Yesterday was an exercise in patience and perseverance.

It all started with an airline ticket that never made it to my house. I got the ticket using points I’d accumulated on my VISA card and the travel agency associated with the card insisted on sending me a paper ticket. I can’t even recall the last time I used a paper ticket. They were supposed to send it to me in the mail, but it never arrived. I tried calling the agency, but got stuck on hold each time.

Not knowing the difference between a paper ticket and an e-ticket, I went to the airport anyway. I’d paid for the ticket, so I assumed it would be on the airline’s computer.

Apparently not. The folks at the ticket counter explained to me that while an e-ticket represented an actual booking of an airline seat, a paper ticket was simply a cash equivalent that could be redeemed for a booked seat. No paper ticket, no seat.

I spent the next hour navigating the voice mail system of my credit card’s travel agency. About eight levels deep, I found an option that might help.

“To contact the emergency travel arrangements desk,” the voice said, “press five.”

I pressed five and twelve rings later, got connected with an agent. He suggested that I buy a ticket to San Jose and fill out a lost ticket indemnity form that would allow me to get the money back once my ticket had been confirmed as lost. The round trip ticket was a little more than I could afford — even with the guaranteed refund — so the people at the airline counter suggested that I buy a one-way ticket to San Jose and have the travel agency courier me a one-way ticket back home.

I followed their advice and proceeded to customs.

I handed customs my passport and boarding passes. They took one look at my ticket and decided I fit the profile:

A one way ticket,

bought at the last minute at the counter

(which they mistakenly thought was bought with cash)

by a solo-travelling non-caucasian male

born in a country with active Al-Qaeda-funded groups (the Philippines has to contend with Osama-funded jerkoffs Abu Sayyaf).

I was escorted into a customs interview room, a small place with a desk equipped with a microphone, a chair on either side of the desk and a surveillance camera pointed at the interviewee’s chair. As I waited for my interviewer, I imagined someone in one of the adjoining offices snapping on a pair of latex gloves and slathering them with lube.

After about fifteen minutes, a man in a U.S. customs uniform approached the room, but was interrupted by a coworker. “Hey, Phil just brought in four boxes of Krispy Kremes!”

Both of them made a beeline in some other direction, and I waited another ten minutes for my interviewer to return. By then, I’d missed my flight.

The customs guy was pretty nice, asking me the same questions I’d been asked earlier — where was I headed, how long was I staying, whom I was visiting — as well as some out-of-the-ordinary questions:

“Have you been to the middle east lately?”

“Have you been to the Philippines recently?”

“Are any of your clients from the currently ‘hot’ countries?”

He then asked if he could search my luggage; I said “yes,” partly because I had nothing to hide and partly because I didn’t want to face the consequences of saying “no”.

When he opened my accordion bag, he asked me to play it in order to prove it was a real musical instrument.

It was then that I decided that there is only one song you play when trying to establish your bona fides with a U.S. customs official: The Star Spangled Banner .

About four bars in, he declared me free to go.

He explained that my circumstances looked a little suspicious, hence the interrogation and search. I told him that I understood he was just doing his job and hustled out of there.

I was thankful that the searching was restricted to my luggage. I’m pretty sure that playing the U.S. national anthem played a part in convincing him that I was not a terrorist and that he should recognize my right to anal sovereignty.