DMV on crack

For all of you pampered Americans who think a visit to the DMV is possibly worse than going to the dentist and whine about it for a week preceeding and following your five-yearly visit to renew your license, let me introduce you to DMV on crack.

First, I should preceed all of this merry-making with the fact that Desiree and I bought a car. It's a 1995 Nissan Maxima (yes, that's almost exactly my first car), maroon with black interior. It's an automatic in a sea of manual transmissions, we got it for a good deal, and we're excited about being independent. Well, at least codependent but not on Rotarians. Anyway, back to my rant.

So, when you buy a used car in SA, you have to have it re-registered with the Vehicle Registration Centre. This happens to be downtown where 20,000 other people are getting their licenses issued and renewed, and any number of other oddities are occuring. So, you arrive, bright-eyed and busy-tailed at 9:30 figuring you'll be out in two hours. Five hours later, you've eaten your cheese pita and drunk your sparkling Ceres grape juice and done all of the lesson planning you care to do. You have watched every white person who comes in yell at a receptionist and seen every form and been hit on several times. You wait, and wait, and wait. Only to have your name called at the end of the five hours, and to be handed two sheets of paper. TWO. And they are NOT embossed with gold. I could've done better on my laptop.

And, for those of you who think that you have a problem with the receptionists not speaking Spanish, try 11 OFFICIAL LANGUAGES. That's right. DMV on crack.