the next visit of OMG, administratively declared one point something

[raven]

So, there was Wednesday morning, almost late enough to be Wednesday afternoon, when I had spent most of the hours previously in bed and it was still raining outside because in Oxford it has done nothing but rain for the last five hundred years and then jacinthsong rang to say results were up and there was a mixture of flailing and extreme do-not-want; and then there was an evening, sometime, in a café in the late-evening sunshine with a man in the background playing the glockenspiel, in San Francisco, and from my increasingly loopy perspective, this was all the same day.

Um. It took a very very long time for me to get here. I left Oxford at half three in the morning, having not really slept for quite a while - I had a couple of hours' worth of nap, and then shimgray came down with me to Gloucester Green, treating me to his crackpots-and-these-women face, special sleep-deprived Extended Edition, and then it was four o'clock and the sun wasn't quite rising and I was gone. Heathrow was an education. I was random-checked twice in a couple of hours - first by an army of beagles, and then when I was so close to actually getting on the plane I could see it, they stopped me a few steps away and made me turn out my bag. Hurrah. Etc.

In Detroit, I was fingerprinted prodigiously, and the immigration official asked me what I was doing in the States. Visiting a friend, I said. "How do you even know someone in San Francisco?" he asked.

Deep sigh, take a deep breath, do not say to the man from the US Department of Homeland Security (urgh), "The Internet."

"We were at Oxford together," I said, after a while. But, I don't know, why shouldn't I know someone in San Francisco? Why shouldn't I come and visit her? Nowhere, I think, is it more evident how politically strange this country is than the long queues at immigration. People are tired and miserable and cranky and children are crying and everyone is being barked at by officials to shut up and stand in straight lines, and then after they've done this for an hour, you are asked intrusive questions and treated as though you are a criminal. Maybe it's different for white people, I don't know, but I don't think so. It's all homogenous and strange. And then again, at customs, all over again.

And then the actual airport, once I got there, was quite spectacularly unexciting - for one thing, there was no food. One would think that an international airport would have, I don't know, eating establishments. (On the flight, they had served me plastic-inna-sauce and runner beans.) But, no. There were people selling food with beef in it, and places where you could go if you wanted to drown yourself in salad cream, but nowhere where I could buy something even remotely appetising. So I sat around and was sleep-deprived for three hours, and then onwards.

I am conditioned, I think, to believe that domestic flights are short hops. (Manchester to Heathrow, thirty-five minutes, for example.) This flight, however, was nearly five hours long. It was astonishingly bad - no food, no food - and I was something of a wreck by the time arrived. But gamesiplay came running up to me in baggage claim and it was so utterly wonderful to see her. We retrieved my luggage and proceeded to fail at mass transit. It was just utterly great. And the sun was shining! There is sun! It's not actually hotter here than it would be on one of the hottest days at home, but I've been rained on for a week and it's just lovely, warm but not still with the air all laced with sea breezes and lovely, lovely. (I saw the Pacific for the first time in years on descent. It was a joy.) And yes, we failed at mass transit! And saw layers of fog with more sun underneath them descending as we came into the city. And geeked about Shakespeare and underground train systems. And then real food, and live music featuring a glockenspiel. And Leigh produced a bottle of champagne like well-aerated magic from the fridge and we toasted each other and how we have both, after all this time, survived higher education. And the sky stays bright late, but I had been awake for nearly thirty-six hours and oh, sleep, sleep is so good.

This morning, I have had breakfast, I have had a shower, I have slept for nearly twelve hours and thanks to the wonders of modern time zones, it isn't four o'clock in the afternoon! I look, feel and smell human again. Leigh has gone to work for today, and I have a familial duty to discharge; much as I am disinclined to spend much time around my family at the moment, I have an uncle I must see today because, well, I am here. It might well be fun, I should not be uncharitable. In the meantime I am pottering quietly about, marvelling at being six thousand miles from home and sitting next to a view for which the focal point is a rainbow flag. I made it! And Leigh and I have an entire week together in which to wreak glorious havoc on a third city.

Thank you all for the comments you left on my last post, they're very much appreciated. I'm probably a little difficult to contact this week, but should anybody want me for anything, email is fine.

Comments

[outintherain.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA I said "the internet" at the Canadian border once... I got referred to a second officer.. it was great!!!!

I think my slightly bemused honesty won them out in the end... I had rather a tone of "Why shouldn't I meet someone on an X-Files forum and then tour Vancouver with them?"

That or possibly the fact that I had a friend actually living in Vancouver...

Anyway; borders! Fun times...

My experience with American Homeland Security was always fine though... I think I had an abnormally polite officer...

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

My only trip alone through US immigration was at JFK, which was fairly placid: the only thing of note was the guy looking at my place-of-birth and asking if I went to 'school' in Oxford. And then he didn't believe me when I said yes >:o

Re: random-checking, J told you about Lewis Iwu, right?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, he did! I remember Lewis Iwu. That story just said it all, really.

(And, ahaha, I have just realised. You can be one of those people who says they went to school in Oxford and "took" a first! Archaisms ftw, etc.)

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

*sighs softly* No, I do not think it would be much different for white people.

I apologize for my country, and I hope you enjoy the other bits of it rather more.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Hah, don't forget that we read PPE. I love that expression, it sounds to me as if one read the entire SSL.

[ladyfalcon.livejournal.com]

Welcome back to the US. I am sorry that customs/immigration people are cunts to you every time you visit us.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

We read PPE! WE DID, LAURA, WE DID. I have no compunction about making people believe we read the entire SSL because, basically, we did.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Hee. Sorry about vanishign earlier - had to restart to install programmes, then my mum snatched the computer for job apps and I had to de-worm the cats (an image you totally wanted). RARGH. Now I shall make chilli.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

God, I did just assume you and your flist were interested in the minutae of my daily movements, didn't I? Norfolk has this effect. :(

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes, because when we were living round the corner from each other we TOTALLY DIDN'T regale each other with tales of room-tidying, failure to work, laundry, comedy signage and Enormous Courgettes and the Purchase Thereof.

miss you <3

[hips-lips-tits.livejournal.com]

airports in america are stupid in general.

i've gotten asked the same kinds of questions, everywhere i've ever been, and that has obviously only been INSIDE the US.

more often than not, though, it's by the people at the airports here in florida, and it is often in a tone of 'omg why would you ever want to leave the south?' like.. 'MARYLAND?! well what in the hell could you possibly want to do up there?'

i think that for the most part, it's more of a need to make stupid small-talk than it is to be intrusive. we just have no tact, and therefore it comes out sounding rude. :)

[ressie-noldo.livejournal.com]

Ack, ack, that sounds all too familiar -- especially the getting-stopped-at-Heathrow and having bags checked when within spitting distance (assuming a good wind-speed and a certain viscosity of saliva) of plane. Woe. I also observed that I was the only person boarding my particular flight who was stopped and searched, which leads me to the theory that being a) not white and b) wearing Ethnic things is automatically suspicious.

Immigration in the US is anger-inducing. I once got asked at an immigration queue why I was taking a degree in physics, what did I want to do with it, how much physics did I know, what was my SAT score -- and this was after being out of the States for ten days. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Still, you survived the entry, and leaving is relatively pleasant -- have an awesome holiday!

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

You toooooooooooo. <3 ps: another addition (http://xandratheblue.livejournal.com/105293.html) to Shim's wishlist of baby savannah mammals? :P

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

You had a lay over in Detroit? I mean, DETROIT? Were you flying some crack-ass airline that forgot about, I don't know, Chicago or Atlanta? Chicago has massive dinosaurs at the Field Museum satellite shops, and Atlanta has the best damn Starbucks I have ever been to at the T-Gates. But they sent you to Detroit?!

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Hi, you are here! I thought that merited mentioning.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

...my wishlist?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You are not the first person to say this! It is a mystery of epic epicness!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

dork. <3

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

This is completely none of my business, but what about Lewis Iwu, if it is shareable/interesting? He's a New Collegian so I'm automatically interested. :)

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

his crackpots-and-these-women face

Right now, I want to see that face more than I want anything else in the whole wide world. Description, pls?

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Oh: in 2005, he was on the England team for the World Schools debating finals in Canada. The team consisted of him and three white guys. Guess which one got random-searched on each leg? Yep...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

<3 The country itself has been treating me very well. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Leigh passed along your message! *hearts* And the country, if not immigration thereof, is, as usual, lovely.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, you know? Because small talk, yes, sometimes. But when the person in question has an arbitrary power to throw me out of the country, it gets quite... menacing. Quite possibly I am reading too much into it on occasion. But it concerns me.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely! Can't trust those ethnics, even at Heathrow. (And normally I am the only person on the planet who likes Heathrow. I am weird, possibly.)

California is a delight, but a big state of enormousness. I am sorry you are still so very far away!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You've seen it! It's his amused-tolerance-with-lashings-of-resignation face, which he used a lot when Laura and I were being utterly appalling to him during our Finals.

[tau_sigma]

why shouldn't I know someone in San Francisco? - well, exactly. I can't quite believe that they asked you, especially not in that tone. Internet people aside - and there are plenty of us, goodness knows' - why shouldn't you know someone who had moved to SF, or something? Harrumph. Not having ever been to America, I don't know if white people are treated differently, but I can't help but think they probably are. Argh.

Anyway. Champagne is so much of the good, and I hope you have a wonderful time. *hugs and smiles*

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

I think it may now be the only face I have.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Awww, thank you. *g* You weren't an axe murderer, either! Funny that. :)