VanAussie Daily

Welcome to the world, Alex & Jack Mendham

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Well, I’m a dad. Our sons, Alex and Jack came early, 10 weeks early in fact. It was a surprise, but they started to fall prey to something that only very occasionally happens to identical twins, called twin to twin transfusion.

Alex is doing well, Jack, not so well. He’s on the mend, but there’s a few issues holding him back at the moment. Hopefully he heals and starts bouncing back. I could fill this blog with daily updates on how they’re doing, but that’s not really the purpose of the blog, so I’ll update when I can, and still try and talk about stuff that’d be interesting to folks coming over here to live.

In the mean time, if you want to see some pictures of the little ones, here’s the album. It’ll be updated daily hopefully. Note, I’ll only add you on facebook if I’ve met you

Update: If you want to track the progress of the twins, I’ve set up another blog over here:

http://alexandjack.canaussie.com/

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Reprinted Working Holiday Permit!

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I got a nice letter in the mail today from Citizenship & Immigration Canada. They thanked me for my  application to request the replacement/correction of my work permit (I can smell boilerplate text, can you?), and they enclosed my new document. They also said that they haven’t charged me for this service as it was a departmental error.

Well, I’ll be a monkeys uncle…

The correction was made pretty quickly, for a Canadian government thing, I’ll grant them that. 28 days, or 4 weeks from when I dropped my paperwork off with someone who looked at them, looked at me, then said “sure!”. I asked if there was anything else I needed to do? “Nope!”

It’s a damn sight quicker than the 5 – 6 month timeline I found the other day, but I’m guessing I was barking up the wrong tree. I feel sorry for those folks.

Right, I’m off to get my SIN tomorrow. Third time lucky!

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Posted in Working Holiday Permit (WHP) | 2 Comments »

Warm spring Saturday

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Here’s a glimpse into our Saturday, told in tilt-shift, a method of making average phone pictures look good through blurring the crap out of them and tweaking the colours… Kinda.

After shopping for maternity stuff on west 4th Avenue, we stopped in for a milkshake at Sophie’s Cosmic Cafe. Well worth checking out and getting a chocolate shake if you’re in the area.

Locarno beach is on the south side of the bay, and has amazing beaches (for Vancouver), logs for hanging out on, and great views of the city… plus lots of daisies

Watching the yachts from the base of the pier at the east end of Locarno beach near the sailing squadron.

More yachts, plus a standing paddler… there’s lots of folks into this sport in Vancouver, and it’s quite funny to watch them. Most of them stand on the board like they need to go to the toilet – bums out, head cocked forward.

Lots of folks crab fishing from the end of the pier – they bait the pot, toss it as far out as they can, then repeat. One guy had at least a dozen pots out, orange lines leading out in all directions from his possie on the corner of the pier.

Now we’re back home, hanging out on the balcony. There’s still snow on the mountains in the distance… not that you can see it, the pic’s too damn blurry!

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Posted in Downtown Vancouver, scenery, Weather | 1 Comment »

Highly technical methods of spelling mistake correction

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

I went down to the border on Thursday to check on a couple of things – whether they could reprint my misspelt work permit, and if they couldn’t, whether it’d be okay for reentry into Canada.

Well, I went back to the Point Roberts border crossing as that was where they screwed it up in the first place, and a slightly embarrassed looking border guard (not the same one) took my passport to see if she could do anything.

At one point they had three border guards crowded around the computer, all pointing and gesturing… Back seat WHP correction? Anyhoo, when she came back after about 20 minutes I had my hopes up.

“You fixed it?” I asked.

“Sort of. It’s right in the computer, so we just corrected your permit.”

So apparently it’s all good now for crossing borders n stuff, however when I went into get my new SIN yesterday the dude there couldn’t find my name on the database, and said it probably wasn’t corrected on the computer… Wait, what?

So no new SIN for me, and the saga continues…

(pic manipulated in an app I just downloaded – TiltShiftGen, double manipulation.)

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And the time it takes to update a spelling mistake?

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

So I have been wondering for the past few weeks as to how long it would take for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to update my work permit with the correct last name after I submitted it a few weeks ago. This evening I jumped on the CIC website and realised that you can actually check the process of your application online… except that when I entered in my details it said that I either wasn’t in one of the groups listed who can access their info online (the working permit group was in one list, before I entered into the info checking part, but then it wasn’t in the info checking part. Damn.

So then I thought I’d check the actual wait times they have posted. For the application that I filled in, Amendments to Records of Landing/Confirmation of Permanent Residence, the wait time is 5 – 6 months. Holy crap!! I could apply for and get a new work permit in that time! 9 times!!

I’m supposed to go to Baltimore in a couple of weeks for work… not sure if that’s going to happen. I might try heading back to the border post I passed into the country through and checking with them there… maybe they’ll be nice and print me a new one.

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Mid-May Twin update

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Time for a quick twin update for those who are interested

They’re both doing great! Had an ultrasound last week at 25 weeks 3 days, and both are still growing well. Due to their nature, we have to have regular checkups and ultrasounds to make sure that they’re still healthy, which is nice.

With twins, they measure growth in terms of weeks/days against the growth rate of what a normal single baby would be undergoing. So while Nat was 25.3, Twin A is 25.2 and Twin B was 26.1. This means that Twin B is growing at a faster rate than A, however they’re both doing really well in terms of growth rate.

It’s interesting having a couple of kids in another country. As it’s a Commonwealth country, and pretty closely related to Australia, lots of things are very similar to how they would be in Aus. We’re now going to see an Obstetrician every few weeks, as well as ultrasounds every two weeks.

Fingers crossed that everything goes great for the next 12 weeks and beyond, as the very latest they’ll let them go is to 37 weeks.

Here’s a gratuitous pic of Twin B, just to make up for Twin A featuring in the last post :

The face of Twin B at 25 weeks

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North Shore Mountain Biking

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

We took the opportunity last week when a lot of my good mates were in town to go for a “bucks” ride on the North Shore of Vancouver, Seymour Mountain to be specific. Man, it was great fun!

Those who didn’t have bikes rented Kona Stinkies from Cove Bike Shop, and we managed to fit 5 bikes in the back of my truck while still having a full complement of people in the seats (perhaps more than full… ). I was stoked about that, but Rusty had to take it pretty slow up the hill with that much weight on board…

While it decided to rain on our parade as soon as we reached the top, it tends to stay reasonably dry to a point underneath the trees, so it was only a little damp. We headed down towards Ned’s and then chose our own adventure from there.

Looking down the trail

A buddy of mine hitting up a ramp partway down

Hanging out in the forest, talking up our riding skillz, waiting for the straggler... who actually ended up walking most of the way down the hill. Whoops!

Some of us were lucky enough to go for a second run… cheers to the gents who opted to stay at the bottom and eat Timbits!

We’re so lucky to have a world class riding area just across the bridge from us here in downtown. Need to take more advantage of it!

(Thanks to Oli for all pics bar the first one!)

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