Ahhh, exciting times.
We woke up at 7:30AM to get ready for our interview at the Canadian Consulate yesterday. The traffic in L.A. is so bad that people advised us to expect a one-hour drive for a distance that’d normally take less than 20 minutes. Luckily the traffic wasn’t terrible, and we managed to get there before 9AM…
We waited two hours as other people went through their interviews in two of the three individual interview rooms separated by clear, sealed glasses. I noticed that other than us and and another Thai couple, the rest of the interviewees were from the Indian Subcontinent. Some people were interviewed for 40+ minutes while it only took others an easy 20 minutes. Ours was somewhere around 25-30 minutes, mostly questions about what I did at my previous jobs. Bryan was fussy being in a fairly small and confined room; so the immigration officer, Joe Francisco, excused him along with Grace from the interview only having asked her two or three questions.
Overall the interview went very well. I was able to provide all the documents Joe asked for (though he didn’t really ask for many). At the end of the interview, he simply passed me a piece of paper for the remaining required documents I still need to submit — medical check up forms and the FBI reports (en route). Not sure if we’d passed the interview, I had to ask Joe, “So this means we are approved?” Joe replied, “yes, pending your medical forms and the FBI report.”
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That wasn’t too bad after all. Now we just need to find a way to LAND in Canada to pick up that sweet Green Card…
At the suggestion of Jan when we met up for dinner last night, we stopped by the Taiwanese Economic and Culture Office today, hoping to fetch a different and more favorable solution for the possibility of getting my passport renewed. But basically we got mostly the same answers from them as we did from TECO of San Francisco except that they “could” give me a special passport valid for six months especially designed for people like me to return Taiwan (and only for that purpose). Whether or not other countries would accept such passport, the lady at TECO told me, is up to them.
That’s a pretty exciting possibility we may explore once we are done with our medical exams.
But for now, we pray and wait.