Becoming an alien...legally

It's 5 pm on my first day off. Bootleg booze and some coke in hand watching the begining of shark month enjoying the AC. Finally at home relaxing after 6 in a row on shift. Looking forward to a not-so-cheap buzz and hanging out by the pool. I open my work email, like I am required to do at least once a day, there it is. The email that I hate getting. "Appt tommorrow." The subject line taunts me like a poorly exucuted school yard joke. "Residency appt with Kuwait medical and police. 1400 lobby of your building, KRH bus will pick you up." I slam the rest of my drink and call up my supervisor. "Ryan, are you fucking kidding me bro?" I spout, knowing he had no control over it. "You have to go to the appt for your residency." "We all did it." He replies. "Yeah, but not after fucking 6 days on shift." I snarkly say back just for argument sake. "Well, you dont have a choice Karl." He snaps back. "Alright I will be there, but I swear I'm not going to like it!"

So, 1337 the next day I head downstairs in shorts, a tshirt, ballcap, and my I-pod. In all the stories of the 3 to 4 hr process, like any government process there is plenty of down time. I figured that some music might help make it less painful. "Ummm...do you think that you can put some pants on?" the operations guy tells me as I walk into the lobby. I glance around, I am in fact the only person wearing shorts. "Why the fuck do I have to put pants on?" I question. "Its a muslim country and it makes things easier, then they have nothing to turn you away for." He replies. "Ok." I agree "I will put some pants on for these assholes." Back up the elevator, pants on wallet and phone in pocket I head back down. Bus arrives only about 45 min late, fuck me I hate this country, thinking that I have to work in the morning and this is completely destroying my day off. Into the short bus we go.

Now, I am like most people, I observe the situation and then act. Bus driver, Hadji of some sort. Bus, shitty and smells like armpits and feces. Oh well, make the most of the situation right? I reach for my Ipod, which is securly placed in the cargo pocket of my shorts. "Fuck me, this is going to be a painful process." I think to myself as we lumber down the road. People are talking as I watch the city go by. I havent spent a lot of time looking around in my travels here. There is still trash everywhere.

We finally slow down and make a right hand turn into what most civilized people would call a ghetto. Nasty, trashy, and down right not the place for a bus load of white folk. Oops...there was one black guy on the bus. So not a good place for a bus load of white folk and one black dude. We stop outside a building barred up from the ground to the 6th floor. Cops cars outside, must be a police station. Its now about 3pm. Everything is locked up tight. Well there goes that idea. As the 10 or so of us turn around towards the bus it starts to drive away. "WIIINNNGGG" I see a airborne water bottle heading towards the side of the bus. "WHAM" Hadji Jim, or whatever his name is, locks up the brakes. "Thats right fucker, you arent going to leave us here to die." I thought to myself. Back on the bus heading towards a parking lot. There we meet the brains behind the operation. Our sponsor company, who had been doing this for god knows how long, cant seem to get it right from what im gathering. We spend the next 40 min inside the bus as they attempt to locate all the paperwork we will be needing for this endevour.

We head to the "new" finger printing place which is a short 45 min bus ride away. Glad the AC worked enough to keep the smell to a tollerable level. Off the bus. Now there are three buses with another company of people trying to accomplish the same steps for their process. From talking with them, we gather they load planes for the military at the airport. To top it off, they make more than we do. Sweet, whatever still more than I would make back home. Bet ya can't guess what happened at this police station. Yep, they're closed also. Back on the bus.

45 min ride back to where we came from to the Kuwait residency medical clinic. We get our passports back in hand, tempting more than just me to think of leaving to the airport right now. And now we are in line for a blood draw. I am about 5th in line watching the Kuwaiti drawing blood. Now I am not one to judge someone elses talent. But I swear this dude must be the bass fishing champ of Kuwait. I have never seen someone fish that long for blood in a while. Everyone is complaining about his technique, remember we are all EMS, and swearing they wont be letting this guy take their blood. His victim stands up hits the floor and all I see is the open seat. I hop in it, while Capt. Pass-out is being revived and let the guy hit my vein. He has no problem with my blood-draw and now I'm off to take my chest x-ray.

Following the directions of our sponsor guy, I walk to the white building at the end of the road. What he neglected to tell me was the chest x-ray entrance is on the other side of the building. I wander into the first open door I see. Seriously it was like a horror flick. One light flickering in the background, abadoned hospital rooms with trash everywhere, I was on guard for a zombie to walk out of a door and try to bite me. "Hope this isnt the place." I say outloud hoping someone will hear me. Back out the freaky door, around the building and into the x-ray waiting room. "Please stand and remove dress shirt and wait for call" the sign reads in broken english. It finishes up with "Thank you Bye." WTF?!?!? Who is translating for these people. So, shirt off and I finally get called in. The X-ray tech running the machine is sitting behind a piece of glass at a desk. He stands and guides me towards the xray partition to slam me into the film. Which I never saw him clean, so now I have sweaty TCN all over my chest. Awesome!

We all finish up and guess what we did. Back on the bus! Heading 45 min drive back to the finger print place which is now open. Now, again I am not one to judge someones talents, but I have filtered through a corrections facility a time or two and know a little something about fingerprinting. The whole roll the finger get a good print thing. This was nothing like that. Place finger in ink, slap onto paper, out the door. So I was okay with it.

We all finished, then BACK ON THE BUS!! 40 min ride back to the apartments and in a quick 5 hr trip. So now I wait like everyone else for my special civil Id for the state of Kuwait. Sweet.