web analytics

2015

You are currently browsing the yearly archive for 2015.

Movers and shakers

March 13, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do for a living is ship.”

Seth Godin

This week’s task – to identify a suitable company of international movers who can assist us with transferring all of our precious goods and chattels across the pond to the fair shores of British Columbia… preferably without breaking the bank (or indeed the goods and chattels!) in the process.

As with so many things concerning emigration from the UK the best place to start is the British Expats website – to which regular readers will know that I make frequent reference within these jottings. The fora on that site contain a wealth of knowledge and experience from those who have trodden these paths before us, and many a pitfall may be judiciously avoided by careful study thereon.

Looking for recommendations for removal companies on online fora is not unlike searching for a decent hotel on Tripadvisor. Though this is undoubtedly the best way of finding a berth for the night, for every five-star “like our honeymoon all over again” review one must be prepared to wade through the morass of one-star “worst night of my life“, and “would’a given it zero stars if your lousy system had let me” diatribes.

Seeking an international mover yields similar results. For each “I would have trusted them with my priceless collection of Jihong porcelain” comment one finds a raft of “they charged me for a second container for one extra box“, and “the guy stood outside and smoked the whole time and then broke a teacup” complaints.

Clearly the whole operation is a lottery!

Somehow, from this fountain of fulmination we were yet able to identify at least a few concerns that seemed consistently to elicit more praise than approbrium. These were clearly the people to approach. The thought naturally crossed our minds that they might also be the most expensive – but what price should one put on one’s precious possessions? That is – of course – actually a good question, since an accurate valuation is required for insurance purposes!

Enough – however – of this wordplay…

We came up with a shortlist of four companies – GB Liners – Bournes – Abels and Renmer and reached for the phone. All have subsequently visited and been shown around the estate by the Kickass Canada Girl, who has also subjected each of them to the third degree regarding their modus operadi. We are now collecting quotes prior to making a decision and – ultimately – a booking.

Progress! Progress!

Tags: , ,

March moments

March 11, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

“Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.”

Ogden Nash 

A few images from the mad month of March:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

We rather liked this pub sign…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

Tags: , ,

Cat… bag…

March 6, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‘n puttin’ it back in.”

Will Rogers

Things at the School have been most interesting since I formally gave my retirement notice at the end of last week.

Strictly I had only to give three months notice but the School was – for entirely understandable reasons – most keen to recruit a replacement before the end of term. Many applicants would probably have to give similar notice if offered the post and with key players out of the loop over the Easter holidays there might have been an awkward interregnum when I depart at the start of July.

I am in any case always content to be obliging and giving an extra month not only helped the School out but also gave the Kickass Canada Girl and I a timely boost when morale might otherwise have flagged somewhat.

I knew that the School would not waste any time in advertising the post, having already been consulted concerning the job description in advance of the event. The job – and my retirement – was duly announced to the community and to the wider world in the middle of the week.

Now – a fair number of close colleagues already knew of my intentions, but it really is most pleasant when others who did not do so take the time to enquire concerning the impending event. I can – for a brief period at least – bask in the glow of complimentary observations to the effect that I can’t possibly be old enough to retire, and to experience the guilty pleasures of being an object of envy when – on being asked if we have any plans for our retirement – I regale the inquisitor with the grand designs with which the gentle reader of these jottings will be all too familiar.

I am trying not to come over as being too smug – but it ain’t easy! A turning point – a good one – has been reached and there is no going back.

I find myself walking around the School with a huge grin on my face.

Long may it last!

Tags: ,

Much ado

March 4, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Image from PixabayThere is – it would seem – suddenly much to be done…

Having handed in our respective notices to our respective employers the Kickass Canada Girl and I are now rapidly becoming aware of just how much has to be studied, planned, decided, arranged, booked and confirmed… and how little time – quite regardless of the fact that our proposed transatlantic transition is still more than four months away – there is to accomplish everything.

In the immediate future we must:

  • set in motion our remaining pension plans
  • ensure that everything required for the smooth transition of our tax arrangements has been done
  • check that the necessary finances are in place
  • book our one-way flights to BC
  • arrange surveys and obtain quotes from a number of international moving companies
  • push through the refurbishments necessary at our Buckinghamshire apartment
  • agree a notice period with our tenant

There is – naturally – much more to be done, but that will do to get us started. I will – of course – report further as things progress.

Heads down – full speed ahead!

Tags: , , , ,

Red letter day

February 27, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWikipedia has this to say concerning red letter days:

“A red letter day is any day of special significance.

Its roots are in classical antiquity; for instance, important days indicated in red in a calendar dating from the Roman Republic (509 BC-27 BC). In medieval manuscripts, initial capitals and highlighted words (known as rubrics) were written in red ink. The practice was continued after the invention of the printing press, including in Catholic liturgical books. Many calendars still indicate special dates and holidays in red instead of black. The practice did not originate, as it often assumed, from Medieval church calendars or a requirement that important holy days be marked in red from First Council of Nicaea in 325CE, as has widely been claimed.”

Today is just such a day. The Kickass Canada Girl and I have formally given notice to our respective employers of our intention to retire at the start of July this year.

Hooray!

I left college in the summer of 1975 and got my first job as a very junior programmer in a University of London medical school. The computing resource there at the time comprised a machine that took up a whole room (an NCR Elliott 4100) which had no hard disks (just four enormous tape drives) was programmed using punched paper tape and had less computing power than my mobile phone… by a very long way!

I stuck that job out for a mere nine months before moving to another of the University of London’s many colleges, though this time in a most pleasant situation in the verdant countryside well outside town. I was to remain there for the next two decades and more, first as a systems programmer and then as network manager. I would probably have stayed even longer had I not been head-hunted (there’s posh!) by the first of the two public schools (in the English sense!) at which I have been gratefully employed throughout the last seventeen years.

Forty years is not a massively long working life these days and will certainly seem even less so to the coming generations. It is – however – not bad going in a fledgling industry such as IT, which is – and will doubtless remain – a young man’s (or woman’s) game. Remember – when I started there were no personal computers, no mobile phones, no InterWebNet – no iAnything! There were also no digital cameras, no flat screen TVs, no touchscreens, no digital recording or sampling, no digital musical instruments – and certainly no ubiquity of microprocessors in absolutely everything – as it seems that there is now.

The Girl and I want to be able to spend as much of the coming years as is humanly possible doing things together and being together. We have already lost far too many precious hours to sitting in planes, trains and automobiles.

My father finished his career at the age of 59 and subsequently enjoyed two decades of retirement. I would like to do at least the same.

It’s time to go!!

Tags: , ,

Humble P-i!

February 24, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | 8 comments

iThose unfortunate enough to have strayed within range of one of my intemperate expostulations on the subject of Apple Inc (a tester of which may be sampled here and here) will be well aware that – even though I have the greatest respect for many of the design elements evident in their product line – I really don’t much care for the ‘richest company in all the world‘ at all. I guess that their ethos explains just how they came to be so fabulously wealthy, but that don’t mean that it’s necessarily a good thing… any more so than are tabloid newspapers, reality TV shows, throwing Christians to the Lions or the ‘spectacle’ of the guillotine!…

See what I mean by ‘intemperate’?

Soooooo…..

I might at some point have waxed rather more lyrical on the subject of the splendid Galaxy Note – which device has seen me across the Atlantic and back safely and sanely over the last few tempestuous years. In my mind’s eye I pictured this excellent gizmo travelling once more across the pond this summer, to forge a new partnership with some fresh-faced Canadian telecommunications giant.

Alas it was not to be. Toward the end of last week the beautiful and capacious AMOLED screen suddenly and without warning died completely. Efforts both on my part and of the technical whizz-kids that I employ proved unable to restore it to life. It is – sadly – no more.

A number of pardoxical perceptions flashed across my mind:

  • I did not want to do anything that would extend my mobile contract in the UK beyond the summer – for obvious reasons
  • I really should wait until we get to BC before signing up to a new deal and replacing the handset
  • I really cannot be without a mobile phone right now – as things hot up on the emigration front

Now – one of the advantages of working in IT and being responsible for the School’s phones is that there are usually a selection of recently ‘retired’ handsets lying around. With luck one of them might take my SIM and get me back on the air. Unfortunately – just at the moment there didn’t seem to be much choice…

OK – you see where this is going. The only phone available to tide me over until we leave for Canadian shores was made by a company named after a fruit and starts with an ‘i’!

Bah!

Tags: ,

Bad for the heart

February 19, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Image by Frank Vincentz on Wikimedia CommonsWaiting for word from Citizenship and Immigration Canada regarding my application for Canadian Permanent Residency is a nerve shredding affair – the which is clearly also the case for the many who contribute to the fora of the various InterWebNet sites (several of which are linked in my blogroll) that are so very helpful to the putative immigrant. The situation is certainly not helped by the (perhaps understandable) total lack of information relayed to the eager applicant as things progress (or not!).

Way back at the very start of my first attempt at the residency process in 2012 I explained in this helpful post the various classes under which one can apply. I had but a single choice – to be sponsored under the family class with my spouse – the wholly admirable Kickass Canada Girl – as my sponsor.

Of course – it is actually more complex than that. Spousal sponsorship applications can be made under two further categories – Inland and Outland. Logic suggests that Inland applications are for those couples already living in Canada, whereas Outland applications are for those where the applicant is not yet resident. Inland applications can take longer to process – being considered less urgent since the couple are already together. As it happens many couples are actually eligible to apply under either category, and may thus choose the supposedly ‘quicker’ option. In practice – of course – it still doesn’t feel that quick!

Regardless of the type of application being made the paperwork is sent in the first instance to CIC in Mississauga, Ontario. CIC processes the sponsor’s application and – once sponsor approval has been granted – the norm for Outland applications (such as mine) is for the applicant’s paperwork to be sent back to his or her nearest visa office to be processed in full. That this does not always happen is dependant on the workloads on the various visa offices. Sometimes the whole application is processed in Canada, which is invariably the fastest option.

Sadly my paperwork was returned to London.

The timeline for my application – thus far – has been as follows:

  • Medical certificate obtained – 30th April 2014
  • Applications fees paid online – 31st May 2014
  • Application sent to Mississauga – 3rd June 2014
  • Application received by CIC – 6th June 2014
  • Sponsor approval – 31st July 2014
  • e-Client Application Status (EAS) online tool shows application and medical results received – 1st-Aug-2014
  • Request from London Visa Office for RPRF fee – 27th November 2014
  • RPRF fee paid online and receipt forwarded to London office – 27th November 2014

The CIC website has a guide to current processing times which covers the first part of the operation. For the second phase the applicant is referred to the local visa office website. Until very recently the London site has consistently shown a total processing time of 11 months, which figure is based on actual processing times over the previous 12 months.

About a week ago – to my absolute horror – the stated processing time shot up to 29 months!!!

The InterWebNet fora were – quite naturally – agog with anxious applicants seeking some sort of explanation for this abrupt escalation. The older hands at this mularkey offered the following:

Midway through 2014 the London office took over processing applications from that in Islamabad – where total processing times had reached 36 months, so swamped were they. The best guess is that the new 29 month figure is simply the result of combining those two sets of statistics, and the consensus seems to be that the times for UK applications are unlikely to change significantly from the previously quoted figure.

This remains, of course, to be seen – but I have to say that such shocks are not good for the constitution of us (near) pensioners!

Hmmm!

Tags: , ,

Balls in the air

February 16, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

joker-306370_1280“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

Brian G. Dyson

I like this quote from the then President and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises: an extract from a speech that he made in 1996. The Kickass Canada Girl and I will – in only a few months time – be effecting a permanent change to our work/life balance, following which we will be able to focus full-time on the four balls that count – family, health, friends and spirit.

In the meantime – however – there is much juggling to be done!

If we are to emigrate as planned in mid-July then these tasks must shortly be accomplished – the which all have interlocking deadlines:

  • The Girl and I must give written notice to our employers of our intended retirement dates
  • I must arrange for my remaining pension to commence at that point
  • The Girl must make the equivalent arrangements with her financial advisor
  • We must book one-way flights to British Columbia
  • We must book international movers to relocate all our worldy possessions to Canada
  • We must give notice to the landlords of our Berkshire apartment of our impending departure

To degrees varing from ‘really quite a lot’ to ‘absolutely unambiguously’, each of these represents a point of no return. Once retired we could not afford to maintain the Berkshire apartment and would have to move. Once air fares and movers are booked there is no going back.

We are in very many ways absolutely ready to go. We are delayed only by those two hoary old chestnuts – selling our Buckinghamshire property and my Canadian Permanent Residency. Though the absence of either would not prevent our departure failure to achieve one or both would certainly complicate matters.

There is no denying that we could – at this point – really use a massive shove in the spiritual scrum to get us over the line!

Tags: , ,

Where are we?

February 10, 2015 in Moving to Canada | 2 comments

you are here“The three most common expressions in aviation are, ‘Why is it doing that?, ‘Where are we?’ and ‘Oh Crap.'”

Unknown quote

It has been quite some while since I last issued an update regarding the progress toward our transit to Canada later this year. There is a good reason for my reticence on the subject: progress has been glacially slow!

Things are moving but – just at the point at which we would really like to be seeing an acceleration toward our ultimate goal – we find that we must just continue to be patient, patient and ever more patient!

It is now around ten weeks since CIC happily relieved me of the Right of Permanent Residence Fee (RPRF) – the request for which I took at the time (as indeed I still do) to be a splendid omen. Reading further on the various fora to which other similarly incipient ex-pats subscribe it would seem that one should expect the wait from RPRF payment to final approval to be anything from eight to sixteen weeks. Naturally I am expecting my approval notice to arrive at any moment! Naturally I am repeatedly disappointed when my daily progress checks again prove negative.

The start of the year has seen much movement regarding our apartment in Buckinghamshire. At least – much movement when it comes to viewings, second viewings, detailed enquiries concerning management structures and so forth. Sadly there have as yet still been no offers.

We paid a visit to the apartment a week or so ago, en route to a meeting with our estate agent (Canadian: realtor!) and we were somewhat put out to discover that some of the rooms there were in fairly urgent need of decorative refurbishment. We were not at all pleased that neither our tenant nor the agents – who routinely show prospective purchasers around the property – had deemed it worth their while to brief us regarding this sub-optimal situation. I have now arranged for a decorator to visit with a view to carrying out the updates, but it is quite distressing to think that some prospective purchasers might well have been put off by their first impressions of what is actually a quite lovely – if somewhat quirky – apartment.

I feel sure that there is a good reason for all such delays and disruptions to our forward momentum. Certainly the recent increasing strength of the pound sterling against the Canadian dollar makes me exceedingly glad that we did not find a buyer last year and then ship our capital out to BC at that point. We must simply believe that all such delays result from similar purposes on the part of the universe, and that all will become clear as things progress.

There will be more exciting news as the weeks pass – so do continue to watch this space…

I always wanted to say that!

Tags: , ,

Angel numbers

February 6, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

angel-297830_1280Idling perusing the WordPress dashboard after my last post a few days ago I was struck by the (mildly) interesting fact that I had apparently posted three hundred and thirty (333) scintillating missives since I started this blog in 2012.

Pleased by the symmetry of the digits (and being slightly smugly aware that as I have been blogging now for just over three years my average is one hundred and eleven (111) posts per year) I casually fired up Google and typed the number into the search box.

Blimey!

So – Angel Numbers! What’s that all about?

I’m actually not going to write anything myself on the topic at all. As you will see should you follow my (Google) lead the InterWebNet is quite full enough already of the weird and the wonderful – and amusing as it may all be I don’t feel the need to add to the canon. Should the number 333 hold some deeper fascination for you then you can read further here and here. If the whole notion of Angel Numbers causes bells to chime in your head then you should probably get help will doubtless find what you seek online. In spades!

Some people clearly make a living from this stuff… but since I somewhat carelessly launched myself into this strange other-world I am really in no position to cavil. Oh well!

Moving on…

 

This is – of course – post number 334!

 

Tags: ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »