What not to do when getting your visa

After running into some technical difficulties trying to get my Chinese visa, I found my savior - Fiona (Chen), my friend Guli's travel agent. I call her and hear a voice say, "ni hou." Somewhere in my brain, the Mandarin tapes I've been listening to tell me that that means "hello" in Mandarin, and I should flex my new skillz and say "ni hou" back.

I stammer a "hi." Strike one.

Either way, we get past that and my butchering of Minguang Zhu (Guli's dad) (his name, not that actual dad), and work out the details. I print out my bank account statement, visa form, flight itinerary to hong kong, passport picture, get a bank check, and stick all that and my passport in a usps priority mail envelope at the post office. I weigh it, add a bunch of stamps, seal it closed, and stick it in the mail box.

Two blocks later i realized that i had written no address. Or return address. Strike two.

I go to china in three weeks and just lost my passport.

So I mosey back to the post office right in front of the mailbox, but they didn't have the key to open it. Now it was 4:45 and I had been skipping work for the last hour and a half. I realized that my best bet was to wait until the mailman came at 5:30, but that was a long time to wait and my long absence at work was probably a little suspicious. So I, foolishly, abandon the mailbox to go to my office for a few minutes, grab a book and return at 5:00 to continue my stalk. By 6:30 still no mailman and I had to leave; apparently he had come in those 15 minutes I was at work. Thus, I abandoned my passport to fate.

Strike 3.

But before i went, out of desperation I wrote 2 notes to the anonymous mailman who may yet have held my fate in his hands, each explaining what had happened. I added the address of the travel agent and put one inside the mailbox and the other set to pop out when the box was opened.

After 3 days of suspense, I e-mailed Fiona to ask if she got the package. (Not that I thought she had gotten it; at this point I was really hoping that they opened up the envelope, found my passport and bank statement, and sent it to my house.)


I finally get the reply - "Got it yesterday, no problems."

whew.

anonymous mailman: you are my hero