Canadian Tire

So yesterday I went looking for pushbikes and rollerblades, and so went to Canadian Tire. What is Canadian Tire? Well, imagine you took Super-Cheap Auto and doubled it in size until it was big enough to have, well, pushbikes and rollerblades. That is Canadian Tire.

Oh, and they have guns. Rifles and stuff. First time I've seen guns for sale in my life. Quickly walked past that aisle. And into the aisle for bullet-proof armour. What the ...? Oh, my mistake, it's just four aisles of ice hockey gear. Nevermind.

In the end I found the bikes and rollerblades - none quite what I wanted. But I did manage to get a set of 12 knives in a wood block for $10 (save $25) and a small ratcheting socket wrench for $20 (save $10). Bargain.

Dinosaur in Vancouver

A triceratops with wiggling tail just went past me...

Storyeum is basically a live museum of Vancouver that does tours and the like. I have to visit them one day, seeing as they're about 1.5 blocks from where I work.

The Neighbours

Had my first glimpse of the neighbours last night. I saw a lone glove, stuck by one fingertip to their doorknob. Still not sure how they made the glove stick there. Wasn't quick enough to get a photo before it disappeared again. They're a mysterious lot.

Even Minor Purchases...

Have a long bit of taxation to go with them. This is the receipt for one umbrella which was advertised as $6.99.

Best Massage Ever

At our research lab they were working on a "vision system" for blind people. The would process live video and generate electrical impulses on a glove. This allowed blind people to "feel" their way around a room through their hands. They tested this on a blind person, who promptly freaked out because the impules were too strong. The researchers had to turn down the settings and then add extra resistors before it was low enough for his sensitive hands to stand it.

And so it makes a lot of sense that (in Taipei) you'll find massage centres staffed mostly by blind people. And not bad prices either. I got a 30 minute upper body massage for about $35 Australian, and it was fantastic. It was remedial as well, but she wasn't just "jamming her fingers in for the fun of it". I came out feeling much better. Highly recommended.

Fun Bank

Trying to setup a bank account here. You need Canadian ID at most places, for example a visa with a photo. Of course, Canadian visas don't have photos, so you need a Canadian drivers license, which you can't get yet. Or a permanent residency card, which you qualify for in 6 months. Did I mention you need that bank account to put your pay in, and to have your rent taken from?

Ended up with HSBC, simply because I know they can handle foreigners, being a foreign bank themselves. I now have two accounts with them - a savings and a chequing account. Don't ask why. :)

Apartment Photos

I promised to put up some photos of my apartment, so here they are. All furniture is actually on loan from a friend. I'm considering a glass and steel desk ($150, similar but not identical to this desk at Sears) and matching dining table with 4 chairs ($250) for the living room. The bedroom would be a basic slat bed and bookcase.

If I do it right I'll leave enough space for a simple single bed (or day bed?) in the lounge area for visitors. Will see what happens. There are lots of options yet.

Mobile Worker

Hi all. I've stopped moving for a few minutes, and have time to post here. It's 10am Sunday morning at the moment - spent the last few days shopping and just learning about stuff. So much to write - just don't know where to start.

Have got myself a mobile phone now. They have an interesting charging system here, that works almost like a "mobile home phone". If I'm in Vancouver:

• I call locally - airtime
• I call long-distance - airtime + 20c/min
• I am called - airtime

If I'm outside Vancouver:

• I call locally - airtime + 20c/min
• I call long-distance - airtime + 20c/min (I think...)
• I am called - airtime + 20c/min

So airtime is like "line rental, charged per minute", and you get a certain allowance per month. They will then charge you extra if you call someone who is long-distance from Vancouver, or are called when you are long-distance from your home area (Vancouver).

Anyway, signed up for a 2 year contract with Fido. Even if I don't last here for that long, there's a $200 fee for breaking contract, and the phone would have cost that anyway. :)

P.S. I'll post photos of this place once I get a bit more set up. Maybe later today.

Free Internet

Hey theres 3 free internet terminals in the international departures part of Sydney Terminal. And I just spent my turn writing this blog entry. I'm a loser. :)

Off I Go

Bags are packed (possibly overweight). Room almost all packed. Telstra call in progress. Shutting things down and heading off. Gotta lug the bags down the stairs without breaking my wrists. :P Will post again from Taipei or Vancouver. Keep an eye on China Airlines flights - apparently they don't have a great safety record. :)

24 Hours

OK, I have less than 24 hours to go. This is my todo list. If anyone has more suggestions feel free to comment. :)

• Switch phone, ADSL, and electricity over to flatmate.
• Double-check everything I've packed to take with me
• Get recent bank statements to show on arrival in Canada
• Triple-check my documentation (letter of introduction, passport, etc)
• Box the last batch of stuff to ship to Vancouver
• Box the Playstation and some other things to post to a friend
• Box various bits and pieces to post to family
• Check weather at destination, and plan what to do on arrival in Taipei
• Call family to say goodbye
• Sleep

Cafe DSL

Cafe DSL is our regular seminar series here at the DSL, and as usual I ordered and paid for the pizza and softdrink. I've just filed my last request for reimbursement ($545.01) and noticed how much I've spent. $4162.20 over 3 years. That's $4162.20 for 511 round bits of bread with grease and questionable meat from the cheapest provider, with softdrink. And damn it tasted good. :)

Floorplan

I have a floorplan for my place now. Well, I'm assuming it's the right floorplan. I dug it up from a site showing availability in my building. It should be a nice little place - will post photos once I get there and get an Internet connection.

Tired

I'm bloody tired at the moment. Recently I've been drinking some of these V energy drinks and finding that, straight after drinking them, I relax and feel sleepy. Taking an energy drink before bed seems wrong, but almost makes sense at the moment. Work here is just crazy. On the positive side (always have to look at the positive side) I should be able to handle any stress the new job throws at me.

Looking forward to the overnight stay in Taipei. Hope the hotel is decent and quiet. Will try to sleep on the plane so I can see some of the city in the evening.

Seacliff Bridge

Needed a break from packing yesterday, so my parents and a friend went up to Seacliff Bridge - the new bridge linking some of those communities that lie between Wollongong and Sydney. It's really quite a nice bridge. It's not as spectacular to walk along as the aerial photographs might suggest, but the views of the rocks and water beneath you, and the rockface it runs along are worth the trip. I think some beautification efforts, like removing the old roadway from the cliff face and leftover construction bits and pieces, will make it a much better attraction.

Packing Almost Done

My parents visited this weekend to take most of my stuff back to Muswellbrook, and help me organise the rest so it could be packed. So far I have just 3 boxes to go - I expect a 4th yet. These will be shipped sometime later by boat.

The bags I'm taking with me are also almost completely packed, though they still need some work. They're about 27kg each, so I'll take a bus/shuttle to the airport if possible, rather than a regular train.

And yes, that is a can of quail eggs and a jar of vegemite holding the lids closed on the boxes. They were just at hand at the time. :P

Rebecca, We Salute You

She's been working for almost 4900 hours straight (203 days), survived power outages, and network attacks. This is a salute to Rebecca - my old Compaq laptop. Today we rearranged the lounge room and unplugged her, and the battery couldn't sustain her for the 5 minutes we took to rearrange the lounge room. She'll be going to Canada with me to provide file and network services in my apartment, much as she does here. But I think now is a good enough time to salute her service. To Rebecca!

Prof Under Siege

One of my favourite professors (he teaches logic and number theory) has come under siege from some rather foolish people writing to Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald. It started when someone provided a definition of 'even'.

"I don't know what mathematicians Etan Stokes has been talking to!" thunders Martin Bunder, Professor of Mathematics as the University of Wollongong. "The even numbers are 0, 2, -2, 4, -4, 6, -6, … so 0 is even, and there is no smallest even number. 0, 1, -1, 2, -2, … are the integers. An even number is defined to be one that is twice an integer."

The response he received was, at best, confused. As a mathematics student it feels odd to see people get it so wrong:

"I don't know how Martin Bunder became a professor of mathematics with the kind of logic displayed in his argument but, by his own reasoning, he is incorrect," shrugs Robert Gotts, of Winmalee. "If an even number is an integer multiplied by 2 then what did he multiply to get 0? And how can we see by looking at 0 whether it has been multiplied by anything at all? Or if we divide it by 2 enough times would the resulting 0 then be an odd number? Zero is a place marker (note how it functions in binary). It counts nothing and represents the absence of anything countable."

I like the response though:

Professor Bunder is in the highest of dudgeon. "If you will allow me a response to Robert Gotts, you can have a long or a short version. The long is: Robert Gotts questions both my qualifications and my logic. I have a BSc in pure and applied maths, an MA in formal logic and a PhD in mathematical logic as well as over a hundred academic publications, mainly on mathematical logic, but also on number theory. I would guess that the number of Robert's formal qualifications in these areas is 0. The evenness of 0 relies only on the two simple definitions I gave last week. 0 is an integer, 0 = 2 x 0, so 0 is an even number. The short version is the last sentence."

See Column 8 for more. It's kind of like a discussion (refereed by the editor) on all sorts of weird things.

A Real Place to Call Home

Some great people at work found me a place to live. I've attached a map showing a (slightly silly) way to get to work from it. The route shown on the map is about 3.6km, though I expect a shorter path to be about 2-2.5km. It's a one-bedroom place, with fridge and washing machine, but otherwise unfurnished. Will cost me $CA840 per month to rent, plus utilities. Not bad considering it's basically right downtown. When I have more information (like the floorplan) I'll post it.

Careful With Those Hands

After the visa appointment yesterday I found myself wandering (technically the word is 'lost' but nevermind) in Pitt St, Sydney. I realised I was going to miss a train and so had 20 minutes to waste. I'd always wanted to try one of those little Chinese massage setups that you see in malls nowadays, so opted for 'Arms and Hands'.

Started out nicely, all gentle. But then they start sticking thumbs into muscles in ways that are extraordinarily painful. The pain is probably because my muscles don't get used properly, but the question then is, what types of massage are just nice and relaxing? I've heard of Swedish massages, but what about Thai? I want something to relax me, not make my feet sweat from the stress.

If you have one of these painful massages, how can you tell they did a good job anyway? My arms joints feel like they might be a bit looser today, especially the wrists. Which sucks when I try to push on things as the limited flexibility of those joints is what stops them from hurting.

US Visa Process

Today I went and paid for my US Visa. I'm sorry, but the guy there was as arrogant and unhelpful as I was led to believe. I was told by others who were also applying for their visa that some of the people there were nice, and I could see that they were. I just got the aggravating one. Anyway, the process is:

1. Choose your appointment time about 2 weeks ahead from their website.
2. Turn up on the day, and try the elevator to level 59. It doesn't work. You actually have to go to level 10 to pass a screening process which will then let you into an elevator that goes to level 59.
3. One minute later pass a second screening process, almost identical to the first except this time they also have an x-ray machine for whatever you were carrying.
4. Enter the waiting room and take a number. That's right, your "appointment time" is actually "the time at which you will take a number and join the queue to have your appointment". Really sucks for the people from Brisbane who had scheduled their flights based on their supposed "appointment time".
5. About an hour later (not sure, mobile phone had to be off) get called up to hand in your documents. The man is on the other side of a pane of glass, mumbles in an accent and hasn't turned on his microphone.
6. Get exceptionally rude treatment because you are not able to hear his instructions, and for not answering questions on the form for which there is no answer. Then get sent away to the post office to exchange your $130 money order for the correct payment method (some obscure item that the person at my post office did not know about).
7. Come back from the post office (traversing the 2-pass security again), and forcefully explain that you cannot answer the questions he asked because you're not going to the US now, you're going to Canada for a year and the Visa Waiver Program will not apply if you drop into the US and back to Canada. So questions like "when will you enter the US" and "who is paying for your trip" really don't have any answers.
8. He asked that you don't leave the fields blank, but you get abused again as you've now put "-" in all the questions that were previously unanswered. Only "NA" or "Unknown" is understood apparently.
9. Forms are now accepted. Sit down for another half-hour until a pleasant man calls you over to ask you rapid-fire questions about what you're doing in Canada (testing that you have your story straight). I'm pretty sure he has no idea what "constraint programming" is, but he was certainly the nicest guy I dealt with.
10. Be told that your visa will be issued and your passport mailed back to you in the next couple of days. Yes they do keep your passport overnight, and it's your responsibility to provide the envelope with your address for them to post it back in.

I just hope I get Permanent Residency in Canada at some point so that the Visa Waiver Program can kick back in. It doesn't apply at the moment as I'll be a Temporary Worker and would be returning to Canada after any trip into the US.

To be honest I'm more interested in my luggage at the moment. :)

Larger Luggage

Moving countries, you want to take as much as you can really. This isn't saying that I'll be taking a lot of clothes (not likely I need all those shorts really), but that I will have a lot of miscellaneous crap. Books (yes books), second laptop, shoes, cables, etc. So the flight I'm booked on allows me 64kg of luggage plus my carryon stuff. It seemed best then to get some larger luggage; something that I could use when travelling to conferences or when I get kicked out of Canada.

So I'm posting just to let you know that BlackWolf 80+20L duffle bags are really quite good. Expandable from 80 to 100 litres, solid-looking wheels, and opens from the middle or the top, your choice. I've been very scientific and photographed it first as "collapsed for storage in a closet", and then "packed to go to Canada with four pillows". One of the more convenient things is a very large 'pocket' accessible from the outside which just expands into the inside. Great for dirty laundry.

Room With View (Of Cement Building)

Looking for a place to live in Vancouver on Craigslist. Have to admit that there's nothing wrong with being honest, though lines like these seem to overdo it a little?

... I imagine it would still suck a tad to live in a room with curtains as doors ...
... I don't want to catch a glimpse of any surprise nakedness should a freak gust of air somehow move the curtains at the wrong time. I value my eyesight ...

Paper Acceptance

I just managed to get two papers accepted for publication at Canadian AI 2006. I now have until March 13th (or 14th for us Australians :) to turn them into camera-ready versions. Thankfully the reviewers were quite happy with the papers and so require little modification. I'm happy (or will be when the shock wears off) that both were accepted, considering that only 22% of papers were accepted by the organisers.

• Relaxation of Soft Constraints via a Unified Semiring
• Simple Support-Based Distributed Search

Squish the Grasshopper

I recently tried talking to someone who had no clue what they were talking about and refused to learn/listen. He comes into the epiphany channel under 3 different pseudonyms and tries to get us to use alternative operating system concepts... that don't work. I pushed him to explain what problems he was trying to solve, and got these:

If people only did things to solve problems, we wouldn't have any technology, because we wouldn't have any of the problems in the first place.
Only because of advancements the problems came along to be solved.
My ideas don't have to solve any problems. It's an alternative way of doing things; one that can solve new problems.

The final straw came with:

What are you calling ideas in this case?

I gave him plentiful advice on how to approach people correctly to present his solutions, and respecting the opinions of others, but he refused. I think that's the first time I've asked for someone to be kicked and banned from the channel, and I have no regrets.

Medical Insurance

I was tossing around, thinking "should I post my recent interests in music?" but then remembered that I'm meant to be documenting all the good and bad involved in going to Canada and other things I'm doing. Kind of as a log and guide to anyone else wanting to try the same.

So recently I've been wrestling with health insurance, and working out whether I really need travel insurance instead. Turns out that I should get travel insurance for about a month to cover health and belongings, and then switch to regular private health insurance to enhance the government programmes.

Note the plural in 'programmes'! Canadians see themselves as independent provinces loosely grouped together, so each province has their own Medicare-like system available to provincial residents. Different healthcare costs depending what province you're in. There's some kind of "out-of-province" scheme I still haven't sorted out. They have a relatively weak PBS-like system, so private insurance is still a good idea anyway, though general medical (GPs, emergencies, etc) are free. One good thing is it applies to residents not just citizens. :)