The Land Where It's Already Tomorrow, Chapter 00: Introduction

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I started writing this while I was sitting in what Telus Mobility is pleased to call an Internet “hot spot’, at Vancouver International Airport. In other words, if you pay you can connect your laptop to the web.

The last time I had a hot spot, the dermatologist gave me a topical lotion for it, but that’s another story—one you probably don’t want to hear. In any case, my opening remarks are not a good place to start digressing. There will be plenty of digressing, later on. Ability to focus was never my strong point.

So, I should stop talking about hot spots, and start from scratch. This is my third or fourth travel journal. This time I will call it “The Land where it’s Already Tomorrow”. It is a strange feeling, to feel at home in both Taiwan and Canada, and to return to the one and to be immediately homesick for the other.

The flight from Cassidy Airport to YVR, all 12 minutes and 5,000 feet of it, was uneventful—at least compared to the events of yesterday. My sawbones will on the phone to the Guiness Book of World Records about my blood pressure, if this keeps up. You see, I got an email from the recruiting company in Vancouver, saying that the ROC Council of Labor Affairs had not yet approved my work permit. No work permit = no resident visa = no alien resident certificate = no right to remain in the country for more than the sixty days on my visitor visa. The recruiter said that she had seven other teachers in the same position—people who had quit their jobs and were living in hotels. Something tells me that those other teachers may not have been as polite to her as I was.

No worries—even though my VISA will max out before my visa does, if I can’t work. The very nice Ministry of Education lady, in response to my diplomatic comments on the relevance of a signed contract (to me, anyway), was very helpful and suggested I just come over anyway and take the training. She is sure that it will all be straightened out within the week. If not, I’ll just stay in Taipei and do corporate stuff again—not exactly a fate worse than death.

So. I will have four nights in my digs at Bihu, then two weeks of training in Sansia at the National Academy for Educational Research. After that, someone from the school will come to collect me, and take me on the train to my new home in Hualien County.

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Photos

My Ride From Home
From Nanaimo (Cassidy) Airport to Vancouver International Airport is a short (10 minute) hope over the water at 4000 ft.

JAL to Narita
Including the three-hour layover in Japan (not long enough to do anything), it is a long flight from Vancouver to Taipei on Japan Airlines and Japan Asia Airlines.