Passport woes

I must rant today about renewing my passport while living overseas.

One of the real hassles now is that I not only have to worry about a passport, I have to worry about the associated work permit inside. I had wanted to renew my passport over the holidays, but my employer would not authorise the expense to renew the passport itself, and without the immigration attorney's support, I did not feel comfortable doing it myself in the US for fear that I might not be able to get back into the country.

So the day I came back to the UK, I sent my passport in to be renewed, in the hope I could get both it and my work permit transferred before having to leave for the US tomorrow.

Well, no such luck. I am flying out tomorrow to california, and I just received my passport today, at 4:35 p.m. The whole process is really irritating. You cannot go to the embassy itself to renew your passport. You can go there to get an emergency passport if you make an appointment, but otherwise you have to send your documents via mail or special courier service. After you have sent in your application, you can no longer apply for an emergency passport. The passport office itself is only open until 12:30 p.m. every day and if you try to call, they put you on perpetual hold til the phone finally disconnects you. The messenger service is equally un-user friendly - when you dial they give you three options - if you want to schedule a pickup, if you missed a delivery, and number 3, which gives you a recording and disconnects you. I did have better luck communicating with the embassy via email, though I have to say they were nonchalant about the whole thing.

The most irritating part was the fact I sent in the wrong size photos. Silly me, I just assumed that all passports are the same size so I never worried about measuring the actual dimensions. But no, I got a letter back that my photos were the wrong size and I had to rush down to get new pictures taken and send them special delivery back to the embassy. My cheeks are rosy in the photo from moving so quickly that day. The frustrating bit is that my head is actually the same size, it was just the physical dimensions of the photos were different - they were not 2 inches by 2 inches. Considering they scan them in to the computer now anyway, this seems ridiculous.

I guess I can't complain too much - a friend of mine had to renew his passport over the holidays in Greece and wound up picking it up on the way to the airport, 40 minutes before his flight. At least I got mine within 12 hours of departure.

Photos from Fall 2006

I realize I traveled quite a bit in the last few months of the year. Between October and December I went to Munich (and Regensburg, a nearby medieval town), Paris, Milan, Siena, Rome and Austria for various work and fun trips, including my first skiing experience in Europe. Too bad there was not more snow! I posted my random pictures from the trips here - not many of Paris since I was not feeling well and have been there plenty of times in the past.

Racism Row on Celebrity Big Brother

All I have heard about on the news this week is the ongoing saga about Celebrity Big Brother. On the BBC radio in the morning, on the television news, on every tabloid headline. Until this week, I didn't know a thing about the show itself other than it is yet another boring reality thing.

I guess the gist of what is going on is that Jade Goody, one of the people on the show who's claim to fame is being on the regular Big Brother, supposedly made some racist comments to Shetty, a Bollywood super star who is also on the show. The local broadcasting authority has had a record number of complaints, Gordon Brown has had to deal with it during his visit to India this week, and in the meantime, the ratings for the show have skyrocketed - making people speculate that it is just a big publicity grab.

Whatever is really behind it or whether it is racism or not, it got brought a bit closer to home for me when a random guy got in my face about it when I was waiting to use the ATM the other day. He stopped on the street, mumbled something incoherent at me, then told me that in reality, Indians are the superior race.

I'm not sure what bothered me more - that he thought I was racist or that he thought I watched Celebrity Big Brother.

More tube antics

It has been quite a while since I posted, so I figured it was time for a new look. Blogger has completed its first big upgrade since the Google acquisition, so I decided to take advantage.

Also, I think i must have rested my arm enough so that I feel better now typing for fun. Back in October I thought I had seriously injured myself due to too much technology in my life, most specifically, typing on one of those tiny keyboards on my PDA. After switching to mousing on the left, changing my workout, three weeks of holiday, and probably most importantly - cutting way back on the use of my iPaq, I am ready again to face the world with new blogs.

Disappointingly, this post is going to be very similar to my last. Yesterday while riding the tube I watched a young girl making her eyelashes beautiful. She went through the entire process - first she curled her lashes with one of those torturous looking metal devices, not just once, but several times, holding it for 20 or 30 seconds at a time. Then she applied mascara very carefully to her lashes, darkening each one until they were all uniformly colored. Then she cleaned up any leftovers that got around her eye. The whole process took about three tube stops.

The funny bit is that then she got up and left the tube and because she had only finished one eye, she looked like Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange. It seems silly to me to go through all that effort only to look freakier than when you started.

One can only hope she did the other eye on the next leg of her journey - without dislodging her eye with that curling contraption when the tube made a sudden lurch.