Pain dealing with Indian Govt officials

I need to provide my Birth Certificate along with my I485 application. My father has my original birth certificate but my name is missing in the certificate. So I need my name added to my birth certificate. My father went to the government office and started to deal with the process. Long lines and no straight forward answers from the officers sitting over there.

First my father had to submit a request and later finds out that they wont add my name to the birth certificate so easily. They requested for proof. So I sent him a copy of my 10th marks card, passport copy and Drivers License. But that wouldn't make them happy. They need attestation on the documents I have sent. My father cant get attested without the originals which he didn't have. The same thing applies for Swarna's birth certificate.

To look at the broad picture, the officers always don't want to give a straight forward answer and they always want us to come the next day to know what is the next step. They themselves are either not sure or don't want to do it right away. Anything that has to dealing with the government sucks. They don't value the time of others. This is all common in spite of paying them the money they ask.

So much inefficiency with the government. I guess this will never change.

Pasadena Police Classic Car show

"Pasadena Police Clasic Car Show" was hosted at Paseo Colorado Mall in Pasadena along with the "Pasadena Chalk Painting Festival". The cars on the show were all vintage. The oldest I saw was 1923 Ford T.

Check my album for the cool pictures of these cars.

Pasadena Car Show

Pasadena Chalk Festival

Pasadena Chalk Festival is one of the best events I have seen recently. It was held on June 16 &17th, 2007. It is one of the largest street painting with more than 400 artists showing their talent. It was held at Paseo Colorado Mall. Viewers had a chance to elect the best murals. We voted for this baby boy painting as our favorite chalk painting.

Click Here for more pictures uploaded about this event on Picasa.

Green Card - June 14th

USCIS came up with July 2007 visa bulletin yesterday. To everyones surprise the priority dates have become current for all categories. This was a little unbelievable at first when my friend called up to inform me.

I have a feeling that this would not last long and everyone should act fast. I have mailed the attorney to do concurrent filing of I-140 and I-1485 but I haven't got any response yet. I am sure the attorneys are very busy doing their job for having to file I-1485 for lots of other people and attending phone calls at the same time.

Now the biggest hurdle I have is that I don't have my birth certificate. I have to call my dad and ask him get a copy of my birth certificate from the corporation.

Also me and swarna have to go for an medical check up from an USCIS medically approved doctor and the earliest available appointments are at least 10 days away from now. I have to start collecting all the documents fast.

OCA - Certification - Step One

I decided to pursue Oracle Certification and will be going forward to pursue OCA track.

To get certified I have to give two exams. (IZ0-007 or IZ0-001) and IZ0-147.

I have decided to nail down IZ0-007: Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL. I founded a two good resources for this in yahoo groups. OCP_1Z0_007@yahoogroups.com and Oracle_OCP_Study_Materials@yahoogroups.com I have subscribed to these and they have pretty good materials uploaded on the files section.

Now I need to come out with a plan to study and give exams. I know that I don't need more than two months to clear the first exam. So August 15th 2007 will be the dead line.

My Green Card Status as of June 11 2007

I will blog my Hara Patta (Green Card) status.

My Green card processing was initiated on December 2006. It took me a while to collect documents and provide them to the attorney.

After I provide all the documents to the attorneys, I saw a job posting in early February 2007 on Dice. It was typical stuff. There were no response for the job Ad. After much waiting for a response to the Ad, my Labor Certification was applied on April 2007.

My labor was certified in few weeks and on early June 2007 the company attorneys received an Labor approval and told me that my priority date is April 26, 2007. So the PERM approval took around 10 weeks. Now the attorney has started to work on my next stage of Green Card process(I-140). So I have requested to confirm that the I-140 will be applied with premium processing.

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Two important rules came out on May 2007.

1. No more labor substitution.
2. I-140 should be applied within 180 days after the labor approval.

I am in favor of these rules. I think this will be of significant impact.

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As per June 2007 bulletin, priority dates moved ahead a big time.

For EB2: 01-Apr-2004
For EB3: 01-Jun-2003

Movie weekend

This weekend was kind of relaxing as well as bit of walking. It was a combination of walking, shopping and movies.

Saturday we had been to Burbank Fine Art Festival and we didn't find anything interesting enough to catch our attention. So we left for shopping and we did a lot of walking. Sunday just went out walking and relaxed.

Also the main attention of this weekend were the movies. We watched two new bollywood movies this weekend.

1. Ta Ra Rum Bum: This was one waste movie. Nothing worth watching. The whole movie was so illogical and a real sense less movie. I will give a poor rating to this movie.

2. Shootout at Lokhandwala: This is a nice movie and can be watched once. First half of the movie is good and intresting. Second half is typical bollywood drama. This is an average movie and was interesting to see. Worth renting a DVD.

Tijuana Trip for H1B Stamping

Me and my wife been to Tijuana - Mexico for my H1B stamping on June 07, 2007. It was fairly easy experience. Drove down to the US border on San Ysidro, CA and parked the car. Crossed the border by walk and took a taxi to the Banamex Bank to pay the fees. Then we walked to the US consulate and we were let inside the consulate right away. The overall process went very smooth and it was interesting to realize that the we were done with the whole process in 20 minutes and were asked to come back to collect our passport at 3PM. Everything went normal. More info about the trip over here.

Scardinos Review - Good Place

Had been to an Italian restaurant Scardino's in Torrance, CA on June 1st 2o07 on the occasion of my wife's Birthday. The place has both take out and dine in. We started with wine and ordered Chicken Parmesan and Egg plant Parmesan (ya we are Parmesan lovers). They also provided freshly made garlic bread. The food was real good. Price was okay, ambiance not great for big occasion as it is small and cozy. We felt very comfortable sitting at this place. The service was good and best among all was the food. I will recommend anyone asking me about this place. I will definitely visit this place again.