The day after I got back, Jimmy and I drove to the border to get a border agent to approve my new employer on my visa. Don’t ask. My visa is some sort of administrative arsehole. So we got there I presented all the paperwork to a young and ugly border agent who, I noticed straight away, was sporting a nice ‘trainee’ badge.  She took a quick look and asked me to go and sit down.

We saw her look through the papers again and then her fat and even uglier supervisor went over and started looking through as well. Moments later, I saw them getting on the phone, and then hanging up and bursting into laughs. The trainee called me over “You know that lying to a border agent is a serious offense that could jeopardize any future work permit or permanent residency application right?”, me “Absolutely”, her “So why did you say you haven’t started working for this company, I just called them and Alyson told me you’ve been working for them for weeks?”, me ” Sorry there must be a misunderstanding, I don’t know who Alyson is, I haven’t met her yet because I have not yet started working there, she probably misunderstood your question. Please ask to speak to Rebecca or Callie, they are the ones who hired me”, her “So you are saying that the person I spoke to on the phone was lying?” me “No… I just think she misunderstood your question”, her “I don’t believe you, I’m going to ask you to give me your bag, your wallet and your phones (Jimmy’s as well), go and sit down”. Naturally, when this kind of stuff happens I instantly switch to guilt mode even if I have no reasons to. I swear if I had to go through a lie detector I’d fail even if I was telling the truth.

So anyway, I went back to my seat.I saw her give another couple of phone calls. I guess she spoke to Alyson again and cleared the misunderstanding cause she didn’t mention anything again. Then she called Jimmy over and asked for his passport. She wanted to see his visa. She took the passport and asked him to go back and sit down. And so on for the next couple of hours, she kept calling us back to the desk, asked us random questions, to which we tried to respond in the best and simplest way possible, and then we’d get asked to go back and sit.

In the end she called me again and told me she was not going to validate this employer and this job on my visa. It didn’t really come as a surprise, by then I knew things were jinxed. Then she looked at Jimmy’s work visa and said she needed to take it away. I tried to explain to her (in the least patronizing way possible) that he was entitled to that visa, being my common-law partner and all that… She seemed to agree… but then took a quick glance at her ugly supervisor and asked me to go back and sit again. Her fat and ugly supervisor, who had missed nothing from the conversation, called her over. And there again I saw them going through paperwork and all that.

Half an hour later she called us back again and announced that she was taking Jimmy’s work visa away. She got into some really convoluted explanation as for how she got to the conclusion that she could do that. I tried to argue it, in the most respectful and calm way possible but she totally lost it. So I surrendered. We took our stuffs back and before we left she said “I realize this puts you in a difficult position but I had no choice, if my supervisor hadn’t pointed it out I wouldn’t have known”. No kidding ugly bitch!

So there you go, we left the border with a useless work visa for me and a ‘visitors’ visa for Jimmy. How about that?

Even though we know we could fight it, it didn’t take us long to decide to leave it at that and go back home for a while. Wherever home is (somewhere between France and Paris).

It’s unexpected and sad but sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow not against it, right? Things have been so difficult in the last few months for us that I was starting to think that the Universe might be trying to send us a message. Maybe something incredible is waiting for us in Europe… I heard someone say (I think it was in the documentary ‘Home’, if you haven’t seen it here you can watch it for free) “Don’t cry about what you’ve lost, think about what you still have”. And this is exactly what I am going to do!

Without wanting to be too negative and I am not sure how personal I want to get on this blog but what the hell, in 2009 I got fired twice. And I feel like I need to add here that I have never ever been fired before. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m some kind of loser who can’t hold a job (especially if you are a potential employer)

The first time I got fired was really tough because I was working for a prestigious Canadian company, I had a good position (which wasn’t in sales), all in all it was a pretty sweet move for me. Howevere on my 3 months anniversary I got called in for a ‘meeting’ and when I turned up in the meeting room I saw that the only people there were my manager and the HR manager. Now, I didn’t have much experience in the ‘getting fired’ department but I knew this was definitely not a set up for an appraisal. And the best in all that is that when you get fired within your probation period, the employer has got no obligation to give you any reason. So that was tough AND frustrating. Now, you might be interested to know that my (ex) manager got fired as well not very long after. And so did the VP on top of her. And then another dude from this department. Basically the marketing department got wiped out, so it might be ok to assume that there was a problem in the department and it wasn’t just me.

But let me tell you, it’s bad enough getting fired but it’s really the shit hitting the fan when you were catching up with your finances due to prior unemployment (oh yeah, because what I am not saying here, is that in 2008 the company I was working for collapsed. Yes I am a lucky kind of girl), your partner doesn’t have any work lined up and there is a visa situation.

So after that, despair took over, and I accepted the first job I found. Even though I had sworn to God that I’d never work in sales again. But I had to sell my soul to the devil on that one. It’s funny what despair can do to you sometimes, isn’t it? So yeah it was a sales job, and to top it off, I was supposed to sell something terribly boring and ugly. To cut the story short, I didn’t perform and I was let go. Yes: AGAIN! But before you pass me the kleenex, I must say that this time was nowhere near as traumatizing, it felt pretty liberating getting out of there actually.

And then nothing for months. I would wake up every single day, fill my heart with hope and courage, browse all the job sites, search, apply, make phone calls… but nothing. I ended up getting myself a volunteer job cause you know, on top of all that, you don’t really want to have a massive hole in your resume, do you? So months passed and before I knew it, it was nearly the end of 2009. Which, in my mind, was a good thing. Then, days before I was going to back to Europe for the holidays (if you wonder how I paid for the flight, well I basically I sold my body and ate potatoes for months) (in case the Canadian immigration reads this blog I would like to add that this is a joke, I didn’t really prostitute myself), so before I was leaving for Paris, I got offered a position in my yoga school. Suddenly it felt like all this struggle was finally paying off!  I’d get to work by my house, in a place I knew really well and liked a lot, I’d get to hang out with nice and chilled out people and I’d get the membership for free, so yes, I was pretty excited. I gladly accepted the job we agreed I’d start working after I’d come back from France, we signed the contract and I flew to France feeling lighter and relieved to see that things seemed to be picking up for 2010.

The holidays were good apart from the beginning and the end. Did you hear about the people who got stuck in both London and Paris right before Christmas because of the Eurostar’s technical problems? Well yours truly was one of them! I landed in London on December 20th, ready to get in the Eurostar (after 13hours flying that is) and go to Paris. But no, fate probably thought this would be way too easy. The Eurostar trains had stopped running because of technical problems due to the snow (because you know, snow in winter is such a surprise right?), so well, I couldn’t go to Paris. Luckily I could go to Jimmy’s parents in Devon and catch a flight from there but, if you’ve followed this story, it’s not like I was loaded enough to go and get myself last minute train tickets and flights. I guess that’s what credit cards are for, right?

So I made it to Paris in the end, spent 2 and a half week with my people (and that was brilliant). T he day before I was supposed to catch the Eurostar back to London and then catch my flight back from London Heathrow to Vancouver, guess what? Snow storm! I went to Gare du Nord anyway on time for my train. When I got there, there was no sign of my train being canceled anywhere, but surprise surprise, my train got canceled! So we all had to cram up in the next train and sit. And wait. And we waited one hour. 2 hours. I was supposed to meet Jimmy at Heathrow Airport and I had no way to let him know that I wasn’t going to make it as I didn’t have a cell phone.

I ended up getting off the train and going back to my mother’s house where I could call Jimmy and tell him my misfortune. Then I had to change my London to Vancouver flight to another day and book a (last minute) flight from Paris to London since the Eurostar was not working anymore. And again, it’s not like I was loaded (but my credit card was)

So in the end I made it back to Vancouver 2 days later than planned, with a credit card about to explode, not having been able to start my new job on time. But hold on, it gets better.

Gotta get on with cleaning chores so this is  to be continued…