As travel.state.gov and cbsa.gc.ca says under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiatve:

Beginning January 23, 2007, ALL persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling by air between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda will be required to present a valid passport, Air NEXUS card, or U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Document, or an Alien Registration Card, Form I-551, if applicable.

Ok, so you need a passport to fly to/from US/Canada.  Though 99% of Canadians flying to the States are carrying passports and those crossing by land aren’t required to carry official documents until next year, there are still complaints of the requirement. Big businesses are complaining that there’s going to be a breach in the USD 450 billion trade. Canadians and Americans are complaining of the processing fees and bureaucracy.

Personally, I’ve been abstaining from crossing over, just because my American, non-descript, clean, car – transporting only me gets stopped and harassed by homeland security.  Ever since 9/11, I have been turned off to cross the border and return to my homeland.  Coupled with the non-smoking ban in my hometown not even the lucrative grey market of quasi-contraband (absinthe, cuban cigars, gay marriage, and weed) is enticing me to cross the border.

Despite my reluctance to put up with border crossing and the “Big Brother” features built into the latest iteration, I am a big proponent of owning a passport.  Next to my voter registration card, it’s the most important document I own as it embodies my birth certificate, my naturalization papers, and the International number that recognizes me as an American citizen.  Exercise your right to a passport and become a part of the global village.  There’s a lot of power in the little blue book.

I was flipping through the channels and found a product that was both tasteless and repugnant. Sweater-set clad ladies of leisure clutching wine-filled goblets giving an air offaux-fistication, were pedaling an indoor waterfall. A stand alone water feature that can be placed against a wall or your existing fireplace; it is a gleaming example of our American excesses.

I don’t claim to be a feng shui artist but I have enough sense that fire and water elements do not go together. Placing this waterfall in front of a fire, one is mixing this revitalizing/harmonizing symbol above and in front of – practically extinguishing the symbol of energy, good luck, and inspiration. Much like people who put large paintings of a mountain and stream over their fireplace, one should never place fire and water together. Placing this waterfall against a blank wall, albeit a good element to bring balance and wealth in the home, shows me that you have too much room and too much money. I hope your McMansion gets foreclosed on.

No judgement – hearthfalls[dot]com

I was lucky enough to be off site where I used to work and close to the Asian market that I used to frequent. Being the middle of the day, I assumed that I’d have the whole store (warehouse, actually) to myself. Leisurely strolling the aisles, I was quickly alerted by this loud and heavily accented chatter.

Rice crew/crispies, poser Asians with a gangster mentality, had to get their “snack on” and decided to stop in the store. They filled their baskets with noodle packets, cookies, and strange fruit-flavored gummi candies. Despite my disdain for this slacker teen group, I was slightly jealous of their friendship. These kids were obviously of different ethnicities all brought together by their parents who decided to make their living in the United States.

I never had the benefit Asian friends growing up and so I consider myself very narrow minded in other Asian cultures outside of my own. I look at these kids and I wonder how I would have turned out if I had a strong Asian influence growing up. I imagine my huge posse, splitting up into groups of five. Those groups cramming into riced up Hondas or Toyotas, scraped and scarred from crazy street racing or regular driving habits. We would head off a parking lot, to dance to the high bass tunes pouring out of the trunk of the most beat up rice rocket.

We’d get drunk off of malt liquor or cheap beer and stink of name-brand cigarettes. At the end of the night, we’d go get some phở and ironically complain about the ethnic things that we don’t want to do, just because we have to do them with our parents. We’d burst into impromptu karaoke as the cramped rice rockets become more roomy, as we all get dropped off at home. Sneaking a cigarette on the back porch trying not to be caught by the parents, then off to bed as a free-spirited individual and awake as a dutiful member of a large, close-knit Asian family.

Meh, so long as I was never one of them I can feel comfortable in judging them from afar… fucking ching chong stanky-ass slacker parasites

I’m just shaking off a cold and I’m now starting to shift into the pink. This being my second cold in a relatively short span of time, my parents worried and fussed over me (from a distance). Happily I can use my illness as an excuse not to be cordial over the phone or see them in person.

In one of our daily “this is how I think your life should be managed” phone calls with mom, she non-challantly slipped in the statement “Dad says he wasn’t as sick as you are, at your age.” As mom’s general tips of well-being, finance, and cultural sensitivity kept puring from the receiver, I pondered Dad’s remark.

Dad was in the air force at my age — living on an island nation, in a time where recreational travel on a fecal tube was an extravagance, where drug reps to this day aren’t driving around in fancy cars pushing antibiotics and resistant strains of germs, without a global economy that relies on businessmen spreading commerce and viruses as easily as shaking one’s hand. Dad’s exposure to migrating vectors at my age, was very very slim.

It is an amazing feat that I am not sick every day of my life between the flux of H1Bs on planes to/from their countries, the lack of hand washing skills of everyone’s children, and the sheer determination of people not to use their “sick time” to recover from being sick (as I am guilty of). I can choose be healthy and cold/flu free in my 20s, I just have to isolate myself from people and places. How am I supposed to cultivate a jaded world view and disdain for the common man without getting a little friendly with the natives, or in my case… natives and migratory foreigners who wish to be natives?