On IT Reform

This post was written before my Wedding, which went ahead a week ago. Sorry to lower the tension.

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.

K1 Visa Interview

This morning was my VISA interview at the embassy in London, an endeavour that I've been preparing for off-and-on for months. Preparation, for me at least, mainly involves rechecking the same three forms again and again, just in case their contents have noticeably shifted since I last looked, or they were suddenly, startlingly nonexistent, like a papery dinosaur-analogy. Short of interning my documents in amber, which is time consuming, or just letting it go - unwise outside of Arrendelle - it's hard to see what more I could do to keep them safe, and yet every night for the last few weeks I've convinced myself that I've probably forgotten to include my passport, or haven't actually got enough copies of each bit of paperwork, and rechecked them.

It's hard to overstate how paranoid I've become about this. I got to the point last night where at two in the morning I went through every bit of paper again and then slept on the containing folder. JUST IN CASE.

With an appointment scheduled for the embassy's opening time of 8, I naturally leave nothing to chance and get up three hours early to catch my bus, for the half hour journey to Marble Arch. By the time I arrived (well before 7) there was a queue of about 40 people. I curse myself for my own tardiness and join the end of the line. Clearly some of them had been here a while, despite the very clear instructions for people not to turn up too early. Idiots.

Probably in a fit of pique at the uncomprehending English, the security guards commits a grievous breach of social etiquette and moves the head, and direction, of the queue. Like Jesus with a badge, his officiousness causes the first to be last, and the last first. The early first fail to pay enough attention, and the crowd reforms around them. The curiously English feeling of unfairness begins to tell; one woman is very obviously realising that she has lost her rightful position, and tries, unsuccessfully, to negotiate:

"This woman was in front of you" she says to the people who have moved to the front, pointing at the woman behind her. Clearly this is preamble. What she really means is "I was in front of you" but that level of directness would be impolite. Better to masquerade her dissatisfaction as altruism. The people in front ignore her, unmoved in any way by the increasingly frantic protests. The security guard who caused all the fuss turns and goes back inside. 

Stretching across the front of the vast Embassy, watched over by a grotesque monument to Reagan, the queue resettles and grows as more people join it. Fronted by one of those frequent green spaces that London seems to be full of, the building is, by comparison to it's surroundings at least, squat and ugly. A giant gilded bird rests over the front awning. Presumably it's intended to be an eagle. It looks more like an especially ugly crane. A pigeon lands on its head, defecates and flies on.

This is probably not the way immigrants are supposed to remember the process of assimilation into the US. But too few of those entering America have described watching errant birds pooping on the symbols of freedom, independence and liberty. The shit spangled banner. 

The doors open, a staff member rolls out two enormous cupboards. The queue is divided, then divided again. I am in the initial group, about 12th in line. I show my first set of documents. My photocopies are in black and white. Nobody else's are. I start to sweat straight through my shirt. Documents are taken, checked, handed back.

I begin to worry that my iPad won't get through the security sweep. Laptops aren't allowed in, but no mention was made of tablets. I have convinced myself that I am about to be sent away for bringing contraband items, and start working out where I can drop off my bag to get back for my interview without it. My name is called. I remove my belt, watch, shoes. The guard asks to look in my bag, and pulls out my iPad case.

My iPad gets through. I talk too much to the man next to me in the queue. He tries to look interested in his own paperwork. I take the hint.

The VISA interview process is two steps; the first inspects all my paperwork, the second involves an interview about my relationship with Jalyss, I have been assiduously prepping for the second. I learnt her Birthday. I know her middle name. I have the story of how we met down to a fine art.

The first part comes quickly. I'm second to be called, it's 8:05. I give fingerprints and hand over my file.

"So, you're engaged" the clerk says. It's an in! I start my pre-planned speech about how we met. "Congratulations" he interrupts, "passport?"

He takes the papers I've been conserving for the last few weeks. My paranoia has paid off, and everything is mercifully, thankfully, wonderfully present. He accepts it and sends me away to wait again. This was the bit I was worrying about and it's already over.

The seating area, sparsely peopled when I left, is now full. The heat has risen considerably, and two industrial fans have been set up. I position myself on a near empty row. A man immediately comes and sits next to me. It's a breach of that other unspoken English rule about personal space, that nobody should ever sit beside you if there's another space available.

The day before I got profoundly uncomfortable when, on an otherwise empty train, a man came and sat across the aisle from me, which, in fairness to me, is a pretty odd thing to do, and shouldn't really be allowed, Today I don't begrudge anyone their seat, even if it isn't typical. "Look at me" I think. "Personal space doesn't bother me and I keep trying to start conversations with people. The process is working. I am becoming an American!"

The numbers that were previously being announced are now simply flashed on a screen. It makes it harder to read when you have to look up regularly to check you haven't been called for. The book I'm reading, a collection of Charlie Brooker's columns called 'I Can Make You Hate' seems an inopportune choice in the context, and I avoid showing the cover or spine to anyone who may be registering my choice of reading material and making judgement calls about my suitability to get a VISA, especially once I start silently laughing to myself. The conjoined seats shudder, and my new friend get up and goes to sit elsewhere.

I 902 flashes up, and I hastily stuff the book in my bag and struggle to get all the evidence of my relationship out whilst I scurry to the window. I had expected a private room, a guy in a slightly too large suit to offer me a coffee, and a smoke. My cop film expectations are not met. A woman asks me to repeat the process of scanning fingerprints, to prove my identity. In front of her she has 4 forms with my photo on. If I'm not me, I'm a pretty good match.

She leafs through the file in front of her, looks at me, and back to the file. She asks me to talk about Jalyss. This is the only question in the interview, I try to say as much as possible without coming across as desperately lonely. I keep an eye out for signs she's trying to get out of the conversation. She doesn't seem to be listening, so I stop,

"I'm going to approve your application" she says. I haven't yet got the evidence I prepared out. Photos, call record, receipts, letters and print outs I'd spent the last few days collating and obsessively filing. A curator's egg of my relationship with Jalyss sits in a folder my bag at my feet. "You can go now"

"Errr. Is that it?" I ask. I think she may have made a mistake. Where's my interview? "Jalyss' middle name is Jarynn. They're made up" I tell her. I sound like an irritatingly precocious 6 year old announcing she's completed her flute recital. I want to punch myself in the kidneys. I learnt this stuff, and I'm going to get it out there, "Jalyss is a conductor; but not a musical conductor - or an electrical one!" When I practiced that line in my head I paused for effect, and to allow time for them to laugh,

"Yep. You can go now" she says, "go celebrate."

My 'interview' has lasted just over a minute and spanned the length of one question. I am strangely disappointed at how anti-climatic it was, my preparation seems unnecessary. It's hard not to feel cheated. I'm not sure why. I close my half opened bag and leave the way I came in. Nobody stops me.

The queue outside is still growing, like a bureaucratic game of Snake. The pigeon has returned to rest on the eagle.

I have up to 10 days to wait for my VISA and passport to be returned to me. 12 days until I'm hoping to fly, and 24 until the wedding.

I'm not nervous about going yet, although I'm sure I will be soon. But for now I'm just grateful I don't have to worry about those bloody documents any more.