figured out that ‘Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me’, the NPR quiz show, takes up a single day’s commute (half of it, each way) on my my iPod. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep from grinning like an idiot on the bus, but I had trouble doing that on the T in Boston. That takes care of the Monday ride. I think it will be fun to plan some of the ‘entertainment’ for the rest of the week.

It’s actually remarkable how similar my route from home to work will be to my last one (when I worked at Fidelity Investments): It starts out with a bridge (the Granville Bridge here, the Longfellow Bridge before), and then traversing some of the downtown area to a train station (Waterfront Station here, South Station before). It’s then a short walk from where I get off to work (Water Street here, Summer Street before). As before, a couple of flights of stairs up and I’m in the office. If I had worked at Fidelity’s Water Street office in Boston, it would have sounded even more similar! The commute time is nearly identical as well. It think this new one is maybe a few minutes shorter, depending on when the bus arrives and the speed of morning rush hour traffic. It was a happy coincidence that Pam and I located ourselves (whether we realized it or not) in the same approximate relationship to the city as our last place.

I don’t think I’ll get a chance to settle in that much before the new year. After all, there’s this week (which will be a 4 day week for me now), next week, and then Christmas hits. The week after that has a holiday on Monday (Boxing Day, for the uninitiated). I”m imagining that the week between Christmas and New Years will be fairly quiet. A New Year’s visit with my brother and his family is also something to look forward to. All in all, a very gentle easing into the workforce. I think that will go a long way toward making me feel more of a part of the city.

When you don’t work, you are always seeing things as a visitor, or an outsider. I remember how I felt the first time I was laid off. It was as if I was walking around with a big ‘U’ (for Unemployed) on my chest. That feeling actually dissuaded me from walking around town, at first. Over time I got used to it. Here, it’s easier still because I haven’t worked in this city yet.

Guns, Germs and Steel
Last night the History Channel ran a fascinating documentary by Jared Diamond, the author of the recent ‘hot’ book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”. It was a dramatization of his earlier book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, which won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1998. Diamond’s overarching idea is that Geography was the largest single force in the rise of European Civilization. An ample supply of food was provided by domesticated animals: the cow, horse, sheep, goat and pig, which were all native to Eurasia. The very shape of the continents and the terrain, which allowed people to move around in the same longitude (and hence, the same climate band) without huge mountains in their way, gave some groups of people a distinct advantage over others. Because they had more free time when they weren’t looking for food, they developed Technology, which eventually created armor, the train (steel) and guns. These items, along with resistance to diseases by living around domesticated animals (which the Africans of the same era lacked), and you had the stage set for the domination of Africa by Europe that continued to nearly the present day. While the program was a bit slow-moving, it illustrated clearly many of Diamond’s ideas. Critics of Diamond claim that his theories are too pat, that it takes more than simply Geography to lead to the ascendancy of one people or another, and that some of that ‘Technology’ was acquired from others (notably, China, who provided gunpowder). Others see this book as perpetuating the myth of European superiority (the way that Hernstein and Murray’s “The Bell Curve” of 1994 clothed potentially racist conclusions in statistical representations). In any case, it’s surprising that Anthropological History can be such a gripping subject, even if it all happened thousands of years before we were born.

Harold Pinter’s Stunning Nobel Acceptance Address

I suppose another moment in history has arrived.

Yesterday, at the Nobel prize ceremonies, the playwright, poet, and now Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter gave an address to the Swedish Academy in Börssalen, Sweden that severely criticized the US and the Bush Administration. It includes some of the most scathing words ever spoken about the US; probably the worst in the history of the country. It burns with the white heat of outrage by a great man. I was particularly struck by this passage:

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

The rest of the speech (including some equally blistering diatribes) can be found here. Will this be dismissed as merely ravings from another ‘European Elitist’ (I can just hear Bush’s Press Secretary Scott McClellan saying something like that), or will some of this stick? ‘Sickened, shamed and angered’ certainly describes how I feel most of the time by nearly everything the US government has said and done for the past 5 years.

More Paperwork

Just as I thought, getting the work permit was like a firing pistol going off. Things have started to change already. But before that, I’ll fill in the gaps from the last posting.

The Catch-22 I spoke of regarding Pam’s inability to get a work permit at the border has to do with the prerequisites to getting the permit. You can get a Work Permit as a Skilled Worker immigrant or as the spouse of someone who is accepted as one. You can also, if you’re a person who is trained in one of the fields named by the NAFTA agreement (and has the diploma to prove it), get a work permit immediately with no questions asked. However, if you are the recipient of an HRSDC Opinion, as I was, the spousal work permit doesn’t apply. Apparently, as the fellow at the border said “The Government’s opinion regarding a Non-Canadian working here is not necessarily for a skilled position. It could be for someone working in a Donut Shop.” While this may sound reasonable, consider that if it’s a non-skilled position, the probability of finding a Canadian to fill it is pretty good. Maybe I’m missing something, but by definition, an HRSDC opinion is for a skilled worker, because unskilled workers would never get one in their favour!

At any rate, after we returned, Pam went to our Immigration Lawyer’s office, and filled out some more forms, which will get her the work permit in 6 weeks or so. If she gets a job offer for full-time employment (not a contract, because that’s classified as Self-Employment and hence, a different category - Doh!), she can then also immediately start working. So it’s only a temporary setback. If the guy at the border had realized that all she had to do was fill out some other paperwork, we could have done the whole thing right then and there.

We had no problems whatsoever getting Driver’s Licenses for BC, though. The Department of Motor Vehicles — here it’s called called Driver’s Services (interesting how it’s explicitly named to serve people who drive the cars rather than the machinery itself) was well-run and not too crowded. The person who served us was helpful, had a sense of humor and got everything right the first time. We took some brief eye tests, had some pictures taken, and walked out with temporary ones. We’ll get the new licenses in a week or two. Although renewing our licenses did get better over time in Boston, I still have memories (as do many Americans) of the poor reputation for the DMV. Perhaps this is another example of what taxes can pay for. On the other hand, we arrived home to find our first biannual Property Tax bill. Fortunately, it’s not due until early February, so we’ll pay it from one of my early paychecks.

Finally, I called my future employer, and they want me to start in my new job this coming Monday. My life of leisure (and burning through our savings) is ending. I’m thrilled to be getting back to work, and hoping that I’m not too rusty. It’s been 10 months, which is about as long out of the workforce as I’ve been since I entered it. I’m also looking forward to setting more roots down here. Here’s to being a working Vancouverite.

I Have a Work Permit!

I’m really tired, so I’m not going to go into too much detail, but we went to the border. We rented a Smart Car, which I’ll write about some time later. Everyone who’s thinking of getting one should drive one. Everything went more or less as we expected, except that Pam was unable to get her Work Permit this time. Long story, and it involves a classic Catch-22 that’s worth explaining. When I have more energy, I’ll do so. It should be resolved soon, but she’s pretty frustrated, and I would be, too, if I were in her place.

A call came through to our Immigration lawyer that the official who was handling my Provincial Nomination wanted to get our case handled before the move of the office from Victoria to elsewhere, so tomorrow I have to photocopy the Work Permit and the Lawyer’s office will fax it to him. This is very good news. With both the HRSDC Opinion and the Provincial Nomination (say that three times fast!) in place, the process of getting us to Landed Immigrant status will kick into overdrive. Well, maybe it will be at a brisk walk compared to a leisurely amble. We’ll see. In 6 months, (that would be…early May, around Mother’s Day) we could be Landed Immigrants. All of this less than a year from when we left Cambridge, MA!

More Immigration News and a Concert at the Chan Centre

On Friday, Pam and I met with our immigration lawyer. It seems that my soon-to-be employer didn’t properly interpret the bureaucrat-ese of the Labour market Opinion from the HRSDC (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, which has now been renamed Employer Services — does this mean that it will now be referred to as the E-S? I doubt it; too easy to say it.). It seems that our wait really is over, and I’m entering the final sprint to becoming a gainfully employed resident of BC.

So, with a Monday trip to the border to apply for a Work Permit in mind, Pam and I located my Diploma from the University of Cincinnati and got yet another set of Passport photos taken ($30 again, cha-ching!). I also withdrew the $300 in fees for the both of us to apply (cha-ching!), and put the stack of documentation together (forms, photocopies of letters and diplomas, the aforementioned photos and my passport). We’re all set now, so tomorrow we’ll rent a car and drive down to the border crossing at Blaine. Oddly enough, that date is also an anniversary of sorts; it’s exactly 5 months from the date that we left Cambridge, MA.
I’m pretty excited about this. Getting the work permit not only means that I’ll start working (and we can stop living off our savings). As if that weren’t enough, it triggers the domino-effect of several other milestones. With work permits we can apply for Health Coverage, Driver’s Licenses, and BC Identity Cards. We can also sign up for the Co-operative Auto Network of Vancouver, a great car sharing system that has fleets of cars parked throughout the city, since we’ll probably need a car only occasionally. It also automatically kicks off the process of making us Landed Immigrants, which means that we can stay here as residents without me having to stay in the same job (useful if something bad happens to the business, or things don’t work out for me there). Although Landed Immigrant status should take about 6 months, by all estimates, the BC Nominee program, which I also applied for, should be coming in soon, and that will also speed the process.
As as I understand it, there is a last, strange little pirouette that we must perform tomorrow. We leave Canada in our rental car, wait in line at the border, and enter the US. Then we do a U-turn somewhere in the first mile or so of Washington state and get in line again, this time to gain entry into Canada. We then meet with Canadian immigration officials to get the work permit paperwork done. If we’re lucky, the lines won’t be long. It’s varied from 5 cars and 15 minutes or so to 2 1/2 hours. Hopefully 10 AM or so on a Monday morning in rain and snow shouldn’t be a peak time of day (or year). It will be pretty funny to tell the US border guards that our purpose in entering the US is to do a U-turn in order to get our work permits. I hope they have a sense of humor about it too.

Friday night we had a nice celebratory dinner with Matt and Oana,( the nouveau novelists) and three of us got a bit tipsy on Saki (man, does that stuff sneak up on you!) and full of tasty Japanese Tapas — Fried baby octopus, anyone? — at Gyoza King on Robson.

Music at the Chan Centre of UBC
Last night, Pam and I took the bus (only about 25 minutes, but it felt longer and farther) to the far western point of Vancouver to the UBC Campus, and the Chan Centre, which house UBC’s handsome concert hall and recital hall (although we only saw the former).
OK, I’m now going to put on my music critic cap, so I’ll try and be honest, but this one is hard. The bad concerts are always the hardest, as I learned when I used to to this as a part-time job back in my Grad Student days. Here goes:
The program included just 2 works, and both were for chorus and orchestra. The first was John Adams’ ‘On the Transmigration of Souls‘, a memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th. It’s the kind of work that probably needs more than one listening to fully appreciate. It weaves together recordings and readings (also on tape) of phrases from missing persons posters and memorials posted in the vicinity of the Twin Towers in the weeks after 9/11 along with choral settings of the same and some very imaginative orchestral writing. Parts of it were beautiful, but some historic events can overpower whatever a composer tries to do with them, if only because of how recent they are in memory. Who knows, it may just take some time. On the other hand, as Johnny Carson used to remark ruefully that you couldn’t ever make any jokes about Abraham Lincoln, it may be a long time before artistic memorials to 9/11 will succeed without that problem, at least for me.

If the Adams was problematic, the next work on the program was much, much worse. The piece was called ‘A Requiem for Peace‘ and was by UBC alumnus and high school teacher Larry Nickel, who started studying and writing music again after a battle with viral encephalitis in 1989. As the program notes read: “After what some would consider a miraculous recovery, Larry committed himself to writing music more earnestly for God. Since then, his career as a composer has taken a dramatic turn.’ That should have tipped me off. It was a classic case of a composer biting off far more than he could chew. The Requiem lasted about 45 minutes, and was in 15 movements. It was in 9 languages, by my count, including Latin, English, French, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch. The orchestra was normal size (although it included lots of percussion), but there were at least 2 choirs. The result was a multi-cultural mess. Besides producing a collection of picture-postcards of these languages and cultures, the composer also had 2 habits, one bothersome, and the other dire: First, he was fond of orchestral and stylistic clichés, including harp glissandi just before climactic moments, liberal use of the bell-tree (that new age sparkle you hear in so much Musak) and the use of whole-tone passages as transitions. More seriously, he had a habit of reaching a cadence or resolution in the middle of his movements, making the endings (including the final one), entirely unconvincing. One final blunder: A composer should never set the Dies Irae with the original Latin plainchant, a melody that gained notoriety and lost all of it’s meaning a couple of centuries ago except as a kind of shorthand for the concept of death, thanks to Berlioz, Liszt and Rachmaninov. Apparently Mr. Nickel decided that he’d ignore all of that and used it anyway. The cellist who we chatted with as we exited the bus on the way to the concert said that the piece was ‘kind of cheesy’. Little did I know that he was being charitable.

The audience didn’t seem to mind any of this. They applauded wildly and gave it a standing ovation. Maybe it was the text more than the music (It was nice poetry, and surely there was a movement in a favourite or first language for everyone!). Maybe it was the preponderance of proud parents and colleagues.

And maybe it was also because nearly 2 out of every 3 classical music concerts one attends these days gets a standing ovation. This was a trend that my parents and I noticed many years ago. People, when you give a standing ovation for everything, then the whole point of it being a special tribute goes away. (*sigh*)

Gee, can I say anything nice? It really was a beautiful concert hall, even lovelier on the inside than the outside, and the orchestra seemed to play well. The strings were a little thin — the tell-tale sign of a student group, but they had a really fine brass section, which showed up well in the Adams. (I suspect that piece also has a reference if not a complete quote of the trumpet solo from Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.) I’ll look forward to other concerts there. It’s good to have more than one concert hall nearby. The Vancouver Symphony plays in the Orpheum theatre, which is right on Granville Street and a 10 minute bus ride for us. There are also some concert halls in Burnaby, which is a little further than UBC.