For foreigners coming into India with a visa, it's required to get it registered and receive a residence permit from the Foreign Regional Registration Office. Unfortunately for all of us, it is one of the slowest, most inefficient, waste of time experiences that anyone will go through when traveling to India.
I had my experience with the FRRO yesterday, along with the rest of the USAC students who are here for the first Summer Session and are starting classes today.
Originally we were supposed to arrive there are 8am to be the first ones in line to start the registration process, but then our program coordinator Jacob was told that we had to register online and then wait until June 5th or 6th to complete it. When he "lubricated the process" as he put it (bribed the officials and pulled some strings with an acquaintance of his) we were able to go later in the day and all register.
I arrived at the FRRO at 1:30. We first waited for an hour for the workers to finish their lunch break, then waited another hour in line to get our 'tokens', just to wait even more to be called upstairs where the actual registration was taking place. It was cool to get to know the other USAC students though, and we had a LOT of bonding time. Everyone was really friendly and it was so easy to make friends! There was even one girl from New York who knows my friend at UD.
Even when we were finally called upstairs, we had to wait again for our token numbers to be called, to hand the workers all of our papers. Then they told us to sit back down. Then they told us to come back to the counter and sign some forms, and then sit back down. This happened repeatedly about 4 or 5 times. Even though the FRRO was supposed to close at 6, we were there until around 7:30 still waiting for all of the forms to be filled out. Instead of having everything being completed electronically, they had to print out papers and have messengers running all around the building to get specific signatures from different officials, just for the papers to come back to the people at the counter for them to fill out more forms.
What took a whole day to complete could have easily been done in an hour if the system was privatized!
I FINALLY got my residence permit at around 7:30, at which point I was way too tired to go out with the rest of the USAC students. I also have an early checkout today to fly to Pondicherry and Auroville!
Yesterday marked my first time riding an auto-rickshaw, and it was a BLAST!! I wish I had remembered to bring my camera, because I passed so many cool sites and streets on the way to and from the FRRO.
Since I was only given a twenty minutes notice to get to the FRRO before 1:30, I had no choice but to hop on a rickshaw and tell the driver to go as fast as he can. My driver really tried his best to get me there as fast as possible!
While he was speeding down the crowded Bangalore streets, he did countless illegal things like driving on the sidewalks, driving on the wrong side of the road, almost hitting countless pedestrians and bicyclists, and even running red lights when he had the chance. It was just like a roller coaster ride, except if he lurched too hard to one side I would have fallen out the door! At one point there was a cow in the middle of the road and the perpendicular traffic was stopped, so my driver just sped on out of the road solo while everyone else decided to wait for the light to change. In the end, I was able to arrive at the FRRO, just barely past 1:30, thanks to this guy!
I had my experience with the FRRO yesterday, along with the rest of the USAC students who are here for the first Summer Session and are starting classes today.
Originally we were supposed to arrive there are 8am to be the first ones in line to start the registration process, but then our program coordinator Jacob was told that we had to register online and then wait until June 5th or 6th to complete it. When he "lubricated the process" as he put it (bribed the officials and pulled some strings with an acquaintance of his) we were able to go later in the day and all register.
I arrived at the FRRO at 1:30. We first waited for an hour for the workers to finish their lunch break, then waited another hour in line to get our 'tokens', just to wait even more to be called upstairs where the actual registration was taking place. It was cool to get to know the other USAC students though, and we had a LOT of bonding time. Everyone was really friendly and it was so easy to make friends! There was even one girl from New York who knows my friend at UD.
Even when we were finally called upstairs, we had to wait again for our token numbers to be called, to hand the workers all of our papers. Then they told us to sit back down. Then they told us to come back to the counter and sign some forms, and then sit back down. This happened repeatedly about 4 or 5 times. Even though the FRRO was supposed to close at 6, we were there until around 7:30 still waiting for all of the forms to be filled out. Instead of having everything being completed electronically, they had to print out papers and have messengers running all around the building to get specific signatures from different officials, just for the papers to come back to the people at the counter for them to fill out more forms.
What took a whole day to complete could have easily been done in an hour if the system was privatized!
I FINALLY got my residence permit at around 7:30, at which point I was way too tired to go out with the rest of the USAC students. I also have an early checkout today to fly to Pondicherry and Auroville!
Yesterday marked my first time riding an auto-rickshaw, and it was a BLAST!! I wish I had remembered to bring my camera, because I passed so many cool sites and streets on the way to and from the FRRO.
Since I was only given a twenty minutes notice to get to the FRRO before 1:30, I had no choice but to hop on a rickshaw and tell the driver to go as fast as he can. My driver really tried his best to get me there as fast as possible!
While he was speeding down the crowded Bangalore streets, he did countless illegal things like driving on the sidewalks, driving on the wrong side of the road, almost hitting countless pedestrians and bicyclists, and even running red lights when he had the chance. It was just like a roller coaster ride, except if he lurched too hard to one side I would have fallen out the door! At one point there was a cow in the middle of the road and the perpendicular traffic was stopped, so my driver just sped on out of the road solo while everyone else decided to wait for the light to change. In the end, I was able to arrive at the FRRO, just barely past 1:30, thanks to this guy!
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