India Rising

India and Australia had one of the best series in recent times. It was unlike the last series in India, where Aus were dominant. Here India played to their potential in the last 3 matches, and if the Sydney test was drawn, it would have been 1-1, which was a fair result, given the performance of the two sides.

I resolved to work from 9-5, but ended up working 5-9.

The US political race has finally entered its last round, but there is still a year to go. doze.. zzzzzzzzzz!!!!I hope Obama gets the nomination and the presidency.

I bought a new home in Ottawa. One of Jinu’s dreams is being fulfilled. We will be shifting in June 2008. I will post snaps of its evolution as and when I get it.

I saw Taare Zameen Par, one of the best movies that I have seen. The movies talks about dyslexia, and parent’s(indian parents) reaction to it, and how children are affected by it. It was Aamir’s debut as a director, and I am mighty impressed with what he had to offer, considering the history of how he came about directing it. It was truly an overwhelming experience, and I have to say that I was overwhelmed by the climax and… I bawled!!!

Bheja Fry!!! Hilarious!!!! Mad cap, and effective comedy.

Shankar and Rajini are going to collaborate again on another project called Robot.

Rajini is going to come in an animated movie - Sultan. This is conceived and directed by her daughter, Soundarya.

I was told about Dave Barry’s columns, and man that guy is good. Reminds me of Chandler sometimes, with his sarcasm and funny lines.

We did some good demos, and hope to get new clients. 2008 is going to be our year, like every other year. Yoohoo!!!

From Ottawa, I wish everyone a Happy New Year

Gavin gives a lesson on how to take on the Aussies: Interesting read. Makes sense.

I’ve been reading your comments in the press after the Twenty20 World Cup win and till the halfway stage of the Future Cup, and I am sorry to say you’ve gotten it all wrong.

And this is placing pressure on your game, at a time when you need consistency of performance, and a galvanized attitude, to be successful against Australia.

Three things have been common to your opening matches: open aggressiveness, verbal sledging, and a belief that you are standing up to Australia.

What you need to understand is that these three things are not about physical actions, but about a mental attitude.

I love the aussie attitude. Even though they come across as arrogant and dominating, I feel that they have every right to do so given their display over the last 10 years or so. They have dominated EVERY single cricket side, and have not let anyone come close to them. Blips like the Ashes defeat in 2005 or the Hadley-Chappell defeat earlier this year, were minor blips from which they have come back strongly and annihilated their opposition. Whenever they have lost, they have fought till the very end. They have never given up on any of the occasions.

In the current series against India, they dominated the first 3 matches, and the Indians

All the reasons I have, are listed in Uday’s blog.  Actually this is the second time, I am shifting to wordpress.  The first time, for whatever reasons, I did not stay in wordpress, but this time around, I am here to stay.  In the context of Blogger, WordPress rocks!!!

While I was preparing for my journey, I was told horror stories about credit score. Apparently, to open a bank account, you need an address, and to get a place, you need a bank account. Duh! Even though it sounded absurd, I did not pause for a moment to question it, and was thinking how I could open a bank account.

For Indians, coming from India, ICICI has an option. You can open an account in India, and when you reach here, you have an account. Check it out. Bear in mind, that an ICICI account makes sense only if you are living in Toronto. As of now they have branches only in Toronto and its surrounding areas. Hopefully they grow into a big bank with lots of ABMs.

Wait a minute, ABM??? Well ATMs are called ABMs here. Automated Banking Machines. Here you don’t see people with cash, its all plastic money. Its either debit cards or credit cards, and you can see loads of them with everyone. I thought 2 cards was luxury, but here you have people going around with 15-20 cards. I am not bluffing, come here and see. Its funny to see people going through their card bundle to make a payment. Err.. this one, no this one.. err…

I know, I know. We were talking about bank accounts, and not someone’s plastic bin. The reason I bought it up was that, you need to select a bank with the maximum ABM network, so that you can minimize your other-bank-ABM withdrawals. RBC and CIBC supposedly have the biggest network of ABMs.

Now that the choice of bank is done, next comes the choice of accounts. I was surprised to know that there can be chequing accounts for individuals. In India, it was only for businesses. Anyways, what it means is that you can get cheques for those accounts, and the savings account is for savings. Simple eh.

To open an account, all you would need is 2 pieces of ID. One is a photo identity, and the other can be either an immigration paper or a letter from your employer. With these, two - you are good to go.

HTH.

Once you get your SIN, its easy to notify any change of address. All you need to do is to call them on their call center number, and then authenticate yourself to the call center agent. And voila, its effected.

There are two ways to defined factory beans in Spring.

1. Where you have a factory class or manager, which has static methods to return instances of various classes. For eg:
public class MyFactory {
public static ClassA getClassAInstance(){
….
return new ClassB();
}

public static ClassB getClassBInstance(){
….
return new ClassB();
}

}

the xml configuration would be:

2. The second approach is when you have a class which has non-static methods to return instances.
public class MyFactory {
public ClassA getClassAInstance(){
….
return new ClassB();
}

public ClassB getClassBInstance(){
….
return new ClassB();
}

}

In this case the xml configuration would slightly change to have another bean, which is then accessed in the other bean definitions.

HTH

Social Insurance Number, or popularly known as SIN, is important for every resident(temporary or permanent) in canada. This number is a unique number given to every resident, who is allowed to work or study, or has been granted citizenship. This ID allows the government to have a single reference for tax, benefits, or for that matter anything. To know more about SIN, check this out.

For a SIN, you would need two pieces of ID. One is your passport and the other is your immigration paper - work permit or student permit. Visitors cannot get a SIN. For temporary residents, the SIN is temporary and temporary SIN starts with 9. By the way, creating a SIN is free. I think you need to pay for it only if you lost it.

Getting a SIN is very easy. You can mail it or you can get it directly. I got the SIN directly, and I would recommend the same for the following reasons - 1. It is easy 2. It is fast and 3. That’s what I know of.

So for the SIN, find a Service Center, take your two pieces of ID and get your SIN.

Best of luck.

PS: In case you find anything different from above, please drop me a line.

The past 2-3 weeks have been hectic but fun. We are trying to settle down, find a place, get the whole thing started, and we are discovering a lot of stuff on the way. I tried to find information from the internet, and though I found some nice sites, it was tough to get them and then to do what was said on it. Since all the information was in different sites, I hope to accumulate them into this blog, and be of help to others.

Before I start listing the process, please be aware that this is based on my experiences, and needn’t be entirely practical for you. I landed here on a worker visa and I have noticed that the majority of the people who come here are landed immigrants, those who have a PR(Permanent Resident) card or refugees. I still think some of the processes are the same, but just in case, please verify.

OK, so for all those confused humans who land here on a work permit, read on…

* Social Insurance Number, commonly known as SIN
* Bank Accounts / Credit Card
* Getting a phone connection (wireless)
* Finding a house
* Health Insurance
* Drivers License
* Renting a car

I am sure there would be more to add to this, but for now, I am listing out what I know, and each point would have a detailed post. Just click on the link to find out more. If there is no link to click, well, in that case, just drop in a comment with your email and I will gladly reply to you.