We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

– Dolly Parton

It’s our 10th week in Halifax and we’re relieved that we finally have jobs. I’ve had two interviews connected to possible career paths, one before we arrived and another a week after arriving. But since then, it has been silent on the “pursuing a profession” front. Nevertheless, hopes are still HIGH!

The job that I landed was a temp job at Walmart. While this COVID-19 situation is going on, I’m fine with this setup. Besides, I enjoy being at Walmart. It’s like a playground to me. And, on the operations end, I’m interested in how long they will keep us. Seriously, when the early restrictions on moving around the province were lifted, I worried whether that meant Walmart wasn’t going to hire me anymore. I was looking forward to doing what I was going to do there. It’s my interest in operations that makes me want to understand how things ran there and what else I could do to make things better or easier. I mean, Walmart would have their processes in place and I’ll be trained for that. But I’m still going to see how I can do it better, and I’m going to have fun with that.

That the situation has eased up got me worried about my employment. But then my application got going and now I’m expecting a call from our Personnel Manager tomorrow. That’s a relief!

Because it is a multinational company, I’m sure Walmart’s pretty much in the loop about these trends around the pandemic. I imagine the company would have these fancy business continuity and resilience policies and strategies in place, guiding their decisions, as well as forecasting the need… for us.

This is going to be fun.

On the other side of life, we’ve barely gotten used to our new environment. If this is it or there are still more people keeping it safe and staying home, we’ll have to see in the next months. But for sure, when the first batch of restrictions were lifted, we saw more and more people out on the streets and at the harbour front.

Since we’ve gone out for walks and visited parks around the neighbourhood we found that the international feel of the place is simply there. I can imagine the time when this city is just teeming with residents relocating from abroad.

This is another one that gets me excited about moving to Halifax and Nova Scotia. With all these programs targeted towards potential candidates of different backgrounds, the province basically has a whole world to invite residents from. Just the other day, the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration ran a draw for nurses with three years of work experience. That’s a draw during the pandemic! And remembering Jade’s timeline and that of others’ in the same stream, this is bound to be exciting.

In a few months, when the borders open, more immigrants will land and Nova Scotia’s population will grow a little bit more.

Now the challenge for us is to already get going, establish ourselves and secure our spots in the economy. It’s going to be more competitive so we have to really get settled soon.