10km race to get Chinese visa

December 6th: I had a mini nightmare today. I got up early, checked out of hotel and proceeded to the Chinese visa office. I had to take a ferry across the bay to Hong Kong island and then walked a bit to get to the Chinese embassy. I had a chill go down my spine when I saw a line of luggage outside of the door to the embassy. I instantly knew that it meant they did not let you take your luggage inside. Desperate travelers had left their bags out in the street under the sign saying “The embassy is not responsible for lost luggage”. There was no way I was going to leave my laptop and camera on the street. I could not believe this! It would have been nice if MS relocation specialists had warn me of this, but this asking too much. If they had given me correct instruction to which visa to get I would not be here in the first place.

I had to find a solution quickly before the embassy would stop processing urgent visa application. Usually if you want to have your visa on the same day you have to give them your application very early in the morning. I raced around the block dragging my carry behind me. Nothing, no locker, no secret place to hid. I increased the radius and circled the embassy one more time! Oh man, nothing thing again. I went to a restaurant and asked if I could sore my bag for an hour and then come back to eat but they would not let me. At this point I was thinking of just getting a cab and telling it to keep my bags until I came back. Fortunately some passer by suggested that I go to hotel and fake that to check in and tell them to keep my bag for a while. It seemed like a workable solution so I raced to find a hotel. 10 minutes later I ran into Grand Hyatt hotel. Because of ITU conference they were fully booked and very busy. I gave my bags to doorman and got a receipt and told him that I would come back to tell him the room number later. Then I ran back to the embassy. By the time I fill out the application form and get to the counter I am completely drenched with sweat in the 20 degree Celsius heat of Hong Kong in winter. I gave a big smile to the girl at the counter and asked for the most expedient service they had. So she said it would be ready in 2hrs!Nice, Mission accomplished. :-)

I spent the rest of the day at the peer in Honk Kong bay wring down my assumptions and question about Chinese telecom industry. I will need to validate what I know and fill in the gaps by talking to Eric and Weihun.