Ricky Martin’s Blog

trying to get back in the groove, and get back in the gym, am trying to come up with a soundtrack for my workouts. I like to listen to uptempo high energy music when working out. not specific to any one style or genre. some of the songs I like right now are Saturday Night Is Alright (For Fighting) from Nickelback, Live Your Life from T.I. & Rihanna as a couple examples, looking for some additional tracks so if you can post suggestions would be appreciated.

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Ok, well I managed to finish off the study book, was a long 14 chapters, 18 if you count the appendices. I have managed to do a couple of practice tests from the CD that goes with the book, and am doing pretty well, about an 89% pass rate each time I do the test. I think I will try and schedule the actual exam around the time I get back from Denmark. I think if I force myself to do it I will be ready to go for it. It is like a lot of the self help and getting things done books and people say, if you give yourself a deadline it will take as long as you give yourself. So if you set a target too far ahead you will only get there when the deadline gets close, and if you never give yourself a deadline it will never get done.

Well as I mentioned in one of my other posts, we are in process of getting our permanent residency in the USA and have been working on getting myself Italian Citizenship for almost a year now, the process is lengthy and there is a different direction depending on who you speak to and where. Also the Language barrier can be a factor, Luckily my Father in law and my wife’s uncles have come in to the rescue. The First step we had to do was actually register my wife with the Consulate in the USA since that is where we started the whole process. After registering with the consulate, we had to get a copy of our act of marriage, now here is where it gets tricky, we got married in Montreal, so we had to request a copy of the act from the government of Quebec. So we had to request that, and they charge about 30$ Canadian for that. So we had to have them mail that to us, in the US to then turn around and send it to the Italian Consulate in Montreal to get certified so they could then send it on to the town in Italy where my wife is Registered. Well After about 5 months, we had not heard or seen anything, we asked my father in-law to go to the consulate in Montreal, which is close to the house so not such a big deal and then confirmed that the papers were sent out and received about 3 months prior, so my father in law called the town office and they told him they couldn’t find it. so we Then had my Wife’s Uncle pay them a visit, he finally spoke to the person in charge of processing the paperwork and found that it was in a pile on his desk, so he got him to process it right away and give him the document, which we then finally got. Now we are at the next steps in the process where we have to get my birth certificate translated and Certified by the consulate in Montreal. We are now waiting on that, then we also have to get a certificate of no Criminal Record for the country of origin and every other country I have resided in, so for that we had to get fingerprints taken from the local police bureau here in the UK, the first set was 60GBP and each additional set was 30GBP. so we had to take 2 sets so far, one for Canada and one for the US. And we have sent those off and now have to wait for them to get processed, for Canada according to the website it is taking about 120 days for them to process manual fingerprints the US is a little quicker about 3-4 weeks. And then I will need to get a certificate for the UK as well. Luckily that does not need to be translated or anything. I will include the links to the websites to give you some additional information.

FBI Fingerprint Criminal Justice Information division

RCMP Canadian Real Time Identification Service

Italian consulate Los Angeles

Italian Consulate in Montreal

Okay well if you have managed to read a bit about me. you will know I am Canadian who has lived in the USA and is now in the UK. Well while in the USA I was there under a work Visa with my employer, I technically still have the Visa as I am still with the same employer, but now in the UK, at any rate while under that Visa my Employer began the process for the famous Green Card, or as it is also known Permanent Residency. Since this was being done through my employer there was quite a lot of work involved, and they actually have dedicated immigration Lawyers to handle this, although if you have a decent understanding of the English Language the paperwork is not all that complicated. the longest part right now is the waiting, at this point I have just received my new Advance Parole Documents which allow me to leave the country while my Application is being processed. This can take a while as we had to wait until the applications got to the processing stage, during that time we had to renew my Visa as it was about to expire and I had not had my Application processed, so just after we renewed The USCIS announced that they would process all applications received prior to July 2nd 2007. We just got in on the deadline but then there is the issue of waiting for an available Visa number. Which at this point in time is still the case, They had ran out of Visa number for 2008 and we are now waiting to see what happens for 2009, They issue a visa Bulletin almost every month which updates the status as of the last one I received they are up to 01 May 2005, and that has been like that since December of 2008. Still trying to figure out how they get the dates as depending on what your referring to they use different dates for the same process. The good thing out of all of this is that as long as the application is government limbo I am eligible to get advance parole documents and eligible to work with work authorization documents. The upside to this as opposed to being on a visa, is I am eligible to work for anyone not just my current employer that the visa was issued for. So right now it is just a waiting game to see when I can get my application processed to get the coveted Green card.

As a side note I am also working on getting my Italian Citizenship since my Wife is Italian as well. I can talk about that in another post as it is a complicated process as well.

Well We got back from Disney Paris 2 days ago. I have to say it was a very nice time, even though the weather was less than perfect we had a good time. Saturday was rather cold with a strong wind and rain. Sunday was warmer still a bit of rain but not as cold, or windy. We went between the 2 parks The MGM Studios and the Disneyland park we had 2 day park hopper passes. It was good as we managed to go back and forth as things got busy and we were able to use the fastpass to get reserved times for some of the rides. the wait time were rather long later in the day. One ride that we both enjoyed was the tower of terror, which shoots you up in an elevator and opens the doors at different levels and then drops, the best part of the ride is going up to the top and you look out and see the whole park, which when we did it was after dark so you manage to see it all lit up. As soon as I get a chance to put up the pictures I will.

So now it is back to work for the rest of the week, and then a short week next week before the Christmas holidays….

Just finished reading through this book, bought it a couple months ago and started it and kind got side tracked. the Book is basically an extension of the website lifehacker.com. The book itself talks you through 88 Hacks you can do to speed up your computer, or make your life simpler using technology. Very interesting and useful information. I enjoyed it and wish I would have finished it sooner…

As previously mentioned in the post Very cool Free INC or LLC, they have actually extended the offer to the end of this year. So this give you a chance to get this before the end of the year and still save the fee from my Corporation.

Well have to say it has been a while since having a proper Work Christmas party. I guess it is a different thing when you are in more of a true office environment, I have to say it was an extremely good time. for those that are interested I have am adding a link to the pictures on Flickr.

Have to say it was a great night and an excellent venue, here is a link to the place, very nice. Wotton House.

I think this is fitting given the recent link to Tim Ferriss and his pilot for his show.

Well I am in the beginning process of going for my MCSE. but at the same time I have always been looking at other ways of making money besides working the usual 40 hour week or more…

A such I came across the book the 4 hour work week, which I had mentioned in a previous post. I like the ideas presented in the book still trying to put some of them in practice. As such I am looking at other avenues to generate some income one of them would be this blog, others I am looking at are online photo stock sites, and investigating a few others right now. Will keep you posted with the outcome of what works and what doesn’t.

One of the other things I have come across in my research over time is also the Bank on yourself concept which is something that intrigued me when I came across it, and there is not that much clear information out there. I will go into more detail on that in a future post as it deserves more dedicated space to that subject.

But at this point as it relates to the Blog, I have already signed up with Google Adsense, and am running a feed through feedburner as well. So far have not seen any monetary results from this but if you have any ideas or suggestions please share them with me?