I owe US immigration an apology. While still quite definitely not as charming as the Canadians or anywhere near the level of the sullen incompetence of the British, it was nowhere near as bad as the last time I came in.
Sure, I was fingerprinted, photographed and had various mean and nasty things done to me - but the important thing is that the guard resisted the urge to have me shot as I repeatedly mixed up my left and right hand on the fingerprint thing.
And since when was Newark Airport renamed "Liberty Airport"? Something to do with the World Trade Centre thing? Either way, it makes it sound distressingly like something out of Grand Theft Auto 3. I look forward to seeing how the moral majority attempt to close down an entire airport because its corrupting the minds of the youth...
One interesting observation is how similar to Russia its getting over here. Not in terms of deprivation, poverty and corruption, where 99% of the wealth is in the hands of less than 1% of the population (although now I come to think of it...), no - in terms of how everybody has to have a job, no matter how apparently pointless. There was a person whose sole responsibility was putting the bags upright when they came down the luggage chute. What the *heck* is all that about? The saddest thing was that as the cases jerked around the carousel, they all fell over again.
After a while she gave up and regarded the bags with thinly disguised contempt. I wanted to applaud this small act of rebellion. Instead, I trapped my hand in the handle of my bag and yelped in a way that even First-Born would consider childish.
