It Never ceases to...

piss me off at how much time I waste at the Office of Unwashed Masses (a.k.a. The Foreigner's Police Station in the Malmi section of Helsinki).

Last Thursday the UVI (immigration office) called da Finn to let have her tell me my permanent residency permit was at last finished processing (8 frakin' months later) and that I needed to drop off my passport so they could apply the auto-go-magic sticker to it and that I would need to leave the passport there for a few days. Okay..how long does it take to smack a sticker on the thing for chrissake?

Seriously..I got to the office at 8am (when they open)..the line was already 345433 people long. So I wait my turn for the deli-counter style number dispenser to give me my holy-grail of numbers only to find out that the queue which *I* need to be in doesn't open until 9am and the button is disabled until then. All the people who want the queue that I want have now lined up in front of the dispenser and will not go anywhere unitl 9. So..by the time I get in the right queue, I am number 16. I then have to wait again until the office I need to go to is open at 9 AND wait for the 15 people in front of me to be served. Did I mention there is no free wi-fi in that joint either..so I couldn't even get any work done while waiting!!!

1 hour later, ::bong:: E16 is up on the display. I get up and go to the office and hand the woman my passport stating my purpose for being there. She proceeds to put a yellow sticky on my passport, print out a document and tell me I have to come back in a few days to pick up the passport.. Soooo I have to go through this ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

..on the bright side, only 2 more trips to the land of the unwashed masses for me and then I have citizenship...hopefully...