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For some reason the Costa Rican Immigration office did not respect President's Day on Monday.  So we were there bright and early.  First we waited through the information line.  They when we were almost at the front, we were told to go to the line for people with babies. We waited through this line, and then were informed by the attendant at the window ("all services for old people, disabled, and with children less than one year old") that we ought to go to the normal information window.  So we did that, cutting to the front of the line (apparently this is what to do if you have a baby less than one year old).

Then we waited through another line at the internal BCR branch and paid for the passport.

Finally, we waited through another line and then were finally invited into the office of an officer apprently suffering from divorce or menopause, she was chain-gobbling treats out of her desk drawers the whole time.

We presented all our paperwork, except there was one big problem.  My wife Milyn's passport (being Filipina) doesn't have a signature line.

The officer was stumped.  She went around and asked everyone else in the building what to do, came back, and was repeating that how could she approve of the application if there is no signature in the passport.

"What do you think about looking at the picture in the passport?" I suggested, but she said, "But then how do I know that she is the actual mother of the baby?" as if that had suddenly been called into question.

One tall man walked around behind the cubicles, and he looked at all the documents, and he said, "It's ok.  It's a fact that Chinese passports don't have signatures."

"Can we verify that?  Chinese passports don't have signatures?  But this is a Filipina."

So the tall man supposedly went to organize a phone-a-thon to call Philippines consulates somewhere (there's none in Costa Rica anymore).  When he returned back finally, he explained that he couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone, though it was unclear whether there had even been a phone-a-thon.  He looked at the papers again, with a "just approve it" kind of attitude, but the officer couldn't approve something she couldn't prove.

Finally we searched our documents and found one of milyn's old ids with a signature (a postal id that looks like it could be made for 20 cents by anybody), plus a copy of our marriage contract.  Of course I had to get photocopies somewhere myself, "And you'd better make it fast," nibbled the officer, probably thinking of her upcoming lunch break.

The woman insisted the signatures were not consistent enough, the man said he'd have to go to the back room to get the final word on the papers.  Later he came back and said the final word was that the documents were sufficient, though it was unclear whether he did anything in the back room other than smoke a cigarette to figure this out.

Eventually our agent did begrudgingly accept our application.

Overall it was actually not an unpleasant morning.  From start to finish about three hours.  Compared to the Philippines, this is nothing.  To get Milyn's passport there took months to gather the papers and get sign-offs from different offices (since she was married to a 'foreigner' she even had to take a special course offered by nuns in which the nuns caution the filipinas about the american's endowment and warn them of filipinas who arrived in the states to find that they had to donate their eyeballs to their mothers-in-law).

Sometimes these places are wierd, eh, but I'm finally starting to get used to it and as long as it works eventually I don't mind the extra time reading Great Expectations or trying to say "goo goo" to see Rosalinda smile.