Only In Real Life!

[Floyd]

I have no idea how people in other countries renew their driver’s license, but here locally one can stand in line for a long time at a small office, or one can renew on line.

In the past, one just entered a driver’s license number, address, and credit card and it was done in 5 minutes.

Today, obviously, is a different world since it took me about 30 minutes to renew on line.

Personal information had to be entered in two different places, then reading about being a donor, and after that if one needs to update their voter’s information.

Then one had to swear the information is factual.

This is the world we live in, craziness !

Too be fair, one can send a check with a form through the mail, but lately our mail service is not what it was.

It seems there is a “fill in” mail person about twice a week now.

It's actually not too bad here nowadays -or it wasn't the last time I did it- the only thing is that since they brought in photocards a few years ago, you have to renew it every ten years and spend a fortune (even though you only need one photo, you have to buy 5 or 6) and I hate those passport booth things at best of times.

Mines only three years out of date at the moment, so no rush.

 

[ramonmercado]

Thank you!

A fun read, you are a modern Dickens!

 

[Floyd]

A fun read, you are a modern Dickens!

The rash has just about gone now.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

My first proper teaching abroad job was in the early noughties and iinvolved me working in a moderrn, smallish gas and oil city* in West Siberia in the Russian Federation.

All the foreign teachers were allocated their own flats - and these were of the late Soviet variety and situated in blocks. The school, which was in the city centre, was located at the top floor of a small shoppijng mall.

It seems surprising now, but I didn't make uase of a mobile phone while I was there. I did have one - a Nokia, but I couldn't be bothered to put a new local chip in the back as I had a landline phone in the flat and the school was in walking distance of my flat and I knew all the staff - and their landline numbers. (This will be relevant later).

Anyway, one November evening I knocked off from my evening's work - I taught mostly adults so that means I would be working until about nine in the evening on most days - and trudged through the snowy boulevards back to my flat.

When I got back to my block I was horrified to discover that some dolt had closed the collective front door. I need to point out at this stage that the collective front door had a sort of very old combination lock on it - probably dating back to the seventies when the city had been built. By `combination lock` I mean one of those locks were you have to press down - in a sequence - a series of metal protrusions. This lock had a lot of such protrusions and I had no idea what the sequence was as, as I have said, people normally left the door ajar. I did try - but it was hopeless.

So I was locked out of my flat in minus stupid weather conditions** in a town I didn't really know. I had no mobile phone and didn't know the locations of my colleagues flats either. Whoopidoo.

Then I remembered that the shopping mall my school was in had an overnight security man keeping watch there. I hotfooted it back to the place. My Russian was pretty basic then, but I managed to convey to the guard - who sat in a sort of kiosk on the ground floor - that I had a problem and needed to access the school. The school was all closed down by then, but he let me in and there I rifled through the records to find a colleague's landline number. I rang him and told him to call for a taxi to pick me up and take me to his place - which he did.

As I waited for the taxi the guard came in and told me something in Russian. I nodded and assumed that he was reminding me to turn out the lights when I left, or something.

Then the phone rang telling me tha taxi had arrived. (I need to piont out here that the taxi drivers in that area are somehat impatient and don't hang about if you don't get too them pretty sharpish). So I bolted out of the door and began my descent down the now dark winding staircase to reach the ground floor. Then I discovered that some of the doors en route had been locked - no doubt that was what the guard had been on about - and I needed to take an alternative route to get down. (There was more than one staircase) - but sorting all this out was slowing me down. At one point I banged a fist against a window of one of the doors in sheer frustration and my hand went straight through it!

When I finally got down, there was no time to try and explain things to the guard and I jumped into the taxi. I then spent a pleasant evening with my mate and some beer in his flat. The next morning I explained everything to my boss and he somehow got hold of the combination needed to open the lock. Then he asked: `But why did you break that window?`

Later I handed to the guard some roubles (for the repair of the window), a bar of chocolate and a postrcard from the U.K o the back of which I had scrawled `Izvinitye` (`Sorry`) and all was sorted and forgiven.

** I'm being coy about the exact location becuase I reserve the right to tell another story invovling the place one day - and one in which the people involved could be identified.

** I knew minus forty whilst there. That evening it was nowhere near that, but it sure wasn't staying out all night weather.