Untitled.

When I was back in school, I remember my Language Arts and English teachers always telling me that I needed to come up with a good title for the essays and stories that I wrote. I don't think I ever came up with a good title. Now, if I ever write papers or anything, I tend to default to something like, "Towards an analysis of..." of "Towards a report of..." So maybe tonight's blog should be called, "Towards an analysis of the process of getting a receipt".

Yes, it is a process.

When visitors come to our fair land, they need to register with the authorities. Normally, people do it when they fly out - just pay their $65 on the way out, get their passports stamped, and out they go. No problem. But for some reason, someone here wanted to register our visitors two days before they left. So they went this morning to the airport to register them. Of course, the guy with the reciept book wasn't around. Now in our organization, you need to get receipts for everything. And I do mean everything. If you spend $0.50 on a pen, you need to get a receipt. It's gotten to the point that we have given our staff their own receipt books that they can take with them to the shops so they can write out their own receipt, should the shopkeeper not have his own receipt book.

Of course, we were also registering 7 people, and at $65 per person, it is useful to have a receipt for that amount of money! So I was asked to pick up the receipt this afternoon when I went to the airport to bring Andy to catch his flight back to the UK. Getting Andy all checked in and everything was a piece of cake - no problems at all. So once that was done, I went in search of the man with the receipt book. The thought had crossed my mind on the way that I should have stuck my own receipt book in my purse, just in case... but I thought, well, this is immigration, so they might have to do something official or something.

Anyways, the guy with the receipt book was around - but he was drinking his tea. Fortunately (or not?!) this is the guy that has decided to be my friend. Several months ago, he seems to have taken a bit of shine to me, and he has remembered my name since. Of course, I'm also in the airport at least once every week or two, so he has lots of opportunity to greet me (by name, of course) and give me a big smile. So far, I've been quite polite to him, and always greet him, as well, as he has been quite helpful to me in the past.

And today, I thought, good, he's got the receipt book today, no problem. Since Andy had to wait for his flight, anyways, I thought I'd just hang out with Andy for a bit, give my buddy a chance to finish his tea, and then he'd get to work and I'd be on my way.

Right. Over two hours later, I was still sitting there, waiting for my receipts. I was checking back and forth and back and forth, and going back to sit with Andy, then going back to check.

One time that I went to check, I got the whole speech about the cows. Or would my father prefer cash? If my father doesn't want cows, he could certainly send some cash, as he's always wanted a white wife.

Right. So then the dilemma comes. Just how do you say, "In your dreams, buddy!" politely enough to still get your receipts and the necessary help that I often need in the immigration department, and yet still give him the message that this whole marriage thing is not open for negotiation!?

I tried to sort of laugh it off, and make a joke out of it. But that didn't seem to work so well... he wanted me to sit on the little bench next to him whilst he finished writing out the receipts. Well, at this time, Andy was still waiting in the departures area, so I went off and sat with Andy. Finally, though, Andy had to leave to board the plane, so I went back to check on the progress of my receipts. Still not done. This time I didn't really have a choice but to sit with him, to see if my presence would speed the whole process up.

By this time, though, the airport was starting to close up for the day - the last flight leaving was the one that Andy was on. So his buddies came over and started chatting with him. I could understand enough of the Arabic to realize that my buddy was telling his buddies that he was going to marry me and that I was going to give him lots of white babies. Sigh. All this just for a couple of receipts... I'm still not quite sure if it's worth it!

Anyways, I buried my head in a newspaper that I found sitting on the desk, and tried to pretend I didn't know what they were talking about.

Finally, he finished filling in my receipts. However, he needed photocopies of each of the receipts. And oh, look at that. The guy who runs the photocopier has already gone home. Grrrr. At least he trusted me enough to take all the paperwork home with me. He then asked if he, too, could come home with me. I said that I would just take the paperwork and photocopy it at home... I didn't need him to come and help me with it!

Then we negotiated the return date of the paper work. I have to go back to the airport on Thursday to bring these visitors away, anyways, so I said I would bring the copies then. But no, that wasn't good enough. The copies have to be brought tomorrow. He wouldn't budge on that one. So I have to go all the way back to the airport AGAIN tomorrow to bring him a photocopy of the receipts!

So, it would seem like such a simple thing to do... just to get a receipt. But in fact, it has already taken almost 3 hours. And with the photocopying and extra trip to the airport again tomorrow... will probably be at least another 1.5 hours! Next time, for sure, I am bringing my own receipt book!