Printing my own passport photos

If you follow my directions, you could look as ballin' as these people in your passport photos. 

   At $9.99+ a pop, printing passport photos is just a real pain. I see all of these prints, 2x3, 5x7 portraits for like half a penny at the drug store, and then there it is, the required 2x2 passport size photo, listed and the most egregious price. It is true I am a penny pincher, but ten whole dollars, for a picture that literally costs the store a penny?!? I say NO!

This all started when I first found out that I needed 8 passport sized photos when I arrived in Nanjing for various ID cards. That is 4 sets of passport pictures y'all.

Then I really started sweating when I got the same message from a different group that I will be joining in Nanjing, the Confucius Institute. I thought, well I'd better be safe than sorry... 16 passport sized photos?! That is $80 for an 8x11 sheet of photos!! How can this be!! I absolutely refuse to give WALGREENS or any other giant mega drug store that amount of money for literally a single sheet of paper.

So I am on a real mission here to print my own passport sized photos. It turned out to be more difficult that I thought. There is a whole slew of rules and regulations on a passport sized photos. Literally too many to list. You can marvel at it here.

Then comes actually taking the picture. Go through your house and find the best lit area. I used my bathroom. Make sure it is really bright so that your face and neck won't be in shadow. This is really important; there is a whole other set of guidelines on how your photo should be in the proper light and contrast. You will also need to have a white background. I used a pillowcase, but I have heard of people using sheets or large poster boards. Have someone else take the photo for you; sorry no selfies.

Next you'll need to crop the photo to the elusive 2x2 size. Travel.gov has a photo cropper to help you. Due to all the rules, the program is very particular, and if it is only slightly off, it will throw you an error message. So go back and marvel at that list of rules again until you understand what is wrong. There is also a "help" bar to help you (duh).

Next, you'll need to print your photos. If you can print photos at home, you will be home free! Just crop it to the right size and you will be good to go. If not, you have a couple options. First, you might try to haggle with your local drug store. The passport photos are expensive in part because they need to actually take the photo for you, so if you explain to them that you don't need any of that portrait taking nonsense and you just need the size of the photo, then you might get a better deal at the store.

Now when I did that just a few moments ago, the lady told me she couldn't because here manager was out of town (lies) so I think I found another method passportcorner.com. This will take your photo, crop it, and then it will fit the 2x2 photo into a 4x6 panel, yielding 5 2x2 photos and 1 2x2 sized passport corner logo for good measure. Download that file, which you can then take back to the drugstore to have printed as a 4x6. Cut out the photos yourself, and voila, you have yourself some bonafide passport photos at a damn good price.

There I just saved you $10 YOU'RE WELCOME ;)

Visa Good News

Finally done (for the most part) with my visa app!! Turned in my forms to Mia this morning. Bus ticket purchased for my second trip back to Rocklin to get my final physical exams. And Mia said that there is a delay in sending the forms to DC, so they won't be late after all!!

When will I learn? I was freaking about about all of this so bad, and here in the end,  there is no problem at all. 

I bought myself a mocha to celebrate ^_^

Travel Physical, pt. 2 or, Things Get Testy: One Quick Trip

I messed it up!! I thought I wasn't going home until Friday, but here it is on Tuesday, and I am sitting on the MegaBus heading towards Sacramento.

It all started yesterday when I was (still) working on getting my visa packet together. It dawned on me that it was due this coming Friday, only a few days from now.  So I was going through my things, seeing what else I had to do, and there it was: PHYSICAL EXAMINATION RECORD FOR FOREIGNER. Remember all of those forms I told you about in my last post, Travel Physical, pt. 1? The giant one that the doc refused to take? That is the one that is due in the visa packet. I about had a heart attack when I realized it. 

The good news though? By some stroke of luck, it just happened that the day I scheduled my health exam for was the same day that it is due in Washington D. C. Mia said it would *most likely* be okay if I just FedEx them over on the same day. 

So why am I going to Rocklin today, Tuesday? Well the forms include some lab tests, like blood work and an X-ray, and if I were to take those lab tests on Friday, I wouldn't be able to have the results ready to be recorded and FedExed. SO. Here I am on the way to Rocklin. Only to head back to SF tonight. 

Now that you are up to speed with all of that, let me just tell you that I am not feeling my best. Lab work comes with fasting, no eating for ten hours prior to the tests, which wouldn't be so bad. Except for... COFFEE. I don't do so well without any coffee. My head feels like there is a clamp on it, and my eyelids have need drooping since I got up this morning.  I got up pretty early so I'm a little low in sleep too. 

But that's enough whining for now, plenty of good things await in Rocklin. My dad is going to pick me up from the bus station where it will be nice and warm, so I am looking forward to that. My mom has the day off too so we will also be able to hang out. And of course Wolfie my mom's dog will be there to play with. So it's not all bad. 

Should be making it home in just a few hours!! Hopefully this trip goes smoothly. What if I go into the office and my doctor goes "I ain't doing it!!" Lol. We shall see. 

Processing my Visa辦簽證/Medical Forms Update

Making more progress with my visa! I was discouraged last time when the Walgreen's people were somehow unable to take a sufficient visa picture of me in after 30 minutes ((shakes fist)) so I just got a refund and left... I have pulled about my visa form once again!

So I've mentioned before, but the Chinese visa application is complicated, and the "instructions" are not much of a help. I have it mostly sorted out now, thanks to MIA!!, but I just wanted to point out a sort of interesting feature, Part D of the Supplementary Visa App Form. This section says, "If you are applying for a visa in a country or territory other than the country of your nationality, please fill out the following." That seems pretty straightforward, like this box would apply to everyone. Then in box 2 asks "What kind of visa or residence permit of this country or territory do you hold?" This question seems irrelevant  because if this visa application is for a country other than that of my nationality (as stated above), wouldn't the answer be "none" ?? THEN it asks for the "number of your visa [for this territory] and its expiration date." Well that just takes the cake because if I already had a visa, why would I be applying for it here with this form??

After talking this over with my colleague, she had the idea that this portion might be relevant for residents of special economic zones like Hong Kong or Taiwan, who might have two passports or something like this. I think that this weird visa app is really an artifact of the incredibly complex resident situations of the area. It only happened just a few years ago that direct flights from China to Taiwan were established, and China still sort of considers Taiwan its territory, and what is HK even?? These issues make answering questions like "have you visited China before?" much more difficult on paper.

Also, just an update about the medical procedures. I found a city run clinic that will do a TB Test for almost half the price of the on campus health center!! The SF CDC&P has a travel clinic that will do the test for only $40 (SFSU Health Center charges $70). They do a drop in clinic which is open M-W&F (not available on Thursdays). Of course it is downtown, and you will have to go down there twice to get it read, but for that price I think it is worth it. Click this link to go to their website and check it out.