Archives for Slices of life

Visas for cruises: Not just for the intended destination

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When my wife and I booked a cruise to Alaska, one must-have that surprised us was the Canadian visa. A visa . . . to go to Alaska. Huh?

The cruise line explained that they had this requirement because we would be traveling through Canadian waters. Given that we were just passing through Canada, and the ultimate destination was US territory, that explanation never really made much sense at the time.

That disconnect disappeared last Monday with what happened to the Carnival Splendor on November 8, 2010. The ship was on a 7-day cruise to the Mexican Riviera when a fire broke out in the engine room, thus depriving the ship of power. According to a report on CNN, the boat is was being towed to Ensenada, Mexico where the passengers would be offloaded.

Switching back to our cruise. Had the unthinkable happened, and we had to be evacuated off our ship, imagine the immigration puzzles, for us, the cruise line, and the host country, that would have cropped up if authorities had to think about what to do with a pair of Filipino evacuees that didn’t have Canadian visas.

Am I over thinking this? Perhaps. I’m not familiar with prevailing practices with regard to immigration rules and disasters. So this line of thinking may be out of whack. I also never really clarified the matter with the cruise company further since we simply took them at their word.

But this belated worry isn’t really far fetched. As reported on Inquirer.net last April, Filipinos on board Cathay Airways flight CX275 (Hong Kong to London) unexpectedly found themselves in Frankfurt, Germany. Their plane had to make an emergency landing because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland, and like thousands of travelers that month found themselves stranded in an airport. Since they didn’t have visas for Germany, they had to stay at the airport pending the approval of their 3-day visas. Eventually, the visas were issued, but reportedly long after other nationalities on the flight had been allowed to leave the airport.

Acquaintances working at the Department of Foreign Affairs reported that the Inquirer article had a touch of hyperbole and sensationalism to it. Nevertheless, the report does give food for thought when it comes to expectations about treatment. We are, after all, a visa-collecting nation. Just a fact of life — for now at least.

The Frankfurt misadventure happened in an airport that is accustomed to handling emerging visa situations. Had it happened on the shores of a small town, with local law enforcement unaccustomed to dealing with immigration matters . . . as would have happened to us had our ship run into trouble . . . hmmm. While past experience with Canadian hospitality had been positive, this is still an unknown that I’d rather not have to deal with. Apparently, neither did the cruise line, so they played safe and issued that requirement.

The visas added to the cost of the cruise, but in the final analysis it was a prudent measure. Side-benefit: It added my first Canadian visa to my collection.

Filed under Canada, Visa collection

Nov 10, 2010

Street signs

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Street signs are so much a part of city life; it’s very easy to take them for granted. At the corner of any street of consequence back home, you’d find a post from which hangs, or sticks out, a sign that indicates the name of the street. In the case of some low cost subdivisions, the subdivision block number would substitute as a street name. Some signs were large and fancy, with reflective coatings. Others were more austere.

But you could always count on these rectangle-shaped signs to be where they needed to be, and to look the way you expect; as surely as the sun’s rise in the morning, and its replacement by the moon at night. After all, why would anyone do it any other way, right?

Ah . . . assumptions . . . assumptions.

My first overseas destination, Taiwan, was a harbinger of things to come. For one thing, naming conventions there were different. Major thoroughfares were called “roads”. My company’s Taipei office, for example, was situated along Tun Hwa North Road, which could be loosely likened to a wider version of Ayala Avenue in the Makati Central Business District. Yet it was still called a “road”. “Streets” were smaller than roads, and relatively less prominent. Small alleys and side-streets were called “Lanes”.

Taiwanese roads were divided into sections and compass directions relative to a point of reference — a concept that has no Philippine equivalent. This was designed to give people a rough idea where on the road they were. Tun Hwa, for example was divided into North and South by its intersection with another road: ZhongXiao. The further away from the intersection you were, you’d transition to different section numbers. Our office, again as an example, was at the southern end of Tun Hwa called Section 2. Other roads ran from East to West. Some had as many as 7 sections which actually stretched outside Taipei City, deep into Taipei County.

Taipei street signs were also squarer than rectangular. They had to be, because they were bilingual. In keeping with efforts to make the Taiwanese capital an international city, English approximations of Chinese street names, and Hindu-Arabic numerals were included in all signs as an accommodation for the city’s foreign residents.

Canadian streets, at least in Ottawa, had an interesting implementation of a bilingual street naming policy. Since the street names were the same for both French and English, and utilized the same letters, it was a simple matter of adding “St.” and the French equivalent “Rue”. The following photo taken near Parliament Hill shows how they do it.

The Irish like to put both old-Irish and English names of their streets on their signs, as with the sign below for St. Patrick St. in Cork, Ireland.

The photo above also captures a common theme amongst European signs. They often use plaques mounted on the sides of buildings. I first noticed them on a trip to Paris. I didn’t immediately recognize them for what they were, because I instinctively associated signs with posts. It also didn’t help that at the time I hadn’t done my homework and figure out that “Rue” was French for street.

Once I wrapped my head around the fact that the street-name-on-a-post was not a “sacred” rule by any stretch of the imagination, Irish and more recently Italian, street plaques were less of a surprise.

Assumptions are funny things. Sometimes, you can’t even distinguish between fact and assumption because it never occurs to you to re-verify what you’ve already accepted as gospel truth. The nice thing about visa-collecting is that you’re often forced into situations that make re-verification necessary.

I wonder which assumption will be challenged next.

Filed under Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Slices of life, Taiwan

Oct 3, 2010

Out of breath in Mexico City

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After graduating from university a lifetime ago, my friends and I decided to celebrate the end of the school year with a hike to Mt. Apo, the tallest peak in the Philippines. Aside from the breathtaking views, the one enduring memory I have of the hike was a pervasive feeling of exhaustion. I felt it during the hike, and it was still there even when I woke up in the morning. Nowadays I can’t look at a mountain or steep hill without flashbacks of that aspect of the adventure.

Fast forward to April 2010. My company sent me for a week to Mexico City to take part in an event organized for our Latin American resellers. This was a great event, where I met a lot of great people, and ate a lot of fantastic food. But I’ll reserve those details for another post.

My hotel was situated between the office and the event venue. So after being driven to and from the hotel for the first two days, I started walking to my destinations. Minutes into these walks, I couldn’t believe how quickly I was getting tired. It was like Mt. Apo again, but without the steep inclines. The part of Mexico City where we were was pretty flat, so how I felt didn’t make sense. I knew I had been slacking off on my Eliptical machine time, but man . . . was I that out of shape? Or was I just getting old?

Half way through the week, I was having a chat with the manager of the Mexican business unit. After wrapping up the business-side of the conversation, he asked with the impish smile of a person who’d been holding something back: “Are you feeling tired?” Apparently I wasn’t the only one that felt out of breath. Other participants from other countries were complaining about the same thing. Turns out it all had to do with the fact that Mexico City was 7,200 feet above sea level.

The city was so high up, the air was thinner. So I was getting less oxygen with each breath. The manager himself found himself panting for the first few days when he moved from the comparatively low-altitude city of Tijuana to Mexico City a few years earlier. He had come to the same conclusion that I did about my health, until his father — a doctor — set the record straight. It apparently takes a few weeks to become acclimatized to local conditions.

I had read about how the city’s altitude had affected the 1968 Olympics (e.g., slower runs, longer jumps, etc.). But I had failed to make the connection between what I was feeling with that stored knowledge. If there were ever any lingering doubts about the difference between theoretical knowledge, and knowledge-through-experience, Mexico banished them completely.

The Mexico trip also gifted me with one more insight: the reason why I kept waking up tired on the trail to Mt. Apo’s 9,692 ft. peak. Armed with that knowledge, hills that I see in my travels now don’t look as daunting.

Filed under Mexico, Slices of life

Sep 30, 2010

Irish houses and their names

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In July 2009, my company sent me on a week-long business trip to Cork, Ireland. It was my first trip to the country, and my third trip to Europe.

The hotel that my company booked me into wasn’t all that far from the office, and I liked to get to know new places by walking. So instead of taking a taxi to work, I opted to hit the pavement.

As I walked through residential neighborhoods to and from the office, one thing that stood out for me was the absence of house numbers. Street name plates were affixed, European style, to the fences on corner homes so you knew what street you were on. But if you were looking for a specific house, I imagined that that would be a bit of a challenge.

I ran my observations by my office mates, who were mostly expats from Germany, France, Spain, and a few other countries, and they confirmed my observations. There were indeed no numbers. But, they were quick to point out, mail and parcels all still found their way to them. Somehow, postal workers knew where everyone’s house was. There was a system, but nobody really quite new what it was.

That day, I started looking at the houses a little more closely. Each house seemed to have names. At first I thought that they advertised the owners of the house. Then I started seeing wording that seemed reminiscent of places in the Lord of The Rings. Hmmm.

Later in the week, I shared a cab to the Cork city center with a co-worker. While we were making conversation with the cab driver, I ran the house-name observation and the mail delivery mystery by him. To my surprise, the cab driver turned out to be a retired postal worker, and he was happy to clear matters up.

Each Irish homeowner, it turned out, was free to choose whatever name they wanted, register it with the local government, and voila, the house had an identity. Our driver chose the name of his favorite vacation spot (somewhere in Europe, forgot exactly what) for his house. These names often stayed with the house even as they changed owners.

I guess the semi-permanence of the house’s name helped postal workers find their mark. But man . . . I’d definitely need help if I ever accepted an invite to a house party, and had to find the house myself.

Filed under Ireland, Slices of life

Sep 26, 2010

Chopsticks required

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One humongous mistake I made before moving to Taipei, Taiwan was to neglect my chopsticks skills. I could pick up large pieces of meat, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal. “After all” I thought “all restaurants should have forks and spoons, right?” Dead wrong.

While pricier restaurants do provide forks and spoons, common-man restaurants where most folks eat, did not. Needless to say, my first week in Taipei became very interesting . . . food-wise. I soon learned two things: hunger is a great incentive to look for alternatives, and that I was, in fact, left handed.

So unless you plan to bring utensils with you everywhere you go (which is what a Filipino officemate did on one trip) . . . it would be a good idea to brush up on this skill before moving over.

Filed under Slices of life, Taiwan

Sep 18, 2010

Sending stuff to the Philippines

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Part of this article can also be found on Yelp.com

It’s as much a part of a migrant’s story as visas and currency exchange: “The need to send items to the home country”.

When we were still in Taiwan, we didn’t really bother with this as much since the cost of travel to the Philippines was relatively affordable. We simply just stored up what we wanted to send home, and then brought them with us when we went home for Christmas. The equation changed when we crossed the Pacific, and into the realm of $1,000+ travel. Christmas gifts would have to handed out in our absence for most years.

My brother moved to New Jersey in 1993, and had been sending stuff to the family by way of Johnny Air Cargo since then. So when we made the jump and needed to send stuff home, it was the logical first choice as a freight handler. We found the lone branch for JAC in St. Francis Square in Daly City — 40 minutes or so away from home. We patronized them for a couple of years, and put up with the travel and parking challenges of the rather congested square.

Eventually we started looking for alternatives, and we eventually settled on a reliable, familiar, brand: LBC.

We tried out a number of LBC branches. The first one we tested was the Tully Rd branch in San Jose. The location was horrible because of the atrocious traffic. It was close to a Jollibee that we used to frequent, we were all too familiar with the fight-for-the-right-lane that led to the entry ramp for US 101. It was a hassle that we didn’t really care for, and would prefer to avoid. We actually stopped going to that particular Jollibee once we found an alternative. So that LBC branch was a no go.

We finally found a branch that we liked in a strip mall along El Camino Real in Santa Clara. We really liked this branch and stayed with them for quite a number of shipping cycles. It was close to home, and the staff was great. Sadly it closed. (We still hope they decide to re-open this branch).

There was no way we were going back to Tully, so we went about looking for an alternative, and found one at. Hostetter Rd. (near a Goldilocks restaurant). Sadly, the owner of the commercial space reportedly chose not to renew this LBC branch’s lease. So this alternative option was short-lived.

Enter the LBC branch at 344 South Main St., Milpitas, CA.

I checked this place’s Yelp reviews, and a common refrain was the seeming lack of warmth on the part of the clerks and receptionists. While I do concur with this observation, I must point out that they were pretty darn efficient. Shipping forms and replacement boxes were provided as part of a well practiced routine. You’ll be in and out in no time.

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Filed under Slices of life, US, California

Sep 12, 2010

The iFly experience

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Part of this article has also been posted on Yelp.com.

While on the way to Tribu Grill in Union City for a Pinoy dinner with friends, we passed by this gem.

I’d heard of this company offering time on their wind tunnels for folks who wanted to get a feel for a skydiving, but in a safe environment. iFly had a tunnel somewhere in San Francisco, and I had planned to check the place out . . . eventually.

But when we passed by this place — a mere 20 minutes from home — I just had to go. So off I went the following day with a friend and his 10 year old son in tow.

It was awesome. Check this out.

A real buddy jump, where you jump out of a real plane strapped to an experienced parachutist, can cost you up to $200, for a 40 to 50 second jump. Wind tunnel time is only $54 — for two 45 second sessions. Its true that you don’t get the view that you get in a real jump. But given that competitive skydivers use the facility for their own training, that’s saying something about the reality of the experience.

We went on a weekend, so it was a pretty full day. The slot we eventually got was for 9:30PM, despite having arrived at noon. Die-hard iFlyers reportedly come in during the week to avoid the crowds.

Hoping to go for the real thing some day . . . but this is cool for now 🙂

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Filed under US, California

Sep 3, 2010

Taipei taxi language laboratory

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Taipei taxis weren’t just a means of getting around. They were also an interesting way to work on my Mandarin.

All the foreigners I knew that managed to get over the hump between between language classes and actual conversation all told me the same thing: “Just do it”. I had to find as many opportunities to speak Mandarin as I could, and just try to be understood.

Being surrounded by Taiwanese in the office, you’d think practice would be easy. But I really wasn’t getting much practice at work. My vocabulary was so limited, my Taiwanese co-workers simply found it easier just to use English. So I had to find other ways.

Enter . . . the Taipei taxi.

Taxis were as ubiquitous as chopsticks. There never seemed to be a shortage of them, regardless of the time of day. Although the bus and rail systems were pretty good at getting people to key points of interest, some destinations just required the flexibilty of these bright yellow cars. Rarely did a week go by without a cab ride.

Most folks liked to ride in the rear seat. Right or wrong, my intuition told me that riding in front somehow humanized me to the driver, hopefully making him less inclined to drive me around in circles. This configuration also facilitated my “lessons”.

At the bare minimum, the taxi presented a very simple language test whose results were immediately available and easy to understand: “if I didn’t get to where I want to go, I failed”.

The basic taxi vocabulary was easy enough: “Hello“, “I want to go ____“, “intersection“, “at the corner“, “turn left“, “turn right“, “make a u-turn“, and “stop here“. In my early taxi rides always I brought written instructions to my apartment so that I could always find my way home. I also asked my friends to write down destinations on slips of paper that I could show the driver. With the destination out of the way I focused, and gained confidence with, the limited vocabulary mentioned earlier.

After watching how my friends gave instructions to drivers on a number of shared rides, I started giving instructions myself. Mandarin is all about the tones. Use the wrong tone and you end up saying something you didn’t intend (more about that in a future post). Some destinations were easy enough to pronounce. Other streets sounded dangerously like others, and were therefore vulnerable to butchery by unpracticed foreign tongues. Sometimes I got to where I needed to go, other times . . . lets just say it was an interesting way to discover new and interesting places.

The vast majority of taxi drivers I met were courteous and mindful of the fact that I was trying to learn their language. Upon detecting the awkwardness in my delivery, they would invariably ask (in Mandarin of course) “Where are you from?”. Small talk and polite probes would follow, until my vocabulary ran out and I said “sorry, I don’t understand, I know very little Chinese”. The probes would then end with polite smiles.

One day, I didn’t have to end the conversation prematurely. By then I had been engaged in a language exchange arrangement with a couple of Taiwanese friends. They were helping me with my Mandarin, and I was helping them with their English. Because of the latter, English was always a readily available safety net. That was not the case with taxi drivers, and this one was no exception.

The usual small talk ensued, and I was even able to ask a few questions myself. It wasn’t until the ride ended that I realized: “I had just completed my first Mandarin-only conversation!!!!” It was a fantastic realization comparable to riding a bike, unassisted, for the first time.

The fondness with which I recall that moment, is only matched by the regret in not having written down the time and day it happened. That milestone is lost to me forever. Hopefully with blogs like this, I won’t let moments like that pass me by again.

Filed under Slices of life, Taiwan

Jun 15, 2010

Visa wait-times

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Travel shows give viewers the impression that the world is borderless. Every place . . . accessible with a simple call to a travel agent. The only thing holding you back procrastination or the “newness” of the travel destination. Alas, such care-free flexibility is not assured for the visa-collector. We have the visa application process to think about.

When thinking about travel, keep in mind that we are on our own when it comes to visas. We are ultimately responsible for finding out if we need travel documents to go to, or even just pass through, a country or not. A travel agent — depending on his or her experience — may be able to help, but cannot guarantee anything. Given the unpredictability of changes to visa requirements that may be imposed on the different visa-collecting nationalities, it would be unreasonable to expect the agent to be up-to-date on all possible developments. Online travel sites offer even less help. If you want immigration-hassle free travel, take charge and do you own homework.

As you match prime-travel dates with vacation time, consider how long it would take to find out if we are actually granted entry or not. I learned this the hard way when I started processing a European vacation between two other overseas business trips that were only two weeks apart. It was a really bad move, since I had to leave my passport with the embassy throughout the application process. Although things eventually worked out, having to choose between a trip that had already been booked and ensuring continued employment was not pleasant.

Visa wait-times vary greatly. They depend on the country, and even upon the specific embassy. The type of visa also has a bearing on this as well. Tourism is an encouraged activity, so these visas are comparatively easier to come by. Business visas require your company to vouch for you, but otherwise proceed like most Tourist visas. Immigrant visas . . . are complicated, take much longer, and deserve their own discussion. Here, lets focus on less-than-30-day travel.

Embassy work-schedules also have to be factored into the equation. Different embassies only accept visa applications at certain times of the day. In some cases, on specific days in the week. The photo on the left shows a sample.

Embassy Websites are a god-send. You no longer need to wait in a phone cue, or worse a physical cue at the embassy, to get a list of travel requirements. Just look for the Website of the consulate that has jurisdiction over your location (if there are multiple consulates in your country of residence), and look for the Visa section. Voila!!!

These sites often give information about visa processing lead times. The US embassy is particularly good about this. Others, on the other hand, do not. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and may actually indicate very short wait times. When I processed a multiple-entry Mexican business visa earlier this year, I needed to come in once to have my papers checked, and then set a later appointment for the actual attachment of the visa — while I waited, and watched. Combined time for both visits: less than an hour.

Regardless of what’s posted on the site, giving yourself more than 30-days of processing time can’t hurt. Otherwise, when internal processing issues — that are not related to you — happen, guess who has to live with the consequences?

Filed under Italy, Mexico, Visa collection

Jun 8, 2010

How this site came about

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A Filipino, a Chinese mainlander, and an Australian found themselves in an idle moment during a training session at their company’s technical support center in Libis, Quezon City, Philippines. All three had flown in for the training, including the Pinoy who was a US-based expat. As the conversation wound through the arsenal of icebreakers that erstwhile strangers with a common employer typically share, the discussion eventually shifted to their travel experiences.

Enter a discussion about visas. The Filipino, accustomed to his own visa difficulties when traveling overseas, was surprised to hear that his Chinese colleague required a visa to enter the Philippines. Chinese nationals apparently needed a visa to go anywhere — and the Philippines was no exception.

This started a pleasant comparison of visas in their respective passports. The same way that different countries had different currencies, visas apparently came in a fascinating variety of shapes and colors. European visas, for the most part, all look the same: predominantly green. The Indian visa was a tasteful blend of light shades of orange, blue and violet. Mexican visas had a washed out look but used heavy colors. The Canadian visa was in a category all its own, with the Canadian maple leaf cut into the visa itself creating a unique outline, and only part covered by a plastic security strip with holographic mounties ensuring its integrity.

Their Australian colleague, however, was hard pressed to contribute to the discussion. He had no visas on his passport. This wasn’t really because he was not well travelled. His citizenship simply exempted him from the travel requirements that Chinese, Filipinos, and other 3rd World nationals faced. While it offered him the convenience of easy travel . . .

. . . it also prevented him from forming his own visa collection. Apparently, having a third-world country passport has it’s upsides. 🙂

Needing to go through the visa application process to go anywhere is not something to which people aspire. But as the cliche goes, when given lemons . . . might as well make Lemon Marangue Pie.

Filed under About this blog, Canada, Mexico, Visa collection

Jun 6, 2010

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Archives for Slices of life

Visas for cruises: Not just for the intended destination

Street signs

Out of breath in Mexico City

Irish houses and their names

Chopsticks required

Sending stuff to the Philippines

The iFly experience

Taipei taxi language laboratory

Visa wait-times

How this site came about

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