A Good Day for Pete

[skyring]

Highlights:
Three wild catches!

1. "It had a big Sticker on it that said 'Take me' so who was I not to take it!"

This is the book that won me the prize for "Best Themed Release" at the Christchurch Bookcrossing Convention, when I released "In the Pond" in the pond in the location where we held our Flashmob. A month later and it's picked up!

I've been Bookcrossing for over two years, but I still get a thrill when my books are found after a wild release!

2. One from Archer City.

3. And one from San Francisco.

Don't know what it is about SF that attracts Aussies....

Yes I do. It's a beautiful city, and Australians have a particular eye for beauty.

And at one stage I was talking to two different BXers on two different chat boards.

FuShMuSh with the latest two in the Grafton crime bookring - I haven't finished the last one yet. Mercy! I tried to talk her into coming to Brisbane, but she's fresh married and wants to buy a house, which in sydney is not cheap.

And Bookczuk helping me get through the day.

I booked my room for the Brisbane convention. which it looks like there will be several Bookcrossers at the old People's Palace.

And I sent off my green US departure card to an address in London, Kentucky. US immigration had neglected to remove the stub from my passport in Los Angeles - we'd all been waved through so long as we had a passport in our hands - and I was concerned that this would cause problems when i went back, as they might wonder how I'd got out of the country last time. So I asked Customs in Sydney and they said Dunno, ring the embassy, and the embassy had a useless telephone menu system and I wrote an email and had just about resigned myself to going over to the embassy when i got a response. Send the form to Kentucky, keep a record of what you sent. So I scanned the relevant pages and printed it on the back of the email printout, tucked in my passport in case I run into trouble next time around.

If they do this to whole jumboloads at a time, they must have holes in their computer records, unless they are getting the data from elsewhere. Not sure how they'd do that - my passport got swiped through the checkin desk in San Francisco, so American Airlines knew who i was, but would US immigration be able to correlate that with an international departure from LAX? At Los Angeles I arrived at the same lounge I was to depart from and nobody looked at my passport.

Oh well, I guess I'll find out next time! Probably when I do the Toronto trip next year.

Comments

RE: US Customs

[shendoah.livejournal.com]

Now you know how people managed to stay in this country for years on end after their visitor/student/whatever visa has expired. That's just pitiful.
(no offense to you of course, but to our slacking US "security")

I feel ever so much safer now that Homeland Security is in charge.....

Re: US Customs

[reddragonlady32.livejournal.com]

lol Hey, when I moved to Germany, the stewardess took my kids and me right past all the customs stuff...thanks to the US military id. No one checked us in the slightest. Then, when we were getting our luggage, all the people waiting for people getting off the plane had to wait on the other side of a clear wall. The stewardess asked who was picking me up, I pointed out my husband and they let him in. I was amazed how nice they were to us. But coming back to the US??? Luggage searched...tied up in lines as customs. And that was before 9/11!

[ravensroads.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's what I like to see. "WHEN" I go to Toronto. ;-)

There's a reason it's called LAX, you know. ;-)

[ravensroads.livejournal.com]

And now you can log into Markeroni, do a search for Fort Mason (making sure you select CA from the list when you search) and snarf it there and then. :: grin ::

Congrats on the wild catches. I had a few from the hotel but none of the wild ones...but I know how much of a thrill it is :-)

[thebiblioholic.livejournal.com]

>There's a reason it's called LAX, you know. ;-)

LOL!

[thebiblioholic.livejournal.com]

I had a couple of catches from my weekend in Virginia. I'm especially happy with this one, though it was by an AnonymousFinder: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/1728265

This one, I think I saw being picked up. Two people sat on the bench behind me where I had left the book, and they were talking about it. I couldn't tell if they were the ones that walked off with it when I boarded my train: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/2729866 And a new member.

And cackleberry "caught" one I released into the postal system: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/2703960 Though it seems I forgot to make a journal entry or release note for it after posting it.

Speaking of visas and bits of paper in passports, I just checked the receipt for my electronic visa for Australia and it is good for multiple entries through the end of the year so I'm set if I go to the Brisbane convention (and that is looking quite likely).

Re: RE: US Customs

[skyring.livejournal.com]

People do the same in Oz. The biggest offenders are American. When they get found out, they just get told to leave. Or they can be deported if they don't mind not coming back for a few years.

The big hurdle is getting in in the first place. Easy for people from the global North, difficult for others, who are suspected (with good reason) of wanting to move here permanently.

To my mind the answer lies not in erecting larger and more impenetrable fences to the extent that long checks are required when crossing borders, everyone needs an ID card and the government monitors everything, but in making sure that conditions in the rest of the world are comfortable enough that people don't feel an urge to leave their cultural homeland and never come back.

[skyring.livejournal.com]

Heh! Looks like you scored a hit with cackleberry! And I'm enjoying Bernie Rhodenbarr.

I got 90 days from my January entry, and nobody said anything when I re-entered in April before the expiration of that period. Possibly because they could see that I'd left again in January. This is why I want to have everything above board, so I don't look like I'm stringing multiple tourist entries into one long residence next time I return.

Incidentally, the UK gives me six months to stay.

[thebiblioholic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see the UK stamps in my passport say six months. New Zealand gave me 3 months, but they wanted me to prove I was planning on leaving (by showing my itinerary) when I entered. On the other hand, they wanted to hold me captive until I bailed myself out with the $25 departure fee.

[skyring.livejournal.com]

LOL!