Jan 29, Interview Day at the US Embassy
For the Babylon 5 fans: Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And, if I ever do anything wrong, Ivanova will personally rip my lungs out...

I wish I was Ivanova.

Two things were happening Jan 29th. I had my K1 visa interview at the US embassy, and two, my cousin W was getting married. Thankfully both things were happening downtown. But horribly, it was a rainy rainy R A I N Y day and...lackwit service and instructions and idiocy struck again! And again! And again!

Confound it!

First was the security guy on the tiny little public road leading up to the embassy. My dad was dropping me off. This little slip of a 5-metre road was one that was off the major traffic road; if anyone wanted to drop passengers off at the embassies, they couldn't very well stay on the major road to stop. The first guy that morning was understanding, he did let us onto the little road and did not tell us to reverse out of there like another security guy later, but there was some silly questioning. Rain was coming in the window.

Security guy (local): "Where are you going, what for?" (In true Singaporean accent.)
Me: "US embassy, fiance visa."
"American passport?"
Me: "What? Me? No, I don't have one..." (Why would I be there for a US visa if I had one?)
"American passport?"
My da: "Her fiance has the American passport, if that's what you mean."
"Your fiance is US citizen?"
Me: "Er, YEE-AH. Yes." (Sorry, man, but DUUH!)
"He US citizen? Live in US?"
I can't remember what I said in reply but it wasn't what I really wanted to say.
"The carpark's through there..."
Me: "We're not going to the carpark, he's just dropping me off. There. That drop-off point." (I point straight. The spot is less than five metres ahead, not blocked, IS a public road, and allows cars to do a little roundabout, better than being stuck where he'd stopped us and where traffic was speeding perpendicularly across our back.)
"Carpark is there. if not parking, go right please." (There was no bloody space for a car to turn right without executing what I call a three-HUNDRED-point turn and blocking other cars trying to get in. And we never figured what carpark he was pointing to, all signs said it was for staff only.)

My dad and I looked perplexed. We were perplexed. The directions made no sense, and I'd been to the embassy before to get my student visa to know the drop-off point WAS a definite drop-off point, previously, as far as I knew, open to the public. So, thinking he was an ----- and being genuinely puzzled and impatient (bad traffic and weather had made us 3 minutes late), I wound up the window and told my dad to ignore Power-crazy Security Guy's instructions. I got to the drop-off point in the car. Dad could drive his car around the roundabout. The security guy hadn't told us we weren't allowed to do so. I suppose I should be thankful we weren't shot at that time, haha.

That was the FIRST thing. Second thing:

I headed into the little glass room that was the first security check area off the drop-off point and that was the gatehouse to the embassy compound. Another embassy visitor was in the tiny gatehouse having his appointment letter and belongings checked. I was told to please get out of the gatehouse, they were only checking and letting people through one at a time. Fine, I co-operated and got out again, staying just outside the glass door. Then this huge group of Japanese-looking people, possibly Chinese mainlanders, came up to the gatehouse and looked at me.

Maybe it's from traveling experience, I have the ability to guess at first glance, anywhere, if a person speaks my lingua franca. These people looked like they didn't.

"There's someone in there and they want us to go in only one at a time," I hazarded saying to the group in English, my guess about them leaning towards Japanese.

More blank stares. Ii didn't occur to me to speak to them in Chinese at the time. No matter. Next moment, they had barged right in ahead of me.

Aha! They were Chinese mainlanders. :P

What was irritating was, the security guard didn't give them the same order he gave me. He didn't ask them to get out, and I had more or less lost my place in the security check queue.

OF COURSE! The way to get ahead with security in this place was just to pretend I didn't understand English. I should have thought of it.

I entered the gatehouse and put on my "thanks for screwing me over" bitch scowl for everyone involved. What's worse than anal security measures? Anal and inconsistent security measures.


THE THIRD AND WORST SCREW-UP OF THE DAY

I had been given WRONG text instructions in my Packet 3 on what documents to bring.

That's right. Read that fucking line again. My Packet 3 instructions from the embassy had one big error, that not only cost me money, but got me an unreasonable dressing down from one of the two women at the counter for immigrant visas.

There I was, faced with a shortish woman on the other size of this big piece of glass/plastic, that allowed a tiny 1-1/2 inch slot at the bottom, in a shallow dish in the counter surface, for slipping documents through. From my side, I could see the woman had a big pink paper folder that had all the paperwork from our first fiance visa petition package to the INS. I could see all our printed emails from June 2003.

"What is this?" the woman asked me, looking at my file.

I should know? I hadn't seen those papers for more than 6 months. "It looks like my petition," I said.

"OK." Then, one by one, she asked me to hand in the documents I had been told to bring according to the Instructions for Immigrant Visa Applicants. She had a checklist that she was marking off. Jason had given me his documents, some in doubles, to accompany his Affidavit of Support. Though I couldn't remember clearly, I think the Affidavit instructions had asked for one or two of his documents to be doubled, because he had gotten both copies notarized. Instead, the woman was pushing the copies through the window back to me whenever she came across them, with a snippy "What is this? Why are you including two of this?" in a tone like I was trying to pull something on her. Why the hell would I even think of doing that?

Then she came to the mistake.

"Your birth certificate."
"My birth certificate?" I had godamn memorized the complete bloody instructions for fiancee visa applicants.
"Birth certificate."
"I didn't know I was supposed to bring my birth certificate. I brought a certified copy of it, as the instructions said."
"Where is your birth certificate?"
"I didn't bring it."
"Where is your birth certificate?"
"At home."
"Where is it?"
"AT HOME."
"You were supposed to bring it."
"The instructions asked for a certified copy, not the original. I brought the certified copy."
I passed it through the dish.
"This is not acceptable as your birth certificate."
"I was NEVER TOLD to bring the birth certificate. But I can have someone bring it to me in a bit, OK?" My mum was coming downtown for my cousin's solemnization. If I was meeting everyone later anyway, I could definitely ask my mum, if she was still at home, to bring it to me.
"What?" she said. "WHERE IS YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE?"
"It's AT HOME! LOOK, I can definitely have to you in just a little while. I can have someone bring it to me from home. OK?"
"It's at home?"
"Yes, I forgot to bring it." You happy with that, now? I have the bloody instructions fucking memorized, the text in black-and-white would back my case. My dad had even checked with a lawyer on what a "certified copy" of the birth certificate really meant, got his answer, and we'd paid to have a photocopy of my birth certificate notarized at a legal services office, who had compared the original to the photocopy before stamping "Certified Copy" on the copy.
"Good. I need to see the original. This is unacceptable."
"What did the instructions mean by a certified copy? That is a certified copy."
"Who certified it?
"There's their stamp and signature right there." I honestly couldn't remember their name.
"We don't want a copy that has been stamped by someone else."
WHAT THE FUCK? I stood there incredulous.
"We want your original and a plain photocopy. So you bring your original birth cert and a photocopy of it later, OK?"
"Then WHY did your instructions say a 'certified copy'?!?"
"We want to see your original cert and a photocopy. We'll certify the copy ourselves."
Then why--

FUCKIT. So here are the erroneous instructions I had been given, scanned from my instructions for fiancee visa applicants, pencil marks made weeks before my visit to the embassy when I had been checking off my contents for Packet 3:



I don't care if it was a mistake purely of semantics. If the embassy had meant that they wanted to see the original and a photocopy, they should have put that in their instructions instead of "a certified copy," which implies a copy that was certified elsewhere beforehand, not a plain one that an embassy staff certifies when you hand in your documents. Later, when I returned to the embassy at 2:20 pm, the first words out of the same woman's mouth was to check if I had brought my "original birth cert." Heh.



--------- INTERMEZZO ---------

It might have been nearly 10 am when I first got out of the embassy building and back to the gatehouse to get my cell phone back. I had been given an interview time of 2:30 pm, when I had to be back at the embassy. Once I had my phone back, I called my mum, caught her just leaving the house, and told her to bring my original birth cert and a copy of it. My cousin's solemnization at the Registry of Marriages was at 11:15 am. I also called my dad, because I needed his Singaporean ID card that had both his date and place of birth, that information not being on my birth cert.

The sky was still pouring. I walked 120 metres to the nearest shopping mall in my heeled sandals. My feet got wet and freezing. This month has been the rainiest and coolest January in Singapore for 30 years. Half an hour later my mum met me at the same mall, and we were off to the ROM, where I was to watch my second cousin within a year get married there. After that, he treated the relatives to lunch at another downtown restaurant. The rain was non-stop and coming down in sheets. Actually, Chinese people take lots of rain as a good thing and an auspicious sign, as long as floods weren't happening.

At the multi-course lunch, I described my trials at the embassy to my aunts. They agreed that the people I had had to deal with were truly maddening.

"But you musn't argue with them," they advised. "They know they have power. They can refuse to give you your visa."

"I know, I know. But I can't shut up they're so clearly wrong and giving me trouble."

"You must, you must keep quiet. You should wait and only scold them after you get your visa."

Yes yes. My parents had been telling me the same thing and were right now repeating it, because I had already told them, very truthfully, than I was more mad than nervous about the visa interview. I was going to be the most un-nervous interviewee they had ever seen. What can I say? Anger and righteousness made good weapons and armor on me. But I was advised, over and over, by parents and relatives, to keep my attitude in check. Smile a lot. Be supplicating.

Which would make this next part of the return to the embassy damn funny.


--------- THE US EMBASSY PART TWO: THE RETURN ----------

My dad had come to the lunch, but had to return to work. My mum would be dropping me off at the embassy for the second visit. There was another security fracas while we were in the car again at the little road leading to the embassy's drop-off point.

Security guy: "Where are you going?" Rain pouring in through the car window again.
Me: "US embassy, fiance visa INTERVIEW."
"You can't come in here."
"She's just dropping me off in front, at the roundabout."
"You have to turn right. You can't go in front."
My mum and I: "There's NO SPACE to turn right!"
Me: "Just let us make the roundabout. Look, there's a van there right now doing it."
"You can't go there."
"She's just dropping me off, like that van there is doing. She can't turn right HERE, OK? There's NO SPACE!"
My ma: "I'm just dropping her off right there!"
"You can't go straight."
"LOOK! It's just a little roundabout in front of us. You can watch us doing it, that green van is doing it!"
My ma: "Yeah! You allowed that green van!"
"Embassy staff. YOU can't go straight."
My mum: "What complete bullshit! What does he expect me to do?"
Security guy: "Turn right, get out of here. You're not even supposed to turn in here."
Ma: "WHAT? YOU'RE CRAZY!" (So much for being supplicating with embassy staff.)
Me: "THEN WHERE THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT PEOPLE TO STOP?!? THIS IS A MAJOR ROAD BEHIND US."
"You can't go straight. Please turn right."
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
The guy got his other security guy to block the little road in front of us and prevent us passing.
Ma: "What now?"
Me: "I guess I have to walk in the rain, and you have to turn right somehow and get out of here." (She bloody well couldn't do a reverse onto a busy trunk road.)
I glared daggers at the security guys as I made a show of struggling with my umbrella and bags of files and had to walk 3 metres in drenching downpour to get to the gatehouse, where my mum's car was not been allowed to go.

I am going to censor myself on what I think about these security people and measures.

The actual visa interview was an anticlimax and with the first American staff I got to deal with the whole day. (The rest of the embassy staff had been local employees, betrayed by their looks, accents, and skills in sucking my blood with moronic instructions.) I was basically asked how about Jason and I had met, about his employment, and other questions that probably came from leafing through the evidence of relationship that I had submitted. I was made to swear an oath of truthfulness before I signed DS-156K. I got my evidences returned, my original birth cert returned and a receipt for my passport, because I would be leaviing my passport with them until Tuesday. They are keeping it to put my visa in.

Cripes? I have to go back there AGAIN? Awesome. :P See you road security guys again on Tuesday.