Craigslist, Rooms/Shared section, starting point of my Seattle housing search. Here's the attributes of my ideal house, in order of importance:

• 5+ cool housemates, gender balanced
• Urban neighbourhood, not suburban, low-density, all-residential
• Walking/Biking distance to work
• Super close to groceries, like two-minutes-walk close
• The house itself should be old and lived in, not new and sterile feeling
• Close to YMCA and climbing gym
• ...

In fact, I want something exactly like 3623 St Urbain, my place this past summer in Montreal.

A related item of interest is the "Best Of Craigslist" page (RSS), where you'll find the posts voted funniest/weirdest/coolest by readers. MY CRAZY GIRLFRIEND made me laugh recently.

I need an unofficial transcript from Quest (UW's online student information system) ASAP for my H1-B application (see below) but it won't give me one because I owe a $50 late fee from last term's tuition. I paid it a couple days ago, and now my account balance is zero, but the "hold" is still there! I'm trying very hard not to panic. On the bright side, maybe this will be my last interaction with Quest ever!

H1B Cap Much Earlier than Anticipated Now that I've accepted my full time job offer at Amazon.com, we're trying to work through all the visa details. The U.S. only issues a fixed number of H1Bs for "new employment" each fiscal year, and once that number is reached, you're out of luck until next October. This year there are only about 1/3 as many H1Bs being issued as in 2003, and according to the article above from an immigration law firm, they are being used up faster than ever.

The people helping me at Amazon are worried that the cap will be reached very soon. There's a lot of paper work to pull together for the application, but it's hard when 1) School is closed for Christmas 2) Marks aren't finalized 3) You can't see your transcript because of $50 credit history that you paid but isn't yet reflected in Quest because school is closed.

This article from the same firm issued a week ago suggests that the issue isn't so urgent. USCIS (formerly INS) estimates H1Bs will run out in Spring, and will issue a firm projected date at the end of January (by which time my petition should be in).

I don't know why I don't just get a TN-1 NAFTA professional visa, which looks like so much less work.

A year ago, after working in the U.S. for two terms, getting in trouble for leaving the country without that stupid pink form, and all the other associated headaches, I remember how sweet it was to move to a job in Montreal without any such hassle. Just get on a plane and find a place to live.

A recent NY Times article, Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S. highlights and quantifies all the stereotypes of Americans that Canadians hold dear. But this article in today's Globe articulates what I learned living in San Francisco on co-op for the better part of a year. Differences in social views are strongly regional, and in the Northeast and on the west coast (where I'll be moving in the new year) the people I'll live and work with will probably seem, well, pretty normal. Indistinguishable from Canadians, even. Yes, some Americans are the gun-toting, bible thumping, flag waving, gay-bashing, yee-haw, bomb-em-back-to-the-stone-age stereotype, (and where would the Canadian identity be without them?) BUT, contrary to conventional Canadian wisdom, you can easily move to the states and choose not to live anywhere near them.

Consider a place like, say, Seattle for example. The editor of the Seattle Times read that NY Times piece and thought in response:

Accepting of gay marriage, reluctant to make pot-smoking criminal, distrustful of Republicans, unchurched ... Hey, wait a minute! These aren't Canadians, they're Seattleites!

So there you have it. Up with the open-minded, cosmopolitan, urban centers where I wouldn't mind living, and down with Canadian ignorance of America's "normal" side.