mmm
Thursday, October 12th, 2006We had a great lunch with Neil at The Grain Store in Edinburgh today.
Archive for the ‘the old country’ Category
och jings, we won!
Sunday, October 8th, 2006Scotland beat France 1-0 yesterday. Here are some Scots enjoying the health benefits of smoking in the drizzle:
in a bit of a dwam
Friday, October 6th, 2006Well, we arrived in Glasgow. Jet-lag’s bad, but at least I’ve had some real Irn Bru to counter it. Forgotten how different a UK keyboard layout is to the Canadian one, so this entry has taken much correcting.
deep fried jam sandwich à la mode
Friday, July 28th, 2006I just had a deep fried strawberry jam sandwich (with ice cream) at St Andrews Fish & Chip restaurant at Ellesmere & McCowan — and survived!
(it was good, incidentally)
Our server also had Bishopbriggs connections, so it’s a wee world.
my kind of town
Friday, July 14th, 2006hot & cold running beer
Monday, July 10th, 2006Norvin sent me this story from the The Daily Rangers in my home town. Apparently, booze is cheaper than water. And if you pay more for Tennent’s than water, you’ve been had.
tattie scone vibe
Saturday, April 1st, 2006Best Scottish/Semitic fusion ever: potato scones with a hummus dip. Num!
1656 days from PR application to Canadian Citizenship
Saturday, March 25th, 2006I found my old misc.immigration.canada post where I gave the timeline of our application. I’ve now got a few dates to add to that line:
01 Jun 2001: Sent forms with all fees
13 Jun 2001: Receipt acknowledged
26 Jun 2001: Medical forms and interview waiver received
07 Aug 2001: Took medicals
01 Sep 2001: Visas received
02 Apr 2002: Arrived in Canada
18 Mar 2006: Took citizenship
It’s been hard work, but worth it. Canada’s a decent place to live.
Some observations on how immigration worked for us:
- We did the application ourselves; all you need is on cic.gc.ca.
- Research ways of getting your money into Canada without incurring swingeing foreign exchange charges. This was perhaps our single biggest cost, and I’m sure we could have avoided some of it.
- Canadian banks are rather stuffy and inefficient. Expect to pay bank charges, and also expect the “free banking” banks to turn you down until you have a credit history.
- It takes several years to become credit worthy in Canada. It took about a year before we had a credit card at all.
- Get to know and love your public transit system. Most Canadian cities have decent transit, and living near a busy transit hub gets you around quickly.
- Join the library. Books, internet access, and information of what’s happening — and free, too.
- Owning a car is quite expensive. It’s not the purchase price or the fuel cost; insurance for new immigrants with no insurance record is unbelievable. If your employer can put you on their policy to drive one of their vehicles, you’ll find that it’ll cut your insurance premiums drastically.
- I ended up changing jobs more than I thought I might.
- Volunteering helped me get into the industry I really wanted to be in.
- Professional qualifications don’t import well. Ontario is getting a bit better at accepting foreign qualifications (my UK CEng counted for nothing) but there’s still a long way to go.
Not long after we arrived, I remember being slightly irritated when a fellow UK immigrant said, “The first three years are difficult, then it gets easy.” Looking back, I now agree with him.
run to the LCBO
Sunday, March 19th, 2006
… for they have Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer. I haven’t had this since I was back in Scotland.
“Imperfection is an end; perfection is only an aim”
Monday, March 6th, 2006Ivor Cutler, 1923—2006, mensch; rest in peace.
Obituary from The Guardian.
bankie haircut
Friday, February 17th, 2006I had my hair cut last night by Arthur, who came over from Clydebank in 1969. His workmates were amused how broad his accent got when we were talking.
It was at The Barber’s Chair, a chain (franchise?) of old-style barber shops. I think I’ll be back.
RIP, crunch, crunch
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006Golden Wonder Crisps are gone; and a large part of my childhood went with it.
That Walker’s should have stolen the crisp crown is terrible. They’re just rebadged PepsiCo Lays. Yuk.
(But I still think that Seabrook’s are the current best in the UK.)
chilly
Saturday, December 17th, 2005A real BBC News headline: Cold Weather Hits Scots Fixtures
<insert obligatory kilt-related humour here>
this isn’t the same Edinburgh as I know
Monday, December 5th, 2005Shawn Micallef on Edinburgh: “… it’s easy to be knocked over by street after street of fairy-tail [sic] landscape”. What?! Edinburgh’s a grubby, cold, stinky place, and best avoided.
grown up
Friday, December 2nd, 2005Even though I haven’t seen him for more than 20 years, I’m pretty sure that Dr Euan K. Brechin is the same person who used to visit his grandfather (and my next door neighbour) in Newton Mearns.
He’s grown a bit since then …
big windfarm, big deal
Thursday, December 1st, 2005So there was a stramash that the RSPB published a map showing where the Lewis wind farm would reach if it started in Edinburgh. Oh noes! Looks like it’d go all the way to Methil.
I’ve been working on a couple of medium-sized wind farms in Ontario. For top laughs, I tried overlaying them on Scotland, using streetmap.co.uk for the measurements.
Since I’m a weegie, I started at George Square. One of the farms would stretch all the way west by Wishaw, near Murdostoun Castle (and the comically-named town of Bonkle). The other would run north to somewhere between Fintry and Kippen, in Stirlingshire.
For those of you unlucky enough to be based east of Falkirk, I tried the same starting at Edinburgh Castle. The first wind farm would run west to the hamlet of Gilchriston, which is just north-west of Dun Law Wind Farm, which I worked on in the distant past. (If you run the farm west from Edinburgh, you end up in Bo’ness, which no-one would want to do.) The other design would end up somewhere between Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, near Thornton — and not that far from Methil, a distance that the RSPB would have us believe is just too far for a wind farm.
So, where’s the news, RSPB? How did your land get somehow more precious than ours?
we’re shite and we … invented the modern world
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005(a rant for St Andrew’s Day)
It must have been great to be part of the Scottish Enlightenment. This wee country seemed to blossom, from a muddy backwater to a world leader in economics, philosophy, mathematics and engineering.
And yet, for the average Scot, all that was a long time ago. All it seems we can manage now is to churn out neds by the million. So how did we get from the place described (rather breathlessly) in Arthur Herman’s How The Scots Invented The Modern World to the place where the football fans chant “We’re Shite, And We Know We Are.“?
Urban disenfranchisement of the formerly agrarian workforce, perhaps? Who can say. We even chose the darkest, grimmest part of the year for our national day (hint: St Jean-Baptiste would make a smashing national day …). So, have a happy St Andy’s, get properly munted, and wha’s like us, eh?
Ivor Cutler: Glasgow Dreamer
Sunday, November 13th, 2005I’ve archived an MP3 copy of Arnold Brown’s Radio 4 programme here: Ivor Cutler: Glasgow Dreamer. It’s a good introduction to Ivor Cutler’s work, and it’s a bit more accessible than the RealAudio format I had to convert it from.
no, I don’t get this, either
Sunday, November 6th, 2005BBC NEWS | Scotland | Crews face bonfire night attacks:
Firefighters and police faced a series of attacks from gangs as they attended bonfire night call-outs in the Strathclyde area.
When I read this, I’m glad I left the Land of Ned.
it’s toast
Saturday, September 3rd, 2005It seems that the concept of a toast rack is alien to Canadian kitchen retailers. Y’see, the parents are visiting soon, and last time they were here, there was a minor scene over toast sogginess. I tried two large kitchen shops; neither had heard of the concept.
