Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Ever heard of the Secondary Inspection Zone at the US customs @ YVR (Vancouver Airport)? Well, I was a guest in that room today. Woke up at 5:00 AM to catch a 7:20 flight (I learned from a past experience that you need to be there at the least 1 hr before departure, that's another story). Anyway, got there at 6:15 and started lining up. Due to the nature I am applying for the Chinese Visa (leaving for China on Saturday), my passport is in the Chinese embassy at Ottawa. I showed my driver's license and social insurance card plus a credit card to the custom officer and they were not satisfied, sent me to a room full of foreign passport holders and wait for a "secondary inspection". The officer in the secondary inspection area did explain to me that a driver's license and social insurance card is no long good for entering USA, after a detailed explanation of why I don't have my passport and the reason of my trip to Sonoma County, she kindly agreed to let me in. However she did have to "blog" the whole thing into the database. By the time I reached the gate, it was 7:18 and I literally watched the plane backed away and took off. I was stucked at the airport for 4 hours, while D'arcy, King and Liang (my UBC coworker) are waiting for me on the other side... Anyway, I don't normally write the daily experiences here, but today's event is bloggable. And for those of you who are planning to travel to States in the next little while, try to bring your passport just to make things easier. And depend how suspicious you look, you may have to leave a finger print behind.