The Visa – Sunday/Monday – Day 150/151
December 26, 2012
Today was not pleasant at all. At 5AM I woke up with a jolt. *CRACK* *SMASH*, my head rolled backwards and my stomach dropped as the sound of splintering wood hit my hears temporarily disorienting me. The bed frame was in pieces on the floor and I was sure the landlord would not be happy.
Most of the day was spent in the house waiting for the landlord to show up as he said he would and soon I was out on the street, $150 USD out of pocket.
That’s all I’ll say about Sunday.
Monday morning I was up in the freezing Montreal cold at 5AM to get to rural Canada to the US Consulate Passport Processing Center. A train to the end of the line, bus and cab later I was outside the doors at a godforsaken hour knocking madly, giving those inside no peace till after around ten minutes they opened the door to ask me what I wanted. I explained my situation and after a number of tense minutes of bargaining they agreed to give me my passport back, complete with new F1 visa inside.
From there it was a race back to the bus station… could I make it by 9AM when the bus was leaving? Back with a cab, a bus, a tense train ride and a sprint through a kilometer long corridor to make it to the bus station at 8:55.
Much of the day from that point was spent on a bus, except for a brief and delightful coffee break midway at which point I purchased a pain au chocolat and a plain bagel that were devoured with a deep intensity.
Arriving in NYC at ~5:30PM I raced to the Bloomberg Building where a bunch of Glee Alums where rehearsing for singing carols at Rockefeller Plaza in the office of one Mark Glassman. Mark himself is particularly notable for two reasons, the first of these being his youthful demeanour and spirited manner, but next and more importantly he has been the playwright for the Glee Spring Show for twelve years! He is reaching C Erik. Nordgren levels of commitment! Getting inside involved a complex process including taking a surreptitious photo of me when I was least expecting it with a camera embedded in the wall.
The internals of the Bloomberg building were fantastic, ornate, yet somehow still office-like. A big highlight of the visit inside was the snack kitchen, accessible in a central location to all employees. Inside were mounds of free foods of all descriptions and even on Christmas Eve it was fully stocked. Snack we did. Next we rehearsed for a while and I as a newman was mentored a little by some of the older alums. Also very thoroughly convinced to join Voice of Gotham if ever I was in town for long enough.
From there we went to Rockefeller Plaza itself and sung to the crowd in pouring rain mixed with ice and snow for a good half hour. During this period our music soaked together making page turns impossible and my fingers froze solid! A highlight of the night was taking the Baritone solo in Winter Song, as I was the only Baritone around!
Freezing cold, I made my way back to my cousin’s once-removed and settled into the warmth for a nights sleep in a bed!
Wednesday/Thursday – 146/147
December 23, 2012
Today was the day to see a show and we picked one that was on the cheaper end for rush tickets: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This was a light-hearted musical based off Charles Dickens’ tale that was left unfinished at his death.
But the first order of the day was obtaining breakfast from a nearby bakery (dual pastries for me, a pain au chocolat et un croissant) and the to pick up some documents I needed printed for my visa application from my cousin’s office downtown. After that it was a light lunch at a vegan/vegetarian fast food joint and then to the show!
The show opened with the warning that we would be voting on the ending for, as Dickens had let it unwritten, the choice would be left up to us as an audience. The show featured heavily non-naturalistic elements including partial narration and frequent breaking of ‘the fourth wall’ but this didn’t detract in the least from the audience’s emotive connection to the story, as frequently occurs. This is possibly because the strong character archetypes that Dickens employs are so designed to arouse a human connection that despite any theatrical additions, the core messages remained. Our audiences chosen ending was somewhat surprising and the actors did a find job of improvising the needed elements. Overall I highly recommend this show, especially given the price for which a student can obtain tickets.
The rest of the afternoon was spent collecting my belongings before eating a little sushi with mum and going to the Port Authority Terminal. Unfortunately with mum being slightly paranoid about me not missing my bus she accidentally ditched me an hour early after misreading the time! Thus, I decided to buy the paper, a book and, a magazine, to while away the two hours before the bus left.
Once on the bus I had a most unpleasant ride, with a large overweight individual of African-american ethnicity with large thighs and loud music sitting alongside of me, reducing my seat to more of a half seat and my sleep to null.
I arrived in Montreal at 5AM, greeted with frozen air and an icy wind that chilled my innards to stone. My nerves protested as I stood outside arguing with the taxis drivers over who would take me. Eventually I made it to 3527 Lorne, Ariel Z, a Melbourne friend’s apartment that he had vacated at the end of exchange just a day prior. His rent carried over for a couple of days and so he said it wouldn’t be a problem if I crashed there. Unfortunately the landlord was later to come and change that…
As I stepped over the front porch, I slipped on the sleet and landed in icy water that made my already burnt nerves scream, and the few minutes it took me to find the hidden key and open the door were painful. Finally inside, I was lost as to which room my key could open and after ten minutes of searching, I found the room, changed out of my clothes and crashed on the bed for a brief forty minutes of sleep I could allow myself before rising to get my visa done.
My visa appointment was at 8AM at the US Consulate in Montreal. It was meant to be a ten minute walk away, however with no internet and no map, it took me close to forty minutes to find the place. Out in the cold again, with not enough cover, this was made more difficult by the fact that I needed to hide from the cold inside apartment buildings along the way so as to avoid frostbite. Once at the consulate there was a line that formed and we were made to wait outside for around twenty minutes. The air was already warming and for that I was most grateful. After a good hour more of waiting I made it through consulate security, past the waiting line for visas and to my interview where I was charged over $300 in fees just to be assessed for the claim. I was then informed that my sponsor institution, the University of Pennsylvania had not paid the SEVIS fee, as was customary for host schools and, that they could not issue my visa until such was done. They took my passport, my I-20 visa application and supporting documents and was thus sent away with information on how to pay the $200 fee myself and also told to contact Penn to get them to pay it too.
From there I headed down the road to find a SIM card so I could call Penn, and a cafe with wifi, to make calls and pay the fee. During this period I was charged ridiculous roaming fees by AT&T. On the scale of $2/min of phone usage and $15/MB of data usage. This meant in 24 seconds of internet usage I was charged $4. Not very fair. I finally made it to the cafe and after calling Penn and being told they couldn’t help, I decided to pay the fee myself. However, on reaching the payment page for the SEVIS fee, was told I needed information from my I-20 which, if you recall, had been taken into holding by the consulate.
I thus raced back to the consulate, trying to make it before the 11AM deadline, only to be told by the security guard that without my documents I couldn’t be let in the building. The tears started to flow and I tried asking calmly if there was anyone else I could speak to about it and he directed me to another staff member who he claimed would tell me the same. She in fact told me to go right on through but the guard, on hearing this questioned her to the point that I was escorted from the building until such time as they could ascertain what to do. After a number of tense minutes, I was eventually readmitted, without any documents to the top floor, where a kind lady handed me photocopies of all my documents necessary to pay the SEVIS fee.
From there I found my way back to Ariel’s apartment and met with the single current resident, Leo from Melbourne Uni, a Bialik boy in my brother’s year and also a Melbourne High Old boy. We had a great many friends in common and hit it off fairly well. He then gave me access to the wifi in the apartment which was a great help and allowed me to pay the SEVIS fee. I then emailed the receipt off to the consulate and from that point just hoped they would approve my application without the 60-90 day administration period that they had told me could follow.
After that I fell right asleep, hardly waking up till dinner. At that point we went out to search for a place to eat. It was that evening that I had my first encounter with the cannabis plant, in this case, a delicious hemp-burger that was served at the vegetarian restaurant around the corner. Perfectly legal, perfectly safe and perfectly delicious.
After dinner I didn’t last much longer and was soon asleep again, finally a chance to relax a little after a somewhat harrowing 24 hours.
Sunday/Monday – Day 122/123
December 4, 2012
Sunday was a last day of quiet. One that I much appreciated. Most of today was spent in, after waking up too late to get much done! To add to this, Tammy’s deployed friend was visiting home for thanksgiving and she needed to spend at least a little time with him. On her return we started packing up things and a few more of her friends visited before everyone returned to their schools and homes. Again, I packed by bags and, was driven to the Greyhound Station by Tammy, with her friend Anthony, in tow.
The bus back wasn’t quite as good as on the way there, it was cramped and I hardly slept, working on the operating systems project for most of the ride. After waking up from a brief nap on one particularly unpleasant leg of the journey, I skyped one of my closest friends in Melbourne to wish her a happy birthday and we ended up chatting for ten minutes at 3AM while I was travelling along the middle of nowhere.
I arrived back at Market Street Greyhound Terminal perfectly on time, at 8AM. Just enough for me to catch a taxi back to Penn in time for my first class, algorithms. I struggled through what work I could and ended up missing Glee Rehearsal due to illness and tiredness from the bus ride combined with an urgent meeting for Operating Systems.
I went to bed far too late, coding well into the night, in an attempt to move the team along somewhat. This was going to be an unpleasant week.