4 books in 4 weeks (TTC war stories and a new job)

Four weeks and 3 days ago, on October 3rd, I started a new job. I left Ganz a few days before that and prepared to come work at my old love, Downtown Toronto. I changed responsabilities, from a Database Developer to a Production Database Administrator. I also changed areas, from the gaming industry to the marketing industry (So far, Education, Municipalities, Communications, Software, Gaming, Marketing :))

Now I don't take the car to go to work, I take the TTC. I can take the subway and the streetcar, or the subway and fast walk aprox. 15 minutes. I get to read and read!! I'm on my 4th week and my 4th book (plus booklet ^^). This is my third Assimov book, plus I read the Wealthy Barber and studied the Citizenship booklet. I'm excited planning my book budget for the coming weeks hahahaha

The TTC has reminded me that you can plan nothing if you are taking it. The times that worked one day may be completely off the next one. You may be sitting one second and standing crushed against people the next one. I have taken 1 hour (the whole ride) some days, and 1 hour and 40 minutes other days! Passenger activated alarms being the main reason most of the times.

One day it took me half an hour from Finch to Eglinton! To hear that we were experiencing signal problems and had to leave the train there and wait for the next one. Needless to say, had to wait around 4 trains (15 minutes) just to be able to get in again. No electricity for the streetcar to work (this one was interesting). Trains crawling to the station for no apparent reason, and/or my record so far, 5 passenger alarms in one trip.

On the bright side, I get to read a lot :D

Citizenship Test!

On friday I had my citizenship test! The letter said that I had to be there at 1pm. At that time they started giving instructions about what was going to be happening in the next couple of hours, and they started calling person by person to the interview.

The interview is very simple, only basic question to see your level of english (where do you leave, where do you work/study, what do you do at work, etc). Only people between 18 and 55 years old need to take the test. Younger than that get the citizenship thanks to the parent that applied for them, and older just need to show their ID and go home.

After aprox. 2 hours, is time for the test. They give you an answer sheet with 25 answer rows, and a booklet with 20 questions; you can't and shouldn't try to answer questions 21 to 25, there are no question with those numbers! The test takes aprox. 10 minutes, but they give you 30 minutes.

After 1 to 3 months you should recive a letter indicating the day of the ceremony (if you have 15 or more correct answers), or the day and time of your appointment with the judge (if you have less than 15 questions incorrect). The test is simple selection (1 answer per question) and you have 4 options per question.

I thought it was pretty easy if you study ;) Now we wait for the next letter!

Canadian Citizenship Test

Well, have been keeping this one kinda under wraps, but in week and a half I'll be taking my citizenship test!

The test will be composed of 20 questions of multiple selection. I already finished reading the practice guide the goverment sends you when you apply. Now is time to practice a lot for that test!

These are some of the practice tests I've been taking:
http://www.v-soul.com/onlinetest/ (Be careful with some of the answers, I'm almost positive I have seen 2 different answers to what did the goverment do to make immigration to the West easier)
http://www.apnatoronto.com/canadian-citizenship-test-practice/
http://www.canadacitizenshiptest.net/ (Sample test)
http://www.citizenquiz.com/
Enjoy practicing!

Register to vote in your country from your new home

One of the things immigrants often forget, is to register to vote in our country, from our new home.

The REP is the registry for the venezuelan voters. When we reside in another country, we can only vote in the presidential elections (as far as I know), but we have to register in the embassy/consulate that corresponds.

To register in Toronto, is necessary to go to the Venezuelan Consulate in Bloor st. You will need the form thats on the web page, 2 photocopies of the passport, 2 photocopies of the resident card (they shouldn't ask for this but do it either way) and 2 photocopies of the "cedula". Everything in different pages.

You should take it to the consulate and aproximate 2 weeks later, you have to go back to stamp your fingerprints (make a phone call to the consulate to verify the papers are ready).

After the fingerprints, they tell you it takes aprox. 6 months for the registry to be updated (took 2 weeks for me!!). Is good to do it as soon as possible, because they can close the registry at any moment.