Visa woes

You know, I hate sports events. I still remember how I was stuck in Russia in 2008 when I was late two weeks to apply for visa (restoring the passport stolen in Beijing took longer then I expected). All you can get long before the Olympics was some crappy one week tourist visa when I needed something like 1 year multiple-entry. I got what I wanted only when the Olympics have ended… end after that visa expired, fecal matter had really hit the fan.

You see, every company likes to save money. That's understandable. But too often these measures will take an ugly form. I have heard numerous stories about rationing of toilet paper, forced re-use of printouts (to the point that no internal memo was accepted by the management unless it was printed on the back side of something else) and some geniuses in the management turning off the servers in the evening to lower bills (preventing the scheduled backups in the process). But in my case it takes the form of trying to cut down the cost of my visa.

To get a one-year visa, you have to cross the border just before applying for new visa as the longest term you can get is 1 year minus 1 day from the date of the last entry. My superiors decided that they want to save money and so I've got only 180 day visa (saving about 2000 yuan for them). Which was expiring just before Asian Games in Guangzhou, of course. So after getting back from Russia I tried to get myself a new visa, this time one-year multiple entry, which would save me a lot of troubles. Immediately the price was questioned, the need for such visa was questioned, then it was approved grudgingly… and then it was too late. So now I have 180-day one-entry visa and will have to do it all over again in April next year (when the cost will be higher) before May holidays (which means that there'll be troubles getting any visa). So they saved about 3000 yuan… and resulting costs have already reached 7000 yuan, which makes net loss of some 4000 yuan, to say nothing of forcing me to run like hell through half the country and back. Some savings, I'd say...