That is not the only problem in David's Canadian citizenship application, there was a second problem, which was triggered by the name duplication and was becoming a much bigger insolvable problem. Due to the extra background check that David had to endure for his common English name, the application of his entire family got delayed. Time flew by fast, and just before the time David's second background check came back clean, Jade's background check had expired. According to Canadian immigration laws, any fingerprint records on file is legally invalid after 6 months. Jade, David's wife complied with the regulation and pressed her fingerprint again for the RCMP (Royal Crown Mounted Police), and the wait for the whole family continued. Now David's second fingerprint is about to expire -- after 6 months again -- and the Chen family still hadn't heard anything from the Canadian Immigration and Citizenship services (CIC).

David discussed with his wife about why things were the ways they were. David joked to his more religious half: "This must be God's way of punishing us, for not being loyal to either China or Canada. We are traitors of China obviously and once we get the Canadian citizenship and the Canadian passport, we will leave this country again at the first chance we get".

Canada is a country with impeccable reputation for being polite and friendly world wide and Vancouver is one of the cities that have been ranked as "most livable city in the world" many, many years in a roll. But like people often observed, things look good on paper could mean little to common mortals. The Canadian social system still has many imperfections that appear to be magnified in Vancouver. The most obvious one seemed to be the over-correction of the "lack of identity" problem. Co-existing with its super-powerful neighbor at the south, Canadians like to assert their identities amongst themselves, especially among politicians. Many political debates usually include this undertone, "you are trying to turn us into US, and because that is the American way, we don't want to do that". But the problem with this is that nobody reasonably analyzed whether that "American way" was good or bad. As results of such thinking, privatization of healthcare would always meet resistance, non-violent crime rate in Canada would always be higher than US, because of its criminal friendly justice system, and drug grow ops would be much more rampant than that of US. The "politeness" image of Canadians is vastly overrated.

It is very easy to mistaken the image of a country with its people. Comparing to USA, Canada drops much less bombs in this world, but if randomly comparing one American to one Canadian side by side individually, it is hard to tell who is more polite and many times, the American would win. If a person dials two customer service representatives for technical support, one in US and one in Canada, then the US customer service rep is definitely more "polite".

Then what officially is the Canadian identity? Let's say starting with who is the head of State for Canada? She is Queen Elizabeth II of United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. When David told one of his Canadian native born coworker, Anthony Dufield, that the citizenship ceremony for new immigrants consisted of an oath "I swear to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II . . ." Anthony immediately raised his right hand and said: "I swear not to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II ". One day, David told his colleague Dan Wortherrington from UK that the office would be closed for Victoria's Day holiday, Dan asked: "Who's Queen Victoria? Are you sure this is not just you Canadians trying to make excuses not to work?"

David wasn't legally a Canadian at that moment, but he enjoyed being bastioned under the freedom of democracy and decided to live out his own Canadian identity. When first arrived in United States, David and Jade were both surprised at how nice people treated them and welcomed them with open arms. After all, they felt that they did not pay taxes all these years to a society that treated them with the amount of respects and hospitality way more than they expected. It was also possible that culture shocks and inability to understand English prevented them from being sensitive to the negative parts of people's reactions to them. When they came to Canada, they were still thankful at a country that gave them a home and welcomed them with open arms, but they did not feel thankful as strongly as other new immigrants who had recently arrived from China.

David suspected it all changed after a conversation he had with his colleague Ken Eaton back in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ken asked him about how Chinese colleges and universities were structured and how students were selected. David replied with the experiences that he had gone through in the 1980's. In essence, top universities selected students based on their grades after a nationally administered standard college entrance exam. Then students are ranked by the grades in their own provinces for university recruiters to draft with a pecking order based on prestige of the universities. Thos universities select best available students based on their grades and their lists of school preferences.

Ken asked, "If your family is very poor and you have very good grade, will best schools in China, like Harvard and MIT here, take you into their schools". David replied: "Yes, as a matter of fact, my family income was below average when I entered university, because my Mom died very early leaving my dad raising three kids as a single parent. If in US, I don't think I would have been able to afford entering my university, which was one of the best in China". "How much did you need to pay for the tuitions?" "It's free. The school even bought us text books in my freshman year. Afterwards, I only needed to pay for my books for the three years afterwards. Of course, I could buy used ones or borrow from friends from higher grades who got them for free in previous years". Then Ken said: "well, at least I found one thing good about China -- the educational system". David was furious, because he was full of anger towards the Chinese "systems" at the time: "but it was really not fair. When I left the country, the government forced me to pay ¥10,000 which is the equivalent of about $2,000 in US just to get my stupid passport. Why?" Ken replied calmly: "well, forgiven me for speaking from an outsider's point of view, but if you haven't paid tuitions for your college, and now you are making money here on this job, I think you should pay somebody back". David was even angrier and gushed out how he thought the communist party had held back the progress of China. Otherwise, with his father's occupation as a medical doctor, $2,000 wouldn't have been a big deal comparing to incomes from medical doctors all over the world. But under the economic system back then, $2,000 could mean tens of years of salaries for his dad. Ken artfully changed the topic of the conversation to avoid further argument. But the conversation stuck in David's mind and he frequently wondered, besides his father, whom he should feel thankful to -- for his undergraduate tuitions.

Since coming to Canada as a tax payer from first Monday onwards, David felt he had really contributed 5 of the best years in his 30's to exchange for a passport that was advertised to worth 3 years of services. He would gladly repeat "God saves the Queen" anytime from this point onward, but praising a Queen of UK anywhere in the world has almost the same effect, for the Canadian citizen and the Queen her majesty, as praising her in the Canadian soil.

David thought it would be better for him to be loyal to the Queen in US or UK, or wherever a bigger paycheck is likely to happen for him, because he would be more productive than in the Vancouver high-tech community, for the Queen her majesty and himself. No longer feeling guilty for being an immigrant in a strange land, after being a sheepish immigrant for many years, David decided to write emails to spam the Canadian government's all three hundred Members of Parliament (MPs) loudly requesting for a passport. He was going to tell them his personal story about how "all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men couldn't put an immigrant's passport together again, Humpty fell, Humpty fell. . ."

If the letter get him a Canadian passport along with long sought after freedom to travel the world, great! If the letter provoke politicians in Canada and cause him never to get the passport again, he no longer cared any more. "I might be a cripple, but I am not a rat", from the movie "the usual suspects", was what came to his mind. A life of a rat is miserable no matter what passport the rat holds. "I only wish my motherland China would take me back again, if I can not continue to travel the world, but if she doesn't I deserve all the punishments" David murmured to himself.

Then, there was the birth of the following letter titled "watching the paint dry".

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Subject: Watching the paint dry -- 21 month citizenship application... and counting