Job Discussion Forums

[Ger]

Dan dan, I couldn't make any sense of your reply.

I don't drink alcohol, I didn't shout at anyone for wearing gloves, I simply felt traumatized by the process involved in entering HK from Shenzhen when having to deal with a glove-wearing, incompetent-immigration official!

[prplfairy]

I think Ger got worked up about the ineptitude of the officer, the gloves being a physically identifiable part of that led to them naturally being mentioned. I just think you can't let these things get to you. It's a well know fact that immigration officers the world over are useless but knowing that you shouldn�t be surprised or get worked up when they screw up. So you had to wait a few extra minutes and you'll have to get extra pages for your passport a bit sooner than planned. Why let it ruin your day?

[Ger]

So I decided to help HK Immigration officers by writing notes in my passport that direct them to the appropriate page on which the most recent valid visa is stuck.

On page 12 of my cancelled passport where the employment visa is stuck in, I wrote "please see page 28 for dependant's visa".

In my new passport which is accompanied by the cancelled one, I wrote "please see page 28 of passport number 987378 for dependant's visa"

When I was leaving HK, the HK immigration officer asked me, "have you got a dependant's visa". !!!!!!!!!

So I figured that actions may speak louder than words and perhaps he hadn't understood what I had written in simple English, so I pointed to page 28 of the cancelled passport and nodded my head.

With this I used body language to step aside so that all the people waiting in the queue could see him fumbling through my passports. I noticed him glance up at the people in line and two approaching superiors and he quickly put the exit date stamp in my passport.

On the way back in to HK from Shenzhen, I decided that I would take out my electronic dictionary and see how many words I could translate from English into Chinese in the time that I had to wait for the glove-wearing HK immigration officer to put two stamps in my new passport. This strategy was to keep my mind focused on doing something useful and therefore to try to keep my emotions in check too!!

Guess how many words I managed to look-up?

By the way, while walking along the road in Shenzhen two thieves opened my backpack and might have made off with my passports - which, had it happened, would have caused no end of trouble for me!!!