System System System

Well, it is visa renewal time. We've been dreading this since Sam's friend had a terrible time with the Bangladeshi bureaucracy a few years back, but since Sam got another grant to stay until December and our visas expire on June 1, we've had to bite the bullet and get things moving. Bangladesh is notoriously inefficient and inconsistent regarding anything paper or government related, so again, we were dreading the whole ordeal.

Sam also has a paper accepted to a conference in Singapore in June, so we will be travelling in and out and will need the whole visa thing sorted out soon. It's funny- all this talk lately about immigration and legality in the US (BOO on you Arizona!) and here we are on the other side, asking for permission to stay and having to justify our presence. We kind of like getting to experience this side of immigration coin, although of course we recognize we are in a much better position than the millions of immigrant workers in the US being exploited and taken for granted (but that's another issue...).

Anyway, when faced with bureaucracy, Sam finds it most effective to put oneself into the mind of the bureaucracy and become one with the circular, maddening process. As such, Sam spent weeks researching anything we might need and we went in armed with loads of photocopies, letters to multiple officials, goverment officials' phone numbers, and every piece of information we might possibly need. We turned our application in and now just have to get national security approval of Sam's research (shouldn't be a problem since we got it before) and the police have to approve that we haven't been up to no good (define "no good"...). We go back on May 31 (Sam's b-day) to see how it all worked out...

The office itself was sort of fun actually. It consists of many different windows- first pick up your papers here, then go to the next window, then get things stamped, then pay this guy who will stamp another thing and staple it to the first thing, then the next guy checks all the stamps and lets you now if it stamped all right and when to come back...sigh - all this work to make sure people have certain stamps and papers. Really it is sad on either side of the coin. We will, of course, let you know the outcome.

Oh well, 'til next time F*^k la Migra!