US Embassy Trip (part 1)

We did our trip to the US Embassy on Friday, to get our visa. We had a 10am appointment, so we arrived nice and promptly at 9:15, to see two large queues. A friendly policeman with a big gun told us that one queue was the 9:00 quese and one was the 9:30 queue, so we should come back at 9:45. We went for coffee, and came back, to find two queues that seemed to have no order or reason to them. We joined a queue.

I thought that there might be a sort of "spirit of the blitz" people sharing jokes and biscuits and all mucking in together. But there wasn't. I had a brief conversation with a red haired chap. He said "Our appointment's at 10:15" I said "Our appointment's at 10:00". H said "I'm getting an E visa. Are you?" I said "No, I'm getting an H visa". (An H1b, if you want the details. I looked up an E visa, it turns out to be a treaty trader and investor visa. I don't know what that means. An H is a temporary work visa, which sounds much less glamorous, but at least you can guess what it means without looking it up.)

We stood in our queue, which moved very slowly. The red haired chap suddenly moved to the other queue, which moved more quickly, and he got in before us. Someone moved up the queue checking our appointment times, if you had the audacity to be near the front of the queue with an 11:00 appointment at 11:00 you were moved to the back. We were given clear plastic bags to place our belongings into.

At about 11:00 we got into the embassy. When we got in, we were given a ticket, so that we could wait our turn. The queuing system inside the embassy was quite specific - there were large TV screens which showed the people who were being served at which windows, and what numbers were about to be called. At the back of the room was a little snack shop, selling sandwiches which I'd guess were overpriced, had they not run out at 11:45, before I could check their prices, and crisps which were overpriced. 75p for a bag of salt and vinegar (and not one of those grab bags that they sell you nearly everywhere now. Hey! I know! Let's reduce the amount of fat in our crisps by 25% and make them healthier. And then let's put them into bags that are twice as big, so everyone eats 50% more fat than if we'd stuck with the unhealthy crisps.)

At 12:00 our number (296) came up, and we went to the first window. We handed over our forms, and were fingerprinted. S had a lot of trouble with the fingerprinting, because of hand lotion or something similar, and had to use a special alcohol wipe to get her fingers clean. It turned out that I didn't have one form, I'd filled it in and sent it off to the US immigration people, when I should have kept it. I was asked to fill it out again, which I did. It was the one that asked which countries you had visited in the last 10 years, and when. Given that I was feeling a little nervous (hey! it's only the rest of your life at stake) and that I was in a hurry, it ended up being a bit random, but we got away with it.

That's the end of part 1. Part 2 will follow after this announcement. (Maybe look at the ads on the side, and pretend it's a commercial break. For a few days.)

United (we are not)

It turns out that the cat can go on the plane with our luggage for about £70 - bargainacious, compared with the previous quotes.

Ah, the joy of United Airlines call centres. I was told that the cat had been booked on the flight, and given the dimensions of the container that it had to be in. It seems that the cat was to carry on baggage – which sounds like an awful lot of effort. And it also had to be in a container that would fit under a seat – which sounds like something of a squish.

So I rang United Airlines, and got through to their (Indian sounding) call centre. The first person I spoke to was very friendly, but didn’t seem to have the faintest idea what they were talking about. I asked to check the dimensions, and they said “Small is …., medium is …, large is …”. None of these sizes sounded like they fitted under a seat, so I thought I’d try again.

The second person I spoke to at United Airlines also seemed very friendly and nice. And what they said didn’t relate to what the first person said. I was given a new set of dimensions – 9 inches high, which sounds like it will fit under a seat, but doesn’t sound much fun for a cat for 12 hours or so. They also said that I had to know the size and weight of the container (with the cat in it) before I could confirm the cat on the flight. However, the first person I spoke to had already confirmed the cat on the flight – which I told them. The fact that what they had just told me was blatant nonsense, and that, therefore, I didn’t trust anything else they said.

The airline might be united, but their staff are not. (Hahaha.)

Boxes and Bubble Wrap

We've been packing and wrapping and shoving stuff in the loft. Pickfords does the best (and cheapest) boxes that I've found, but I think that Staples does better bubble wrap.

Inline skates

I bought some roller blades inline skates at the weekend. JJB are having a closing down sale, and they had some for £12.50, which fitted me. I haven't dared try to do anything with them, partly 'cos I've been a bit weary after the weekend of much jolliness, but mostly because I'm not sure where I could try where the entertainment value to the local teenaged population would be minimised.

I looked them up on wikipedia where, of course, I found out more than one could ever want to know. Including the fact that the word Rollerblade is a trademark name for one make, and therefore it shouldn't be used as a description - like Hoover or Aspirin or(or Heroin) or like Google is getting upset about ("So, I googled for it on Yahoo").

I read a bit of the inline skating FAQ - the gist of this is "learn to slow down, and stop". Once you can stop, you can try anything. Last time I tried, I had trouble starting though.

P.S. See Jo, I've not told you about any of this!

Dull

Gosh, this blog is dull, isn't it?

More on CDs

Up to R, and have recorded 2818 tracks.

First project!

I had some contact with someone (L) from Corporation of Future Employment asking if I wanted to get involved with a project. The deadline is October 1st, so we needed to talk about it beforehand. I said "Yes", 'cos I'm a bit prone to saying yes without thinking too much.

L sent me a proposal for a previous project, which turns out to be a whole lot heftier than anything I'm used to. Apparently section D is going to be my responsibility. It's 12,000 words long - which looks more like an MSc thesis than a proposal (or even a section of a proposal) to me.

One of the things one has to do at CfE is to justify one's existence by saying how long you have worked on different projects. I will, at some point, need to estimate how long it will take me to do this section D.

I spoke with K about this on Saturday, and she said it was normal that proposals are much more long and detailed - US reviewers have to be told that UK proposals aren't crap, they are just normal.

Recording CDs

I've decided it's more sensible to record all my PCs onto a hard disk, and then stick them in a box up the loft. So I've spent every spare second (well, it feels like it) removing and replacing CDs from the PC. (Which is what I'm doing now. Hence I'm sat at the computer doing nothing, hence I'm typing this blog for the first time in a while.)

I've been doing this since Wednesday (it's Sunday now) and I'm up to G. Which is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and so is almost 1/3 of the way through. However, it's better than that. If you look where G comes in the phone book, it's more than 1/3 of the way through.

Except it's worse than that, because I have a large number of Neil Young CDs, and have bought a lot of Frank Zappa CDs in my time. (And Frank Zappa made a lot of records. And a lot were doubles, and triples. I'm regretting "Guitar" (double CD) and "Shut up 'n play yer guitar" (triple CD) now.

Just changed the CD, and found I was only up to F (Foo Fighters). I've got 1368 tracks recorded, so far.

Embassy and visas

So we got a moving and packing date. All we need is a visa.

To get a visa, you need to send off a bunch of forms, to Corporation of Future Employment, who give them to their lawyer, who gives them to the INS. They sit on them for X weeks (where X is an unknown value) and then give them back to your lawyer, with an additional magic form, who sends them to you.

When you have the forms you can go to the US embassy in London, have an interview (what are they going to ask? I've no idea) and then they post you a visa. Which all sounds, in principle, relatively straightforward. However, there's a 6 week wait for an appointment at the embassy. So you make an appointment, making some assumptions about the value of X.

If you wait until the date of the appointment, and then find you don't have your magic form back from the INS, you have to wait 6 weeks for a new appointment. So you estimate, and then (in my experience) you get it wrong.

Getting it wrong means you need to make a new appointment (which involves a £1.30 / minute phone call - "Thank you for calling the US embassy appointment line. For training purposes, your call may be recorded. If you would like to ..." AAAGGGGHHHH!!!

However, then the earliest appointment you can get is (again, in my experience) after all your stuff has been packed, and people are moving into your house. Which is slightly inconvenient. So we are moving out of the house on the 25th August, but not leaving until at least the 4th of September.

Comment on Slashdot

I just saw the following on Slashdot, which made me feel (slightly) better about the ridiculous amount of rent we are going to pay:

And, finally, there's a reason rent and property are so expensive in some areas. Go to California and look out of the window. Rumor has it that other parts of the world have a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Land is expensive in California because you never shovel snow, you rarely deal with crazy humidity, you rarely have the insane heat of Arizona, you rarely get mosquitoes the size of Volkswagens and you can sit on the beach on New Year's Day. In short, supply and demand means that when there's a crazy price, there's generally a great reason for it.