a day with immigration
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today we set out at 08:30 for the pension office. It was much as you'd imagine. Then to the tax office, which took an hour. When we rolled into Immigration, it was just shy of 11:00. Mari had arranged all these visits beforehand and was keeping us moving with great efficiency, but when we took a number we knew we were out of luck. There were 71 people ahead of us, and only three windows open. So we had lunch, finding an Indian place by dead reckoning - that looks like the kind of place where there'd be restaurants. It turned out that we'd ordered from them before. But that didn't take an hour, and we knew we'd be in a spot of difficulty making the 15:30 deadline back at The Girl's school. So we went back and waited around in the street with everyone else. "Everyone else" was about a hundred Asians and a tiny smattering of Caucasians. I talked briefly with a South Asian fellow whose little boy had conked out quite some time before; even the dad was clearly exhausted. We were called at 15:10, and the paperwork was in such good shape that we were called back only five minutes later to go through things one more time. And then we were done. We hopped back on our bikes and got to The Girl's school with a couple of minutes to spare. As it happens she'd taken her bike to school for some event (this otherwise never happens) and we were able to head back together.
The weather couldn't have been better at this time of year. The Rainy Season officially started earlier in the week (they announce this based on the weather, not the calendar) and I have a pic of three weather systems competing for airspace. As the Season goes on we'll see some crazy sights. But today it was mostly sunny, quite breezy, and not too hot. It'll take "four to six months" for the PR application to be processed, but it has started anyway.