Immigrants of P&B

[Torpar]

1 minute ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Yes, I don’t think it is a usual thought on Canada. 

Several reasons I guess. I actually used to live in Canada as a kid and have a number of family members there. The ‘hype’ of Canada in the 70’s probably raised expectations too high.

As a kid we stayed in Whitby and when I moved myself it was to Oshawa

 

Say no more..

[Tight minge]

Just now, Torpar said:

Say no more..

Actually, I probably could have just written that one word and it would have been clear. Stayed with my Uncle in Whitby at first and bought a house in Oshawa as there were some new builds that looked good (Taunton to be precise). 

I think if I had moved straight from Scotland to Canada it would have been a lot different.

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

8 minutes ago, Torpar said:

The cost of living, you can buy a 5 bedroom house in Regina for the same price as 400sq ft 1 bedroom apartment in Toronto. The big city is cool when you are young and single but now I'm married with a kid I'd rather she didn't have to grow up here. 

Yeah but the reason for that is that no one wants to live there as it’s boring as f**k and full of farming truckers. Scorching summers and bitterly cold winters. Bland landscapes. Each to their own I suppose.

[Barry Ferguson's Hat]

I moved to Australia because I didn't have anything better to do and thought it would be a laugh to drink alcohol and take drugs in a different country. It was, so after my 2 years there I spent two years in New Zealand then two years in Canada doing the same thing. Was absolutely class.

Now I live in Ireland but don't have a dealer yet. 

[Torpar]

14 minutes ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Yeah but the reason for that is that no one wants to live there as it’s boring as f**k and full of farming truckers. Scorching summers and bitterly cold winters. Bland landscapes. Each to their own I suppose.

Unless I moved to BC (mild winters) or one of the territories, that's pretty much everywhere in Canada. I'm in my mid 30s, I'm married and I don't drink anymore, I'd be quite happy to live in a little hick town with "nothing to do" if it meant affording such luxuries as a house with a garden, which in Toronto is near impossible. I've had my fix of big city life now. 

1 minute ago, Barry Ferguson's Hat said:

I moved to Australia because I didn't have anything better to do and thought it would be a laugh to drink alcohol and take drugs in a different country. It was, so after my 2 years there I spent two years in New Zealand then two years in Canada doing the same thing. Was absolutely class.

Now I live in Ireland but don't have a dealer yet. 

Have you tried reaching out to your local paramilitary group?

[Torpar]

32 minutes ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Actually, I probably could have just written that one word and it would have been clear. Stayed with my Uncle in Whitby at first and bought a house in Oshawa as there were some new builds that looked good (Taunton to be precise). 

I think if I had moved straight from Scotland to Canada it would have been a lot different.

We actually looked at the Oshawa/Pickering area as a place to move but like anywhere that's within 90 minutes of Toronto, the price of homes are ridiculous. Barrie is now the move expensive city to rent in Ontario, I like the South Barrie/Innisfil area a lot, especially near Lake Simcoe but it's out of our price range, even Brantford is getting expensive, so moving out of province looks more attractive at the moment. 

[SlipperyP]

4 hours ago, EH75 said:

Moved to Norfolk from West Lothian 6 years ago. Missus is from here. Its alright I suppose. The weather is generally better which is a big plus but other than that I can't say its too different. Its full of gammons and the insistence of everyone giving me their uninformed opinions on the economy of a hypothetical independent Scotland within 2 minutes of me arriving here got very old very quickly. I don't miss the sectarianism or the rain but I do miss the humour and being able to converse about fitba with folk. Invariably conversations down here will revolve about the poor standard of the league or the Old Firm, which again people generally don't know as much about as they think they do. I would be quite happy to move back in future but other half probably wouldn't be as keen. We'll see.

I don't know your age, but was in Solihull at 19, got involved with  cricket, football rugby everything, move and  grove.....never be fieirt to ask.

[welshbairn]

Just now, SlipperyP said:

I don't know your age, but was in Solihull at 19, got involved with  cricket, football rugby everything, move and  grove.....never be fieirt to ask.

He'll never fit in with Norfolk society without webbed feet for crossing the marshes.

[SlipperyP]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

He'll never fit in with Norfolk society without webbed feet for crossing the marshes.

Separation? ,

I know what you ken but....

 

[carpetmonster]

4 hours ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Just wondering have any of you ever encountered the kind of exceptionalist shite foreign migrants get over here with the ‘dey dook or jaabs’ type stuff or are the places youve settled not backward hick shiteholes?

Only once - was told I was ‘a British guy’ and I should ‘go home’ by a white American woman in Miami. Lot of white Americans there who are complete arseholes, see themselves as having been colonized by the Cubans & Colombians. 

[mugen_power]

Another one in Canada here.

Moved here originally in 2012 sponsored by a company in a specialist field.

Got made redundant halfway through 2014 but found another job in the industry which had me travelling constantly in North America so I did see a LOT of the continent and got a feel of places I'd quite like to stay permanently

Met my wife here, moved back to Scotland in mid 2016 for a couple of years just to get away from the travelling for a while. We were doing very well for ourselves there but she couldn't hack it cos she missed her mum. So start of 2019 we came back to Calgary and I went back into the travelling job...our 1st born (son) arrived in 2020 and she's not feeling the stay-at-home-mum lifestyle like I hoped she would

I'd ideally like to move somewhere in the central USA, but whether she comes with me would remain to be seen

I'm eligible for citizenship in March, so when I've got that done and dusted, I'll weigh my options

I miss a lot about Scotland - the people, the fitba, certain foods, the "pub culture" and the ease of travel

I don't miss the weather, the cost of petrol or the utter shite negative mentality thats been mentioned already, which is especially prevalent in west of Scotland factory workers

Edited August 6, 2021 by mugen_power

[SlipperyP]

5 hours ago, hk blues said:

Here, pretty much every sizeable business is owned by the Chinese in some way or other.    Duterte has made it clear he'd prefer to get into bed with them than the Americans - what a choice to have!

Bitch my fist, I'm tryiing..........got 15  good thais, it a shiitre....... 2 weeks dead,.

Problem we can still work but we have no produced, folk @philpy ?

4 hours ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Just wondering have any of you ever encountered the kind of exceptionalist shite foreign migrants get over here with the ‘dey dook or jaabs’ type stuff or are the places youve settled not backward hick shiteholes?

 

[MSU]

What a great thread.

For my part, I moved over here in the summer of 2012 but it all started in January of 2011 when me and Wife #1 split up. She bought me out of the house we had in Alloa and I got myself a nice wee flat above a Ladbrokes in Stirling and booked myself a holiday in Boston. I write a wee bit and had arranged to meet up with some writer friends I'd made online over the years, actually pretty much 10 years ago to the day. One of those friends would go on to become Wife #2. I went back over to see her a couple more times and decided to give it a bit of a go. At the time I worked for an insurance company in Stirling who had a sister company in Michigan. The first time I looked at their job board online, I saw something that was 95% the job I was doing. So I applied, got an interview, and on March 1, 2012, as I was sitting in Morrison's CBC, I got a call from their HR department offering me the job.

There then began four months of immigration hell and waiting around and I learned more about applying for a visa than I'll ever need to know again. Like, when I applied for a visa, I wasn't really applying for a visa, I was applying for a petition to apply for a visa. Because the job I did in Stirling was fairly niche, and it was the same in Michigan, we were able to bombard Immigration Services with paperwork describing the positions in glorious terms so they eventually granted the petition. The next stage was a meeting at the embassy in London. On the advice of my Immigration Lawyer, I got suited and booted and jumped on the sleeper down to That London.

In those days, you weren't allowed anything electronic in the US Embassy but there was a wee chemist nearby that would hold on to your stuff for a tenner or whatever. That place must've made a fucking fortune. When I dropped off my electronics, I was aware that I had made one mistake, which was wearing a new pair of work shoes that were sawing their way through my achilles as I walked to the embassy. The second mistake was being told at the embassy that my paperwork hadn't been submitted. Someone had forgotten to hit the COMPLETE button on the form. That someone was probably me. So I had to walk back to the chemist, that was also an internet cafe, log on and hit the button. I limped back to the embassy, stood in line again, only to be told that the paperwork wasn't through. So I hobbled back to the chemist where I checked, it was complete, but one of the chemist staff, who were all experts in US Immigration, told me that it can frequently take an hour for the updates to filter through. My shoes were now filling with blood as my razor sharp shoes went about amputating my feet as I squelched back to the embassy, stood in line, saw the immigration officer who confirmed the application was now complete. He asked me three questions: what's your name, what's your date of birth, what company are you going to work for in the US. He stamped a form and my visa was approved. I crawled back to the chemist, retrieved my phone and bought some plasters for my poor feet. 

A week later, and I was standing in Edinburgh airport saying goodbye to my mum and cousins and as I walked to security, because for four months I'd been just waiting for something to go wrong and f**k everything up, I remember thinking, "Well, I guess I'm moving to Michigan." So the first time I was in Michigan was the day I moved to Michigan, wife #2 joining me from Connecticut a little later, and we got married that September. My new company put me up in a hotel for a couple of months while I found a place to live, eventually settling in a town I'd never heard of, which is where I am now. I became a citizen a couple of years ago and now have two passports which, along with raging misogyny and a violent approach to the preparation of vodka martinis, makes me feel a bit like Jimmy Bond. 

Nobody tells you how much it costs to live in the US and while lots of things are cheap, there's plenty that's ridiculously expensive. My mobile, Wi-FI, car insurance, health insurance etc are all far more than I expected and for the first few years, money was really tight. And starting again at 38 as I was at the time with no credit makes life a bit more difficult than it should be. Winters are shite here and Summers are hot and humid. But between traveling with work and general wanderlust, I've been to 44 states and visited the graves of 28 former presidents around the country.

I've only been back to Scotland three times in the last nine years, and I haven't been back since 2015, when my mum passed away. I've no real family left in Scotland so I don't know if or when I'll be back, and I've made my peace with that. I do miss my friends back home, I miss square sausage which I've tried and failed to recreate a hundred times. I miss Irn Bru. I miss the NHS. I miss Raads kebab in Alloa, Falcone's chippy in Carronshore, I miss getting off the work's bus outside Morrison's Cold Beer with every intention of going straight home and then ending up in the pub until 9. Again. I miss public transport. I miss being able to drive by the house in Carronshore where my family lived from 1950 and which was always my sanctuary and safety net. I miss that last one a lot.

 

[MSU]

1 hour ago, mugen_power said:

Another one in Canada here.

Moved here originally in 2012 sponsored by a company in a specialist field.

Got made redundant halfway through 2014 but found another job in the industry which had me travelling constantly in North America so I did see a LOT of the continent and got a feel of places I'd quite like to stay permanently

Met my wife here, moved back to Scotland in mid 2016 for a couple of years just to get away from the travelling for a while. We were doing very well for ourselves there but she couldn't hack it cos she missed her mum. So start of 2019 we came back to Calgary and I went back into the travelling job...our 1st born (son) arrived in 2020 and she's not feeling the stay-at-home-mum lifestyle like I hoped she would

I'd ideally like to move somewhere in the central USA, but whether she comes with me would remain to be seen

I'm eligible for citizenship in March, so when I've got that done and dusted, I'll weigh my options

I miss a lot about Scotland - the people, the fitba, certain foods, the "pub culture" and the ease of travel

I don't miss the weather, the cost of petrol or the utter shite negative mentality thats been mentioned already, which is especially prevalent in west of Scotland factory workers

I love Ontario and have tentative plans to move there at some point. The most I've been confused in a long time, tho, was at BP in Canada where I was trying to convert Canadian Dollars per litre to US Dollars per gallon to figure out how much petrol to ask for. 

[BFTD]

6 minutes ago, MSU said:

I miss Raads kebab in Alloa,

I'll pass on your regards when I order a massive donner hoagie tonight 

(j/k, on a diet)

[mugen_power]

7 minutes ago, MSU said:

I love Ontario and have tentative plans to move there at some point. The most I've been confused in a long time, tho, was at BP in Canada where I was trying to convert Canadian Dollars per litre to US Dollars per gallon to figure out how much petrol to ask for. 

I did a couple of jobs in Windsor...incredible how two cities so close to each other are polar opposites

Although the fuel thing...is Michigan one of those states where it's illegal to pump your own gas?

[Granny Danger]

6 minutes ago, BFTD said:

I'll pass on your regards when I order a massive donner hoagie tonight 

(j/k, on a diet)

Aye, you’d normally have two.

[Granny Danger]

17 minutes ago, MSU said:

What a great thread.

For my part, I moved over here in the summer of 2012 but it all started in January of 2011 when me and Wife #1 split up. She bought me out of the house we had in Alloa and I got myself a nice wee flat above a Ladbrokes in Stirling and booked myself a holiday in Boston. I write a wee bit and had arranged to meet up with some writer friends I'd made online over the years, actually pretty much 10 years ago to the day. One of those friends would go on to become Wife #2. I went back over to see her a couple more times and decided to give it a bit of a go. At the time I worked for an insurance company in Stirling who had a sister company in Michigan. The first time I looked at their job board online, I saw something that was 95% the job I was doing. So I applied, got an interview, and on March 1, 2012, as I was sitting in Morrison's CBC, I got a call from their HR department offering me the job.

There then began four months of immigration hell and waiting around and I learned more about applying for a visa than I'll ever need to know again. Like, when I applied for a visa, I wasn't really applying for a visa, I was applying for a petition to apply for a visa. Because the job I did in Stirling was fairly niche, and it was the same in Michigan, we were able to bombard Immigration Services with paperwork describing the positions in glorious terms so they eventually granted the petition. The next stage was a meeting at the embassy in London. On the advice of my Immigration Lawyer, I got suited and booted and jumped on the sleeper down to That London.

In those days, you weren't allowed anything electronic in the US Embassy but there was a wee chemist nearby that would hold on to your stuff for a tenner or whatever. That place must've made a fucking fortune. When I dropped off my electronics, I was aware that I had made one mistake, which was wearing a new pair of work shoes that were sawing their way through my achilles as I walked to the embassy. The second mistake was being told at the embassy that my paperwork hadn't been submitted. Someone had forgotten to hit the COMPLETE button on the form. That someone was probably me. So I had to walk back to the chemist, that was also an internet cafe, log on and hit the button. I limped back to the embassy, stood in line again, only to be told that the paperwork wasn't through. So I hobbled back to the chemist where I checked, it was complete, but one of the chemist staff, who were all experts in US Immigration, told me that it can frequently take an hour for the updates to filter through. My shoes were now filling with blood as my razor sharp shoes went about amputating my feet as I squelched back to the embassy, stood in line, saw the immigration officer who confirmed the application was now complete. He asked me three questions: what's your name, what's your date of birth, what company are you going to work for in the US. He stamped a form and my visa was approved. I crawled back to the chemist, retrieved my phone and bought some plasters for my poor feet. 

A week later, and I was standing in Edinburgh airport saying goodbye to my mum and cousins and as I walked to security, because for four months I'd been just waiting for something to go wrong and f**k everything up, I remember thinking, "Well, I guess I'm moving to Michigan." So the first time I was in Michigan was the day I moved to Michigan, wife #2 joining me from Connecticut a little later, and we got married that September. My new company put me up in a hotel for a couple of months while I found a place to live, eventually settling in a town I'd never heard of, which is where I am now. I became a citizen a couple of years ago and now have two passports which, along with raging misogyny and a violent approach to the preparation of vodka martinis, makes me feel a bit like Jimmy Bond. 

Nobody tells you how much it costs to live in the US and while lots of things are cheap, there's plenty that's ridiculously expensive. My mobile, Wi-FI, car insurance, health insurance etc are all far more than I expected and for the first few years, money was really tight. And starting again at 38 as I was at the time with no credit makes life a bit more difficult than it should be. Winters are shite here and Summers are hot and humid. But between traveling with work and general wanderlust, I've been to 44 states and visited the graves of 28 former presidents around the country.

I've only been back to Scotland three times in the last nine years, and I haven't been back since 2015, when my mum passed away. I've no real family left in Scotland so I don't know if or when I'll be back, and I've made my peace with that. I do miss my friends back home, I miss square sausage which I've tried and failed to recreate a hundred times. I miss Irn Bru. I miss the NHS. I miss Raads kebab in Alloa, Falcone's chippy in Carronshore, I miss getting off the work's bus outside Morrison's Cold Beer with every intention of going straight home and then ending up in the pub until 9. Again. I miss public transport. I miss being able to drive by the house in Carronshore where my family lived from 1950 and which was always my sanctuary and safety net. I miss that last one a lot.

 

That is a very uplifting and life affirming post.

[MSU]

2 minutes ago, mugen_power said:

I did a couple of jobs in Windsor...incredible how two cities so close to each other are polar opposites

Although the fuel thing...is Michigan one of those states where it's illegal to pump your own gas?

Ha! No, the only place I've been where that was a thing was New Jersey which nearly got me into some bother when I didn't realize. Michigan also has the good sense to have those wee clippy things on the pump trigger that keeps it depressed. Connecticut doesn't have that, or at least it didn't, and it used to drive me mental that I had to stand there, depressing my own petrol pump trigger with my actual own fingers like a fucking neanderthal.

[Torpar]

10 minutes ago, MSU said:

I love Ontario and have tentative plans to move there at some point. The most I've been confused in a long time, tho, was at BP in Canada where I was trying to convert Canadian Dollars per litre to US Dollars per gallon to figure out how much petrol to ask for. 

I personally wouldn't mind leaving this province and never returning, though I have to admit small town Ontario can be quite nice, most places are outside of the GTA. 

My office is opposite the US Consulate in Toronto and can confirm you still can't bring in electrical stuff, the local convivence store will hold them for you for a fee. I'm been lucky enough here to find Irn Bru in two supermarket chains and at a Scottish owned chippy nearby, unfortunately said chippy doesn't offer the full range of delights you would get in a chippy back home.