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I only have a tourist visa, I smuggled myself in under false pretenses. (Well, technically I'm not earning money, so I'm not evading taxes or stealing jobs or whatever. But I did lie about my purpose here to get in for fear of the people at the airport being anal.)

I really hate those interviews. Even though I've got nothing to hide I always feel really nervous. What did you say? That you're just having an extended holiday or that you planned to travel round the country for 90 days?

How is your trip going, btw? Made many friends out there? Someone I know is getting ready to put on his first stage production in LA. Shame I'm here and can't see it :(

Yes, and now you're confessing to everything on a public forum. I think you should rethink this course of action.

I think his blog, and homepage with video introduction, might have given "the game" away long before that post. Besides, it's hardly a confession, he's not breaking the law nor professed any desire to.

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Yes, and now you're confessing to everything on a public forum. I think you should rethink this course of action.

Says the huge space glove, speaking of "anal" at the airport... :hah:

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Man, I have left and reentered the States too many times, in too many different ways. I've done it as a non-resident alien, as a resident alien, as a resident, as a permanent resident, as a citizen—by plane, by land—through sleepy border crossings where agents didn't much seem to care, as well as semi-militarized zones where a dog jumped on my car and barked and slobbered all over the window for no reason whatsoever (apparently that meant that I was clean).

I've never had any kind of normal status such as "Tourist" or "Student". It was always some sort of esoteric visa tied to my mother (who's a scientist), that they had to educate themselves about before giving me a stamp in my passport—but they would never say as much; they would just disappear in some back room for half an hour. Dealing with Homeland Security bureaucracy was never fun. And they seldom have a sense of humor about the Kafkaesque shenanigans they force people through. I never know if the fuzz is going to see some detail about me or something I say as irrelevant rambling of a silly fat kid, or as a reason to send me to Gitmo. :deranged: So I'm somewhat traumatized by it all.

I finally became a citizen a month ago, but then proceeded to marry a Mexican on a student visa... which means the fun times with the Homeland Security and INS will not end for another 3+ years.

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I only have a tourist visa, I smuggled myself in under false pretenses. (Well, technically I'm not earning money, so I'm not evading taxes or stealing jobs or whatever. But I did lie about my purpose here to get in for fear of the people at the airport being anal.)

Fixed for new international travel policies.

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I never know if the fuzz is going to see some detail about me or something I say as irrelevant rambling of a silly fat kid, or as a reason to send me to Gitmo. :deranged: So I'm somewhat traumatized by it all.

It really is horrible, isn't it? I've gone through many, many times under the visa waiver program (ie. tourist), but I've also been some sort of Alien in the past (back when I was married living over there). This last time going through, the conversation went this like this:

Man: Where are you staying?

Me: At a friend's.

Man: How did you meet him?

Me: I met him when I was last over here.

Man: What where you do doing here last time?

Me: I was living here.

Man: Under what visa?

*panic sets in as a I realise the complicated story that I might need to explain*

Me: Er, I had gotten married to someone.

Man: So you had a Green Card?

Me: No, er, had Resident Alien or Non-Resident Alien visa, I can't quite remember. It was in my previous passport.

Man: But you don't have one now?

Me: No, we broke up.

*man glares at me*

(etc.)

It was hard to hide my panic when I started thinking, "Oh my god, this sounds terrible! What a ridiculous story to try and condense in a few sentences... it sounds so suspicious! He's probably going to not let me in!" Absolutely horrible, although it was all fine in the end, and the guy was perfectly fine, too. Nerve wracking, though -- even though I had nothing to hide!

I finally became a citizen a month ago, but then proceeded to marry a Mexican on a student visa... which means the fun times with the Homeland Security and INS will not end for another 3+ years.

Congratulations on your citizenship... and good luck with the INS! :/

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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I'm sure the FBI is right outside my door at this moment, ready to bust my illegal alien ass :tup: So I'll have no other option than to parkour my way into the Dutch consulate, which will then be blown up by James Bond.

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The FBI is too busy laying around with AT&T in order to help the RIAA make some sweet monies on illegal MP3 downloadin'.

I think you are safe Rodi.

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The FBI is too busy laying around with AT&T in order to help the RIAA make some sweet monies on illegal MP3 downloadin'.

I think you are safe Rodi.

lol.

***

Alright, well working American isn't working out so I need some advice based on the following vauge description.

Basically, if I can't work in the states, I might as well go back to school this year(I'll sort that out during registration) but int he mean time I need to actually work to make money.

I have a full time job at a game company in Montreal(take your guess, I think theres like three here, but what do I know) so right now I have the choice of either...

1. Help dismantle a game I love with a sequel that will either end up still being cool or crap; but either way we're shitting over the thing I love

2. Help rebuild a broken franchise by doing pretty much the same thing that broke it, but this time better; it's really a gamble and the reason it broke I'm literally so emotional I was talking to my computer while watching the presentation of the people who broke it... so yeah.

3. Work on something new that could potentially suck or be disinteresting.

Either way I won't make it to ship if I end up in school, on the other hand, I may not make it into school so whatever I decided I should consider being on until the end.

I may just throw names into a hat and pick them out because they are all equally interesting/disinteresting.

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That's a pretty disheartening list, really =( Doesn't seem like there's an option you'd be actually happy with, right?

OK, I've got a question for anyone: how the hell does Facebook work? I just can't figure out how the order of the posts works. Posts will magically appear and disappear, and their order doesn't seem to be decided by the time they were posted or commented upon, so... am I going fucking crazy? Why isn't this obvious to someone who's been using forums and whatnot for over ten years?

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That's a pretty disheartening list, really =( Doesn't seem like there's an option you'd be actually happy with, right?

OK, I've got a question for anyone: how the hell does Facebook work? I just can't figure out how the order of the posts works. Posts will magically appear and disappear, and their order doesn't seem to be decided by the time they were posted or commented upon, so... am I going fucking crazy? Why isn't this obvious to someone who's been using forums and whatnot for over ten years?

I think this is a recent thing, I've noticed it, too. I hope they fix it soon, it's very confusing.

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You should have a link at the top that says "View live feed" or something. The live feed is working chronologically, the newsfeed seems to be pulling in random posts and is a bit fucked. Annoyingly, it seems to switch automatically from live feed back to news feed once or twice a week for me.

If you're using Firefox, I'd also recommend Facebook Purity for Greasemonkey, it gets rid of a *lot* of the annoying spam items in feeds.

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So I have had a mediocre few days, due to both awesome and annoying things. So I'll start with the good: I have most of my new PC has arrived and is now assembled and the rest of the components 'should' arrive tomorrow. On the bad side I have had to make several calls to get my orders to go through with some person in my postcode committing postal fraud. Also It took me over 6 hours to do a journey it takes me at most 4 due to the fucking snow.

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Yes, and now you're confessing to everything on a public forum. I think you should rethink this course of action.

I'm sure government agencies read the fucking Idle Thumbs forums (NOT!!!).

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You should have a link at the top that says "View live feed" or something. The live feed is working chronologically, the newsfeed seems to be pulling in random posts and is a bit fucked. Annoyingly, it seems to switch automatically from live feed back to news feed once or twice a week for me.

If you're using Firefox, I'd also recommend Facebook Purity for Greasemonkey, it gets rid of a *lot* of the annoying spam items in feeds.

Or Safari, Chrome or Opera. Your link has intructions for them too.

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I'm sure government agencies read the fucking Idle Thumbs forums (NOT!!!).

Snitches with nothing better to do than get other people in trouble might though :fart:

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proceeded to marry a Mexican on a student visa...

Pictures, please.

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Aw, you got married on my birthday. Coincidences are fun! The actual photo is really cute too. Congrats!

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Aw, you got married on my birthday. Coincidences are fun! The actual photo is really cute too. Congrats!
We had two parties, the first one on the 19th in SA, and then the other one on the 26th in Victoria. The photo is from that second party. Her mother (who threw the second party with no input from us) insisted she wear the weird little veil and throw the bouquet, neither one of which happened at the wedding proper.

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Life is pretty sweet at the moment.

Still seeing that girl, and things are going well ten weeks in. Since work upgraded the mobile tariffs, I got my bosses old iphone, which is 3G and in good nick.

I also took up Systema regularly after a break over Christmas, and it's very, very good. The instructor makes the class as flat and non-hierarchical as possible by getting everyone to teach what they can, and everyone is patient and nice even though what we're learning is a bit nasty. We're not just learning self-defense, but also how to be good training partners. Bullies get told to not come back.

There's some very hard physical training at the start of each class, and it feels good to ache all over regularly. Also, someone asked the instructor "What's your best fight?" and he responded "I'm not proud of that sort of thing". Think this is the right class for me :tup:

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Oh, hey we finally got to uploading some honeymoon pictures. They are of Guadalajara mostly. A couple of standouts from our excursion to Mazamitla, a relatively pristine adobe mountain village with some affluent weekender neighborhoods:

4291754241_19b64880a3_o.jpg

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These people have paved a plot of forest! With red brick! These photos don't do justice to how glaringly red the brick was against the relatively pristine—if excessively manicured—nature of the neighboring yards.

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