Levelling off

 Hi everyone,

Well the big news is that I finally found a fantastic house to live in London.  It's central, it has a living room, it's close to work, close to the tube, lively neighborhood, new, and quiet.  You'd be surprised at how hard all of that is to find (within your price range) in London.

I couldn't afford to get my own 1 bedroom flat with a living room so I got a 2 bedroom instead with the intention of renting the other room out.  As of now, the entire house is well out of my budget, but split with another house mate it fits nicely in my budget.  I thought I would have an easy time finding a house mate so I wasn't too concerned about it.  The London market is quite dynamic with lots of movement all the time.  However, when I started to advertise my room on the web, days went by... then weeks went by... I only had 1 real person come by to see the flat.  I was getting really worried because I can't really carry this whole house by myself without major financial sacrifices.  I started lowering my asking price, then again, then again... still no takers.  Finally, I tried advertising the room on a different website.  I got 2 messages within the first 24 hours on this new website.  Within 3 days, I had rented the flat out.  It was an expensive lesson that I learned.

My new house mate will move in soon.  He's a very interesting guy.  Julie and I chatted with him for well over an hour last night when he came to see the flat.  He is a PhD computer science student from the Belgium who is just finishing up school.  He has now been offered a job in London and is moving here.  He has been working on a mobile phone application that helps map sound/noise.  Basically, it uses your mobile phone's GPS & microphone to track how noisy various parts of the city/world are.  This will ultimately give you a picture of where the quiet and noisy parts of town are.  The data is overlayed on Google maps to give you a clear picture.  He's a super ambitious guy and I hope a bit rubs off on me while he is here.  He reminds me a lot of my brother Max.

My new place has a London Bikes stand within 50 meters walking distance.  I'm hoping to get an annual pass and start biking to work most days.  I can easily take the tube on very cold or rainy days, but I would like to bike whenever possible.  There are several stands around my work that I can dock the bike at.  I got a lot of value out of the Dublin bikes scheme and I'm hoping that trend can continue here in London.

Our new place also has a small terrace.  I'm hoping to put a few plants out there and try my hand out at city gardening.  I'll start with a few herbs and see how that goes... maybe end up with tomatoes and vegetables :)

Work is going well.  We are looking to release an Android app in the future which should be cool.  I am in the early phases of writing test automation for this new android app using Robotium.  So far it was very tough to initially configure but then very easy to write test automation once configured.  I still think I'm in a good spot for a future promotion and this android automation could be enough to put me over the top.

It took a long time, but I finally got a regular football (soccer) game going with my work colleagues.  We had a hard time finding a pitch that was both close to work and available at a time just after work.  The first game will be coming up this Wednesday and every Wednesday after that.  I really enjoy playing football with work colleagues, I find it's the best bonding technique available.  These other team building exercises that companies some times go on are really no match for weekly football in my opinion. Anyhow, I really need this football;  I haven't been getting enough exercise.  I really need another game per week to round out my schedule.

I was telling Julie tonight over dinner that it finally feels like the uphill battle (that was our move to the UK) is finally starting to taper off and level out.  We're finally getting settled, comfortable, and back into a regular routine that is both healthy and fun.  Looking back, the past 6 months were brutal... all the Visa applications, moving around, finding new work, learning a new job, figuring out the city, etc.... it all took it's toll on me... but now I feel like things are starting to fit together and move forward nicely at a pace that I am more comfortable with.


Love,
--Ben

Jan update

Hi Everyone,

Lots continues to happen here in the UK.

I had a nice trip back home to Canada over xmas. I spent most of my time with my family in Ottawa. I hadn't been back for 2 years and it had been too long. My brothers & I got all caught up on everything from future plans to spanking children to politics. I was really happy to have some 1 to 1 time with each and every one of my brothers as well as my parents and in-laws. I got to meet my new nephew who I hadn't met before and my other nephew who is now 2 years older from when I saw him last. It was amazing to see them both but I will say they took up more time than I wanted to spend with them. Sometimes it was tough to get deep into conversations with my brothers when the 2 babies were getting into trouble in the background. I also felt a small sense of cabin fever because of the snow and I think next time I go back to Canada it will be in the summer.

I went to see my house & tenant in Kanata. The house looks to be doing well and my tenant is happy and seems to be firmly rooted in my house and probably not moving anywhere anytime soon – which makes me happy. She does want new carpets which I expected. So we are going to have to budget an extra $3500 hit this year. I'm still super pumped about that house though. It's been such a great investment. I'm not really cash flowing yet on monthly rents but the appreciation has been amazing. Kanata keeps growing at a rapid pace which can only be a good thing in my opinion.

I wrote up my goals for this year. I'm pretty pumped about them. I think if we are smart about our money and time we can accomplish them all. Some of them are pretty exciting! If we can get a amazing flight prices, I'd like to go back to Asia this year; Ideally India! I have no idea how to “do” India but I want to try. The good thing is that London to India is a major airline route and the prices can be pretty good at times. If my brother Tom is still in Asia we might go visit him as well.

While my goals are awesome, they are going to be tough to pull of financially. One of my goals is to be promoted to a management position. We are going from a team of 2 to a team of 8. The team of 8 will have 2 management positions and I think I am a strong candidate for either of them. One of my goals this year is to get 1 of those 2 management positions and, consequently, make more money in the process.

We are currently on an aggressive hiring spree at work hiring about 6 more in my team people ASAP. I am doing 50% of the work for hiring these people. I've learned a lot in the process. The biggest thing I've learned is that people lie like crazy on their resumes. They seem great on paper but when we start asking them some technical questions they fall flat on the floor. I've been able to use this knowledge to improve our interview process. I've implemented an email test that all applicants must pass before we even talk to them. Basically the applicants review a small program that I wrote. They can review the code, the executable, or both. At the end they are to provide me with a document for how they would test my program and what bugs they found in my program (I intentionally added a few bugs). My email test has been a massive success. My favorite scenario is when people simply respond “this is too hard, I don't want to work here”; so far 2 people have said that. I love it because we don't waste any time interviewing that poor candidate. Honestly though, my test is actually fairly simple. Anyone with a computer science degree from university could do it with their eyes closed. The people that fail are the bullshitters. Anyhow, my boss loves this test... it has saved him lots of time from telephone interviewing losers. I am hoping that me being a key part of the interview process will make me a prime candidate for one of those manager positions when they come around!

My work uses a lot of head hunters to find people. However, if you find someone yourself (who we eventually hire) you win a free iPad 2. I am gunning for this prize. So far I've found 2 people who are making their way through the interview process. Fingers crossed.

I am still not making the most of this amazing city though. To be fair there is more going on here than 1 person could possibly do... but I still have a long way to go. I am slowly signing up for clubs and organizations like Soccer, Badminton, and renewable energy. I took a cool class on parkour a month ago and I plan on going back.

The flat I am renting now is not ideal. Mostly because it's at the wrong end of town & it has no living room. I am hoping to move soon. Luckily I am only on a 3 month lease which is about to expire. Julie & I have already scouted out the ideal neighborhood and I think we can afford it if we find the right place. We definitely cant afford a 1 bedroom place with a living room so we will have to have flatmates. I'm thinking it might be best to just rent a 2 bedroom place and then sublet one of the rooms out to the person of our choosing.

I think that's about all for now.

Cya

Hello everyone,

So, lots more has happened since my last post.  My UK move continues to be adventurous.
After a fair bit of searching, I finally found a place in London.  It was vastly more difficult than expected because the good places get snatched up so quickly.  Basically, if you're not there within about 24 hours of the place first being posted on a rental website, it's probably already rented (especially if it's half decent).  This made it extra tricky for me to look for a place in London while I was living with Julie in Oxford. 

Eventually, I just started commuting into London daily and surfing the internet from coffee shops in London constantly watching the housing websites for something new.  It was crazy but I finally found something which is pretty good.  The best thing about this place is that I only had to commit to a 3 month contract.  This allows me to discover London and try to find out where the best neighborhoods are.  Since being here, I have found that the neighborhoods vary quite a bit.  One person described London as a collection of little cities (neighborhoods) all crammed into on big city.  Some of the neighborhoods can be vastly different from others.  Right now, I am living in a middle class area that is very culturally diverse; Caucasians are the minority by far.  It's actually quite friendly and everyone seems to know each other and have fun together but it is missing some key things that I enjoy like good food & parks.

The house itself is pretty nice.  I am sharing it with 2 very quite flat mates who I almost never see.  My room is a fairly good size and the kitchen and bathroom are nice and new.  The biggest problem is that there is no living room and a pretty pathetic dining room.  This means I spend basically all my time in my room which does start to get old.

I imagine we will move to a new place once our 3 month lease is up here.  I've already seen some nicer areas that I think would suit us much better.  I'd like to be a little closer to work & have access to a nice park where I can relax and play soccer.  We are contemplating renting a 2 bedroom place and the subletting 1 of the rooms out.  We'll see.

My new job is going well.  It's been fairly overwhelming with new information.  Unfortunately, the skills I acquired at Microsoft on the Mac team are not very relevant to this new job.  I am doing quite a bit of programming.  At Microsoft, I probably only spent about 10% of my time programming but here I'm spending closer to 60%.  This is good though, I really want to learn some new skills and I enjoy programming.  However, it's pretty tough on my brain.  Leaving work each day is like leaving an 9 hour exam.  I am thinking hard all day long and it's exhausting on my brain.

The company itself is cool.  It's fun to work all day on a product and then go home and watch a movie from the site (enjoying the fruits of your labor).  The people here work crazy hard though.  I'd say at Microsoft most people were only working at about 60% capacity.  Here they're working constantly all day.  They work long hours too - usually about 9 hour days. 

One cool thing about working for a small company like this is that everyone knows each other.  This means you can get away with some things that wouldn't be tolerated in a bigger company.  I won't go into too many details but the jokes that are told and the pranks that are pulled would absolutely not be acceptable most places.  I love it though!  Ask me in person some time about the things I've seen :)

I'm headed back to Canada this xmas and I absolutely can't wait!  It's been far too long since I've seen my family & friends and I desperately need this. 

I'm headed out to Oxford this weekend to see Julie.  I'm writing this blog while siting on the train with my laptop.  The trains are great here!  They have electrical outlets.  I can even get internet now while riding on the train because I can share the internet that I get from my mobile phone to my laptop. 

So far I'm really enjoying my new life in the UK.  There are tons of things to see and do here.  I think if anything, I'm really not making the most of it yet.  Once I get into the groove I think it's going to be amazing!
Anyhow, I'm almost at Oxford now.  I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend for my brain.

October Update

Hello,

So much happened since my last blog post, so here goes.

Julie spent 1 month in Dresden, Germany learning German. She is doing very well now and she can carry on full conversations now. I am very proud of her.

While Julie was in Germany, I was aggressively working with London recruiters to find a job. Apparently my skills are in high demand because I’ve been turning away recruiters left and right because there are just too many of them to work with. At first I was only working with 2 recruiters and I wasn’t getting enough interviews but once I started working with about 6 then the interviews started pouring in. With all interviews, I did the first round over the telephone and if they still liked me I might fly over to London for a face to face.

In the end, I visited London twice for 4 face to face interviews.

The first trip to London was interesting. There were 2 interviews lined up for the first trip. I didn’t want it to be too rushed so I flew over the night before and stayed in a hotel so that I could be fresh in the morning. Unfortunately my head was too focused on the interviews that I ended up showing up to the airport only 30 mins before my flight and the gate had closed. So I had to buy a new ticket for the next flight (not a good start). When I got to my hotel in London I just sat on the bed with my laptop and studied for several hours for the interviews. I made a detailed itinerary for the next day describing which trains & tube lines I needed to get on so that I didn’t have to figure that stuff out on the day of the interviews.

My first face to face interview was with a financial investment company working with FOREX (Foreign currency exchange) investment software & services. The building was incredibly sexy and modern. Everyone wore suits. I was dressed up well but I wasn’t wearing a jacket. The interview itself was with a stern Russian man who was clearly brilliant technically. I think he was probably a nice guy but he did not show any positive emotions on his face or in his tone. He asked me a lot of technical questions that were way beyond my level. I think he was interested in watching HOW I struggled with questions that I didn’t know the exact answer. He was clearly interested in watching me talk the answer out. When I finished the interview it was quite difficult to gauge how well I did because I really only correctly answered about 50% of the questions.

I then got on another train and headed to my next interview. This company specialized in online banking and was looking to get into the mobile phone banking market. The building was not nearly as sexy as the first one. They had way too many people crammed into a small building. People were even working full time in meeting rooms. The interview started with a bit of chatting and then the technical questions started coming. I nailed all of the technical questions this time. The role I was interviewing for here was a technical test lead as well as a customer facing contact. I really got along well with all 3 people who were interviewing me (especially the test lead).

I left London without any issues. The next day I got a call back from the mobile phone banking company. They said the loved me but didn’t think I was suitable for the “customer facing” part of the role. However, they wanted me to work there and said they were going to try to create a new position just for me. They had to get sign off from a manager who was on vacation. A few days later, the manager came back from vacation and said they didn’t have the budget to create a new position so therefore I didn’t get the job.

One week later, the FOREX company called me back. The recruiter told me that I pretty much had the job in the bag but HR wanted to have me in again for one last HR type interview to see if I was a nice guy who would fit into the company. All I had to do was dress nicely and act nice and I’d be in! I booked a flight over again and setup the interview for the morning. This time I was just going to fly over and fly back all in the same day.

However, just after I booked that flight, I got a call back from another company who I’d already telephone interviewed with and they wanted to do a face to face as well. I slotted them in for an interview just after the FOREX interview.

I made another itinerary for my day (this time I was determine not to have any transportation screw ups). I flew over early in the morning. My interview with the FOREX company was first at 11am and it was going to be tight just to make it there from the airport. I paid extra to take the express train into the city. I decided a taxi would be quicker & less prone for getting lost. This turned out to be a mistake because traffic was terrible – I should have taken the tube. The taxi driver was hilarious because she was dedicated to getting me there on time and pulling some crazy driving maneuvers. I ended up being 10 minutes late but it was ok because I called them early and let them know I would be a touch late. The FOREX company was understanding about me being late. The interview was easy HR type questions with 3 different people. I got to go out into the cubicle floors which was quite interesting. It reminded me very much of a stock trading floor. Some people had 6 monitors and their desks with tickers and graphs running all over the screens. There were no cubical walls whatsoever. Again, even the software guys were wearing black pants, shirts, and ties. The working floor where I would work looked a lot like this:

I left and headed over to my next interview (this time I took the tube). I had a bit of time to relax and study a bit more. This company works on streaming movies & TV over the internet (much like Netflix), but they wanted to get into the mobile phone & tablet space. The company was a startup with only about 20 people but it was part owned by a huge corporation. Everyone I interviewed with was super nice, young, and fun. The interview was typical but fun. The technical questions I did pretty well on but my code had a bug in it that I struggled to fix. I took me almost 10 minutes to fix the bug in my code which was a bit stressful with people watching over your shoulder. I finished with the first 2 interviewers and as one of them left, the other guys turns to me and says “you’re doing really well”.

In the end I got both jobs and I had an interesting decision to make. The FOREX job paid a nice chunk more. However, the online streaming job seemed much more interesting, had a better group of people (based on quick first impressions), was working on more interesting technology (like phones & tablets), and was a small startup where I could really make a big difference. When I first went into the job search I had made up my mind that I would always choose more money between 2 jobs but this seemed different. This online streaming job had a lot of things going for it that were interesting to me. This was a tough decision and I lost many hours of sleep trying to figure it out. In the end, I chose the online streaming company and turned down more money from the FOREX company. I have a good feeling it will work out :)

----

At Microsoft, your bonus is tied to an annual performance review. I was expecting to do fairly well this year and therefore expecting a decent sized bonus before I left for UK. However, I ended up getting quite a bad review. I am almost certain that it has a lot to do with the fact that I was leaving Microsoft and there was no incentive to give me a good review and keep my morale high. Your manager has to fight for you against other managers in review sessions and if you get a good review it means someone else doesn’t. There is little incentive for my manager to fight hard for me if I am leaving the company. That’s my theory anyways. I talked to my colleagues afterwards and they agreed I was rated too low (but maybe they were just being nice). Anyhow, I can’t help feeling quite sour towards Microsoft after I feel they screwed me out of at least 1000 euros. Regardless, I didn’t burn any bridges and I was still courteous right to the end. I gave a nice leaving speech that everyone seemed to enjoy. We had two nice leaving drinks nights that were both a ton of fun.

On October 1st, we packed everything we had into about 10 boxes/bags and headed down to the ferry to Hollyhead, UK. I was very nervous that the ferry company would turn us away with the insane amount of bags that we had. I had called ahead before hand and they said it was ok. In the end there was no problems getting our bags into the ferry. However, at Hollyhead, our rental car was far smaller than expected. We had to do some creative packing to get all of our bags into the small car but we somehow managed! We drove our little car from Hollyhead port to Oxford.

The first few days living in Oxford have been good. Julie’s new flatmates are nice. Julie has the attic room which is fairly spacious and has its own on-suite bathroom. We’ve got the house setup nicely and now we are starting to get other things setup like internet, banking, mobile phones, etc. So far oxford seems like a nice little city and I think we will be happy here.

I got Julie a nice new laptop that I hope will last her most of her school career. Its very thin & light but still has a nice size screen.

I’ve got to start looking for my own place in London soon. I will probably live somewhere near Paddington station because there is good transportation (by either bus or train) from oxford. If you book the train more than 24 hours in advance you can get really good deals between oxford & Paddington. I was in that neighborhood today and it looks really nice. Mostly just houses and shops (no offices). I’m hoping to postpone getting a place as long as I can because I’m living for free right now with Julie in Oxford and I don’t want to waste money having 2 places until I start my job on October 17^th.

That's all for now.

--Ben

After a major wrinkle we are nearly back on track

It's been an emotional trip since my last update. The guidelines for our visa documentation said we should apply 3 months before you plan on permanently relocating to the UK. So on the dot, 3 months before we planned to go, we submitted our Visa applications and brought in all of our official documents into the Dublin UK embassy. We provided just about every official document we had (passports, birth certs, marriage certs, bank & investment statements, etc). As we were in the embassy office, I was worried that we didn't prove our finances well enough and didn't use official enough documents for our finances. Regardless of this worry, we submitted our documents, they took our finger prints, took our photos and sent us off to wait for the decision. We paid around 750 pounds to make our applications.

One week later, we got a knock on the door from the postman. Our visas had been rejected! Our visas are only possible because my Grandfather is Scottish. The rejection letter stated that we had not provided long form birth certificates to prove the family line between me, my mother, and my grandfather . We had only provided the wallet sized short form birth certificates which don't state who your parents are. When I went back to the official UK checklist of documents required it simply stated "full birth certificates". I had no idea that Ontario even provided long form birth certificates. My Mom also didn't know that she had access to a long form birth certificate for herself either.

As we kept reading the rejection letter we noticed there was an appeals process which sounded good. We could quickly get the long form birth certs for both myself and my mother and then submit for the appeal. However as we kept reading the information about the appeals process we realized that it would take between 3-6 months to happen. Julie's school started in 3 months from then! It was impossible for us to wait 6 months for an answer.

The was a very stressful period. I had never even heard of "Long form birth certificates" in Ontario. School at Oxford was coming up soon and couldn't be postponed.

The appeals process seemed unworkable because of the massive amount of time it took. The only other option we knew about at the time was to use Julie's Oxford acceptance to get a student visa and then I would latch onto that and work with that. However, with the student visa they kick you out of the country as soon as school is over. That option wasn't ideal because if we were enjoying life in the UK we wouldn't be able to stay.

I took the next day off work to try to find a way out of this mess. We asked the internet to see if people had advice for us. We were also going to start calling lawyers to see what our options were. Luckily the internet came through with the answers we needed. The best solution seemed to be to just avoid the appeals process and pay the 750 pounds again to apply again. If we went the student visa route, it would have been impossible to convert that to an Ancestry visa until the student visa expired. Aren't immigration rules fun?

We decided to pay again and apply again. I couldn't help but feel a bit extorted by the UK government. They were using their power over us to extort more money out of us. Anyhow, we rush ordered new Long form birth certificates from Manitoba (Mom) and Ontario (me). Both of these came in amazingly fast (Go Canada!). One week later we had both long form birth certificates.

However, I still had an uneasy feeling that while we may have been rejected the first time because of not enough proof of family line... We still may have been rejected for other reasons (like insufficient finances). I was still worried that we didn't prove we had enough money. I was worried if we apply a second time they may reject us this time on financial reasons. We do have lots of money but how much is enough? It's really not clear. Should I get an appraisal on our house in Canada to show how much equity we have there? How far do I take this? How much documentation do they need? Is my documentation "official" enough? Will they think it's fake even when it's not? Is there anything else I can provide that might hep my case? These were the questions that ran through my mind for weeks!

I didn't get the appraisal on the house, but I did add many new documents to the second submission. We paid again, got our finger prints and photos take again, then waited...

One week later, we got the visas!

I actually received an email days before saying that they were approved but I was feeling so burned from the first rejection that I wasn't happy until they were in my very own hands. Now they are :)

We are both feeling much better now. We are now moving on to other final tasks. The big one for me is to get a job in the UK (ideally before leaving Ireland). Getting a job is now my top priority. I am using 2 recruiters in London now and have already had a few interviews. I think it took about 24 interviews before I got my current job at Microsoft so I will be patient and expect that I won't be a good fit for most companies. I do know there are many companies who would love me to work there... I just need to find them. The mac team at Microsoft is happy with me so I'm sure others will be too. That being said, I have already had 2 interviews and I didn't get the spot for either of them. I hope to fail my way to success! The good thing is lots of places are hiring and I am confident in my many talents. I just need to find a good match.

Also, we are starting to sell off our possessions so that we can fit it into planes and/or ferries when we move. We are also throwing out anything we don't need. It feels nice to be able to slim our lives down to a few suitcases.

Julie is working hard to try to find a place in Oxford city. She didn't get a place in the campus dorms but things are looking good that she will get a place with flatmates in a house off campus. Right now, I'm not too worried about finding a place in London. I'll get the job first and then worry about a house. In London, at any given moment there are 100's of places I could move into so I can take my time with that.

At the end of August, Julie will be off to Germany to do a month of intensive German language training. Depending on our finances and how big my bonus is from Microsoft this year, I may join her for the last week (not to study though).

We plan to take the ferry to the UK permanently on October 1st. We will then rent a car and drive it to Oxford with all of our stuff. We need to take the ferry rather than the plane because Julie has about 100 pounds of books that she wants. I'm happy enough with this though. It will be nice to drive across the UK before settling down in Oxford.

Anyhow, after a few extremely stressful weeks where the fate of our futures rested with an immigration officer, I think our lives are finally back on stable grounds and moving forwards nicely again.

June update

Hi Everyone,

All is still well in Dublin. Julie is back after 2 long months away in Canada and I'm happy about that.

I had a nice trip to Porto, Portugal. It was a bit boring all by myself though. Sometimes it's nice to be by yourself if you are trying to get some good thinking done, but I didn't have 3 days worth of stuff the think about. It was a beautiful city and the weather was perfect. I posted all the pictures on Facebook here. I didn't do a whole lot mostly just wandered around the city. The vegetarian options were terrible though so I spent far too much time looking at menus and not enough time eating. I ended up eating at a lot of overpriced hotel restaurants because they often had at least 1 vegetarian option. I spent a lot of time along the river side enjoying the weather, watching people, and drinking local beers. The view was just so pretty it kept me entertained for hours just looking at it:



While in Canada, Julie was able to secure a large zero interest loan for her studies from her native band. This was very important because international tuition at Oxford is pretty expensive. We are very grateful for the money from Julie's band. Julie has a former classmate who was accepted to Cambridge who has nearly exhausted all scholarship opportunities and may have to turn down the offer purely for financial reasons. I was looking at an interesting chart by the US department of labor and education still pays off. I'm not too worried about any long term debt burden from this.

I have made a few more apps since my last post. I made an Italian app and a Spanish app. Right now I'm only making about 10$ a week but the windows phone market is still small relative to android and iPhone. I really do think the market will change because windows phone is just a better product than both of those. So hopefully once the market share increases, so will my revenue. I have also started to port my apps over to Android. I am starting with German and I am about 75% through developing my first android app. The android development software is not nearly as good as the windows phone software. However, there is a much larger support community for android so any time I hit any snags, I can often quickly find the answer online. In the end, I have actually flew through development largely because I have not run into any tough problems that someone else on the internet hasn't already had :).

I really want to get an android app done here soon so that I can put it on my resume. It really makes your CV stand out nicely and I think will be an interesting conversation piece during the interviews. I have been holding back a bit in applying for jobs because the move was so far away. My plan is to start aggressively searching for jobs starting early July. I am actually very confident in my chances of getting a job quickly. The software market is one of the hottest industries right now and my resume is very strong. I was reading than in the USA and Ireland the unemployment rate for software people is half that of the respective national unemployment. Just for fun I sent me resume to about 20 positions and got 5 responses back and many voice mails and emails back.

We are going in for our visa appointment on Thursday. I think I have all the documentation ready to go and I really hope it all goes smoothly. I have been reading about the process and I think it will but I am still nervous because they hold so much power over me. Wish me luck!

I have been doing a bit of website work for max and making some extra cash from it. He is looking to make an android app for his business. I am going to help him with that android work. Should be interesting.

The summer here in Dublin has been pretty grey. Lots of overcast days and rain. Everyone, including myself, are not too happy about it. Luckily we just had a nice warm weekend which was a nice change. I hope we get more of that. The length of the days is just amazing though. It really didn't get pitch black today until about 11. Last night we went out for drinks at about 9pm and it was still very bright out.

We are still very excited about the move to the UK. It does create a ton of extra work that needs to be done like selling a bunch of stuff, getting visas, finding a new place before we go, etc. It looks like renting a car from Dublin and then dropping it off in the UK will be too expensive so we will likely take the ferry instead as a foot passenger. This means that we need to get all of our belongings into just a few suitcases. We did this 3 years ago so theoretically it's possible, but we have also acquired lots of new stuff since then :)

Anyhow, it's getting late and I think that's about all I have.

Cya

March Update

Hello,

It's a crazy nice day in Dublin today, so I am typing this blog from Merrian park on a bench. Everything is in full bloom and the sun worshipers are out. Here is a pic of where I am sitting. One amazing thing about Dublin is that there are no mosquitoes and very few other annoying bugs. It really makes sitting here so much better :). Another thing I like about Ireland is that the laws are much more lax on drinking alcohol in public. There is a group of people in front on me enjoying a picnic complete with sandwiches and wine. I feel like in Canada, that might land you an $80 fine.



Progress continues to be made on the legal end of my move to the UK. I finally received my grandparents marriage certificate in the mail from the Manitoba Government. This was the last document I needed in order to get my UK working visa. So, I imagine I will apply for this visa around 3 months before we expect to go. Currently, we are thinking of going in Mid-September because I have stocks and bonus money coming around that time and I would like to have that money.

I would really like to live in London when we get there. I've never really lived in a big city and I want to experience it sometime in my life. I think this may be the best chance I get to live that experience. So, the plan would be to have a place in Oxford and a place in London. The prices for these 2 places is going to have to be cheap because our family budget really cant afford to do this, so I expect we will have to go back to living with flat mates. (Note, they don't use the word room-mate here because that would imply you are living in the same room; Housemate is acceptable as well). There is a good bus called the Oxford-Tube that goes direct between London city and Oxford city. It's a coach style bus with free Wifi on board and it takes about 1.5 hours each way. I expect Julie & I will commute back and forth on this bus several times a week but we will be apart a few days a week as well. It is required that Julie live close to campus for the first year.

I've got job alerts that come in my email every day about jobs that might interest me in London. There are lots of jobs out there. I even have recruiters calling my phone the odd time trying to sell me on certain jobs. So, I don't think it will be too hard finding something. There is also a huge financial software industry in London. Much of it is centered around investment banking. I am debating whether or not to join this sector or not. On the one hand, the money is about 15-20% better, but on the other hand I really don't think these investment bankers are doing anything positive in society, especially when it comes to things like high frequency trading software which buys and sells stocks in fractions of a second. The dream right now would be to work at Microsoft in London. Microsoft has a small office in london which does a bit of software development. They also have a large office in Reading which I would be much more likely to get in but I don't think I want to live in Reading nor commute from London. The other option is that I could do contracting work which might not require me to go into an office very often but might give me less stability (but possibly more financial potential). I was talking to a guy on Friday night who hires iphone developers on contract. He says good developers working for him are making 100 euros per hour! There is lots to think about and lots of things still to investigate.

Right now Julie is in Canada staying with her parents. She is getting in lots of quality time with her family before her grueling Ph.D.. She is even going out to California to see her brother for 1 week. One main objective while there is to try to convince her native band to completely fund her Ph.D. at Oxford. Right now, they will contribute about 50% which is a good start but still leaves us on the hook for a substantial amount more. She will be making a presentation to Chief and Council soon to ask for more money. Yesterday she had a great chat with an old German lady who lived in Germany during the entire WWII. She was 9 years old in 1939. Julie said that chat was amazing and quite emotional for the both of them.

I have been working hard on the weekends these days on Windows phone apps. My first app was called "I speak German" which was a small quiz game to help you learn 1000 basic nouns in German. I think there were actually quite a few Germans who were downloading as well to learn the same nouns in English. Here is a link to the app. When the app was free it was getting about 20 downloads per day. However, when I started charing $0.99 for it, my downloads dropped to about 2 per day. The German app was targeted at English people trying to learn German. However, I also made another app called "Yo Hablo Ingleas" which is targeted at Spanish people trying to learning English. I hired a Spanish person to translate all my 1000 nouns into spanish and all the text in my app to Spanish. This time, I also recorded my own voice saying each and every noun so that the spanish person can listen to how the word is pronounced as well. I put that app out on Friday for $1.99 and we will see how well it does. If I could make $2000/year per app, then I might just be able to make 25 apps and live off the income. Unfortunately, now making only about $700/year per app it may not be worth my time. We will see. I may also need to market my apps better which could be a possibility of increasing my revenues.

Over the easter weekend, we are moving desks at work, so they have given us a 4 day weekend while the movers move our stuff. So I've planned myself a little weekend trip to Porto, Portugal. It's a very old little town on the ocean that is famous for wine. I will be taking a day trip away from the coast and into the famous wine region! I'm super excited about this trip. The prices of everything in Porto are supposed to be very cheap. I have actually considered Portugal as a possible place to retire one day. Its got everything - safe, cheap, all the amenities, and close to all the best parts of Europe. We'll see if this opinion is strengthened or weakened when I visit :)



Max has offered me a little website work which I am looking forward to. He doesn't have time time these days and his employees seem to be untrustworthy and unreliable. Hopefully this work goes well. It's using some technologies I am not too familiar with so there will be a bit of learning involved which is always good.

Anyhow, I think that's about it. Cya