Ok, this isn’t really about my weight loss or Weight Watchers journey but I was talking to my mom today and was telling her about how I went about getting my passport application done and she found it vastly entertaining so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s like a joke…except it’s real…and how I approach most things…I am uh, let’s say unique, that’s a non-judgy kind of word lol. 😀
Ok, so last week I printed off the passport application from the government website. If I had gotten off my ass ages ago I could have just filled out the Renewal Form but nope, not me! I waited and waited and now I have to completely reapply. *rolls eyes* I was so excited to get the application in (don’t ask me why…I’m weird about stuff like that lol) so I started filling it out right away. I decided to show a bit of my personality on the form – I mean, those forms are so boring and I figure the employees who process them must get so bored looking at the same thing over and over that why not make mine a bit more fun to look at? shrug. My way of making it show a bit of “me” in the form was to use a pretty ink colour. It’s a very nice turquoise colour. 🙂 I picked it cause important forms should have black or blue ink but I read (in a fiction book that has an almost complete cast of characters who are vampires…but that’s neither here nor there…) that all legal forms should have blue ink never black and sure, this isn’t technically a legal form but I’m filling it out and then signing to confirm I’m not lying right? So, kinda legal…in a way…so I thought I should use blue ink and well, turquoise is a shade of blue, so that should be ok, right? 😀
I was filling out my form and started to get bored so I stopped part way through. I used the excuse that I needed to confirm with various friends who will be my Guarantor and who will be my 2 References and I might as well wait to finish the rest of the form. So of course I texted friends and left it at that. 😛 This past Saturday I went for my photo only because I was having a good hair and makeup day, otherwise I probably would have put that off a bit also…there is always the hope if I wait another day I’ll look better in the picture then if I took the pic today, right? 😉
Anyways! I got two friends who agreed to be my references and one who agreed to be my guarantor, yah! I met up with KL for an early lunch today so she could fill out her section of the form (she’s my guarantor) and last night when I was making sure the papers were in my purse I thought “I should take a quick look at them, see if anything is missing or if I need anything special” but then I poo-poo’d that idea as just silly and nitpicky and assured myself it was all good. While KL was filling out her section of the form (with my snazzy turquoise pen) she said “I don’t know my passport number”…uh, say what? Yeah, turns out she needs some info from her passport but I didn’t know this cause I didn’t check the form the night before did I? *rolls eyes* KL calls her bf who is at home but he doesn’t believe in answering his phone, or keeping it charged, or taking it with him when he goes out (annoying!) so she just keeps calling and calling…and calling…sigh.
KL had to go back to work so I wandered downtown killing time waiting to see if she gets a call back from her bf and saw oh so many things I wanted to buy but being broke I bought nothing, sadness. She actually got a call from him and got the info so she texted it to me and I go to fill out the form by leaning the paper against the side of the London Drugs but the (snazzy turquoise) pen didn’t like writing at an angle and it stopped working. Meh, no biggy, figured I’d go to the passport office, find a table and fill it in there But! while shuffling the papers to confirm the address I see a couple not completed sections, oops!
I was supposed to fill in my work info but I didn’t cause I needed the address and phone number and exact dates of when I started and when/if I stopped working there…do you think I had that info while wandering downtown with a cell phone that can only go on to social networking sites and not google? Why no, no I didn’t. I decided I’d go to the passport office, find a table, sit and call my parents, lol, parents fix everything! I thought one of them could pull up my tax stuff to get the dates of employment and one of them could go google the addresses and numbers – easy peasy right?
When I got to the office I had a brainstorm! I could old school it and see if they had a phone book, then I could get the addresses and numbers all on my own…course, I kinda suck at understanding/using phone books but hey, desperate times desperate measures. shrug. When I asked the security guard she said if I go up two more floors there is a Service Canada Office and they have ten computers for public use and I could use one of them…I think she thought I wouldn’t be able to use the phone book, oh how right she was! lol. So up I went, found a computer and got the info I needed. Yah! I was also able to log in to my government account and see my ROE for the job I got laid off from which gave me the job info for that one and the other job I figured I knew the info decently well enough.
While filling out the addresses I decided I’d actually read the instructions for that section again, sigh, turns out I thought it said “fill in the info from your last two jobs”, it actually said “fill out the info from your last 2 years of work” – uh, two totally different things, and that would explain why there were three lines available for the info…I was wondering why if they only wanted the last 2 jobs there were 3 lines *confused face* Well, they were gonna hafta make do with the last two jobs for info cause that’s all I had. lol 😛
I also saw that I hadn’t filled in the references section, heh, but my pen was working again and my friend’s info is stored in my phone so that wasn’t too hard to take care of.
After all of that I go back to the passport office and go to the first line up I need…the person takes a look at your form checking for glaringly obvious screw ups then assigns you a number, oh, and she collects your ID and stuff, puts everything into a plastic bag (like a ziploc bag but no brand name on it) so you don’t lose any of your stuff while sitting and waiting. There I am, thinking phew it’s all but done now and she says “while you’re waiting I need you to go over to that desk in the back and go over everything on your form with a black pen because I think the ink colour is too light to be picked up by the scanner” What?! My pretty turquoise ink?! Covered?? No more personality for me…and ya know, I don’t think she even appreciated the colour! *shocked*
Well, what else could I do, I wrote over everything in black ink, boring, then waited, in a highly air conditioned room while wearing a short sleeved tshirt and no book. That’s right, I forgot my book! Man was I bored! Score for me though is that the distressingly long line ahead of me moved rather quickly and I didn’t have to wait too too long…I played games on my phone and texted with peeps to pass the time. 🙂 (side note, is it sad I can’t sit and patiently wait for something for longer then 5 minutes without needing some sort of entertainment?…were people more patient in the past or was it just that they didn’t have cell phones and mp3 players and handheld game devices to keep them entertained so they just had to suck it up and wait?)
When I got called up I got the nicest lady, she worked crazy fast, went through the form, asked me some questions, did who knows what on her computer, gave me back my ID then told me the wait time to process the passport is 2 weeks and when it is ready they will priority mail it to me and is that ok? Ok? Dude, that’s awesome! Only 2 weeks and they’ll send it to me so I don’t have to get my lazy butt all the way back downtown to pick it up?! Super Great! 😀 I thought it was gonna take a long time to get my passport and that I’d have to go back for it so this was quite the pleasant surprise. I told her that and she seemed a little surprised I thought the 2 weeks and mailing to me thing were great…how could it not be?
So there we have it, that is how I filled out my passport application…it only took me about 1.5 weeks to get it done! lol. 😀 If I was my brother he would have filled out the form perfectly first try (and in record time) and submitted it all in the same day…but I like my way better, cause this way I have a story to tell! 😀 His life may be awesome in all the ways society judges these things, but I think mine might have more funny stories. 😀
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 