Passport
Started: 2022-04-13 19:43:30
Submitted: 2022-04-13 20:43:58
Visibility: World-readable
Renewing my passport
My passport expired last week.
I last renewed my passport in 2012, as I was preparing to head to Hyderabad to train a member of my team who would be working in the Qualcomm office there. (Along the way I discovered that my name was too long for a passport card, which was kind of a hassle; I ended up with just a passport book, though I don't think I would have actually been able to use a passport card.)
I traveled extensively on this passport for the first eight years I had it, until a certain global pandemic shut down international travel:
- Hyderabad, India in 2012;
- Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Taipei in 2012;
- Scotland in 2014;
- India in 2015, with Calvin and my family of origin;
- Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing in 2016;
- London (with a bonus side-trip to Portsmouth) to visit the Google office in 2016;
- Helsinki and Copenhagen in 2017 for Worldcon; this was Julian's first international trip;
- London to visit the Google office in 2018;
- London (with a bonus side-trip to Bristol to visit the Google office in 2019;
- Dublin for Worldcon in 2019;
- London (again) to visit the Google office (again) in 2019 (again).
(In 2019 I took two trips to Canada (first by land, then by sea); for these trips I used my NEXUS card (which also enrolled me in TSA Precheck and Global Entry), though I had my passport within arm's reach in my bag just in case I needed it.)
My passport has two entry visas to China (one for six months, for my day-trip across the border from Hong Kong in 2012; one good for ten years, for my trip in 2016), one entry visa for India (for my trip in 2012; my trip in 2015 was under an electronic visa waiver), and a whole bunch of entry and exit stamps. Not all of these entry and exit stamps are still legible; my passport made a round-trip through the washing machine in my pants pocket after one of my trips (I had left it in a zipper pocket for protection while flying home, then forgotten to remove it from my pocket in my jet-lagged haze while running my post-travel loads of laundry), which left the cover somewhat more flexible than it was supposed to be, though it was still electronically readable and no border official I ever encountered thought twice about it.
Today I mailed my passport to the US Department of State to renew it. I don't have any specific international travel plans yet, nor do I know for sure that international travel will be a good idea, but I'd like to have the option. I might not travel as much in the next ten years as I did in the last ten, but I still intend to get out in the world when I can.
