The school kept its status as an EF franchise, I renewed my contract for another year, you can't get a passport from the British Embassy, summer is here and I have sunburn.
Well, we had the visit from EF Shanghai and all went well. The new school is in transition phase at the moment which is, erm... interesting. But I am sure that we will iron out most of the wrinkles in due course.
I went to Beijing last month to renew my passport. My original intention was to go to Shanghai but, when I checked the British Embassy website a month previously, it informed me that Shangai stopped doing passports in February 2010 and I had to go to Beijing. Upon my arrival at the Embassy in Beijing, I was informed that they, too, have stopped issuing passports and I should go to Hong Kong. Marvellous.
Needless to say that I had neither the necessary time, nor holiday funds, to just jump on a plane and stay in Hong Kong for a couple of nights, so I have entrusted my passport to a Chinese courier company. I requested DHL but the school chose an alternative company which is "like DHL, only local".
The courier company in question is based in Rizhao. It took them four phone calls and a two-hour delay to locate the school, which is in the same city, which started the alarm bells ringing. I filled in the form in front of the two scruffy-looking representatives, to make sure that there were no errors or omissions, and one of the school's staff filled in the Chinese sections for me. They checked it over and off they went, leaving me with a wrinkled receipt informing me of my tracking number.
Two days later I received a call from the school informing me that my package could not be delivered "because I had not written down a telephone number for the recipient". Ok, breathe, Benny, breathe... calm down.
So, just which phone number would they like me to give them for the British Embassy, 1 Supreme Court Road, Hong Kong? The main switchboard, perhaps: "Dial '1' to be put on hold... Dial '2'... " etc.? Maybe they want the personal mobile number of whoever will be processing my application? What, exactly, do they expect me to put in as a phone number? But, and more importantly, why didn't Scruffy and Scruffier ask for that information in the first place and, furthermore, why does a courier company think its delivery driver will need to put in a phone call to find the BRITISH F***ING EMBASSY?!! Ok, breathe, Benny, breathe... calm down.
Anyway, it is all now in the lap of the Gods and if I get deported you can rest assured that you will read all about it here. If, on the other hand, I end up in a Chinese prison, you may find that blog updates become a little less frequent. Unless, of course, whilst behind bars, they provide me with a computer with internet access and don't mind me using proxy servers to bypass the Great Firewall of China...
