Vincent Cheung

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Friday, April 20, 2007

I feel at home with the Russians

Thursday is my Russian day :). I had to go to the Russian Consulate today to pick up my and my family's Russian visas and passports. It was like going home! I walked into the room and I recognized half of the 6 people there! It was so comforting! It was as if we were one giant family :)

Us Russians, we're a tight community :)

How the Russian visas work is that they give you a date when you can go and pick them up (2 weeks later) and then you pick it up between 4 and 5. So, a bunch of people that were waiting with me for an hour 2 weeks ago were there waiting to pick up their passports and visas. We also all knew the system of lining up where we'd sit down and know the person who was before and after you, despite our random seating. We do this because the Russians don't believe in giving out numbers to people waiting in line. It forces you to talk to the other people so you can figure out what's going on :p

It was a lot faster to pick it up, but when I went up the guy called someone and was gibbering off in Russian for a while on the phone and he was like "Niet!" and shaking his head, so I was concerned. Everything was fine though and I got the visas, so I bet he was just calling a friend to talk about a hockey game or something.

So apparently, my Russian name is Vinsent 3arl9z V3eung. At least that's what the code on my visa says :)

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

As a Russian, I can definitely confirm that we do not believe in numbers... Standing in a line can be so uniting and you can meet so many new people! :-)

Jenika said...

that's a cool idea

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