Bah. I do not feel like blogging right now. That is happening a lot lately, especially when I have to blog in the afternoon because I am planning on being social in the evening. Maybe it’s a function of getting more in touch with my emotions and thus feeling things a little more strongly (yay!).
Or maybe it’s just because it’s the summer and summer makes me feel lazy, as well as making it uncomfortable hot in the afternoons and hence no fun for writing.
Either way, blogging is the thing I do, so here I am, blogging away for you nice people.
On the personal front, I just finished sending off my writing samples and my pitch to VFS, so once I get my BCID renewed and shoot them a picture of it, my application will be complete.
That’s going to be a pain, because of course, ICBC is not open on Sundays, and so I will have to find my way to their office in Lansdowne Mall on 3 road some time during the week and hope I can convince them via my CareCard and whatnot that I am who I say I am and they should really give me a new ID so I can go pursue my television writer dreams.
I am pretty sure I won’t have to pay for it. It was a long long time ago that I got my first BCID (it’s like a driver’s license for ID purposes but doesn’t let you drive) but I am pretty sure that the nice lady behind the desk said that the first re-issuance is free.
I guess they assume that anyone can lose it once.
But even if I have to pay again, I will do it, of course. Hell, I have already paid VFS their $50 “application fee”, or as I like to think of it, the “ha ha ha, we hold your dreams in our hands and can juice you for whatever we like” fee.
I mean really. Like it ever cost $50 to process a form. (And from what I have heard, that is actually quite low by industry standards. ) Even in the bad old days of carbon copies and paper filing, the labour and materials were $20, tops. And in this day and age, it costs next to nothing to process my ONLINE application form and attached writingses.
So it can’t be seen as anything more than a bogus money-grab. It’s not like if applying was free, hordes of miscreants would file bogus applications and waste the school’s time and money just for fun.
And even if that was a possibility, a fee of just $5 would probably be enough to discourage it.
But anyhow, that ranting about the general malfeasance of learning institutions aside, I am very keen to dot my tees and cross my eyes on the application process. Not only am I super keen about the Writing For Film And Television program in general, once the application is in, I can start pursuing funding.
Good news on that front : it looks like I will be able to bridge the gap between student loan and tuition from the funding for the disabled alone. There is a section for disabled students right on the BC Student Aid websites, and the funds from that section add up to a potential $3,800 or so, and that is more than enough to cover the gap.
And that’s just the standard stuff. Who knows what else I might be able to find out there? I might end up not needing the full student loan, and that would mean less money to pay off in the future.
So, w00t on that.
No real progress on the “finding a new place” front. I found a place that does three bedroom townhouses for $1500/month, and that is a possibility. I assume by “townhouse” they mean “tract housing”, or as the Brits call it, “semi-detached”.
I assume this because they mention a big back yard in the ad, and that is a pretty hard thing to add to your usual apartment. I don’t really care about big back yards, especially if they are communal (my idea of a proper back yard includes a ten foot privacy fence), but renting a townhouse might be a good compromise between an apartment and a house.
I would have to see the place first to see if it had that elusive feeling of living in a house.
$1500/month would mean $500 apiece, which is $100/month more than I am paying now. I can handle that without much of a problem. I could probably do $600/month if the place was nice enough.
Of course, I don’t know what the rent limit for people on provincial disability is. For all I know, a raise in rent would result in a raise in how much they give me for shelter and hence not cost me a thing.
That would be nice.
It really sucks that these two highly stressful things – pursuing education and getting evicted – are happening at the same time. Plus my sister will be visiting in a couple of weeks. STRESS!
Oh well, at least the education thing has an end point. Assuming that they accept me as a student (and why wouldn’t they? I’m awesome!), and I secure the student loan et al (ditto), the process will lay dormant until at least September and I can concentrate on other things.
Like not ending up homeless.
I might also look into whatever legal challenges to this eviction we might have. If Wall, the company that owns this place, is trying to pull a fast one here, I would love to be the one who pulls their tail about it and tells them “Not so fast, you corporate slumlords!”.
On the other hand, the commute to and from VFS every day is going to be kind of a bitch. In theory, I should look for lodgings closer to Gastown (like, in the DTES), but bleh. I don’t wanna!
Long commute, or life in a residential hotel, ALONE. Hmmm.
Oh well. Talk to you again tomorrow, folks!