Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Stories of a Visa Application - Part IV: Right Back on Track?

Fast forward to Part V: http://ocavusoglu.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/stories-of-visa-application-part-v-old.html
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Come Monday.

Morning: Hardly wake up to my mother's insisting wake up call. Go to the bank. Put through the request. Go back home.


Noon: Call from the bank:

- It is settled, you can come and collect the letter.


I go, collect the letter. It is only in Turkish, so I request an English one to be written, too.

I download the application form once again, fill it, and start making my application envelope.

In the meanwhile, D. is alert. There is no great news from that part of the world, but as far as bank account is concerned, I might not even need it. She's mailed me the laptop charger, though. That's also good news.


Evening: I feel like it is happenning. No more hard thoughts. Have a nice evening, meet a bunch of people, go see a gig, get a nice message.


Come Tuesday.

Morning: I am lazy and up late. So, skip here to the afternoon.


Afternoon: I go collect the English letter from the bank. At that very instance I realise that both the Turkish and the English letter and the bank account name look very ambigous, rather insecure to me. I have a funny feeling. I will not yet reveal here what it says, but it just doesn't feel right. It does not really state what is up with the account but it is rather a mixture of some names. Is this what the bank is trying in order to help me?

Feel shit. Meet a bunch of friends and share the pain with them... Sad thoughts of having to leave here so soon, yet again. Not much energy left to change plans...


Evening: I wanted to cross-examine this bank account and how much it belongs to me by going into a random branch and try to carry a transaction. It is too late, the banks were closed. So, after a fine evening, I go on the Internet and find out that the joint account shows up in my list of other bank accounts. Good relief. I can't try a transaction because it is past 23:00. Gotta wait for the morning.


2 tasks before I feel secure tomorrow:

1. Try a transaction with this account

2. Get another letter stating what transactions I can carry individually on this account.

All else sort of dealt with.


The rest is to show up at the appointment, get a feeling of whether my application looks strong here. I do not want to risk my future in the UK tomorrow with a weak attempt once again. A fucked up situation, a worst-case scenario of going back to London earlier than expected should be a priority over leaving a life there behind.

Moral of the story so far:
In times of hardness and scarcity, the one who will suffer the most will always be the one who has already been suffering. One whose rights of travel, work or live abroad was limited will have even more limited opportunities. There are many those are much worse than me, and the least I can do now is to be reminded over and over again that they are suffering even worse at what they are trying to get to. What we can do the least is to remind ourselves that each and every one of us are responsible of what the others are going through, and those with more power are those who are potentially more responsible. And those who seek power shall always keep in mind that it is just another element that changes hand with every passing moment and we are just intertwined with the complexity of mutual and multi-dimensional dependencies that are all bunches of limitless variables and some "randomish" probabilities.

Let's see what tomorrow literally brings...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice documentation of yet another typical visa story. I applied for the same one you're trying now, and after reading what you've gone - and still are going- through, I'm just glad that I was over with it in October. On my part, I especially had a lot of trouble in getting just a stupid one month statement from HSBC here in London - another long bizarre story which proves that randomness you said is so true and so powerful as well. I guess you just have to keep on trying until you reach that lucky strike person. Wish you luck tomorrow, keep it updated till you get the good news ;)

Ömerillo said...

Thank you Didem for the message and the good luck wish.

Glad that you're already over with. If it weren't for the unscrupulous way of handling things by the LSE, I would have also been on easy vacations now back in Turkey.

But such is life =)

Will keep it updated after my decision tomorrow and further onwards...