Beetlejuice

[mbarrick]

I'm sitting in the passport office, waiting to see an "examiner". It is remeniscent of the closing scene in Beetlejuice. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy beside me knows how to shrink heads.

I skipped out of work to do this. The passport is so I can proceed with my Australian immigration, although in another year and half it will be require to go to the U.S. as well. Either way, it's about time I got one.

Why must government waiting rooms always be so dismal? It doesn't seem to matter which governmant it happens to be, either. It's like there is an international standard that applies to all levels of government.

All the require players are present as well: the increacingly imaptient running/screaming infant and apologetic mother; the shrill women nattering in a foreign language; the surly clerks manning only 10% of the available wickets...

Comments

[princeoigan.livejournal.com]

So are u still likely to head down here? Or are you just covering yourself in case you do? You have see an examiner to get a passport? Whoa.. we just have to fill in a form and provide some ID at the post office! hehe

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I had no idea what the "examiner" was when I wrote that. The first clerk looked at my papers to make sure they were filled out completely and I wasn't a waste of time. She then gave me a number and I sat for an hour and a half in an unconfortable chair between a pickled late-middle aged woman with skin like leather and dressed entirely in denim who asked me why my "calculator" had so many buttons and could not grasp that I was reading and posting to a website, and an old Japanese man with halitosis who felt compelled to tell me how Japanese electronics were superior to my Blackberry.

When my number finally appeared and I went to see the "examiner" I discovered just what a passport office "examiner" does. He "examined" my I.D., made sure the number on my birth certificate matched the number on the form. put my photos in a little sleeve that I had to sign, and took my money for the fee. That was it. It took about a minute. Based on his job title I thought I was going to be interrogated or something. The "examiner" was, in fact, nothing more than a cashier.

I felt kind of short-changed after the experience. After waiting so long I was expecting more.