Tag: I am Canadian

Quick update

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Quick update

After many trials and tribulations, we’re back in Saffron Walden. Holiday’s over. Katy went to work last night and is working tonight and I’m back at work bright and early tomorrow morning. Bean is fairly back in his UK schedule and is going to be in nursery full-time for the next two weeks. That should really cement his routine. Now only if his attitude could get back into gear :) He’s a proper little monster at times these days. Yay, terrible twos.

On the bathroom front, we have a toilet, sink, shower and bath. We’re still missing a tiled floor and the final finishes, but that should come on monday. Pictures to come soon. We winterized the garden by dead-heading the flowering plants, bushwacking the out-of-control herbs and planted some violas and pansies. More pictures to come soon.

I need to write a massive post-holiday post and process a few hundred pictures. That should come within the week.

So yeah. Holiday over. Back to the grind.

Having said that, I’m rather looking forward to a bit of boring routine for the next little while.

Now if only Katy could stop watching the bajillion episodes of Neighbours and Home and Away that have been series-linked on the sky box, life would be good. As a side note, we only had about 20% free space on the box with all the junk that had been recorded). We’re going to have hours and hours of catch-up TV for the next little while ;)

Current Mood:Tired emoticon Tired

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Damn you Conservatives, damn you to heck!!!

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Damn you Conservatives, damn you to heck!!!

Expats fear for children’s fate under new rules

Changes to citizenship laws limit ability to pass Canadian status to those born outside Canada, critics say

OTTAWA — Expatriate Canadians say their children who have been born abroad are being denied the full rights of citizenship under rules that come into effect in April.

Canadians who give birth or adopt in another country will be able to pass along their citizenship to their children. But those foreign-born children of Canadians will not be able to bestow that same citizenship on their own children should they also decide to adopt or give birth outside Canada.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the minister has heard from parents who fear that the new law will limit the options of their children adopted abroad. He is aware “of these concerns, and is seized of the matter,” Alykhan Velshi said. “Last week, he asked his officials to review this aspect of the legislation.”

But there do not seem to be similar plans to review the rules that will affect, retroactively, the many people born to Canadians working in foreign countries.

“Hundreds of thousands of Canadians will be affected by these rules. These people may be working or volunteering abroad temporarily,” Allan Nichols, the executive director of the Canadian Expat Association, said in an e-mail.

“My own children will be affected,” wrote Mr. Nichols, whose son and daughter were born outside of Nagoya, Japan, where he was working as a consolidator for a travel agency. “They were born abroad, but, of course, live in Canada. As bilingual (English-Japanese) children they hope to work in international trade in the future. Do I honestly need to tell them that if they have kids while working abroad, they will not be Canadian?”

The new regulations were released in December, after changes to the Citizenship Act were passed into law last spring. Exemptions have been extended for the children of Canadian diplomats and military personnel.

But those who have taken jobs overseas with multinational corporations, for instance, or have gone to another country to teach or work with aid groups, will be affected. Robin Pascoe of Vancouver, who advocates for the interests of Canadian expatriates, said the new regulations will affect Canada’s competitiveness in the global economy.

“There is a mobile Canadian work force. And it’s not a small number of people who are going to feel the long-term effects of this,” Ms. Pascoe said.

In introducing the changes to the Citizenship Act, the government was trying to prevent foreign-born nationals from coming to Canada, obtaining citizenship, then returning to their country of origin and passing along citizenship endlessly from generation to generation.

But federal officials acknowledge they did not contemplate all of the ramifications when they crafted the legislation.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said her group is concerned about people born Canadian citizens in another country – or adopted as Canadian citizens abroad – whose main or only meaningful tie to a country is to Canada.

The new rules, said Ms. Dench “leads to the risk of children of Canadian citizens being stateless.” Some countries do not automatically grant citizenship to children born within their borders.

Douglas Kellam, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that can’t happen because Canada has signed an international treaty that means it doesn’t have rules that could lead to statelessness.

“Potential stateless cases may be eligible to be sponsored in the family class for permanent residence,” Mr. Kellam said. “As soon as a minor child of a Canadian citizen becomes a permanent resident, the parent could immediately apply for a grant of citizenship on behalf of the child.”

A child born to a Canadian citizen who ends up stateless as a result of the new law could also apply for citizenship if they are under 23 and have resided in Canada for at least three of the four years immediately before they make that application.

CANADA’S RULES: SCENARIOS

A girl is adopted in China by Canadian parents and then raised in Canada. She returns to China as an adult and marries a Chinese man. She cannot pass along her Canadian citizenship to her children.

A boy is born in the United States to Canadian parents who teach at a university. He returns with his family to Canada, where he grows up. Like his parents, he also goes abroad to teach as an adult. He marries a woman who teaches at the same university in France. His children are not eligible for Canadian citizenship.

A girl is born to Canadian parents who have moved to Kuwait, where her mother works for a Canadian petroleum company. She is granted Canadian citizenship because her parents are Canadian. But Kuwait does not grant citizenship to children just because they are born in that country. When the girl grows up and has a child of her own in Kuwait, that baby is neither Canadian nor Kuwaiti.

THE WORLD’S RULES: OTHER STRATEGIES

Children born to Australians outside of Australia must be registered to become Australian citizens, but the granting of citizenship is basically automatic. The second generation of children born outside Australia can be registered as Australian only if one of their parents is Australian and has lived for a cumulative period of two years inside Australia.

Children born to British citizens while they are outside the United Kingdom will be considered British citizens by descent, but they cannot pass along their citizenship to their own children born abroad.

Children born to American parents abroad can become citizens if both parents are American and at least one of the parents lived in the United States before the birth. If only one parent is American, the citizenship can be passed to the children if that parent lived in the United States for five years before the birth and at least two of those years occurred after the parent turned 14.

So, in a nutshell, if Ben has kids outside of Canada, they won’t be Canadian. If he has kids in Canada, they’ll be Canadian and British, but *their* kids won’t be British unless they have them in the UK. Nice and simple, right?

Current Mood:Aggravated emoticon Aggravated

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updated picture links

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updated picture links

I’ve updated some of my online picture galleries:

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/irina/ : tons of new pictures of the kitties

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/cambridge_kings_jun2008/ : pictures from inside Kings College Chapel in Cambs

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/bobbles_canada_may2008/ : our last Canada trip pictures

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/hupo_amsterdam_aug_2008/ : pictures from my trip to Amsterdam

Current Mood:Amused emoticon Amused

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The travel diary of Bobble, the little blue owl.

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The travel diary of Bobble, the little blue owl.

Our pictures from Canada are online at http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/bobbles_canada_may2008/.

You’ll notice a recurrent theme. As we were packing our bags prior to leaving, we realized that a small plush Bobble the little blue owl had been living in my backpack for close to a year now. How could we be so cruel as to evict him from his home? We couldn’t, so we took him with us and cataloged his many adventures.

It was quite astonishing to see where we managed to make him end up. He was an instant hit with everybody that interacted with him. I was shameless in trying to get him anywhere I could (Katy was mortified on more than one occasion). My motto was if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Because of this, we managed to get him:

Never underestimate the power of the owl! We got some pictures that still manage to crack us up! All in all, Bobble had a great trip, ate waaaaay too much for such a little blue owl that he is and tried to kill himself with chocolate on more than one occasion.

Having said that though, he was very tired at the end of the trip and was glad to be back home.

Current Mood:Happy emoticon Happy

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Canada Redux – part 1

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Finally a bit of time to write about the whole Canada trip. The epic begins on the 13th, where it took me 4 hours to get to Gatwick. My flight was at 4:30 in the afternoon but Katy dropped me off at Great Chesterford at 8 in the morning on her way to work. I didn't mind – I actually prefer to take my time and get to the airport well in advance. I just plug into my ipod and reader and zone out until it's time to board the plane.

I had two trains pass right in front of me at the station without stopping. There was a signalling fault and there were delays (these were already late trains). My 8:30 train arrived closer to 9:30, but what can you do. That's when I learned that there were engineering works at Tottenham Hale and the train wouldn't be calling there, but at Seven Sisters instead. Normally, I get off at TH and get straight on the Victoria line to Victoria station and get on the Gatwick Express. This time though, I wasn't sure enough of the stations on the tube line and didn't want to spend an hour waiting at Seven Sisters in case my hunch that it actually was on the right tube line was proven incorrect so I elected to bite the bullet, avoid the shortcut that normally saves me about 45 minutes and go straight to Liverpool station and get to Victoria station using the tube.

This turned out to be a big mistake. It took about an hour longer to get to Liverpool, and then an extra half hour for a circle line tube to finally show up. I still wasn't really fussed, cause I had ample time to get to Gatwick, but I was getting fed up of waiting for trains. I finally arrived at Victoria and had 15 minutes to wait for a Gatwick Express (of course, I'd just missed one). I went to buy some food at the M&S express and a cup of tea from a stall – where the dude was so slow that I almost managed to miss my train (I caught it, but at the price of spilling a lot of my very hot tea on my hand – I should sue Nero).

At this point, I am starting to relax as I am now on the last leg of the journey to the airport, and I have (most of) a cup of tea. Something bad had to happen then. I mean, come on…. And it did, when the ticket lady told me that my travel card was not valid on the Gatwick Express. Now let me say that Katy and I have previously used the exact same travel card on the Express and had had it confirmed from the GE ticket counter that it was valid. But apparently it's not. I must have looked dejected enough that the nice lady only charged me for a ticket upgrade instead of a full ticket.

I finally arrive at Gatwick to learn that my flight has been delayed for 2 hours because of a mechanical failure on the original plane. They're having a replacement one flown down from Manchester.

Nothing else really important to note happened that day. I passed security, went window shopping, drank tea and waited for my flight. The flight itself was boring and uneventful. I watched Oceans 13 (and was glad that I didn't go see it in the cinemas – they managed to make Al Pacino sound lame!!!). Cleared customs without a problem and got my bags. The folksies were waiting to pick me up in Ottawa and we drove to their place, where I spent the first two days getting over my jet lag, which seemed nastier than usual.

On Saturday, I took the bus to Montreal to spend a few days with the boys and taking case of some business. I met up with Michel near the old Forum and we spent most of the afternoon shopping for stuff that I wanted to bring back with me (a new backpack cause my old one was dead, some DVDs that are not out yet in region 2 and flannel sheets that for some reason are impossible to find in the UK). The backpack was an adventure in itself, because Future Shop now sucks the big puss-filled ass.

The new layouts of the store is awful and it's impossible to find somebody willing to help. I wanted a Targus backpack because I know they're solid. My old one, though now literally falling apart at the seams, was bruised and battered through years of solid wear and tear. Future Shop apparently only carried a generic knock-off brand but then we found something really weird. Two identical bags – one branded Targus, one branded the no-name brand. Guess which one I wanted. Guess which one didn't have a price sticker. Guess which one I took anyway. Guess how many trips the sales clerk had to make through the busy store to get me the bag I wanted…

The day ended well though, cause we went for a pint at Hurleys and then really, really, REALLY excellent sushi at Bishoku. I have a really soft spot for the folks who run the restaurant. I haven't been a regular client there since I moved to the UK, more than 2 years ago but I try and go there every time I'm in Canada. Every time Michel goes there, they ask about me.

When I went there and they noticed that Katy wasn't with me, they were sad. I told them we'd be back at xmas and they said “when you come next time, we'll give her ice cream”‡. I finally asked them why they always ask for news about me and it seems that when they bought the restaurant a few years ago, Michel and I were some of their first regular customers. It seems we made a good impression :) Anyway, the sushi was excellent – it's still the best I've ever had and is the yardstick by which I measure every sushi restaurant – and the company was good. I took a cab to go to POs (he was nice enough to offer his guest bedroom for a few nights) and chatted over a few ciggies then went to bed.

On Sunday, I had brunch with Sara and Em and then went to see Nat's new house. I was pleasantly surprised by it – it's nice and bigger than it looks from the outside. I'd made plans the night before to go have dinner with Michel, Isabelle and Danielle (Michel's sister – which it turned out I hadn't seen in over 7 years). Dinner was fun and there was much laughing. Isabelle had bought mussels for dinner, but they seemed a bit dodgy so we ended up chucking them all in the bin and ordered in some St-Hubert :) It still tastes the same.

Monday was another busy day, because I wanted to go to the old port for some tea at Ming Tao Xuan and get a drop-chain necklace for Katy from the jewelers at Marche Bonsecours. Tea was good but I was a bit disappointed that it didn't taste as great as I remembered it :( I got a nice tea set though. The jewelers were also a let down because their stuff was all much of a muchness. I didn't see what I was looking for, and didn't see anything really leaping out at me saying “buy me, I'm original”. I went to see Bernard, my financial planner to go over some paperwork and then went back to the old port to try my luck at some jewelers at the Marche des Artisans. No joy. Got back to POs and went to buy some curry-making supplies as I'd offered to cook for the boys before the game night. I discovered that I missed Tesco…

Boy's night went ok, but I was disappointed that a lot of people just didn't show up. PO had sent an email weeks before, and a reminder days before, and yet another on the day. Seb, Vincent and Simon just didn't come, nor did they give any sign of life. That hurt a bit. Still, it was a fun night. I discovered a new card game called Bang! and we played a few games and chatted over beer and ciggies.

I took the bus Tuesday morning back to Ottawa and spent the rest of my time in Canada at the folks' place. We went shopping on Wednesday for some new suitcases, weird and wacky stuff from the dollar store for Katy and a broadband solution for my dad's computer. I got two really nice Samsonite individual-sized suitcases for about £65 – bargain.

Thursday was lets-get-Dad-connected-to-the-Internet day. We bought a new-fangled WiMax wireless broadband modem from Bell. It's the only way they can get broadband but the upside is that it works and is roughly 80 times faster than their previous connection speed :) The only room in the house that gets decent signal is their bedroom, so we had to go back into town to get a wifi router and card for the desktop computer. Got that hooked up and secured (a VERY big concern for my dear papa) and then spent roughly 6 hours trying to reach somebody at their 24/7 tech support helpline to activate the damn account. We did, it works, they are happy. Life is good. The service was stable for the whole time I was there, so touch wood it should be good. There was only one small speed bump that required another (useless, as it turned out) 2 hour phone call to tech support but I found the problem the next day and worked some tech magic for it to not happen again.

My sister and the sprog arrived the next day and there was drama over the weekend, which I will write about at a later time cause now I'm tired and lunch is over so I need to get some work done.

‡ Katy loves their deep-fried ice cream dessert :)

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I'm HooOOoOOOOOOoOOOmmMMMmMmMEeeEEeeE!!!1!

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I've made it back home in one piece, albeit a f'n tired one. Lots to write about, but not now. Now? Shower. Then bed. BED!

I've been on the go for the last 13 hours straight with only about an hour's sleep at the beginning, if that. Then there was Gatwick. I hate Gatwick. And Tottenham Hale. Which is not that much better. And then home!!!!!!!!!!

I've come to a profound realization. Canada is a nice place to visit, but it's no longer home. Home is where my bed is. Home is where my cat is. Home is, most of all, where my wife is.

On that note, duckie to you all!

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A long and massive update

Posted on By admin 11 Comments on A long and massive update

I've been a bad blogger recently. I've been keeping up to date on the reading part, but the writing part has suffered. I blame [info]sbourge's keyboard. I'm writing this entry on my laptop and it's sheer bliss to be able to blind-type again, instead of having to peck at keys on an AZERTY keyboard. Those things are just evil, but I digress. I've been keeping all my thoughts on paper so I wouldn't lose them, so now I just need to type everything up. I missed my keyboard. Good keyboard *pats the keyboard*

Our story starts on Saturday night, when Stephane convinced me to go out with him and some of his LJ friends to an 80s night at a club he knows on the Plateau. I quickly realized that I'm an old fart. Going out to clubs was never really my thing, but now, hella no. I fail to see the fun of getting shit faced for its own sake in a poorly ventilated bar where the music is so loud that you can't understand what the person that's screaming in your ear is saying. Most people in the club were not born when the music that was being played was made. I was more excited by his description of a cosy tea room that we were going to try out later in the week.

I'm old; I'm pretty good at accepting it gracefully. I sometimes wonder how it happened and how I should feel about it, but most of the time I'm glad to be where I am and how I am (though more teenage sex would have been appreciated, but hey, what can you do…).

On Sunday, I got wet. As in, soaked-jeans-clinging-to-your-legs wet. Not once, but 3 times. I think I caught a cold cause I've had a crap throat all week. I met up with [info]eniran and [info]ashre79 for breakfast. I was waiting in line to get in to Eggspectation at the corner of Drummond/Maisonneuve when I called them to see if they wanted to join me for brunch. Sara said that it would be easier for her to park at the old Forum, so I told them I'd meet them there. Walking there was my first soaking.

I was shocked to discover that the Forum Eggspectation is no longer an Eggspectation, but something called Burgers and Benedicts. The food was tasty but horribly from a health perspective: eggs benedict with bacon on waffles. So good, but damn! It's a good thing that my diet has generally improved in the last little while, cause this week was sometimes painful for it :)

Sara and Em wanted to go to the old port to run an errand, so I tagged along and then we went book and DVD shopping. I'd forgotten how annoying it is to have to factor sales tax to every thing you buy. I went to all my old haunts: Indigo, Chapters, Metro Video. I didn't find any DVDs that were screaming at me to buy them. In fact, the only thing that really caught my eye was some over-expensive hentai porn (but that was mostly for the giggle factor of seeing Sara and Em give the evil eye to a creepy old man who was trying to browse the porn rack without actually seeming to do so).

I headed over to Indigo, where I ran into an old co-worker that I had a bit of a crush on when I was working at the hospital (no, not the crazy german girl!) before having a good perusal of the fantasy and fiction section and finding a few interesting titles to buy for the trip back.

I walked Sara and Em back to their car and got soaked. I was supposed to go have dinner with Michel at Bishoku, but it's closed on Sundays so we went to Weinstein & Gavinos instead. Got soaked walking there. After a really nice dinner, we played count the whores along our usual post-meal walk and I actually won a round!

Monday was an expensive day. I bought 3 pairs of jeans (which isn't too bad, considering that I paid the price in canadian dollars that I would normally pay in british pounds) and bought some shiny, pretty and expensive things for Katy at the old port and Marche Bonsecours. I got lost trying to get to the Studio Tranchefile (where I took my bookbinding course) but I finally made it and spent an hour or so putting in a custom order for a wedding photo album.

People are going to think I'm a bit nuts for the amount of money I'm going to spend on that album, but I think it's going to be worth it. It's going to be hand-bound in burgundy leather and will have red marbled paper inside covers, one cream paper folio (for signatures), 12 black paper folios for pictures and a cream paper envelope (to put scrapbook stuff). It's also going to be embossed with our names in silver on the cover. I've seen their work and it's amazing.

As I was making my way back downtown, I ran into Chu, the head lab tech while I was doing my master's. He's still as nuts as ever :) I had sushi for dinner with Stephane at Mikado and Michel joined us for a spot of tea at Camellia Sinensis, the tea room that Stephane had mentioned on Sunday. It's really nice and I can't wait to bring Katy there. We had a nice evening just chatting and laughing about this, that and a few raunchy other things.

On Tuesday, I went to work with Stephane and said hello to people at Ste-Justine then went downtown to meet Shibl and Ata for lunch (Bishoku!!!!!) and then I putzed around a bit downtown before going to Michel and Isabelle's condo. I told them that I'd cook them a proper curry dinner, which was quite well received. Spent a nice evening chatting on the terrace on their roof and then had a quiet walk with Michel while heading back to the metro.

Quote of the day for Tuesday: “I'm more annoyed that you went to sushi without me than I am that you want to go to the strippers”. I love my sweetie :)

I had a lazy day for most of Wednesday, because my week was starting to catch up with me. I had a pisser of a headache for part of the day, but that was taken care of with some advil and other herbal medicines. I cooked a thank-you curry for Stephane and headed to POs place for a night with the boys. Amusingly, when I got to his apartment block, I pushed the wrong apartment buzzer and the person who answered the door was an old friend who'd moved in next door to PO and didn't know I was in town. I got an O-face, which was unexpected and really funny.

The evening was a smashing success. We played a game of Risk 2210 and a game of Knights of the Round Table, which I'd never played before. I hadn't had a night like that since before I left for England. It had all the essential ingredients for a good boys' night, including St-Hubert take-out (club sandwich, white meat, hold the tomatoes, extra cheese, with the chip gravy in a separate bag). Went to bed at 2am and got up at 7:30 with PO and Sonia and headed to the bus station to come back to Ottawa.

All in all, a very satisfying trip to Montreal. I did most of what I'd set out to do and saw all the people I wanted to see.

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Day one in Canada

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I made it in one piece, albeit a very tired one. My travel itinerary went something like this. I woke up at 6am to get ready to make an 8am train at Whittlesford to London, then hop in the tube to get to Heathrow. My flight was scheduled for 2:30pm, but with all the chaos I was expecting at the airport, I wanted to get there as soon as possible. My plan worked out a bit too well. I arrived at Heathrow at 10:30. Check-in took the whole of 10 minutes and I had loads of time go walk to the M&S at arrivals to get some sandwiches for lunch.

There was a queue from hell to get to security, where people every 10m or so reminded you that you couldn't take any sort of liquids, gels or cosmetics on board. They were hand-patting everybody that was going through security. Except me, for some reason. I think it's because I don't fit the “flying while asian” profile, and I think they didn't even see my epipen. If they did, they didn't bring it up (even tough it's sharp and liquid, but hey).

While I was waiting to pass through security, I had the (dis)pleasure of being regailed by what I would have thought to be the two dumbest american teenagers though, sadly, I think they're just average in their stupidity. One is from Texas, the other from Florida. That's not a good start. Some amusing tidbits overheard: “I've never seen as much multiculturalism in one place as here (meaning at Heathrow)” and “I don't believe how British Intelligence actually caught the terrorists. They were like from Al Quaeda, right? How come US Intelligence didn't catch them?” God bless America…

Anyway, the flight itself was uneventful. Since I'm not going to Dubyaland, I was allowed to bring liquids and all the schwag I bought at duty-free on board. One of the movies was MI:3, which is amusing because I was talking to Katy about it just the night before and saying that I really didn't want to see it. Watching it on the plane, I was proven correct that I was glad that I didn't pay to see such a steaming pile of shite.

I also discovered that earplugs will from now on be an integral part of my travels! They're wonderful at filtering out all the extreme noises (including the ever popular screaming toddler two seats behind you) while leaving you able to listen to the movie and talk to the stewardess.

Customs were a breeze, and I spent the next 40 minutes waiting for my suitcase to make it up the ramp. After that, it was smooth sailing to get home and get horribly jetlagged.

I woke up at 3am this morning but was able to get a few more hours of sleep until I had to get ready to leave for Montreal where I spent the day seeing Nat go nuts over baby clothing while I reinstalled her computer :)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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