Telephone calls...

My entire day today at CBSA was spent on the telephones following up with BSO candidates...I'm an email type person, I prefer electronic communication over telephone especially with people I am not too familiar with. Perhaps it is because I never gave out my phone number to my classmates/friends until I was a teenager. But what I hate more is leaving messages...I hate talking to machines...I absolutely can't stand those speech automated directories, I would rather press numbers until I get a hold of an agent.

Because many people were out at work I had to leave a ton of messages ... "Good Morning, this is Richard calling from Canada Border Services Agency. I'm calling you to follow up on an email I sent you yesterday. I would like to confirm that you've received it and if you have any questions feel free contact me...have a good day!" Of course, that doesn't sound too bad when it is typed out but when I had to think of what to say on the go...there were many ums...ahs....yea, so...

We're in the process of upgrading security clearances of all BSOs...so far it isn't too bad...but it is only going to get worse...some people don't like providing the 'required' information and or just simply don't like forms...though we did get an existing BSO who requested to do them to get upgraded...we're doing it in steps beginning with candidates and then we'll move onto existing BSOs and we'll break them down by province...

We had a candidate whose transfered into our region though she resides and originally applied for a position in Quebec. They had her clearance file so I had to contact them...of course it is a FRENCH speaking community but it turns out the security officer who contacted her was also a STUDENT like me! So when I called my collegue in Quebec up, I was hit with this cultural difference shock. All the telephone recordings were in French and I did my best to try to understand...I couldn't get why he had '#' before the extension and I dialed # with it and got a recording (in French) and then I tried without the "#" and I got a hold of him. So my co-worker answered in French "Bonjour, ...." (I have no idea what he said) and I froze...and then I'm like "um...Good Morning"...and I knew he could speak English because he wrote the email to the candidate in English and she was too. I really admire those who can speak both official languages...it is really an asset. I really could have made the transition more smoothly by asked "Excuse-moi, est-que tu parles anglais?" or "Je suis desole, je ne comprends pas francais, est-que tu parles anglais?" but I was frozen...I can only speak limited French after thinking about it for a really long time right now. I'm going to need to keep in touch with him so perhaps we can get to know each other better. I want to find out what he is studying and stuff. I'm als supposed to be a spy and figure out how other regions are doing in there upgrade processes. There really needs to be more inter-regional communication between the 8 or so CBSA regions. The first time I contacted anyone outside our region was in this conference call. It was really funny when we unanamously agreed that we weren't receiving clearance confirmation via email from HQ. Perhaps my new co-worker in Quebec has a few contacts. We need to have a Student Security Officer group on facebook or something so that we can all get to know one another. I have family members who live in Montreal too but everytime I go there we speak Cantonese.

Taking French classes up to Grade 12 did not make me very fluent...I think I was most fluent in Grade 10 because I had grade 9 French in the second semester and then grade 10 French was in the first semester of the following year, so I had almost one year of French everyday. We also did a lot of writing and I got really good at it. My best friend in Ottawa and I had these reallly long msn conversation completely in French...perhaps we weren't 100% correct in our grammar but we understood one another. Then in Grade 12 we only had French class every other day in the second semester and we didn't do much in class but we had lots of fun since it was our last year. I'm glad we still have our monthly French get-togethers, otherwise it would be hard to get some many people (all 9 or 10 of us). Our next meeting is next Friday I believe, hopefully the weather is going to be better than it has been for the last couple of days... It is supposed to be sunny Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday so hopefully that trend continues...but they have been wrong before...many times...