Today I talked with my wife about a scouting trip to Ottawa this coming summer and she says it’s a good idea. So last week of June or first week of July I’ll be heading to Ottawa for 7-10 days, probably 10 days. For financial reasons, I’ll be traveling alone, plus it will be easier than taking two jet lagged kids all over the place. They’d probably be bored to tears.
On this trip, I’m planning on scouting out various neighborhoods, schools, and housing markets. Of course I will be doing a lot of this online before I arrive, but online versus in person is completely different. I’ll also be able to talk to banks about what my chances for a mortgage are. Other things to do include checking out Korea town, the Ottawa chamber of commerce, learning more about registering my business. Most importantly I will be able to talk to a real estate agent in person, before shifting everything back to online communication. I’d really like to be able to have a line on a house just before or just after we plan on landing in Ottawa and securing a good real estate agent will be key to that.
I am also hoping to meet people in Ottawa that I have connected with online via this blog, message boards and twitter.
I’m sure there are several other things that I will need to do, but can’t think of right now. When I originally decided to return to Canada, I gave myself three years to get ready. It feels like I made that decision just last week, yet there is only 1 year, 7 months and 17days left. Time is flying.
In unrelated news I changed the header image – I think this is a big improvement over the one that came with the template I was using. I’m no designer, but I like it.
One day last week, I was walking my kids home from school/daycare when my daughter decided that she wanted to have some odeng. Odeng is a popular snack food that you can buy on the side of the street. It is also used as a side dish in some restaurants and in some soups.
It’s essentially a fish hotdog – all the leftovers from processing fish pressed together and sold, just like a hotdog is leftover cow parts. In any case my kids love it. I don’t mind it, but I do know several foreigners here who think it is disgusting. Fortunately I had my camera and took some pictures.
Buying food on the street is cheap. One odeng is 500 won which is less than cdn 50 cents. One picture here and the rest in the extended entry.
The odeng tent from across the street
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On my way home this morning from a morning class I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in sometime. Ed is also moving back to Canada, Calgary, in the near future and is further along in the process than I am. We stopped to talk over coffee and I am really glad we had a chance to talk.
He gave me a lot to think about, many things which I hadn’t considered yet or had only thought about at a superficial level. One of the biggest was housing. I haven’t taken a look at the cost of buying a house in Ottawa but had figured I should be able to pay cash outright for a house or get a mortgage on three houses and rent two of them to cover the loan payments. Silly me – when I move home I won’t have an income and will a bank really provide a loan to me – even with my freelancing business and a hefty deposit. Clearly I need to actually talk to a bank and see how much I would be able to get, if any.
I’m also thinking, at Ed’s suggestions, that going with a smaller home such as a townhouse, which I should theoretically have enough to buy outright and still have enough money to live off of for a year without a job. Once I’ve established myself with a steady income, I could then sell it and upgrade a bigger home. The townhouse will be bigger than my current apartment in Seoul and have a yard which is important for the kids.
Additionally I want to buy a 2-3 year old car when I arrive and preferably a hybrid. But apparently the market for used hybrids is pretty small and more expensive than I had anticipated. I don’t really want to buy a car much older than 3 years old because I see it more as a liability due to increasing need for repairs – and car repairs in Canada are significantly more expensive than they are here in Korea. I’m also not interested in buying a brand new car as I see that as a waste of money due to the immediate loss in value after you drive off the lot. I figure my budget for a car on arrival in Canada will be around $15-18,0000 Ed suggested taking a look at auto-trader online – I remember the magazine from when I last lived in Canada, but now it’s online which makes everything easier. Gotta remember to look everything up online.
There are a few other things we talked about, but one that I had thought about but not actually planned was to make a trip in advance and scout out the housing market, car market, and talk to banks etc. I’m thinking that I will do that next summer as that will leave me with one year to go before I arrive. The only other possibility is to go this January/February but I’m not sure I want to travel to Canada in the winter. I’d rather ease into the cold by living through autumn than get slapped in the face with a bitter Canadian winter after landing in the airport.
Will have to find a place to stay for 7-10 days in Ottawa and rent a car. I’m thinking that it would be easier (and cheaper) for me to go alone this time. Airfare for 4 would be a major expense plus having two young jetlagged children tagging along on what would be extremely boring (for them) excursions would not be fun. Additionally with my 20 weeks of vacation a year it’s easier for me to do this than for my wife to use her 10 days of vacation.
Finally am planning on having Ed and his wife come over to our home sometime this month. Will be good for his wife and mine to meet and talk about everything that needs to be done on the Korean end of things.
I’m not a big drinker; actually I rarely drink and always in moderation – at least for the last 8-9 years in moderation. This means I’m not a big connoisseur of alcohols and can usually make do with a beer or cheap whiskey – though I do like CuttySark (is that a good brand, I don’t know). In Korea there is one alcohol that I could drink all day everyday – it’s that good.
Seoljungmae 설중매 is a kind of plum wine and at less than $4 a bottle is cheap and damn tasty. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to find it easily or cheaply once I move to Ottawa. Here’s a picture of the bottle.
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