Lancaster & UK

The visa saga part 2

Alright, this PhD Comics are becoming more and more scary. Why? They do in some way correlate quite high with my little life here in UK. I experience US immigration difficulty and what happens in the comic strips? Yes, one character has also visa problems. Ok, you could argue that this is an incident but there is more to come. When I started teaching last year, one comic character also started teaching. Believe it or not, her experiences were very similar to my owns. Well I have two theories for explanation:1) My PhD life is so average (boring) that it correlates with thousand of others or 2) I am the inspiration of the artist. Well while the first has a higher probability to apply I still prefer the second one as it makes me feel special ;-)
And of course, there are no news to the visa saga apart that I have to wait till the 10th of July. Each phone call telling me that cost about £5. I am impressed by the implementation of capitalism to all services.

The Visa Saga

Information is an expensive... thats probably THE "new" insight of the day. Ok, my visa pack is on the way (I can even track it thanks to FedEx tracking system *wow.
SO fully motivated, I phone the London Embassy asking for the earliest possible visa appointment (interview) date. After a long waiting loop (and £5 less on my phone card I hear about the middle of July). Right... Ok, I phone the Dublin Embassy... because I am not calling from Ireland, it costs €16/7Minutes... to find out that they could schedule an appointment at the 25th of June, however they could not guarantee me that not being a resident in Ireland would make a problem... I got one of these feelings that I shouldn't risk it. Alright, I phone the London Embassy again, and get an interview date at the 10th of July. Right, not ideal but at least something... (they tell you should apply early... and they meant it).
Well, after that, my immigrant specialist called me: we are going to make an emergency case :) ...kind of feels important ... still I have no clue when to go AND... she urged me to call the embassy every day (checking if somebody cancelled their appointment and whether I could re-schedule my one)... right with £1.20/Minute this is going to be an expensive visa...conclusion of the day... I have still no clue when I leave.

Waiting for the Visa

Ha, well there will be a little delay for the BIG move. I am still waiting for the visa pack to arrive... well it is in the snail mail already... the thing that is bothering me now is what embassy I should choose. According to the waiting times, in London I will wait for 21 (!) days. Phoning them up and asking for an appointment costs about 1.4 £ per Minute. The embassy in Dublin has a waiting time of 3 days for a visa appointment ... however, I would need a Irish posting address so that they can post me back the passport.... of course, I have my second holiday home in the middle of Dublin =) ... the smart (but not so cheap thing will be: phoning up london and asking the earliest possible date, phoning then the Irish embassy asking for a data and whether it is possible to process the visa there. Then finally scheduling the appointment... it will look funny on the phone bill.
this waiting kind of annoys me a (just a little). If you don't know whether you are around for the next week-end or not;... well updates follow of the interesting bureaucratic obstacles for my way to the wait house.