Amparo Bertram

06:44 am: WoW Weekend
This past week at work went about the same as usual. Friday was a holiday, which meant we couldn't do our training, so all of the trainees spent the day back in passenger baggage.

Immediately after work on Friday, I caught a plane to Seattle for a gathering of the members of my World of Warcraft guild. Over twenty of us attended. Friday night we went to a restaurant that's famous for its large omelets--your choice of 6 or 12 eggs. One of the guys there actually finished the 12-egg omelet complete with a pizza-sized plate of hash browns and toast. (He didn't feel so great afterward....)

On Saturday we all headed to our hosts' house, where we spent the entire afternoon (and well into the night) talking about mostly Warcraft. We did have one activity: a Loot Piñata with our guild leader's character's face glued onto it. It was all in good fun, of course, and he got first crack at bashing the piñata. ...Then the piñata got its revenge...

I got back on Sunday afternoon, just in time to do laundry.

06:29 pm: Air Cargo Blues
I've been procrastinating (again) about posting because it's hard to figure out exactly how much of my job I can talk about without getting into sensitive information. They just made us all take an online course on safeguarding secret information, so the topic is fresh in my mind. I'll try to stick to things that could be considered either common knowledge or common sense.

To start off, on the week of the 8th through 13th, megory and I hung out together, watching shows and doing a little shopping. I saw her off at the airport on the 14th. After that, it's been back to the same routine.

I'm in the middle of my air cargo training at work. The airlines have big warehouses all around the airport where they store the cargo that they bring in. My particular branch of customs has to check any items from overseas that could potentially be a threat to our agriculture. This includes commodities such as cut flowers, hunting trophies, medical supplies, and fresh herbs. (Every day I can't help but be amazed that people can cut a flower in, say, Thailand and ship it to the opposite side of the world while it's still fresh.) This also includes shipments of personal effects. The things people ship over as "personal effects" could be completely harmless toys and clothes and books, but there might also be things like camping equipment with soil still attached, dried flowers or spices with weed seeds mixed in, or even fresh fruits. We don't know until we check.

When I arrive at the office in the morning, the first thing I have to do is grab a set of keys and bring one of the official government cars over from the parking garage. If I'm lucky, I get a regular car. If I'm not so lucky, the only vehicles left are the SUVs. ~_~ Have I mentioned that I hate driving? The reason that I have to get a car is that, while some of the air cargo warehouses are within a block or two of the office, some are several miles away. Once I have a car, I wait for the person in charge of the desk to hand out the morning assignments. Everyone gets about three shipments to inspect. Some shipments can be released if they have the correct paperwork, so those are fast. Others require a lot more work. Hunting trophies, for example, usually come packed in wooden crates. The lids have to be completely unfastened, either using a drill to take out the screws, or with a crowbar and hammer if they're nailed shut. If we're checking perishable items like cut flowers, sometimes the brokers will watch us do the inspection so that they can collect the shipment as soon as possible after we finish.

If we're inspecting fresh items like flowers or herbs, sometimes we find pests. (That's what the inspection is for, after all.) If we collect an insect or snail or stray seed, we have to continue to hold the shipment while we drive the suspected pest to the nearest Plant Inspection Station to have it identified. If it turns out to be harmless, everything's okay. If it's not, however, usually that means the shipment has to be destroyed. (Generally the options are "reexportation or destruction," but perishable items wouldn't survive reexportation anyway.)

When a shipment is released, we call the broker to let them know, so it can be delivered to the proper recipient. Have I mentioned that I hate talking on the phone to strangers? Yeah.

Then we get a break for lunch, and repeat the inspection process in the afternoon. Return the car to the parking garage, and that's it for the day.

Some people really enjoy the cargo environment, because once the assignments are given out, they just go off and do the inspections on their own, at their own pace, getting out and about in the (sort of) fresh air. They don't have to deal with passengers, they don't have to work together with a bunch of other people, they don't have to stay cooped up in the airport all day. I have to say that it's not my favorite job, though. The driving and constantly having to call people on the phone is extremely stressful for me. I'm going to be glad when this training ends.

Tags: cbp

10:06 am: San Francisco holiday
It has certainly been a busy couple of weeks. I met my parents at the airport after work on May 22, stumbling across them by chance just as I was turning on my cell phone to call them. In the morning, we started with an early breakfast at a nearby restaurant, then we went to San Francisco to check out the farmers' market at the Ferry Building. I picked up several things there, including a pound of biwa for making tarts. From there, we walked along the edge of the water until we came to Pier 39, where we browsed the shops and watched the sea lions hanging out. We walked back through North Beach and Chinatown.

On Sunday morning, we headed back to the city, starting off in the Mission district, where we walked around the neighborhood admiring the murals. Then we lined up to watch the Carnaval parade. I hadn't realized the parade would last three full hours. I filled up my camera with pictures and movies, though most of the best shots were ruined because the press photographers were standing in the street directly in front of the performers. A lot of my shots mostly show photographers' backs. My camera battery gave up at around the two hour mark. After the parade, we browsed through the various vendor stalls. We followed that up with a stop at Japantown for an okonomiyaki dinner and a brief visit to Borders.

I had to work during the week, so my parents amused themselves doing their own sightseeing. They went a number of places, including Golden Gate Park. Meanwhile, I started my ten-week cargo training module, beginning with the post office international mail room on Tuesday. The mail is very different from the passenger baggage environment. The pace is more relaxed, since you're not dealing with cranky passengers in a hurry to catch connecting flights, but on the other hand it seems that people are willing to send far more contraband through the mail than they risk carrying through the airport. We not only have to watch out for agricultural commodities such as uncertified seeds or sausages, we also have to recognize dutiable goods, counterfeit merchandise, and various drugs of concern. All that, while being on the alert for radioactive packages.

On Tuesday night, I took my parents out to watch Wicked. That was a lot of fun. And of course it got the songs stuck in my head again. On Wednesday I managed to take some time during my lunch break to greet gnine and xparrot as they made a connection through the airport on their way back from Japan.

Saturday the 30th, we went back to the Mission district, where we walked up the street and checked out some of the small markets. We continued on through the Castro area, finally ending up at Haight-Ashbury, where we stopped for lunch at a small Indian restaurant. The next day we took my dad to catch his early morning flight at the airport...then got stranded when we tried to take the BART back to Millbrae, not realizing that the earliest train on Sundays doesn't come until 9am.

On Monday I started working in air cargo, though the beginning has been a bit rocky because my supervisor is just starting out and hasn't gotten the training module into a routine yet. For example, he was supposed to give me and another trainee a safety orientation on Monday, but due to one delay or another, he wound up not giving it the entire week. I was supposed to go out shadowing various customs teams, but none of that has been arranged. I did spend two days at the Plant Inspection Station watching slide shows about various plant pests that we are trying to prevent from coming into the country (or at least California). The cargo inspectors have a great deal of responsibility. I had to condemn a large shipment of fresh flowers worth thousands of dollars on Friday because of finding one harmful snail.

This weekend, mangaroo came over to join me as I showed megory an Avatar marathon. We actually managed to make it all the way through the series by Sunday evening. That was quite thrilling.

We'll see what the rest of this week brings.

Tags: cbp, sightseeing

08:42 pm: Puppy procrastination
I waited what I considered a reasonable amount of time, and still didn't hear any news about the canine position. Finally I went knocking on the chief's door today to ask what the decision was. He said that the Port Director was not thrilled at having to decide between two trainees for the position, so instead he's not hiring anyone. He plans to advertise the position again "next calendar year." Since that could conceivably be anytime during 2010, I asked the chief specifically whether he thought that meant January, and he said probably yes.

On the bright side, this means I can go to Comiket!

In domestic news, I bought myself a new blender and a pair of pressure cookers (one large, one small). I'm continuing to experiment with making Indian food. My most recent dish was a three-legume curry that turned out quite well.

I'm looking forward to having my parents come visit starting this Friday. I hope they get to experience a lot while they are here.

Tags: cbp

01:56 pm: Beagles, baggage, and bombs
I've been waiting to update in the hope that I would get more information about the canine situation, but so far there hasn't been much progress. I did receive an email letting me know that I meet the minimum qualifications for the position, but so did my co-worker, so we still don't know which of us will get the assignment.

I did hear more about the language test, albeit second-hand. One of my classmates who also applied for it told me that our new supervisor claims we have to finish cargo training before taking the test. (Our previous supervisor hadn't said that.)

Several amusing things have happened at work. A couple weeks ago, one of my classmates saw a group of people hanging out together waiting for their luggage, and he decided to send the whole group through agriculture inspection. It turned out that they were the cast of a major motion picture, and they were none too happy about having to be inspected. (He hadn't seen the movie, so he didn't know who they were.) The other day, a co-worker's car broke down and had to be towed. When everyone recommended that she become a member of AAA for the roadside assistance, she became extremely confused. She was convinced that she had to join AA and receive a certificate of completion before being allowed to join AAA. (She had three supervisors in stitches by the end of the conversation.) One of the things I am asked to do thanks to my Japanese skills is translate for the CBPOs, the officers in charge of collecting customs duty and determining whether people are bringing illegal items into the country. On a recent occasion, the officer who requested my assistance seemed to think the passenger would be reluctant to talk to me. I soon found out why: The officers had stopped a Japanese man with several porn CDs, and they wanted me to question him to make sure they didn't contain child porn. (Luckily the man was quite easygoing about the whole thing.)

Most days pass without too much incident. Thursday, however, was very eventful. We started off the morning by having a fire drill during a time when there were few passengers in either terminal. That was all well and good. A couple hours later, we were back to business as usual when we heard people yelling, and a supervisor came rushing up, ordering us to evacuate all the passengers immediately. At first we wondered whether it was another drill, but it was actually a real evacuation due to a bomb scare. (Thankfully, it was a false alarm.)

One big flaw in our evacuation procedure wound up becoming apparent. The agriculture specialists, including the supervisors, don't have any walkie talkies or other means of communicating with each other as the CBPOs do. My group was standing around with one supervisor for an hour before the supervisor let us back in the terminal. When we got back inside, another supervisor yelled at us for being missing for an hour; it seems his group didn't have a clue where our group was (standing at a different exit), and they went back to work much sooner than we did. I hope the supervisors got that all straightened out among themselves afterward.

I have a nice three-day weekend right now, but then I'll be on the afternoon (1-9pm) shift for a week. That's annoying, because it means I can't really do anything social during the day or the evening. At least it's only for five days, and then I'll be back to morning shift.

Tags: cbp

09:51 pm: The week in review
Friday I had the day off, so I ventured into San Francisco to have a look around Chinatown. I figured that stores would open around 9am, since it was a weekday, so that's when I timed my arrival. It turned out that many of the stores don't open until around 10:30, so mostly all I could see were the building exteriors. There were a couple of shops doing business, so I browsed there, and as it approached 10am the small grocery shops with their tables of vegetables spilling out onto the sidewalk were packed with customers. After picking up a few things there, I headed back home.

On Saturday I had my tae kwon do belt test. The numerous small children had their test before ours. My group consisted of three boys, three teen girls, and three adult women. We all had to show off our kicking and punching abilities, go through our memorized form, and break two boards (one with a punch, one with a kick). I managed to break the first board okay, though I slammed my wrist bone against the wood, from which I now have a nice purple bruise. It took me four tries to break the second board, which was more than anyone else. Regardless, I now have a bright shiny yellow belt.

Sunday morning, I cleaned my kitchen pretty thoroughly, including mopping the floor. I'm sure the hair tumbleweeds will respawn far too quickly, though.

Today I heard an update on the canine situation. They apparently had offered the beagle position to one of my coworkers, who then decided he didn't really want it. So now the chief is recommending me for it, though headquarters still has to make the final determination. However, the ten-week training course starts in mid-July, at which time I will still be doing my cargo training. (Not only that, but if I go then, I won't be able to attend Comiket in August. ;_;) The chief wishes we could postpone so that he wouldn't have to juggle my training schedule around, but the canine training slots are so tightly planned that if I miss this one I'm told I won't get another chance before next year. We'll see how it goes.

The big issue on everyone's mind at work is, of course, the swine flu outbreak. They've issued us lots of hand sanitizer and face masks for those who wish to wear them. The morning shift only gets one small flight from Mexico, and we're all wearing disposable gloves for everything anyway, so there isn't too much concern.

Tags: cbp

11:33 pm: The heat is on
Still no word about my canine application, though I should be hearing something any day now, if the supervisor I talked to was correct in his estimation that it should take two or three weeks. I also haven't heard anything about the language test that I requested that would increase my pay for being able to speak Japanese. Another member of my class (with the same supervisor that I have) is in the same predicament with his application for the Vietnamese test. One of my coworkers with a different supervisor has already taken the test for Tagalog; she heard back right away after she applied. I'm wondering if my direct supervisor, who recently moved to cargo inspection, somehow misplaced the applications and didn't turn them in.

A further bump in the road is that, although my schedule was supposedly finalized, my date for starting cargo training was delayed three weeks. That means I won't start until May 25. On the bright side, that means I'll be working more Sundays in the interim, which pays more. Since I spent quite a bit on knitting supplies and Indian cooking supplies this month, every bit helps.

The weather here has been nice...TOO nice, perhaps. It got to be over 90° in my apartment this afternoon, and that's with the balcony door open to catch a breeze. I tried switching my thermostat to cool, but nothing happened, so I suspect my apartment is not equipped with air conditioning. I'll have to ask the manager about that tomorrow. My coworkers tell me such high temperatures are unusual for the area and seldom last long.

Tags: cbp

09:12 am: Of Bunnies and Blossoms
I hope that everyone who celebrates Easter had an enjoyable weekend. It has always been my favorite holiday, mainly because it has doubled as my birthday celebration multiple times.

On Saturday I went to the Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival, where I met up with Jenn and her friend Gaiety (after some confusion caused by the fact that Kinokuniya has entrances on two different floors of the mall). The place was packed with people. A number of those who attended the festival dressed up in yukata for the occasion. One lady even dressed her pets.

We started with a nice lunch, then listend to a taiko drum performance. We proceeded to shop for most of the rest of the day. I'm glad I brought along my wheeled cart to haul my purchases. (I know myself so well...) We ended the evening by trading book recommendations and making an emergency run to Borders for more shopping.

I haven't gotten any official response yet about my application to be a canine handler, though I have heard from a couple sources that there were four openings and only three applicants. At this point it depends on whether headquarters is willing to assign me the position even though I haven't finished my training.

Speaking of which, I learned yesterday that I'm scheduled to start my air cargo training on May 4th. The nice thing about being in training again is that I'll have regular work hours for the duration. That will make it easier to plan things for when my parents visit, because I won't have to worry about being assigned a night shift while they're here.

In other news, my Warcraft guild has beat the game. The hardest boss encounter in the current version of the game involves a fight with four dragons (a boss and three minions). If you kill the minions one at a time before attempting the boss, it isn't so difficult. However, if you start fighting the boss with all three minions alive, you have to deal with many different enemy attacks that compound each other. The special reward for doing so is the title "Twilight Vanquisher" for everyone who participated and the blue dragon mount in the screenshot. Now we're just biding time until more raids are added to the game.

08:20 am: Tamales of the living dead
A.k.a. "I survived two weeks on the graveyard shift."

It turns out that the late night shift really isn't too bad overall. The most inconvenient part of it was that the BART stops running before all of the passengers are gone. Luckily, one of my coworkers with a car was willing to drive me home most nights, which saved me from having to take the once-per-hour bus much. Also, it just so happened that a cold ravaged through the ag specialists, and a number of people wound up calling in sick, making things a bit frantic as the rest of us had to cover for them. One guy called in sick for the first time in six years. I had sniffles for two days, but that was about it.

The work load is relatively light, and I had enough down time to finish the blouse I was working on. (And that's including having to pull out one entire side because the gauge given in the instructions was on crack.) The hardest part of the job is that most of the late night flights are from Mexico and Central America, which require an entirely different set of X-ray skills. For example, the morning shift gets lots of Asian flights, and we have to be on the alert for poultry products because they have bird flu. There's no bird flu in the Americas, though, so everyone can bring in as much chicken as they like. (And they do...everyone comes in with a big bag of fried chicken. Or two. Or three.) The language is also a problem. I kept my mouth shut as much as I could. Although I studied Spanish in high school and college, every time I thought about asking a passenger for food, the sentence forming in my brain was something like, "Comida ga arimasu ka?"...which no doubt would have been highly amusing to my coworkers.

There isn't much other news here. I've been continuing my experiments with making Indian food, and I've found several winners so far. I've also ordered a number of balls of sock yarn. Now I just need to get some needles and I can start experimenting with knitting.

I'm making plans to attend the cherry blossom festival in San Francisco on April 11th. The cherry trees in my neighborhood are mostly done blooming by now, so the date seems a bit late, but I'm sure there will be a lot to enjoy. I have also been scheduled for my first tae kwon do belt test on April 25th...I just don't know if I'll be able to attend. It probably depends on whether I can get someone to swap me for that day off.

Tags: cbp

08:53 am: No idle fingers here
Work has been going smoothly. Tomorrow I'll be starting my first late-night (5pm-1am) shift, for which I hope I will be able to stay awake. A lot of people like that shift for many reasons, including A) being able to sleep in, B) getting paid an extra 15%, and C) fewer flights and thus less work. I hear there's a lot of down time, during which people can sit at their desks and read. The down side (other than having to stay awake) is that I won't be able to make it to any of my Warcraft evening raids. Luckily, my tae kwon do place has just started offering noon lessons, so I can at least still do that.

A position with the beagle brigade has opened up at the airport, and the head supervisor told me that I can apply for it even though I haven't been here for a year yet. Whether I get it or not will depend on how many people apply.

Some of the things in my herb garden have begun to sprout, which is exciting to watch. Hopefully more will start popping up this week.

The yarn that I ordered arrived, so I've been able to start work on my blanket project. When I used to crochet in college, I always used the cheapest yarn available. It's pretty enough, but it has a plasticky feel to it that isn't entirely satisfying. This time I've been looking into higher quality yarn. On Thursday I went back to the nearest yarn shop (the one closed Mondays) and browsed through their collection for yarn to make a blouse matching a skirt I bought at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I wound up picking a type that's around $9 per skein--much higher than the cheap stuff, but hopefully it will feel nicer when I wear it.

One of the things I've been wanting to try is making my own socks. It's always a challenge to find socks in the colors that I want for matching my clothes. I thought that if I made them myself, I could pick whatever color I wanted. I looked up the location of the nearest Michaels, which turns out to be relatively easy to get to ("relatively" because only every other train stops at its station, as I found out the hard way). Sadly, they only had two skeins of sock yarn in the entire store. I tried looking sock yarn up online, and not only is it expensive ($18-$25 per skein), most places that produce it dye it into weird color combinations for making striped socks. Few places make solid colors, which is what I wear. Alpaca Sox is the most promising I found so far, although I kind of want to get Sleeping Dragon just for the name...

Tags: cbp

10:15 am: When it rains, it pours
I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks. To start off, when I went out on my day at the farmer's market, I bought a large Indian food cookbook. I decided to try cooking a number of the recipes in it, starting with making my own cheese. That actually went rather well, with the exception of the slight mishap when the gallon of water I was using as a weight slipped and fell on the floor, spilling water everywhere. The cheese came out okay once I got the weight to stay in place.

I had to get a number of Indian spices for the recipes, so I tracked down a small Indian grocery in a neighboring town. I filled my basket full of goodies and took them to the register, where the man at the counter stared at me in shock.

Man: You know how to cook?!

Me: ...Yes...I like cooking...

Man: Where did you learn?!

Me: ...From a cookbook...?

I wondered if I really looked so inept that it was unbelievable that I could cook. It took a few moments for it to register that he meant "cook Indian food."

On Saturday, I took a trip to San Francisco. I started by having lunch in Japantown, where I browsed a bit at Kinokuniya. From there I went to see Wicked at the Orpheum downtown. I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would after listening to the soundtrack...although I was distracted through most of the performance by making Avatar music videos to all the songs in my head. I would have bought some of the merchandise afterward, but sadly the items I wanted were more than double the price I was willing to pay.

After that, my next project was to start an herb garden on my balcony. I purchased a hexagonal tiered planter online. The challenge was putting it together, since the instructions were in German, and none of the wooden slats were labelled. I somehow managed.

Before I had the chance to find something to cover the large drainage hole in the bottom so that I could fill it with soil, it started storming here. It's been gusting wind and pouring rain for the past couple days, and the rain is expected to continue through tomorrow. I think the weather is causing them to re-route planes over my town from the airport, because I've heard more of them flying overhead in the past three days than I have in the 2+ months since I moved in.

Another task that has proven somewhat difficult has been locating a craft store where I can buy yarn for crochet projects. I found one online located in the next town, so I used my day off on Monday to check it out. I was flabbergasted to find that it is closed on Mondays. (The shop hours weren't listed on its web site.) I've had that happen in Japan, but I never expected it here. I tried going three towns north to Colma, the location of the nearest Joann's. Sadly, it is a small branch store and doesn't have much of a selection. It seems I'm back to ordering online.

My tae kwon do classes are proceeding well. I got a pair of special shoes at my last lesson that I can wear on the mat. That way I can stop constantly worrying about slipping on sweat, which has been making it difficult for me up until now.

Tags: sightseeing

10:13 am: Trainee no longer
Today is the official last day of my passenger baggage training period. Starting next week I will be on the regular schedule. I have already had my introduction to the wonderful world of shift-swapping. That is, the supervisors don't care who works during each shift, as long as someone does. So if a person is assigned an unfavorable shift, the challenge is then to find out who would be willing to swap for a more convenient one. For example, one of my co-workers comes in a carpool with another person, but that only works if they both have the same shift hours and the same days off. When the times or days don't match, she has to swap around with other people until they do. I helped out a bit by swapping one of my Thursdays off with one of her Mondays. The problem with all this swapping is that you have to be careful to remember which days you are actually supposed to be working...

There was a bit of excitement last week when we had a group of people come through with 50 cartons of cigarettes each. Now, everyone is allowed ONE carton of cigarettes duty-free, but any more than that and customs charges just under $5 in duty per carton. For one or two extra cartons, it generally isn't worth the effort to collect the money, but when the amount of duty owed is over a thousand dollars, you better believe they are all over it. A couple days ago a routine search uncovered an entire (taxidermy-finished) sea turtle in someone's carryon bag. We can't seize such items for destruction under customs authority, because they don't have any diseases or pests that would damage US agriculture, but we have to detain them until someone from Fish and Wildlife can examine them to see if they are endangered. No endangered animals, or any body parts thereof, are allowed into the country without proper paperwork.

On Saturday I went to the Ferry Building as kirbyfest suggested to see the farmer's market. That was pretty neat, and I wound up purchasing several flavors of jam and olive oil, plus an awesome vegetarian cookbook.

On Sunday I went to mangaroo's place to watch more Avatar, which turned into an overnight marathon to finish the series. It certainly does get exponentially better with each season. Here was a fun excerpt from the marathon session:

Me: Argh! I know I've heard Toph's father's voice before...

mangaroo: You'll never guess where.

Me: ??

mangaroo: He's the voice of Malygos from World of Warcraft.

Me: !!

It was definitely entertaining.

Tags: cbp

08:20 am: A tale of two fans
Certain people have been reminding me that it's about time I posted an update. First, my training in passenger baggage is nearing its end. Starting this week, rather than requiring a trainer to tell all the trainees what to do, we have been written into the daily assignment schedule so that we are expected to show our initiative in keeping ourselves busy. Once we've done that for two weeks, we will be finished with our baggage training and can be put on the regular work schedule. The main benefit of this is that we will be able to work overtime, which we currently aren't allowed to do. The drawback is that we aren't guaranteed weekends off. In fact, for the first couple weeks in March, I will have Thursday/Friday off and work on the weekends.

My tae kwon do classes have been going well. I broke my first board last week (and couldn't help thinking "but I'm not being attacked by a tree..."). Apparently breaking boards is a requirement for advancing to the next belt. I have also been practicing something called a poomse (kata in Japanese) that consists of a punch and a block repeated in various combinations. I've been told this is also part of the belt test.

My first fan tale is about the fan in the furnace of my apartment. It was just installed in December, so it's brand new. A couple weeks ago, it started making a strange noise, which sounded like a motorboat or helicopter...or the sound you get when you hold a piece of paper up to the blades of a revolving fan. After being awakened in the middle of the night repeatedly by this rather loud noise, I told the building manager about it. He showed up one day to see what the problem might be. First I had to convince him there WAS a problem, because he wasn't able to hear the noise until I took him to one of the rooms where it echoes through the vent. After fiddling with the furnace for quite some time, he decided that the filter was loose. He didn't do anything about it that day.

Yesterday I came home after work to find that the noise had grown even louder. I opened up the furnace to see that the building manager had come in some time during the day and had attempted to hold the filter in place with duct tape. However, the tape had worked loose and was flapping around wildly. I wasn't about to sit through all that noise, so I ripped the tape out...and lo and behold, when I pulled out the piece of tape that had gotten one end sucked into the fan, that end had stuck itself to a piece of paper. Once the strip of paper came out, the sound vanished, and all was well.

The second fan tale is about mangaroo, who has recently become a fan of the animated series Avatar. She invited me over to her house on Saturday so we could watch a marathon of the first episodes. ( Cut for spoilers )

Note: This would have been posted Tuesday evening, but my internet service went out.

Tags: cbp

09:06 pm: Another day, another furnishing
I am happy to announce that the last of my purchased furniture has arrived and been assembled. My sofa and table set were delivered last Saturday, and I put my three bookshelves together yesterday. The shelves are still shamefully empty, but I'm sure that will be remedied soon enough.

Training at work has been continuing on apace. We had a day-long field trip to the Plant Inspection Station where we send all our unidentified plants and pests for their experts to identify. We'll be going back there later for another two days of training. We had a lecture from SITC, our sister organization responsible for finding illegal agricultural imports that have gotten past customs and out into the market and recalling everything for proper destruction. Those of us who scored above 95% at the academy in Maryland were invited downtown to the customs house to be congratulated in person by the port director.

Outside of work, I had a chance to visit briefly with an uncle who had come to town for a conference. I've also been sticking with my tae kwon do lessons, and I believe I may be starting to get in slightly better shape. I attempted to go watch a movie at the nearest theater last weekend, but the ticket price was over $10, yeouch. Not as high as Japanese ticket prices, which are truly insane, but not something I'd be willing to spend on a movie unless I know in advance that I'm going to like it.

I've discovered that somewhere in all my moving about, I've lost my entire address file. If anyone wants me to have their snail address, for newsletter purposes (if I ever get around to writing one) or whatever, drop me an email and let me know.

Tags: cbp

11:56 am: Twists and turns
This past week at work I spent most of my time attending a course on anti-terrorism. Most of it was geared toward the regular customs officers, and they really take that stuff seriously. By the time passengers make it to my area in agriculture secondary, they've already gone past at least two customs officers, and possibly more if they had to stop at immigration secondary. I also learned how to input records of our searches and seizures into the computer system.

I finished my three trial tae kwon do lessons and signed up for a year at two lessons per week. It was expensive compared to, say, a gym membership, but the students are getting one-on-one or one-on-two attention from the instructors, who are doing hard physical labor. It does take away from my warcraft time, though.

Sadly, I was unable to arrange for my furniture to be delivered during a time I would actually be home on Friday, so I had to reschedule. The earliest time I could reserve for a date when I would be home all day was next Saturday, so I'll still be sitting on the floor until then.

The weather here has been sunny and in the mid-seventies all week. Yesterday I decided to take advantage of the fair weather to go sightseeing in downtown San Francisco. The first thing evident as I exited the BART station was that the streetcars were indeed quite common. There was even a special streetcar crossing sign designed for them.

I began by walking up to North Beach. On the way, I took a couple pictures for wednesday_10_00: one inspired by Flesh & Blood and the other by City of Glass. My first stop, just north of Chinatown (which I skirted but didn't really enter), was to view the Bill Weber Mural. It took me a few minutes to realize that the white flappy things suspended from wires in front of the building were books, not birds.

From there I walked up the street to the National Shrine of Saint Francis. This whole area is Italian, and the street is lined with cafes that have outdoor seating. In fact, it was a little tricky to walk down the sidewalk without tripping over the feet of the people sipping coffee at the rows of tables. I continued on to Washington Square, which is dominated at one end by the Saints Peter and Paul Church. There were a number of people in the park enjoying the day by practicing their dancing or tai chi.

Next I walked up--and I do mean up--the road to the Coit Tower. This walk is not for the faint of heart. Once there, I paid the five dollars for an elevator ride to the top, where I could gaze out at such sights as Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. The interior of the tower itself was not very impressive compared to, say, Tokyo Tower. It was all bare concrete, and very cramped. The elevator operator didn't even try to entertain us with facts about the tower, as I had expected he would.

After leaving the tower, I headed west along Lombard Street. There were a number of interesting examples of architecture along the way. Finally I reached the famous crooked section of the road. I was glad to be a pedestrian, I must say. I was going to head home after that, but I took a brief detour north to the Hyde Street Pier, because I was so close anyway. I didn't stay long, since by that time I had been walking for over four hours and was getting a bit tired, not to mention hungry. On my way back to the nearest station, I passed by San Francisco's decorative city hall.

Now I have to plan where to go the next time I have an opportunity for sightseeing...

Tags: cbp, sightseeing

10:28 pm: Improving by leaps and bounds
This past week has been quite full. At work, I was shown how to use the computer system and spent a couple days shadowing the officers who do immigration work (inspecting documents and determining whether passengers are eligible to enter the country). I also spent two afternoons at the DMV in my quest to acquire a California driver's license. They are only open weekdays, and only administer the test until 4:30pm. I work until 3:30pm, and the nearest DMV is a half hour drive from the airport; luckily a co-worker with a car needed to get a license too and let me ride along. The line of people waiting to do DMV business literally stretched out the door. I couldn't get my paperwork done in time to take the test the first day, so I had to come back the next day to finish.

Outside of work, I signed up for three trial tae kwon do lessons. I had my first one on Wednesday. It was me (white belt) with two more advanced students (blue and brown belts) and two instructors. They certainly had me working up a sweat, and I only did about half as much exercise as the other two students. My next lesson will be tomorrow evening.

mangaroo generously took time out of her weekend to drive me to Ikea yesterday for furniture. I bought quite a few things, though none of their sofas were comfortable and I didn't like any of their dining table sets. We were also forced to pass on the bookshelves, because not only were they too big to fit in the car, they would have been too heavy for us to carry up my stairs. After mangaroo headed home, I went to a department store for the sofa and table. They were a lot more expensive, but they are more comfortable/attractive, so I think I got my money's worth. They are scheduled to be delivered on Friday.

I spent most of today assembling my purchases. I now have a new look in both my living room and bedroom. I didn't have too much trouble with the wooden items, though the dresser took forever because it had a jillion pieces. Unfortunately, the adjustable reading lamp has a proprietary socket size that only fits Ikea bulbs, which wasn't advertised on either the product display or the package. Not only that, it's impossible to order lightbulbs from their website, nor do they sell them by phone; the only way to purchase them is to go to the store in person and pick them up. Considering a round-trip fare on public transportation from my location would cost more than the lamp itself is worth...I'm not very impressed with their customer service.

On the bright side, at least I have more light than I started with. That's a good thing, because since I moved in less than a month ago, three of the apartment's lightbulbs have burned out. I can't replace them yet because I have no chairs to stand on to reach them. Hopefully that will be remedied when my dining set arrives.

09:05 pm: I can haz mattress!
For the past week, most of my free time has been spent exploring and shopping. My cable was installed a week ago Saturday, but after a couple hours the cable box malfunctioned and I had to make an appointment for someone to come replace it. For some reason, they had messed up which channels I was receiving, which may have had something to do with it. For example, I could view all of the premium channels, but I was randomly missing basic channels such as USA. Someone showed up yesterday to switch me to a new cable box, so hopefully the problem's all cleared up.

I've been spending a lot of time walking around areas to the north and south, as well as traveling a stop or two by train. One stop north is a shopping mall, where I've been picking up items a bit at a time. It's hard to buy bulky items when they have to be a small enough load to carry back to my apartment. Among my purchases were a new printer, stock pot, and camera. I wanted to buy a spice rack, but I visited three different department stores, and the only ones they carried were pre-filled with labeled bottles of spices. What the heck? What if I don't want those spices? What if I'd rather have garam masala than sea salt? That makes the entire rack useless. Not a single store carried just a plain, empty spice rack.

I tried to find a place to fix my digital camera, which spontaneously stopped interpreting light conditions while I was in Maryland. Apparently Sony cameras (which is what I bought in Japan) have to be sent back to Sony for repairs, which I heard from the one camera repair place I managed to semi-locate. (I tracked down the address, but there was no storefront. It turns out the owner operates solely by mail.) So I decided to buy an upgraded version to replace the malfunctioning one. The new camera has more features, but I'm a bit frustrated that it's missing some of the options that the old one had. For example, my old camera could select among about five different picture sizes. The new one only has two choices: Large or Small. Even the Small setting takes up twice the memory of the setting I had been using on my old camera, which means I can only fit half as many pictures on the memory stick. Anyway, I can now take pictures again, and I'll be linking some shots of my apartment later in the entry.

What I'm most excited about is that, after a great deal of searching, I managed to locate a health food store a half hour walk away that carries nutritional yeast and vegetarian chicken-flavored broth. (There is a train that runs to the area on weekends, but there's only one train per hour, so it's faster to walk.) Since I was down to my last cup of nutritional yeast, it was quite a relief to locate a source. Today I also bought a couple of plastic crates that I can set my laptops on until I get furniture. It's not exactly comfortable to hunch over to use a laptop on the floor, and it would make my neck hurt after an hour or so. Not so good for Warcraft raiding.

The other big excitement was that my mattress was delivered last night, so I got to sleep on it for the first time. I conked out at 7:30pm and slept for nearly 12 hours straight. Now I'm just waiting for the headboard to be delivered, which could take another couple of weeks.

And now for the pictures. Here is a shot of the exterior of my apartment building. The ground floor only has one apartment, for the building manager, and the rest is parking space. The remaining five apartments are on the second floor, with mine directly over the manager's. (On a side note, when I went to pay my January rent, I met his wife for the first time. She said "we're cousins" because we both work for the federal government; she's IRS.)

Inside, my living room is mostly empty, containing only my entertainment center consisting of my TV, DVD player, and laptops. In the rear of the living room is my reading nook (the one spot that actually has light). I need to flatten some of those boxes to put out in the recycling bin.

The doorway continues on into the kitchen (left side view, right side view). I'm slowly starting to accumulate items to fill my cupboard space. Next is the bathroom, which has a surprisingly high toilet seat. Also, for some reason the toilet paper holder (invisible from this angle) was attached at ankle height, making it impossible to reach. I plan to get a new one eventually.

Finally, there is the bedroom, with my new mattress. It turned out to be higher off the ground than I expected. I'm currently sleeping on it upside down, because when I tried the other way I was afraid I'd hit my head on that little bar holding the curtain cords. I'm probably going to move it around to another spot to avoid that problem.

And that pretty much sums up my week. Next week I'm scheduled to start learning new things at work, such as how to give out penalties to people trying to smuggle food, and how to detain items for other agencies (such as the Fish and Wildlife Service).

07:28 pm: Thank goodness the books lasted long enough
<breathes huge sigh of relief>

My internet and TV are finally all hooked up. It really would have been difficult to wait much longer.

Work at the airport has been going well. It's amazing how many different kinds of food and animal products one can encounter when opening luggage. This past week we had an abundance of pigeon, for some reason. And even the senior officers were astounded by the drink holder made out of a male kangaroo's nether region.

I'm interested in seeing what will be featured on ABC's upcoming series about Homeland Security. (Apparently it was inspired by the Australian series that I saw a commercial for while I was there on vacation in the spring.) No doubt it will focus on some of the more exciting/sensational aspects, such as Border Patrol, but I'm crossing my fingers that Ag Specialists will show up in it somewhere. Maybe a bit of Beagle Brigade cuteness?

Now I must be off to check out which channels I get...

Tags: cbp

07:32 pm: Home is where you hang your badge
I made it back from Maryland with a two-hour delay sitting on the runway in Dallas. I started work immediately the next day, where I discovered that not only did our two trainers have to deal with the eight of us returning from the academy, they had twelve more trainees getting ready to head off to the academy in January. Needless to say, they are scrambling to find enough people to show us all what we should be doing.

I did get a couple hours of real practice on Friday. It's amazing how powerful one feels when deciding whether the person with a cart loaded down with bags who just said, "No, no I didn't bring ANY food" is going to get sent through the agricultural inspection line regardless. Some people insist they have no food when they have a suitcase full of goodies; other people will spontaneously empty their pockets to hand over their kids' snacks (despite mournful looks) even when such snacks are allowable. It's quite a spectrum.

Today I signed the lease for a one-bedroom apartment. The location is about four blocks from a BART station that's two stops from the airport. There is a grocery store and a branch of my bank literally across the street. The building manager lives in the apartment directly beneath mine, and he seems determined to maintain a quiet, friendly community. He says that most of the tenants are flight attendants. I made an appointment for someone to come install cable and internet service, but the earliest they can come is next Saturday. Once mangaroo helps me move to the new place tomorrow, I'll be cut off for a while.

A whole week without internet. It's a good thing I got some books as an early Christmas present...

Tags: cbp

08:52 pm: California bound
Everything went smoothly through the last week of classes, and we finished our graduation ceremony today to everyone's vast relief. Dad and megory came down to attend the ceremony and help me pack. I'll be leaving for the airport bright and early Tuesday morning, so I'm signing off for now. Hopefully the flight goes well and I arrive on time in California tomorrow evening.

Tags: cbp maryland training