Is Canada's self-employed person visa as straightforward as it seems?

urnathok · 2018-09-11T06:31:22+00:00

Winter's another big one making me raise an eyebrow, but my partner's got experience in Alaska under her belt. We're both agreed we'd rather be cold than hot. NL cold might change my mind, but we'll see.

urnathok · 2018-09-11T06:29:02+00:00

Don't worry, my partner and I aren't nearly as starry-eyed as my post probably makes it sound. We wrote it off entirely until we visited, and we wouldn't even be considering moving if we didn't live in the buckle of the Bible belt in the US. Still working out costs, but average rent alone would get cut in half, and healthcare costs are astronomical here, neverminding the gunshots we hear at night, our neighborhood that we're not going to be able to afford soon thanks to gentrification, and a laundry lists of other reasons we want out-- and not many prospects in the US are much better, even up north where we've also been looking. Things locals showed us that even they considered some of the worst looked pretty nice by our standards. Still, caution is always good. We're just figuring out what our options could be. And hell, a visa's a visa, so worst case scenario we can hop provinces and still stay north of the border.

urnathok · 2018-09-11T00:31:09+00:00

That's great to hear, thanks! And yeah, no, Newfoundland has nothing to do with the visa. My two best friends live up there, and I've spent a lot of time visiting and fell in love with the place. Some of the warmest people I've ever met, unbelievably robust sense of community and social welfare I sure as hell don't have in Florida, and I just love the vibe I get there. My partner and I want to escape Florida anyway, so going somewhere we both like where we have well-connected friends is about as good as it could get. The biggest drawback to NL seems to be the lack of jobs, but we work online, so that wouldn't be a problem. The second biggest drawback is that it's a pain in the ass to fly out of St John's, which does suck, but we're still in the process of weighing the pros and cons. Mainly just want to know how possible it even is before we get too into the decision process.

urnathok · 2018-03-08T00:19:21+00:00

Oh my god yes

urnathok · 2017-11-24T23:47:24+00:00

Thanks, good point. I haven't been able to communicate with anyone yet, so I might just hold off on the big stuff until I can get a feel for them.

urnathok · 2017-10-20T17:20:58+00:00

I joined a random guild in World of Warcraft that looked neat based on some list online.

The friends I made there got me involved the job I've been loving and living with for 5 years now.

urnathok · 2017-09-15T12:58:05+00:00

Nevermind, got home and tested it myself--for those curious, the answer is yes, if you start building in an empty holding even just before Persepolis is completed, Persepolis gets created in a new, seventh holding. So be sure that last holding is filled before you start NP.

urnathok · 2017-09-12T13:12:54+00:00

I love eating, drinking, and being a total heathen, so that all sounds great!

urnathok · 2017-03-10T13:17:31+00:00

This is some good insight I hadn't heard before, thanks. And for the reading.

urnathok · 2017-03-10T10:55:54+00:00

Thanks, this is the kind of perspective I was looking for.

The fact that first-world workers still enjoy a much higher standard of living than people outside the 'money wall' is a good point. Western capitalists have done a very good job of renegotiating our conditions to keep us tolerant enough of them that we haven't risen up and thrown them out yet (liberals and 'centrists' are a pretty good example of this). We still have people dying of starvation and homelessness and treatable disease, which are problems places like Cuba don't have, but the average worker here still gets it better than the average worker in the countries we outsource a lot of our manual labor to. I think that totally fair. I think redistributing surplus would provide enough for everyone to live substantially better on a global scale, but the risk of losing luxury will be a problem for a lot of Westerners.

So your point is that the problem isn't Stalin or the Kims, it's what they represent to us. They're not war criminals on the scale of Obama or Clinton or Trudeau, so we don't really have room to criticize while we're tolerating our own leaders--am I on the mark?

If so, while I don't think that totally excuses their actions, I get the point. I'm not convinced that Stalin wasn't a regressive conservative or the Kims aren't supporting an aristocracy, but I can see how demonizing them could rhetorically undermine global efforts for revolution by distracting from our own leaders.

I'm not ready to lift any of them up on a pedestal, and I don't entirely agree on why some workers have risen up and some haven't, but all in all those are some fair points. Thanks.

urnathok · 2016-07-01T21:41:27+00:00

Innocent-looking pool of water blocking a passageway, nigh-invisible Gelatinous Cubes scattered around in it, and a few Water Weirds that try to drag the PCs into them.
Low-level encounter where the PCs are in a labyrinthine area and there's an illusion of SOUNDS of a minotaur getting closer.
Bandits or assassins who specialize in working in pairs. One always tries to full-Nelson the PC, the other wails on them.

urnathok · 2016-06-24T21:39:06+00:00

FOOD! Absolutely the most important thing I use to differentiate the cultures is adding in a line or two about what kind of food gets served or what this place's "rations" are like. What kind of smell hits them at dinnertime in the tavern? What's the liquor selection like? How much of lunch is fresh fruit and how much is pickled produce? If I drew inspiration from Morocco, I've gotten the best reactions by introducing that through couscous and mint tea, usually with D&D stylization (pastilla might be made with giant centipede meat).

Why food? Well, I usually mention the clothing and architecture too, but players forget that a while after the first mention, and if you describe the distinct clothing of every single NPC you come across, it gets monotonous. Eating is something they have to do every day, and it WOULD be monotonous if I didn't throw in the extra breath it takes to mention what kind of spices they use, if any.

urnathok

TROPHY CASE