Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

So Operation "Get Mitchy a Passport" appears to have been successful. I won't actually believe it until the passport is in my hot, sweaty palms next week, but this part of it went swimmingly well. I have to take my hat off to the passport office, they have one hell of a good system. My appointment was for 10.45 and I ambled into the building at 10.35, mildly boggling at the number of people there. I could see others holding interview notification letters and their time slot was 10.45 too, so clearly they do everything in batches. Got through the airport-type security ok and presented myself at a counter. I was given a ticket with the number 6864 on it and told to go up two floors and wait for the number to be called. "Oh joy," I thought," this will take hours!"

I was out of there 15 minutes later! *boggles* I only had to wait 5 minutes for my number to be called. Sheesh, the sheer volume of people they process and the speed with which they do it is mind-blowing. Basically, they have 30 counters per floor; on our floor, 6 of these were cashier counters, the rest were processing counters. When your number was called, you were told what counter to scamper to - mine was 19 :) No seats at the counters, so no lingering there, the lady just took the application form and photo, tappity tap typed a bit at her machine, asked how I was paying, stamped a form, gave it back to me to present to the cashiers and that was it. She didn't even want to look at my documentation. *blinks* I can only assume the fact that it's a replacement passport and that I've not moved since the last time I got a passport means they didn't feel the need to jump hoops. At least, I hope it's that and not corner cutting. From what I could see, the all important bit on the application form was the counter-signatory section - if that's fine, they're happy. Weird. Memo to self: must buy TooBrightTies something nice from NYC as a thank you; he went to the trouble of ringing me at home last night with his passport number so that I could finish off his section of the counter-signatory form.

It took me longer to queue up to pay than it did to submit the application. By 11am I was outta there. Amazing.

So I had a nice mooch round London, bought a fantastic bag from Primark that is perfect for the upcoming carry-on baggage only NYC jaunt, accidentally bought some books (it's all jenni411's fault!) and scoffed food. By 2pm, I was tiredy and footsore so scampered back home.

And since then, there has been snoozing and reading of new book :) Now just gotta wait a week and see if the passport people keep their promise!
Oddly enough, I don't feel stressed and anxious now. Clearly, this was preying on my mind. Now it's all in the lap of the gods and I've ceased to fret :)

Only downer about today was I got the "thanks but no thanks" letter I've been expecting in response to the job interview I had the other week. Ah well, disappointing but not really a surprise. I shall ask for feedback from HR though, just to see if it matches what I thought at the time.