Street Level Bureaucracy

It has been a hectic week and a half.  I taught seven financial education classes to the community during Military Saves week, we visited Kuala Lumpur for four days, we are still unpacking from the move into our new house, we are going to Vietnam in a few days, and the car battery died. 

In other words, a perfect time to squeeze in a visit to the United States Embassy in Singapore.

I admit that I do not hold United States embassies and consulates in high regard and do so with scant evidence: 

1. I saw Missing in 1982 and remember that they lied to Jack Lemmon when he was searching for his son in Chile, who disappeared when Pinochet took over and murdered all of the leftists.
2. It is rumored that the State Department only hires lawyers from Top 5 law schools.
3. In the waiting room of the consulate, ex-pats pass the time by telling horror stories of being treated with contempt by U.S. consulate and immigration personnel throughout the world.

But I had to visit.  In eleven months we have plowed through the pages in our passports, leaving only a few pages remaining for immigration stamps and visas.  Until last week, when our daughter snuck the passports off to her bedroom and wrote in one of them with a pen. 

She made very nice little boxes and triangles, carefully positioned inside the lines.  A very good imitation of the official  immigration stamps that left Elysia with only one blank page in her passport.

After dropping Citrus off at preschool I raced to the Embassy yesterday only to find that they would not let me submit my wife’s passport even though her signature on the form matched the one in her passport.  I needed to get a letter of authorization, something that is not required when you are in the States.  A bureaucratic roadblock that required an extra round-trip and US$35 in cab fares.

Back at her office, Elysia drafted a letter authorizing me to drop off the passport, authorizing them to add pages to the passport, authorizing me to pick up the passport.

We were tempted to add “P.S.  Please stop buying all of the canned corn.”

Embassy staff shop at our small Navy Exchange and on the weekend there is a small parade of shopping carts unloading into the ice chests in their cars.  Canned tomato paste disappears and it can be months before a new shipment comes in.  In the States, addicts try to buy bags full of decongestants to turn into meth.  Here, they had to put signs at the cash register announcing a limit on cheese purchases.

I will not say that it bothers me to not be able to find regular sugar for months at a small store meant for active duty military personnel and those directly supporting military missions.  Or that even disabled veterans in the United States are not allowed to shop at the Navy Exchange on base, let alone other agency personnel.  The truth is I mind because I am too lazy to shuck my own corn and I want to buy Ben and Jerry’s for US$4.50 instead of US$8 at Singapore grocery stores.

I visited the Embassy again today to drop off Elysia’s passport and will be back tomorrow to pick it up.  As I left, I swear that I saw consulate staff eating tomato paste by the spoonful, right out of the can.  That’s how they are.

I know what you are thinking and you are absolutely right:

Jack Lemmon never had a chance.

Tagged as: Chile, consulate, Jack Lemmon, Missing, Singapore, United States Embassy