Our work life

I work at Konverge & Know, which is a fairly small company in downtown Toronto for software development. We always have a lot of work in different projects and every day we get more and more xD

The people working with me is from all over the world, we are between 20 and 30 people and the maximum quantity from the same country are 3 from Pakistan and Canada and the rest is 2 or 1 from other countries, which make it pretty interesting :) We all have different cultures and it's really nice to learn from all of them. For example, the latin americans are the only ones that say hi with a kiss every morning (for now, 2 from Venezuela and 1 from Mexico) and the ones from USA and Canada really like how we say hi ^^ 90% of all of them say good morning every morning, and at least half the office likes to talk from anything and everything from time to time, so it's a pretty lively office!

One of them even made me this after the futbol (soccer) game!:

That was my area at one point ;)

We have snacks at the office, a foosball table, and a big tv. We work office hours and if we need to work extra, we can ask them to pay us the hour or we can accumulate them and use them as free days, which is what I'm doing right now, that is why I haven't been a lot here, a LOT of extra hours!.

At Igor's is pretty different, he get's to know a lot of people from all over the world, but they are much much serious (all work and no fun) and they don't pay them extra hours :( even though they work so many!!! He works for Ganz, which is a pretty BIG company that has a "small" project called Webkinz.

Webkinz are small plush animals you can buy almost everywhere, and they come with a code you can use to have your same animal as a virtual mascot in a very big virtual world. Igor is a system administrator for Webkinz and he more or less likes his job :)

My family

I'm so so happy, mi family is coming here for the first time!! I have 2 younger sisters and my dad and mum, and they are all coming here on August 5!

That is why I wanted to tell you that I'll be a little bit lost for a few days (they are staying for 15 days). But don't be afraid, I already wrote a few posts and programmed them so you won't be completely Aiglee free ^^

Just for laughs

This weekend was the Just for Laughs festival! :)

On friday we went to the Jason Alexander Gala, where we saw 5 comedians at the Massey Hall for more than 2 hours; more than 2 hours laughing the whole while!!! It was soooo good, and we really enjoy it a lot!

Then, we went yesterday to see the street festivals, where you can see living statues:

Comedians:

Contortionists:

And a very big mantis in the middle of the street amoung other things xD

It's really worthwhile and I hope to come back year after year, since it has a lot more things that we didn't have the time or the stamina to see :)

In search of...

We are in search of a web designer for a contract of aprox. 3 months where I work, it has to be a permanent resident already in Toronto.

If you are interested, please send me an email to aiglee@yahoo.com with something you've done and your resume :)

I'm sure I know at least a couple of new immigrants with this characteristics but I really can't remember who was it, so please step forward and write to me!!!

Thanks ;)

Batman - The dark knight

On friday a friend of mine asked me what I was going to do this weekend, saying "you always do something big on weekends" and I said "no this weekend, this weekend I'm going to rest and clean the house".

Little did I know that I would wake up this morning at 6am, take the bus south to queen street, raining, take the streetcar west to john street, raining, and be on line at the Scotiabank theater at 7:15am on a rainy sunday, to watch Batman in Imax!!

This is the first time that I go to the movies that early xD specially a sunday, but was it worht it? Oh yes! it was really really good! It's a shame that we didn't have the camera to take pictures of the looong line that was waiting under the rain at 7am ^^

Air Miles card

The Air Miles card is a point card you can use in several places to gain points you can later trade for something else you want.

So far we've had it for a few months and we have almost 200 points which is not that much but if you manage to forget about exchanging your points, it can be of value at a later time when you already have many more.

So you have an example of where you can use it, we use it at Dominion, Rexall pharmacies, and LCBO; and the whole family collects point to a single account, so you can have multiple cards working for one goal, and the best of all? it's free ;)

Miss Universe 2008 - Venezuela!

No one can deny Venezuelan beauty, and I'm one that loves to say "I'm Venezuelan" and very proud of it!.

We just finished watching Miss Universe 2008 where 4 of the top 5 where latin american women, and Venezuela is the new Miss Universe. We were cheering for her and are very very happy, since the last Miss Venezuela where not that pretty or didn't know english, but this one, inteligent and beautiful, go Venezuela!

Casa Loma

Last week we went to Casa Loma and the Renaissance festival :) I really wanted to go to Casa Loma since it looked really interesting and after looking at everything, I was a little dissapointed.

The castle is impressive but nothing out of this world, and knowing all the money the owner had and that he lost everything buying and doing every single thing he did there, well, it's sad.

The festival was interesting but little, just nice.

We paid $2 extra for the ticket to Men in Tights which was really good and funny and more worth it that everything else in my opinion.

And wanted to see the gardens everybody talked so much about, but it was really a small garden and a lot of trees.

So, if you want to see with your know eyes, it's nice and if you are using a Metro Pass, show it when buying the tickets for $2 off ;) Otherwise, not really worth it.

Toronto Zoo

Yesterday we went to the Toronto Zoo. I've been to a few zoos in my life, in USA and Venezuela, but this one is by far the biggest one and most impressive one I've seen!

It was pretty impressive, the type of animals, the care the zoo gives them, the conservationist programs they have and the freedom some of the animals have, or the interaction the people visiting the zoo can have with some of the animals.

One of the first things we did was to go to the stingray bay, where you can touch the stingrays :D That was pretty amazing, and to make it even better, it turned out that we were there at the exact moment they were going to feed them! That sounded amazing, until they told us, that we (the people there) were the ones to hand feed them!!! They gave us shrimps and sardines and we hand feed them! WOW, you would think it doesn't get better than this.

Then we went to see the rest of the zoo, with ALL kind of animals.

And we even saw a pregnant seahorse!! SO CUTE!!! :D

And we were able to go inside the kangaroo habitat :0

So we are thinking, wow, amazing day, and keep looking at everything else the zoo has to offer, when all of a sudden a little friend walks by!

Yeap, I'm not kidding you, just passing among us!

And last but not least, a beautiful big grizzly bear playing in the water with a ball!

Really amazing, we were so tired after all that, but it was reeeeaaaally worth it! More pictures in my picasa album ;)