Cleared :)

Long day.


I started out as early as 4am to line up for the NBI clearance our company had been reprimanding me to acquire. 


The husband, who was kind enough, was there with me.


The original plan was, he was just to see me off because he had to go to work at 5am. 
But when he found out that it was difficult to get that document, and since he was already there, he decided to stay and  get his own copy too. 
When we arrived in Robinson's Metro East(as one of NBI's sattelites was there and it was the nearest to our house), there was already a long line of people. I couldn't imagine how early the very first guy in the line woke up today just to get his clearance. Or, did he even sleep? Oh, yes. He might have. He might have slept in Robinson's, at that. 


Anyway, so we were there. At first, I didn't have any idea how many people there were before us. I just had a ballpark figure that there were less than a hundred, at least. So we waited. And waited. Until we've almost ran out of stories to tell, jokes to crack and people to observe. At 8am, the guard finally gave out numbers. I was right. There were less than a hundred people before us. I was even the 76th person in the line. 


The system was good. Actually, it was better than I expected. There were four steps to go through. First step was for payment. A hundred and fifteen bucks for your clearance. Not bad. With prices of goods skyrocketing these days, this is one of the very few items which didn't have any increase. It hasn't changed since the last time I went to get one. Well that was 3 years ago. Second step was to have your data encoded. I was lucky because the woman who typed in my information was quick. I just didn't like the idea that one of the monitors was facing the entire line of people while she was encoding all the information about me. That meant the people at my back knew what my name was, where I lived, who may parents were. Gawd. Anyway, third step was for picture taking. No time for retouching or anything. It wouldn't matter anyway. NBI picture is in black and white. So your red lipstick would appear black in the photo. Again, it was quick. No chance for a retake. Just pure luck. The last step was for you to get the finish product. You're required to buy an envelop (smaller than the usual brown envelop you bring with you during job interviews), but it costs 5 pesos. Well, business is business.


I got mine without any problem. The husband had., he had to go back after 2 weeks because his name had a hit. Don't get him wrong. He's innocent. Haha. It was just that, his name was so common and someone who's got a name like his was at large, for robbery. Oh well.