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When I said that there was a more clever entry to follow I’m sure you didn’t think I meant in a week. I’d also bet that you figured it would be a whole lot more clever than this.
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Visa – It’s Everywhere You Want to Be
ACT II
SCENE 1
KIRSTEN: Panic, panic, panic, there is no way that I have all the financial information I need. Alas, for tomorrow morning I will be unceremoniously kicked out on my rear and into the middle of 3rd Ave. But the humiliation will not end there! I will forevermore have to list my rejected visa application on all future visa applications.
The screen fades dramatically to black, while ominous music plays. Perhaps there is a Hitchcock walk-on, if the budget allows and the neighborhood necromancer has a bit of spare time.
SCENE 2
KIRSTEN: I will take a taxi so as to not tempt fate into making me late.
CABBIE: You’re from Staten Island? So am I!
KIRSTEN: How lovely. However, I’m too nervous to talk to you right now. I need to focus all my attention on deep breathing.
SCENE 3
CONSULATE SECURITY: You’re 45 minutes early…
KIRSTEN: Go me!
CONSULATE SECURITY: …so I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to line up outside the building until your appointment time.
KIRSTEN: Line up? Surely you meant to say queue.
CONSULATE SECURITY: No, I’m pretty sure I meant line up.
KIRSTEN: How disappointing.
CONSULATE SECURITY: I’m an American. So are you, in case you’ve had a brief lapse. We line up.
KIRSTEN: I appear to have gone momentarily deaf.
SCENE 4
LADY PILOT: Hi, I’ve been trying to book an appointment for weeks now but the online form has been giving me trouble. I’m a pilot and I can’t send my passport away for any length of time so I really need to get this done in person.
MAN: Oh. my. Gosh! I’m having the exact same problem! TWINS!
CONSULATE SECURITY: I’m not really sure this is my jurisdiction.
KIRSTEN: (aside) And to think, the situation could have been much more dramatic! I could be coming here without an appointment because the website hates me.
45 minutes later, our heroine is walking through security and LADY PILOT and MAN are being allowed to book an appointment in person. Justice prevails, thanks to CONSULATE SECURITY!
SCENE 5
KIRSTEN’S HEART: I’m actually on the verge of going into arrhythmia, so maybe you could do me a teensy favor and calm down a bit?
KIRSTEN’S ADRENAL GLANDS: NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!1!
PHOTO-BOOTH: I am a cleverly placed courtesy to the forgetful amongst you, and I speak in a soothing British accent.
OTHER PEOPLE: are nervously silent
SCENE 6
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Next!
KIRSTEN: Crap.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Hello! And what can I do for you today? A student visa? Wonderful! What school?
KIRSTEN: The University of Leicester.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Excellent! I’ll just take your passport and your acceptance letter from you for a moment so I can make copies.
A moment passes. It is a very tense moment.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Well that seems to be in order! I’ll just hold on to your passport so we can put the visa in, and you can collect it in an hour. Cheers!
In stunned silence, Kirsten puts her financial documentation away.
KIRSTEN’S HEART: Well thank God that’s over.
THE END
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So, you see, the whole thing was a bit anti-climactic. I don’t know why they didn’t check my financial documentation, though of course I like to think it was because I look independently wealthy. (It was probably more along the lines of “Well she’s not wearing a potato sack at any rate, plus this queue is rather long. Let’s hurry it up, then!”)
Once I picked up my visa I scurried home to make my travel arrangements because at long last I could. How liberating to finally be able to drop hundreds of dollars on airfare! I leave next Thursday, September 20th. I’ll be in London until the 23rd, then I go to Nottingham to meet up with my friend and old flatmate Rebecca who is just finishing up her MA there. On the 25th I am able to check into my housing at Leicester.
Oh yes, I am staying in campus housing. I didn’t plan on it initially because I didn’t want to be locked into a 42-week contract at extortionate rates, but in the end I was too chicken to just arrive and risk homelessness. Plus the rates and contract lengths were essentially the same, so I opted for a bit of security. Of course I opted at the last possible minute and had to send my application via FedEx to nip in under the deadline.
I finally got my housing assignment Wednesday night. I had just stumbled in from the bar (which is not really as debauched as all that, since Wednesday was my last day of work) so I didn’t get much of a look at it beyond the fact that I had someplace to live. On Thursday morning I checked my email and there was a message stating that because I hadn’t responded to my housing offer by the 11th (Tuesday) it was being rescinded! How long does the USPS hold mail at customs? I’m thinking it must be at least a week, because the speed of service between Leicester and New York has been atrocious.
Luckily, several phone calls and emails later, I was able to send in scans of my housing contract and I will no longer be homeless. Unfortunately for me, neither will I have hot water nor be anywhere near the Department of Museum Studies, but such are the rewards of flying by the seat of one’s pants. Additionally, my cold-water flat is on the ground floor and there’s a clause in my housing contract that I’m liable for any damage thieves do to my window when they smash it in to steal all of my belongings. Fan-frigging-tastic.
This entry might not do a good job of conveying it, but I’m actually really excited. Less than a week!
Originally uploaded by nerdgasms
One thing that I really hate about flickr is that I appear to have to compose my entries here rather than over at WordPress.
Alas, for it is late(-ish… I’m kind of an old lady) and I have been drinking, so this crap entry will have to do for now anyway.
Tomorrow I go to the British consulate to officially apply for my student visa. I am scared shitless.
I am noticeably lacking in the financial documentation area of my application, and because this is a drama that predates the creation of this blog I will relate it to you now. In play form. Because it is dramatic.
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Visa – It’s Everywhere You Want to Be
ACT I
SCENE 1
FAFSA: Leave your email address off of me, and Uncle Sam will send you your Student Aid Report in 15 days.
20 days later…
KIRSTEN: It’s odd that I haven’t gotten my SAR yet. I thought Uncle Sam couldn’t tell a lie? Or was that little Georgie Washington?
UNCLE SAM: Surprise! You actually have to call and request your SAR.
KIRSTEN: It would have been nice if you’d told me that from the start.
UNCLE SAM: But that would spoil the surprise! Your SAR will arrive in 15 days.
SCENE 2
KIRSTEN: Well crap. This delay guarantees that my financial aid stuff won’t be processed by the time I apply for my visa. How am I going to prove to John Bull* that I have at least $34,000 to burn? Wangst, wangst, wangst…
*John Bull = the cartoon Uncle Sam was modeled off of. On the off-chance that you didn’t know.
DAD: I will generously loan you an exceedingly large sum, so that you can produce bank statements showing the necessary funds.
KIRSTEN: Sweet! All my problems are solved!
DAD: Actually, now that you mention it, you might still have one problem.
KIRSTEN: Crap.
DAD: The exceedingly large sum is hiding out in a secure location and won’t be reachable (or transferable) until we’ve returned from vacation a week hence.
KIRSTEN: Crap. Now my bank statement is going to be issued without the large sum on it.
DAD: Life’s a bitch. Go to the bank and get them to print something out.
KIRSTEN: Hmmm, this plan seems viable but I remain wary.
SCENE 3
BANK LADY: You want me to print something out showing all the funds in your accounts? No problem! Here you go!
KIRSTEN: Wow, that was easy.
PRINTOUT: Hello, I am the most unofficial looking piece of paper you have ever held in your hands. The Citibank logo in my upper left-hand corner is actually pixelated! Could you have cooked me up on your home computer? Why, certainly! In fact you might have been able to do better.
KIRSTEN: Crap.
SCENE 4
KIRSTEN: Hi, I got this printout here? And it looks like a 12 year old made it? And I need it to look really, really official so that I can get a visa. Is there possibly something you can do to help me?
BANK LADY #2: I think what you should do is come back on or after the 8th of the month, because that’s when your statement period begins and ends. The exceedingly large sum won’t show up on anything official until then.
KIRSTEN: That would be really fantastic except for the part where my appointment at the consulate is on the 7th. You might have mentioned this when I was in here earlier.
BANK LADY #2: Oh, you didn’t speak to me before. That was another lady. Here, I will give you her card on the off-chance that that she actually remembers helping you AND that the consulate is in the habit of making phone calls to verify fake-looking printouts.
KIRSTEN: Brilliant. This seems like a completely fool-proof solution and my mind is now totally at ease.
SCENE 5
KIRSTEN: Crap.
DAD: I think you might need to expand your vocabulary a bit.
KIRSTEN: Fucking bugger ass-shit.
DAD: I think we might be having communication problems.
fin
Stay tuned for Act II.
Very exciting business, today; I booked my appointment at the consulate! This appointment constitutes my official visa application. That whole bit where I filled in the visa application online and submitted it? Just a bit of bureaucratic fun. I had to go through all that just so they would tell me the web address, and I’ve had to essentially stalk that web address for the past week, continually refreshing, to see when new appointments were made available. You see, they’re released whenever the consulate gets the whim to do so, so you never know when one will appear on the website. Good thing I don’t start work until tomorrow, huh? Otherwise I might not have the luxury of refreshing every 5 minutes.
What’s even better is that the website, which shows a color-coded calendar of the current month, has been showing that the appointments for this coming Friday (August 31st) were not yet available. This morning I clicked over to September just for fun (since they hadn’t released Friday’s appointment yet, why would there be anything in September?) and saw that Wednesday and Thursday had already filled up. “What madness is this?” thought I.
It seems like the British Consulate in New York is taking a 5-day weekend for Labor Day. Silly me.
Since I discovered this, I’ve been diligently checking the September calendar. And lo! Around 4:58pm I saw that appointments were available for Friday, September 7th. I tried to book one, but my browser wouldn’t let me.
To be fair, the website states that you must use Internet Explorer to book. I don’t have this and hadn’t planned on downloading it, so I inquired around the internet, which never ever misleads information seekers. People told me they had no difficulty booking with either Safari or Firefox, both of which are browsers I use, so I figured myself quite safe. Needless to say, neither worked for me. I had to run into the den to use my mother’s computer, all the while praying Explorer would actually function for once. (It runs rather poorly on Macs.)
Success! I was able to select a date. But wait a moment, what’s my visa application number? I’ve got that in an email from the consulate that they sent to my .mac address. I had to run back into my room to look for it on my computer. OK great. Now what are the last 6 digits of my passport number? Well crap, it’s off to find that now. When I was returning I spotted my mother ascending the stairs towards the den. “Don’t touch the computer!” I yelled. I think I may also have run at the door like a fool, flailing my arms (and the box of visa stuff they were carrying).
In the end, she didn’t touch the computer and I booked the appointment. Now all I have to do is sit through the 5 hour process and hope everything gets approved. My financial information is a shoddy printout from Citibank that looks like I rigged it up in Photoshop (and I am no Photoshop pro), so I am cautiously optimistic, but more cautious than optimistic.
