In the past year, I have flown 21,714.3 miles (including my flight home in a fortnight). That has, apparently, created 3.96 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
That’s not a good number. We’re supposed to be trying to reduce the amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, not create more.
So today, I offset my flights’ carbon emissions. [...]
Three weeks ago I said I was going to write an update on my activities over the previous three weeks. That never happened. Oops.
There are some good reasons (well, reasons, anyway): I’ve been very busy. I’ve just finished working twelve days straight at Enzyme (lots of overtime pay – yay!); I’m still trying to write [...]
I can’t help but notice that I’ve not blogged about what I’ve been up to the past three or so weeks, so I hereby give you warning of a mega-bumper post (or several shorter posts) coming very soon, featuring some or all of the following:
Potter night – with thousands of crazy Canadians, at least three [...]
Last Thursday, I was paid for my first couple of weeks work at Enzyme. But no social insurance number = no bank account = nowhere to bank a cheque. Sigh.
On Friday I finally got a social insurance number (this involved a rather enjoyable couple of hours out of work, so that was fun). But… both [...]
I spotted this at Montreal’s central bus station yesterday:
[Clicky for bigger at Flickr]
Those crazy Canadians took the word “guichet”, which can mean both “ticket window” and “wicket”, and picked the wrong translation.
Well, I found it funny, anyway.
[More of my Montreal photos at Flickr]
So, I’ve been in Canada for five days now. I’m living in a small town called Sainte-Adèle, about an hour away from Montreal. It’s fair to say, I think, that there’s not a lot happening in Sainte-Adèle. It’s in the Laurentides region of Quebec, which is rather well known for skiing in the winter, but in [...]
Finally, nine weeks after applying, I have received my work permit from the Canadian High Commission. I am flying to Montreal tomorrow afternoon, and will start work there as soon as I can…
Woo.
Yep, I’m still not in Montreal. It’s been another 10 days (one of which was, admittedly, a Bank Holiday), and I still have no work permit. Quite apart from the fact that I was supposed to start work last Monday, the Canadian Grand Prix is in a fortnight and I’d really like to beat the [...]
The Canadian High Commission updated its website today (or yesterday, but I’m pretty certain it was today). Previously, as I said on Thursday, there was no indication of how long one should wait for a work permit application, just a vague “most are dealt with in three weeks” kind of statistic.
Now, as well as changing [...]
As those of you who have been paying attention will have picked up, this year is my “year abroad”, the third year of my four year degree course that should be spent in the countries whose languages I am studying.
I’ve done my time in Egypt (studying Arabic at the University of Alexandria), and for the [...]