The Swede in the middle of Silicon Valley

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The visa interview

So I just wanted to share my crazy morning to get to the interview.

06:20 am: The alarm goes off and my cousin comes into the room to make sure that I'm waking up. (I stayed at her place).
06:30 am: I've washed myself and is getting dressed with my new suit which cost me a fortune.
06:40 am: Heading of to the subway station with my cousin, ahead of schedule.

06:55 am: PANIC! I've forgotten my passport at my cousins place. I get of the train, runs to the other platform that goes back.
07:00 am: The train finally arrives after 5 painful minutes.
07:05 am: The train is now back at the first station.
~~~~~~: I'm running like a maniac to my cousins place to pick up my passport, the more I run the more sweaty I get, awesome to smell horrible for my interview....
07:15 am: I'm back on the train towards Stockholm downtime and realize that I'll never make it to 8am.

07:25 am: Suddenly I see my cousin at the subway station which the train is coming into, apparently she has been jumping on every train since I left to check for me. We're going one more station and all of a sudden she drags me out of the train and starts running. Since I know that I'm screwed in regards of timeframes I just follows her. When we get up on groundlevel she grabs the first cab she sees and tell him to drive fast as hell. (Notice that it takes about 40 minutes to go by car from this station to the embassy and the time is now 07:30am.

~~~~~~: Time passes....

07:55 am: The cab arrives to the embassy. JUST IN TIME!! My cousins throws me out of the cab to make sure that I'll get there.

So now I'm here, and what do I see.... a LOOONG queue, outside, in the cold.

So I'm standing in the queue for 45 minutes, I'm still not inside the embassy since everyone has to pass the security control. And I'm getting more and more worried that I'm screwed.

08:45 am: I'm now in the embassy, leave my papers and passport to a cashier and sits down to wait.
09:15 am: A man in the speaker says: Jonathan Petersson, please come to window D.

A small note here, everything that's within ( ) is thoughts I'm having during the so called interview.

I'm now standing in front of the immigration guy who sits inside a stall, we're divided by a glass window.

- Good morning, he says.
- Good morning, how are you?

- I'm fine thanks, and you?
- I'm fine to.

- So you're going to work for SQL in the United States?
- Yes (It's called MySQL...)

- What does SQL stands for?
- Standard Query Language (Gha! Wrong it's Structured Query Language)

- Uhm ok.
So how long are you planning on staying in the United States?
- Well, we haven't decided yet.
I guess I'll stay as long as the company needs me to.
If they want me to stay for one year I'll do that.
If they want me to stay for two year I'll do that. (Why do I continue!?)
If they want me to stay for three year I'll do that. (Gha man get out of it!!)

- Uhm, ok.
Your visa is hereby approved, you'll have it sent to you on Tuesday.
Have a nice day.

- Uhu? Well thanks....

So I'm spending all this morning hurrying like crazy, spends $30 on a cab, have bought a new suit for way to much money, and shoes for $150 which he doesn't even sees just to spend less than 5 minutes doing non-constructive talking. What an awesome way to start the day on.

2 comments:

Entry 23 Eco of Kristofer said...

Very amusing story! Good thing they don't know you are a pirate and an advocate for changing the american way of life. good luck! :)

Garnser said...

Yeah right...