death by doughnut

First, a funny story. Texas Kid was upstairs in the conference room with me waiting for me to start a presentation. He found a box of doughnuts, and ate some of them. It turns out the doughnuts were for the base commander to eat during my presentation. Worse, Texas Kid ate the commander's favorite flavor doughnuts. We pretended we didn't know what happened to the doughnuts when the meeting started.

Then, I got a call back finally from the [insert bad word that begins with B] who is supposed to be processing my visa, and who is a total twit from the UK. I am supposed to leave at 2 am monday morning for Banff, and, as thursday is the last working day of the week, was wondering why I didn't have my passport back.

Turns out B has the flu. Yeah, I'm sympathetic. I've been going to work with bronchitis for the past two weeks. She didn't follow up with the PRO to see if my passport was ready. Worse, they were supposed to expedite it so that I could have it back Thursday. But B outright lied to me and said that wouldn't be possible (I confirmed it IS possible with the immigration office).

So, I may or may not get my passport back in time to leave on Monday. Worse, B, who is about the rudest person I've dealt with here, told me if I wanted my passport back I could go down to immigration and get it myself. I pointed out to her that it's HER job and what she is getting paid for. She said "I have the flu" and hung up on me.

I called back to try to get the number of the PRO to make sure his ass is in the immigration office Sunday to pick up my passport. She refused to give the number to me. Other things have happened, but I won't go into them now, except to say that she wanted me to email her my travel itinerary to prove I had to leave on Monday (I should note when I gave her my passport almost three weeks ago she assured me it would only take 7 days to process it, and when I checked with her on Sunday she said I would have my passport back by Tuesday - I also told her a million times that I had to leave on Monday).

So, I have a screaming pain in my stomach from my ulcer, I may arrive for my class late, and my ticket, assuming I can change my existing one, is going to cost a fortune. I have never experienced such incompetence in my life. If I ever see B again I am going to have to restrain myself to not punch her in the face for lying to me and then being rude.

In the mean time, an Iraqi colleague of mine is going to immigration for me on Sunday morning because he has contacts there and thinks he can help me. Allah willing...

And I'm going to tell the base commander that B ate his doughnuts.

excuses

I haven't been updating my blog because:
- I've been working 90 hour weeks the past few weeks
- I have bronchitis (though, hopefully at the tail end of it)
- I'm leaving for Banff in a few days and have been trying to get my project in order before I go