Pretoria to Victoria

The One With The Going Away Party

2011-07-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

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...