A smirk, is a smirk, is just a smirk – or is it? A smirk, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is “a smug or silly smile”, and who, may I ask is to be the judge? This question is not as trivial as it may seem once you understand the situation.
Last month my husband applied to renew his New Zealand passport. He duly sent in the 2 required photos, and all the other paraphernalia that goes with all government procedures, along with the date of travel (November 17 2008). Given that he was born in N.Z. and has held a passport for years he did not expect any complications.
As the date drew nearer I was a little concerned, and so I was more than a little relieved to see the N.Z. official envelope when it arrived yesterday (Nov. 10th). Then, can you imagine our surprise when it turned out that the new passport was not inside, but a request that 2 new photos be submitted due to the fact that in the ones sent my husband was deemed to be smirking (my sister-in-law later informed me that you are not allowed to smile in their passport photos!). Now as ridiculous as this may seem, it was all the more ludicrous when you take into consideration that we are talking about professional passport photos taken of a 50 + yrs man….smirking???
Given the lateness of the situation, I called Wellington N.Z. and spoke to an official since I had already researched all other avenues, I could not find a service that could get the new photos back to N.Z. earlier than the 17th. The gentleman I must say did attempt to be helpful, given as he said that I was not the primary party and therefore he could not divulge any real information. However he was not all surprised when he heard that the photos had been returned due to the fact that my husband was judged to be smirking and that although the date of his departure had been recorded he felt that his department could not have ascertained how long the delivery and return would have been for said documents to and from Hawaii – longer than 4 days even an idiot I think would have seen that – but losing it with anybody in an official position is usually not the means to the end one would like, so I held my breathe. The final conclusion was that I should contact the Consulate General here, who I had already discovered was out of town until tomorrow.
So I shall wait until tomorrow and hope that they will be able to arrange some emergency travel documents. My husband is going home for his mother’s birthday, unfortunately perhaps the last one she will remember since she, like too many older people is in a rapidly declining state of Alzheimer’s. So you see a smirk, may just be a lot more than just a smirk.
-
Tags: Consulate, government procedures, information, New Zealand passport, official, passport, passport photo, passport renewal, smirk, travel, travel documents, Wellington
November 11th, 2008
Are you anything like me, forever grateful for the amazing technology so readily available that allows me to get a dearth of information just at the touch of my computer? I pay my bills online, check my credit card balances, keep an eye on my son’s grades, receive and write my emails etc. etc. In fact I run my life from my computer. However recently it is all starting to give me a headache, and no, not just from spending long hours staring at the screen, but rather because of the need to remember ad nauseam the answers to all the questions asked in order to verify myself as myself.
I do understand that security is an absolute necessity, especially when dealing with one’s finances, not that a robber would be in hog heaven if he made his way into my accounts! Rather I think he would be merely assuming more unwanted debt than cash flow. Be that as it may, I do try to use a different password for every account that I have. Some of these passwords I might add are of the oddest nature because with so many people logging on many of the easier words are already taken! However the problem is, with the list growing exponentially every day I am having a hard time keeping track of them all. I do maintain a list, but the question is where should I keep the list? In order for it to be readily available I could print it out, or keep it on my computer – but then am I opening myself up to say a burglar, or a hacker or God forbid a virus? I could be being overly paranoid, but something must be up since when I logged on to register my son for his SAT’s the site asked me for so much information in order to verify my authenticity that I started to wonder what sort of people would want to hack into the site and see what dates and where a 17yr old boy was going to sit his exams? I also believe that if all the information gathered by these sites were to be compiled, they would have a startling amount of information albeit much of it pretty trivial (e.g. my first pet’s name) about me… I wonder is Big Brother out there?
I just wish that with all this technology somebody could come up with an easier solution. Say if I could merely scan my fingerprint for recognition, not my voice, because it is not reliable seeing that on days of ultimate hysteria it can go up an octave or two. Just something, that would not require such a great deal of thought, because truly my brain is just about fried!
Tags: authenticity, Big Brother, computer, emails, finances, hacker, information, logging on, online, paranoid, password, recognition, register, scan, screen, security, technology
September 15th, 2008
