Vidi Vici US Visa
Bloody hell!
Most of you will find this inanely boring, pretty much on par with queuing for 3.5 hours. Yes. That's right. I shit you not. 3.5 hours of our lives spent queuing that we will never get back. I wouldn't even queue that long for Pink Floyd tickets! Jeebus!
So we caught the taxi on over to the US embassy, only to be dropped way behind the back of the thing and not on the gate we needed, because the taxi driver refused to listen to my instructions. Or maybe he just couldn't deal with the whole 'foreigner-can-speako-the-lingo' thing. Aaaaaanyho... asked a guard how to get to where we needed to go, received instruction and set off on foot to the appropriate gate. Which we queued out the front of, showed our passports and were allowed in. Then we queued again to actually enter the security section. Given that we're not US citizens, we queued with EVERYBODY (and my, there were many people wanting that golden ticket to the 'Land Of The Free' (honestly peeps, if China's so bloody advanced and fantastic, why do y'all wanna leave? Just sayin'...)
There seemed to be the usual attempts at queue jumping, so Mr C and I puffed ourselves up a bit, as you do, when you get a little tired of the queue jumping in this place... ...and then a wee-security-man came along, checked our passports and asked us to move to the front of the queue..ahem...(to our credit, we did try to argue that we are Australian, not American and therefore we were cool with queuing, but they insisted, so we did in fact proceed to the front of the line...).
Being forewarned, we knew our goods would have to be surrendered, so we only took our paperwork and wallets with us. Still, we had to surrender our keys and a pen over to the next security guard, get a number and proceed through the checkpoint and on to the next queue, to get into the actual embassy.
By this time, we have been asked three times if we're American, by various security guards (you'd swear we stand out or something), who were making sure we weren't US citizens and therefore in the wrong queue, because unlike FORTRESS AUSTRALIA (as I fondly call our piece of dirt here in the 'jing), the US embassy has the good sense to have an American citizens only line, where they can just walk up, get through the security and walk in. I'm blonde these days, so I attracted a fair bit of attention from the crowd...sigh...much hilarity ensued as I was pointed at, giggled at, whispered about blah blah blah... (not to mention the nervous laughter when I did catch the eye of someone who had just been staring at me)
So then we get inside the embassy and we're queuing again. We're not sure for, but everyone else is doing it and we just seem to go with the crush flow. It's a long corridor. We're directed to a window, do our thing, get a ticket and then we're queuing to get outta there. Good thing we're not claustrophobic, because it was awful in there and no-one's afraid of a fart here, lemme tell ya! So finally we get to some fresh air and we're queuing again for the finger printer, and then again for the interview. How many queues is that now? That would be 7. Only we get to the interview window and the lovely American bloke tells us we have to go pay a fee we were unaware of up the stairs and no, there's no queue (luckily for him!) and we can come straight back to his window without queuing again. Yay! This we did, much to the swearing and carrying on of all the people we hurried past. One couldn't help feeling a little smug.
3 or 4 days, they said and we'll have our passports back. I am wondering what the catch is... I'm guessing they'll get lost in the post or something. What? Me cynical? Well, seeing as the post office wasn't actually where the guy from the embassy said it was, you will have to excuse me for feeling a little... well... amused by the whole thing.
Oh and because Mr C and I were a little brain drained after the whole ordeal, we forgot to pick our stuff up from security. So when Mr C went back to get it, the security guard knew exactly who Mr C was "I know who you are! You have a beautiful wife!". Thanks, Mr Security Guard, thankyou, wo pengyou because I have been living in this crazy city nearly 3 years and I've been called all sorts of things - big nose, barbarian, fat, freckly, crazy, a number of swear words, dumb, uncivilized, to name a few and that, I believe, that is the very first compliment I have been paid. And I wasn't there for it. Arse...
But in closing, all I can say is THANK GOD WE DIDN'T HAVE TO TAKE THE KIDS! You cannot even begin to imagine exactly how bad that would've been... especially in the farty corridor!
Oh and Toasty? No G&T-serving-David Bowie! DENIED!
Most of you will find this inanely boring, pretty much on par with queuing for 3.5 hours. Yes. That's right. I shit you not. 3.5 hours of our lives spent queuing that we will never get back. I wouldn't even queue that long for Pink Floyd tickets! Jeebus!
So we caught the taxi on over to the US embassy, only to be dropped way behind the back of the thing and not on the gate we needed, because the taxi driver refused to listen to my instructions. Or maybe he just couldn't deal with the whole 'foreigner-can-speako-the-lingo' thing. Aaaaaanyho... asked a guard how to get to where we needed to go, received instruction and set off on foot to the appropriate gate. Which we queued out the front of, showed our passports and were allowed in. Then we queued again to actually enter the security section. Given that we're not US citizens, we queued with EVERYBODY (and my, there were many people wanting that golden ticket to the 'Land Of The Free' (honestly peeps, if China's so bloody advanced and fantastic, why do y'all wanna leave? Just sayin'...)
There seemed to be the usual attempts at queue jumping, so Mr C and I puffed ourselves up a bit, as you do, when you get a little tired of the queue jumping in this place... ...and then a wee-security-man came along, checked our passports and asked us to move to the front of the queue..ahem...(to our credit, we did try to argue that we are Australian, not American and therefore we were cool with queuing, but they insisted, so we did in fact proceed to the front of the line...).
Being forewarned, we knew our goods would have to be surrendered, so we only took our paperwork and wallets with us. Still, we had to surrender our keys and a pen over to the next security guard, get a number and proceed through the checkpoint and on to the next queue, to get into the actual embassy.
By this time, we have been asked three times if we're American, by various security guards (you'd swear we stand out or something), who were making sure we weren't US citizens and therefore in the wrong queue, because unlike FORTRESS AUSTRALIA (as I fondly call our piece of dirt here in the 'jing), the US embassy has the good sense to have an American citizens only line, where they can just walk up, get through the security and walk in. I'm blonde these days, so I attracted a fair bit of attention from the crowd...sigh...much hilarity ensued as I was pointed at, giggled at, whispered about blah blah blah... (not to mention the nervous laughter when I did catch the eye of someone who had just been staring at me)
So then we get inside the embassy and we're queuing again. We're not sure for, but everyone else is doing it and we just seem to go with the crush flow. It's a long corridor. We're directed to a window, do our thing, get a ticket and then we're queuing to get outta there. Good thing we're not claustrophobic, because it was awful in there and no-one's afraid of a fart here, lemme tell ya! So finally we get to some fresh air and we're queuing again for the finger printer, and then again for the interview. How many queues is that now? That would be 7. Only we get to the interview window and the lovely American bloke tells us we have to go pay a fee we were unaware of up the stairs and no, there's no queue (luckily for him!) and we can come straight back to his window without queuing again. Yay! This we did, much to the swearing and carrying on of all the people we hurried past. One couldn't help feeling a little smug.
3 or 4 days, they said and we'll have our passports back. I am wondering what the catch is... I'm guessing they'll get lost in the post or something. What? Me cynical? Well, seeing as the post office wasn't actually where the guy from the embassy said it was, you will have to excuse me for feeling a little... well... amused by the whole thing.
Oh and because Mr C and I were a little brain drained after the whole ordeal, we forgot to pick our stuff up from security. So when Mr C went back to get it, the security guard knew exactly who Mr C was "I know who you are! You have a beautiful wife!". Thanks, Mr Security Guard, thankyou, wo pengyou because I have been living in this crazy city nearly 3 years and I've been called all sorts of things - big nose, barbarian, fat, freckly, crazy, a number of swear words, dumb, uncivilized, to name a few and that, I believe, that is the very first compliment I have been paid. And I wasn't there for it. Arse...
But in closing, all I can say is THANK GOD WE DIDN'T HAVE TO TAKE THE KIDS! You cannot even begin to imagine exactly how bad that would've been... especially in the farty corridor!
Oh and Toasty? No G&T-serving-David Bowie! DENIED!