I’m about to set off overseas again, though this time returning will be easier – I hope. My Gre.en Ca.rd has been confiscated and I now have a US passport (with a scary orange picture: I don’t know what they did to it) applied for and issued on the same day. When I came back from New Zealand in May, my GC had already expired and the “naturali-zation pending” stamp in my passport caused consternation. I was ushered to the dreaded Secon.dary In.spection area, with which I’m familiar from the old days – sometimes it’s like stumbling into an abyss where time has no meaning. An Air New Zealand official came in to check on me. “What are YOU doing here?” he asked, and when I explained, he wandered off. It’s not the kind of place you want to hang around. You feel guilt by association.
It didn’t take long on that occasion – probably about twenty minutes of waiting to have my passport and other documents checked, i.e. less time than it took to get through Cu.stoms afterwards with my bag. Even though there were three international flights in the baggage hall at once, LAX saw fit to have only two people working at the Customs checkpoint. I’ll be going through LAX a lot this year, so will save my rants (slow security lines, broken escalators, endless waits for buses to get to other terminals, lack of facilities, etc) for future posts.
But now I don’t have to worry about cards and extra documents. I will not experience conversations like the one I had with a Cus.toms official on my way back from the UK in March.
Him (checking my customs form): How long do you intend to stay in the US?
Me: I live here.
Him (outraged): You LIVE here?
Me: Yes. I’m a perm.anent resi.dent.
Him: Oh. Welcome home, ma’am!
Now, I assume, I’ll just get the ‘welcome home’ bit. Of course, I still have card issues. In March I joined United’s Red Carpet Club for the year, because I’d be flying to the UK twice and to New Zealand four or five times, with a lot of time to kill in Washington Dulles, Heathrow, LAX, Auckland, etc. I wanted to be able to get work done and spend the hours I have to hang around somewhere vaguely pleasant. I printed out my a membership confirmation from the Internet, and didn’t think much more about it.
Until I traveled to New Zealand in May. I couldn’t use the RCC during the March trip to London, because I was flying BA (not a partner airline) and was in a different terminal. But this May, when attempting to infiltrate the Koru Club in Auckland Airport, and then the RCC in LAX, I discovered that a) my temp membership form was no longer valid; it had expired in April; and b) my United Premier card, which can also get me in (the front desk person has to look up my FF # for confirmation I’m a member), has expired as well. Luckily, I managed to talk my way into both (harder at the RCC, oddly enough, where the person was very suspicious). But I called United when I got back to ask for both cards to be mailed ASAP. I was told they’d be here in four-to-six weeks, which is ASAP in United-land. (Funny: I couldn’t send them the $400 it cost to join the RCC in four-to-six weeks – I had to pay up right away.)
So on Wednesday, I’ll have to talk my way into the RCC in Dulles: “Here’s my invalid membership confirmation, and my invalid card: would you let me in, please?”
Cards I CAN take with me to London: my beloved Oyster card, and my new British Library card, which features the worst-ever picture taken of me. I look recently exhumed from the grave. My skin is ashen, and my eyes appear to have been pecked by birds. I showed the evil person taking it (with a desk-bound digital camera positioned several feet below my chin) my old BL card. “Look how cute this picture is,” I told him. “I want another picture like this one.” He was unmoved.
On an unrelated topic, there’s a storm of annoyance over the announcement of finalists in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards: you can read the irritated comments over at Beattie’s Book Blog. This year’s judges have chosen only four titles for the fiction shortlist rather than the usual five, even though there were many strong, well-reviewed novels and short story collections published in New Zealand last year, and they had 35 books to choose from. Everyone is angry – publishers, authors, booksellers. It’s our version of the Booker Prize, and the only six weeks of the year in which five literary titles get major promotion in the media, book stores, libraries, etc.
I have an article about this – and the fiction finalists themselves – coming up in the Listener, which goes on sale this Saturday. This is the fourth year I’ve written a feature about the Montana fiction finalists for the Listener. In the interests of disclosure, in two of those years, I had a novel eligible for shortlisting. I’d hoped that Hibiscus Coast would be shortlisted, but it wasn’t: I sucked it up, and moved on – as you do. This year, there was no chance of Trendy But Casual getting on the shortlist: I’m not even sure that my publisher submitted it for consideration. It’s a comedy set in New York, which involved the three Rs – romance, reality TV, and Rapstallion, a rap star with a pink-maned horse, who appears in a hip-hopera called “Mary Rappins.” It’s hardly a novel that screams NEW ZEALAND’S PREMIERE LITERARY AWARD. Though I’m very fond of it, of course, and urge you all to buy numerous copies for your friends and relations.
If I make it into the RCC at Dulles Airport tomorrow, I’ll
post again from there. Or will those hallowed doors be closed to me as well?
Paula, I reckon the phrase 'suck it up' is one of the US's best exports. Today I'm doing that with relish &, perversely, finding disappointment very invigorating. Have fun in Blighty.
Posted by: Susan | June 10, 2008 at 11:34 PM