Still waiting

The Immigration section of the CHC London website has been given a wee makeover, and the processing times have been extended in the process...This may very well explain why Mr. O has yet to hear anything back on his temporary work permit application, which he sent in the middle of April. At that time the average wait time was 28 days, so he would be hearing back right about now. Whether he got in before or after the bell we can only wait to find out. An email request for a status update hasn't even received a so-called "automatic" reply, so barring any typos on our side, not very encouraging.

That said, today is Sunday, and, just as the bus always comes when you light a cigarette and the phone always rings when you're on the toilet, I hope that by posting this today I'll naturally be proven wrong in tomorrow's mail.

Something to look forward to

A few weeks old but timeless, really. Thanks, R.M. Vaughan.

"...all the bad things the rest of the country says about Toronto are so wonderfully, refreshingly true: It's trashy, dirty, dangerous, rude and full of itself."

Read the whole article

Shedding extra tonnes

Funny the things that get you. Mr. O sold our car last night, our cute little fuel-efficient black Renault Clio, and even though we had it for only a year and it was by no means one of my most cherished possessions, and even though nobody was born or died in there, and really cars are sort of the devil anyway, I still felt that naked, floating sensation of loss, like I had instantly shed a few pounds. [Sell that car and ride your bike instead and you will lose a few pounds - Ed.] I know this is just the beginning of the process, but the point is that it has begun. With a car.

I hate driving in strange cities where I don't know where I'm going. I will never drive in Calgary again, for instance. So driving in Helsinki was a bit of a trip for me; I was 'from' here and I knew where I was going and even got myself unlost once or twice. I was driving home from the airport the other day listening to Bassoradio and between cheap, derivative West Coast rap songs I realized that I could understand everything the mic-abusing DJs were saying. At the same time I have to admit that this connection between driving and belonging most definitely marks me as a Ca-merican rather than a Finn-opean.

While on driving, I have to take this opportunity to vent about the Gilliamesque system of licence renewal in Ontario. I had a brush with this monster before leaving, when my bag was snatched at Industry (this was a long, long time ago) and I had to replace my Alberta DL with an Ontario one. Now that has expired, and despite the fact that we will be sans auto for the foreseeable future, we will both have to take driver's tests in order to get cards. This comes as a surprise considering that Canada and Finland are both part of the same international agreement by which one country's licence can be exchanged for the other; at least that's how it worked when I moved here, no test, no nothing. I'd almost be better off keeping my Finnish licence (to get my Canadian card back I'll have to exchange it at the police station here) or getting an international licence.

Don't call us, we'll call you

Found item: Canadian High Commission London website:

"NOTE: We will NOT respond to case status enquiries unless the following period of time has elapsed from the date we receive an application: Skilled Worker, Entrepreneur, Investor, Self-employed: 45 months"

...45 months???

Mr. O adds: "There's another note on the website asking people who have applied ages ago to update their application now, because they've made changes to the laws meanwhile, even though they haven't been able to process the applications yet."

That is some serious backlog...

The good news, part 2

Sometimes the best way to get things done is not to try -- to say to hell with it and throw a dinner party instead. The girls came over on Friday and in between drinks and dinner they'd called dibs on our bed, our table, and our espresso machine, all of which will be going up for sale with the rest of Mr. O's old bachelor furniture when we move out of this place come end of July.

Did somebody say end of July? Yep, we don't have to pay August rent on this place (which, as of last night, I sort of hate, as they REFUSE to turn the heat off in the building and we have no thermostat) because my lovely, talented friend Minna the video artist is living in residence on Suomenlinna this summer and needs someone to take her place for two weeks at the start of August, which is pretty much freaking perfect timing. Minna is also buying our coffee table.

So yeah, aside from the 12-hour hangover on Saturday, a very productive weekend. Anybody need a couch?

Things to do in Finland before I die -- I mean, move

-Walk on the ramparts at Suomenlinna
-Nude beach at Pihlajasaari (with my 'mos)
-Siivikkala to see Karri's old 'hood [check! -Ed.]
-a week with my man at the sauna cabin in Kustavi
-Bike ride to Kallahti
-Lintsi!
-Find me some nice Finnish art
-Fancy-pants graduation dinner at Saari
-Trip to the old homestead in Herttoniemi
-Climb the Olympiastadion tower
-BBQ at Mustikkamaa (yes Virginia, that means Blueberryland)
-Basketball
-Stock up
-A summer's day in Tampere
-Hakaniemenhalli and kauppatori
-Fiskars with my moms when she comes in June
-Hot air balloon TOMORROW
-Cheap trip to Copenhagen [check! -Ed.]
-Cheap literary pilgrimage to Dublin
-Cheap party pilgrimage to Berlin (and the last of our carbon-combusting weekends for a long, long while)

Waiting waiting...

Mr. O is patiently waiting to hear back from the High Commission in London about his temporary work visa. He sent the LMO + application + fee (a banker's cheque for 150 CAD that the bank here charged him 20 euros to cut -- nobody uses cheques here any more -- why not allow an EU bank transfer between Finland and the UK for FREE? Anyway.) about two weeks ago and it shouldn't take more than a month. About 12 days ago he was ridiculing Royal mail for taking so long to deliver the package. About a week ago he wondered out loud if he could call them to check, since it had been 10 days, hadn't it? Afraid of raising the ire of underpaid and overworked public servants who might take pleasure in slipping an annoying applicant's file to the bottom of the pile (who would do such a thing?!), I told him to chill.

He's not just manic though. Since Finns take their summer holidays very seriously, usually firms here ask their employees to inform them of their holiday plans right after Mayday, which would be right about now. Rather than get into the whole deal with his boss, he gave the dates according to our optimistic plan that he gets the visa and it's all good. Positive thinking et cetera. If he doesn't get it (and there. is. no. reason. why. he. wouldn't.) we had planned that he could take his vacation later, come with me to TO to find an apartment, visit the family etc., and then come back and work for a bit. Which would suck, even by Plan B standards.

So I'm all playing it cool, because I know it's going to be fine, and then my friend in Copenhagen tells me about how the CIC in Ottawa totally botched her application for her son's citizenship certificate, stupid things like spelling his name wrong on the document, screwing up the postal code, etc. In the end it took 18 months or so to get the document, just because of a typo. Not exactly encouraging. It makes me wonder about the people who work there, what sort of hours they work, what they get paid, etc. Mr. O will disagree I'm sure, but Finnish names are kinda hard to spell. And I know from my rewarding experiences with Royal Bank Visa that Canadian input systems don't like funny European address formats. Hmm. I think I'll go distract myself with something else now...