Passport

After jumping through all sorts of hoops and wading through lots of red tape, I finally got my temporary Canadian passport this week. This means I can travel to Asia in June as planned. For those that don't know the Canadian passport renewal process, we have to:

1. fill out application form
2. take two passport pictures
3. send in some money

All pretty normal so far...

4. get a guarantor to certify that the passport pictures actually look like me and I'm of good moral character; the guarantor has to be either a doctor, dentist, postmaster, or something else on their list, and has to know me for more than 2 years; they have to fill out a section of the application, sign the back of one passport photo, and also sign copies of my driver's license and green card; so far, I've been bothering Dr. James since he's also Canadian and understands the pain
5. sign in side the white box; if the signature goes outside the white box, they won't process the application
6. send in the original Canadian citizenship certificate and expired passport
7. send everything to Hull, Quebec (across the river from Ottawa) via FedEx and hope 20 days later we get a new passport
8. repeat every 5 years

So what happened was that I lost my Canadian citizenship certificate. In order to get my passport renewed, I need to apply for a replacement which requires more photos, application forms, money, a bunch of copies of documents notarized, and 6-12 months. Without the certificate, I can only get a temporary (1 year) passport which hopefully will get me to Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and most importantly, back to the US. I guess the good think about becoming a US citizen, other than having to do jury duty, is that a US passport is good for 10 years instead of five.

Did I mention you have to sign inside the white box?