Picking up the passport
Oct. 1st, 2010 05:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99As I got out of the car, a woman walked up to me. Jackie? Yes. We are a half hour early.
I get my bathroom break (thank God!) and we head to the correct office. And then we wait. There are disreputable-looking Taiwanese males waiting with us in the hallway. Not street bums, but more like too-old college kids. I wonder that they can go to India. Later, Jackie explains that they work for travel agencies.
Finally, the door opens and we go inside the waiting room to wait in chairs. More disreputable Taiwanese men appear. They seem to know each other.
As I wait I read the signs. Turns out that we can only drop off passports between 9:30am and noon on weekdays. I wonder what hour we dropped off mine. 11:30am? It probably was a close thing... And if we had missed the noon deadline, my passport would be another business day being returned to me.
FINALLY she has a bucket of paperwork and she gestures us all up. The disreputable men are quite speedy, and each acquire more than one passport. My turn, I hand over my receipt and she stamps it immediately: DELIVERED.
Then she starts going through the bucket of passports. Which are all green. To Jackie, "Mine is blue." I know the woman behind the glass speaks English almost as well as I do. Jackie repeats my words in Chinese, and the woman snaps at her, "I know!" in Chinese. She looks through the bucket three more times. There are only green passports.
I stare at my receipt on her counter: DELIVERED.
But no passport.
She goes away and comes back with another bucket. All green.
Have they lost it?
She goes away and comes back with a stack in her hand. I see my much battered and security-stamped passport on back of her stack. Whew! She goes through this stack three times, seeming to ignore The Only Blue Passport. I don't mind waiting. At worst, I figure my arms are long enough to snatch it away through the narrow passthrough in the glass. Rude office girl is tall, but built like a twig. I can take her.
Jackie and I checked the visa, to make sure it looked right before we left the office. It does. Though I had a minor heart attack when it said that it was active
1-10-2010 to 1-10-2011. Mean people, charge me for a year and only give me four months!
Oh, right DAY month year. All good.
I get my bathroom break (thank God!) and we head to the correct office. And then we wait. There are disreputable-looking Taiwanese males waiting with us in the hallway. Not street bums, but more like too-old college kids. I wonder that they can go to India. Later, Jackie explains that they work for travel agencies.
Finally, the door opens and we go inside the waiting room to wait in chairs. More disreputable Taiwanese men appear. They seem to know each other.
As I wait I read the signs. Turns out that we can only drop off passports between 9:30am and noon on weekdays. I wonder what hour we dropped off mine. 11:30am? It probably was a close thing... And if we had missed the noon deadline, my passport would be another business day being returned to me.
FINALLY she has a bucket of paperwork and she gestures us all up. The disreputable men are quite speedy, and each acquire more than one passport. My turn, I hand over my receipt and she stamps it immediately: DELIVERED.
Then she starts going through the bucket of passports. Which are all green. To Jackie, "Mine is blue." I know the woman behind the glass speaks English almost as well as I do. Jackie repeats my words in Chinese, and the woman snaps at her, "I know!" in Chinese. She looks through the bucket three more times. There are only green passports.
I stare at my receipt on her counter: DELIVERED.
But no passport.
She goes away and comes back with another bucket. All green.
Have they lost it?
She goes away and comes back with a stack in her hand. I see my much battered and security-stamped passport on back of her stack. Whew! She goes through this stack three times, seeming to ignore The Only Blue Passport. I don't mind waiting. At worst, I figure my arms are long enough to snatch it away through the narrow passthrough in the glass. Rude office girl is tall, but built like a twig. I can take her.
Jackie and I checked the visa, to make sure it looked right before we left the office. It does. Though I had a minor heart attack when it said that it was active
1-10-2010 to 1-10-2011. Mean people, charge me for a year and only give me four months!
Oh, right DAY month year. All good.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-01 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-02 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-02 05:31 pm (UTC)I really really want to not be having these adventures.