Did I ever write about how I almost failed my masters?
I was driving to my master's defense/presentation in Buffalo with my friend
Kevin and a friend we call Lep, short for Leprechaun because he's from Ireland. When we got to the border an hour early I had a premonition
something awful would happen.
The border patrol asked Kevin where he was born and Kevin replied Mississauga, which is a suburb near Toronto. Obviously, a border guard wouldn't know this and I'll outline how this spelt trouble for us. He asked Lep where he was born and Lep said Northern Ireland. He said it with an Irish accent and the border guard instead of admitting he couldn't understand kept saying, "speak up. You're mumbling." He scribbled some things down on paper after he took our passports and I knew things weren't good. He asked me where we were going and I told him I had to be at my masters presentation. He didn't really give a crap. He sent us over to area one.
In area one the place was filled with discrimnated people. I felt sorry for the one guy who was a doppelganger for Saddam Hussein. Close to an hour later we finally get called in. We had assumed it was Lep who caused all the trouble but he was only half the problem. When the officer came out and asked for us, we presented him with our sacrifice, Lep. He said, "No, we want to see Kevin Chiu."
Inside they talked to Kevin for a very long time and the officer kept holding and checking his palms. He even called other officers over to look at his palms. Kevin later related what happened:
Officer: Are you Native American? (Kevin is Chinese btw)
Kevin: No.
Officer:
Are you of Indian descent?
Kevin: No.
Officer: You're sure you're not Native American?
Kevin: No!
As the story goes, apparently Kevin was a doppelganger for a wanted Native American drug dealing criminal and saying he was from Mississauga sounded, to them, like an Indian reserve. The whole looking at the his palms was in fact looking at his fingernails to look for drug use marks, because criminals shoot up under the fingernails now to hide the marks (there are viens under the finger nail).
Later they called Lep in and he had to get his I-92 or whatever crap. Then, I was off to my presentation, which started already. As I entered the place, panicked and diseheveled, there were calling out names to collect their certificate. They called my name three names into it.
