It's 33°F out there, and our driveway is, to once again steal my younger sister's so-descriptive phrase, "slicker'n whale-shit on an iceberg." Gilford schools are delayed two hours; hopefully by then most of this crap will have melted off. snowscraper is on the job.
With luck, it'll thaw solidly enough that we'll get the growing ice ridge across the bottom of the driveway cleared again.
One of my uncles just got married in Vietnam. At least, he thinks he did. He's not quite certain.
No, it's not one of those "How much did I drink last night?" things. It's that the process of getting married in Vietnam, especially when you're not Vietnamese, apparently involves negotiating a vast and apparently endless bureaucracy.
I just had to pass on his latest chapter (names redacted, and edited slightly for structure):
Latest developement : I think we are married. We've been told that we just have to wait 22 days ( or maybe 30 ! ) and we can collect stamped papers! We reached 72,000,000 Dong and that seems to have been the magic figure. I'll still believe it when I see the paper tho'.
One of the latest problems was that ######### had to be interviewed in English, to see that she could speak the language. Unfortunately they don't have anyone in the office who can speak English. Suddenly light in sky comes on, "Yes they do, they have me". So they appoint me translator and I interview #########.
After 15 minutes of utterly bizarre nonsense I gave her a 'pass', I signed the paper, ######### signed the paper, a little fat woman signed the paper ( no idea who she was ) and they took a photo of us. The paper had questions on it for me to ask, written in English (loosely speaking ) and Vietnamese. Like, "what time do you get up?", "Do you like cooking?", "Do you like babies?", "How many babies do you want to make after you are married?', etc., etc. After the photo they seemed to lose interest, but said they would type the answers in later, though of course they had no idea what they were.
Bureaucrats. You gotta love'em. 'Cos otherwise you'd never be able to resist beating them black and blue with a big stick.