A matter of (right) experience

This is something that has been stuck in my mind for a while: a post on the so-called Canadian experience. An e-mail I’ve gotten today acted like the trigger to turn my thoughts into words.

A friend I’m in touch with is finding very hard time to get a job as an architect in Vancouver. She’s Spanish, with years of experience. Nevertheless, after months of search she has found only in these days a job as a… waitress.

It is my understanding it is not a lonely case. The more I talk with people the more I hear stories of well-educated and widely experienced professionals who can’t simply find a job related to their experience in Canada. Architects, engineers, doctors, biologists, accountants: it doesn’t matter what they’ve done and whether the job market needs them, it only matters they haven’t studied/worked in Canada, and that’s more than enough to exclude them from the market.

Once I even heard on the TV news the issue of some born-Canadians who graduated in medicine in prestigious universities in UK and now are not allowed to work as doctors in BC, that has a chronic shortage of health workers.

I’m yet to take a taxi here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the Indian driver has a PhD in molecular biology or something like that. Only for IT people things appear to be easier.

I know this problem is widely known and discussed in Canada. Yet it seems a solution is still far to come.

A Canadian colleague of mine claims this is the way the government uses to “punish” people not to have spent money with a Canadian university.

I honestly don’t believe so, but I noticed a big contradiction in the whole system: a degree brings you more points to get qualified to immigrate to Canada, but at the same time proves to be useless when you search for a job. In other words it’s good to get in but not to stay, and that really makes no sense.

My thought is that Canada is shooting itself on a foot. Natural resources are important (and this land has a lot) but brains are more: just imagine what could happen if this country could combine the appeal of a very high quality of life with the ease to see your merit and credentials appreciated even if you come from overseas.

I guess there would be many professionals coming from all over the world happy to get a lighter payslip (compared to USA for example) just to enjoy a magnificent nature and safe cities where to settle down.

In a globalized world the arena is the contribute people can bring in terms of creativity and new ideas.

South Korea for example hugely invested in education, and it is now one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, performing very well despite of the global recession, and it’s probably leading worldwide research on cancer.

Canada has far more potential to attract talents, given there wouldn’t be a language barrier like in South Korea and there are multicultural cities and wonderful landscapes.

It’s time for this country to turn Canadian experience into Relevant Experience.

Hurry up Canada, open your job market and get filled up with talents!

Sunday walk

Long walk today. I met up with a friend and we made a sort of periplus of Stanley Park, from English Bay to Coal Harbour. Probably it’d take a couple of hours with no stops, but being a walk to enjoy the place and talk (she’s as a good walker as a good talker) we took almost 4 hours.

Nice weather is an irresistible attraction to drive Vancouverites out of home, and once more you can understand how this people appreciate healthy lifestyle: it seems that jogging, biking, skating and whatever helps to make the feet work is just a rule for everybody here. I even spotted a guy doing push-ups on a sidewalk.

That’s west coast style, I guess.

 English Bay beach

Vancouver as viewed from Stanley Park

 "Boat park" in Coal Harbour

It sucks, really

I’ve just come from my first real approach to Vancouver nightlife. I don’t know if I should say I’m disappointed, as somehow I was expecting and suspecting it was not properly vibrant. For sure I am not happy about that.

Ok, I’m not 20 years-old anymore, and even in my “golden years” I was not a real disco animal.

Nevertheless I like enjoying some atmosphere in the night, and Vancouver has none, as far as I’ve seen so far.

I must probably admit a pint of Hoegaarden (over 10 dollars bloody hell!!!) unleashed some hidden awareness, but for the first time I came to think I miss Dublin.

Where are the bounces of drunk people, singing and pissing in the streets? Where are the vomits? Where are the girls with the inflatable dummies with that big thing between the legs? Where is the countless number of pubs with extraordinary beers, and venues with for-free entrance?

Yes, of course there were side effects: very dirty and smelly lanes on week-ends night, bad attitude of mother****er bouncers, hamburgers and remnants of kebabs spread all over the streets. Yet that city had personality, with lots of people around, very nice pubs and venues, and genuine drunk paddy boys and girls singing something incomprehensible.

Vancouver is damn quiet and costly. Few people around, and almost every venue has an entrance ticket.

That created a sort of vicious circle: nightlife is bad and expensive, so people don’t go out, and the venues overcharge the few customers they get, making the whole thing even worse.

I’m yet to find a real Irish pub here, with a bar with a proper range of beers.

Now I fully understand why on Wikipedia this has been defined as a no-fun city. A place where people prefer to stay at home or go to a private party flavoured with beer and weed. If there’s anything wild, it must be in a cage.

And, as somebody who lived in Dublin when the green tiger was roaring, I feel like to have just moved from a massive party in a disco to a cemetery in the middle of the night.

This is Vancouver my friends, not Dublin. So let me tell you: it’s beautiful, but the night life sucks, really.

Shopping list (welcome to Costcouver)

There’s only one thing as high as the condos in downtown Vancouver: the cost of living.

To live in city centre is bloody expensive, and out of the reach of most of the ordinary people I suppose.

Last Saturday I went for my first real food shopping since I left my home family.

This is a picture of my healthy effort.

I committed to greately reduce the intake of meat for a while. I previously ate so much of it that now I will stick to a less fat diet, with more fresh stuff.

But if I can keep healthy my veins on the other hand my wallet risked a heart attack: altogether the stuff you see in the picture cost me over 50 bucks. That’s pretty a shame.

I understand quality comes at a price, but I do not see such a great quality in the things I bought.

To make the shopping issue even more difficult I had to spent over half an hour wandering in the streets to find a real supermarket.

In fact against any logic the Pacific Center, a huge shopping centre 3 minutes walk from my flat, has no supermarket. I don’t know how it is possible to think of a shopping center without the most basic thing, i.e. a supermarket.

I now understand the joke of a colleague of mine: “People in downtown do not buy food, they just live to spend money”.

If I think about the rent I can only weep: yes, I got a stunning view over the city but it costs me 860 dollars a month! If you want to live in downtown get ready to open your wallet or to find a cheaper place (and I confess I have already restarted having a look at Craigslist).

More luckily I got 4 decent tee-shirts for 31 dollars. They’re no great, but who cares. I’m Italian I know, but I’m also living in the third worst city in the world in terms of style, so I will be great anyway.

Here it comes a list of items I purchased at IGA Marketplace in Richards Street, just to give you an idea of the prices:

Granola for breakfast…………………………….....…...3.99

Granola bars……………………………………..………...3.89

Sandwich turkey & cranberries……………................4.49

Orange juice………………………………………….....…2.39

Bottle deposit (wtf is that???)………………............…0.25

Recycle fee (wtf is that???)……………………............0.10

250g of tasteless Canadian cheese………….............6.09

Herring fillets……………………………………..…..…...4.89

Carr’s crackers……………………………….....…...3.39 X 2

Sushi……………………………………………...…......…6.99

2 carrots……………………………………….…..…........0.71

Raspberries……………………………………............…5.99

Cucumber…………………………………………...........0.99

Coconut Tofu……………………………...…................1.85

Total (HST included)……………............…….……....50.41 dollars (as of right now = 38.95 euro).

… and they even dared to place on the bill in bold letters: You saved $3.06

They must have thought at least irony can be given away for free, with no additional cost.

And by the way: 2 litres of organic whole milk cost 5.29 dollars.

Welcome to Costcouver!

Flat on the top

I’ve been busy in these last days to move my staff and get used to the routine of a finally former jobless, but as now I’m a little bit more settled in my new flat, I got some spare time.

Since I was thinking of moving to Vancouver I had in my mind the clear idea to give a try to live in downtown; well… I must say I got what I wanted.

I now live in a flat at the 30^th floor of a skyscraper. The place should maybe be refurnished but no doubt: you get a wonderful sight on the city.

Is that what I really wanted? It’s maybe too early to confirm it.

I’m actually surprised and disappointed by the amount of noise you get from downtown, and I can’t figure out yet how comes that the sirens of police and ambulances can reach even my room at the 30^th floor.

Noise that anyway hasn’t prevented me to notice a nonsense of the English language: how can be a flat located in a skyscraper, i.e. in something that is high, thus far from being flat? Native-speaker explanation required!

I miss anyway my host family. I spent over three months with them in a quiet suburb of Vancouver close to Burnaby, learning more about Filipino food (bittermelon is not so bad, and Filipino sausages are great). They are really lovely people and I wish them the best.

I will have also to refocus my priority. I stopped searching for a job for now and I must decide how to use profitably my off-work time.

Maybe it’s really time to get out more often and get something to put into this pages, as I noticed I recently broadened the number of the followers of my blog.

Here come a couple of photos I shot from my balcony.