Pogma's blog
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I love this picture. We have to slick back her hair and put it into a bun for her ballet class. Of course, I have no experience in putting hair into a bun, so we decided to practice the other night. There were tears as I pulled at her hair, but afterwards she said “It’s ok, I have stopped crying now, and I really like my hair!”.
Hmm.
Jessica and I at the christmas santa parade.
I spent most of the afternoon listening to the UPS beeping, waiting a while, shutting down the computers, waiting for the power to come back on, powering everything up, and repeating. Manitoba Hydro seems to be like its counterparts all over North America, and is not able to deliver electricity reliably to consumers. Why? In the time we spent in Japan, power went out a couple of times, due to earthquakes and typhoons, never for more then a few minutes. I think that in Japan the power companies inspect power lines regularly and remove branches from trees that are encroaching, and ensure that everything is ship-shape. I guess that here, there is no inspection done, failure is expected. Consumers here seem to think that it is normal for power to go out. No blame is assigned.
Similarly, last week, MTS had an outage for their DSL in my suburb, a phone call to them resulted in an estimate of “between 30 minutes and a few hours” before it was fixed. The person on the other end of the phone exhibited no surprise and expressed no apology for the outage. I don’t know what I expected, I’m only paying through the nose for my DSL line!
This attitude that outages are “normal” from both the utilitiy companies and consumers is depressing. 
So, yesterday, despite the rain, my wife and I left Jessica at her Grandma’s and drove to the Border crossing at Emerson. Since it was such awful weather we decided not to go to Grand Forks for lunch, just to go to the border, turn around and come back (stopping at Canadian immigration to get all the necessary stamps, of course).
So, we got to the checkpoint for U.S. immigration and the guy asks “What is the purpose of your visit?”, so I reply, “I just want to do a U-turn and go back to Canada so I can become a permanent resident.”. As expected, we had to park the car and go into the office. Guy takes my passport, sits at his desk, asks if I’ve ever done this before, and proceeds to give me a piece of paper saying that I have been refused entry into the United States. I thought that was a bit odd until he explained that it was easier (and $6 cheaper for me) than giving me a visa waiver. I don’t know why he asked me if I’d ever done it before, it seems like the kind of thing most people only ever do once.
So, without having officially entered the U.S., we turned around and went back to Canada. The immigration people in Canada did not ask any questions, simply entered all my details into their computer and told me to sign a form, warning “If you write outside the green box, the whole process is cancelled and you have to reapply.” Well, the first time took 9 months and cost a couple of thousand dollars, so I was a little nervous signing my name, but luckily did not slip. The signature does not much resemble how I normally sign my name, of course, but that does not matter, does it?
Now I am a permanent resident, the drive in the rain along the very straight highway through the very flat plains was the easiest part of the whole experience, I do wonder if I am supposed to check the box that says “Have you ever been refused entry into the United States” next time I enter the U.S though.
So, I applied for permanent residency in Canada in August 2006 or so, they asked for my passport in November of that year, I sent it to them in December and asked for it back again in March, as my work visa for Japan was expiring and we had nothing else to do but move to Canada.
I sent them back my passport at the beginning of April and, again, asked for it to be returned yesterday. They replied today:
“This refers to your fax enquiry dated May 22nd about your application for permanent residence in Canada. Your immigration visa was issued on May 22nd and forwarded to your address in Winnipeg on May 23rd by DHL (collect), air waybill # XXXXXXXXXX Please note that the validity of your immigration visa will expire on June 15th. This means that you must re-enter Canada from the USA or any other country with this visa on or before this date in order to be landed as an immigrant. ”
So, looks like I get to drive to the border, do a U turn at America and come back again 
.
Well, we made it. Jessica “graduated” on the 26th of March in the morning. Then we quickly packed away the rest of our belongings to have the house empty for 3pm. At 3, the water, gas and electricity people came to turn off their services and collect money, then the real estate guy came and inspected. It seems that the week of cleaning was worth it, we should get some of our deposit back.
Then to an airport hotel where Walter met us, and then next day he took us to Winnipeg, he’s a good guy, came all the way to Japan for one day so that he could take us to Canada on his airline buddy pass. Saved us a bundle.
Now, furniture is purchased and we’ve moved in to the new house. Got to wait a couple of weeks for cable TV, so we’re stuck with one channel that we can get with the indoor antenna. Jessica is not too happy about that
Well, our bags are packed, we’re ready to go. etc..
We shipped 51 cardboard boxes to Canada on Monday, sold or threw away the rest of our possessions, and now we wait in a house, empty except for futons and a couple of suitcases (and of course a macbook).
Jessica graduates from とくえいじ保育園 (Tokueiji Hoikuen) in the morning, the real estate guy comes to check out the house at 3pm – we hope to get some of our ¥500,000 deposit back, and then to an airport hotel.
It will be quite sad, 12 years in Japan is a fairly large chunk of life, still, we’re looking forward to our new life in Canada, although we will miss the people we’ve come to know here.
This is me handing over my old car keys to its new owner.