And So It Begins

Paperwork is such a joyous thing, isn't it?

I expect there's a lot more of it to come, but over the past couple of days I have had the absolute joy of filling in forms for both my visa, and my passport renewal (which I probably should have tackled much earlier).

The American visa forms were especially amusing. Along with the three questions asking about my terrorist affiliations, and several others on my various torturing, money laundering and prostitution habits, was my personal favourite; "Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?"

I know they're all very conscious of security and all, but I expect if a genocidal terrorist was stupid enough to actually tick the yes box, they wouldn't be able to get their head around the rest of the form.

Tomorrow (assuming I manage to convince someone with a current passport to agree I exist) I'll head into the passport office to hand in all the forms and get my new passport on its way. I'll probably have to go past twice, as I think the photos I got done for my visa aren't good enough, even if I chop them up a bit. But I might as well check first, rather than fork out twenty bucks or so for some new ones. The passport itself is already costing over $150.

What with that, and the final payment I made yesterday, not to mention the new laptop, and my current state of unemployment, my bank balance is not looking quite as cheerful as it once was. Ah well. I'll get fun stories to share with you all instead. A very worthy investment.

I now have a few definite dates as well, which is rather nice. I abandon New Zealand on the 14th of August, to arrive in New Jersey, where I will be for my training course until the 18th, when I fly off to my new home in California. My program is scheduled to finish on the 15thof August 2012, and my plans for then are still a little fuzzy, and largely dependant on how eager I am to get home. I'll probably travel about the States for a month, until my visa runs out, then fly onwards or homewards. They'll pay for a flight either back to Auckland, or on to London, and currently the plan is to go over and spend a bit of time in the UK, maybe some more of Europe, too. It'll be good to see my grandparents, Anastasia, and a few others who I might be borrowing couches from. At some point I'll probably come home, but I do have a British passport, so I could potentially stay and work there for quite some time, if I feel like it.

Those shall be decisions for another far away day.