My New Hobby: Getting documents stamped
Monday, 23. October 2006, 02:44:11
(The entry for Wednesday, October 18 was included in last week’s blog.)
THURSDAY, October 19, 2006
Years ago when my niece, Heidi, would come to the States for visits, she invented a game which revealed her deep understanding of Brazilian culture. She went around the house giving everyone little slips of paper with numbers, and she instructed each person to report to a certain table at a certain time to have their documents stamped.
I'm not having as much fun playing the game as Heidi did, but now, nearly twenty years later, Heidi is doing what she can to make the document game less tedious for me. So we wouldn't have to walk two miles, Heidi gave Bob and me a ride to the Federal Police. No, she wasn’t turning us in for a crime. She was doing us a favor. The Federal Police had come looking for us the day before… it seems that after we paid for our visa extension at the lottery/bank, we had failed to bring the receipt back so that the necessary stamps could go in our passports. Now we just needed to get everything straightened out… But first we had to wait for 40 minutes.
Then, we went to visit our accountant, the one who will be working with our immigration lawyer, Fernanda, in São Paulo. He gave her a call to ask how he could help us. What’s up with my CPF number? We had it reinstated a month ago, but the website showed it was still suspended. The CPF could wait. We had a few errands to run: … natural pharmacy… picked up prescription.
Two bookstores… no "vestibular" materials in English. SO… I bought hundreds of Brazilian stickers to send to 400 of my closest friends at the John Stanford International School.
Mr. Carmo at the real estate office? Not in.
Unimed? Closed.
Decorum? Looked around at furniture.
Time to walk home. On the way we found a NEW popsicle place with regional flavors. I finally got to find out what mutamba tastes like. It seemed a lot like tamarindo. We walked for about an hour, getting home just at dark.
FRIDAY, October 20, 2006
Tending to Brazilian bureaucracy can be a full-time job. We wanted to get downtown faster, so we stopped along our route and waited and waited and waited for a bus to take us to the Receita Federal. This was the first time since 1996 that Bob has been able to work up the courage to get on an Anápolis city bus. No one should ever get on a bus during rush hour. At 11 a.m. things weren't so bad. There was a bit of a learning curve, though. What’s the fare? How do you make the bus stop where you want it to? Where exactly are the stops? We went a bit too far, and then couldn’t find the RF building… but every day is an exciting new adventure in Brazil… and helpful people are always around to guide us.
Yesterday our accountant told us we had to go to the Receita Federal to find out what had happened to our request for a CPF number. So we waited and waited in the waiting RF room… But the kindhearted folks at the Receita Federal knew that the time would go faster if we had a TV in the room so we could watch the Power Rangers battle a big green guy that Bob thought he recognized from a religious music video from India.
So the helpful and competent man who waited on us explained that the post office had never sent in our request for a CPF number, even though it had been a full month since we had filled out the paperwork and given them our money. So we had to go back to the post office and re-file the request. Without a CPF number we wouldn’t be able to apply for permanent residency. Oh well. I had to go to the post office anyway to mail a package to the John Stanford International School. And besides, the guy at the RF said he’d have my CPF number regularized by tomorrow. Bob’s number was another matter. He’d have to wait for his, since he had never had a previous CPF number. It rained on our walk to the post office, so we ducked into a high-end furniture store, where we drooled on the specially-treated drool-resistant upholstery.
The rain let up and we went to Correios. After the nice people at the post office had filled out the CPF forms for us, we went onto the next item on the list. Yesterday our health insurance bill arrived in the mail, and the deadline for payment was today… So I went to the combination federal-bank-and-gambling-entity to pay the bill. Oh boy! There was NO LINE today! This would be a cinch. Last time there were about 20 people in the line. A woman got in line ahead of me, and got the news that the computer was off-line and they couldn’t do anything. So I’m learning. No line means everything is out of order. No matter. It was only a kilometer or so to the Unimed headquarters. We’d just walk over there and pay the bill.
So, I paid the bill at Unimed without much of a wait. But, I wanted to talk to someone about another payment method so I wouldn’t have to rush downtown the minute the bill arrived in the mail.
So Bob and I waited and waited and waited, and the thunder thundered, and the lights went out… but then they came on again…and finally I got to explain to a nice young woman that this billing method wasn’t convenient. She explained that billing was done by a third party, and there was nothing they could do… But, I could come and wait and wait and wait in line any time if I would like for them to produce a bill for me ahead of time, so I could pay them wads of cash ahead of time.
But still we hadn’t had enough adventures, so we walked to the headquarters of the real estate company that helped us buy our condo. I wanted to talk to Mr. Carmo, the president. To get my resident visa, I’ll have to invest $50,000 in the country. Only then can Bob apply for a “family reunion” visa to stay in Brazil with me. Mr. Carmo listened to my investment proposal, and said his sons might be interested in receiving small amounts of cash investments for their civil engineering projects. He had fun speaking English with us. Just when I was about to feel bad that we had taken so much of his valuable time, he insisted that we stay to listen to him play a couple of tunes on his guitar!
The afternoon was going quickly, but we still had time to go back to my accountant to explain the story about the CPF. He arranged for us to come back again on Monday morning before we head to the Goiânia Airport.
We walked back to Jundiaí, the site of one of our favorite bakeries. We picked up a few items that we could pretend were a late lunch, went on to the Shell station bank machine, and then started walking home. Then we thought… the bus trip earlier in the day hadn’t maimed or killed us… maybe we should try it again. So we got on a big yellow bus, knowing that someone would make sure we didn’t miss our stop.
We got home in time for me to call our lawyer in São Paulo. Yes, she agreed; We could go to São Paulo on Tuesday to meet with her. We had our “return” tickets to use, anyway. So I called TAM Airlines to confirm our flight to São Paulo, and to cancel our return trip to New York. Then I went online to make reservations at the Formule 1 Hotel for four nights. They had such cheap rates, and they’re right downtown, so we thought it might be fun to spend several days in “Sampa”. We’ll fly there Monday evening, and leave by bus on Friday. I’d better go up to the attic and look for our sweaters. We’re having beautiful spring weather in Anápolis, but São Paulo is just outside of the tropics, so we’re not guaranteed the “forever-in-the-seventies” temperatures that Anápolis has.
Shirlee had delicious vegetarian chili and cornbread waiting for us when we got home. After she goes to the States, we will very likely starve to death.
SATURDAY, October 21, 2006
I’m pretty sure we didn’t spend the whole day getting a haircut, but that’s how it seems. Instead of going to see Dona Sirlene, we found a barber closer to home. It seems like every third person has a “unissex” hair salon attached to their home. Our strategy was to find a barber who had customers, indicating that they were competent, but without a long line, indicating that we would have to wait all day and pay double. We found just the right place.
http://my.opera.com/kevinbob7/albums/showpic.dml?album=151471&picture=2206382
For a haircut and beard trim, we were each charged only about three dollars. While I was waiting, I read the local paper, and saw that the freeway overpass near home will be completed by Christmas.
The “photo” in the paper showed a circular lawn, instead of the labyrinth of construction vehicles that we walk through every day.
There was also an ad for Marcelo Tattoo.
On the way home we decided to stop and buy fruit. I usually pass up watermelons when I’m on foot, but today I decided I just had to have one. It was twenty-some pounds, but I got it to fit in the backpack, and, after all, it was only about a one-mile walk home.
In the evening Brian drove Matt to the mall to meet his church youth group.
I went along to the mall, and Brian and I had a chance to look at the magazine stand before ordering falafel sandwiches from one of my favorite Lebanese restaurants. Brian let me drive home, and I only hit two potholes really hard. Maybe three.
SUNDAY, October 22, 2006
Today we all went out for lunch at a churrascaria downtown. I persuaded Brian to go for a drive. I had two objectives. One: To find an ice cream place that was open on Sunday so I could have a lemon or passion fruit topping for my fruit salad. Two: I wanted to locate the neighborhood that we see from the kitchen window. It’s on the far horizon… and none of us can figure out exactly where it is.
So, we drove…and drove… and decided that objective number one was way more important than objective two. Our favorite ice cream place was open, and so we bought the five-liter box of ice cream… with out choice of six flavors. Mint and chocolate for Matt, “burned coconut” for Bob, “wild fruit” with raspberries for Shirlee, and lemon and passion fruit for me. The whole thing cost less than five bucks.
http://files.myopera.com/kevinbob7/albums/151471/October%2022%20013.jpg
We went home and ice cream was eaten. I began getting ready for the trip to São Paulo tomorrow. MY way of getting ready for a trip might not look like YOUR way of getting ready for a trip, but there is still an 80% chance that I’ll be ready in time.
THURSDAY, October 19, 2006
Years ago when my niece, Heidi, would come to the States for visits, she invented a game which revealed her deep understanding of Brazilian culture. She went around the house giving everyone little slips of paper with numbers, and she instructed each person to report to a certain table at a certain time to have their documents stamped.
I'm not having as much fun playing the game as Heidi did, but now, nearly twenty years later, Heidi is doing what she can to make the document game less tedious for me. So we wouldn't have to walk two miles, Heidi gave Bob and me a ride to the Federal Police. No, she wasn’t turning us in for a crime. She was doing us a favor. The Federal Police had come looking for us the day before… it seems that after we paid for our visa extension at the lottery/bank, we had failed to bring the receipt back so that the necessary stamps could go in our passports. Now we just needed to get everything straightened out… But first we had to wait for 40 minutes.
Then, we went to visit our accountant, the one who will be working with our immigration lawyer, Fernanda, in São Paulo. He gave her a call to ask how he could help us. What’s up with my CPF number? We had it reinstated a month ago, but the website showed it was still suspended. The CPF could wait. We had a few errands to run: … natural pharmacy… picked up prescription.
Two bookstores… no "vestibular" materials in English. SO… I bought hundreds of Brazilian stickers to send to 400 of my closest friends at the John Stanford International School.
Mr. Carmo at the real estate office? Not in.
Unimed? Closed.
Decorum? Looked around at furniture.
Time to walk home. On the way we found a NEW popsicle place with regional flavors. I finally got to find out what mutamba tastes like. It seemed a lot like tamarindo. We walked for about an hour, getting home just at dark.
FRIDAY, October 20, 2006
Tending to Brazilian bureaucracy can be a full-time job. We wanted to get downtown faster, so we stopped along our route and waited and waited and waited for a bus to take us to the Receita Federal. This was the first time since 1996 that Bob has been able to work up the courage to get on an Anápolis city bus. No one should ever get on a bus during rush hour. At 11 a.m. things weren't so bad. There was a bit of a learning curve, though. What’s the fare? How do you make the bus stop where you want it to? Where exactly are the stops? We went a bit too far, and then couldn’t find the RF building… but every day is an exciting new adventure in Brazil… and helpful people are always around to guide us.
Yesterday our accountant told us we had to go to the Receita Federal to find out what had happened to our request for a CPF number. So we waited and waited in the waiting RF room… But the kindhearted folks at the Receita Federal knew that the time would go faster if we had a TV in the room so we could watch the Power Rangers battle a big green guy that Bob thought he recognized from a religious music video from India.
So the helpful and competent man who waited on us explained that the post office had never sent in our request for a CPF number, even though it had been a full month since we had filled out the paperwork and given them our money. So we had to go back to the post office and re-file the request. Without a CPF number we wouldn’t be able to apply for permanent residency. Oh well. I had to go to the post office anyway to mail a package to the John Stanford International School. And besides, the guy at the RF said he’d have my CPF number regularized by tomorrow. Bob’s number was another matter. He’d have to wait for his, since he had never had a previous CPF number. It rained on our walk to the post office, so we ducked into a high-end furniture store, where we drooled on the specially-treated drool-resistant upholstery.
The rain let up and we went to Correios. After the nice people at the post office had filled out the CPF forms for us, we went onto the next item on the list. Yesterday our health insurance bill arrived in the mail, and the deadline for payment was today… So I went to the combination federal-bank-and-gambling-entity to pay the bill. Oh boy! There was NO LINE today! This would be a cinch. Last time there were about 20 people in the line. A woman got in line ahead of me, and got the news that the computer was off-line and they couldn’t do anything. So I’m learning. No line means everything is out of order. No matter. It was only a kilometer or so to the Unimed headquarters. We’d just walk over there and pay the bill.
So, I paid the bill at Unimed without much of a wait. But, I wanted to talk to someone about another payment method so I wouldn’t have to rush downtown the minute the bill arrived in the mail.
So Bob and I waited and waited and waited, and the thunder thundered, and the lights went out… but then they came on again…and finally I got to explain to a nice young woman that this billing method wasn’t convenient. She explained that billing was done by a third party, and there was nothing they could do… But, I could come and wait and wait and wait in line any time if I would like for them to produce a bill for me ahead of time, so I could pay them wads of cash ahead of time.
But still we hadn’t had enough adventures, so we walked to the headquarters of the real estate company that helped us buy our condo. I wanted to talk to Mr. Carmo, the president. To get my resident visa, I’ll have to invest $50,000 in the country. Only then can Bob apply for a “family reunion” visa to stay in Brazil with me. Mr. Carmo listened to my investment proposal, and said his sons might be interested in receiving small amounts of cash investments for their civil engineering projects. He had fun speaking English with us. Just when I was about to feel bad that we had taken so much of his valuable time, he insisted that we stay to listen to him play a couple of tunes on his guitar!
The afternoon was going quickly, but we still had time to go back to my accountant to explain the story about the CPF. He arranged for us to come back again on Monday morning before we head to the Goiânia Airport.
We walked back to Jundiaí, the site of one of our favorite bakeries. We picked up a few items that we could pretend were a late lunch, went on to the Shell station bank machine, and then started walking home. Then we thought… the bus trip earlier in the day hadn’t maimed or killed us… maybe we should try it again. So we got on a big yellow bus, knowing that someone would make sure we didn’t miss our stop.
We got home in time for me to call our lawyer in São Paulo. Yes, she agreed; We could go to São Paulo on Tuesday to meet with her. We had our “return” tickets to use, anyway. So I called TAM Airlines to confirm our flight to São Paulo, and to cancel our return trip to New York. Then I went online to make reservations at the Formule 1 Hotel for four nights. They had such cheap rates, and they’re right downtown, so we thought it might be fun to spend several days in “Sampa”. We’ll fly there Monday evening, and leave by bus on Friday. I’d better go up to the attic and look for our sweaters. We’re having beautiful spring weather in Anápolis, but São Paulo is just outside of the tropics, so we’re not guaranteed the “forever-in-the-seventies” temperatures that Anápolis has.
Shirlee had delicious vegetarian chili and cornbread waiting for us when we got home. After she goes to the States, we will very likely starve to death.
SATURDAY, October 21, 2006
I’m pretty sure we didn’t spend the whole day getting a haircut, but that’s how it seems. Instead of going to see Dona Sirlene, we found a barber closer to home. It seems like every third person has a “unissex” hair salon attached to their home. Our strategy was to find a barber who had customers, indicating that they were competent, but without a long line, indicating that we would have to wait all day and pay double. We found just the right place.
http://my.opera.com/kevinbob7/albums/showpic.dml?album=151471&picture=2206382
For a haircut and beard trim, we were each charged only about three dollars. While I was waiting, I read the local paper, and saw that the freeway overpass near home will be completed by Christmas.
The “photo” in the paper showed a circular lawn, instead of the labyrinth of construction vehicles that we walk through every day.
There was also an ad for Marcelo Tattoo.
On the way home we decided to stop and buy fruit. I usually pass up watermelons when I’m on foot, but today I decided I just had to have one. It was twenty-some pounds, but I got it to fit in the backpack, and, after all, it was only about a one-mile walk home.
In the evening Brian drove Matt to the mall to meet his church youth group.
I went along to the mall, and Brian and I had a chance to look at the magazine stand before ordering falafel sandwiches from one of my favorite Lebanese restaurants. Brian let me drive home, and I only hit two potholes really hard. Maybe three.
SUNDAY, October 22, 2006
Today we all went out for lunch at a churrascaria downtown. I persuaded Brian to go for a drive. I had two objectives. One: To find an ice cream place that was open on Sunday so I could have a lemon or passion fruit topping for my fruit salad. Two: I wanted to locate the neighborhood that we see from the kitchen window. It’s on the far horizon… and none of us can figure out exactly where it is.
So, we drove…and drove… and decided that objective number one was way more important than objective two. Our favorite ice cream place was open, and so we bought the five-liter box of ice cream… with out choice of six flavors. Mint and chocolate for Matt, “burned coconut” for Bob, “wild fruit” with raspberries for Shirlee, and lemon and passion fruit for me. The whole thing cost less than five bucks.
http://files.myopera.com/kevinbob7/albums/151471/October%2022%20013.jpg
We went home and ice cream was eaten. I began getting ready for the trip to São Paulo tomorrow. MY way of getting ready for a trip might not look like YOUR way of getting ready for a trip, but there is still an 80% chance that I’ll be ready in time.
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 24. October 2006, 00:10
I just thought that you should know;
this is my most favorite news website of all the news I read!
You are obviously having a wonderful adventure...
and I am adventuring right along with you!!!!!
Love ya cuz!