If something has to go wrong it will...
Thats something I learnt today. I was in "The city" downtown area today visiting a consulate of a schengen state. To set the stage, I live in the suburbs and I avoid driving and parking in downtown areas altogether. Having said that, I had to parallel park my car today and was pleasantly surprised when someone pulled out of a parking spot as I was trying to locate one. So feeling very upbeat, I pull into the parking spot, park my car and feed the parking meter for 45 mins and walk towards the consulate hoping that everything should be as smooth as this. How wrong I was!!!
When I got to the consulate I was told that I had to make 2 copies of all the documents I had. So now I had to go looking for a copy center which was luckily about a block away. This is the first time I can remember where I had pay to make photocopies in this country. I come back to the consulate after making copies only to realize that they accept only cash or money orders and that I was falling short by $10. So not I have to go looking for an ATM. Meanwhile I realized that I may not be able to return to my car in 45 mins so I decided to feed more coins to the parking meter before I take off looking for an ATM. As I approach my car, I saw that someone had scrapped the driver side door leaving white paint on a green car and a noticeable dent. The schmug did not even leave a note. I try to clean up the paint a little but with my hands and walk over to the other side and there it was flapping in the cool thin air. It was a parking ticket stuck to my windshield. Thats when I knew that getting that parking spot was a curse in disguise.
I checked the parking meter and there was still 15 mins left and I checked the signs to make sure I parked legally and everything checked out fine. Then as I went through the ticket in detail, I found that I failed to "curb" the car. Since I had parked in a street that had a 3% gradient slope, I am supposed to turn my wheels towards the curb. Now for someone who had lived in suburbs all his life, I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be ticketed for not having to turn the wheels of my automatic transmission car, in park with the hand brake engaged, towards the curb. I left the $35 parking ticket on the windshield, fed the parking meter a few more quarters and walked to find an ATM.
Finally I did find an ATM about a block away only to find that I have to pay nearly $5 as convenience fee for using a non-bank ATM for the $10 that I need to withdraw. I paid it, withdrew the amount and walked to the consulate with just 15 mins left for it to close. The security was kind enough to let me in and I go stand in the window for the visa officer to go over my documents. She takes one by one, reads every letter of my documents and finds that 2 sentences were missing in one of the letters that I got from my company. So I have to get another letter and mail it to them. The interesting part is that, this consulate does not have a website in English that lists the documents needed and I am not sure how anyone can find out what documents to bring. So I stand there taking down the list of items that I missed and need to mail it to them. They were kind enough to accept the application and asked me to mail the missing documents as soon as possible. Then they tell me that I can get my visa on the date I am supposed to travel. So now I have to call my travel agent and postpone my trip by a day because I may not have my visa on time. Also I have to request new letters and mail it to the consulate tomorrow. Arggggghhhhh.... That really sucks.. Thats when it struck me that this had to go wrong from the beginning and it very well did...
When I got to the consulate I was told that I had to make 2 copies of all the documents I had. So now I had to go looking for a copy center which was luckily about a block away. This is the first time I can remember where I had pay to make photocopies in this country. I come back to the consulate after making copies only to realize that they accept only cash or money orders and that I was falling short by $10. So not I have to go looking for an ATM. Meanwhile I realized that I may not be able to return to my car in 45 mins so I decided to feed more coins to the parking meter before I take off looking for an ATM. As I approach my car, I saw that someone had scrapped the driver side door leaving white paint on a green car and a noticeable dent. The schmug did not even leave a note. I try to clean up the paint a little but with my hands and walk over to the other side and there it was flapping in the cool thin air. It was a parking ticket stuck to my windshield. Thats when I knew that getting that parking spot was a curse in disguise.
I checked the parking meter and there was still 15 mins left and I checked the signs to make sure I parked legally and everything checked out fine. Then as I went through the ticket in detail, I found that I failed to "curb" the car. Since I had parked in a street that had a 3% gradient slope, I am supposed to turn my wheels towards the curb. Now for someone who had lived in suburbs all his life, I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be ticketed for not having to turn the wheels of my automatic transmission car, in park with the hand brake engaged, towards the curb. I left the $35 parking ticket on the windshield, fed the parking meter a few more quarters and walked to find an ATM.
Finally I did find an ATM about a block away only to find that I have to pay nearly $5 as convenience fee for using a non-bank ATM for the $10 that I need to withdraw. I paid it, withdrew the amount and walked to the consulate with just 15 mins left for it to close. The security was kind enough to let me in and I go stand in the window for the visa officer to go over my documents. She takes one by one, reads every letter of my documents and finds that 2 sentences were missing in one of the letters that I got from my company. So I have to get another letter and mail it to them. The interesting part is that, this consulate does not have a website in English that lists the documents needed and I am not sure how anyone can find out what documents to bring. So I stand there taking down the list of items that I missed and need to mail it to them. They were kind enough to accept the application and asked me to mail the missing documents as soon as possible. Then they tell me that I can get my visa on the date I am supposed to travel. So now I have to call my travel agent and postpone my trip by a day because I may not have my visa on time. Also I have to request new letters and mail it to the consulate tomorrow. Arggggghhhhh.... That really sucks.. Thats when it struck me that this had to go wrong from the beginning and it very well did...
posted by Siva Balan @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home