I (Finnur) went to the Icelandic equivalent of the US department of motor vehicles (DMV) to get a new driver’s licence issued. My old one is probably somewhere in our container heading to Iceland, but\u00a0I never got the international credit-card style licence (like Hrefna did before we left) so it was time to get a new one anyway.<\/p>\n
The experience was a bit surreal, being used to the US DMV which is infamous for slow service. Basically, I was greeted by a kiosk as I entered, where they do first-level triaging (are you here for a passport? a driver’s license? collections? registering your elf? etc). I selected “driver’s license” and the kiosk spews out a number printed on a piece of paper. I take my number, and as I start walking towards an empty chair to wait I check my number but before I have time to read it (“Ding!”) my number is up!! I’ve been in the building less than 30 seconds (!!). I think this is a new record. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
The whole process was dead simple (probably since my old license is still valid): I give my social security number*, I hand over a passport style photo, sign a piece of paper and get back the piece of paper with my number on it so I can pay my fee to a cashier. And sure enough, just as I start heading for another empty waiting chair, I hear another “ding”! I didn’t have enough time to sit down — my number is up again. I must admit I was a little disoriented at the fast service and wish I had timed the whole thing from entry to exit because I think I spent less than 5 minutes in the building.<\/p>\n
Small societies sure have some benefits… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
* Social security numbers (SSN) are not secrets in Iceland, so knowing someone’s SSN doesn’t compromise anything — and in fact you often need them to make transactions (transferring money to someone through online banking, for example).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I (Finnur) went to the Icelandic equivalent of the US department of motor vehicles (DMV) to get a new driver’s licence issued. My old one is probably somewhere in our container heading to Iceland, but\u00a0I never got the international credit-card style licence (like Hrefna did before we left) so it was time to get aRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}