2007-02-05 - 5:28 p.m.

..lessons in efficiency or productivity or both?...

Today's first lesson is that it is very expensive to receive a gift in Canada. In the past week we've had to pay $160 in customs fees to get our things into the country. The first package ($100) was full of MY things. The second was a wedding gift - a waterford cake knife from my aunt and uncle ($60). Both were shipped UPS, which charges a customs handling fee. So indeed, it is way cheaper to just wait for Canada post.

Today's second lesson was that it takes WAY too long to get criminal record reports - essentially a sheet of paper that says NOTHING - from North American countries. The FBI's original waiting time (when we put the paperwork in) was 8-10 weeks. This past week the number was just revised to 16-18 weeks. We were equally shocked to learn that the current waiting time for the same paperwork is 17 weeks in Canada - a country with 1/10th the population of the USA. Of course, permanent residence is dependent on our getting these police records. K thinks that arguments for normalizing by population are a little bit shaky. Well, whatever - European nations can process this paperwork on the order of days (even INCLUDING the time in the mail), while Canada and the USA require months.

Other lessons: It took me fifty minutes on the telephone, two different browsers, and three restarts of the peoples*ft program to process my purchasing request this morning.

I have my health. I have my health.