I’m sitting quite comfortably in the clean, well lit and airy DMV of Redwood City, California. The agents are well dressed and smiling at the patrons. I look forward to getting my license renewed. It seems the DMV has gone through several leadership changes, and I applaud these changes. (DMV third director in 32 days) I even got to go get coffee after a smiling receptionist told me the estimated wait time and assurance that I can be paged by text closer to my appointment time!

I’ve never experienced such a pleasant DMV in the past decade or so, Jean Shiomoto since 2013, and I can’t even find the director before her. When my wife arrived in California seven years ago, her 8-letter Chinese name was misspelled on the license twice, once, and then again when she went to correct it, third time was the charm. And honestly when I visited here in 2018 to replace a lost license, I do not remember such a clean and cheery place.

Good stuff! Great to see my tax money finally at work!

Oops, gotta run, my number coming up now.

…and it’s done, in under 30 seconds. Only thing it could improve is faster change for cash… he has to get change for $100 dollar bill, giving me time to finish this post. Man! That makes me feel good paying all that tax! I feel like going back to work again to pay more state taxes!