Monday 27th April 2009 – It’s not What You Know, … (I Hope)

After a good breakfast, and a serious health check, we feel able to tackle the Immigration Service again.  Once again, men with guns strip us naked and look up our bottoms.  They tell us our Swiss Army knives are considered weapons, which must please the Swiss Army.  The men with guns have specific instructions to exclude my voice recorder.  Given we are about to joust with government bureaucrats, they probably see it as the more dangerous weapon.  We skip naked into the car park to put them back in the car.  The receptionist, who is clearly herself a recent immigrant, and (perhaps therefore) extremely helpful, tells us how we can make an appointment.  It involves going home and using the internet.

The next stop is the bank.  It is actually a 'credit union', and savings are backed, as it quaintly puts it, by the "faith and credit" of the US government.  We know the bank president, so we know this is not going to be a problem.  But even the bank president can't open a bank account for someone who doesn't have a Social Security Number.

We have a break to gatecrash the local Rotary Club: you can get a free lunch, and a lot of entertainment there.  We meet a number of other local bankers, who assure us that the Social Security Rule in inviolable.  My uncle died recently.  I regret not having had the foresight to steal his identity.  I don't really know how to steal identities, but it must be particularly easy if it's the identity you were named after.  We also meet the local Police Chief.  Rotary Clubs here clearly have bigger guns (literally) than they do back home.  And we meet some good old boys (I have to check the use of that phrase:  I think it is both a big compliment, and a big insult, depending on the context).

The insurance agent is ex-rotary, and wants to be updated on the lunch.  He also has a large box of lollipops on his desk, and know I am about to go through one of those zen tests, where I have to concentrate on a curious mixture of insurance interrogation and local gossip, when all I really want to do it grab a lollipop.  I wonder, ungraciously, if this is a business ploy, and concentrate hard on the questions.  I doesn't matter too much, because only one of his companies offers insurance to foreign drivers.  It's not too expensive, but apparently a local licence would make it considerably cheaper.

 

When we get back, and set up our Immigration Service appointment, we discover that, as is often the case these days, Microsoft decides to make its presence felt.  The Immigration Service wants us to print out the appointment letter, and puts a bar code in it, no doubt to simplify the admission process.  We have used our Vista-based laptop to make the appointment.  It refuses to talk to the house printer, which is not cleared for conversations with Vista.  I spend the rest of the afternoon cutting and pasting bits and pieces, and using 'sneaker net' (data transfer on foot) to get it to the printer.  The piece-de-resistance tomorrow will turn out to be the hand-painted bar code.  I wonder if the Immigration Service will ask me to sign it.