Yes, I know I've promised to tell you lots more about the Manila Jaunt, however for the past week I've been ... well, I've been circling An Entirely New Hell, at HK's Immigration Tower in Wan Chai, trying to get us new visas.
In the past, I know we complained about the process, but it's looking pretty damn good in retrospect since they've now changed all the rules on us:
Ah yes, such nostalgia for all that sauntering in at 2.00 in the afternoon, lining up maybe behind 100 people in order to submit your passport and "request for extension of stay" application, along with 'original and complete' supporting documentation, and then sitting to wait for up to 3 hours for someone to interview you and, like some anal-obsessive school teacher, intensely scan through all the original documents, sifting through everything, looking for the smallest error, to ensure it's in order, before putting all your photocopies - which you have to get ready beforehand too - into the system ... and then waiting a month for an interview wherein you're finally able to find out if you're permitted to stay on in HK.
OK, that's how they did it before, which I'd already done so many times previously, so there I am, on Monday at around 2pm, rocking up to collect the forms. But totally to my surprise, I've walked into crazy-land:
Yup, I have to push my way through a veritable 10,000 to reach the appropriate floor to collect the documents.
Since it's NEVER been like this before, "What's happening?" I ask everyone. "It's the new quota system!" I'm told by Ryan who mentions he was actually there in a 10,000 crowd on Friday, when it took him seven full hours to submit his request for an extension.
Quotas? OK! Right! I take on board that obviously one can no longer arrive at 2pm, so on Tuesday I turn up at 11 am, lugging the required huge and heavy bag of documents, only to find:
After three hours in line, I finally reach the front only to be told I'm wayyyy too late for a quota number so to try again the next day.
Wednesday, again lugging the very heavy bag, I rock up at 8.15 am to find:
After waiting two hours, I'm told I'm too late again. Quota is full. Try again the next day.
Thursday, I arrive at 7.15 am:
Again not a hope in hell, but this time, after only an hour of waiting in line, a kindly Son of Gurkha guard tells me that the quota is full BEFORE I wait the entire two hours to reach the front.
I'm literally in pain, BTW, with the most brutal spasms in my shoulder from lugging that heavy bag, and my jaw aches from clenching my teeth, trying to not lose it ... and then the sciatic pain sets in all down the right side of my body, and I think I've earned myself a zillion "Keith-owes-me" points since it's his visa I'm after too, but instead he's downright furious with me! "You're doing this! This is all your fault!" he says and so, yeah, yeah, we have a big fight.
"How early do I have to be there to get on the quota?" I say at dinner Thursday night.
"I leave for work at 6.15 am." says Fortuna, who lives right next to the Immigration Tower, "and already the line is thousands deep."
So, Friday morning at 5.50 am, unshowered and wearing yesterday's clothes, still lugging that damn stupid bag made even heavier with a thermos of tea - no time for breakfast - but brimmed with clench-jawed determination to beat this, I arrive at Immigration Tower only to discover:
Kill! Kill! Kill! 179 people ahead of me! I know because I count them! But then I notice that most of them are Filipinas and I'm overjoyed because they usually are processed on a different floor ...
The Filipina Floor!
... with their own Quota system which means they're not in competition with me for a spot on the 5th Floor Quota! Yayyyyy!!!!
And so, after only three hours in one queue after another, each queue on a different floor, and, on the second floor being drilled by cute-as-pie red-beret-ed Sons of Gurkhas into proper techniques of queuing - two abreast, keep those lines straight, face front, and a loud "psst!" coupled with an angry hand gesture when I ask the woman in front of me if she'd finished with her newspaper - and always in the most intense and excruciating sciatic pain, I'm finally allowed in to line up on the 5th Floor.
Finally, the Holy Grail!
But, stupidly, I line up behind the five folks already there not realising that there are different queues for different people AND I'M IN THE WRONG ONE!!
And I don't notice until about two entire minutes later by which time ...
... 18 people have lined up ahead of me in The Right Queue! Kill! Kill! Kill!
And despite there only being 18 people ahead, for the first half hour, the counters aren't manned, and when they finally are, the process was so painfully slow that when that poor fellow with the highly inappropriate handbag immediately ahead of me nipped off for what was obviously an emergency toilet break, tried to get back into his spot in the line, there was a massive outcry from everyone behind me. He was told by everyone to go back to the end of the by-now thousands-deep queue behind us.
Thank heavens for that handbag because if it weren't for that I never would have recognised him again, so when the poor honey looked like he was about to burst out crying - which I totally understood because I would have cried too - I say "No, no. I know him. He's in front of me." and I pull him back into the line. Oooh, many disgruntled grunts from behind but that's OK by me! Whatever!
Finally, I'm at the front of the queue and a very nice Son of Gurkha guard gives me TWO red quota tickets - two since I'm processing two applications - and I am finally permitted to hand over everything. Yayyyyy!!! In the system AND with a light bag! Amazing how such little things can make you feel BLESSED! Plus I finally get to sit down in the interview waiting room. NICE!
Particularly nice since
I get the last available chair and, within minutes,
the interview room is standing room only.
But it isn't over. First off, after only 10 minutes sitting, and expecting it will be at least an hour before my interview number comes up, I decide to nip out for breakfast and a smoke, and I stand up to go ... but just happen to glance at the number board and I notice my quota number is up there: Ahhhhhh! If I hadn't spotted it, or if it had come up even a minute later, I'd have missed my spot and would have to do the whole thing over again!!!
But I do notice and feel so deeply and doubly blessed ...
... until, at the interview, the anal-obsessive interviewer notices that the supporting letter accompanying Keith's contract isn't dated. Seriously, Mrs Yau - she of the obsessive-compulsive 'get it right' 'do it again and again and again until it's flawless' bent - has forgotten to date the letter. "I can't let this go through!" says the lady-officer! "You'll have to come back on Monday."
Jesus wept!
I did too!
"I can't do this again." I cry. "Every day for one whole week, I've been in here - every single day - trying to get a quota number. I am in the most intense sciatic pain from one whole week of these ridiculous queues."
The nice lady-officer looks very sympathetic. "Sciatic pain?" she says.
Perhaps she's also a fellow sufferer because she softened on me "OK, just this once I'll let it through, provided you bring the letter done again and properly when you come for your interview next month!"
And that was it! Finally ... FREEDOM!!! FREEDOM!!! FREEDOM!!! And, after an entire week of sheer and unadulterated horror, I'm out of there so fast.
"Why is it now like this?" I ask at Yum Cha today!
"China!" everyone decides.
"China is getting more hands-on in how HK is run." "China now owns America so China now finds it funny to screw over foreigners in every way possible." "China is taking over from the so-British way of doing things by hitting everything with a very large CRAZY stick!!" "Everything we're now having is go through - all these lines and quotas - is simply China's way of demanding retribution for The Opium Wars!"
And, I regret to say, that new Quota System is so downright awful, I'm more than willing to accept this theory! Mainland China is now in control and the old system, which seemed so dire back then, has now been injected with a very large dose of CRAZY! If you're after a visa yourself, expect it!
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2 comments:
Random thoughts:
-Would never have happened if the British Empire were still running things, meaning something other than the present multicultural PC folks. Then you, being one of His/Her Majesty's subjects, would have been whisked away to a clean, quiet comfortable office to deal with a well mannered official in a crisp tan tropical uniform and who looked and acted a lot like Michael Rennie. He would have said something like "Beastly hot today. Why don't we discuss your family's requirements over a few gin and tonics at the club? Yin here - or is it Yang? Lum or something? All these silly wog names sound the same - will take care of all the paperwork and I'll have it delivered to your home. I'll summon the car."
Clearly a more civilized era.
-Offering a bribe to the right person would probably have moved you to the front of the line. Indeed, I'm suprised that they weren't fishing for bribes outright.
-Sounds like a setup you'd see in a third world country.
-Speaking of third world, sorta' sounds like the lines you see in downtown L.A. outside of the Federal buildings or County Health.
Just a thought.
VicB3
Gerald and Tracey lived here for a decade back in the 80s, when the British were still in charge. They say that getting a visa-extension was a matter of sticking your passport and application form into a special plastic bag and dropping it into a slot in a wall. Then you'd go off for a cuppa someplace nice and come back about half an hour later and your passport with visa attached - or else an invitation for an interview - would be waiting at a desk for you to pick up.
Civilised, yes?
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