The Residence Permit

Whenever something goes missing Nazy's analysis is predictable:

“You threw it in the garbage, Dan.”

“Why would I throw my residency permit..”

“Or you passed it through the shredder.”

“Nazy!” I exclaimed.

“There is always a mess on your desk. You like shredding.”

“Right!” I thought. “My career ambition is to be a vegamatic machine.”

“Remember when you lost my invitation to the special sale at the Hermes store?”

“I remember it well,” I thought. “Whatever are you talking about?” I said.

“I should never put anything on your desk.”

“So,” I pounced. “You put my residency permit on my desk?”

Nazy looked, eh, glared at me.

I ruffled through the papers on my desktop.

“Oh look!” I said. “Here’s that pesky Hermes invitation. But sadly the sale is over.”

Later, at the town hall, Nazy and I discovered that the old residency permit – an awkwardly sized document – was being replaced. The new permit will be the size of a credit card. Moreover, both of us needed to get the new permit.

“See,” I whispered as the clerk prepared the forms. “Losing the permit doesn’t make any difference. You need to get a new one too.”

A new photograph was required for the new permit. There were, moreover, specific rules about the photo.

No Smiles. (“Naturally,” I thought. “We’re in Switzerland.”)

Eyes Open. (“I wish the bankers had followed that edict.”)

Full Face. (“Excuse me?” )

The requirements, specified in great detail, described the size of the requisite photograph and the proportion (in percentage terms) of the photograph that had to be ‘face’. (This was to prevent submission of a 1” x 1” photograph of an unsmiling, eyes open, full-faced person the size of a microdot standing in front of the Matterhorn.) The rules were so complex that the clerks were not qualified to judge the worthiness of the submitted photos. We have made several trips to the town hall in attempts to provide an appropriate photograph. Some of my efforts are provided in this update.