Preparations

I'm so sorry it took so much time for me to post again!!! I finished working this wednesday and I've been busy with all the things we have to do before take off ^^

I have to write about leaving my last job in Venezuela, but they keep calling me asking about a system I made, even today! So, no goodbye for them until they stop calling me for work :p

What kind of things are we doing? We had to go to the "Ministerio de Educacion Superior" to give them our university diplomas, scores, pensum and programs, and then we had to go again to pick them; one they you take them there and the next day you can pick them up.

Then I had to go to the "Ministerio de Exteriores" for the same thing, BUT I went this friday, and they don't like working fridays, so they said "we don't have system today, come back next week" -_-

I had to go to the cleaners and to the bank, and working on the phone for hours :( It's a lot of work, so I'm a little tired, but you know what? I'm happy, I'm closer to leaving and already doing the final preparations; you should see my calendar! It has a lot of medical appointments and legal paperwork everyday xD

Do you think one month of "vacations" are enough to do everything before leaving your country for good? Think again!

Dinner party

"The idea is to work your way through the eight phases of the dinner party, answering all of the questions on the way - being as honest and creative as you wish. Once your homework has been completed, please nominate any number of bloggers to host their very own "virtual" dinner party."

Thank you Zhu for this great meme ^^ It's going to be fun trying to have a great party, so I'll try my best and hopefully everyone will have a great time :)

1) The Dinner Party Theme
You have decided to hold a dinner party. When writing the invites you clearly state that fancy dress must be worn. Assuming that cost is no issue, who or what would you dress up as, and why?

I would dress confortable, with soft clothes and socks, without shoes, so everyone should come in their pijamas! If you sleep naked or half-naked, please bring some other clothes xD

We would have our party in a log cabin by the lake, with the sunset in the horizon, seating in the deck ;)


2) The Invitations
This dinner party is for 6 people (including yourself), you are allowed to invite any 5 other people (either past, present, real or fictional), who would you invite and why?

Ummm, this one is hard, since I would like to invite EVERYONE I know, it would be much more fun xD

Well, I'll invite everyone plus:

• Stephen King: I love his books!! I really want to pick his brain and talk for days!

• Tolkien: Oh my God... Can you imagine Stephen King and Tolkien talking?

• The Beatles: They count as one, don't they? ^^ I love their music!! I couldn't believe having one of them in my party, let alone the 4 of them :D

• Robin Williams: We already have writers and musicians, so we need a great actor and comedian!

• Anne Rice: I know, I know, another writer, but I can't help it!!! Books are the best, and we need a woman!

3) The Starter
You are preparing the menu, which dish(es) would you choose as the starter, and why?

This one it's too difficult for me... not only I don't cook, but I don't know the names in english either xD

So, lets try...
I would serve Bruschettas, cheese and bread (yes, we have cheese as a started and not at the end ^^)...ummm...soup... chupe if I don't have to cook it xD


4) The Main Course
Okay, now for the main course? and what drink would you serve with it?

Oh my God, I suck at this...

• We'll have spinach, tuna and cheese au gratin with white rice.

• And Chalupa!, Does this have a name in english? I could only find de recipe in spanish, sorry!

You can bring anything else if you want ^^ These are venezuelans, to show a few of our specialties :D


5) The Sweet
Finally, the sweet. Which would you choose, and why?

Chocolate! Chocolate! and Chocolate!
Cocoa, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse ^^
We could also have cheese cake and apple pie :D


6) The Entertainment
The dinner party has gone swimmingly, everybody has had fun, conversation and drinks have been flowing all evening. At the end of the meal you announce that everybody should perform their ‘party piece’ (no matter how strange or pointless). What party piece would you perform?

Can we play UNO? That would be so much fun! Of course we have writers, musicians and a comedian, please do your thing! :D


7) The End Of The Evening:
The party is over, everybody has gone home, the house suddenly feels empty and quiet. Your eyes fix on the hi-fi in the corner of the room. You search through your CD collection to put on some music as you want to listen to one more track before your retire to bed. Which track would you play?

Oldies! Everything and anything from the 70's, I love that music :D


8) The Dinner Party Nightmares
Okay, so the "virtual" dinner party is over. Now for the real thing. Have you ever been to or hosted a dinner party during which something has gone wrong (either with the food, a guest or something else)?

Ummm... Can I say my wedding? The music arrived 3 hours late! The photographer took us far away from the reception and took our pictures until the music arrived, can you believe that? Of course I didn't pay them -_-


Now, the victims :D

I would like to tag:

• Tina, I would love to see one of your parties
• Erin, I think you would have a cool party :)
• John, another teaching soul ^^

Canadian resume

When I tell people "I'm going to Canada", they always ask "Do you have a work there?", and I always reply "No, I have the permanent residence :D", they say "And a job?", "No, just the permanent residence -_- and I'm happy with that, I'll look for a job there", "Aren't you scared?", "ehh, no really".

Well, should I be scared? I have a great career, I don't need certification, and I'm prepared with my brand new Canadian resume!

Our CVs in Venezuela are VERY different to Canadian resumes, we have to have a picture in the CV, our marital status, our age, and every little thing you can think up that Canadian resumes don't have and don't want ^^ So I studied a lot what I really needed and made my new Canadian resume, so I'm posting here the information I found so you can follow these great advices :)

• This one is a Resume Guide you can use to see what you need to write and what not.
• I loved this one! It's What hiring managers hate about your resume, so you can avoid the big mistakes everyone makes.
• Do you think your resume is perfect and you followed all those advices? Great! Now, is your resume scannable? hehe, yeah, some companies use computer systems that scan your resume, and you need a good "Scannable" Resumes / CVs ;)
• Now you do have a perfect resume, you are set and ready, here you have The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing ^^

What about your resume?

Imagine the pain

Today I was reading one of my morning immigration forums and I found a discussion about why venezuelans want to leave, and wouldn't stay to fight for our country, for a better tomorrow here, in our homeland.

Some people said that we are allowing the government to ruin the country and our lifes, and then someone wrote something that inspired me to write this post, he wrote: "Quizás la cobardía por haberlo permitido se compense con el sacrificio de haber empujado a un hijo a irse, y soportar la tristeza de su ausencia, y la incertidumbre de su bienestar"
--> "Maybe the cowardice for allowing that, will be compensated with the sacrifice of having pushed a son to go, and living the sorrow of his absence, and the uncertainty about his wellbeing"

That phrase broke my heart, that phrase could only be said by a parent, an immigrant's father or mother. I just pictured my mum and dad the first day we talked seriously about immigrating, they were crying, telling us to go, to leave the country, saying that we didn't have a future here.

At that moment I didn't see it as a sacrifice, but reading that I can only imagine how hard must that been to them and will be to them, you are really pushing away your son, hoping they will have a better life.

I can only imagine with tears in my eyes and my heart in my hands...

Blog Action Day - Global Warming

Today is blog action day, I just heard about this today and I'm glad I did, so I still have time to post about it. Today all bloggers should talk about the environment to create a conscience about it.

For me, I would like to create conscience about global warming, since I know it's real, and I know it's a big problem everyone it's living right now. The seasons are all crazy, we have colder winters or hotter winters, we have rainy seasons in the wrong time and a lot of months without rain at all.

We need to do something about it and everyone can do at least a little bit. I loved Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth, it's real, and it gives a lot of advices to what we can do at home to help de environment today. He even won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for talking about this, and I admire him for that, we needed someone to grab our attention and say "hey! look at this! you can do something about it".

You can contribute too, do something about our world, it's the only one we have.

From my bed

This is what I see from my bed.

That map of Canada has been there for more than a year ^^ Once we decided that we wanted to go to Canada, live there and eventually get the canadian nationality, I bought that map.

You have to see what you want, concentrate on that, work for that, live for that. We see that map at nigh when we are going to bed, and we see that map when we wake up in the morning, and every moment in between when we are in the bedroom xD

When we read my lawyer email telling us that we could go to the embassy to get our visas, I just sat on my husband's legs, both watching our map, watching our future and crying from happiness :)

I love my bedroom and I'm ready to leave it, but one thing is sure, that map is leaving with me... We are going home.

Banks and credit cards

I should clarify first that I haven't done this yet and that I don't have knowledge about all the Canadians banks, so I'm just posting a tip a friend gave me to get a VISA credit card.

One of the main problems immigrants have to face is the "no credit" problem, and it can probe to be very difficult to overcome if you don't have the money and knowlegde. I have read a lot about different banks, the pros and cons, the personal accounts and benefits they offer, and every single thing people say about them, and I haven't found one bank you can say "this one is the best one" or "this one is the worst one" without finding someone stating the contrary ;) but I'm going to open my bank account with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) or Scotia Bank, since those are the best ones I have found for me.

I got a great tip with RBC to get a VISA credit card, and I'm sure you could get the same deal in almost any other bank.


When you open your bank account, you should get a Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC). These certificates are cero risk, so you won't loose your money with a bad investment, it gives less interests but it can get you a credit card ;)
So you need to ask for a classic visa credit card using this certificate as a guarantee, and assuming you have a $2000 certificate, you could get a credit for around $1800, not bad at all :D

Do you have other tips you would want to share?

Tired...

Today I'm tired, even though it's just monday and I didn't do anything special this weekend, I'm tired. I want to write here but don't have the inspiration...

I have so many things in my head, everything is a long list of things to do before the trip, and things to say, and things to do once we are there, and things I want to do now but can't, even things about the immigration process that need to be written here but don't know how to write them.

I know a lot of you feel like this once in a while, and I think I feel more like this since the whole process started and even more since we have our visas. I only want to read about others but I already read all of them this morning, maybe that it's why I love books so much, I love to be caught in someone else story, to forget about me for a long while.


I specially love Stephen King, John Grisham, James Patterson, Terry Pratchett, V.C. Andrews, J.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis and would hate to leave my books here. What do I do? Well, I have given away more than half, I gave away all the V.C Andrews, Patterson, and Grisham books, and I still have half Stephen King books and all of the others. I don't want to leave my books, they are my scape of reality.

The hardest material thing for me to leave here (people not included) are my books, what are yours?

Driver Licence

I don't have my canadian driver licence so I can't say that the information I'm going to post it's the truth and nothing more than the truth, but this is the information I've been collecting for months now and that's what I'm going to use to get my driver licence once I'm in Canada.

In Canada there are a lot of Licence Types but the ones I'm going to focus on are the G and the G1. The G1 it's the one that allows you to drive "accompanied by a fully licensed driver with at least four years of driving experience", and you get this one if you pass the written test but you haven't taken the road test. Once you pass the road test, they give you the G licence that allows you to drive "any car, van or small truck or combination of vehicle and towed vehicle up to 11,000 kg".

If you have an USA driver licence there is a great chance you can exchange that one for the Canadian one without taking any test, it depends of the State where the driver licence is from as far as I know. If I remember correctly, you can exchange your UK licence too and I'm sure there are lot of other countries that can do it. In fact, this is the official list I found for Ontario: "US States, Austria, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Switzerland".

If you are from any other country, you'll have to take the tests or prove you experience any other way. I've read that you can take your driver licence (from your country) translated to english and an official document where it says the years you've been driving, and they will accept it instead of making you take the test. I don't know how much you have to pay for this.

I'll be letting you know how it goes with me :)

We are in the Oddities section!

Every morning I read my mail, the immigration forums, my favourites blogs and the canadian news. To my surprise this is what I found this morning in the Oddities section: Chavez to take Venezuela backward in time - 30 minutes, to be exact

I knew our "president" wanted to do that and I'm one of the lot that has to do preparations in our places of work for this change, but I never expected to found this news in this section. This is the section I browse to laugh of people, this is the section where everything funny or weird goes. Ok, I admit it, this change to our timezone is ridicuolus, a lot of work and nothing in return.

Who can think that we are going to sleep half an hour more? We are going to bed half our later so you are going to sleep the same. That the kids are going to wake up with the sun higher? Well, the schools should start half an hour later, we shouldn't change an entirely timezone :S

Don't get me started with the change in our currency, that's even worst!

Well, this made my day, Venezuela it's officialy part of the diversions of others :)

Venezuela and the lost dollar

As you know (or should know), in Venezuela we have an exchange control that's been going on for years now -_- so we can't buy dollars, euros or any other currency for that matter and we are stuck with the bolivar or buying a very expensive dollar in the black market.

If you don't know what we are going through and you think we should stick with the bolivar and stop complaining, then bite your tongue and don't speak please, because we are very tired of fighting with everyone that think they know but know nothing about it, but if you are curious and just want to know more about it, just say it :)

So you could ask, "then what do you do to save dollars?, or going to another country without starving?", well, we think of several ways of "cheating" that exchange control. If you have a credit card of your own, you are entitled to $3000 for electronic transactions a year (only the right to buy in dollars for that amount, not the money), and $5000 a year to use outside the country ONLY if you show your 2 way ticket, thats it, not a dollar more.

What do you do? you can travel and get $500 cash from the ATM machine a month (they take it from the $5000) and deposit that money in a bank account in the country were you are (you can't do it in Venezuela). What else? You can buy that dollar from another person that wants bolivares...ohh, but thats easy, right? Well, no, because our official dolar it's 1 dollar = 2150 bolivares, do you know how much is that dollar in the black market? 5300 bolivares! MORE THAN DOUBLE!!!

We are stuck, we can't do much more than buy that dollar in the black market and say goodbye to our savings :( Last week that dollar was in 4800, today its 5300, next week? who knows... this is so sad...

Tagged... My Desktop ^^

I'm still new to this blog world and there are things I don't understand yet, since I've been reading blogs for months now, but new in posting :)

A friend of mine tagged me and if I understand correctly, she wants to see my desktop, so I'm showing one of them here ;) This one is from work, not the most personal but some elements I need wherever I go ^^
I have a wallpaper of the manga Fruits Basket, since I love anime and manga SO MUCH!!! and this one it's my favourite manga ^^

GTalk to stay communicated with my husband and friends, and the Folding@home icon (the red one at the bottom right) to help as much as I can with that great project! The rest it's work related :p

Now I have to tag 5 people, right?

Then I'm tagging:

• Tina, author of Wichmann Stories
• Jacqueline, author of Casi en serio
• Guillermo, author of Los Ziegler en Canada
• Sonja and Leo, authors of Sonja y Leo pa' Canada
• Anne, author ofTan simple como esto

Most of them are in spanish ^^