Following the VISA interview, I had seven to ten days to wait for my VISA and Passport for be returned to me by courier. Unfortunately, two days before my interview, it turns out that the US State Department decided to upgrade all of their VISA systems, a task that I like to imagine involved them haphazardly nailing floppy discs to a sparking central server with one hand whilst focusing the majority of their attention on a breeze-blown leaf, or an especially interesting formation of cloud.
IT projects seem to be some form of generic governmental Achilles heel, and so it should come as no surprise that this particular endeavour took the embassy's computers from a system capable of processing 450,000 applications every ten days, and upgraded them to shiny black paperweights.
Of course, because this is a far reaching problem that directly impacts me, I found out about it by accident. I had stayed in all day every day since the VISA interview to avoid missing the courier, and just happened to go back onto a corollary of the London embassy main page, and found a tiny caveat that delays were possible on all VISAs to be issued between the 20th and 29th, but that nearly half had been processed.
That still leaves 200,000 that haven't been, in case that makes it sound like they've been in some way successfully engaged in their jobs. There are very few occasions where being able to do roughly half of what is expected of you is sufficient.
It has been, I think it's fair to say, a bit of a cock up. Unless their IT process is run by Dennis Nedry, and this is the first step in an attempt to smuggle DNA samples inside a can of shaving foam, in which case everything is going to plan except that he's about to be eaten by a really scientifically-inaccurate Dilophosaurus.
So that seven to ten days elongated into a full seventeen, which was rather inconvenient as I was meant to fly after fourteen, and thus lost my flight. The expectation of an imminent courier also left me confined to my house, and lead me to realise the limits of never venturing outside. There's something truly intangible about existing in one place for too long. It's easy to see how people can go mad in isolation; even with all of the resources and diversions of the internet at hand.
Getting the email that the courier had the VISA was a relief not just because it meant I could travel and wouldn't miss my own wedding, but also because it meant I could throw away the bloodstained volleyball that had served as my constant companion and return to civilisation, and people, and sunlight that wasn't filtered through a window.
The courier having received the VISA on Friday morning, I managed to convince a sympathetic member of their customer relations team that I could pick it up from their central processing hub rather than wait for it to be delivered to me on Monday. Confirmed to be there on Saturday, and with assurances that picking it up would be simple, we drove over.
At the courier, we met the person left in charge; a bubble-faced man apparently only just out of childhood who wore an air of confusion, as though he had only just woken from an especially interesting dream, and who happily admitted that he was just a driver and didn't know what he was doing. We gave him the details and he gumped away, only to return empty handed. This didn't bode well, and so it proved as he had spectacularly succeeded in not locating my VISA.
"Do you want to go away and I'll find it later?" he asked, hopefully. "I'll deliver it your house personally."
"Not really", I replied. He looked unsure of what to do next. "I really don't want to leave without it in my hands, to be honest."
By this point, emboldened by the courier's (seemingly misplaced) confidence I had rebooked my flights for 9am the next day. Not having a VISA or passport was probably going to be a bit of a problem.
The gump shuffled back off to search for the package, and we waited. As time passed and he returned again and again to update us on his continued lack of success we began to despair.
We began to try and help out. Had he checked to see if it had been put to one side? He had. Was it likely to be a different size to most other VISAs as it contained all my documentation? It wouldn't. Did he have a parent nearby who may be able to help? Apparently not.
The lack of boats and aircraft suggested we weren't in the Bermuda Triangle, but the couriers office seemed to have a similarly disorientating effect; "Would you like a cup of tea?" the gump asked, at one point, two hours in. We assented and he left. Our cups of tea never appeared. Like the package, the kitchen was seemingly lost.
Fortunately a rescue party had obviously been sent out after the gump, who presumably shouldn't have been allowed out of the company creche in the first place, and they proved more capable. Suggesting checking the safe, and the delivery stacks, they returned with a package ten minutes later. It looked exactly like the one the gump hadn't been looking for, being the wrong size and shape and in a different place entirely.
The smiles, the laughs, the 'not your faults' that greeted this discovery can be brushed over.
IT system be damned. Courier be damned. I have my Passport in hand, and my VISA in bag. I am as ready as I can be, and I am going to America.
