When somebody like me, who is living in a country of which he is not a citizen, wants to travel for such a long period of time, he must take special precautions with regard to safeguarding his immigration status in the country of residence...
A green card gives its happy holder the right to live and work in the United States, but it also stipulates that the residence is "permanent", which actually means that in order to enjoy its benefits, the resident must actually live in the United States. So pretty much, if you don't use it you lose it... This is a fact lost on some people - and I am personally acquainted to a few of those - who have acquired a green card through one of the legal avenues but prefer to live abroad, and come each year for a short vacation thinking they have fulfilled their residence duty. What they don't know, is that their green card is already lost, just nobody has figured it out yet. If you ask me, I think the green cards of those people (who will remain nameless) would be better off in the pockets of some of those poor devils who cross the southern border illegally in hope for a better future. At least they want to live and work here...
Now, to come back to more concrete matters, in order to keep this precious right of permanent residence, I had to apply for a reentry permit - a document that will give me the right to stay abroad for more than one year and not lose my green card. I only have to apply for it before I leave, I don't have to wait for a decision, but they are usually granted. It will be sent to my mother-in-law's address and she will be sending it to my mother's address in Romania where we will pick it up - assuming it will be approved by then - you never know, when it comes to government efficiency...
Yeah, and it comes at a price as well - $170, and a lot of obsessing over having filled the right boxes on the form...
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Not much time left
At the office, I've been working frantically on my last feature, which has to be finished and tested before I leave. Things haven't been so smooth and I've been lagging behind in some areas that should have been figured out long ago. But everything should be ready now, a couple of more days for testing, then it's all smooth sailing and maybe some bug fixing; It would be irresponsible to undertake anything major when I'm two weeks away from leaving my job.
I'm a little sad that I'm leaving all this behind, but my mind hasn't been on my job for the last few months, ever since we decided to go on full-throttle with the plan. It's hard to do both: be 100% focused at the office and work on the trip at the same time, especially as I had to spend some hours doing trip planning while at work: calling foreign consulates during day time, going to the post and figuring out all the quirks with the Romanian consulate for all those documents that I needed... but I catch up at night; I have spent many late hours at the office these recent weeks.
Today I had a general physical exam, the last doctor visit before departure - better do it now, while I still have medical insurance; I just wanted to be sure I would be healthy as I leave for this trip, and it turns out that nothing is wrong with me, at least according to the blood tests and the x-rays. The head?... don't know...
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The chronicles of Red Tape
If you’re like me, from a country that has only recently joined the – how should we call it... bottom part of the "first" world, maybe – then whenever you are traveling abroad you will need lots of visas. We Romanians have not needed visas for travel within Europe for a few years now, but bilateral visa agreements with, say, African countries have not been a priority of our recent governments. Quite understandably, we were trying to get admitted into the E.U. first. So while Angela needs three or four visas for the whole trip, I need about 15 to 17...
Adding to that the entry/exit stamps and the previously used passport pages, it became quite obvious that my passport would not have enough space for the whole trip. So what’s to do?
The first idea was to ask the consulate for additional passport pages, but they said that this could not be done. Angela, who probably took for granted the fact that if Americans can add pages to their passports on request, people of all other countries should be able to do so as well, was especially outraged. I, on the other hand, expected it – it all depends on the attitude one has toward bureaucracy – if you had to deal with it all your life, like me, you just shrug your shoulders. Clearly, the path was to get a new passport, while using the old one to stack up as many visas as possible before getting the new one.
I went to Portland to meet the Romanian consul as he was offering his services in the area and got a power of attorney to be used by my mother to apply for a new passport for me in Romania, since things were much faster that way. The passport office in my hometown didn't accept it because it was missing the transcription of my marriage certificate (I had checked the "married" box on the form and the consular officers told me the certificate wasn't needed) and the old passport (which, they assured me, I wouldn't have to send over...)
The plan changed: now we will travel to Romania after getting out of Africa and I will apply for a passport in person in my home town; by then I will surely not have any empty page left for the visas needed to enter the Asian countries.
But in order to be able to apply for a passport in my hometown I need to have a Romanian ID card (my current one expires in March). To obtain the ID takes time (if you don’t know people…) but I can have it ready by the time I get there by getting a different power of attorney to my mother (all those documents are not for free, mind you). Either way, nothing works without the transcription of the American marriage certificate into the Romanian civil document registry… which requires a lot of documentation: the marriage certificate with an apostille from Olympia (so I drove to Olympia and back one morning) my passport, her passport, my birth certificate, and hers...
My lucky star was shining after all: the Romanian consulate was visiting Seattle today, and they are authorized to give Romanian marriage certificates. My passport arrived back from the Belize embassy yesterday so I had everything I needed to apply for both documents… fingers crossed! There’s a light at the end of the tunnel!
Belize Visa
When I was a kid I used to collect stamps from all over the world and I would marvel at the names of foreign countries and at the small, elaborate pictures that supposedly purported small bits of the soul of those places. So far away, so mysterious!
One of the countries whose names I came in contact with by way of my stamp collection was Belize. I used to think that the name Belize was too strange to be that a country, it sounded to me rather like the name of a girl. What made this country so odd in my eyes was the fact that I didn't have any context about it, no history and no location (until I looked it up in the atlas), it was known to me only as a stamp. Obviously people were living there... what language were they speaking?
But it seems that now, 20-odd years later I will be making my way into the land that is still tucked away safely in my stamp album in Romania. The visa, stamped on the passport, just arrived in the mail today! Tomorrow, the South Africa visa package goes off to the consulate. I met South Africa through the stamps as well; I remember they were marked "RSA" and I had to ask my dad what those letters meant...
One of the countries whose names I came in contact with by way of my stamp collection was Belize. I used to think that the name Belize was too strange to be that a country, it sounded to me rather like the name of a girl. What made this country so odd in my eyes was the fact that I didn't have any context about it, no history and no location (until I looked it up in the atlas), it was known to me only as a stamp. Obviously people were living there... what language were they speaking?
But it seems that now, 20-odd years later I will be making my way into the land that is still tucked away safely in my stamp album in Romania. The visa, stamped on the passport, just arrived in the mail today! Tomorrow, the South Africa visa package goes off to the consulate. I met South Africa through the stamps as well; I remember they were marked "RSA" and I had to ask my dad what those letters meant...
Monday, March 12, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The soles of my feet
We're preparing for a long trip, and a long trip means a lot of walking. City streets, rough African safari roads, South American mountain trails, sandy beaches, pebble-covered river banks and suspicious-looking campground shower floors, all will find their way under my feet at one time or another.
One unavoidable question for each traveller is "how many pairs of shoes should I take?" Without much hesitation I opted for the magical number three. One pair of Keen trekking shoes for most of the out-of-town walking, one pair of (presumably indestructible - according to the people who swear by them) Tiva sandals for the aforementioned sandy beaches and suspicious showers and a third pair of sturdy neutral-looking walking shoes, mostly for city walking.
I have bought the Keen and the Tiva at REI not long ago, but I haven't yet decided anything about the third pair. It should be something that looks good with jeans and khakis, but I won't mind if I were refused entry in a Michelin restaurant because of my shoes being too casual.
I'm sure Angela would think three pairs of shoes for a whole year is blatant insanity but as long as she carries her 36 pairs herself I won't mind...
One unavoidable question for each traveller is "how many pairs of shoes should I take?" Without much hesitation I opted for the magical number three. One pair of Keen trekking shoes for most of the out-of-town walking, one pair of (presumably indestructible - according to the people who swear by them) Tiva sandals for the aforementioned sandy beaches and suspicious showers and a third pair of sturdy neutral-looking walking shoes, mostly for city walking.
I have bought the Keen and the Tiva at REI not long ago, but I haven't yet decided anything about the third pair. It should be something that looks good with jeans and khakis, but I won't mind if I were refused entry in a Michelin restaurant because of my shoes being too casual.
I'm sure Angela would think three pairs of shoes for a whole year is blatant insanity but as long as she carries her 36 pairs herself I won't mind...
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Dell dude got a little brother
We have to get a computer on this trip for various reasons. OK, we don't really "have to" but it's the age of all things connected so we need to stay in touch with the world, vicariously, through the magic of Internet Explorer. People like me, grown up with the Internet feel like they don't in fact exist when they stay away from the keyboard for too long.
The main reason to get a computer is to update this blog. I need an Internet connection for it, but in between i-cafe stops I can download pictures from the camera and write some text for later upload.
One other reason is online banking: we'll have to pay the credit card bills and transfer money between accounts and hell knows what else, and I don't really trust any public computer, I've been in this business way too long... Granted, I still have to use somebody's network, and if they don't have a wireless I'll have to beg for a tap. But I want some degree of assurance that my passwords don't go where they shouldn't. I'm not visiting Nigeria but I'll be quite close...
I won this Fujitsu Likebook P1510 on eBay, from the Fujitsu online store. I think they just got the newer models, the P1610 and they were getting rid of the old stock online. I won it for $875, but with tax and shipping it ended up costing around $950.
It's not a power-house but it's just the right thing for the traveller: it has a 1.2GHz Pentium M, 1GB of RAM and 30GB of hard drive, USB, etc. It has integrated 802.11g wireless and an Ethernet port and more importantly, it fits in any kind of backpack without grabbing all the space. This way, if I get really paranoid about hotel theft, I can always take it with me to town in a small day-pack.
I looked at plenty of alternatives before I chose this one, but there weren't many really viable ones. I didn't want to type with the thumbs so the PDA-like newcomers like the OQO model 02 were out of the question; I needed a real keyboard. The problem was that most of the ultraportables, like the Sony Vaio PCG u101 (out of production) are only sold in Japan. You can get some of them from specialized resellers in the United States or private sellers on eBay, but I wouldn't chance it, some of them still have the original Japanese Windows. At least I got a 90-day warranty from Fujitsu and legal software. 'Cause you know, the most reliable thing when travelling around the world has to be your computer...
The main reason to get a computer is to update this blog. I need an Internet connection for it, but in between i-cafe stops I can download pictures from the camera and write some text for later upload.
One other reason is online banking: we'll have to pay the credit card bills and transfer money between accounts and hell knows what else, and I don't really trust any public computer, I've been in this business way too long... Granted, I still have to use somebody's network, and if they don't have a wireless I'll have to beg for a tap. But I want some degree of assurance that my passwords don't go where they shouldn't. I'm not visiting Nigeria but I'll be quite close...
I won this Fujitsu Likebook P1510 on eBay, from the Fujitsu online store. I think they just got the newer models, the P1610 and they were getting rid of the old stock online. I won it for $875, but with tax and shipping it ended up costing around $950.
It's not a power-house but it's just the right thing for the traveller: it has a 1.2GHz Pentium M, 1GB of RAM and 30GB of hard drive, USB, etc. It has integrated 802.11g wireless and an Ethernet port and more importantly, it fits in any kind of backpack without grabbing all the space. This way, if I get really paranoid about hotel theft, I can always take it with me to town in a small day-pack.
I looked at plenty of alternatives before I chose this one, but there weren't many really viable ones. I didn't want to type with the thumbs so the PDA-like newcomers like the OQO model 02 were out of the question; I needed a real keyboard. The problem was that most of the ultraportables, like the Sony Vaio PCG u101 (out of production) are only sold in Japan. You can get some of them from specialized resellers in the United States or private sellers on eBay, but I wouldn't chance it, some of them still have the original Japanese Windows. At least I got a 90-day warranty from Fujitsu and legal software. 'Cause you know, the most reliable thing when travelling around the world has to be your computer...
Thursday, March 8, 2007
The point of no return
I just gave notice at work today. Four more weeks.
When I first mentioned it to my manager, he reacted with "so, you've had enough?"
No, it's a great job, but my wife and I have decided to take a year off and travel around the world, etc
It was indeed a tough decision. I like my job and it's the best job I've had so far. I felt a lot of stress recently, but that's not the job's fault; it's mostly an undesired side-effect of my trying to juggle too many things at once: work, family, trip planning, hobbies, writing... it wouldn't be easy on anybody, unless you're Dilbert's pointy-haired boss and you know how to delegate everything...
Most of the people that I shared this news with are very curious, where I'm going and what I will do. It's certainly not your average job departure. My manager and his manager suggested that they would be delighted to have me work in this group again when I come back. It would be nice, but of course they can't promise anything, and I don't expect them to. A lot can happen in one year.
OK, now we're really on, there's no way back.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Got bubbles?
Imagine being on vacation somewhere on a tropical island at a resort, and everybody you meet at the bar is talking about how great the diving on the coral reef is and how awesome that German wreck from the second world war looks, how the canons are still pointing toward the sky, as they were when it was sunk by British planes. Wouldn't you feel a little left out of this conversation and a little frustrated for not being able to see those wonders yourself?
That's mainly why I took up Scuba and got certified this weekend for open water diving. It's not something that I couldn't live without, and I was definitely not very happy to have to do my certification dives in the cold waters of Puget Sound, but any healthy adult who, like us, plans to travel to many places which are also famous diving sites (Belize, Honduras, the Galapagos islands, Egypt, to name only a few) would be foolish not to do it. The other reason, is to keep an eye on Angela and prevent her from grabbing a shark by the tail.
From last year's Jamaica trip Angela and I had "Scuba diver" certifications. "Scuba diver" is the entry level in the diving experience hierarchy and should be used to go to a maximum depth of 40 feet. Now we got our "Open water" grade which will enable us to dive up to 60 feet deep; it's enough for now. To upgrade from "Scuba diver" to "Open water" we had two options: either do the full open water class again, together with other 10 people or so and two instructors, or get a referral "upgrade" training, pay about the same price and have one instructor just for the two of us. So we chose the latter, did a couple of pool sessions, the written exam and the two dives today, and we're done! The water was freezing and we couldn't feel our toes after getting out but diving is a good shot of adrenaline no matter how miserable the conditions are. And once you're down there you forget everything about the cold, it hits you only when you're back at the surface.
The next step - advanced open water certification (100 feet) in Honduras!
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