Trends

Debates, discussions, news articles, cultural differences stories and everyday life blah blah.

On The Road

Follow me in China, in Central and in South America, in Australia, in South-East Asia or in Europe. Enjoy the pictures and some crazy travel stories!

Immigration

How to immigrate to Canada, how to apply for Canadian citizenship, and how to tackle the challenges newcomers face.

Just Blogging

Blog contests, memes, interviews, photography hunts, random facts… Let’s connect, share some blogging fun and some little snippets of life.

The Saturday Series

The ten post Saturday series: how to immigrate to Canada, how to find a job, interviews with immigrants… and more!

Picture of the Week: Lost Something?

June 3, 2011 – 8:00 am | 12 Comments

When you get into pho­tog­ra­phy, you learn to see the world dif­fer­ently. The great part is that walk­ing pur­pose­lessly around the city never gets bor­ing. Sure, build­ings mostly stay the same (unless you hap­pen to live in Asia where huge sky­scrap­ers pop out overnight) but peo­ple and street scenes are end­lessly entertaining.

A Weekend Offline

June 1, 2011 – 8:25 am | 21 Comments

We called Bell. Tech­ni­cal sup­port said there were issues in our area and that it would be solved with­out two to twenty-four hours. “Twenty-four hours like… like a day?” we shrieked. “What are we going to do? Talk to each other? Play board games? Clean the house? Make babies?”

Nelson: From Venezuela to Toronto

May 28, 2011 – 9:00 am | 15 Comments

This sec­ond inter­view of the series is the chance to meet a very new immi­grant cou­ple: Nel­son and his wife, from Venezuela, landed in Toronto just a few weeks ago. Com­ing to Canada had been a life­long dream for Nel­son, who wanted to com­plete his stud­ies here.

Political Pawns

May 25, 2011 – 8:35 am | 29 Comments

I’m a bit dis­con­nected from French news. But recently, a few head­lines caught my eyes again, mostly because they quickly spread inter­na­tion­ally. First, there was the tragic story of the Dupont de Ligonnès family—the father is still on the run by the way.

Nui: From Thailand to Ottawa

May 21, 2011 – 8:30 am | 2 Comments

We will start today with Nui, from Thai­land, who recently arrived in Ottawa. After years on the move around the world, Nui and her Canadian-German hus­band decided to set­tle in Canada. They lived in Kingston for a while and are now in Ottawa, where Nui is launch­ing her small business.

How to… Report Scams

May 14, 2011 – 9:00 am |

So, you got scammed and now it’s too late. You feel angry and embar­rassed and you wish you had trusted that gut feeling.

What can you do now?

Two words: report it.

The steps you need to take mostly depend on the type of fraud and on the nature of the scam.

Oui, I hablo Spanish!

May 13, 2011 – 8:25 am | 23 Comments

A lit­tle while ago, Guillermo, my good blog friend and fel­low immi­grant in Ottawa, asked me if he could inter­view me. “No wor­ries!” I replied—hey, who doesn’t like being interviewed?

“The inter­view would be in Span­ish” he quickly added. See, Guillermo and is fam­ily are from Argentina and even though I know for sure he speaks Eng­lish flu­ently, the inter­view was for his Span­ish blog.

“Well, sure” I replied, men­tally review­ing who could edit my Span­ish replies.

“Oh, and it’s a recorded inter­view” he finally added.

State of the Blogosphere

May 11, 2011 – 8:30 am | 34 Comments

I can almost always tell when a blog is about to die, and it has noth­ing to do with how pop­u­lar it is. Once in a while, the author comes back to apol­o­gize: “I know I haven’t writ­ten in a while… I promise I’ll blog more”. This is usu­ally the begin­ning of the end. Because you can’t force your­self to write to please the audi­ence. Oth­er­wise, you sound like an awk­ward date who tries to avoid uncom­fort­able lulls in the conversation.