The One With The Going Away Party

As the weeks to go became days counting down to my flight, it became a time of lasts. The Last Supper Dinner Party making homemade pasta was one such last. As always with pasta making, everything did not go as planned and the dough took some work. :)

My main going away party was lively affair and the turnout of 30+ people was a moving way of seeing what I was leaving behind. A Flaming Lamborghini, bachelorette party and a bunch of good friends made it a night not to forget.

The One with the Visa

Having received my acceptance letter in March and my financial aid confirmation in April, I moved quickly to apply for my Canadian Student Visa. I filed it on the 21st April after navigating all the website instructions and dealt with 2 different document checklists. And so began 3 months of waiting. With an average processing time of 14 weeks on one website and 8 weeks on another I was cutting it very thin to get my visa and buy my flight tickets.

Six weeks later I finally received a form to enable me to have the medical checkup required. I had already handed over around R820 for my Visa only to be charged R900+ for a 15 minute checkup, R300+ for blood tests and R250 for an X-Ray. The medical results had to be sent to Kenya for review with an estimated 4-6 weeks turn around time. On the 21st July I picked up my passport with the beautiful shiny visa exactly 3 months to the day after having handed in my application.

The One with the Beginning

Doing my Masters overseas was a dream floating around in my back of my head when I decided to become a student volunteer and attend ICSE2010. The International Conference on Software Engineering was held in Cape Town in May last year and with some effort I made my way down there to attend the conference and immerse myself in the cutting edge research happening in Software Engineering. It proved to be a very important decision in my life.

My introduction to UVic and the Computer Science department happened while attending the Web2SE workshop on Web 2.0 in Software Engineering. This is where I met Dr Storey and one of her PHD candidates Christoph Treude. Their research areas at their research group CHISEL (Computer-Human Interactions in Software Engineering Lab) was very new and interesting and struck a cord with me. An invitation from Dr Storey to apply was all I needed and so I began the long process of applying. Over 15 months later and here I am in Canada about to undertake one epic adventure.

Christoph and Dr Storey leading discussions.

Hello World

Hi, I’m Sean :)
I’ve always wanted to write a blog and now I have something to write about. Pretoria to Victoria will chronicle the adventure I am undertaking to go study my Masters in Canada. I have been accepted to do my Masters in Computer Science at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. My classes start in September and I will have 2 years of my student life in Canada to blog about.

Let the adventures begin...