It's a visa story...

Hi all,

I just checked Fanny has been quite active recently so I need to keep up and add my bit to this blog.

So here we go a funny story to start with.

How to get a visa for the USA?

As most of you know, the US have a visa waiver program for most of western Europe (apart of the Greeks but well... ) and so for French citizen as well .... if you have a recent enough passport, which is not my case.

So here I go, applying for a US visa. And that's when the race started.

When you want a visa from the US you can't just pop down to their embassy in London. No,no,no. First you need to call an overpriced call center to book an appointment, then 4 weeks after you need to queue .... a lot ....
First you need to queue outside to get into the embassy (in the cold of course) then you need to queue to go through security checks, then you need to queue again to get a ticket to queue to give all your paperwork and have your hands scanned for fingerprints.
Then you have to queue, ...... again, to wait for your visa approval.

And after 5 and a half hours of queuing, 3 security checks (I still don't understand why 1 is not enough) and seeing human beings for roughly 10 minutes they give you (or not) your visa.

No wait you have to queue again to fill up the forms to get your passport sent back to you.

In comparison, Australian visas took 5 minutes over the internet and Vietnamese visas just 10 minutes queuing at their embassy.

But all this waiting and queuing is well worth it because after 1 months and a half you have a nice sticker on your passport saying you are trustworthy enough to enter the USA :) yeah!

And know I need to translate all that in French so for our French speakers I promise I'll do it asap.

Mobile phone - Telephone portable

Hi guys,

God, we hate O2.

They were due to stop Matt's number after Christmas but they decided to do it yesterday, so no more mobile phone for Matt.

You can still join him on mine. We will keep this number during our travelling, so you will be able to join us.

Fanny and Matt

French version - Version francaise

Coucou tout le monde,

Mon Dieu, nous detestons O2.

Ils etaient supposes arreter le numero de Mathieu apres Noel mais ils ont decide de le faire hier, donc Mathieu n'a plus de portable.

Vous pouvez toujours le joindre sur le mien. Nous garderons ce numero pendant notre voayge, comme ca vous pourrez nous contacter.

Fanny et Matt

Farewell Party - Fête de départ

We're gonna have a party, obviously!!!

So we plan to get really smashed in the WalkAbout in Temple on the Friday 15th of December and we will party as well on the following saturday and the week after on the wednesday and the thrusday.

(Fanny: I swear I would not dress like that)

French version - Version francaise

Bien évidemment, nous allons faire une fête !!!
Donc le plan, c'est de se retourner la tête au WalkAbout à Temple le vendredi 15 décembre et on fera aussi la fête le samedi qui suit et la semaine suivante le mercredi et le jeudi, soyons fou.
(Fanny: Je jure de ne pas m'habiller comme ça, promis)

Where are we going? - Où allons nous ?

Good question? We would have to think about it...

French version - Version francaise

Bonne question ? Il faudra qu'on commence à y réfléchir...

It's done!!! - C'est fait !!!

Monday the 20st of November 2006, we gave our notice (Fanny: "Yeahhhhhhhhh, for the one who were working in the same company as me they will understand!!!).

So that's it. It's done, finito, finish, niet, nada, zero, there is no coming back, no more work... Ok maybe a little bit more of work, till the 20st of December at least.

French version - Version francaise

Lundi 20 Novembre 2006, nous avons démissionné (Fanny : "Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, pour ce qui on bossait là où je bosse, ils comprendront !!!).

Donc, ça y est. C'est fait, finito, finish, niet, nada, zéro, il n'ya plus de retour en arrière, plus de travail... Ok peût être un peu plus de travail, au moins jusqu'au 20 décembre.