We Saw a Chicken …

Tag: canada

  • boo {gerund} hoo

    [Rick Ciarnello, president of the Vancouver Hells Angels chapter] claims he has been treated rudely by his local supermarket staff, and he says many people are no longer friendly toward him, and instead fear him or avoid him altogether.

    — Hells Angel says he feels shunned.

  • providing cannon fodder for empire since 1867

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the toll of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan is the price Canada is paying for playing a leadership role in world affairs.

    I reckon that if I took a random street poll anywhere (anywhere outside Canada, that is), no more than 3 out of 10 people would consider Canada as having a leadership role. I do not wish to make light of the soldiers’ plight; I just don’t want them there in my name.

    (I was going to make a comment about the nearest thing to a role to most Canadians would be a Swiss Chalet 1/4 chicken dinner, but that doesn’t work in a written context, and barely works when spoken.)

  • half-yay pedelecs

    Electric bikes hit the road in Ontario — but you have to wear a helmet, for some reason.

  • stones, as current vernacular would have it

    Finatics' sign, by Big Al's

    I’m no fan of billboards, but I have to congratulate Mike of Finatics for sheer gall when he put up this sign. See the plastic shark on the building behind? That’s Big Al’s, one of the biggest aquarium stores in Canada. Mike’s probably not going to get any favours from them any time soon.

  • the computer does work

    Picked up the new computer from Canada Computers yesterday. High-end it isn’t, but it’s more than adequate. It’s an AMD Sempron 3000+ (on a Foxconn K8M890M2MA-RS2H motherboard), with 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA disk and a DVD±RW drive. There was change out of $400, including tax.

    It’s running Ubuntu for AMD64. While there are a few things I don’t have configured, it was all installed in under an hour. It reminds me a bit of OS X. There’s one thing it does better than the Mac; it knows about duplex printers, and assumes you want to be able to print duplex. Under OS X, you have to choose two-sided every time you print. Thanks to Davey for originally putting me on to Ubuntu. My life’s too short to mess with linux configs.

    Now I need to move the old hard drive over as a spare, and fit the various cards from the old machine.

  • the computer does not work

    My 4 year old Athlon XP box finally gave up this week. It had been acting ropily for a few months, and now it won’t even boot. Don’t really need to replace it with anything powerful; maybe just a cheapo Sempron box. We’ll see what Canada Computers has to offer.

  • I’ll be your terrorist for the evening…

    I’m at YYZ, and despite the Canadian passport, I’m still Mr Designated Searched Guy. Thought that the passport might’ve changed things, but no. Sigh…

    It does mean I no longer have to do those dumb visa waiver things, yay!

    And it didn’t help that part of one of the lighting panels started to fall off inside the cabin before takeoff, so we had to taxi back, get it fixed, and head back out an hour later. Gotta love Air Canada.

  • Souvenir of Canada

    We saw Douglas Coupland’s Souvenir of Canada movie last night. We liked it a lot.

  • pass the port

    I just picked up my Canadian passport. I am teh canada now!

  • … with raspberry vinaigrette!

    Paul and I often talked of doing this, but I see someone’s done it for real: they hacked the GO Train scrolly LED signs to read Stephen Harper Eats Babies.

  • Hwy86 Turbine

    AOC 15/50 near Listowel

    I think it’s an AOC 15/50; note the downwind design and prominent blade tips.

    It’s near Mornington, which is SE of Listowel on Hwy 86. Catherine and I spent the weekend in Goderich, and we came home the scenic route through Wingham and St Jacobs.

  • the mayor is back in town (or will be)

    Mayor McCA is touring in Canada soon!

    May 4-Ebar Guelph ON
May 5- The Jane Bond. 004 Princess St, Waterloo ON
May 6- Music Gallery- The Over The Top Festival Toronto ON (advanced tics recommended for this one).
May 7- Casbah. Donut Rock City (Hamilton) ON,
May 8-10- TBA
May 11- The Paramount. Moncton NB
May 12- World Cafe 2412 Agricola St , Halifax NS
May 13- Gus' Pub 2605 Agricola St, Halifax NS
May 13-17- TBA

  • timwin

    Don’t want no car, don’t need no barbecue… But I can always use another coffee from Tim Hortons.

    (for those outside Canada, every spring, the Tim Hortons donut chain has a prize promotion. It always provokes a national response little short of hysteria. You can win big things, but winning a coffee is just dandy by me.)

  • 1656 days from PR application to Canadian Citizenship

    I 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.

  • This wind study brought to you by the Canadian Nuclear Association

    So there’s a new report on wind integration in Canada, written by The Conference Board of Canada. People are picking up on it, and even the doughty Refocus quotes “… electricity from onshore wind is uneconomic in comparison with traditional alternatives“. Hmm.

    So I read the report, and what do I find in the Preface?

    As part of an ongoing initiative to investigate energy policy options and the future of the Canadian energy system, the Canadian Nuclear Association contracted The Conference Board of Canada to conduct a comparative study of various countries’ experiences with supporting and implementing large-scale wind projects.

    So we’re expected to believe that the CNA would wish to have an objective and non-partisan report written on wind power, eh?

  • kotthu roti night in Canada!

    Yeah! Amma is back open after the fire. Had my first kotthu roti in months, and it’s as great as it ever was. The place was jumping, and the Sri Lankan bachelors (reluctant) were looking forward to their first square meal this year.

    Poondy Bread is back, too, so the neighbourhood smells just like it used to; bread and curry, mixed in with occasional candy (from the Cadbury plant) and biscuits (merci, Peak Freans).

  • i’m really sorry …

    We bought a car today. We’ve been car-free for over 10 years, nearly four of them in Canada, too.

    Honda Civic

  • The week of shaving carefully

    So how did my first week of shaving with a plain safety razor go? Pretty well, I think.

    I’ve discovered that Weleda shaving cream and after-shave balm work well for me. They have a muted, natural scent, and are very soothing.

    What didn’t work for me was Lush Prince shaving cream. This heavy, waxy preparation clogs up the blade, it smells too strongly of neroli, and is a horror to rinse off. I also cut myself the only time I used it. Styptic pencil owies resulted.

    Catherine has remarked on the closer shave (I suspect ‘cos I’m spending more time on it). It’s strange, but the stubble seems sharper. I wonder if multiple blades smoothed the razor-cut ends of the hairs, and thus gave an impression of a smoother, longer-lasting shave?

    I like my Merkur. Using it for a year will end up cheaper than any cartridge razor, and result in far less trash.

  • my letter to etymotic

    To: Etymotic Research Inc. Customer Support

    I recently placed an order with you for accessories for my Isolator ER-6i headphones. I was very disappointed when UPS added an additional brokerage charge of approximately US$27 (plus taxes and duties) to the order. Since the value of the the order was only $43, your courier’s brokerage charge was almost two-thirds the value of the goods ordered.

    Please consider using another courier for Canadian orders. USPS/Canada Post’s brokerage charges are much smaller, of the order of $5.

    I would also like to note that none of your agents in Toronto seems able to stock these spares. I visited all three of the dealers mentioned on your website:

    • Long & McQuade had no stock, and didn’t seem particularly keen on ordering any for me.
    • Carbon Computers, though very helpful, only had eartips for the ER-6, and didn’t know that they wouldn’t work with the ER-6i.
    • CPUsed sold me an incomplete bag of ER6-14 eartips; only 6 tips for the full price of 10. When they weren’t assuring me that they’d work with the ER-6i, they were trying to sell me a set of Shure E2C headphones, which they said were better.

    Up until now, I have been widely recommending your products. Until I know that you’re serious about supporting your Canadian customers, however, I cannot recommend your products to anyone in this country.

  • a few loose tools on the workbench

    Lee Valley make and sell good (if doggedly non-metric) woodworking tools. It would seem, though, that LV proprietor Leonard Lee has a rather unhealthy problem with Canada Post: postalproblem.ca.

    His lengthy letters and full page ads in the Ottawa Citizen have an Incensed of Tunbridge Wells quality to them. It might be an idea to start hiding the sharp things when Leonard’s around.