thanksgiving

the visa for india has now been obtained.

next time i plan to travel to a foreign country, i think i may consider mailing in my application and passport rather than waiting for lengthy periods of time at the consulate. when i arrived at the offices around 10:00 am on a processing morning (applications accepted until 12:00 noon - i figured this provided plenty of time for me to pass in my pre-filled out form and photos), my bags were searched, and i was handed a number chit and instructed to watch the VISA display. a 8.5x11" sheet of paper with a large letter E was taped to said VISA display. i quickly inferred that this referred to the prefix on my number chit, which incidentally read B27. as the VISA display announced the turn of person E27 with a derisive ping sound, i edged my way through the crowds to one of the few available seats and hoped that the mysterious letters appearing on 8.5x11" sheets of paper beneath the VISA display did not comply with standard alphabetical order. luckily, this was the case. but it was a good 2 hours before i was summoned to the counter by my very own much-awaited ping. i'm glad i remembered to bring along my copy of this. together with the longest-eyelashed-female-baby i have come across in my life to date (sitting directly in front of me), provided ample entertainment for the waiting period. steingarten is brilliant. don't think i've laughed out loud so hard since i came across david sedaris last spring. to cut this tangential story short, i picked up my passport - complete with visa sticker - the following afternoon. what i don't understand is why they felt the need to plunk it down on page 13 of my otherwise empty travel document. can't they adhere to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies of order order order??? books to be filled are MEANT to be filled from page 1 to page n, in the serial order of {1, 1+1, 1+2, 1+3, ... , n-3, n-2, n-2, n}. right? i suppose i'll have to learn to live with this, as multiple friends have now informed me that passport stamping officers simply 'don't care' about such things. oh well.