Visa, please!

It's almost midnight and I've just completed my applications for a US student visa. After 9-11, the process is a little more complicated - one can't just stroll into the Embassy to obtain forms or ask questions. You either get the forms on-line, or go to USEIC, an information center for US education that is located in Bestway Building off Shenton Way.

Once all the documents are complete and in order, you'll have to mail everything - including a stamped, seld-address envelope - to the Embassy, or approach a travel agency to do it for you. Our travel agent, Daisy, has kindly offered to help me out.

Something else that's different - I have to provide the names of two contacts who can verify, if necessay, information about me. I've nominated my boss, Andrew, since he is a big-shot Commissioning Editor in a big-shot publishing company. Plus, maybe a Caucasian last name might reassure an immigration officer that I'm not a fundamental who abhors contact with Westerners. I've also put down my pal, Vanessa Tan, on the list. She can easily state that I exist, I do not write fan letters to any famous terrorists, I do not know how to use a gun and have never taken a chemistry or physics class at university (unless you count the six quantum physics lectures that I sat in and took notes for my dear Lin Kiat).

Of course, Vanessa can just as easily tell on me and reveal that I am capable of inflicting bodily harm to any who dare provoke me, that I am a certifiable threat to staplers and license plates of cars parked behind my own vehicle, and that I have a fiery and occasional moody demeanor, which any self-respecting, aspiring writer would possess.

Well, I shall still trust my old friend to deliver the goods, or information in this case, if the Embassy calls for it. Now, it's off to bed and a prayer that a good, long sleep awaits me. Making a note that it is past midnight now, I shall presume that a long sleep may not be applicable, but I'll hope for a good, restful one anyway.

To all you who sleep tonight, I bid you good night! And to the immigration officer who will be working on my case, I'm really a nice, harmless girl, please let me go study books and writing in wintry Michigan this year!

Posted by Monoceros at June 20, 2003 1:08 AM