That was fast.

(Thanks, 百妮）

So some of you know me, and won’t be surprised; others of you know me better, and will be very surprised:  the thing about this clip I was most thrilled to see was the Eastside.

I told the folks at work today that I was going to be a little late; I had some business at the US Consulate General.  They had told me that the whole process might take up to 30 minutes, but I wasn’t sure if that was American 30 minutes or Chinese 30 minutes.

I took a cab to the Consulate, which is housed on the 8th floor of a retail building, complete with a multi-level mall at the bottom.  There were signs on the street in Chinese telling people where to line up, and I thought, “time to play the ignorant foreigner card.”  So I walked up to the crowd-control guard, who saw my passport and immediately pointed me inside to the elevator.

When I got up to the 8th floor, there were more signs, and people waiting in line down the hall.  When I got to the end of the line, the end-of-the-line crowd-control guy immediately saw my passport and showed me to the front of the line, where I stepped in front of the people waiting patiently, and passed my passport to the officer behind the bullet-proof window, who immediately had me come through the security door.

On the other side of the security door I checked my cell phone, my PDA, and my camera, which they locked up in a box and gave me a key for.  I went through a metal detector and was shown past the big waiting area (complete with a hundred people moving slowly through the the airport-style cordons) to a small waiting room marked “US Citizen services.”

So I took a number and sat on the bench.  There were forms in neat piles with information urging me to register with the consulate and to register to vote.  I also noticed that there was a restroom attached, so that only passport holders had access to it.   I also noticed three framed prints of that p.o.s. George Bush, that evil p.o.s. Dick Cheney, and that ridiculous Secretary of State who answered the question “why weren’t we prepared for the 9/11 attacks” with the fabulously stupid “because we weren’t on a war footing.”

Anyway, before I could puke on the carpet (there was carpet!) my number was called.  I went to a window, told the lady my business, and to my surprise, she a) looked at me in the eye, and b) said “I can take care of that… that’s $30.”

What?  She doesn’t have to interrupt the guy in the next window, then go to the manager, then get a stamp…  Nope, she did it herself!  I was stunned.

I asked “where do I pay?” and she said, “Oh, I can take your payment.”

WHAT?   I don’t have to go to the cashier, wait in line again, come back with a stamp and a ticket….

So I paid her, and she smiled and told me to have a seat, and wait for my name to be called. I turned around to go have a seat, and before I could take a step, the guy in the next window called my name.  He had me raise my right hand and swear I was telling the truth (ha.  I was telling the truth, but still, ha.) and then he notarized my document.  Just like that.  In fact, he gave me two notary stamps, the normal one with raised letters, and then another one with ink, just in case I needed to fax it.   That’s it, he says, thanks for coming in!

Honestly, if I had known it was going to be that quick, I wouldn’t have taken off my hat and scarf.

Just a year ago, I might have considered that process ‘kind of a hassle:’ having to take a number going to more than one window, etc.  However, there is really no government agency or business in the US that’s as willing to waste the time of the customers/clients the way every bank, post office, or government agency here in China does on a daily basis.  Even getting my driver’s license renewed back in Seattle never took as long as it did to just activate my own ATM card here in Shanghai.

The one agency that did waste people’s entire day was the old INS; I remember taking my grandma once to get her green card renewed.  And actually the big hall the non-citizens all had to wait in was probably all people applying for visas.  So it’s true, America does indeed have day-killing bureaucratic processes, but of course they save them for non-citizens.

Anyway, my consulate business was done in a snap, and next thing I knew I was…. caught in traffic, wishing I had taken the subway back to work instead of a cab.

______

After work today, I went with L to Megabyte, and had teppanyaki.  L was so impressed he wants to make it regular Wednesday night thang. We’ll see.