{"id":50,"date":"2004-04-21T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T15:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=50"},"modified":"2025-04-25T01:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:49:08","slug":"torontoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=50","title":{"rendered":"Torontoin&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m in Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in a meeting room at our Toronto office.  There are 12 guys, some from Atlanta, USA, some from Toronto, Canada, some from Reynosa, Mexico.  Very NAFTA.  We&#8217;re training each other on the various aspects of the product we&#8217;ll be releasing over the next few months.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time, I had trouble going through customs.  I used to carry my passport in my back pocket, but one time last year I left it in my jeans when I got home and it went through the wash.  It wasn&#8217;t too bad, to my mind.  The cover was gone and the pages were a bit wrinkled, but nothing was smudged.  The picture is as bad as ever.<\/p>\n<p>So when I showed it at the ticket counter, the agent held it up between two pinched fingers like it was a dead fish and said &#8220;was this&#8230; a passport at one time?&#8221;  I said, yup, it&#8217;s been washed.  He shook his head and gave me my ticket.<\/p>\n<p>When I showed it to the person who checks your ID before the metal screeners, she held it up between two fingers like it was a dead fish and said &#8220;this is your ID?&#8221;  I said, yup, it&#8217;s been washed.  She shook her head and let me through.<\/p>\n<p>When I got to Toronto, the customs agent held it up between two fingers like it was a dead fish and said &#8220;is this a passport?&#8221;  I said yup, it&#8217;s been washed.  He shook his head and directed me to immigrations.<\/p>\n<p>Going to immigrations is the worst punishment they can dole out.  Because it takes a long time.  I was in line about a half an hour.  And when I got to the agent, she held the passport up between two fingers like it was a dead fish and said &#8220;this&#8230; is not a passport.&#8221;  I said, &#8220;Yup, it is.  It&#8217;s been washed.&#8221;  She looked me in the eye and said &#8220;This is an insult to the government that issued it.  This is unacceptable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What I didn&#8217;t say was &#8220;my government is an insult to me, so we&#8217;re even.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What I also didn&#8217;t say was &#8220;hey, at least it&#8217;s clean.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The third thing I didn&#8217;t say is &#8220;bite me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, it WAS acceptable, because she let me into the country, after handing me a &#8220;tell us how we&#8217;re doing!&#8221; comment card.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to send the card in saying &#8220;Your agents let me in even though I was using a dead fish as ID.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m in Toronto. I&#8217;m in a meeting room at our Toronto office. There are 12 guys, some from Atlanta, USA, some from Toronto, Canada, some from Reynosa, Mexico. Very NAFTA. We&#8217;re training each other on the various aspects of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=50\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[528,475],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day-in-the-life","category-the-world-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3703,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}