immigrate

I’ve been so lethargic lately. I’ve had nothing better to do than write, yet I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I stare blindly at a stupid arcade game, Roof Rats, and watch dangerous house hunting/renovation shows. Then there was the entire final season of Angel. I laughed, I cried, I loved it. But now it’s over. Forever. So very sad!

My eye is twitching and it won’t stop. I’m beginning to get worried.

There were a few days in which we couldn’t shower. That was fun. There was a big leak in the kitchen ceiling, right down the wall containing the electrical wiring for the water heater. The wall was completely soaked through, so much so that inner layers of red paint were beginning to seep through the yellow overcoat in bright bloody splotches. Joy! We phoned the landlord a million times and eventually he sent some guys round to sort it out. (Only after two days confined to the flat waiting on the off chance someone might turn up. Grrr.) I was expecting some sort of professional, but no… we got two stooges. One tiny old man with a ruddy face and missing teeth who muttered in the thickest accent ever that I struggled to understand. The other was a bit younger, a bit taller, and a bit more sociable, but wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt covered in white paint, his hands black with dirt and ash and god knows what. So when the landlord said he’s send “some guys” around to sort it out, he really meant it. Hmmm.

They turned up at the door with a ladder, some strange plastering tool and a big blue rope, and immediately went up into the attic/roof. At first I couldn’t figure out what the rope was for, but then I saw big chunks of dirt being thrown from outside my window and realized one of them had actually climbed out the skylight and down the roof – the rope was probably tied around his waist for his safety, though I seriously doubt it would have saved him had he fallen. He cleaned a virtual garden of overgrowth from the gutter, and came back in. They reckoned the blockage had forced rainwater inside the roof for the past year or so, and it had all collected above the water heater and only now began to seep in. But they couldn’t be sure, because they couldn’t actually reach that part of the roof without going through our ceiling. They climbed up inside the water heater enclosure and had an argument about whether it was collected rainwater or a leaking pipe, then decided the only way to tell for sure – and to empty/dry the place out – was to cut a big hole in the ceiling. So they took out a trusty Stanley knife and started cutting. Huge pieces of black rotted wood came raining down onto my kitchen floor, followed by muddy streams of water. Joy! They stuffed the hole with a towel, which was quickly drenched, and cleaned up the mess a bit before leaving me with it, promising to return next week to re-examine and mend and paint and clean. Yeah, sure. In the meantime we have an ugly gaping hole in our kitchen, which is dripping even more rapidly than before and doesn’t seem to be letting up. And as for the electrics… well, supposedly it’s safe to take a shower, for although the wires and electrical box containing the switch are completely drenched, there’s no exposed live wires in there. And besides, this much water must have been building up for months – if we were gonna be electrocuted, it would have already happened by now. That was their logic. Hmmmm….

So that’s been my excitement of late. That, and the fact that I can now work. Well, technically. I spent much of my day Monday at immigration, waiting for my extension of stay visa, the final hurdle. I had made an ‘appointment’ which just means a three-hour time slot in which you, and 20 other people, are allowed to come in and queue as one immigration officer slowly assesses each insanely complex case. Ack. I told Richard we should get there as early as possible as I suspected we might have to queue, but no… he suggested leaving 15 minutes before the appointment, and was late on top of that. So by the time we got there, there were 10 people ahead of us, and we ended up sitting there for an hour and a half before we were finally called to the first window, which was located in an area with least privacy, in the center of the waiting room, so that everyone there could hear the intricacies of your case. Ha! There were five other windows, winding down a corridor out of earshot, but those windows were for boring stuff like the cashier’s desk and the passport stamping desk. The embarrassing personal stories interviews were all conducted in public. Which went a long way towards staving off mind-numbing boredom during our wait, of course. It also infuriated me after awhile as I realized just how stupid some people are, yet manage to get away with it.

For instance, there was this one woman who came to the UK several years ago on a work permit with some hotel chain. The original permit, which was stamped in her passport, expired in February 2003, and apparently she got an extension before switching jobs to work for the NHS, which required another work permit entirely. So now she was asking for an extension of stay for some other reason. Yet she didn’t have any documentation for the two most recent work permits. What sort of moron turns up for an immigration interview without, at the very LEAST, copies of the official documents allowing you to be in the country??? I can understand maybe not having some of the other random superfluous documents, like your council tax bills or lease or what have you. But DUH! The amazing thing is, she got the bloody visa. He actually gave it to her. My god.

Then there was the young Glaswegian and his very obvious, very old, Cambodian MAIL ORDER BRIDE. He was there with his father, who took control of the proceedings about halfway through in a very scary assertive way. The woman spoke hardly a word of English and it was all very awkward. I’m not sure which type of visa she was applying for, but they were also hopelessly unprepared. I think she had to establish residency for at least two years, but they couldn’t produce a single document with her name and address on it. The immigration officer was being insanely generous, willing to accept ANY piece of mail, but they didn’t have one. So eventually, after about 20 minutes wrangling, they had to make a new appointment and come back with more documents.

Needless to say, I was prepared with every type of document they could possibly want, and in the end didn’t have to produce anything. Since I did everything by the book and applied for the fiancée visa and all that, I was able to breeze through. But not before a little mix-up. First of all, he skimmed through my passport really quickly, stopping at the page with my work permit stamp, not even getting to the page with my fiancée visa in it. He seemed ready to approve the visa then and there, but stopped to ask a few questions, like why I was bothering to apply for it if I had a work permit. I explained that my work permit was technically no longer valid, as I quit my job. He said he appreciated my honesty, and said he would have to ask a few questions to establish that I wasn’t getting married just to prevent deportation, etc etc. When he was halfway through the schpeal, I pointed out that we already went through all that when I applied for the fiancée visa, at which point he turned the page, saw the visa and said “Well, will you look at that! I suppose I should have checked that first eh?” Lordy. I realized I could have gotten away with so much… first of all, I probably could have stuck around for years on my invalid work permit. Or I could have at least skipped the whole expensive fiancée visa process. And he didn’t even bat an eye at the fact that had I been sticking around for the past six months on an expired work permit, I would have been here illegally. He never checked to make sure I left the country at any point. Argh! Ah well. Better safe than sorry eh? And at least now it’s all over. A mere three hours later I emerged with my permission to stay and work. Now all I need is a job…

And I’m glad to say, there’s been some progress on that front. Yeah! Not a proper job as yet – I haven’t heard from any of the million jobs I’ve applied for, nor even from the temp agencies I registered with – but I got a few subbing shifts next week. Yay! My ballsy move emailing the chief sports sub at a national tabloid after seeing his contact details on a media networking site totally paid off! Go figure! Problem is, I’ll be subbing on the sports desk and I know NOTHING about sports. I wouldn’t recognize a misspelled name or know any team nicknames for headline-writing purposes… hell, even the writing style for sports stories is in a category all its own, with weird use of prepositions and awkward phrases that just sound wrong to me. That coupled with the fact that I’ve never actually subbed at a big paper before, makes me really, really nervous. I’m sure I can do the job – at least I hope so – but… eek! I hope I can convince them of that, despite my fears. Because it would be SO GREAT if I could somehow make this a long term thing. I hear the money is good – I didn’t dare ask over the phone when he offered me the shifts – and I suspect the work itself is pretty easy. With any luck, they’ll have me doing really simple tedious tasks like typing in all the racing results or something. Easy, no pressure, that’s what I need. Fingers crossed!

In other news, I think I’m coming down with a cold. Argh. I HATE being sick, and the timing is terrible. We had a very sociable weekend planned, culminating in a big gig for Richard tomorrow, the first one I’ll actually be able to attend! Very exciting! If I have to be sniffling all the way through, I won’t be a very happy camper. Grrrr…

Is everyone as freaked out by the latest end-is-nigh scenario as I am? Eek!

Although I’m generally excited by natural disasters, this one seems a bit… much. Half of the US obliterated? Ten years of ash cover, causing widescale loss of crops and wildlife? Al Qaeda and co. must be psyched. I, however, am not. I watched the documentary a few weeks ago now, and it is still lingering with me, in the form of clenches of unease deep in my gut, followed by deep reflection about the meaning of life. Yeah. I haven’t come to any conclusions, really, but I did decide it was high time to wash the windows. They’re getting mouldy. Gross.