I'm afraid you are stuck with me now. Today I attended my Naturalization Ceremony, and became a US citizen.

Following on from my last blog post on the N400 interview, I thought I would give a quick review of today's proceedings. Today 102 people from 38 countries became US citizens at the Seattle USCIS office. I was the only Irish person. Several times I heard Philippines, China, Korea, Ethiopia, India, etc. A couple of Canadians and a couple of UK folks, one Swedish, and so on. Fairly diverse crowd :-)  Three members of the US military were given special mention and a round of applause. The coolest moment was when 3 members of the same family all became citizens together - can't remember where they were from but definitely one of the Eastern European countries.

The whole thing took about 2.5 hours. In rough order the day went something like this:

• Arrive about 30 mins early (just in case!), clear security
• Stand around with a bunch of other people confused about which line to stand in until a security guy tells us to go wait upstairs
• Sit upstairs waiting for a while, eventually hear some guy shouting about something or other, coming from downstairs. People start to lean over the railing wondering what's going on. After a little while it seems that those people start going downstairs. They hold an Oath Ceremony invitation like mine, so I decide to follow. The shouting is coming from a little Asian man who is trying to divide people up between those who are going to take the Oath of Allegiance, and those who are just here as guests of the Oath-takers. The guests are told to go into some room, and we are told to follow the shouting guy. My first impression of the shouting guy is obnoxious and rude, but considering he's trying to shepherd 102 Oath-takers plus their guests, I guess it's understandable. The USCIS should really spell out this process so that people know what to expect in advance. His job certainly wasn't made any easier since none of us had any idea where we were supposed to be or what we were supposed to do.
• Follow the shouting guy back out into the security area. We all stand in a snaking line in a small, crowded area. The shouting guy starts shouting again, telling us what's going to happen next and reviewing what we are supposed to have filled out on our invitation letters. He also takes questions from various people. After much standing around waiting, we begin to get processed, one by one. This takes some time, although the processing doesn't take much time - hand over the invitation letter, hand over the green card, verify their information about you is correct, and receive several items:
  • a letter from the President
  • a copy of "The Citizen's Almanac"
  • a copy of "Pocket Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States"
  • a little US flag (I had to laugh when I saw the little cheapie US flag. Fortunately there was no requirement to wave it. I guess this "flag-loving" culture is something I'm going to have to get used to).
    
• After being processed, we are sent to the Auditorium, which is where all the guests have been waiting. Oath takers in the front, guests in the back. No sitting together.
• Sitting, waiting as more and more people get processed and file in. This takes a long while. I now realise this is not something where you benefit from being early for your appointment...
  
• After everyone is in, two officials begin to hand out some more papers and pens. It's the US Passport application form. Mass confusion at this point as nobody explained what we were to do, but hey, here's a form and a pen, so gee, maybe we should fill this thing out right now? NO. Apparently the pen was given to us just because it has the US Passport office's URL on it (http://travel.state.gov). They won't actually take the forms from us or anything like that.
• Finally the ceremony starts. A video plays (in Windows Media Player!) - "Faces of America" or something to that effect - basically old photos of immigrants and some inspiring quotes.
• The Director comes in and has us all stand, raise our right hands and recite the Oath of Allegiance.
• We are now US citizens! Everyone applauds.
  
•  OK, now it's time to get the Certificate of Naturalization. One by one the Director calls out a name and a country, and we go up and get it. Applause as each name is called out.
• 102 people later, we're done. Oh wait, we're not done. Time to watch another video. This time it's the President welcoming us as citizens, and then ... a music video. A country music video of particularly patriotic nonsense. I kid you not, friends.
• Still not done. Now it's time to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Stand up, hand over heart, and pretend you're a schoolkid who has to do this every morning.
• OK! NOW we're done. Off out into the dark and rainy Seattle evening, a newly-minted US citizen. Don't forget to sign that certificate in black ink, and don't forget to notify the Social Security Office of your change in status. Oh, and don't forget to register to vote!

Overall impressions/takeaways/criticisms:

• The USCIS make a big deal about the solemnity of the occasion and ask for proper attire to be worn, no jeans, shorts, etc. Apparently this is not enforced too strictly, I did see jeans. No shorts, but it is December...
• The solemnity of the occasion is marred by "el cheapo" little US flag. Am I supposed to squeal "whee" while waving it around like an idiot? Maybe it's just me. The solemnity of the occasion is also hugely marred by the damn country music video.
• They need to do a better job in organization. Just tell people what's going to happen, it would really help. Give us the Passport application forms at the same time as everything else and give us a little bag to carry it all in. 
• The Director did a good job for the ceremony and pronouncing everyone's names. Can't be easy. And she provided clear ancillary information which was very useful.
  

I had my US Naturalization interview today. Good news: I passed! I will have my Oath-taking ceremony on December 1st. In hindsight, the interview was pretty quick and uneventful and nothing to be scared of. That didn't stop me from being nervous all weekend and this morning, though :-)

I thought I'd review my experience in case it's useful to others.

After showing up at the USCIS office, and getting through security, I stood in line 3 which was for N400 and I485 appointments. The attendant swiftly called everyone up, checked us in, and directed us to the second floor. I saw some sign indicating that N400 visitors were to go to the blue room and I485 people were to go to the green room - I have no idea what this referred to as there was absolutely no sign of a blue or green room anywhere. Instead I arrived at the second floor and found two waiting areas with seats, one on each side of the stairs. I had no idea which side I was supposed to sit and looked around for any indication for which seating area was blue or green, to no avail. Finally I picked a side at random and sat down. As it turns out, it makes no difference whatsoever which side you sit. Immigration officers come out from several different doors located on all sides of this waiting area, and call people's names. It was occasionally difficult to hear the names being called.

Finally my name was called, after waiting about 30 minutes. My officer was female and middle-aged. Not super-friendly, but not rude either. I was directed to her office, then she swore me in.

The interview was basically in two halves. The first half consisted of the officer reviewing my N400 application form - essentially asking me the questions on the form and making sure that my answers corresponded to the answers I had provided when I sent in the application. She asked to see my green card, my driving license, and my passports (current and expired passports). In the end, she never looked at the passports. She looked at the green card and tried to mentally calculate how long I had been a resident to make sure I had been a resident long enough. After going through the entire application in this question-and-answer format, she seemed satisfied that everything was in order, and moved on to the second half of the interview - the test!

The officer asked if I wanted to take the old or the new test. (I had this option based on my N400 application date.) I asked for the new test.

The English Test:
I was handed a piece of paper with 3 English sentences on it and asked to read aloud the first sentence. The sentence was "Where is the White House?" Then I was handed a different piece of paper and asked to write a sentence. The officer spoke the sentence to me first. The sentence was "The White House is in Washington, D.C."

Civics Questions:
The officer asked me 10 questions, all of which were written on a piece of paper. She just read them in order and checked them off as I answered. All 10 questions were from the new (revised) civics test. There's no guarantee you will be asked the same questions, you just need a day or two to memorize and practice the 100 questions. It's not rocket science ;-) 

1. What is an Amendment?
2. What is the supreme law of the land?
3. Who signs bills to become laws?
4. Who vetos bills?
5. What is the capital of this state?
6. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?
7. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?
8. Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
9. Who did the United States fight in World War II?
10. Name one US territory?

Think you can answer all of them correctly? I did.

Once the test was completed, we were almost done. The officer had me sign my name in three places on the N400 application. She then printed a sheet of paper with my personal details on it and asked me to review it for accuracy. Then she brought out the two photographs of myself that I had included with my application, and asked me to sign them. The photos were then stapled to the sheet of paper with my personal details, and I assume this is then sent to another officer to prepare the actual Certificate of Naturalization. She handed me another piece of paper showing that I had passed the test and that I was being recommended for naturalization. I could keep this. Finally, she gave me yet another piece of paper which was my appointment letter to attend the oath-taking ceremony.

So that's it... 12 days to go until I recite the Oath and receive my Certificate of Naturalization.

I'm confused.

Last time I checked, "PC" was an abbreviation of "Personal Computer". It doesn't matter which OS is running on the computer - Mac, Windows, Linux, DOS... a PC is still a PC. So this whole advertising campaign Apple started highlighting why a Mac is better than a PC doesn't make any sense. How can you compare a Mac against a Personal Computer?

Now Microsoft has its own "I'm a PC" ads... at least that statement is accurate :-)

At both work and home I use a Mac with Leopard about 50% of the time, and a Windows Vista machine the other 50%.

Our first anniversary is coming up in a few days. The time flew by! We thought about what to do to celebrate, and the idea of heading to Maui came up. But the timing didn't work out - just a month before the Live Mesh @ PDC, I couldn't take the time off work. This weekend we finally settled on a new plan - we're heading to Maui for my 40th birthday instead (the week after PDC).  I've only had 1 week off work so far this year so I'm really looking forward to it.

As for our anniversary, Paew's heading to Yellowstone right before it with the girls and getting back Sunday night, and I'll take a day off work on our anniversary (Monday). We're not sure what to do yet. A day trip to the San Juans is one possibility, if the weather cooperates.

I haven't written anything here for a while now. This is due to a few factors - 1) buying a puppy and therefore being more busy at home than before, 2) being more busy at work than before (I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants most of the time in the recent past). But at least partly there's another reason too - a feeling of being slightly over-exposed on the internet. Between this site, our personal site, sites like Facebook, etc, and some skill at using search engines, I became aware that you could actually find out a LOT about me and my life. More than I expected, perhaps, and more than I was 100% comfortable with. Perhaps I am an old fuddy-duddy with outdated thoughts on the social internet.

So, I've locked down this Space to people on my friends list - despite having started it for general public consumption about impersonal things, I ended up talking more about my life and so am less willing to share that with the entire world. Over on our personal site, I've locked down our wedding photos, etc behind a username/password. And my Facebook profile is set to not allow indexing by search engines, and most of the detail on my profile is only for friends, or friends of friends.

Over-reacting? maybe. I want three "me"s - Work Me, Personal Me, and Annonymous Me. Work and Personal can overlap to some extent without much concern (since personal me is not in the least bit controversial). Annonymous Me is an interesting one. What do I have to hide? It's not that I want to hide something from the people I know or work with. Actually it's the opposite! I don't want to share my personal stuff with the world at large. But I guess part of me still wants to share something publicly. Certainly this Space was 99% read by the public and not by people on my friends list! So I'm going to try and maintain two blogs from now on - one for work/personal and one for annonymous ramblings. Let's see how its going to work... (not that I have much time to write anything, anyway!)

Oh sure, Winnie is so cute. But when she's hyper, the little devil in her comes out! Witness:

 

On Friday our little baby girl arrived! Yes, our wonderful little Winnie is now a part of the Bennett household...

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Winnie, of course, is a dog. Did you expect something else?

Winnie is a cute little pure-bred Bichon Frise female, born on April 20th and became a member of our family on July 4th! We spent the entire weekend at home, playing, feeding, and frantically running around cleaning up "accidents" in the house and trying to keep her out of trouble in the garden (boy does she love to eat slugs... ew!)

MSN and BusinessWeek recently published the results of a survey on the best places to live in the world.

Switzerland took the #1 and #3 spots with Zurich and Geneva respectively. Vienna, Austria took the #2 spot.

Quite an endorsement! I have to agree, Zurich made a great impression on me both times I visited there.

Closer to (my) home, Vancouver, Canada took 4th place! It's a really nice city - very liveable and wonderful Chinese food!

Anyway, worth a look if you're considering relocating or need a change in your life! Follow this link for the entire list!

On Sunday morning before heading out to the Mariners game, I had to do a little video editing and dvd creation on my PC. During my wife's graduation ceremony on Saturday, I took my video camera along. In total I recorded 12 short scenes to the video camera's hard disc. Fine. So on Sunday morning I had to copy those files to my PC, using Sony's software that came with the video camera. My video camera is high-definition, using the AVCHD codec, and it can record audio in dolby digital 5.1 (surround sound). Fine. Or so you might think.

By the time I had finished copying the video files from my video camera to my PC, a process which involves not just copying but also analyzing the files, my 12 scenes had been saved to disc as 36 files. For each scene, I had a foo.m2ts file, which was the actual AVCHD video file. The filename was a user-friendly year-month-day-hour-minute-second.m2ts. Each of those 12 *.m2ts files came with an accompanying *.modd file and a *.moff file. Who knows what they are for, possibly the result of the "analysis" the Sony software had performed. Anyway, it's pretty annoying to have all these files cluttering up my filesystem instead of just having the actual video files.

But wait, there's more. I was doing this video editing to make a DVD containing the scenes I'd taken, to give to two friends of ours who had also graduated with my wife. Of course, I couldn't just give them the video "as-is". The AVCHD video codec can be used for blu-ray discs, which is logical since they are both Sony creations. I don't have a blu-ray disc burner in my PC, and I don't even know if they have a blu-ray player or not. So I had to convert the video to the DVD-Video standard codec, MPEG-2. Naturally, I made a copy rather than replacing the HD versions. The re-coding process took forever even on my dual-core machine, both cores pretty much maxed out. When it had finally finished, I was astonished to find my 12-scene, 36-file HD folder had a new 12-scene, 60-file SD folder alongside it. 60 files! The *.m2ts files had been replaced by *.mpg files, which I expected. But even the SD video files each had their *.modd and *.moff files, and now I also had a *.mpg.stk01 and *.mpg.stk02 file for each video file. Whatever. That's 5 files on disc for every time I pushed my thumb on the "record" button of my video camera!

Taking the high- and standard-definition files together, I was now up to 96 files. And I hadn't even started to make a DVD yet! This is just total BS!

And the frustrations with video editing on the PC just continued from there. By the time I was done - miraculously done just in time to make it to the Mariners game on time - I was pretty fed up with the PC experience and ready to go use a Mac. Next time I'll talk about my adventures with some video and dvd creation software that left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Word to the wise, never try doing home movie editing against the clock

Today was Paew's MBA graduation ceremony at Key Arena. Of course, photos are online. Plenty of Paew and the rest of the Thai CityU gang!

Click on through our blog posting to the gallery here.