Pitfalls of U.S. Immigration System and Life of Foreign Nationals

This is a long due post but I think this story needs to be written down somewhere and people need to know the challenges foreign nationals face in U.S. (especially those from developing countries). 

I came to USA in Fall 2014 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so definitely I was on student visa. Close to graduation I got to learn that, the student visa becomes invalid on the graduation day even though the length might be longer in your visa. To stay in the U.S. after graduation and look for jobs you've to apply for F1-OPT extension, which allows you to work for a year with the same status. However, you must be able to secure a job within 90 days of your graduation. I was the lucky one, I already had a job offer before graduation but still there's some particular timeline by which you've to apply for OPT and it can take up to a month to receive your Employment Authorization Card (EAD). All that worked out, I started my job and it's been almost a year now. My employer's sponsored me H1B visa and that got approved as well. Now you need to get the new visa stamped on your passport in case you travel outside of U.S. You can stay within USA without any issues but if you cross the border, you'll have to show the visa to re-enter. Well, that's how generally things work except for Canadians. BUT you can't do it within USA even though you're living in the damn country! The options are - going to your home country, Canada or Mexico and again, they don't tell you how long the process will actually take. There's something called "Administrative Processing", in which case they might decide to dig into your case and that'll prolong the whole process.

I don't plan to just stay inside USA border for unlimited time. I'm an academic librarian and I travel pretty frequently for conferences. So, I finally managed to take the time to travel wholly to take care of the visa stuff, and I decided to come home even though it costs me a lot more money and 30+ hours journey just in case there's any issue. Also, I must include that I had to face the new electronics ban on airlines rule because I don't have too many options other than using Turkish or Emirates Airlines - both are not allowed to carry laptop or any electronics bigger than mobile phone when you're flying to USA. So, I had to leave my MacBook home because I don't feel safe checking it in my main luggage.

Anyway, I arrived home without any trouble and went for the interview the following morning. The appointment was at 8:30 but I couldn't reach the window until 10:30. First of all, there was about 2 hours wait time for 5 mins interview. Then I could finally attend the interview and the consular officer and she said it'll be ready in 3-4 business days and that I should receive an email. On the 4th business day I check their website for any option to track my passport because I didn't receive any email from them and it says my passport is still with the U.S. Consulate and that it can take up to several weeks! It also says to follow any instructions given to me at the interview. But there was no instruction given unless confirmation that my passport will be ready to pick up! Also, they tell you in case of Administrative Check not to contact until 60 business days, by which they hope to resolve your case. 

So, I've a proper job and I earn money using my brain and time. Do these people value any of these?  I've been living abroad for 8 years now and I don't have any background here at all. If they needed more documents during the interview to check my background I could provide them all. This is not a rational or logical system and this is not how it's supposed to work. Also, most Americans have no idea this is something foreign nationals go through and it's my duty to explain this. I know most will empathize but I want some rational people to fix this system. Now I just need to wait and see whether I can be back to work in U.S. on time or I've to buy another one way ticket with hundreds of dollars!

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Update: So, there wasn't any issue on my side with visa processing. Apparently, that was a system error and affected others as well. However, the error message was confusing, user experience issue I guess. In the end I just want to reiterate that there should be a better and easier way to process visa, especially for those who are already living in USA. In the age where most things are digital and digitized, spending a good amount of time and money for a printed visa does not seem to be an efficient way to operate. Unfortunately that's how immigration systems still work but they can at least try to simplify the process. 

It's been 3 years...

Today is dad's 3rd death anniversary. It's been 3 years but it never got easier for me to live without him. However, I had accepted the truth long ago that nothing else can fill this void and all I've to do is  keep myself busy, do the things that'd have made him proud. I'm not sure how much I could succeed into doing so, don't know if he'd approve of my current life but all I know is that I miss him everyday, terribly. 

It was too early for him to go. Wish life was little easy on him, wish he could see us before he left us, wish I could talk to him one last time. I often regret choosing to leave home that early in my life, may be I could spend those 5 years closer to my family and not be so far away from them even now. After losing dad I suddenly realized that all of our siblings had to grow up and grow stronger very quickly. I really wish it wasn't this way but I can't revert back the truth. I hope he's doing well whenever he's because he was a great person with the kindest heart. Miss you dad :(

New Year's Eve in New York

New York City if often on top of must visit list of tourists, so living in USA for about 2.5 years now I was supposed to visit NYC long ago. But when we're grown-up working adults, number of vacation days become more expensive than the trips themselves! Also, NY trip tends to be quite costly around winter vacation time. So, this winter break when I went home, I decided to stop by NY for few days since I already had lay over there. Also, since my best friend Nate is living there now, it seemed like a perfect reason to visit. 

First two days in NY I spent with my uncle, aunt and cousins. It was dreary when I arrived JFK and beyond exhausted after 33 hours trip. I had little bit of rest and my aunt made really delicious food for us in the occasion of me visiting. We went for a drive around Manhattan that night and stopped by the 5th Ave. There was the famous christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center, 94 ft tall and blinking gorgeously with pretty lights. They had a beautiful light show too, which apparently happens annually. I was lucky that they didn't take those down soon after Christmas Day. I wanted to go to the Lego store too, but all the shops were already closed, so we wandered around and I decided to come again with Nate if I have the chance. 

The huge Christmas tree

A snap from the light show

Lego store at Rockefeller Center

The next day we were supposed to visit my another aunt's house. I woke up, had breakfast and went to bed again until everyone got ready, the jet lag was rough! In the evening I took the kids to watch Moana and all of them really liked it, so that was successful :)

I kept next two days for more sightseeing and hanging out with Nate. On 31st we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts (METS). I love visiting art museums and liked it there. Got some cool souvenirs as well. Then we walked around Manhattan, went to the Lego store and I finally got to go inside! The store itself isn't super huge but it has good collection. The Batman minifig series was already out there. We both bought few things and I was super happy. Later that evening we went to the Times Square to celebrate the New Year, which was my crazy idea. That was Nate's first time going to TS on 31st as well and we definitely didn't know what we were going to run into! There were millions of people there and two opposite streams of crowd. Most of them (like us) had no clue that they closed the main venue by early afternoon! However, I saw the New York Times office and it was worth experiencing anyway.

The METS

Manhattan skyline

I also had a really good ramen!

LEGO!

Walking around 5th Ave

New York Public Library

The NYT Office

On the first day of new year I was up 5:30am, thanks to my jet lag! In the morning we walked around Brooklyn neighborhood and went to watch Hook. I love that movie and the old theatre was pretty fun. They served really good brunch during the show, my first time of such brunch movie experience. Also, on our way I saw some cool graffiti, which I thought was very Brooklyn-ish. 

After the movie we went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and I absolutely loved it there! I was thrilled to see the models of Bangladesh Parliament House by Louis Kahn being exhibited there. They have an awesome gift store where I can spend hours. I enjoyed every moment there and would love to visit again!

Entrance of MoMA

BD Parliament House model

I came back by afternoon the next day and went back to work immediately. It was a really good trip and could see many cool places, even though I was tired from the long journey. I don't know if I'd ever want to live in NY but I like visiting big cities as they're the hub of all the cool stuff, so it was worth visiting NY.

A Princess without Crown

Soon it'll be 3 years that dad left us. Time flies, it really does, but some scars don't get old and it always hurts the same whenever I think of him. Even though I try to keep myself busy with work and all, in my subconscious mind he's always there. That's probably why I dream him pretty often. 

Couple of days ago I had a dream where I was in a prize giving ceremony. I think that was a school. They called my name for the first prize, I walked up on the stage and could see dad watching me proudly. I was so happy in my dream! When we were little, whenever we achieved something great, dad would hug us and call us tiger cubs! That feeling of him being happy and proud was so precious to me. I knew I always worked hard because someone was watching me succeed and it mattered to that person. And now there's an empty spot, a big hole in my life, which I know no one else can fill in. 

It's funny how a single event can flip your whole life upside down. Every success is a bitter-sweet experience for me now. The fact that I can't share that news with dad makes me so sad that I can't really celebrate. I always used to call him the first when I had a good news and he'd always respond however busy he was. It was so difficult for me when all my friends had their parents attending their graduation ceremony at grad school, and I walked on the stage to receive my award knowing that my dad wasn't there to cheer me. Every single happy occasion just makes me miss him more.

I'm reading the book 'All the Light We Cannot See', where a dad brings up his daughter who lost her eyesight at an early age. He teaches her how to find the way back home alone little by little, gets unique presents for her that help her see the world in her imagination, and he makes her believe that she's strong and enough. It reminds me of my dad, how he always wanted us to be self-reliant, hard-working and empathetic. I read books or go out for a walk to feel better but whenever I see a girl is having great time with her dad, my heart aches inside that I can't deny. But it's still beautiful to see how (almost) every dad treats his girl like a princess.

My dad always treated me like a princess. He didn't spoil me but he treated me right and taught me the right values. Without him I feel like a princess without crown, but I'll always follow his path and do everything that'd have made him proud. When I go out for run I listen to the song 'If You Could See Me Now' often and think that I need to make him proud because he's watching me wherever he is. I miss him every single day and really wish he could see me now...

Milwaukee Visit for DLF Forum 2016

When people talk about different places to visit around U.S., Milwaukee isn't one of the common names that come up in those conversations. I've been to Madison in 2015 summer for my cousin's graduation ceremony. It's a pretty little town with beautiful lake side. We only went for a day trip and I was pretty exhausted, but I loved it. Growing up in a port city, I loved lakes, seas, oceans all my life and I love any cities that have water body, it soothes me. 

Madison was beautiful but I had no image for Milwaukee in my head. Anyway, last November I had a chance to visit Milwaukee for the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum conference. It's one of the biggest conferences in the library world and is usually hosted in lovely places (last year was in Vancouver). I looked up for places to visit before leaving for the trip. The Art Museum looked interesting (I visit art museums wherever I go, so that's always on top of my list) but otherwise, I wasn't sure what to expect from it. But before I go into more details I must say that I absolutely loved Milwaukee! 

Beautiful lake side

On my way there, my flight was almost 4 hours delayed and I wasn't happy about it. I wanted to arrive early to visit the art museum but that didn't happen. My friend and colleague Eka was already there enjoying amazing looking sushi all by herself! After I reached the hotel Eka and I dropped our bags and went out for a walk around the city. 

My first impression of Milwaukee was - it's a walkable city, which is always my first preference for any place to live or visit. The city has many historic buildings due to its growth and popularity in the mid-19th century. It felt like a treasure land where you find the jewels one by one with every new adventure. I loved the lake side views especially, looked so pretty even at night with all the light reflections from little boats, decorations from surrounding parks. It's a place where you hold hands of your loved one after a tiring day and sit by the lake while enjoying the breeze and watching little waves, and that's all you need. After our walk we went to a fancy Italian restaurant, which again was very romantic and we both didn't have partners :p It was still very nice, it's always great to spend time with her :)

View from my hotel room, I think it was a performance theatre

Lake side view at night

The conference started next day at the Pfister hotel, which is amazingly gorgeous. There were many interesting presentations and conversations. I didn't present this year but it was still a good learning experience. I wanted to go to the art museum as I couldn't make it the day before and I did but it was closed (-_-). However, it was a nice walk and the surrounding lake looked pretty in the day light with bright blue.

The Art Museum 

Different perspective of the museum

The third day I had decided that I've to visit the museum at any cost! So near the end of the last session I headed there and finally had my peace of mind enjoying the paintings. Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the building itself is an enchanting piece of art with stunning interior and exterior design. 

Museum interior

Entrance view

We were supposed to leave the next day, so that night all the NCSU folks had dinner together, which was great. I got too exhausted and had to come back to hotel alone while others went to get drinks after dinner. Also, it was a very important and sad night for everyone - Trump got elected. So, next day was very gloomy and depressing for all. The weather was great in the morning, so we walked around the lake side for pretty long after the conference. 

On my way back I got myself a magnet (it's a ritual). As the day was bright and sunny, the sunset was stunning too. I kept getting distracted while chatting with Todd in the boarding area. All in all it was a good trip and felt little sad to say goodbye. I loved Milwaukee and if I've a chance I'd love to live there.

Wisconsin magnet, of course cheese!!

Gorgeous sunset

Fun with Data - Basics of R - Part 3 Visualization

In this section we'll cover some basic visualizations with R using the built-in plot function and using the library ggplot2. Before we start, here's a quick review of the topics we covered in previous two sections.

Part 1 - Getting R and R-Studio in your machine, understanding the structure of R-Studio and loading data into R. We also covered some basic functions for viewing the content of loaded dataset.

Part 2 - Understanding prompts in R-Studio, variables, vectors and data frames. Also, summary, mean and length functions.

Now that we can load data into R and see what's inside, let's try to visualize it. Visualization is a great way to actually make the meaning of data visible, especially when we're dealing with large amount of data. For example, we're planning a sports event at school and trying to group students based on their heights. We can see the distribution by looking at the data, but when we create a graph it is easy to comprehend which proportion falls in which category based on height. 

Today we'll see how to create scatter plot using both basic plot function and ggplot2. R comes with many freely available datasets, which you can view by typing data(). We'll use the airquality, mtcars and pressure datasets to create sample graphs. Since they're already in R, we don't have to load them, but look into the content by using some of the functions we covered in previous sections, or by simply typing their names in the console.

airquality()

mtcars()

pressure()

Splitting the View Window

You can split the view window to see more than one graph or plot in the screen. For example, par(mfrow = c(1, 2)) splits the window into 2. Changing it to c(2, 2) will split it into 4. 

Install ggplot2 Package

install.packages("ggplot2")  # installs the package

library(ggplot2)                    # loads the library into the workspace 

Scatter Plot

In the mtcars dataset we can see weight of a car and how many miles it runs per gallon. We can find out if there's any correlation between these two by creating a scatter plot.

plot(mtcars$wt, mtcars$mpg, main="Scatterplot Example", xlab="Car Weight ", ylab="Miles Per Gallon ", pch=19)

I'll explain what each of the parameters mean. 

main -> Give a name to the plot

xlab -> Name of X-axis

ylab -> Name of Y-axis

pch -> Type of symbol for the graph. You can see the full list from this page.

Now, this alone can be little difficult to understand. So, you can add fit lines to this to see how many data are positively or negatively correlated. 

abline(lm(mtcars$mpg~mtcars$wt), col="red")  # regression line (y~x)

lines(lowess(mtcars$mpg~mtcars$wt), col="green")   # lowess line (x, y)

You can create the same graph using ggplot2, which is visually more pleasing and provides a lot of options to ornate your graph. (Check out the package documentation for further information)

# Create the same graph using ggplot2

qplot(mtcars$wt, mtcars$mpg, xlab = "Car Weight", ylab = "Mile/Gallon")

# Following syntax can be used if the two vectors are already in the same data frame.

qplot(wt, mpg, data=mtcars, xlab = "Car Weight", ylab = "Mile/Gallon")

We can also add colors to see correlation to another variable. In this example, cylinder size of cars. 

qplot(wt, mpg, data=mtcars, xlab = "Car Weight", ylab = "Mile/Gallon", color =cyl)

From this graph we can make assumption that light weight cars with smaller cylinder size usually run more miles per gallon. Similarly, we can create different visualizations by comparing other variables or in other words, by considering which information we're trying to provide to our audience. 

A great reference to learn about visualizations with R is R Graphics Cookbook by Winston Chang- 

Chang, W. (2012). R graphics cookbook. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".

Another Thanksgiving

From 2015 thanksgiving to this year - I don't know how time went by so fast. Too many things happened in between, changed my life so drastically that I felt I was constantly struggling to catch up, still trying. Life hasn't played fair with me for sure but I still have a lot to be thankful for. 

I've a loving family who are eagerly waiting to see me at home. My 2-year old nephew who hasn't seen me in real yet dies to talk to me on phone. I've a job that's going well and I'm almost always loved and appreciated by people. I've some awesome friends who're not living close to me anymore but are always there for me when I need them. Most of all, I woke up in my own comfortable bed and don't need to worry about food or other things. Life's good even though something is missing but something will always be missing and that's what gives us the drive to live and achieve the things we're missing. I know what's missing in my life right now - all the people I love, no one lives close to me anymore. It'll be almost 8 years soon that I left home. I missed my family but always had my friends around who'd fill up that space, but now that I've started a proper adult job like all my other friends, I'm missing the life I've lived for past 7.5 years. However, there's always something to be thankful for and what's meant to be for me will find a way to come back to my life. I believe that kindness, honesty, hard work and love can win everything in life even though sometimes it takes longer for some people.

Last year on this day I was with Aly and her family, it was wonderful. I was invited this year as well but couldn't afford to travel all the way to Illinois cause I've been traveling a lot lately and going home in two weeks. I needed some time for myself and I'm thankful to have that time. I'll have thanksgiving dinner with some of my lovely colleagues though, looking forward to that. Just hoping next year will be a more positive one for me and everyone else in my life who I love and hold closely.