I had the pleasure of traveling with my family to the US consulate in Chennai over the weekend. The boys and I need to have our passports renewed before we can get our new Visas renewed in time for our April deadline. We've been in India for several months now and have experienced many Indian government situations - our FRO (Foreign Registration Office) registration, cell phone through Airtel, the government led cell phone service, electricity, water, etc. You have all read in past blogs about how frustrating it is to deal with any of the previously mentioned companies. But the worst government experience we've had has definitely been the FRO office. Within 7-14 days of being physically in the country our family needed to register with the FRO office. Fortunately we had a third party helping us navigate the eccentricities of dealing with the government in India, but it still meant traveling into the city on a school/work day, waiting in line for several hours until we could finally reach the front of the line where 3-4 families were waited on at the same time and told to go wait in the waiting area until we were called.
We were finally called and sent to the second floor (first floor here in India, the actual first floor is the ground floor and the second floor is the first floor, but unless you plan to move here you don't need to worry about that!) Dozens of families moved to the first/second floor only to wait longer in an un-airconditioned area. Our number was called and we were being waited on at the same time the family ahead of us was finishing up their paperwork. The man behind the counter pushed the paperwork in front of Kyle and asked him to fill it out. Then, Kyle got scolded for filling out the paperwork with his information when it was my information they were looking for. Forgive Kyle for doing what he was told to do - the Indian male will never directly ask a female to do something. They will always ask the male even if what they are looking for is the female's information. That resulted in a tearing up of paperwork and a redoing of the paperwork in my handwriting after the papers and pen were passed to Kyle first and then to me. Eventually, after two additional parties were called to the very same counter we were at, our paperwork was complete. I'm not completely confident that our paperwork was not confused with anyone else's since the scene was completely chaotic and too many hands were involved in too much manual paperwork without any computer intervention, but so far so good :)
Needless to say my expectations were extremely low when we visited to US consulate in Chennai. My impression was not improved any by the sight of 10 or so Indian security professionals reading the newspaper while on post at their consulate checkpoints. On the upside, it was incredibly easy to get a car into the car lane by the front door of the consulate. We had a minor situation with our not so English speaking driver when we specifically spent 10 minutes explaining to him that no electronic devices were allowed into the consulate so we would not have our phones to call him so he would need to meet us at a specified time/place. He agreed. But, when we got out of the car he said, "call 10 minutes before you need me, sir?" Apparently our long explanation was for naught. Eventually we determined that we could call him from a security phone and all was good.
At this point I am prepared for a day long affair in the consulate waiting to get passports renewed. I was RELIEVED that the US government was actually the most efficiently run organization I have experience in my 6 months in India. We filled out our paperwork, handed it in, realized we were missing the appropriate sized photos but they still allowed us to submit all paperwork and gave us a special waiver to re-enter the building with new passport photos as soon as we got them printed. All was done within 2.5 hours - even with our own mistake! I never thought I'd be so pleased with the efficiency of a US government office, but WOW!!! It was so nice to spend even 2 hours inside a US government entity. I know it isn't actually the US and that I still needed to go outside into the real India, but just to have 2 hours of an air conditioned office with instructions that made sense and a staff that spoke to me with equal weight as Kyle was the most refreshing experience I've had so far in India.
I will post soon about our weekend in Chennai on the shore. It was fun and hot and we had a great time other than another Kane child going down with fever and illness. Why is that the Kane kids only get sick on vacations in Asia? Poor Jameson is still sick and will likely be out of school for 2-3 more days. Poor kid -although he would honestly rather be sick than in school.
We were finally called and sent to the second floor (first floor here in India, the actual first floor is the ground floor and the second floor is the first floor, but unless you plan to move here you don't need to worry about that!) Dozens of families moved to the first/second floor only to wait longer in an un-airconditioned area. Our number was called and we were being waited on at the same time the family ahead of us was finishing up their paperwork. The man behind the counter pushed the paperwork in front of Kyle and asked him to fill it out. Then, Kyle got scolded for filling out the paperwork with his information when it was my information they were looking for. Forgive Kyle for doing what he was told to do - the Indian male will never directly ask a female to do something. They will always ask the male even if what they are looking for is the female's information. That resulted in a tearing up of paperwork and a redoing of the paperwork in my handwriting after the papers and pen were passed to Kyle first and then to me. Eventually, after two additional parties were called to the very same counter we were at, our paperwork was complete. I'm not completely confident that our paperwork was not confused with anyone else's since the scene was completely chaotic and too many hands were involved in too much manual paperwork without any computer intervention, but so far so good :)
Needless to say my expectations were extremely low when we visited to US consulate in Chennai. My impression was not improved any by the sight of 10 or so Indian security professionals reading the newspaper while on post at their consulate checkpoints. On the upside, it was incredibly easy to get a car into the car lane by the front door of the consulate. We had a minor situation with our not so English speaking driver when we specifically spent 10 minutes explaining to him that no electronic devices were allowed into the consulate so we would not have our phones to call him so he would need to meet us at a specified time/place. He agreed. But, when we got out of the car he said, "call 10 minutes before you need me, sir?" Apparently our long explanation was for naught. Eventually we determined that we could call him from a security phone and all was good.
At this point I am prepared for a day long affair in the consulate waiting to get passports renewed. I was RELIEVED that the US government was actually the most efficiently run organization I have experience in my 6 months in India. We filled out our paperwork, handed it in, realized we were missing the appropriate sized photos but they still allowed us to submit all paperwork and gave us a special waiver to re-enter the building with new passport photos as soon as we got them printed. All was done within 2.5 hours - even with our own mistake! I never thought I'd be so pleased with the efficiency of a US government office, but WOW!!! It was so nice to spend even 2 hours inside a US government entity. I know it isn't actually the US and that I still needed to go outside into the real India, but just to have 2 hours of an air conditioned office with instructions that made sense and a staff that spoke to me with equal weight as Kyle was the most refreshing experience I've had so far in India.
I will post soon about our weekend in Chennai on the shore. It was fun and hot and we had a great time other than another Kane child going down with fever and illness. Why is that the Kane kids only get sick on vacations in Asia? Poor Jameson is still sick and will likely be out of school for 2-3 more days. Poor kid -although he would honestly rather be sick than in school.
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