The Sweet taste of....
success.
After a lot of stress, mostly from me very little from H, last minute preparation (everything gets done last minute with the two of us!) and a very early morning we arrived at the American fortress that is the embassy. The embassy is typified by concrete barricades which look extremely permanent, crowd control barriers, security and a lot of British policemen with guns. For those brits reading this you can understand how odd this is. There's even one poor chap who is situated just inside the security checkpoint who is standing behind bullet proof blankets laid over steel crowd barriers. Not the best assignment of the day. Mmm...
What is it about high security area's that get's one talking about politics, gun control, foreign policy of your and other nations and makes you eye up big men with guns in a curious/suspicious manner. I always do god knows why. Hannah kept telling me to change the subject!
After queuing for about 30mins in the first cold morning of the year, Hannah with open toed sandals, we got through the security check, a long walk around the building past more men with guns and we're in. That felt like achievement enough, I thought we'd done the hard bit. We joined another queue; this was beginning to be tedious, and paid the fee to have our documents returned. We entered the transit like lounge and sat down. All of the initial interviews appeared to be brief just to take in one's documents. Hannah was called first and I was right behind her. Standing in front of the bullet proof glass at my allotted window my brain seemed to shut down, I managed to thrust my application through the gap. The American official behind the bullet proof glass asked if I had any supporting documents I said no. The fact I was sweatily clutching a whole bunch of bank statements, airline tickets and other assorted proof of my wholesome intentions passed me by completely at this point. The idiot switch had tripped and all I could muster was my now stale sweet boy next door smile. No way was that going to wash with this lady. She looked at me and was entirely unimpressed. I was instructed to take a seat.
I sat down and swore quietly to myself, I'm sure the lady next to me thought I had turets syndrome or some similar ailment. Three hours of an electronic voice saying 'number 217 please go to window 7' later and Hannah was called to window 19. We had fathomed this was the window were all the interesting cases go so being called there was a worry. H made her way over to her interview and scanned away her right to privacy at which point she made my life extremely easy. Asked if she knew what number her traveling companion was she gave the official my number. I was called and dutifully trotted over to the window. I scanned away my right to privacy too with some enthusiasm; it's amazing what you'll do when you want something enough. The man behind the window asked how much money we thought we would need/had. My first answer was met with barely concealed contempt at which point I started to tell him about all of our contingency options. When I had finally sold my soul to the devil and had mentally spent all our cash in America he nodded and said no problem. We were in!
After a lot of stress, mostly from me very little from H, last minute preparation (everything gets done last minute with the two of us!) and a very early morning we arrived at the American fortress that is the embassy. The embassy is typified by concrete barricades which look extremely permanent, crowd control barriers, security and a lot of British policemen with guns. For those brits reading this you can understand how odd this is. There's even one poor chap who is situated just inside the security checkpoint who is standing behind bullet proof blankets laid over steel crowd barriers. Not the best assignment of the day. Mmm...
What is it about high security area's that get's one talking about politics, gun control, foreign policy of your and other nations and makes you eye up big men with guns in a curious/suspicious manner. I always do god knows why. Hannah kept telling me to change the subject!
After queuing for about 30mins in the first cold morning of the year, Hannah with open toed sandals, we got through the security check, a long walk around the building past more men with guns and we're in. That felt like achievement enough, I thought we'd done the hard bit. We joined another queue; this was beginning to be tedious, and paid the fee to have our documents returned. We entered the transit like lounge and sat down. All of the initial interviews appeared to be brief just to take in one's documents. Hannah was called first and I was right behind her. Standing in front of the bullet proof glass at my allotted window my brain seemed to shut down, I managed to thrust my application through the gap. The American official behind the bullet proof glass asked if I had any supporting documents I said no. The fact I was sweatily clutching a whole bunch of bank statements, airline tickets and other assorted proof of my wholesome intentions passed me by completely at this point. The idiot switch had tripped and all I could muster was my now stale sweet boy next door smile. No way was that going to wash with this lady. She looked at me and was entirely unimpressed. I was instructed to take a seat.
I sat down and swore quietly to myself, I'm sure the lady next to me thought I had turets syndrome or some similar ailment. Three hours of an electronic voice saying 'number 217 please go to window 7' later and Hannah was called to window 19. We had fathomed this was the window were all the interesting cases go so being called there was a worry. H made her way over to her interview and scanned away her right to privacy at which point she made my life extremely easy. Asked if she knew what number her traveling companion was she gave the official my number. I was called and dutifully trotted over to the window. I scanned away my right to privacy too with some enthusiasm; it's amazing what you'll do when you want something enough. The man behind the window asked how much money we thought we would need/had. My first answer was met with barely concealed contempt at which point I started to tell him about all of our contingency options. When I had finally sold my soul to the devil and had mentally spent all our cash in America he nodded and said no problem. We were in!
posted by patrick at 1:47 PM
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