Week Sauce: New Is The New Old

Posted: January 16th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: week sauce | 12 Comments »

It’s less than two weeks before I finish flushing my worldly possessions and leave for an open ended life of travel. So naturally I had a cup of tea last night and entirely scratched my travel plans. Now I have all brand new travel plans! Why? Meh, who knows, I have issues probably. You have to  be versatile as a traveller so it’s good to mix things up once in a while. Keeps your scrotum taut, or some such.

This week in the Sauce™ I’d like to share a few sweet new travel blogs that I found. Plus great articles from some familiar favourites, some good phonetography shots, and I’ll sum up my new travel plans. Read the rest of this entry »

Over 35 and Want a New Zealand Working Holiday Visa?

Posted: November 27th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: travel | No Comments »

nzToo bad, so sad, grandma. As far as I can tell, the cut off age for working holiday visas for both New Zealand and Australia are both 35. The official immigration sites quote the age limit of 30, but the licensed immigration agents seem to be able to pull off 35.

This sort of thing might change at any time, so check these sites for yourself:

Immigration NZ: http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/stream/work/workingholiday/
Immigration AUS: http://www.immi.gov.au (use the visa wizard, it’s rad)
BUNAC: http://www.bunac.org
SWAP (Canada): http://www.swap.ca

I do appreciate that I can enter both countries for free with no Visa. However, I am rather sad about the working holiday visa cut off. I don’t really see what the point of an age cap is on that sort of visa. Both countries benefit from temporary workers (primarily agriculture), so why cap it? Are they afraid that some 36 year old will break a hip? If you happen to be the Immigration Minister for either country, or the Queen, I would be really interested to hear the logic behind the age caps.

.
// shawn

ps: I’m 36. I knew I should have gone last year, damnit.