Just capturing a couple of Anouk's colouring attempts in May'19. As before, Arun would make the drawing on a large poster size sheet. Anouk would do the colouring, sprawled on the floor, moving around the picture to reach all the edges of the drawing and at times open to suggestions of the choice of colour from the parents J. One of them, the duck is a particular favourite of mine as I love the strokes on the body and the neck, giving it an almost feather covered look. Since May there has not been much colouring activities mainly because the parents were busy behind the closing of the house purchase and a new interest in Rubik's cube. Now as everything seems settled and as Anouk is geared (wishful thinking) for school for the first time in September, its time to bring back the brushes and paper J.
Around the time Anouk turned four, Arun started introducing the 2x2x2 Rubik's cube to her. From simple beginnings trying to make her grasp the problem statement, from seeing her eyes amazed at how the moves can be made and the much bigger task for Arun- to make her visualise the steps while she grappled and excelled with the logical thinking behind each step- it was and is quite a journey in itself. Arun realised that his standard techniques of teaching algorithms had to be completely overhauled to teach a 4 year old who refuses to make a move unless she is able to figure in her head the end result. None of the techniques available out there could cater to her, so Arun had to spend time everyday by himself trying to devise ways to teach her. The initial two months saw very little progress, yet Arun was commendably patient and understanding as well as giving her room for her to think it through by herself. Then all of a sudden as she learnt to solve the first layer, the progress accelerated and the next 4 weeks saw her wanting to learn 3x3x3 as well. As a matter of fact, she always wanted to start on 3x3x3, but knowing that its too much for her to begin on that, Arun had striked a deal with her that she could start on 3x3x3, only after she learnt to finish 2x2x2 J. And that kept her motivated. There was no mugging up of algorithms involved and she was not doing it the easiest way. Infact she was taking it through the old text book way of solving it which really convinced the onlooker that she was thinking through and visualising the step(s) ahead.
Tournament - preps
Around the time Anouk learnt both the 2x2x2 and 3x3x3, we learnt that the Canadian Open championship is being held 26-28 July, 2019. The fact that it was held at Niagara falls (yaaay), plus there would be both 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 categories among much more (since its a national championship) plus the fact that a short trip sounded appealing to all the parties involved made us enthusiastic to participate in the Canadian Open 2019. And the preps began (couple of weeks before the tournament). Ordered speed cubes and a mat with timer and Anouk was overjoyed. Dad-daughter duo spent almost half an hour everyday with their preps. Ofcourse we learnt that there were a few challenges in the pipe line. For the 2x2x2, there is a cutoff of 30s for the first two trials, to complete the rest three and get an official timing. At that time, Anouk was in and around 31-32s. We definitely did not want to stress about timing at all (guess we never will), so thought we will see how it goes on actual day.
Ze tournament
On 26th July, we went for registration at the Canadian Open 2019. Anouk was super excited to get her goodie bag and T-shirt (the smallest size they had was for an adult-S ) and was a source of amusement to the organisers and the other participants' families. The organisers were very accommodating of our request of a trial solve at the competition hall, so that she will not be taken aback on the environment on the actual day (27 July). On the tournament day, we watched her with pride and relief as she cleared the cutoff on the first two rounds of 2x2x2 and went on to do the all the rest of trials of 2x2x2 and all the five trials of 3x3x3. We were glad that there was sufficient time break in between the two categories. She was so enthsiastic seeing all the older kids solving it and watched in amazement for a while.
Anouk clocked an average of 30.09s in 2x2x2 and 2m 38s in the 3x3x3 at Canadian Open, 2019, her first tournament at the age of 4 years, 5 months and being the youngest contestant. Extremely proud to see her resilience, the effort in logical reasoning and the will to hold on in the face of roadblocks. Here's to many many years of love of logical reasoning and the places it will take you, Anouk.
As mentioned in previous post, Anouk's colouring attempts showed good improvement after mid-February. The month of March saw her colouring to simple pencil drawings that her father kept on sketching for her, both using water colour and crayons. It was quite nice to see her slowly learning to adjust her strokes depending on the curve and learning to use a thicker bristle paint brush. We do not have any special colouring area at home, typically use 3-4 sheets of newspaper spread out to protect the floor from all the colour drippings, lay the sheet of paper on top and she'll be sitting, sprawling on the floor changing directions like the hands of the clock to suit herself. She has loads of fun with the colouring and sits for over one hour in a go at a painting with her own explanations of the picture as she goes through the colouring. As a footnote, we realized that her letter tracing skills has massively improved in these two months and could be attributed to all the crayon strokes that she's fluently doing. Totally win-win J
Below is the roundup of a few pictures from March and early April.
House and light house (One of her first decent attempts at water colouring a pencil drawing)
Wanted to water colour aeroplance and hence the motivation for the drawing
On the left is the colourful version of her "sun" in crayons;
On the right is the first attempt of watercolouring flower+pot
This was a second attempt at a house with chimney with a tree in the yard (watercolour); we liked how she can now fairly contain the "door and window" colours, the border for the roof as well as the clouds, from the random strokes a month ago.
The first quarter of 2019 saw Anouk getting more interested in crayons and watercolouring. From simple crayon strokes that filled up pages, she showed interest and improvement in controlling her strokes and learning to contain them within boundaries. At the same time, she also started showing more interest in using water colour as a medium too and showed improvement in strokes as the first quarter progressed. As a fun fact, this time line captures Anouk's graduation from a daytime napping toddler to a no-more-nap in the daytime 4 year old, which was also one of the reasons for the increased amount of time spent on the colouring activities.
This post captures a rough roundup of a few pictures she coloured in February. (Still winter and playtime is mostly indoors)
Crayon colouring -random strokes
Yet another crayon colouring - random strokes
One of the initial attempts at watercolouring - random strokes
Part-1 covered the process of entering the Express Entry pool till getting the Invitation to Apply. Once we get the ITA, we have 60 days (as of Oct-2018) to submit the application of PR after completing the personalized checklist from CIC. A general idea of checklist is given below.
Checklist for making the application to Permanent Residence (All scanned documents MUST be of original document and NOT of photocopied documents)
Marriage license/Certificate
Scanned copy of the original of marriage license certificate) -only for the principal applicant.
Passport
Scanned copy of the front and back pages with all the stamped pages
Required for all the applicants
Medical checkup(Click the link to know more about Medical checkup requirement)
To be done at a clinic designated by CIC, locally.
The provisional medical certificates can be collected the same day, which must be scanned(originals) and uploaded later, during the application process.
Indian PCC - We chose to get the Indian PCC from India itself and not through Indian embassy in Singapore. The PCC was issues by the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) in my hometown in India. If you have renewed the passport in the last 10 years or so at the PSK (and not abroad), they would have your record and the PCC will be issued in the first visit itself. If not, the process has to go via a manual police verification followed by the PCC issuance (need to be collected in person at the PSK), which can take almost a month. The originals need to be scanned and uploaded during the application process.
Singapore PCC - As mentioned by CIC, the Certificate of Clearance need not be obtained upfront, from Singapore Police Force, at this stage. As and when the application review proceeds, a few months after we submit the final application, CIC sends a letter requesting the PCC from Singapore. We need to provide this letter (mandatory) to appeal to Singapore Police to provide PCC. However, we found that if you're a single applicant you can get the Singapore PCC upfront by just providing the ITA letter, but require this request letter from CIC for your dependents.
Employement Records
For all the past jobs, we presented a scanned copy of the original relieving letter bearing HR Head's signature, on company's letter head, citing our full name, designation, duration in the company etc. In addition, we also scanned our last salary slips in each job with the last drawn salary details. For the present job, we got a letter from the company's letter head citing our employement status with the currently drawn salary. Its a good idea to prepare this before the ITA itself, as this good be time consuming depending on your career path.
Educational Records
We provided scanned copies of the original degree certificates, original transcripts and the ECA report from WES.
Proof of funds
As Proof of the funds that we have claimed in the application to enter the pool, we showed both of ours savings bank account details in Singapore, for the last six months. The monthly account summary, with each page stamped had to be requested at the bank. Since this fund covered the claimed amount, we did not show any other source of income. A guideline to the fund requirement is mentioned here.
The requirement for the digital photo and the hardcopy (required later, while stamping the visa in the passport) is provided here. Sticking to specifications is highly suggested to avoid any delays while processing.
Birth certificate
This was required only for the child. Scanned copy of the original document was uploaded.
Cover Letters
Whenever we felt that a little description is needed to explain the uploaded documents, we always wrote section-wise cover letters(as a first page of the scanned document(s) pdf), which we felt will help the reviewing officer overcome any confusion.
Finally, in the cover letter section at the top level, we wrote a letter citing our application giving a brief introduction to who we are and what we are and why we think obtaining a Permanent Residence in Canada is important to us.
Submitting the application and AoR
We submitted our completed PR application in February'17 and received the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AoR) on the same day. And the wait began.... In part-3, we'll cover the different steps from getting the AoR till we got the PR card.
