Manic Monday #10 or 11, I've Lost Count

[ciroccoj]

I forgot to mention this before, but last week I had a sort of Experiential Education day, like I was back in elementary school or something. In Env class, we were taken into a storage room and told to be Canada Customs agents, and decide which objects before us could legally get into Canada if we followed CITES (Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species). Really cool stuff - medicine with Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn as ingredients, all sorts of lizard and crocodile and snakeskin stuff, corals, mahogany, ivory, etc.

We were bad Customs agents, BTW. We didn't know our assess from our endangered donkey subspecies. And according to our prof, we had a hell of a lot more training than normal Customs agents do in this stuff. Sadly, I could attest to this. I worked Customs one summer and I'm damn sure CITES was never once mentioned. They taught us how to "stop these Somalians who all wanna cry 'refugee, refugee!'", but not how to stop ivory from entering the country.

In ADR, we were asked to act as arbitrators deciding the case of a school bus driver who neglected to check his bus for stray children and ended up taking one of them back to the bus depot by accident. Moderately amusing; one of our profs played the bus driver, the other played the bus company supervisor, and both delighted in taking potshots at each other's characters. I believe "shrew" and "dimwit" were both uttered at some point or other.

Then in Drafting, we were given instructions re. new legislation to draft, and told to treat our prof as our instructing officer and ask her clarifying questions about it.

Nice, refreshing change from the regular routine of doing the readings, listening to the lectures, and discussing the lecture and readings in a class discussion.

***
But that was last week. This week, notsomuch. Regular humdrum day, except that, having reached what lonejaguar calls the Special Place with my ADR article annotation, I was delighted to finally hand it in. It may be a worthless pile of fertiliser, but that's not my problem. Or rather, it is, but I don't really care.

Stupid woman in my Drafting class made me ulcerate. Will write about her tomorrow. Feh. Stupid people take far too much mental energy from those around them.

Comments

[a-dawn.livejournal.com]

The training for CITES is part of the intensive 9 week course that indeterminate CIs get, so it actually is there (not that you are wrong in your own experience, or anything, just sayin'. I will refrain from commenting any further. (Wishes you had screened comments)

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

indeterminate CIs get

Sorry, don't know what that is. Help?

I worked at Customs in 1990, and I was only a summer student, so I didn't get the whole gamut of training. But we were told that what we were missing was more training on drugs, immigration-related issues, porn, and a couple of other issues that didn't include CITES.

According to our prof, there are 18 CITES-enforcement positions in Canada. The agents drive from crossing to crossing, checking out whatever has been flagged by the local agents. They also try to train at least one person at each crossing to have a little extra knowledge of CITES so they can flag more stuff, but they aren't always able to do the training. And Customs has a fairly high turnover, so the local CITES experts don't always last very long.

I think our prof said that the last time she'd worked on CITES-related stuff was two years ago, so things may have changed since then. I hope they have. Because 18 positions across Canada? Does not sound like much to me.

[a-dawn.livejournal.com]

Indeterminate = permanent positions. And training for permanent vs. summer students is different. The 18 CITES enforcement positions is the first I've heard of it. While I work in HQ and not the field, I've been with Customs for 4 years and never heard such a thing. Perhaps it's just your profs wording. If such a thing did exist, the job titling is still likely "Customs Inspector".

Anyway, 'nuff said, shall not risk the job :) It's just interesting to see the external perspective.

[insanelonewolf.livejournal.com]

ADR? *freaks out* I've got a legal exam on that tomorrow.

Probably should have studied more -.-

[tudorlady.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Customs...

I've been mailing things to sugarkane_59. Anything that is "not just paper" needs a customs tag and needs to be mailed at the post office. Actually, that's not exactly true. They sent back a book I mailed because it didn't have a customs tag, so I'm thinking that what the guy meant was "anything that's not just a letter or unbound documents".

So, yesterday I mailed a 6x9 envelope. The customs manifest attached read 'teddy bear clothes'. That got a smile out of the guy at the PO counter. Yep, that's something for Homeland Security, all right. Teddy bear clothes. :)