Hong Kong ID, Easy Process... For Some

Today we had our appointment with the immigration officials to get our Hong Kong ID cards - which we need to do lots of things here like get a cell phone plan so that we can ditch our prepaid cell phones.  Oh how we miss our iphones!! The immigration building was a huge tower, just think of an 8+ floor DMV office.  Checking in was really easy as we already completed almost all of the forms online prior to making the appointment. However...that is where easy street ends.

The first desk we went to reviewed our documents, took our photos, and scanned out thumb prints. Sounds easy, right?  Wrong! The officer asks Melissa "Please put your thumb there.... again, again, again, again".  No, the scanner was not broken.  After 25 times, Melissa finally gets it! 

Then the photo... "No turn your head, but not like that, not like that either...." 

After a few minutes of that Melissa, was finally(!) done.  

I had to nail it on my first go for giving Melissa such a hard time... of course, I did.  After that, we had to go to another desk to review everything the other desk just did...Then the dreaded words, " Melissa, please place your thumb there".  This time we were good after "only" 5 tries - success! 

For lunch, we stopped by McDonald's for a quick bite to eat.  Melissa went to grab a table as I ordered the food.  As I start looking for Melissa, I suddenly realized, there is  only bench seating with 20 inch tall bar stools.  I would have been more comfortable to sit on the ground, and this doesn't even address our lunch mates we sat with shoulder to shoulder.

A taste of home

 

As we were entering the metro station to head back to Central, we noticed a Mrs. Fields cookies, YES!  

As we are picking out our cookies, this little fat kid in a private school uniform runs up to the counter and proceeds to swipe all the sample cookies from the counter right in front of me, and in a flash he was gone.  It was like he did it on his way home from school every day.  Of course, then I checked my wallet to make sure the cookies were the only thing he took - luckily for us, they were!

I never really liked the green M&Ms.