Moving forward!

Today I received the news that I’ve been dying to hear:  “Your visa has been issued!”

Success! 

I got up, did my victory dance around my chair.  Threw my hands up and my head back and breathed THE biggest sigh of relief, ever.  Honestly, it feels like a door has just been opened and I can continue on my journey.  I can move forward.  I can look forward with certainty and with intent!  I can plan.  I have motivation. The past 2 weeks have been a slow kind of hell.  I’ve been waiting anxiously and my patience with the world in general has grown very, VERY thin as of late.  I’ve found myself in the foulest of moods.  Like on PMS but armed with a metaphorical rocket launcher ready to blow whatever I came across.

My mother asking me about my plans for the weekend – BOOM

A cold caller – BOOM

Slow internet connection – BOOM

Pla-Plah chomping on my thumb whilst trying to feed him – BOOM

Sunshine – BOOM

I mean I was just a big grump and took it out on people.  It’s no excuse.  Yesterday I found myself lying in bed that evening feeling tired of being angry and anxious.  It was a strange moment because I just decided to call out to God/the Universe/the World/Anyone and ask for my visa to be granted.  It was an angry and whiney and desperate request but it was an honest one.  I was really serious that evening.  I think part of me was just so tired to this waiting game that part of me threw that request out with hopes that someone was listening.

So back to the present – and I was totally surprised to read that email this morning and even more shocked that I got an answer.  Me, the cynic, the realist, in a last ditch, hail mary type of prayer?!  And have it actually answered?!  Sure it could have been coincidence…but with my lack of luck with anything visa related, I certainly feel that someone out there was listening that night.

Fish: Weekend Musings

Fish woes

(You know you have a slow weekend when…) 

Since my mother acquired “Pla-Plah”, the oscar cichlid suffering from swim bladder and hole-in-the-head disease, I’ve been working on trying to cure the little bugger.  Oscar cichlid fish are rather aggressive types, and are rather interesting to keep.  This one, in particular, has got a passive-aggressive streak.  Curious in a fish.  Seriously, if he doesn’t like something – like changing the water – he’ll float on his side and pretend he’s dead.  Go figure.

Anyhow I wanted to tackle the swim bladder first as it was related to his ability to digest food.  The poor fish had about a quarter of its body sticking out of the surface of the water that he had to spend a lot of energy trying to stay submerged so his back wouldn’t dry out.  Well, I scoured the internet looking for a cause and a cure.  Lo and behold, I found both.  Swim bladder is related to digestion, where basically he couldn’t digest everything his ate properly because he had a lot of gas in him.  Or the fish was constipated.  Really.  The cure: Peas.  Yeah I had to read that again after laughing. 

So here I am thinking, “Great!  A few peas should do it and he’ll be fine!”.  Not exactly at first.  For one, peas sink and a fish that can’t dive well can’t eat food that rests at the bottom of the tank.  Secondly when he did manage to chomp on one he immediately spat it out.  Picky, picky.  He did eat regular fish pellets with gusto – a healthy appetite is a good sign that he’s still ok.  So what I did was mash the peas up and coat the fish pellets  so that he’d have to eat his food and the peas.  After three days of doing this Pla-Plah sank a good 1/2 inch and seemed able to dive better.  2 weeks later, he’s swimming beneath the surface but still floating about and inch beneath the surface.  So not quite out of the wood work yet.  I’m trying to get him to a state where he doesn’t float automatically up but can choose to float to the surface. 

Now for hole-in-the-head disease.  Again, Google search revealed that no one knows quite what causes this disease.  There are a number of factors that can play a part.  And there isn’t a cure, just treatment to slow it down – vitamins.  Other than changing the water more frequently (once a week instead of fortnightly), I’ve powdered a regular multivitamin and mixed it into the peas.  I’m trying to find fish vitamins to make it easier to feed this guy but so far, nothing yet.  Only time will tell if the vitamins and water changes will be enough to keep that hole from getting bigger.

Sheesh – all that for a fish?!

In the dark: How UK Visa continues to be rubbish

RANT:  Honestly I cannot fathom how many useless hoops of bureaucracy I need to go through just so that some ignorant admin drone can tick the boxes off.  Seriously applying for UK Immigration is like trying to cross a frozen lake that has thawed.  You need to be on the pieces that they tell you to stand on and move when they tell you to.  That is…IF they tell you.  See, these powers that be have failed in informing their applicants of yet another change to their ever expanding list of requirements.  This one is about your parents.  Should you need to use your parents as sources for financial support (and let’s be honest, with international student fees, you’d be fool not to) you need to provide some kind of document to prove who your parents are.  No problem, IF they let everyone know.  But they haven’t!  Their webpages are not updated nor is their guidance booklet/download.  And they would have the audacity to blame the applicant for not knowing. 

I was in Edmonton on Monday for my biometrics appointment.  I had all the necessary documentation with the exception of this one.  Honestly, I could have cried I was so mad.  I checked religiously every day the website for updates on any changes and there was nothing online about needing official papers to prove your parentage – only the premise that students are now allowed to use the bank details of their parents.  Nothing else.  I looked and searched the website that was given and the page itself wasn’t updated.  So how the hell was I suppose to know?

I loathe them.  I don’t hate many things in life but this establishment I abhor.  They implement a system that they haven’t really thought through and, when implemented, shows some serious flaws.  So it’s ad-hoc / waste more tax payers money/ make more requirements up to cover our asses / type of approach that really gets me so frustrated.  It’s the people like me that try so hard to play by their rules and go through the process that gets screwed. 

So I’m hoping that an old school baptismal certificate will do as I’m running out of time.  The other alternative is to hope that they haven’t changed the money requirments.  On that basis alone will I be granted a visa.  But seriously, just to cover their mess I included my baptismal certificate and my birth certificate.  If that isn’t enough I have no idea what is.  And then I will let them know just how rubbish they are!