One week on....

...and I have acquired an office, a parking space and three projects while Richard has acquired a wii, a road atlas and two new pairs of shoes.

At the weekend we drove to Whitemud park which is one part of the huge river valley park through Edmonton. We went for a short walk along one of the many trails and it looks like a great place for walking and cycling once we get bikes. Didn't see much wildlife though other than a squirrel, various foreign birds (feathered variety before you snigger) and lesser spotted Canadian joggers.

We also did a couple of dry runs to my new work so that I could get used to the route on a quiet Sunday afternoon with Richard beside me providing moral support. I felt ready to deal with anything the monday morning rush hour would throw at me.

What rush hour? I left at 7.30 on Monday morning and arrived by 7.50 with only the smallest amount of queuing at each intersection. What joy. I have my own office (but before you get delusions of my grandeur, all companies out here are laid out with offices for the engineers and cubicles for the technicians). It's an internal one and I can only see daylight if I leave it and wander along the corridor, but it's mine. I'm going to be assisting in 3 new projects so far, a road maintenance (or rehabilitation as they call it over here!) scheme in Leduc (20 mins south of Edmonton), a road improvement scheme in Lloydminster (2.5 hours east, on the Saskatchewan border) and a LRT (tram) scheme in downtown Edmonton. However, I've spent most of the last three days filling in forms and cramming design standards and specifications so that I can hit the... er...road, running. Thrilling stuff.

While I've been out earning money, Richard has been sourcing food, credit cards and other necessities and cooking dinner. The IT job at ISL hasn't come to anything so he'll probably have a look around, when he finally gets too bored in the flat.

Only two more days to the weekend.

Turning Canadian

Things done today:

Get Richard's Social Insurance Number
Go to the post office
Open a couple of bank accounts
Go to Walmart
Buy wii !!!! (very important)
Buy Canadian Beer
Drink Canadian Beer

The SIN's and the bank accounts, we're very relieved about, the book's said it would take weeks to sort out, in reality 24 hours, all groovy.

Then we relaxed, jet lag hit us both in turn, now we're knackered. Addrenaline reserves very low. But now we have a lot of the important things sorted out. It also sounds like I'll get a chance to talk to the ISL IT guy regarding the job they have open, nothing more than a chat atm.

We also started the jungle telephone earlier, letting the more technically challenged members os the family know that we're here and okay.

And so begins our Canadian adventure (finally)

We have now been here approximately 17 hours and have so far achieved two work permits, one apartment, some sleep, some food, an internet connection, one out of two social insurance numbers and one hire car.

It was touch and go whether we would actually make our flight yesterday. Having loaded up Richard's parents' car with our 6 suitcases at 5am yesterday morning, their car alarm went off and no amount of pushing buttons would stop it. They drove it out the village to get it out of earshot of sensitive neighbours and called the AA. Francis, the nice AA man, turned up in his van an hour later and removed the alarm. Despite disconnecting the power and hitting the alarm with a hammer, it was still going, so we buried it in the ground under a hedge for later retrieval. Maybe it's still going...

Despite this delay and slow traffic on the M25, we arrived at Heathrow in good time and had no trouble getting through security and onto the plane at midday.

At the other end of the 9 hour flight, Canadian immigration fortunately approved our work permits for a year (we'd have looked very silly if they hadn't) and Canadian customs fortunately approved our container. Graham from ISL met us and drove us to the apartment. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing the important jobs of unpacking (me) and investigating the cable TV channels (Richard).

The apartment is cosy but has everything we need including monster fridge, dishwasher and dvd player. It is on the north side of the building and overlooks a parking lot. However, if you stick your head out of the window and look left it overlooks a nice neighbourhood of houses.

We managed to stay awake until 7pm (2am UK) and went to bed, waking at 10pm, 1am and 5am. Not too bad. After breakfast we walked to the nearest supermarket, in a nearby industrial estate. It was fantastic to wander round - like a french hypermarket it sells everything from engine oil to ironing boards to blueberry pies. The only problem is that, like everything else in Canada, it is car orientated and so everything is sold in bulk. So we bought the barest minimum we could and struggled back on foot via Tim Horton's for coffee and a doughnut.

In the afternoon Graham came round to sort out some paperwork regarding my job. He then took us to the Canada Service building to get our social insurance numbers, which we need before we can start work, open a bank account and pay tax. Mine went through fine. However, the printing on Richard's work permit had got smudged so they needed to check his further. We've therefore got to go back again tomorrow to get his SIN after they've checked it out with immigration.

Graham then drove us to a car hire place and a nice lady called Lori provided us with a Nissan something or other (er it's blue) for 2 weeks while we look for a car of our own. With Richard navigating and giving encouragement, I managed to drive back without any problems despite it being on the wrong side of the road and an automatic. I did stamp on the floor several times with my left foot along the way, and my knuckles have only just returned from white to pink. However, we made it.

That's all for now folks.

Weekend in Norfolk

Groovy groovy, spent yesterday making sure all my stuff would fit in the suitcases, watching the footie and taking the parents out for a meal at the Bird in Hand, Wreningham. Very nice meal, posh pub grub, even dad liked it, you could even take Pete Kelly there I reckon.

Sunday Jacqui and me went for a walk on Sunday morning round Carleton Rode, my home village, really nice morning, brought back a load of memories too. In the afternoon Jacqui wandered off to see Ann, I stayed in to play computer games, there is balance in the force.

Tick tock, tick tock, less than three days until we fly out, getting bored now, just want to be there.

P.S. Thanks for the supportive comments.

Bearded Update

Still not Canadiaian,
everything's set now though, flights re-booked, accomodation sorted, back from sunny Mallorca,(the quiet bit).

Jacqui picked up our hire car today, Renault Megan, first car we've had that has a card to start it up, how odd.

Signing off now, have to get up bright and early tomorrow for the funeral.

Buenos Dias Todo

We´ve come to Mallorca for a few days to recuperate after the stress of becoming homeless. We´re staying in a small village to north of the island - all mountains and sea - and it´s lovely so far. However, everyone else staying seems to be German so we haven´t had a look in on the sun beds yet. My long forgotten Spanish is coming in very useful and there´s hope too for Richard´s german.

---

Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail.

We can't go to Canada yet, so we're off to Spain

Graham and Ray were obviously expert Tetris players as they managed to fit in all the stuff from the "can't manage in Canada without it" pile and also all the stuff from the "we'll take it to Canada if there's room as it's easier than trying to get rid of it" pile.

Over the last couple of days we have been sorting out the house and paperwork, and after a marathon clearup today including hiring a man (a fairly butch man whose day job was as a masseur/aromatherapist!) with a van to help us retrieve the bulky stuff, we are finally homeless.

To celebrate we're grabbing a 5 night break in Majorca. See you when we get back.

You Lucky Lucky People

You get to keep us for another 2 weeks!

ISL have agreed to let us delay for the funeral so we're really happy about that, we're planning to have a short holiday before then and flying on the 23rd May.

Anyway our container's just turned up so now we see how good our packers are at tetris.

What a Weekend...

This is my second attempt at writing this post, the first one was deleted accidently when techno-pixies crosswired my brain making me think ctrl-v was copy, I was not best pleased.

Our missions for the weekend were:

Drop jacqui's bassoon off at the place that sells bassoons
Visit our friends Emma and Richard in Taunton
Travel up to Coventry to drop the car off with its new owner, Jacqui's sister Liz.
Train to the big smoke to stay with my sister Elaine.
Visit Jacqui's sister Carolyn.
All go to a restaurant for Elaine's 30th birthday celebration.
Parents give us a lift home.

Busy busy busy, as you can see

All went well to start with, dropped the bassoon off, hit loads of traffic on the way to Taunton but we only arrived an hour late. Had a very nice evening with Richard and Emma, topics of discussion included puffins, Canada, remote Scottish islands and Puffins We awoke to a lovely day on the Saturday and left about 11 to travel to Coventry, nice trip up the M5, and we were there. In the afternoon we handed over the car, chatted and prepared for dinner, then the phonecall happened.

Mum called to tell me that my Dad's dad had died. He died suddenly, in his sleep, some time on Saturday, we hope and believe it was peaceful. After we had dinner Liz dropped us to get the train. Our journey was basically Coventry-Train-Euston Road-Bus-Elaine's; nice and easy. A sombre evening followed, although it was really good to see Paul and Elaine. The next morning we made a flying visit to see Carolyn and her new flat - very nice indeed (Carolyn and the flat). Then Me, Jacqui, Elaine and Paul made our way to Shenfield, Elaine's-Bus-Liverpool Street-Train-Shenfield-Walk-Grandad's.

Then we had a day chatting and just being together as a family. Jacqui and I decided that, if at all possible we will delay our flights until after the funeral, this could be 2 weeks away. Just need to check with ISL that they're ok with that.

Left at 6 to make the legendary journey from Shenfield to Norwich, roughly 80 miles.

Shenfield-Train-Ingatestone-Bus-Colchester-Bus-Ipswich-Train-Norwich-Taxi-Home and we got home at 11pm. The main problem was waiting for 2 hours at Ipswich while emergency emergency engineering works happened, these were on top of the ordinary emergency engineering works.

So now we're at home seeing how much we can fit into our suitcases and waiting to talk to Graham at ISL this afteroon when Canadia finally wakes up.

Another post soon when we should know what we're going to do next.

Wow isn't technology great + Footie

Texts from our solictor, posting to blogs via email, the ability to do most things wherever you are on the planet, make me all teary eyed sometimes. Probably also makes me a techno-peasant.

A special thanks to Palmer, Robinson and Duggan, that famous midfield quartet, for giving me a signed Norwich City shirt at my testimonial, I was truly touched cheers guys.

Completion Date Set

Nice Emma from our solicitors has just texted me, our completion date for the house has been set for next week, rock and roll!

The flights are set for next Wednesday, family taxi has been booked, as well as family B&B.

Our little skip has been filled but thanks to scavvies and a self proclaimed eco-warrior taking any metal that was going we have a bit more space. This weekend is another round of visits and goodbyes but we feel we're on the home stretch now.

Still not in Canada

But we have a moving company sorted, sold the house, sold the car and booked the flights.