I am fortunate that my wife is from a country for which it takes about 6 months for the process to conclude. If you are sponsoring your spouse from a country where the process takes 28+ months, you have my deepest sympathy (truly) … distance is not great for relationships.

For a smooth processing of your application, I strongly suggest you follow these simple steps:

1. Take lots of pics of your wedding/civil ceremony… but don’t lose your sanity and send CIC 2,000 pics. You should not exceed 50 pics … MAX.

2. Ensure you can show a call log for all those late night, early morning, mid-noon calls to your sweetheart

3. Pay all the fees (stage 1 and 2) at the same time. Will reduce the processing time by 2 months

4. If you email your spouse frequently, then create a folder to store all the emails you sent and received from your spouse and send a screen-capture of this folder to CIC. I sent a few sample emails as well.

5. Be Patient!!!  CIC doesn’t update application status every day. Their website says, they only update the site with application status once a week.

6. Apply soon. Rules and application form format may change with a very short notice.

7. Be very organized when sending your package to the Case Processing Center. Use file folders and send evidences in a separate file folder.

8. Be honest! Follow the process exactly as required by CIC. Don’t try to out-smart the system by altering a step.

Something you should know:

1. If your application is complete and goes to stage 2 of the process, you will receive an email from CIC notifying you of this. They will give you the UIC number but their website may not (will not) have any information on this file.

2. During stage 2, your spouse will get asked for his/her passport.  You may think it’s all good and she/he will get the visa in hand within two weeks or so. Not quite the case!! It took my wife 2.5 months to receive her passport. Don’t panic. As long as your spouse sent the passport to the Canadian embassy using registered post/courier and can track delivery, it’s all good. The agonizing thing here is that you’re left in limbo by Citizenship and Immigration Canada where they do not update your spouse’s application status beyond “Application Received”, “Medical Reports Received” … on the date your application reached CPC, Mississauga. Calling the CIC call center in Canada won’t help as they sound unfamiliar with everything you will ask them and give canned answers. I found it very annoying and frustrating when the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi won’t even respond to a simple question like if they received my spouse’s passport.

#2 was the only quirky part in the whole process but the process was very efficient and my wife received her visa and passport back well within the proposed time.

NOTE: The narration above is just one case. It may be much smoother for you or a total nightmare. I scoured the Internet for someone’s experience with sponsoring their spouse from India (Canadian Embassy in New Delhi) … no luck. Hope this helps someone like me in the future.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/

Rare Monochromatic Picture of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

is slated to release in North America later this year (December 23, 2011).  Like the Simpsons Movie, I have to watch this movie first day first show, no matter where on the planet I am.  I grew up reading Tintin (first book I read was Tintin in Tibet) and there isn’t a single Tintin book I haven’t read.  As a matter of fact, my dad gave me the nickname Tintin and my loyal friend Snowy is still with me.

Walking with Snowy at a nearby park

Please watch Tintin, you will love him forever.

Here is the theatrical trailer.

It’s all great! But here are some of the myths about IIFA and Bollywood that are lingering around and as a fan I must comment on those…

• IIFA to Indian cinema is not what Oscars is to Hollywood. Filmfare Awards are far more prestigious than IIFA any day of the week.
• Securing a role in Hollywood was (or is) never an objective for the real stars of Indian cinema. Shahrukh Khan (the undisputed King of Indian cinema) prefers not to use the term “Bollywood” as it is overshadowed by Hollywood.
• There is a lot of buzz around Mallika Sherawat in Toronto. Contrary to the Canadian media reports, she is not a top-notch actress, but a B-grade actress who came into limelight by showing too much skin in low profile movies and cameos. Her views on Indian society are biased and bogus. She was talking to CBC News – The National (June 23, 2011) and this is what she said, “India is a very very hypocritical country with different rules for men and women.” I strongly disagree. India has a population of a 1.3 billion and represents a very broad spectrum of humanity. It is just wrong to tag all Indians as hyprocrites, just because nobody cares about her acting and are only interested in her cameos (I am not). Poeple with real skills do not talk such trash. And before talking, for lack of better words, crap about India, Ms Sherawat should know that she is making her mark only due to her Indian origin and Indian cinema. I can never picture a Canadian celebrity going abroad and talking similar non-sense about Canada in front of foreign media.  Why even bring Canada into this… no other sensible and patriotic Indian would talk such trash about India in front of foreign media, forget the stars.

  Watch the video. (Search “Watch actress Mallika Sherawat’s interview” and she talks trash at 1:40)

That would be all for now.

I do not want to associate myself with anybody who thinks it is okay to kill animals for fur.  It’s a crime against civilization and should never be allowed to happen.  Please don’t just sit in front of your computer and feel bad.  Take some action.  Trust me, the feeling is rewarding.  Visit Humane Society International and donate something to help them fight for animal rights. Or at least voice your opinion, spread awareness, post this link (HSI home page, not my swear-laden blog entry) on Facebook, Twitter … do something.

Sorry Canadian fur trade organizations (whatever f*** your organization is called) … there is no such thing as “ethical fur trade” as mentioned on your propaganda pages.  You guys are a bunch of losers just  for killing black bears for the guard hats at Buckingham Palace (…. buckingham … lol).

You have an ASP .NET page with three tabs rendered using jquery-ui.  Every tab has its own Submit button that causes a post back.  You finished working on the first tab, you’re happy.  Then when you are about to feel great about the second tab as well, you see that after a post back triggered by the Submit button on the second tab, your first tab loads (now it seems obvious to me) and your user in confused and the “joy of using” your web app goes out the window.

Solution

After fighting for a very long time (not going to say how long), I finally came up with an elegant (i think it’s elegant) solution to persist the current jquery-ui tab after a post back in an ASP .NET page using Master Pages.  There is probably a more elegant and resource-efficient way of achieving this using AJAX, but my corporate work box doesn’t have AJAX Tool Kit installed with the VS 2005 installation… had to find a work around using what I have at hand.

I posted my solution at StackOverflow (username: KalC). Here is the link

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/701470/jquery-hidden-field-in-table/4867648#4867648

But this stuff is cooler than anything I have seen in 2011.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662831/how-one-engineer-redesigned-an-ancient-greek-mechanical-computer-out-of-legos?partner=homepage_newsletter