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Posted Tuesday 20th September 2011 at 3.53pm
First impressions
I arrived in Canada yesterday. There was a bit of a wait at immigration while a Canadian woman tried to get an Indian man (with French nationality) to speak French. She refused to believe his French ID was genuine until he spoke some French to her. He was a bit weird, but unless you have to not be weird to enter Canada... he clearly spoke French as he was answering the woman's French questions perfectly well, albeit in English. He kept making irrelevant points ("I worked for Air France for 30 years!"); she was quite rude ("Je m'en fous, monsieur, je m'en fous!"). But at least it gave me something to watch until it was my turn to collect my work permit, and that meant that I then didn't have to wait to collect my luggage, which is my least favourite part of flying.
Then there was the bus into town, and the first thing I saw when I got off was a park with several games of giant chess going on. One of those "I think I'm going to like this" moments, like the first time I listened to the Hold Steady ("There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right..."). 10 minutes' walk up the hill, past loads of cafés and restaurants, and I was at the apartment. My flatmate Jeremy, a biology postdoc, gave me a brief tour before heading back into the lab; I skyped my parents to let them know I'd arrived, sent a few emails, and headed out to the supermarket. On the way I passed scores more restaurants and bars - French, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Vietnamese, Indian, Lebanese (probably loads more that I've forgotten) and of course the ubiquitous English pub. The supermarket was pretty good too, although some stuff seemed expensive compared to UK prices. A quick meal - just pasta with cheese sauce, spring onion, sweetcorn and red pepper - and I gave in to the jetlag. 10 hours' sleep.
This morning I gathered some documents together and set off to try to get some admin done. First stop was McGill maths reception, where after some confusion I was given a run-through of the different things I had to do, a key to office 1212, and a name tag for the office door. Up to the office then; but ah, someone sat inside tells me that there are already four occupants for the four desks. Back down to reception, where the receptionist tells me that "Wang, Z" is not on her list and should not be in the office. But I point out that he is on the staff list stuck to the reception desk, and indeed it lists his office as 1212; and besides, he wasn't actually in the office himself when I called, so what was I supposed to do, pick up his stuff and put it outside the door? She asks me to return tomorrow. I've now received an email telling me that one of the other occupants should not be there. This still doesn't answer the question of what I'm supposed to do with the illegal alien's belongings, so we shall see what happens tomorrow. I suppose it would be too much to ask that I get a desk straight away with no complications. In Bath I was shunted around for my whole PhD; the only time I ever had an office in the department was when I spent three weeks in a seminar room with a couple of clunky old computers shared between 6 of us. In Paris I started in the "visiting professors" office with the man who spent all his time on the phone speaking Italian loudly, and when we moved to the new building there was nothing - not even a chair or a desk - in my room. And neither the heating nor the internet worked. In Berlin things were better, but still I was in a building across the road from the rest of my group, with construction work going on downstairs which meant that at various times either the lifts or the stairs were out of action.
So, onto the health insurance office. There was a queue to see a woman to get a ticket to join another queue; after this I saw a woman who insisted on speaking French to me (on the plus side, she did tell me my French was good; this is a lie, but shows a markedly different attitude towards the language compared to that of the French from France), who registered me and then told me to rejoin the queue to get my photo taken for the ID card. After an interminable wait I decided that I could spend this time more profitably by filling in some of the forms that I need to return to McGill tomorrow; but of course 2 minutes later my number beeped up on the board, I had my photo taken, and I was out of there. All in all this was a fairly painless experience: it took about 90 minutes, 80 of which were spent in queues, and could have been improved by some kind of estimated waiting time information, but at least all they required was a work permit and $8, and it was all done in one place and in one visit.
Then home, filling in forms, and looking at mobile phones and bank accounts. All part of the joys of moving to a new country.
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