> H O M E

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining — I chose Canada, not the other way around. Not yet at least. Which is precisely the issue here.

Of course, I love paperwork just as much as the next guy. But I mostly tolerate it as long as I see the point in filing it, and I seem to always get that tingling, warm feeling of achievement whenever I seal a 9×12″ envelope and shell out 20 bucks at the Xpresspost counter, secretly hoping that some government agency may, at some point in our space-time continuum, actually receive, fail to misplace, understand, process and finally update me on whatever futile request I had the naive faith to submit four cabinets ago. But, these days, I am starting to get a tiny bit tired with the paperwork game. I feel like I’m losing my edge.

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I’ve been meaning to post about my two-and-a half days in Ottawa for a couple of weeks now, but as you can tell from the recent lack of activity on Goyave, I’ve been rather busy lately.

This was my second time in the National Capital, and the first not in the dead of winter. Although to be honest, the weather could have been better — gusts of wind and the occasional sleet made the 2-h drive quite a pain. Of course it started getting better as we left on the Wednesday afternoon. Oh well, spring is here to stay now.

Impressions of the town… actually pretty positive. Sure, it doesn’t compare with Montreal, nor should it — it’s 3-4 times as small, and seems to have fairly harsh height restrictions ensuring an utterly non-impressive skyline. It also has a lot of redeeming qualities, like the compact, walkable financial district, the parliament hill and the ByWard market. It did seem like pretty much the only spot in town for close-to-decent nightlife, though.

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Fin février, le temps des impots est arrivé. C’est un peu spécial pour nous puisque c’est à la fois notre première déclaration d’impôts et la première au Canada. On a passé un petit moment dessus dimanche après-midi déjà, et quelques questions restent en suspens comme la possibilité de récupérer quelques $$ pour avoir été étudiant une partie de l’année. On a jusqu’au 30 avril pour la soumettre, et ca ne sera pas de trop vu la complexité de l’engin.

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