This is a short but dramatic story about us (my beloved wife Arina and me) attending a visa interview in American embassy in Moscow.
We had an appointment on Friday, November 15, 11 am. Normally it takes me about 30 minutes to get to the nearest underground station. Plus 30 minutes by train makes it about an hour to get from home to the embassy. Being a responsible fella myself, I decided to have an additional hour just in case. So we were pretty confident of not being late when we were leaving home at about 8:50. How wrong we were!
First, we got stuck in a huge 7 km long traffic jam caused by a 4-car crash. Luckily, as soon as we had had an hour "just in case", we arrived at Kuzminki underground station just in time. But Moscow didn't want to let us go so easily - the whole line turned out to be shut down. We had nothing else to do then to run back to the car and drive through all the disastrous Moscow traffic to the opposite side of the city where the embassy is located. By the way, on our way there we gave a lift to a couple of losers just like us (but who didn't have their own car). Of cause, for free. Just to boost our karma.
To cut a long story short, we were late by half an hour, but they let us in and everything ended up fine.
In the embassy we bumped into three guys from the Russian KVN team "Станция спортивная" ("Stantsya sportivnaya" or, in translation, "Sports station"): Ivan Pyshnenko, Vladimir Porubaev and Konstantin Obukhov.
For me the whole story is just another reminder of why we have decided to leave Moscow.
If somebody is interested the interview dialog was as follows:
- Hello!
- Hello!
- What is your profession?
- I am a Software Engineer.
- Where are you going to work?
- I am going to work for XXX in New York.
- Where did you study?
- In Moscow State University here is Moscow.
- Does your work involve antivirus development or cryptography?
- No
- For how long have you been married?
- For more than a year. About a year and 3 months, to be more precise.
- What is your official position in XXX?
- Senior Software Engineer.
- OK, your visa is approved. Stamping is going to take 3-4 days. Here is a brochure with your rights in USA, just in case
- Oh, thank you, but I have already printed and read it.
- Then I'll save a tree, if you don't mind (took the brochure back smiling)
- Sure.
- I wish you luck with your move and goodbye.
- Good bye!
An interviewer was very polite and friendly and the whole interview took about 2-3 minutes. It turned out there is nothing to be afraid of. It really seems to me that they need all these questions just to be sure that I am really the guy from their docs and to kill time while they are fulfilling some documents.
We had an appointment on Friday, November 15, 11 am. Normally it takes me about 30 minutes to get to the nearest underground station. Plus 30 minutes by train makes it about an hour to get from home to the embassy. Being a responsible fella myself, I decided to have an additional hour just in case. So we were pretty confident of not being late when we were leaving home at about 8:50. How wrong we were!
First, we got stuck in a huge 7 km long traffic jam caused by a 4-car crash. Luckily, as soon as we had had an hour "just in case", we arrived at Kuzminki underground station just in time. But Moscow didn't want to let us go so easily - the whole line turned out to be shut down. We had nothing else to do then to run back to the car and drive through all the disastrous Moscow traffic to the opposite side of the city where the embassy is located. By the way, on our way there we gave a lift to a couple of losers just like us (but who didn't have their own car). Of cause, for free. Just to boost our karma.
To cut a long story short, we were late by half an hour, but they let us in and everything ended up fine.
In the embassy we bumped into three guys from the Russian KVN team "Станция спортивная" ("Stantsya sportivnaya" or, in translation, "Sports station"): Ivan Pyshnenko, Vladimir Porubaev and Konstantin Obukhov.
For me the whole story is just another reminder of why we have decided to leave Moscow.
Interview details
If somebody is interested the interview dialog was as follows:
- Hello!
- Hello!
- What is your profession?
- I am a Software Engineer.
- Where are you going to work?
- I am going to work for XXX in New York.
- Where did you study?
- In Moscow State University here is Moscow.
- Does your work involve antivirus development or cryptography?
- No
- For how long have you been married?
- For more than a year. About a year and 3 months, to be more precise.
- What is your official position in XXX?
- Senior Software Engineer.
- OK, your visa is approved. Stamping is going to take 3-4 days. Here is a brochure with your rights in USA, just in case
- Oh, thank you, but I have already printed and read it.
- Then I'll save a tree, if you don't mind (took the brochure back smiling)
- Sure.
- I wish you luck with your move and goodbye.
- Good bye!
An interviewer was very polite and friendly and the whole interview took about 2-3 minutes. It turned out there is nothing to be afraid of. It really seems to me that they need all these questions just to be sure that I am really the guy from their docs and to kill time while they are fulfilling some documents.
