in.ane - origin Latin "innis"; content that lacks sense or substance.

chat - origin Middle English "chatten"; to converse in an easy, familiar manner.

in.ane chat - origin "innis chatten" - to converse in a familiar manner, content that lacks sense or substance.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Countries and Embassies

Have you ever wondered how embassies are in some ways the representation of the country itself, a metaphor for the country? How closely the place, the people and the buzz at an embassy is so much like the country itself.

American Embassy - High security (everywhere); queues of immigrants (everywhere); work gets done (everywhere); and as per an American himself, whites get preference over any other skin colour (at least in London).

Australian Embassy - Big and empty (Paris); laid back attitude but work gets done once you are at the counter (London).

French Embassy - Consular/embassy office takes forever to do anything (Sydney, Australia); honorary consul does not know or do anything (Melbourne, Australia); for an office consisting of a big hall and 2 French nationals serving the consulate there are about 6-8 support staff (Mumbai, India).

Indian Embassy - Overly crowded (London); no order or queue for anything (London, Sydney); archaic such as old fashioned ceiling fans humming at low speed (London); dirty (London and Sydney).

ADDENDUM
I had to go the Indian embassy today. the counter opens at 8:30, but as I was warned I got there at 7:30AM to be 200th in the queue. The queue stretched all over the road for about 300 metres. Once inside, the queues continued, the electronic system to call each token number was one that we used 20 years ago. And when your number came up it was up to you to decide which counter to go to. The system would just say that your number is up, not which window you have to go to, nor did the window say which token number it was serving. Even after my number was called I had to wait 10 minutes before I could actually go to one as all counters were busy!!
On hindsight, I should have followed the economic principles taught to me by one Tim VZ. I should have gone at 9:30 when there were no crowds and taken a token number for later in the day. It would have avoided me standing in the queue for one hour in cold London weather and I would have had the time to do something between then and 2PM when I would have to go back to submit my application.

Labels: , ,