Mexican Ordeal

Now that I am awake and done stoning, let me tell you guys what happened last night that got me this tired. I went to get my temporary residential permit done in the police station yesterday, where I met two Mexican girls, one of whom had lost her ticket. Since they were right in front of me in the queue and trying to speak Spanish to the policeman, I asked if they spoke in English and managed to help them translate their case so that they could be understood.

What happened next started the little treasure hunt that brought us across the whole of Chaoyang( A district in Beijing I suspect is larger than sg). You see, police stations only care about their own precinct and we were in the wrong precinct. Luckily for the them, I had just found out about it the hard way when I went to the wrong precinct, less than a kilometer away, to get my permit done so I directed them to it and asked them to call me to let me explain it to the police officer there.

That is when I found out about another annoying law, that is that losing something and having it stolen are completely different. I was previously unaware of it and gave an account that made it sound like it was lost, resulting in a very pissed off policeman who made the girls wait until I went down to the station after work, where I had to explain things to them again. It took some time before he finally lost patience and directed us to yet another station, presumably the area HQ, to get their statements taken.

The people in this station were much much more cooperative, probably because they had enough of us hanging around after office hours. We managed to get their statements taken and got really really happy that it was about to be over. The ordeal started at 3 for them and it was nearly 7 by then, and they were really excited. Of course, things are never that simple. We had to go to yet another station, this time near SOHO, a 45 yuan taxi ride away.

We were lucky to have had dinner ( A very enjoyable one with my roommate, but that's another story for another day) before we left for SOHO as by the time we were done it was 10. 7 Hours and 4 police stations just to get a note to say that the tickets were stolen. Now you know why I'm tired?

Anyway, it wasn't all bad. It had been some time since I had seen nice towering office buildings and SOHO was beautiful. I took some pictures with the Mexicans and I'll try post them up once I get them. It was really nice to finally meet people from South America too, especially in a place like Beijing, speaking in English was a refreshing change as well.

Anyway, sorry for the rather rambling post, its what happens when you spend too much time just hanging around.