Houston, Chinese Consulate

Sitting at a Starbucks in what must be the gayest district in Houston.  I love it.  We just finished up at the Chinese Consulate, dropping off our passports and paperwork to get visas.  There was a line to the street before the consulate even opened.  We had parked at a nearby shopping center and walked to the consulate, disobeying the "No Chinese Consulate Parking" signs that littered the parking lot.  Don't worry, this story has a happy ending (for me), but not in the sexual sense.

Well...good thing the line was long and I decided to go back and get some drinks, because when I walked out of the Starbox...there was a towtruck behind my dad's car, the guy checking the license plates and about to put rollers or something under the chassis.  I hit the lock button on the keychain so time would stop and he would be frozen, allowing me to kick him in the balls and put a bomb in his truck--some superhero has to temporarily scare the towing industry.

Unfortunately my keychain lock must've been broken, because instead of stopping time and motion, the car just beeped a few times, making the towtruck guy look around.  As I approached I asked him how he was doing.  He looked at the two iced venti unsweet no-water green teas in my hand and then up at my face, and asked if it was my car.  I said yes at which point he backed away and I said, "Thanks."

I had planned on moving the car after leaving the Starfox anyway due to the fact that I get paranoid and with the line at the consulate we obviously had plenty of time before anything was going to get done.  In addition, there was free parking down the street. The reason we had parked there was because it was close and we were going to come back to the Storebux later to get a drink anyway.

I moved the car and headed back to the consulate where we waited in line for about an hour.  There were a handful of people in line from passport agencies with collapsible folders full of visa applications and passports (suppose you don't live close enough to the consulate or embassy--you can give your paperwork to a service to do it for you).  It was kind of frustrating to see them taking up so much of other people's time while simultaneously making tons of money from all of the applications they were getting put in (I think my dad paid $150 to get his visa processed by an agency...and there were people with 20+ passports).  It would be nice if people from the agencies had restricted hours or a separate line that way normals didn't have to wait.  What was slightly more irritating was most of the people from agencies acted somewhat ostentatious and a few even brought like half of their social-skill-lacking families.  Whatever, I was calm about it.

In the end we got some cool little stickers in our passports that were only about $170...a pretty good deal considering they were way higher quality than the shit you get from quarter machines at Walmart.  There were some other funny things but I will leave you all with a photo that pretty much accurately sums up my thoughts of Houston:

He was on the wall of our hotel room.  Apparently Shawna also saw a different cockroach that made this one look tiny in comparison.  And you know...the font on that comment form had to be at least 24 points.  Do the math.

Anyway, thanks Houston, see you never if we're lucky!