Da Chen

"

After writing the letter, David felt a sense of relief. Although not being religious, he decided to live a life with his fate in the graceful hands of the almighty God.

From the time he left China, he had always wondered about this unknown world ahead of him. A flight from China to North America invariably leads to a short day, because of flying East. Soon the darkness descended and it is human nature for people to fall in sleep. David had always been blessed with the ability to sleep soundly in transportation vehicles, being it cars, buses, trains or air planes. He could remember comfortably sleeping like a baby first, but then waking up next morning, feeling extremely anxious, wondering: why am I in the sky now? How is it going to be in this place that I will land? Seeing the rising sun, when it should have been the darkest hours of a 24 hour period in one's biological clock, he felt empty and non-existent, a sort of a ghost living in a real world.

Now after going around a circle, he finally got the answer which is: this place that I will land is probably no different at all from the place where I came from. Why should I feel like that I am an alien coming from another planet? He recalled a letter received from one of his best friends in the University of Science and Technology of China -- a letter actually written on paper with ink, like light years away! Does anybody still remember people used to write letters? Not emails? The letter read: ". . . When we were 4 or 5 year old, a group of us, kids from the neighborhood, accidentally wondered into the neighboring village. We thought that we had wondered into a new world. Don't be too excited about this new world that you just happened to wonder into. Fairly soon, it is going to become just your neighboring village. After every 4 or 5 years, a person should always get beyond himself, examining the role models that one used to idolize and gain new knowledge that help to reestablish a fresh perspective about the world".

We all live in a confusing time and an entangled world; therefore it is really hard even for countries to calculate which country owes which other countries how many historical debts. As one out of millions of immigrant floating around, in the processes of changing citizenships from one country to another, David felt he would leave the calculation of his debts to professional and certified accountants and attorneys of this world. He would just simply assume that he owes a great debt to every country that he had ever lived in, but nevertheless, happily live out the rest of his life as a normal human being instead of an "alien". There could be times that he would pay more, or some other times less, to get the same deal for being an "alien", but he would treat that as just God's will or the works of market economy.

Did Beatles say: "When I find myself in time of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: let it be"?

Or did Blues brothers said: "God always work in his wondrous ways"?

Four days after sending his email titled "watching the paint dry" to the minister of immigration and MPs from British Columbia, David's family received a letter from CIC informing them to attend the next citizenship ceremony scheduled in their area. From the date appeared on the letter, the notification was sent out the same day that David wrote his email spam blasting to numerous innocent by standers. He would like to believe that it was God's work not his that made the response coming so quickly. "Maybe CIC was thinking about sending out this notification when I was composing my letter" David explained to other colleagues and students when asked about his citizenship application.

Later, he received several phone calls from CIC and local MP's office inquiring whether he had received the notice to attend the next citizenship ceremony. After all, Canada is still more immigrant friendly than United States, and as an evidence, at least an immigrant can have a conversation with live officer from the government.

At the citizenship ceremony, David's family stood up and swore to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II along with hundreds of immigrants from many countries, following a retired colonel dressed in Canadian military uniform. The old colonel was an amiable old gentleman who told stories about how amiable the Queen was in one of her visits to Canada, when he had the pleasure to attend to her. David wasn't sure whether he was supposed to feel such a story is all of a sudden no longer so "alien" or whether he was supposed to still feel such a story is still so "alien" and in a galaxy far, far away.

On the way home from the Citizenship ceremony, David and Jade went straight to the designated immigration office to apply for Canadian passport so they can travel. Their daughter Crystal Chen was singing a song that she learned from kindergarten:

I am a little coconut
Sitting on a coco ground