visa limit.

have you ever tried to get a tourist visa to go to china? i have.

i have tried. and tried. and then i tried again. three straight days of immeasurable frustration interrupted by one actual nightmare. three two hour round trips to the consulate in camperdown, two fruitless encounters with the same visa clerk, one frantic dash to an atm.

fine, i'll take the blame for wednesday's empty-handed venture. what idiot gets within spitting distance of a consulate only to realize that he's left his passport back home on the lower north shore? (for the record, on that same day i also went to the gym with a towel and socks but no shorts. who am i, amelia bedelia?) but i refuse to take the blame for thursday. no where on the website did it say that i must provide a confirmation number as proof of accommodation. when i had asked sally at the far east yha in beijing via email if the letter she drafted for me would be sufficient i got a resounding yes. only to get a resounding no at the visa counter. this after i the bus driver decided not to stop at my stop, forcing my to sprint the three blocks to catch the bus at the next strand, hopping aboard and shooting a filthy look toward the driver's seat. this after i arrived at the front door of the consulate to find the security guard trading profanities and threats with a delivery man who had parked in the wrong place. this after i had made the same trek not twenty-four hours early, walking away empty-handed on both occasions.

so today i showed up, packing a detailed email from our beijing hotel and my brightest smile. only to get shafted again. and told that i needed to speak to the receptionist. and then the supervisor. and then the same visa clerk. for the third time in three days. when i was finally granted the go ahead, i was asked "do you want to pay extra to get this back in a few hours or come back and pick it up next week?"

are you kidding me? come back again? no thank you.

i have a visa now. it is pasted into my passport and grants me access to the giant nation anytime before august 16. that's if i still want to go.

china and i have some making up to do.