Embassy Madness
Today was the day i had the joys of going to get my visa from the american embassy! What fun it was!
For starters im a little peeved, i only got to speak to one real american! Never mind the four hours of Q-ing no no, it's all about meeting americans, altough he did make me feel about 400% better by saying those immortal words 'have a nice day'. It was a moment of pure magic. The system itself was quite amusing, you started off in a cue outside the building confronted by a siginificantly rotund security guard with a magical folder, and he knew how much power he held. The main dissapointment here was that he had a cockney accent and not the mid-western drawl i'd imagined from such a man.
In the Que I met two fellow Bunac'ers (yes im not enitrely sure of the grammer here), one a friendly sort of girl who was from Nottingham and going to New Hampshire, and another a Scottish boy who was also heading to Maine, but a different camp. Once threw the guardian with the folder, a long walk around the outside of the building led to a strange portakabin type affiar with two security guards and one of those airport type security devices that beep hideously. I even had to remove my belt!
Then walked back around the building again the other way, back past where i'd just walked to meet yet another security guard who asked me to turn off my phone, and hand in my camera or laptop if i had them, which i didn't but why were they so desperate to make me hand them in anyway, is it in case i were to actually try to combat the boredom of the process, however, there are always other means to these sorts of things.
Once i entered the waiting room, which most closely resembeled and eastern european airport lounge, i was handed a pair of barcodes with my alloted number- 598 which for the rest of the afternoon would become something close to an obsession. Despite me wanting to cry out 'i'm not a number i'm a free man, i began the search for a seat, which at this point was little close to a mission that james bond would be hesitant to accept.
I eventually found one, typicall right in the middle of a packed row, but negotiating this was still a better prospect than pearching in the corridor as many had resorted to. It turned out then that you had to wait twice, once to hand in your forms to one of the windows, which it turned out was about an hour, which were being called out in sequence, then you had to wait even longer, about another 3 hours, to visit another little window, which was home to my american.
Whilst sat down i discovered that my neighbours either side of me were also Bunac'ers, One again a scottish bloke who had done it last year and was going to California, and the other was another scottish girl who was going to Maine, which may or may not be linked to my camp. What is it with the scot's, there do seem to be alot of them who are bunac'ers, i suppose there were also a lot of them who ran the empire, maybe its a sort of escape complex, not that i know, having never actually made it as far as Scotland.
Well eventually after the four hour marathon i decided that some retail therepy was required so headed up oxford street and, inevitably ended up in HMV, after having a brief spin of some records on the decks, bought a Stone roses remix on Vinyl, cureing the current obsession for both vinyl and the stone roses, then on the way out bought the vaugely useful 'How to Dj- Properly' which i read with some ferverency on the train back in order that i may have a hope in hell of looking like i know what im doing when i get out there!
Anyway as Zebedee would say, Time for bed!
T
For starters im a little peeved, i only got to speak to one real american! Never mind the four hours of Q-ing no no, it's all about meeting americans, altough he did make me feel about 400% better by saying those immortal words 'have a nice day'. It was a moment of pure magic. The system itself was quite amusing, you started off in a cue outside the building confronted by a siginificantly rotund security guard with a magical folder, and he knew how much power he held. The main dissapointment here was that he had a cockney accent and not the mid-western drawl i'd imagined from such a man.
In the Que I met two fellow Bunac'ers (yes im not enitrely sure of the grammer here), one a friendly sort of girl who was from Nottingham and going to New Hampshire, and another a Scottish boy who was also heading to Maine, but a different camp. Once threw the guardian with the folder, a long walk around the outside of the building led to a strange portakabin type affiar with two security guards and one of those airport type security devices that beep hideously. I even had to remove my belt!
Then walked back around the building again the other way, back past where i'd just walked to meet yet another security guard who asked me to turn off my phone, and hand in my camera or laptop if i had them, which i didn't but why were they so desperate to make me hand them in anyway, is it in case i were to actually try to combat the boredom of the process, however, there are always other means to these sorts of things.
Once i entered the waiting room, which most closely resembeled and eastern european airport lounge, i was handed a pair of barcodes with my alloted number- 598 which for the rest of the afternoon would become something close to an obsession. Despite me wanting to cry out 'i'm not a number i'm a free man, i began the search for a seat, which at this point was little close to a mission that james bond would be hesitant to accept.
I eventually found one, typicall right in the middle of a packed row, but negotiating this was still a better prospect than pearching in the corridor as many had resorted to. It turned out then that you had to wait twice, once to hand in your forms to one of the windows, which it turned out was about an hour, which were being called out in sequence, then you had to wait even longer, about another 3 hours, to visit another little window, which was home to my american.
Whilst sat down i discovered that my neighbours either side of me were also Bunac'ers, One again a scottish bloke who had done it last year and was going to California, and the other was another scottish girl who was going to Maine, which may or may not be linked to my camp. What is it with the scot's, there do seem to be alot of them who are bunac'ers, i suppose there were also a lot of them who ran the empire, maybe its a sort of escape complex, not that i know, having never actually made it as far as Scotland.
Well eventually after the four hour marathon i decided that some retail therepy was required so headed up oxford street and, inevitably ended up in HMV, after having a brief spin of some records on the decks, bought a Stone roses remix on Vinyl, cureing the current obsession for both vinyl and the stone roses, then on the way out bought the vaugely useful 'How to Dj- Properly' which i read with some ferverency on the train back in order that i may have a hope in hell of looking like i know what im doing when i get out there!
Anyway as Zebedee would say, Time for bed!
T
posted by Delorean Gray at 10:02 PM
2 Comments:
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Oops. Yeah I went to the American Embassy on Thursday last week, would have been really odd if we bumped into eachother. Kinda wish we did, might have been fun! As soon as I walked into the room the heat hits you doesn't it? There were like 300 people there, it was awful. Never want to go through that again! It WAS madness.
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