Antony’s Weblog

This is my last post in this blog. From now on, I won’t update this blog any more.

If you are still interested reading my blog, please visit the following blogs and subscribe the feeds:

• Antony’s Life Blog. A blog about my personal life, including my daily life, career and love.  If you want to know about my personal life, then this might be a starting point.
• Antony’s Personal Opinion. My personal opinions about many topics that interest me, including economy, finance, engineering, computer, etc.  They might jump from one topic to another completely different topic.
• Antony’s Mobile Blog. My personal blog about mobile phone technology and wireless industry.  The postings include mobile phones trends, tutorials and mobile development.
• S60Tips.com. A blog about tips, tricks and tutorials of using S60 phones.  S60 is a smart phones platform from Nokia, based on Symbian OS.

About 6 weeks ago, I applied for extension of my working permit in Canada. The reason is because my current working permit will be expired in the next 2 months. Besides that, I have to go back to my home country for my wedding. I thought it would be better to apply for an extension 4 months in advance.

Yesterday, I received my new working permit. Great! I can work in Canada until 2009. But… wait a second. There is a sentence written in a big font on my working permit. "This does not authorize re-entry". What the h*** is that? I can work in Canada, but I cannot go out and then re-enter Canada?

This morning, I called CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canadian) to clarify it. They said that working permit authorize me to stay in Canada until 2009. However, I cannot go out from Canada and then re-enter Canada during that time frame. If I want to do that, I have to apply for TRV (Temporary Resident Visa).

Ok, that’s fine for me. I thought it should be a bunch of forms to fill out (not again… :(). Then I ask the person on the line, how can I apply for TRV from within Canada? She put me on hold for a couple of minutes. Perhaps she is trying to find out more information.

A couple of minutes later, she came back to me. She said I have to apply TRV from my home country or from the US.
There is no immigration office in Canada that issue TRV. Oh my God… what is the logic behind this???
Well, I think this is my worst experience with immigration process. When I worked in Germany, they issued working permit within 5 days and resident visa within 10 minutes. For the extension, I just need to come to an office and get a new stamp in my passport (also in 10 minutes). When I worked in Singapore, they issued working permit within 3 weeks and resident visa within 1 day. I just need to go to Ministry of Man-power (MOM) office.

Can’t CIC make immigration process easier and faster? There should be something they can do to speed up the process.

Another thing I would like to point out. Currently I have a PR (Permanent esidence) application in Canada. It has been processed for 1 year and 4 months. And still… I still don’t have Canadian PR until today. My friend told me 1 - 2 years is quite normal for PR processing.

I hope someone from CIC read this and do something to make the process faster. I don’t know why they need 6 weeks (only) to extend my working permit.

Don’t you agree that the whole world should be able to study for free?  Recently I am calculating how much money I have to spend if I would have a child that want to study engineering/science in the university.  Fortunately, I don’t have a child yet.  Puih….

We all know that education is so expensive.  It may not be going cheaper either.  So we have to prepare education for our children as early as possible.  You may say that there are a lot of student loans these days.  But living from a loan or credit is not a good habit.  I have been trying myself not to live from credit, except mortgage.  Of course, there is a possibility to apply for scholarship too, but not all students are eligible for that.

Now, let’s see how much is the tuition fee for several universities in the world.  Assume that my child is going to study computer engineering (undergraduate degree) as international students.

• University of British Columbia, Canada
  Tutition fee: C$ 21,093 / year ~= US$ 18,341 / year
• University of California Davis, USA
  Tuition fee: US$ 17,304 / year
• National University of Singapore, Singapore
  Tuition fee: S$ 22,420 / year ~= US$ 13,925 / year

As you can see, the tuition fee itself is more than US$ 10,000 / year.  If we include other costs, like room, food, books, etc., it will easily hit US$ 20,000 / year!

One possibility to get cheap education is going to a country where education is free, for example Germany.  I myself is a graduate from Germany and I enjoyed free tuition fee there.  Unfortunately, I heard that some German universities has started to apply for a small tuition fee.  It is not as expensive as other countries, but then not free any more.

Well, let’s prepare the best we can for our children’s education….

About two months ago, Budi Rahardjo, a security expert and famous blogger from Indonesia, posted an article, Why I should work for Google or Google should hire me.  Many people want to work for Google.  They are the fastest growing technology company in the world.  They just went public with IPO at $85 per share on August 19, 2004 and today their stock has soared to almost $400 per share.

We have seen that the best engineers and scientists in this planet have moved to Google, instead of Microsoft.  We all know that their working environment is perfect for idealist and brilliant people.  They have a corporate motto, "Don’t Be Evil".  They are not chasing money.  They try to solve problems in the right way.  Later, they will try to monetize their solution.  Look at Google’s home page.  So simple, no advertising at all.  Look also at Google’s tools.  All of them are free for users.

Back to the title of this blog, why can’t I work for Google?  A few months ago, one of Google headhunters contacted me.  She asked whether I was interested working for Google.  They are expanding to the mobile world, so they need some experts with mobile competencies.  Unfortunately I had a contract with my current employer for two years (until 2007).  I said to her that I couldn’t resign from my current employer.

Anyway, even if I would have had a chance for an interview, I don’t think I would be able to work for Google.  Here are some reasons:

• I am not young any more (31 years old this September).  Most of Google employees are young and fresh engineers/scientists with age of less than 30 years old.  In fact, I am only 2 years younger than Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
• We have to have full of ideas to work for Google.  I might be very strong in mathematics and engineering.  In fact, I was selected as Indonesian representative to the International Mathematics Olympic 13 years ago.  Unfortunately, I am not a creative person with lots of ideas.  I heard that Google employees are expected to allocate 20% of their time to explore any ideas that interest them.
• They are located at the heart of Silicon Valley.  I have a personal preference not to live in North America.  Although I am currently living in Canada, but I have a plan to go back to Asia someday.

Well… I love Google.  I am using most of their products and services.  If you read this blog, you will notice that I put Google’s AdSense too.