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arrived in chile; hilarious bureaucracy

July 27, 2009 at 4:52 PM
to get you up to speed: i'm on exchange in chile, just arrived yesterday, will be attending pontificia universidad catolica (orientation thursday, classes next week), living with a homestay, and will be here (other than small trips to brazil, argentina, and paraguay) until decemberish when i go to colombia, then back to canada in january.

so i'm in my house with matty, jaime, and felipe (mother, father, son in host family) in las condes, one of the nicer neighborhoods in santiago, and enjoying myself aside from the constant nagging feeling of the essay i need to be working on pretty damn quick for an sfu course i still haven't finished.

buying a cellphone
today i went with matty on a walk to change currency and buy a cellphone. jaime dropped us off at the 'claro' branch in his ciotren van/truck type thing with two real seats and some cushions in the back for any extra passengers.
we spoke to a lot of people in order to just buy a prepaid cellphone. when we got into claro the first thing matty did was head towards the "Venta" (Sales) sign, which made perfect sense to me, but apparently that's too easy for chile.
  1. a security guard soon approached us and asked what we were looking for, then directed us to a woman standing in a booth in the middle of the room, the 'reception' lady.
  2. we went to her and waited in a quick line, she asked what we wanted, then printed us a ticket with a number on it and directed us up the stairs.
  3. at the top of the stairs a security guard looked at our ticket and told us to wait for our number to come up.
  4. after about 5 minutes our number came up and we went into a cubicle, like one you'd find in a bank when you're opening an account or requesting a loan, and spoke to a salesperson. she explained to us our options, we chose one, she printed a receipt and told us to go downstairs to pay.
  5. we went downstairs and struggled to find the payment counter, but finally did. we paid, and of course had to speak to the cashier there.
  6. now i went back upstairs and back to the cubicle, presented the receipt, and the woman proceeded to go and get my cellphone, activate it and hand it over. transaction completed.
okay so it was really only 5 people because the 6th person was the same as the 4th, oh well, still a lot!

time to get working on that essay.. chau


Comments:
wow that is just insane, do they want to sell phones or what? If any business were to attempt to operate in such a crazy way in vancouver they sure wouldn't las too long!
- jonathan
 
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