This week I downloaded the application form for my visa to live in Australia. I do not plan to send it off just yet though as I need to renew my passport first, so can't do that until I am back from our next holiday at the very earliest. (For those of you who are interested it is the "Application for migration to Australia by a partner" Form 47SP).
Anyway there are a lot of very frustratingly and seemingly pointless and time-consuming and even impossible to answer questions in this form, (as you might expect from a government agency). So I would like to use this opportunity to vent some frustrations.
For example Question 9: Have you been to Australia before? Seems an easy enough question, so yes I can give them the dates or arrival and departure, because I have the stamps in my passport to check against. However they also want Visa Number.....Now as Australia uses electronic visas, I have absolutely no record of this.... Oh yes but that's OK because if I have no visa number I can always give them my 13 digit visa grant number!!! My What?!!? Anyway, shouldn't the Australian government already have that information?
Now question number 81 is my favorite: In which countries have you visited during the last 10 years....with exact dates! Ha Ha Ha! Now, for those of you who do not know B and myself that well, you might wonder what the big joke is here, but it's really quite simple. I have completely lost count of the number of trips abroad B and I have taken. As a lot of these trips were within Europe, it's not even like I have stamps in my passport to aid my memory!
Still I just need to grit my teeth and buckle down to it, it will all be worth it in the end! (As long as they don't reject my visa application simply because I can't remember the exact date I moved in with B, or because I forgot the date we got back from Paris when we went for B's birthday a couple of years ago).
Adam
See it's not just me venting today now is it! Why not go through all the pics you've put up on facebook, it might jog your memory and at least you'll have the dates you uploaded them...might be around the time you got back from those trips? I work for the government and even I don't understand all the forms we use! Good Luck! x
ReplyDeleteP.S. It's Amy, just realised I forgot to put my name!
ReplyDeleteThanks Amy, I think that is the plan I'm going to have to utalise, I should be able to do more than guess dates though as there should be the 'date picture taken' in the file properties...But this relys on me having set the clock and calender on the camera properly!
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