Home sweet home, Part 2

It started with, surprise, a mad rush during the days prior to my departure, to finish (unsuccessfully) work tasks, to pick up various items for overseas delivery, and of course, to pack. Just a couple days after my 3-year anniversary of arriving - moving to Taiwan, I was going home for the Mid-Autumn holidays.

I managed to drop all my work without too much guilt (or concern) so I could get back to my dorm and shower before my flight. My coworker picked me up and off we headed to the airport. Surprisingly, I felt... nothing. No emotions. No worries about the work I'd dropped, no irritation about the work I'd brought with me (to complete on a best-effort basis) and not even excitement about going home. There was nothing positive nor negative.

When I got to the airport, the lineup for baggage check-in was moderately long. I listened to some men speaking Spanish queued in front of me while waiting my turn. As expected, the check-in staff paused at my passport... and then asked me to follow her to the Immigration Office. And there I was scolded by a middle-aged Immigration official for not getting a new passport after obtaining Taiwanese citizenship. He went on about how I shouldn't keep using my current passport just to save trouble and to save on the passport application fee and that I was inconveniencing myself as well as Immigration (for having to verify my status). He did have a point. Though quite honestly, it had just never occurred to me to renew my passport after receiving a status upgrade; it wasn't about the application fee nor the eons-away expiry date (10-year validity). Anyway that was quite the earful.

In an effort to minimise the effects of jet lag, I stayed up most of the flight. As I'd only slept an hour the previous night (working and packing), staying awake an additional 12 hours proved a little more difficult that it might normally have been. I watched Fantastic Four 2: Silver Surfer (mediocre), The Ex (entertaining), and made it partway through Surf's Up and Ocean's Thirteen and some interactive games (looking for whatever required the least brain power) (though in the end, nothing helped). It was with a skip of joy that I heard them announce our descent to YVR.

I managed to break skin on the glass barriers lining the stairs, and Customs asked me to present myself to Agriculture after collecting my luggage, for inspection of the mooncake my mother special-ordered. I waited half an hour for my large suitcase, before hearing an announcement and recalling that I hadn't removed an old "Fragile" label... and off I went to looking for my fragile suitcase. Then it was another half-hour as Agriculture looked into a woman's canned mutton from New Zealand before deeming that my vegetarian mooncakes wouldn't cause an epidemic outbreak.

And then FInally... I was home.