Recent content by axolotl

My partner showed her passport and expired PR and told the border agent that we were in Europe for three months for a medical treatment. No further questions. We were two adults and a small child. (Both the child and I have Canadian passports.) Not exactly the type that would raise suspicions.

Eventually we flew to the US and entered Canada in an Uber. By the time when we withdrew the application, since we were already in Canada, its status was still "submitted".

We travelled to Europe on March 15. While already in Europe, my partner noticed that her PR card had expired on March 17. She applied for a PRTD immediately. (It's our first trip outside Canada so Residency Obligations should not be a problem.) But since then, its status is stuck at...

Almost 2 years have passed since my last post. Here's an update. My son is now 3.5 years old. He is doing great. Since last November, he has been staying at home with us. His vocabulary in English has exploded. Now he knows the names of all the planets in the solar system and of many dinosaurs...

Technically, I could simply apply to become a Dutch citizen again. Since my spouse is a Dutch citizen, I won't have to give up my Canadian citizenship. It will however require me to live in the Netherlands physically for a year before I can apply. (For better or for worse, there are special and...

Thank you very much! I'll be a bit more concrete. The country which I am talking about is The Netherlands. Can I assume that I will be safe if I always go back to the Netherlands to renew my passport there?

Let's say I am from a country which does not allow dual citizenship. Becoming a Canadian citizen means, at least theoretically, that I will automatically lose my current citizenship. My question is, how can my country of origin know it? Does Canada share such information with one's country of...

I moved to Quebec last June. So I've already experienced the winter here.

I am now on parental leave for a second time (although it's about the same baby). A good moment for some reflections. It was a great decision to move to Montreal from Toronto. Quality of life is much better here. I recently purchased a three-bedroom house for 336,000 dollars, on a...

I am now focusing on paying off my mortgage in the Netherlands at 4.7%. It is partly because I feel an economic/financial winter is coming. If it does come, I will have cash/income to buy whatever at a more attractive price. If it does not, it's also okay. Recently I read Antifragile. It has...

The secret of two-hour working days is to have your boss in a different city (e.g. Toronto). Commute is not bad at all. I used to take the train to Montreal and the train itself took 30 minutes. Now I drive (25 minutes) to Costco, where I can park for free, and then walk to the office in...

I haven't bought any other property since then. The move to Quebec has made it less easy to look actively for properties in the Windsor region. I tried, but could not find anything as interesting in the Montreal area. The market here is less crazy than in Toronto. But it is still hard to...

Indeed it has been a while since my last update. Here's a brief summary of what happened since then. I became less and less happy with my then employer and I left in April 2018. I started with another company in Montreal as a Lead Data Scientist in July. Now I live in Saint Bruno, a small town...

Any specific questions?

Just for fun, I did some research on the legality of putting one's extra rooms on Airbnb in Ontario. The findings are very interesting. First of all, as long as a tenant still occupies the unit, it does not constitute a sublet, and consequently any no-sublet clause in the lease agreement does...