One of those ‘Must Be Done’ things when you begin working in the US (as a non-citizen) is getting a social security number. You can live without it, but you can’t get paid without it, so you might as well get it as soon as possible.

Of course, just because you need it doesn’t mean they make it easy for you to get one. You don’t need to stand in a line, but you do need to sit for a while with a token in your hand — which is a notch better than how things get done in India, but the novelty wears off pretty soon.

Perhaps it was a busy season when I came to Seattle and applied for an SSN. I had to wait for almost a month before I got mine. But this long wait led me to some inter­esting discoveries.

First, I found out that it is impos­sible to get an appoint­ment with the social security office over the phone for such a matter: their automated system requires you to supply your SSN, and that’s exactly what you want from them.

Second, I found out that it is impos­sible to avoid the long wait by person­ally visiting the office and getting an appoint­ment for a different day. That’s because you need to wait in line in order to speak to the officer at the counter to get the appoint­ment in the first place, and in that case, you might as well get your work done rather than get an appointment.

After I actually got my SSN, I found out that it takes some time to perco­late through the system, which means that you can’t use it to open a bank account, or use it for any kind of verification.

When I finally got my SSN working properly, I heaved a sigh of relief, which of course, was short-lived. When I tried to open a bank account online, it turned out that my SSN wasn’t enough. They also wanted my driving license number for verifi­ca­tion purposes.

I visited the licensing office last Saturday. There I found a queue that was twice the size of the one at the social security office.

To start this story backward, I finally have some furni­ture in my house, thanks to a weekend trip to Ikea.

It had been two months since I moved to Seattle, and I figured it was now or never. So last Saturday, I took the plunge and bought myself a neat little corner worksta­tion where I could keep my desktop computer and work (?). That wasn’t quite enough, so I also got a chair, and a sofa that doubles up as a bed.

The most inter­esting part of buying furni­ture from Ikea is that it needs to be assem­bled. When I finally had time to do this, it was something like one o’clock in the middle of the night, but that wasn’t going to stop me now, was it? I started assem­bling the table first, but I reached a point where I needed to hammer in a few nails, and being a good and kind neighbor, I desisted. The rest of the table was left for the morning.

There are a few words of wisdom I would like to pass on to the reader. These are:

• Before inserting any metal screw/object into a hole, ensure that it is the right size. Especially if it can only be removed with the aid of a coat hanger.
• Do not use a hammer early in the morning when you are partially asleep. There is a good chance that the hammer will wake you up in an unpleasant manner.
• If you buy a sofa for your living room, make sure there is something that the occupant of the sofa can look toward. If you don’t have a TV, at least get a coffee-table.

That’s all folks!