They say February is the most depressing month of the year. More people are driven to eat their babies and go harry carry at this time than any other, with the exception of when Jersey Shore is on TV. So I thought, better make like a banana and get the shit out of town, China sounds nice. To do this I would need the bane of my existence, the unobtanium known as the Chinese visa.

Standing in the shadow of the Toronto Chinese Consulate and gazing on, insane asylum and a fortress both come to mind. A quick ID check at the gate house and I slid past the 10 foot high spiked fence to the courtyard, where pasted up against the walls are faded pictures of various Chinese accomplishments, like rocket launches and some guy playing a broken banjo. You may assume that the security around the building is to keep all the crazy FG protesters out. Wrong. The real reason is so that they can keep all the visa applicants IN.

Just after I take a deep breath to open the door and brace myself for the onslaught of humanity, some sneaky bastard cuts in front of me, throws the door open in my face, and gets into the line that was now spilling outside of the building.

90% of people in line were Chinese, who you would think have been to China at least once before, yet for some reason, none of them had the forms filled out, and they often cut in and out of the line to get missing pages, photocopies, passport photos and whatever other forged documents they needed to make sure that when they go back the Chinese government doesn’t repossess them.

As I stood there waiting for what seemed like hours, and then days passed by, the sour stench of restless bodies encircled my head, making me dream of having one of those buttons that you can press to make everyone incinerate and implode at the same time, taking their smells with them. Oh you’ve never tried one of those buttons? They’re rad, but Doomsday Depot was sold out last I checked.

The little hellions running around, crying, grabbing other people’s applications and then putting them in their mouths provided some entertainment at first, but grew old quick, and ultimately had me calling my doctor’s office to book a vasectomy.

Then there’s the sketchy white dudes that look like sex tourists. No scratch that. It couldn’t be anymore obvious that these guys ARE sex tourists, what with their constant leering at every female present, to their mustaches and outdated fashion that although being really trendy right now, still looks like they just finished serving 15 years for child molestation. I can only hope that these losers take home some bianxings and wind up with more than they bargained for. Two balls and a dick more than they bargained for.

The worst are the agents. The agents are people who work for travel or tour companies, or visa services that have a huge stack of visa applications to go through. Right when I’ve got one person left in front of me, and I think I’ve almost escaped from this dungeon of despair, buddy ahead of me pulls a huge stack of visa applications out of his pants like he’s a fucking kangaroo. Then of course after checking and double checking all the forms, the consular person determines that John Lee’s name should be spelt Jon Li, and then cue the agent on the phone with the guy, yelling at each other for like 15 minutes. All the while I’m wishing that there was an armed PLA officer stationed here so he could ʈianamen square my ass.

Finally I got to the window, slid my application and my passport under, and before I have a chance to ask when I can pick it up, the lady hands me a slip and says “Come get it next Monday”. At that point, I was thinking of asking things like, “hows your salary?”, “what’s your take on Obama’s medicare bill?” or “why are you wearing arm warmers over a winter jacket?” It was one of those times where you’ve spent so long in line, and that the service you get is so little, that you feel like making shit up just to get your time’s worth. With what little sanity I had remaining, I decided against it, because at the end of the day if I wanted to have any left, I’d need to go while the going was good. There would be plenty more opportunities to lose my mind the next week, when I would be stuck in the pickup line that was twice as long.

Filed under: dragons