Immigration's One Fickle Pickle

Immigration's One Fickle Pickle

I'm having a great day. And a great night, except for the frustration involving logging into my Gmail account. First, this morning, I got a call from the in-charge-of-international-student's-immigration-although-she-doesn't-do-crap person, saying that now I can get an I-20 (needed document that provides me with the permission to study in the US). After about 3 weeks of believing that my status had evaporated! I do have a bone to pick with the whole system, but as long as things go well for me, I won't complain -- at least for the time being. So that's good news. I also got my date to register for the fall semester, a further indication that I will be able to stay, at least temporarily, at my current institution of higher learning.

Second thing that made tonight great is that I had a date. Very interesting young man, mid-twenties, well-cultured, opinionated, obviously passionate, extremely intellectual, pleasantly attractive. I've decided, in the recent light of things, to meet as many new people as possible. Diversify my circle. Get out of Koreatown and its insanity (I actually wrote a brilliant and rather cynical essay on Los Angeles and its filth while I was driving home yesterday, but it is all in my brain. I'll have to try to pick it out of there sometime -- wish me luck). There's got to be a real diamond in a sea of cubic zirconias. Got a promise for a round two for sometime later this week, and that was that.

Before, it was all about waiting it out. Waiting to get some answers from that damned immigration. Then, it was about survival, how I'm going to make it in LA without a valid legal status. Now, it's about having the endurance to go through the whole charade again, one more time. Going through the motions. It's never quite a firm "Yes" nor is it a certain "No." It reverberates back and forth, going in circles, round and round we go. Someday, I'll beat the system. And condemn its inefficiency to Hell.