International incident, narrowly averted
Keys in the right pocket, knife in the left. I’ve done it that was since I were a wee slip of a lass of a weasel. It’s the things you don’t even know to worry about that get you when you’re a ferriner.
There was an airport-style security screening going into the building. The look on dude’s face when my NRA Commemorative Charlton Heston Three-Bladed Case Knife tumbled out told me “I’m going to have to talk to my supervisor” wasn’t a good thing. They huddled over my knife and hooted, like those monkeys in 2001.
It’s a perfectly ordinary American-street-legal pocket knife, but Supervisor told me if I were stopped for some reason by the police, I would automatically be arrested. It’s a knife. And it’s sharp — something a knife in London is not allowed to be. (I bit my tongue before I blurted, “my daddy always told me it’s the dull knife that’s dangerous”).
As it was under three inches and it wasn’t a locking blade (“my daddy always told me that a locking blade is a safety feature”), he wasn’t obliged to call the cops on me himself. But he did give me a talking-to and confiscated my deadly weapon while I was in the building.
It’s no joke. Under new rules, an arrest — even a small and stupid one — could get me kicked out of the country and barred from coming back.
Yes, today’s the day we had to drive up to sunny Croydon (think Queens) to the UK Border Agency in the aptly named Lunar House, so’s I could be biometrificated for my next round of alien papers. I left Uncle B outside. His tolerance for bullshit is extremely low. After I was disarmed, I went to the third floor to a great long room full of hundreds of green plastic chairs bolted to the floor and took a number. My number was 523.
The interview and biometrics were pretty prompt, but I waited for an hour and half while my fingerprints were checked against the ones I gave in November for my fiancée visa. They checked. I’m not approved for visa #2 yet, but it’s one more step in that direction.
I found Uncle B outside, looking splotchy and apoplectic after two hours of standing on a street corner in Croydon. Poor bastard. I didn’t have the heart to tell him beforehand he’d be the only white man in all of South London.
And my fingerprints? “In the permanent database” the helpful brochure informs me. Isn’t that swell?
May 19, 2009 — 6:56 pm
Comments: 25
Cheap at twice the price
Shhhh…I’m trying not to annoy Uncle B tonight. He’s working. (Hey, one of us has to!)
Today I mailed off my FLR(M) application. It’s the second visa I need. The first one let me enter for the purpose of marriage, and it’s good for six months (I’m legal on that one until the end of May). The second one lets me work and be a sort of semi-person, and it’s good for two years.
It’s taking an average of 14 weeks to process those ones at the moment, so (assuming all is well) I expect to remain blissfully employment-free until July, mayhap.
Mayhap longer. The visa fees go up (again!) on Wednesday, April 1, so I imagine the Home Office will be buried in applications tomorrow. Heh heh heh.
The picture? That there’s a Thermionics Vacuum Products FLRM Series Push-Pull Linear-Rotary Feedthrough. It’s a linear-rotary feedthrough based on the FLM series push-pull linear feedthrough mounted on a standard 2.75″ O.D. flange. Strokes of up to 36″ are feasible, dependent upon payload, orientation and acceptable deflection. All metal construction for bakeability. It costs about three grand. It turned up on a Google Images search of “FLR(M)”.
I have no fucking idea what that sonofabitch does.
March 30, 2009 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 23
Beer. Sale. Two great words that go great together.
w00t! Our local market had a beer sale today — three bottles for…shit, I don’t know. It’s not like I pay for anything. I’m a foreigner; when I want something, I point and grunt.
Poor Uncle B hates beer, but it was a sale on brew exclusively from the Badger Brewery, so he was cool with it. (You’ll notice there are seven. Spot the one that isn’t Badger).
Tonight, we’re putting together the paperwork for my next visa, the FLR(M). It’s my Married Lady License (though it will cover civil unions and homosexualists, also). I intended to do this the day after we were wed, but I didn’t on account of I’m a lazy sack of shit. Also, it’s taking 14 weeks on average to turn this one around, and I can’t work until it comes through. So you can see why I’m in such a hurry.
Asking Uncle B to interface with government in any way involves a good deal of throwing things and saying the f-word. So I’d better go.
And drink some fucking beer.
March 25, 2009 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 16
I has a visa!
It is very shiny. They apparently have some kind of weird-ass color bubblejet, because it’s printed right on the first blank page of my passport. How you print a hologram dealie, I do not know.
So! I totally finished packing last night. I mean, everything but the plate I eat on and the cat’s bowl, the things I’ll throw in a FedEx on my way out of town. Would you believe, I don’t have a mover yet? Last one coming to quote today.
Whee!
November 19, 2008 — 8:50 am
Comments: 53
The Taj Mahkitteh
Today’s Hair Across Weasel’s Ass: plane-legal pet carriers. A regular, take-her-to-the-vet-sized pet carrier will not do (never mind that mine is 30 years old, solid as a brick shit-house and served perfectly well to fly a bigger cat than Charlotte from Tennessee to Rhode Island). If the airline doesn’t turn the cat away, there are grievous fines on the UK end for shipping an animal in a container they consider too small.
And so, of course, they provide really precise instructions for choosing the appropriate carrier.
Ha ha! Just woofin’ you. Every document describes the requirements s-lightly differently. It should be the height of the cat standing, the height of the cat sitting or two inches above the ears of the cat standing. There has to be ventilation in all four sides, or it doesn’t matter as long as it’s 13% open to air. The animal has to be able to stand up turn around and lie down again (which makes jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton spin up on my mental Wurlitzer). The problem is the confluence of airline regs, US government regs and UK government regs.
I particularly liked this instruction from DEFRA:
Containers for cats should have litter trays which are either heavy enough not to move around or fixed to stop them moving.
Litter trays! Holy pooperscooper! Charlotte needs at least a five foot radius to operate a box properly. She’s a sweet girl, but stupid. She stands with all four feet inside, hangs her ass over the side and pees on the floor.
Whatevs. I bought her the biggest carrier that’ll fit in the Weaselmobile. And it occurs to me I never told you what needs to be done to bring a dog, cat or ferret into the UK. It’s a hell of a deal, but I won’t complain — they don’t have to go through six months of kennel quarantine on the British side now. They essentially allowing the pet to serve out quarantine at home. Zo! In this precise order:
■ Spay and microchip. (Very important — that microchip is checked before every stage of the process. Some people drop a couple hundred bucks for their own chip reader, just to be sure).
■ Vaccinate for rabies.
■ Some time later — twenty days is recommended — draw a blood sample and have your vet send it to Kansas State University.
■ They send back a document certifying presence of rabies antibodies (my documentation didn’t have the official seal, so I had to chase them to send another one).
■ Six months after this date, the travel documents can be applied for. If the rabies booster comes due before you’re ready (ours did), booster and documentation.
■ When the time comes, gather all the documentation and FedEx it to the nearest USDA veterinary office. They FedEx the docs and the stamped travel permit back. This document is good for four months.
■ Not less than 24 nor more than 48 hours before Puss gets on the plane, one last vet’s appointment. She gets de-ticked, wormed (must contain Praziquatel!) and the vet makes a final entry on the USDA and airline forms.
■ Show up at the approved airline’s freight service six hours before the flight. There are, incidentally, one or two government-approved cat-flying airlines for each city that flies to London.
■ After going through People Customs at Heathrow, hop a taxi and drive four miles (oh, the cabby’s going to love me!) to the Animal Reception Center. They say it takes 3-4 hours to process a cat through. Why? I don’t know!
And…umm…ta-dum, I guess. All for the filthy little crooked-tailed, squint-eyed, bug-eating feral Goblin Princess I trapped in my garage five years ago.
Oh, well. One good thing I’ve gotten out of this: pee pads! They’re giant Kotexes for bed-wetters. You put one in the bottom of the travel kennel to mop up accidents. I got a ten-pack of 30×36″ pee pads for six bucks at Wal*Mart.
So that right there is nine wonderful, lazy Sunday mornings I can say to myself, “nah. I don’t feel like getting up yet…”
November 18, 2008 — 1:12 pm
Comments: 36
And then I made a little puddle on the floor
I was going to publish the tracking numbers so everyone could follow the twist of the screw with me, but something in the back of my head said that was a bad idea. I can’t put my finger on why, but I don’t need to make unnecessary withdrawals from my stupid account. I’m going to need those credits.
Yep, they’re away. One is cat papers going to the USDA, the other is weasel papers going to the embassy. Pray god I didn’t get them the wrong way around. I don’t want to be wormed before I get on the plane.
The fingerprint place is a general immigration office of some kind. The people who worked in it were teh suck. The surly cow who took my prints refused to join me in a laugh about my full and legal name, a sure sign she was working at being a bitch. She thought I was insanely stupid because she had to tell me what to do. It particularly exasperated her when she pointed to a chair and I sat in it (I was supposed to put my stuff on it). This seems doubly unfair since she ordered me to sit in the chair later by pointing to it.
And just before she took my prints, somebody leaned over and said something that really pissed her off. She’d start to roll one of my fingers and then fling up her hands and shout “He’s lucky I wasn’t there — I’d’ve said something!” and then she’d start to roll a finger again and shout, “I wouldn’t have let that pass!” and gesture in the air. With my finger.
I had to fill out a customer response card on the way out. I gave her good marks for everything. You don’t fuck with civil servants if you want your papers to get there.
That machine is cool, anyhow. It’s a little plate of glass and a big monitor, and you get to see your fingerprints up huge in realtime. Then it grades the quality of the print. I guess I got passing grades.
Hartford wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t find the FedEx place. My GPS got the stupids and kept sending me in circles or directing me down roads that didn’t exist or weren’t named that. It particularly enjoyed sending me up and down Asylum Street (and Asylum Place and Asylum Ave). Ha ha. Yes. I gets it. Wants to go home now?
I hit a FedEx Kinko’s in Providence and got everything packaged up. Then my Visa card bounced. “!” I said. This was a pain because I’d used that card number for the return FedEx slips and had to throw those away and make new ones using a different card number and repackage everything.
Got home, called the credit card company, gave the robot my number…and immediately got to a human being. “!” I thought.
“Your account was frozen because of suspicious activity from overseas.”
“Hm?”
“November 4. Great Britain.”
“Oh. I do have somebody in Britain. I might have bought him something locally. How much was it?”
“$942.”
“Oh, dear. That is rather a lot of…OH HOLY FLAMING BATSHIT!!! YOU BOUNCED MY VISA APPLICATION FEE?!?!”
“Well, I can’t really tell if it bounced or if we froze the account after that, but I’ll unfreeze you now! And thanks for calling Huge Stupid Credit Card Company! click”
Jesus. They didn’t call me or anything. They waited until I tried to use the card and called them. So either they let a big suspicious charge float for eight days without saying anything or they’ve crushed my little weaselly dreams. Crushed them, I say!
November 12, 2008 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 25
Think of my FedEx bill, and weep!
Here’s where my years as a cubiclemonkey finally pay off. Those document holders are holding sheaves of papers, of course, not individual ones…grouped topically and described in an inventory. The two stacks in the back are the photocopies. And that thing on top is my check to the expediter. I have never been so glad I chose the Scooby Doo personalized checks.
Okay, so, biometrics tomorrow, off to the nearest FedEx/Kinko’s, make copies of the biometrics, FedEx the lot to the expediter, drink until I hear something. Then I’ll pick myself up and dust myself off and start all over again.
Let us review. The visas in order are:
Marriage visa: good for six months, during which time we must wed. That’s this one. I can see a doctor, but I’m otherwise pretty much a non-person on this visa. No work, not even volunteer work. Before the six months is up, I have to go for
Further Leave to Remain: this one allows me to get a National Insurance Number and work and stuff. Essentially the same paperwork as this visa, plus marriage certificate. This makes me a sort of probationary person. Currently, it’s taking two months to process these, so I shall be a Stoat of Leisure — or, at any rate, a houseweasel — for some time. Before two years is up, I have to go for
Indefinite Leave to Remain: this one is good forever, unless I do something bad and get caught. Then they can still deport me. Before I get this one, I have to take something called the Life in the UK test, which is kind of like Limey Trivial Pursuit. I’ve taken a couple of mock versions online. I passed one, but not the other. Dates. I cannot remember them. Finally, there’s
Citizenship and passport. I wouldn’t do this if it at all endangered my US citizenship. But it don’t. So I shall. Under current rules, I’m eligible for this three years after I set foot in the UK with that first visa, so I’ll probably go for it shortly after I get my ILR. I have to be sponsored by a couple of responsible professional people, like a vicar and a doctor. So ixnay on the ussingcay.
You’d think government would prefer people stay on an ILR, because it’s easier to control them, but they are currently talking about making citizenship semi-mandatory. That is, you become a citizen, you explain why you can’t (religious reasons, or losing citizenship in your native country, for example) or you leave. So. Um. Okay.
Each one of these is a thousand bucks a throw, not counting shipping costs and document gathering and so on. The Immigration Service is entirely self-supporting, and it’s not hard to see how they manage it.
So think of me at noon tomorrow, in Hartford, having unspeakable things done to me in the name of homeland security. They won’t even let you bring a cellphone in the building, so I’m pretty sure there’s at least an anal probe. Yay!
November 11, 2008 — 4:44 pm
Comments: 38
Licenfe for to Import ye Weazelle
Okay, here’s what I had to scrape up for visa number one.
- ■ A letter from Uncle B saying he’s cool with this
■ His passport
■ Six months of bank statements
■ Deed to Badger House
■ Two years of his tax returns
■ My old passport
■ My current passport
■ Six months of my bank statements
■ A list of all the times we’ve been together, where and for how long
■ Pictures of us together
■ A few postcards covering the widest spread of time
■ Screencaps of our email traffic for a few months
■ Screencaps of our Skype history for a few days
■ A passport-sized photo of me not smiling, looking like a sad, elderly, half-deflated balloon
■ A Xerox copy of all this shit (and another one to keep in case they lose all this shit)
■ $940
Bear in mind this is originals only — no photocopies. And you can’t start early, the bank documents have to be farm fresh.
Wednesday noon I take me and my passport and my appointment sheet to Hartford, CT, where I get fingerprinted, rephotographed — and possibly put into the DHS database. They don’t tell you when they do this or what triggers it. The biometrics step is all new. Lucky moi.
Then I go to the nearest FedEx/Kinko’s, have the biometrics thingie Xeroxed, put it together with the other stuff and a return FedEx envelope, and FedEx it all to the Visa Expediter. Three hundred bucks to them, they drop it off at the embassy, it goes to the top of the pile (which, incidentally, sounds like a very dubious racket to me) and if the papers are in perfect order, they pick up my Import License next day and FedEx it back to me.
But, of course, papers are never in perfect order. He’s missing June on his bank statements. I’ve carried my birth certificate in my wallet my whole life, but it wasn’t there when I looked today (it’s unclear if I’m from a country that requires this, or if my passport is enough). And on and on. I’m told that individual immigration officers have tremendous personal authority about what to accept and what to reject. So basically, I only have to hope I get dropped on the desk of a British civil servant living in New York City in November who doesn’t have a hair across his ass.
I am SO screwed.
November 10, 2008 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 59
Today’s Fun British Fact
It is illegal to mail horror comics to the UK.
For reals. I tried to find an online citation for that, but I couldn’t. It’s true, though. The lady at the Post Office showed me the regulation sheet.
I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to mail Uncle B an air pistol. A BB gun. PO Lady wouldn’t let me, on account of it’s “a weapon.” And I say, “a reproduction weapon.” And she says, “well you could hurt somebody with it.” And I say, “I could hurt you with this Customs Declaration form if I tried hard enough.”
I lost. Of course I did. Nobody ever argues the regulations and wins.
My real guns are going in the shop (most of them, anyway). But I have a couple of CO2 pistols I’d like to keep. They’re perfectly legal in the UK, but one looks exactly like a Glock and the other looks like a Walther PPK. I figured I didn’t want to pack them in with my household stuff, on the off-chance they turn up on an x-ray or something and get everything confiscated. So I decided to mail them on ahead.
I’m sure the comic regulation is some fusty old thing left over from the pre-Code comics era. Like the comic I stole this header graphic from. Which is in my horror comic collection.
Which is packed with my stuff.
Oh, piffle.
October 30, 2008 — 2:41 pm
Comments: 39
Dear British Embassy: not good at paperwork, draw picture instead?
Ugh. Starting to assemble stuff for my first visa application. But not my last!
October 25, 2008 — 10:06 am
Comments: 22