The Hoops.

Oh the joys of coming to a new country and trying to learn just exactly how the system works. I think this is true whenever you move to a foreign country. Some countries are only ankle deep in bureaucracy while others (for example France or India) are neck high. My experience so far is only ankle deep. It's really amazing. All the administrative staff here are super friendly and competent. What was incredible was that the departmental administrators knew we were coming so they had keys ready to hand over and an office space assigned. They were really helpful in trying to get us the right documents. Not only that there is a new employee orientation for post-docs. Geez, I guess post-docs matter in some places.

Despite the friendly administrators, it was still a maze of paperwork. For example, general access to the building can’t be granted until an employee ID number is obtained. But to get the employee ID number, a Z number needs to be assigned but to get a Z number, a social security number is required – this is the penultimate number since it is what will allow me to get paid. Everything leads back to the SS# - for example to get a bank account one needs a SS#. Well, this doesn't really matter - because I don’t have a SS#, I won't get paid for 20 days. To get the SS#, we drove 50 minutes to a ModeratelySizedTown spent all of 15minutes to apply for the number and 50 minutes to get back to SmallTown. Good thing we’ve got the hippie bus because the next time an agent was scheduled to come into SmallTown was November 25.

Thank god for the sheep.