Memento - A Picture Tells A Thousand Words

From Eh to Zed

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8 PM

10 PM

12 MN

View of CN Tower from Sherway 2
First Night as a Canadian

"What is a Canadian? A Canadian is a fellow wearing English tweeds, a Hong Kong shirt and Spanish shoes, who sips Brazilian coffee sweetened with Philippine sugar from a Bavarian cup while nibbling Swiss cheese, sitting at a Danish desk over a Persian rug, after coming home in a German car from an Italian movie... and then writes his Member of Parliament with a Japanese ballpoint pen on French paper, demanding that he do something about foreigners taking away our Canadian jobs."

So there you go, I just made it! We made it. It was midnight of September 11 when we arrived from the Philippines with 2 boxes and 2 bags, with Jo and Mike opening their doors for us, relatively unknown except for Mike being my batchmate, platoon mate and schoolmate.

Exactly on the 1,095th day of physical presence in Canada, we applied for citizenship. Exactly.

After another 12 months, we were given time to review and take the exams to see what we understand about the history, the economy and politics of our adopted country.

We passed that and last Friday - we were sworn in.

Whew! And we went straight to the Passport office to apply for a Canadian passport. Ganun ka-ganado!

So what will change? Not much except for the following:

1. No More Filipino Time: Yes, I promise to arrive 15 minutes earlier. No not 15 minutes earlier than usual but 15 minutes earlier than the agreed time. Of course, this will work best if it is followed by the rest of the Filipino-Canadians who we mostly meet. But someone has to start somewhere and pave the way.

2. No More Ningas Kugon: Yes, work hard and work smart and work consistently. No great start and fizzle out in the end. No catch up or deadline beating. Kind of hard, but again, it's worth a try.

3. No More Visas: the most important of all. We can travel sans the raised eyebrows of the Immigration officers, or leafing through my passport looking for that page to tell them that I'm legal to enter.

Except for #3, there is no reason that Filipinos not to practice #1 and #2 despite being Pinoy.

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On thing for sure, I will still be doing the following. Besides, you can take the Pinoy from the Philippines, but you can not take the Philippines from the Pinoy!

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