Trying to get through US customs
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I'm off to Tulsa. Here's how it happened.Tuesday, April 28:30am I am told to be ready to travel to Tulsa for 6 months. All I know is "soon". 10:00am I'm told that it might be as early as Thursday, but we will plan for Monday. Start talking to travel agent. Wednesday, April 3 9:00am I'm told that I will be travelling this afternoon, and that I should get ready right now. I immediately walk to the travel agent's office in the building, and arrange the trip to Tulsa that afternoon, flight departs at 3pm. 9:15am I walk back to my office as the phone is ringing, and I am told that I will be travelling tomorrow. I call the travel agent, and tell her I'm travelling tomorrow. 9:30am I pass a manager in the hallway, and he asks me "Aren't you supposed to be in Tulsa today?" 10:00am I attend a meeting where I am told that I will be the guy on-site coordinating all the efforts from on-site, and that a PL (project lead) will be organising things from Calgary. Also, that there will be seperate 24/7 support and that all calls will be relayed to me either to action or for information purposes. There is an organisaion chart, and people's names in bubbles, and there are alot or arrows going into my bubble. 11:00am Lunch 1:00pm I leave to do some things to get ready. 3:00pm My palm pilot alarms and reminds me of a demonstration meeting about to take place at 3pm and that I should be there because it deals with things I will be dealing with in Tulsa. 3:15pm I arrive at the meeting place to find it has been cancelled, but instead there is a meeting with mostly the same people as the one at 10am, and I find out that the PL is not selected yet, so, gee wiz, what are we going to do. "How about I do that untill you can find a person, or untill I take on that role?" Hmm - sounds good they say. 5:30pm I have dinner with my aunt and uncle and father. 9:30pm I return home and start packing and cleaning up the room and paying bills and generally sorting things. Thursday, April 4th 5:30am Alarm. Rise. 6:45am Leave home. 7:15am Park car and take shuttle to airport. 7:20am Check in to flight. 7:30am Attempt to enter US immigration. The inspector treats me like shit and asks me to wait on the chair next to the office. The head jar-head comes out and invites me into the office, and asks me the same questions:
Unfortunately for me, the letter isn't clear on whether my work is covered under an existing contract. Of course, I could be going down there for free. Yeah, right. Sure thing My Jar Head. Why dont you get an even bigger uglier ring to wear. So I had to organise a fax from my company. Of course, due to a matter of national jar-head security, the US immigration office in Calgary airport doesn't have a fax machine. But they will escort you out the secure jar-head area to the airline desk. Thanks. Well, American Airlines doesn't have a fax machine either, but the dinky little Horizon Alaska Airlines does. Thankyou Horizon. They laughed and wondered what the big demand for the fax machine was all about (aparantely I had not been the first that day.) Other travellers were being refused because they didn't have their birth certificate on them, which was being asked for because their photo ID was not good enough. Good thing everyone travells with their birth certificate, hey. Good grief. But the skanky woman in front of me who was travelling on air-miles and was going to see friends in San Fransisco hardly had an eyelid batted at her. Yet the guy trying to travell for work is worked over. Here's a note for all you terroists: fly with all you skankiest friends and use air-miles to do so. You wont have a problem. Unless of course you have a shop lifting records from when you where 15, then you wont have a chance in hell of ever getting into the US. And that, my friends, is a true story. So I have the fax, and then went a booked the very next flight. Only a short wait - the next flight is at 3pm. Yay. A great little 6 hour wait. Good thing I'm not Arab. Update April 23 Now it seems that not even a sales contract for my maintenance work is enough, now I need a bill of sale which links this maintenance contract to the origional contract for the sale of the system. This is all to prove that only I can work on this particular system, and in fact that I'm not going to go and work on another system that only I could work on. Riiiight. And this is all because Johnny-shouldhavebeenamallcop-Jarhead can't (or is not allowed) to jump that massive logical conclusion from a letter which states that I am travelling in order to work on a proprietary system and will not be receiving any money. C'mon America. Its OK to admit that you buy stuff from other countries, and then need them to help you look after it. |
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