We arrived back in the US at the end of the first week of February. The point of entry (PoE) we used was Los Angeles because the airline we wanted to fly across the US with didn't fly direct from San Francisco. I was sort of nervous when we got there because everything had been such a trial up until that point that I was expecting something to go wrong or to have to wait around for hours to be processed as a fiancée to a US Citizen on a K-1 visa. Much to my surprise and delight it was the easiest and quickest part of the process thus far. The immigration officer opened my sealed envelope with all my documents in it from the US consulate in Auckland and asked a few questions then took my fingerprints and a photo, stamped my passport, told me we had 90 days to marry and let me through.
It took us a few days to manage to get to the Town Clerk's office to apply for the marriage license and then there is a 3 day wait for the license to be issued. The day that it was ready we had booked an appointment with the Town Clerk to officiate the marriage and we were married that very morning on 16 February. It was just the 4 of us: the Town Clerk herself, my (now) father-in-law, the groom and me. We couldn't stop grinning at each other, hubby and I, throughout the ceremony. We just wore comfortable clothes and funnily enough I was wearing the very same top that I wore when I first met my husband back in 2010 at the airport. He had joked in the past that I should wear that top and some jeans when we got married because I had expressed how wasteful I felt it was to buy a lavish dress I would only wear once. The words that the Town Clerk (who had the same name as my late mother-in-law) used were beautiful and religiously ambiguous enough that we were comfortable and pleased with them. The Town Clerk then gave us 3 official copies of our marriage license with our brand-new name on it. We both changed our surname to a portmanteau combination of our father's surnames. I won't list it here since, as far as I know, we are the only two people in the world to have that surname.
Since days before the ceremony I had begun to prepare my Adjustment of Status (from K-1 fiancée to immigrant/permanent resident wife of a US Citizen) application documents. It's been about 2 weeks now since we were married and I finally, yesterday, sent off my package with all the documentation needed for this next stage. The package was huge and it took a long time to complete. While I was in the process of preparing it I actually applied for a Social Security Number (like an IRD number for NZ readers) and it arrived very quickly so I was able to include that information in my application. Now that I have an SSN I can apply for a bank account and a driver's license. I've never driven a car before but I have drive motorbikes and scooters for a few years so I think I'll be a good, defensive driver. I find it hard to imagine being comfortable driving a car - they're so big! I feel like it would be hard to gauge how close to other cars, the edge of the road and other objects each side of the car would be while driving. I don't even want to think about parking yet.
I'm not authorised to work or study in the US yet - those privileges are part of the approved permanent resident status perks - so I'm still chafing for that right. The next step in the process is to hear if US Citizen and Immigration Services receives and accepts my adjustment of status. Once that happens then they will give me an appointment for biometrics. After that I may or may not have another interview to establish that my marriage in genuine and I'm not an undesirable immigrant. I think that's their reasoning, anyway, but they don't give any details on the purpose of much of their requests. Anyway, hopefully one interview is enough and that will be the final hurdle until I have to renew my permanent residency 21 months (it lasts 24 but you have to apply again 90 days before it runs out) and ask for the conditions to be removed.
Immigration to the US is certainly not for the faint of heart or people who can't stomach paperwork. If I had known all the work involved ahead of time then I might have looked for another way to be with husband. But, as it stands, I still don't know how we could have done it an easier way. Our circumstances don't leave much opportunity for flexibility. Hopefully things will change and there may be a time, if we so decide, that we can move back to New Zealand. But the foreseeable future is here so I guess I should start getting used to it.
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, September 12, 2011
Technology of Convenience
I last left New Zealand on 31 August 2011 which was 1 day before the new legislation "Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011" came into effect. Copyright holders could use information collected as of 12 August 2011 to prosecute, however. Still, my name has never been on an ISP account and I wasn't a fan of using peer-to-peer file sharing software which is what the law targeted. I wasn't immune to the concern about the law, though, so it was something of a relief to be leaving the country when I was (avoiding the Rugby World Cup was also a huge bonus). I wasn't glad because I thought I could go to a place with more lax copyright law, not at all, but because I was heading somewhere that has all the services that I need without having to break the law.
In the USA I can watch House M.D. and new episodes of The Simpsons on Fox's websites. I can watch free content directly from the copyright holder themselves; all legally. Sure, the copyright holder chooses which episodes to make available to me at which time, each site has about 5 episodes available at any given time and they rotate them, but it's still incredibly convenient. In NZ the closest I came was TV 3's "TV on Demand" which usually just made available a few episodes from earlier in the day or week. Usually the shows were NZ made shows too, not the property of big US copyright holders, so there was a limited variety from what I recall. So, to sum up: in the USA I don't need to break copyright law (even if I wanted to) because my needs are met with free media directly and legally from the source.
Now, NZ readers out there might think: "But wait a minute, what about your monthly bandwidth limit? If you're watching so much online then you'll be downgraded to dial-up speed or charged a mint for exceeding your limit!" My answer to that: bandwidth limits don't exist here. Fiancé told me that some of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tried to introduce limits, individually, and it would just cause their customers to migrate en mass to another ISP. Basically, unless all ISPs introduced limits at once then it could never happen because the ISP that does loses too large a portion of their customers. Sweet deal, huh?
Cable television here is a lot better than in NZ, too, in my opinion. I've been in a household where we had Sky TV but, with the exception of a few cartoons that were repeats of repeats of repeats, I found that there was never anything to watch. Or I would turn the TV on at the end of a movie that I really wanted to see or end up watching half a movie because I only caught the end of it. I know TiVo has come to NZ now, and other recording devices of a similiar nature, but there's still not as much good and recent content as in the US. And, because a lot of the good content is owned by US copyright holders, there likely never will be. In this household there are 3 TiVo machines, 3 widescreen TVs and 3 people. Excessive, I know. By hey, fiancé and I at least share 1 TiVo while the man paying for it all (bless his soul) monopolizes the other 2. Far be it from me to complain; fiancé and I watch many of the same shows and we're both happy with this arrangement. Fiancé was already recording Futurama (a rare show in NZ), The Daily Show, Colbert Report and he set it up to record House M.D. for me. There is, sadly, a lack of British shows available. There's BBC America but when I tried watching that once it was during a marathon weekend of Top Gear. Hmm, no thanks. I shall investigate and see if the TiVo can't pick out a few gems for me, however.
Not all is sunshine and cupcakes in terms of US technology, however. In the US it's normal practice (and they all do it) for Mobile Service Providers to charge customers to receive text messages. When I found this out, since I had previously thought that this only applied to when International text messages were received, I was flabbergasted. I can get unlimited text plans here for around $20 US but otherwise texts are $0.20 each way so, effectively, $0.40 per text! In NZ my phone company charged me $0.09 NZ ($0.07 US at today's exchange rate) per text message sent - nationally or internationally - and nothing to receive text messages even if they were international. They would also give me a number of free national texts each time I topped up my pre-paid account and, because I was mostly sending international texts to fiancé, I can honestly say that I never used all of the free national texts that I got. I usually had about 700-900 free texts just sitting there waiting to be used, though they did expire after 30 days, so all I had to do was pay for the international texts. To be honest, that company was an anomaly because most other phone companies charged $0.20 NZ per text send, nothing for receiving texts and $0.30 NZ for international or Pxt (picture) messages.
Another sore point with me about US phone companies is that they don't have to unlock a phone when a customer leaves them. Say I purchase a phone from a company and, since it's their hardware, they make me sign a contract. I have to pay to leave them if I want to go before the contract is up which is pretty standard (though scummy) and is done in NZ also. If I then want to move to another company with the phone I purchased from the last one then I have to ask the first company to unlock my phone so that it can be used on the other company's network and plan. Legally, they are under no obligation to do so. I've never come across this in NZ. Perhaps they do it with smart phones but I've never bothered to own one so I wouldn't know. I like to give my old handset away or have it spare when I upgrade so this would be a major pain in the backside. Fortunately, I still really like the phone that I got in NZ and since it's not locked I can get a sim card from a US phone company here and pop that in without even signing a contract since they can just add my phone to fiancé's contract with them. I could go pre-paid but I figure this way is less hassle and there's just 1 bill to deal with each month. It seems to work out a bit cheaper too, from what research I've done, so it's probably the way to go.
Games are ridiculously cheap here too. Even if you factor in the exchange rate, console and PC games (especially pre-owned) are incredibly cheap when compared to NZ prices. A game that would retail in NZ for $80 I can get a pre-owned copy of for $10 US. And the beautiful thing about my main console of choice is that I don't have to deal with any region lock issues. Lack of bandwidth limits also makes purchasing music and games online to download much more manageable. Supposedly, electronics are much more affordable here than in NZ but I have yet to find evidence of this. I was (window) shopping online for a netbook and found that the prices seems comparable to what I recall from NZ. Then again, I didn't compare specific models so fiancé may be correct in his claim that PCs and their parts are much less expensive here.
In the USA I can watch House M.D. and new episodes of The Simpsons on Fox's websites. I can watch free content directly from the copyright holder themselves; all legally. Sure, the copyright holder chooses which episodes to make available to me at which time, each site has about 5 episodes available at any given time and they rotate them, but it's still incredibly convenient. In NZ the closest I came was TV 3's "TV on Demand" which usually just made available a few episodes from earlier in the day or week. Usually the shows were NZ made shows too, not the property of big US copyright holders, so there was a limited variety from what I recall. So, to sum up: in the USA I don't need to break copyright law (even if I wanted to) because my needs are met with free media directly and legally from the source.
Now, NZ readers out there might think: "But wait a minute, what about your monthly bandwidth limit? If you're watching so much online then you'll be downgraded to dial-up speed or charged a mint for exceeding your limit!" My answer to that: bandwidth limits don't exist here. Fiancé told me that some of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tried to introduce limits, individually, and it would just cause their customers to migrate en mass to another ISP. Basically, unless all ISPs introduced limits at once then it could never happen because the ISP that does loses too large a portion of their customers. Sweet deal, huh?
Cable television here is a lot better than in NZ, too, in my opinion. I've been in a household where we had Sky TV but, with the exception of a few cartoons that were repeats of repeats of repeats, I found that there was never anything to watch. Or I would turn the TV on at the end of a movie that I really wanted to see or end up watching half a movie because I only caught the end of it. I know TiVo has come to NZ now, and other recording devices of a similiar nature, but there's still not as much good and recent content as in the US. And, because a lot of the good content is owned by US copyright holders, there likely never will be. In this household there are 3 TiVo machines, 3 widescreen TVs and 3 people. Excessive, I know. By hey, fiancé and I at least share 1 TiVo while the man paying for it all (bless his soul) monopolizes the other 2. Far be it from me to complain; fiancé and I watch many of the same shows and we're both happy with this arrangement. Fiancé was already recording Futurama (a rare show in NZ), The Daily Show, Colbert Report and he set it up to record House M.D. for me. There is, sadly, a lack of British shows available. There's BBC America but when I tried watching that once it was during a marathon weekend of Top Gear. Hmm, no thanks. I shall investigate and see if the TiVo can't pick out a few gems for me, however.
Not all is sunshine and cupcakes in terms of US technology, however. In the US it's normal practice (and they all do it) for Mobile Service Providers to charge customers to receive text messages. When I found this out, since I had previously thought that this only applied to when International text messages were received, I was flabbergasted. I can get unlimited text plans here for around $20 US but otherwise texts are $0.20 each way so, effectively, $0.40 per text! In NZ my phone company charged me $0.09 NZ ($0.07 US at today's exchange rate) per text message sent - nationally or internationally - and nothing to receive text messages even if they were international. They would also give me a number of free national texts each time I topped up my pre-paid account and, because I was mostly sending international texts to fiancé, I can honestly say that I never used all of the free national texts that I got. I usually had about 700-900 free texts just sitting there waiting to be used, though they did expire after 30 days, so all I had to do was pay for the international texts. To be honest, that company was an anomaly because most other phone companies charged $0.20 NZ per text send, nothing for receiving texts and $0.30 NZ for international or Pxt (picture) messages.
Another sore point with me about US phone companies is that they don't have to unlock a phone when a customer leaves them. Say I purchase a phone from a company and, since it's their hardware, they make me sign a contract. I have to pay to leave them if I want to go before the contract is up which is pretty standard (though scummy) and is done in NZ also. If I then want to move to another company with the phone I purchased from the last one then I have to ask the first company to unlock my phone so that it can be used on the other company's network and plan. Legally, they are under no obligation to do so. I've never come across this in NZ. Perhaps they do it with smart phones but I've never bothered to own one so I wouldn't know. I like to give my old handset away or have it spare when I upgrade so this would be a major pain in the backside. Fortunately, I still really like the phone that I got in NZ and since it's not locked I can get a sim card from a US phone company here and pop that in without even signing a contract since they can just add my phone to fiancé's contract with them. I could go pre-paid but I figure this way is less hassle and there's just 1 bill to deal with each month. It seems to work out a bit cheaper too, from what research I've done, so it's probably the way to go.
Games are ridiculously cheap here too. Even if you factor in the exchange rate, console and PC games (especially pre-owned) are incredibly cheap when compared to NZ prices. A game that would retail in NZ for $80 I can get a pre-owned copy of for $10 US. And the beautiful thing about my main console of choice is that I don't have to deal with any region lock issues. Lack of bandwidth limits also makes purchasing music and games online to download much more manageable. Supposedly, electronics are much more affordable here than in NZ but I have yet to find evidence of this. I was (window) shopping online for a netbook and found that the prices seems comparable to what I recall from NZ. Then again, I didn't compare specific models so fiancé may be correct in his claim that PCs and their parts are much less expensive here.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
State of the Culinary Arts
In my last post I mentioned that I've been cooking more often in the past couple of weeks since my arrival than I had been earlier in the year. Part of the reason for this is that I want to make a lifestyle change to stick to foods that are safe for me and won't make me sick (because of IBS) and another part is the freedom of the comparatively large kitchen that I have at my disposal. For a while now I've been wanting to make a post about shopping, cooking and eating in the US because I've noticed a fair amount of differences between those habits here and in NZ. Some of these points may have to do with income levels, State differences and family habits/culture but this is my experience.
Firstly, shopping in the US is interesting. Even in the normal everyday supermarket I can get Soy Cream Cheese - which is incredibly delicious and safe for me! There are more flavours of soy ice cream than I'm used to (cookies and cream included) and in our local grocery store there is a Dunkin' Donuts. I've actually found, to my surprise, that I can eat the type of donuts that Honey Dew Donuts and Dunkin' Donuts sell. I've also found that strawberry frosted donuts with sprinkles are so good that I want to eat too many of them. These stores are everywhere and they have drive through windows. Oh, that's another thing; there are drive through windows for pretty much everything. In Wellington, the capital of NZ, there were 2 stores with drive through windows in the central Wellington and close suburbs. They were both US franchise fast food restaurants. Here you have all the fast food places with drive through windows, a café has one, the pharmacies have them, there are drive-through ATMs and you can get little electronic boxes that attach to your windscreen to automatically pay at toll booths. It seems, in the USA, all you have to do is drive through.
Back to the supermarkets now. I have never seen so many frozen dinners in one place at one time! There are at least 4 aisles of vertical freezers with vegetables, pre-cooked meats, ready made dinners, ice cream, waffles, donuts, gluten free foods and etcetera in our local grocery store. About a half of one of those freezers is filled with microwave meals. There is another freezer for seafood, though it's a bit smaller, and most of the back wall of the store is refrigeration for meat, dairy, perishable soy and, yet again, more mircowave dinners that don't need to be stored frozen. Compare this to my local supermarkets; the larger of which usually had 2 freezers for vegetables, pre-cooked meat and instant foods. The instant foods took up about a quarter to a third of 1 freezer. These freezers were also much smaller; they were the type you look into from above. And it's not that this area is more populated; Franklin has a population of 31,635 as of the 2010 US Census and Wellington City has a population of 192,800 (and those are just those that live in the city, not those that live in the greater Wellington region, many people commute into the city for work for other activities). The reason for the difference is, in my humble opinion, that there are more supermarkets in Wellington city than there are in Franklin. A lot of Franklin is spread out and you can't walk or bus anywhere without first getting a ride to a footpath that goes somewhere other than around the block or to a bus station. Downtown Franklin doesn't contain a supermarket (they're too big here for one to fit) and they tend to be in big malls with a dozen other stores.
Secondly, I wanted to tackle the topic of fast food and restaurant meals. The US has something of a reputation, at least in NZ, of creating a habit of large portion sizes. While it's true that you can get a giant drink from a fast food restaurant; it actually seems that most franchises give portions around the same size as those of US food chains in NZ. Now, non-fast food restaurants are another story. When I went to a steak and seafood place nearby they gave giant portions. Future-in-law said that the reason for this is that if a restaurant serves normal, moderate sized portions that people would give themselves at home they are suddenly assumed to be stingy and they would get a bad reputation. He said that many people, himself included, take half the meal home to have the next day or at another time. There are people who eat the whole meal then and there but I think every country has people who over-indulge at least some of the time.
And lastly, the adventure of this family's kitchen. I have to tangent back to the super market for a moment here to explain a detail I missed earlier. There seems to be, on almost all items that I went to buy, a constant discount deal on buying in bulk. For example, if you buy 10 bottles of iced tea you can get them all for $10. I'm used to seeing 2 for $5, and there are a few of those deals too, but I've never seen a bulk deal for 10 of an item in an NZ supermarket. In fact, from what I recall, most NZ supermarkets actually restricted the number of an item shoppers could purchase and it was usually maximum of 12. Perhaps the enticement of a discount for buying in bulk can be partly to blame for the state of the kitchen in this house. There is, as I put it to fiancé the other day: "More of everything you could ever need or use before it expires" in this kitchen. There are two large closets which are used as pantries and they're completely full of cans, packets, boxes and cartons of food. There's half a shelf of plastic re-sealable storage bags, tin foil, wax paper and parchment baking paper. There is an entire, albeit small, shelf dedicated to pre-made frosting, muffin and cake mixes. There is an entire very large shelf covered in herbs and spices in jars and zip-lock bags. It's great to have so much to work with but the problem is that I don't know I have all these things unless I manage to hunt them out through the 3 rows of cans on one shelf or the stacked trays of spice jars.
When I asked fiancé if he had ever heard of the fad of eating your way to a bare cupboard; he said that he had not. I'm not in the least part surprised by this. I would love to do this with this household's kitchen but I foresee some issues. One is that fiancé, due to a physical condition causing heightened senses, is a very fussy eater. There are foods in the cupboard that he used to eat but now won't. Another is that I can't eat a lot of what is in the cupboards because of my own health issues. Perhaps, if we can find no one at home who will consume them, some of the cans will have to be donated. We'll see what happens, and if I can get anyone to co-operate with me, as time goes on.
Firstly, shopping in the US is interesting. Even in the normal everyday supermarket I can get Soy Cream Cheese - which is incredibly delicious and safe for me! There are more flavours of soy ice cream than I'm used to (cookies and cream included) and in our local grocery store there is a Dunkin' Donuts. I've actually found, to my surprise, that I can eat the type of donuts that Honey Dew Donuts and Dunkin' Donuts sell. I've also found that strawberry frosted donuts with sprinkles are so good that I want to eat too many of them. These stores are everywhere and they have drive through windows. Oh, that's another thing; there are drive through windows for pretty much everything. In Wellington, the capital of NZ, there were 2 stores with drive through windows in the central Wellington and close suburbs. They were both US franchise fast food restaurants. Here you have all the fast food places with drive through windows, a café has one, the pharmacies have them, there are drive-through ATMs and you can get little electronic boxes that attach to your windscreen to automatically pay at toll booths. It seems, in the USA, all you have to do is drive through.
Back to the supermarkets now. I have never seen so many frozen dinners in one place at one time! There are at least 4 aisles of vertical freezers with vegetables, pre-cooked meats, ready made dinners, ice cream, waffles, donuts, gluten free foods and etcetera in our local grocery store. About a half of one of those freezers is filled with microwave meals. There is another freezer for seafood, though it's a bit smaller, and most of the back wall of the store is refrigeration for meat, dairy, perishable soy and, yet again, more mircowave dinners that don't need to be stored frozen. Compare this to my local supermarkets; the larger of which usually had 2 freezers for vegetables, pre-cooked meat and instant foods. The instant foods took up about a quarter to a third of 1 freezer. These freezers were also much smaller; they were the type you look into from above. And it's not that this area is more populated; Franklin has a population of 31,635 as of the 2010 US Census and Wellington City has a population of 192,800 (and those are just those that live in the city, not those that live in the greater Wellington region, many people commute into the city for work for other activities). The reason for the difference is, in my humble opinion, that there are more supermarkets in Wellington city than there are in Franklin. A lot of Franklin is spread out and you can't walk or bus anywhere without first getting a ride to a footpath that goes somewhere other than around the block or to a bus station. Downtown Franklin doesn't contain a supermarket (they're too big here for one to fit) and they tend to be in big malls with a dozen other stores.
Secondly, I wanted to tackle the topic of fast food and restaurant meals. The US has something of a reputation, at least in NZ, of creating a habit of large portion sizes. While it's true that you can get a giant drink from a fast food restaurant; it actually seems that most franchises give portions around the same size as those of US food chains in NZ. Now, non-fast food restaurants are another story. When I went to a steak and seafood place nearby they gave giant portions. Future-in-law said that the reason for this is that if a restaurant serves normal, moderate sized portions that people would give themselves at home they are suddenly assumed to be stingy and they would get a bad reputation. He said that many people, himself included, take half the meal home to have the next day or at another time. There are people who eat the whole meal then and there but I think every country has people who over-indulge at least some of the time.
And lastly, the adventure of this family's kitchen. I have to tangent back to the super market for a moment here to explain a detail I missed earlier. There seems to be, on almost all items that I went to buy, a constant discount deal on buying in bulk. For example, if you buy 10 bottles of iced tea you can get them all for $10. I'm used to seeing 2 for $5, and there are a few of those deals too, but I've never seen a bulk deal for 10 of an item in an NZ supermarket. In fact, from what I recall, most NZ supermarkets actually restricted the number of an item shoppers could purchase and it was usually maximum of 12. Perhaps the enticement of a discount for buying in bulk can be partly to blame for the state of the kitchen in this house. There is, as I put it to fiancé the other day: "More of everything you could ever need or use before it expires" in this kitchen. There are two large closets which are used as pantries and they're completely full of cans, packets, boxes and cartons of food. There's half a shelf of plastic re-sealable storage bags, tin foil, wax paper and parchment baking paper. There is an entire, albeit small, shelf dedicated to pre-made frosting, muffin and cake mixes. There is an entire very large shelf covered in herbs and spices in jars and zip-lock bags. It's great to have so much to work with but the problem is that I don't know I have all these things unless I manage to hunt them out through the 3 rows of cans on one shelf or the stacked trays of spice jars.
When I asked fiancé if he had ever heard of the fad of eating your way to a bare cupboard; he said that he had not. I'm not in the least part surprised by this. I would love to do this with this household's kitchen but I foresee some issues. One is that fiancé, due to a physical condition causing heightened senses, is a very fussy eater. There are foods in the cupboard that he used to eat but now won't. Another is that I can't eat a lot of what is in the cupboards because of my own health issues. Perhaps, if we can find no one at home who will consume them, some of the cans will have to be donated. We'll see what happens, and if I can get anyone to co-operate with me, as time goes on.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Day 5
We ended up waking up super early (about 6am, which is early by my standards) and went off to church for the 10am service only to find that there were around half a dozen people and dogs there sitting outside in the sweltering (by my standards) heat. It turned out to be the last "Summer Service" which was for blessing the pets of congregation members. I guess it was held outside to prevent pet accidents indoors but I wasn't able to hang around in the sun so fiancé and I went off to do some shopping. A decade ago I never would have entertained the idea of buying, let alone wearing, short-shorts. I'm sorry, teenage-self, but it cannot be avoided. I obtained 2 pairs of tiny shorts (1 of which are jeans shorts but they're actually quite tasteful and do not, I repeat do not, have frayed bottoms for that "I just cut my jeans into shorts" look. Perish the thought!), and a couple each of rayon tops and dresses with the hope that I might survive my furtive trips outside during the end of this summer. The Gods only know what I will do next summer, immigration willing, when I am subjected to the height of a Massachusetts summer.
Jet-lag is making me lethargic and my compulsion to be useful is warring with my lack of energy to actually put into action all the cleaning, tidying and cooking plans that are floating around my head like rain-clouds on the horizon of a picnic. I just finished an IT diploma more than a month early, you'd think I might have some sense of achievement from that, but all I can think is that I'm not supporting myself financially and not making myself useful enough. Maybe the tiredness is making me a bit mental too.
None of these feelings are helped at all by the phone call I just made to the Auckland US Consulate's Visa Services call-centre when I learnt that getting my immigration visa sorted out is even more involved than I had expected. I have to leave the North American Continent and surrounding Islands before the end of my holiday visa, not just the USA but the whole area, and I also need to have a medical exam, interview and provide more documents than I can count on both hands. Even if I had known all this before I left NZ, it wouldn't have made much difference. Fiancé's travel visa and prescription medication was running out so he had to go, and he couldn't have travelled that far without someone to accompany him, so it's not reality that's bending to bureaucracy; it's just my vision expanding to encompass all the details I failed to see when I was so focused on getting everything done to suit my schedule. Government departments don't really work that way.
Every cloud has a silver lining, though. I may not be able to pin-point that gleam just yet but surely it's out there somewhere. Perhaps being forced to leave the area will mean that I'll get to visit the Chilean branch of my family sooner rather than later. Anyway, I better get back to filling out my paperwork.
Jet-lag is making me lethargic and my compulsion to be useful is warring with my lack of energy to actually put into action all the cleaning, tidying and cooking plans that are floating around my head like rain-clouds on the horizon of a picnic. I just finished an IT diploma more than a month early, you'd think I might have some sense of achievement from that, but all I can think is that I'm not supporting myself financially and not making myself useful enough. Maybe the tiredness is making me a bit mental too.
None of these feelings are helped at all by the phone call I just made to the Auckland US Consulate's Visa Services call-centre when I learnt that getting my immigration visa sorted out is even more involved than I had expected. I have to leave the North American Continent and surrounding Islands before the end of my holiday visa, not just the USA but the whole area, and I also need to have a medical exam, interview and provide more documents than I can count on both hands. Even if I had known all this before I left NZ, it wouldn't have made much difference. Fiancé's travel visa and prescription medication was running out so he had to go, and he couldn't have travelled that far without someone to accompany him, so it's not reality that's bending to bureaucracy; it's just my vision expanding to encompass all the details I failed to see when I was so focused on getting everything done to suit my schedule. Government departments don't really work that way.
Every cloud has a silver lining, though. I may not be able to pin-point that gleam just yet but surely it's out there somewhere. Perhaps being forced to leave the area will mean that I'll get to visit the Chilean branch of my family sooner rather than later. Anyway, I better get back to filling out my paperwork.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Day 2 and 3
In the afternoon when we woke up, almost 24 hours after our arrival, we found that the van we needed to use to buy groceries had 1 slightly flat tyre and 1 dramatically flat tyre. Now, back in Wellington I could have hopped on the bus, called a taxi or simply walked down to the corner store of the centre of town. Not so in the urban sprawl of this town. Taxis have to be pre-arranged the day before, buses don't even service the area and there are no footpaths along the roads we would need to walk to get to any store. We ended up ordering Chinese food because they delivered and because I thought that would be slightly less painful on my sensitive stomach than pizza. It wasn't much. It was ridiculously amusing to me, however, that Chinese food here does actually come in those white cardboard boxes with the wire handle just like in American Sit-Coms. It also came with 5 complimentary fortune cookies; apparently I "will make changes before winning" and I have been advised to "Do the right thing because it is right. Have the courage to face it.".
We ended up making a quick store run just before the store closed at 11pm because the future-in-law got home and let us use his car around then. The next day we set about moving all the analogue TVs out of the room we have claimed as an antique-free zone and moving fiancé's computer into the aforementioned room so that it could actually be used (there was no room to stand in front of it - let alone sit - in his old bedroom come antique storage room) and then we were told not to move anything else until future-in-law was home to tell us where it was to go so we stopped.
Again, it was hard to wake up at a reasonable hour the next day so today I got out of bed just as future-in-law was heading off on a trip out of town for 2 days. It just so happened that this was the exact same moment that the pump which brings water from the underground well that provides the water-supply for this house decided to break. We have had no running water for over twelve hours. Now, the fact that future-in-law is out of town isn't the worst part of this. Tomorrow is July 4 - USA's "Independence Day" - which means, effectively, that we will be without water until Tuesday 5 July at the very least. More than likely, all of the service people who we could call to come out to fix the pump are away on holiday out of town. We've left messages for two separate companies, at least 1 of which advertises 24 hour service, and have heard nothing back for almost 12 hours. I shall never take running water for granted again.
At least I can credit my "ghetto" (in the words of fiancé) upbringing as useful for helping us through this situation - we'll ask for some buckets of water from the neighbours tomorrow and do the good old bucket flush for the toilets then boil some for doing the dishes that are piling up and washing ourselves a bit. One of the things I was looking forward to about living here was that I would have improved living conditions. The Fates, it seems, are not without their sense of irony.
We ended up making a quick store run just before the store closed at 11pm because the future-in-law got home and let us use his car around then. The next day we set about moving all the analogue TVs out of the room we have claimed as an antique-free zone and moving fiancé's computer into the aforementioned room so that it could actually be used (there was no room to stand in front of it - let alone sit - in his old bedroom come antique storage room) and then we were told not to move anything else until future-in-law was home to tell us where it was to go so we stopped.
Again, it was hard to wake up at a reasonable hour the next day so today I got out of bed just as future-in-law was heading off on a trip out of town for 2 days. It just so happened that this was the exact same moment that the pump which brings water from the underground well that provides the water-supply for this house decided to break. We have had no running water for over twelve hours. Now, the fact that future-in-law is out of town isn't the worst part of this. Tomorrow is July 4 - USA's "Independence Day" - which means, effectively, that we will be without water until Tuesday 5 July at the very least. More than likely, all of the service people who we could call to come out to fix the pump are away on holiday out of town. We've left messages for two separate companies, at least 1 of which advertises 24 hour service, and have heard nothing back for almost 12 hours. I shall never take running water for granted again.
At least I can credit my "ghetto" (in the words of fiancé) upbringing as useful for helping us through this situation - we'll ask for some buckets of water from the neighbours tomorrow and do the good old bucket flush for the toilets then boil some for doing the dishes that are piling up and washing ourselves a bit. One of the things I was looking forward to about living here was that I would have improved living conditions. The Fates, it seems, are not without their sense of irony.
Beginning
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step - or so Confucius is supposed to have said. My own journey from the land of fantails (Aotearoa/New Zealand) to the state of the Black-capped Chickadee (Massachusetts, USA) began with a drive around the bays of Wellington and one mislaid suitcase. Far be it from me to do things by halves as, in actual fact, the journey I undertook was actually 9119.649 miles (14676.653km for us metric users) and it took 4 plane rides, 2 of which we missed and had to be rescheduled, 4 car trips, too much fastfood and all the patience that I could possibly fathom. Oh, and a ride on a train in the Washington Dulles airport which made me feel like I was taking an after-hours tour of a Sci-Fi set.
I arrived to a mild day near the end of summer; at least my new household considered it mild. 86°F or 30°C is not what I would consider mild - not by a long shot. Some people make the innocent mistake of thinking that New Zealand is tropical. It is not. Wellington is known as "The Windy City" for a reason; a gale-force strength reason. NZ is sub-tropical, with a stress on the sub, and I like to remind people that we are neighbours with Antarctica. Yes, we have snow - we have some great ski fields in fact - heck, it even snowed at sea level in Wellington a week or so before I left! I came from the end of a cold, wet and windy winter to the tail-end of a summer in which it gets hotter than my place of birth can get without volcanic activity on a serious scale.
So, it was hot. Did I mention that enough yet? I was also miserably tired because I find it far too uncomfortable to sleep on a plane in economy class - except for when my fiancé was kindly lending his lap to me as a pillow - and our trip had taken from 1pm Tuesday 30 August (GMT+12) to 3pm Wednesday August 31 (GMT -5). That's almost 60 hours of travel. Admittedly, missing our flight from San Francisco to Washington and the subsequent flight from Washington to Providence, Rhode Island was something of a blessing in disguise. My fiancé's brother had gone to a lot of effort to come out to see us for the brief few minutes while we stood in line at San Francisco airport security on the way to the gate for our next flight. We had been held up in immigration for a good hour because, apparently, I suck at following instructions. Once we missed the flight, and found we had to catch much later flights, he kindly came out yet again and picked us up, drove us to his home and let us shower and crash on his futon fold-down sofa bed. This was the first time I had met him and the first time my fiancé had seen his brother in two years. Though we spent the majority of our time there sleeping, we got to chat in the car to and from the airport and his hilarious stories were a much needed stress reliever. I think we owe him a fruit basket, at the very least.
Back in Massachusetts, once we had dragged our suitcases out of the car and ourselves up the stairs, we arrived to a room which looked more like a museum than a bedroom. My future father-in-law is an avid collector of antiques - specifically antique technology such as wooden radios, early television sets and phonographs - and he has increasingly run out of space in the 4 bedrooms, 2 sitting rooms, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 laundry room, 3 bathroom, double garage, attic and the large basement of his house. The 2 rooms we wanted to use, which I had spent 3 weeks cleaning 3 months previously, were filled with antiques and over-flowing storage boxes of items which were long past being useful. Disheartened, but exhausted, we slept like the dead.
I arrived to a mild day near the end of summer; at least my new household considered it mild. 86°F or 30°C is not what I would consider mild - not by a long shot. Some people make the innocent mistake of thinking that New Zealand is tropical. It is not. Wellington is known as "The Windy City" for a reason; a gale-force strength reason. NZ is sub-tropical, with a stress on the sub, and I like to remind people that we are neighbours with Antarctica. Yes, we have snow - we have some great ski fields in fact - heck, it even snowed at sea level in Wellington a week or so before I left! I came from the end of a cold, wet and windy winter to the tail-end of a summer in which it gets hotter than my place of birth can get without volcanic activity on a serious scale.
So, it was hot. Did I mention that enough yet? I was also miserably tired because I find it far too uncomfortable to sleep on a plane in economy class - except for when my fiancé was kindly lending his lap to me as a pillow - and our trip had taken from 1pm Tuesday 30 August (GMT+12) to 3pm Wednesday August 31 (GMT -5). That's almost 60 hours of travel. Admittedly, missing our flight from San Francisco to Washington and the subsequent flight from Washington to Providence, Rhode Island was something of a blessing in disguise. My fiancé's brother had gone to a lot of effort to come out to see us for the brief few minutes while we stood in line at San Francisco airport security on the way to the gate for our next flight. We had been held up in immigration for a good hour because, apparently, I suck at following instructions. Once we missed the flight, and found we had to catch much later flights, he kindly came out yet again and picked us up, drove us to his home and let us shower and crash on his futon fold-down sofa bed. This was the first time I had met him and the first time my fiancé had seen his brother in two years. Though we spent the majority of our time there sleeping, we got to chat in the car to and from the airport and his hilarious stories were a much needed stress reliever. I think we owe him a fruit basket, at the very least.
Back in Massachusetts, once we had dragged our suitcases out of the car and ourselves up the stairs, we arrived to a room which looked more like a museum than a bedroom. My future father-in-law is an avid collector of antiques - specifically antique technology such as wooden radios, early television sets and phonographs - and he has increasingly run out of space in the 4 bedrooms, 2 sitting rooms, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 laundry room, 3 bathroom, double garage, attic and the large basement of his house. The 2 rooms we wanted to use, which I had spent 3 weeks cleaning 3 months previously, were filled with antiques and over-flowing storage boxes of items which were long past being useful. Disheartened, but exhausted, we slept like the dead.
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