To New Orleans, with love from China

Everyone likes a parade: the music, the people smiling and cheering, the mayor in the convertible, the marching band. But in New Orleans, the Saint Patrick's day parade has all this and more and it comes all the way from China!

The "'tradition" has it that men get all dressed up (which means wearing polyester!) and ask the girls for kisses in exchange for flowers and shiny necklaces. But it's all plastic. From China. I recognize that it's almost inevitable to buy cheap from China and that it's all in the name of fun. But there were thousands of plastic flowers and plastic beaded necklaces being given away only to end up in landfills. This really is the land of plenty and also the land of wastefulness.  

We only realized the proportions of the whole parade closer to the end when trailers of people threw the weirdest and unexpected things at the crowds that were cheering and asking for more. I'm not only talking about necklaces but cookies, carrots, candy, ramen noodles, plastic toys, plush toys, and my all time favorite... cabbages. Whole green cabbages tossed around. People we spoke to say it's a lot worse during Mardi Gras....

In the end we brought home around 3kg of beaded necklaces, 4 cabbages, and cookies and carrots that we ate on the drive home. We'll probably keep the necklaces for future use like maybe another Burning Man, cause it really choked us to see what it all looks like after the parade goes through town:

Atlanta's winter wonderland

They said it was going to snow. And it did. So everyone got off work early to get home. Everyone.

I left work at 2:15 and instead of heading for the highway because it was completely jammed, I called Pedro and he guided me through smaller roads. It went well until I was about 6km from home and then came to a total stop. It took me 2 hours to ride 3km and I was almost out of gas. But I was the lucky one, I got home and it only took me 4 and half hours! Thousands of people were stranded on the highways. As night came so did the ice which just blocked everything even more. Most just left their cars on the streets and walked to shelters, churches and stores that opened their doors. Others slept in their cars. Pedro went out to see how the highway was and brought home a stranded couple that was considering sleeping in their car.

Photo from the AJC

This is what the street in front of our house looks like: all ice!

One side was closed because of ice.

back in the day...

...water from the rivers powered mills to grind corn and wheat. People came long distances to grind a week supply of flour to make their bread.

Tommy Martin, the miller

And so history repeats itself. But this time we drove our car, paid with a credit card and bought 15kg of corn flour to make corn bread and grits in our electric stove! 

This is Nora Mills, probably the only functioning water mill in all of Georgia, powered by the Chattahoochee river. What a great discovery! 

the computer says no....

here

Who´s familiar with this Little Britain sketch? You cross your fingers and hope this is only fiction and that in real life civil servants are nice and helpful people. Well not with the Social Security Administration (SSA) here in Atlanta. My adventures with them have been surreal! So for those who complain about Portuguese civil servants, trust me they are truly nice compared to the ones over here. 

I'm sorry this is such a long post but if you have the patience keep reading!

NOTE: Pedro received his SS card 2 weeks after our arrival. I'm still waiting for mine. 

SOCIAL SECURITY, THE PROCESS:  

1. The day after our arrival in Atlanta we went to a local SSA office to fill out the application for a Social Security Number. This was my first application. 

NOTE: the documents riquired are: passport with I-94 (Alien number) and because I have an L2 Visa, a copy of my marrigae certificate, which is written in portuguese (this will be interesting latter on!). 

2. In my first application they got my address wrong. So after waiting 2-3 weeks I went back, only to be told that they didn't know where the application was and how I applied so quickly for a SS number (because you have to wait at least 2 weeks before applying). To sum it up I had to fill out a second application.

3. I waited one month after which I returned to the SSA office. The nice man here told me that I had been attributed a SS number and wondered why I didn't receive a letter of notification. After a couple of minutes of searching his computer, he tells me he doesn't understand what was going on with my application and goes talk to his manager. He returns and tells me that something was wrong with the verification with Homeland Security (because I'm an "alien" the process goes through Homeland Security). Anyways, I would need to fill out my third application!

4. If you managed to read it up to this point, this is when it gets nasty. After one month I finally receive a letter saying that they weren't able to give me a number because Homeland Security was unable to verify my "legal alien status" but this did not mean I was ineligible for a SS card. The letter also stated that if I wanted someone at SSA could review my application. 

5. So I went to the SSA office once again to better understand what was going on. I had the most surreal treatment! The lady basically says: NO! No to all my questions. Refusing to review my application because she needed my marriage certificate (which I didn't have on me that day because they have 3 copies of it on file!) She says, and I quote "I am the one that works here!"; "I can't do nothing!"; "I can't search for your application!". I kept telling her that my application is on file, look for it! She says NO. Simply no. Come back tomorrow! 

6. I was furious! I exited the building, waited a couple of minutes, talked to Pedro on the phone and went back into the building, got another number and waited for my turn. This time I was attended by another "nice lady" that sat right beside the bitch that had served me just 15 minutes before. I asked her the same questions: can you review my application? can you tell me what was wrong? Not as bitchy as the first one, but without ever being nice, she gets up, goes to a file cabinet and gets out my application, reviews it and says: Homeland Security stamped your passport wrong with my first entry, instead of stamping L2 visa, they stamped L1 visa. Since I went to Toronto I got the proper L2 visa stamp but they still hadn't updated my status in the system. I would have to do a fourth application! 

7. The next day I go back to SSA office, with my passport and Portuguese marriage certificate (that had been accepted the other 3 times). I'm served by the same "nice" lady that had accepted my second application. She looks at my marriage certificate and hands it back to me saying she "can't read it"! I couldn't believe it! When I tried to explain, she interrupts me and says "DON'T TALK!"! Can you believe it! Don't talk! I laughed and ignored her and said that a couple of months ago I was sitting in the same chair and she accepted that same document, so she would have to accept! She literally snarls, gets up and goes check other applications with foreign documents. To her surprise and my pleasure, it's SSA responsibility to accept and translate foreign documents because there is no federal law that says English is the official language in the US! She snarls the whole way through the application and I sit there and smile in her face. 

8. Now I'm waiting for my SS card to come. If it'll ever come. And when it does, I will write a personal letter to the general manager of SSA in Georgia and to the office manager in Atlanta complaining about unprofessional behavior and explaining why courtesy and kindness should be universal principles in civil servants. They often forget that their paycheck comes from the people they serve. 

This post will serve as a draft. 

Thanks for reading.

traffic signs

In Portugal, as in the rest of Europe, traffic signs are intuitive: a series of color codes and pictorial symbols that are very easily interpreted. So, imagine after a 24h flight to Atlanta, having to learn to drive an automatic car at 2am and then encountering a 14 lane highway with this type of traffic signs:

Fun, right?! East, West, North, South, miles, etc, etc. 

Aside from my still very complicated understanding of the imperial metric system, most signs are in writing: sentences that must be read in a split second while driving down a highway. You can imagine my first experience behind the wheel: I either paid attention to traffic or I read the traffic signs. Pick one!

When people ask me what the biggest difference between Portugal and Atlanta, first I say that everything over here comes in extra-large sizes and then I say traffic signs. 

After being here for a couple of months, I still don't understand another thing: traffic sign duplication. Traffic authorities need to make sure that a driver thoroughly understands the signs. A simple pictorial symbol is very often supported by a written reinforcement of it's equivalent meaning: 

It's not enough that a red circle with a white horizontal rectangle universally means "do not enter", they have "do not enter" written right over the sign. I suppose it's to aid the color blind? They do this all the time: imagine a turn right sign and under it the words "turn right".

I'm now collecting traffic sign photos! (Sorry, not the best quality photos, they were taken from inside the car.)

frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn

Last night I spent 4 hours watching Gone with the Wind. The movie portraits the Old South during the Civil War and the reconstruction that followed. It takes place in Atlanta and though it's a bias white american's perspective, it helps visualize that historical period. I especially enjoyed the overly romantic dialogues and the way Scarlet raises her eyebrow when she turns on her manipulative character. Very close to the end, when Rhett finally gives up on Scarlet, he says that magnificent phrase: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn". It was worth waiting the whole 4 hours to get to that part. 

hero and villain

Have you ever noticed that in super hero movies, the hero, being a the personification of good, never really "kills" his arch enemy, the villain? Even though the hero has this thriving urge to aniquilate the bad guy (and we all do too when we're watching the movie), he'd rather catch him with life. If, by chance, the villain dies, he simply dies in a way that was impossible for the hero to prevent his plunge to death.      

Have you ever thought about it? It´s a matter of principal: if the hero actually killed the villain then he would be nothing different from the villain. 

here

We don't have television, so we don't watch the news. Which sometimes makes me forget that I'm even living in the United States.  But the other day we were listening to the radio in our car and the local news comes on: this man is going to be executed on July 18th, here in Georgia. An then I'm remembered that I now live in a country were there is no difference between hero and villain.