Auspicious Anniversaries Approaching
We're now into the latter part of October, and once again my thoughts are not about Hallowe'en and all the fun dress-up that involves, but of the events of 11 years ago that led up to my moving away from California up here to the Vancouver area of British Columbia.
On July 2nd 2003 I was let go from my position with a tech company in the Bay Area. To be honest, had this not happened I probably would have been going back to the UK anyway, because there was no way - with the state the US economy had been left in since the big tech crash of 2000 - I could have gotten permanent residence.
On July 25th, I drove north up to Vancouver to spend a couple of weeks job hunting.
On July 31st, I had my first interview of that trip.
On August 6th, I had a followup interview with that same company. These were the only interviews I had gotten.
On September 10th, I got the offer from that company.
October 16th, I drove down to LA to sort out the temporary work permit at the Canadian consulate in Los Angeles, which ended up being a source of drama due to a whole bunch of other documentation I didn't immediately have.
October 26th, I depart Cupertino, CA
October 27th, I land in Canada.
October 31st, I go to the freighters to pick up my belongings I shipped up and have to deal with Canada Customs. That CSI episode aired just a few days ago, and all the costumes I had in the manifest got me questions about that.
Since then, Hallowe'en has never "worked" for me. I had gone down to the local Howloween party for a few years since there, but never seemed to have too much fun there. In 2003 on Hallowe'en night I was moving into an apartment, and no-one came to the doors there. By 2004 I was living in the basement (well, ground floor) suite of a house, and also never got anyone come to the door. In 2008, I had gotten my permanent residency in Canada the year before, and had just moved into my own townhouse on October 24th, and was too exhausted to do anything for Hallowe'en. In 2009, I had only just gotten back from a work trip to Portugal, and again, couldn't be bothered to do anything.
Only things that really came close to getting into the spirit were an evening down at the Niles Haunt that Aeto volunteers at one weekend in 2012 (the other night was a complete rain-out) and a couple of full weekends last year. This year I've been unavailable virtual all weekends in October due to parents visiting Seattle and other stuff, with work on-call taking the remaining.
This wasn't meant to be my yearly grumble about Hallowe'en and not being able to get into it.
Really, it's about... are things working for me up here in Canada? Sure, I have a steady job that I've been at now for almost 11 years, now have citizenship and can't be easily shipped back to the UK if I lose the job or work down in the US for longer than I'd be allowed to keep the Canadian residence.
But am I happy here, or just coasting? I think that it could be the latter. My job doesn't really interest me much anymore, and I feel that the skills that I had built up - mainly on the systems admin side of things - prior to 2002 are now very much stagnated. I didn't want to be doing techical support for 13 years straight. There's been far less travel options for me at work, and increasingly my manager doesn't like to send me traveling because he sees me as the best troubleshooter for problems and doesn't like to lose that for a week or two at the time. Working in downtown Vancouver and living out in Maple Ridge really only gives me the train as a way to commute to/from work, and the schedule is very limited meaning that flex time is impossible. To get in to work, I have to get up at 5:15-5:45am (depending on the day). This has the knock-on effect coupled with where I live that means that socialization is very difficult unless I want to survive the next day on little sleep. And socialization is nowhere near what it used to be for me down in the Bay Area. Not just random dinners with people (of which I've tried many times to see if anyone was around, and got pretty much no response), but even stuff like community mascot opportunities are slipping to barely any.
I appreciate that there is a group here that does this, but it's nothing like Critters by the Bay. I see that just this weekend, CbtB had a local Hallowe'en themed event they went to, and there usually seems to be something they do every month - with more starting around April; parades, Easter events, etc. Here? Seems that few people in the local group are interested in parades, and there's such reluctance to do more events that there only seems to be 5 events on the yearly calendar, and very spread out.
I used to be so into costuming and loved to get out there and do things! Critters by the Bay really helped to keep that fire stoked. But now? That fire is waning. I don't want it to go out, and conventions are just not cutting it. Costuming at conventions really has become so much less fun these days; no-one really cares who is in a costume or not for the most part it seems. So much different with costuming around the public, which I think is far more rewarding.
I do think that I definitely need some change in my life. The company I work at recently sold itself to another in such a way that it keeps itself intact with all staff (including the CEO, who now basically is employed by someone else to be the CEO of this company). Theoretically, we're meant to get stock next year, but no-one has said yet what the details of that will be. That's pretty much a guaranteed bonus, as opposed to the profit sharing carrot-and-stick that had been dangled in front of us for years and nothing much coming out of it. (2 payouts in 6 years despite consistent growth from year to year).
I could start to look elsewhere for a job, but that's scary. As mentioned, I really think that my skills have stagnated. There have been new technologies in the last 13 years that I haven't kept up on, or been able to have any experience on. Immediately that puts me at a disadvantage. Also, I have about 25 days of vacation per year I can use with this job. Going back to as low as 10 days a year would really hurt.
Now that I've got Canadian citizenship, I could look outside Canada and back down to the US - probably Seattle. As alluring as getting back to the US is, that's scary too because of being a home owner. I'd have to look at selling my place (because strata rules are such that I can't rent it out), and I'm not sure how much work that I'd have to do in order to get it sale-worthy.
*sigh* So, there's just a lot on my mind right now...
On July 2nd 2003 I was let go from my position with a tech company in the Bay Area. To be honest, had this not happened I probably would have been going back to the UK anyway, because there was no way - with the state the US economy had been left in since the big tech crash of 2000 - I could have gotten permanent residence.
On July 25th, I drove north up to Vancouver to spend a couple of weeks job hunting.
On July 31st, I had my first interview of that trip.
On August 6th, I had a followup interview with that same company. These were the only interviews I had gotten.
On September 10th, I got the offer from that company.
October 16th, I drove down to LA to sort out the temporary work permit at the Canadian consulate in Los Angeles, which ended up being a source of drama due to a whole bunch of other documentation I didn't immediately have.
October 26th, I depart Cupertino, CA
October 27th, I land in Canada.
October 31st, I go to the freighters to pick up my belongings I shipped up and have to deal with Canada Customs. That CSI episode aired just a few days ago, and all the costumes I had in the manifest got me questions about that.
Since then, Hallowe'en has never "worked" for me. I had gone down to the local Howloween party for a few years since there, but never seemed to have too much fun there. In 2003 on Hallowe'en night I was moving into an apartment, and no-one came to the doors there. By 2004 I was living in the basement (well, ground floor) suite of a house, and also never got anyone come to the door. In 2008, I had gotten my permanent residency in Canada the year before, and had just moved into my own townhouse on October 24th, and was too exhausted to do anything for Hallowe'en. In 2009, I had only just gotten back from a work trip to Portugal, and again, couldn't be bothered to do anything.
Only things that really came close to getting into the spirit were an evening down at the Niles Haunt that Aeto volunteers at one weekend in 2012 (the other night was a complete rain-out) and a couple of full weekends last year. This year I've been unavailable virtual all weekends in October due to parents visiting Seattle and other stuff, with work on-call taking the remaining.
This wasn't meant to be my yearly grumble about Hallowe'en and not being able to get into it.
Really, it's about... are things working for me up here in Canada? Sure, I have a steady job that I've been at now for almost 11 years, now have citizenship and can't be easily shipped back to the UK if I lose the job or work down in the US for longer than I'd be allowed to keep the Canadian residence.
But am I happy here, or just coasting? I think that it could be the latter. My job doesn't really interest me much anymore, and I feel that the skills that I had built up - mainly on the systems admin side of things - prior to 2002 are now very much stagnated. I didn't want to be doing techical support for 13 years straight. There's been far less travel options for me at work, and increasingly my manager doesn't like to send me traveling because he sees me as the best troubleshooter for problems and doesn't like to lose that for a week or two at the time. Working in downtown Vancouver and living out in Maple Ridge really only gives me the train as a way to commute to/from work, and the schedule is very limited meaning that flex time is impossible. To get in to work, I have to get up at 5:15-5:45am (depending on the day). This has the knock-on effect coupled with where I live that means that socialization is very difficult unless I want to survive the next day on little sleep. And socialization is nowhere near what it used to be for me down in the Bay Area. Not just random dinners with people (of which I've tried many times to see if anyone was around, and got pretty much no response), but even stuff like community mascot opportunities are slipping to barely any.
I appreciate that there is a group here that does this, but it's nothing like Critters by the Bay. I see that just this weekend, CbtB had a local Hallowe'en themed event they went to, and there usually seems to be something they do every month - with more starting around April; parades, Easter events, etc. Here? Seems that few people in the local group are interested in parades, and there's such reluctance to do more events that there only seems to be 5 events on the yearly calendar, and very spread out.
I used to be so into costuming and loved to get out there and do things! Critters by the Bay really helped to keep that fire stoked. But now? That fire is waning. I don't want it to go out, and conventions are just not cutting it. Costuming at conventions really has become so much less fun these days; no-one really cares who is in a costume or not for the most part it seems. So much different with costuming around the public, which I think is far more rewarding.
I do think that I definitely need some change in my life. The company I work at recently sold itself to another in such a way that it keeps itself intact with all staff (including the CEO, who now basically is employed by someone else to be the CEO of this company). Theoretically, we're meant to get stock next year, but no-one has said yet what the details of that will be. That's pretty much a guaranteed bonus, as opposed to the profit sharing carrot-and-stick that had been dangled in front of us for years and nothing much coming out of it. (2 payouts in 6 years despite consistent growth from year to year).
I could start to look elsewhere for a job, but that's scary. As mentioned, I really think that my skills have stagnated. There have been new technologies in the last 13 years that I haven't kept up on, or been able to have any experience on. Immediately that puts me at a disadvantage. Also, I have about 25 days of vacation per year I can use with this job. Going back to as low as 10 days a year would really hurt.
Now that I've got Canadian citizenship, I could look outside Canada and back down to the US - probably Seattle. As alluring as getting back to the US is, that's scary too because of being a home owner. I'd have to look at selling my place (because strata rules are such that I can't rent it out), and I'm not sure how much work that I'd have to do in order to get it sale-worthy.
*sigh* So, there's just a lot on my mind right now...