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On Tuesday 5th April I
attended the Tartan Day Dinner at Casa Loma in Toronto where I met the
Lieutenant Governor and sundry other folk including my old friends Doug
and Pat Ross. A fine evening was had by all.
I completed my house
purchase on 7th April 2005. I had gone down the night before to stay at
Nola's country cottage at Port Crewe...
As you can see the cottage in on Lake Eire
This is a good place to have a meal just up
the road from Port Crewe
It took around 4 hours to
get down there from Toronto as there were road works on the 401 and so
long delays for part of the trip but once past that had made good time.
Having completed the paper
work I then met George (my builder and decorator) at the house where we
changed the locks... not that there is anything worth stealing. We then
worked out the plan for the house and then it was time to head back to
Port Crewe for the second night.
In the morning I headed to
Wallaceburg where I had arranged to visit Tom and Al's furniture shop
where I purchased 3 beds (1 queen and 2 single), fridge, cooker,
microwave, TV and DVD and a chair besides other small items. It's a long
time since I purchased a bed and was a touch confused as the what was
what. As well as getting a single or twin bed you get a Double,
Queen and King bed. Each one being larger that the previous one.
They had a special deal on the Queen bed which is why I got that one
:-)They will arrange to deliver it all for me and set everything up.
So just need to get duvets for the beds, kettle and toaster and that will
be me setup until my stuff arrives from Scotland. I was also looking for
some kind of desk to work on until my stuff arrives so Brian took me down
to their warehouse where they store some second hand stuff and I found a
great pedestal table which they kindly threw in for free.
I really just need to
arrange for the cable internet and TV service and arrange the Hydro and
that's about it.
George reckons he will take
around 3-4 weeks to do all the stuff around the house so the plan is to
head down there Monday week to see how things are going. I will then be
staying up in Toronto until around 7th May and then going down on the 8th
to take possession and get settled. Nola is heading to Turkey for 10 days
at the end of April and asked me to stay on while she was away and hence
the short delay. More than happy to help out as they have all been
absolutely great in putting me up for so long. That will be six months all
told!
In the meantime I plan to
do some advertising selling to make sure I have enough money to pay for
everything :-)
Plans are continuing with
my immigration. I now have my police report from Scotland and my
educational certificates have also arrived. So I now need to get a police
report from the RCMP here in Canada and also get some pictures taken.
Once that is sorted I'll be starting to build the application.
One thing I did note is
that they want to know every address that you've lived at since aged 18
and that is certainly going to be a problem for me as I shared flats and
houses in various parts of Coventry and for the life of me I can't
remember any of the addresses.
I also have to get letters
from past employers for the last 10 years. That will be fun as I was
the Employer for the first 5 years so looks like I need to send myself a
letter :-)
Anyway... some serious hard
work needs to go into this now to get things moving but at least I can now
say I have a house and car :-)
And on my return to Toronto
I ended up missing a road I should have taken and so while I kept driving
I noted the single Wind Turbine way down to my right and thought to
myself... I should be down there somewhere and not up here. So.. I
got my mobile out and phoned Harold to say... Hi.. I seem to have arrived
at Ajax and think I might be getting lost. He kindly told me that I
had gone far too far and needed to turn around and head back the way I had
come. Now this being a Friday and around the 5 o'clock rush hour I
have to say that the road reports were indicating that a chunk of the city
was grid locked. So.. it took me some time to get myself turned
around and long delays getting back to the house. I don't think I've ever
seen so many cars, even in London. Some of these roads have 15 lanes so
mighty confusing. Anyway... I did arrive back eventually :-) |
