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!

The Professional Worrier

March 16, 2011 – 9:21 am | 14 Comments

Feng calls me a “pro­fes­sional wor­rier”. I do worry a lot. I worry about the past, the present and the future. I mostly worry about the future though. And time. Time is my biggest issue. I don’t have enough time to do what I love and I spend too much time doing stuff that I don’t like. There are never enough hours in the day except when I’m bored, never enough time to accom­plish everything.

I Want Out… But How and Why?

March 14, 2011 – 9:53 am | 18 Comments

This atti­tude is com­mon when it comes to immi­gra­tion. A lot of peo­ple want to leave their coun­try for polit­i­cal or eco­nomic rea­sons. I get emails through this blog that basi­cally say: “I’m des­per­ate to leave XYZ coun­try, how I can move to Canada eas­ily?” And when I start explain­ing that mov­ing to Canada is usu­ally do-able but that you have to meet a few require­ments, do research etc. their inter­est vanishes.

How to Avoid... Employment Scams

March 12, 2011 – 12:54 pm | 9 Comments

I was a French teacher for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for four years. Once day, as I was hav­ing lunch in on the Sta­tis­tic Canada cam­pus, I was approached by two guys. They intro­duced them­selves and explained there were “work­ing here” and took an inter­est in the papers I was grading.

A Movie Rant

March 9, 2011 – 10:12 am | 15 Comments

When I first came to live in Canada, Feng got a job work­ing in a movie the­atre. We were two pen­ni­less trav­el­ers and the per­spec­tive was very excit­ing: a job! Free movies! And so we started going to the movies reg­u­larly, thanks to the free passes Feng got at work.

How to Avoid... Immigration Fraud

March 5, 2011 – 12:38 pm | 3 Comments

I recently com­plained about the num­ber of scams going on in Thai­land but I must admit Canada is not per­fect either. While the gov­ern­ment and the police are rel­a­tively corruption-free, and the coun­try is very safe, we have a fair num­ber of scam and fraud problems.

Way2many Pa$$word$

March 2, 2011 – 10:58 am | 13 Comments

I work in a cubi­cle and it’s fairly com­mon to over­hear phone con­ver­sa­tions. When I first started work­ing there, I would always hear my co-workers beg­ging IT Ser­vices for help: “Can you reset my pass­word?” “Seri­ously peo­ple”, I thought, “how hard is it to remem­ber vari­a­tions on your birth date?”

Human Beans

February 23, 2011 – 10:44 pm | 14 Comments

The dif­fer­ence between Euro­pean cof­fee and North Amer­i­can cof­fee can be illus­trated by the cup: in the old world, you sit down for hours sip­ping a con­cen­trate of the pre­cious bev­er­age in a thimble-size cup, a small piece of sugar and a square of dark choco­late in the saucer. In the new world, you line-up for a mega-size of super-hot cof­fee served in a large dis­pos­able paper cup.

Food in South-East Asia

February 14, 2011 – 10:41 am | 20 Comments

Com­ing from Aus­tralia, where food was expen­sive and not exactly haute-cuisine, South-East Asia was a foodie’s par­adise. First, food is cheap by world stan­dard and sim­ple meal usu­ally cost under $5. Sec­ond, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Thai­land have a “street food” tra­di­tion and numer­ous hawk­ers offer local del­i­ca­cies on-the-go. Finally, the blend of flavours was sim­ply amaz­ing, from Thai curry to Penang’s Nasi Lemak.