Waiting, Time and Visas

There is an old saying that goes "Time and tide wait for no man," which basically means that no person is powerful enough to stop the march of time. Which brings me to my pet hate, waiting. I hate waiting with such a passion it is unbelievable and that is a case where time drags its feet. Seriously. Don't you just hate waiting?  Don't you hate not having any control?  Another thing I have come to realise is that everybody has their own agenda and it doesn't always coincide or fit well with yours.  This of course can make life quite interesting while we all try to juggle our time.  It's difficult to plan ahead when you don't know exactly what someone you are relying on has planned.  What is a priority for you might not be a priority for them and therein lies many frustrations.

Take for instance my daughter's student visa application for Canada.  You already have to wait weeks for a reply then they go and have a strike so that visa processing slows down to a virtual halt.  They didn't care about the many futures that were being put on hold for international students from all over the world.  Then you get a letter declining the visa because her home ties were not strong enough.  So now it's a hindrance if you work at international schools and give your child an international education if they are wanting to study in Canada.  That doesn't sound very logical to me.  Many people choose to work abroad for whatever reason.  Their children should not be punished for it.
I'm still waiting for my visa so I can start my new job.  First they need a certain document that takes 8 weeks to get, then you have to wait for the couriered document to reach its destination, then wait for it to be processed, then wait for it to be couriered back to you.  An enormous amount of waiting that is beyond your control.  You can't move forward until you have it and there is nothing you can do to expedite it.  Totally out of your control.  My flight is booked for next week.  At this stage it is highly unlikely I'll be on it.  Frustration rules.
As I'm having a bit of a rant I may as well add in medical insurance.  Of course after you submit a claim you have to wait around 3 weeks to get your money back.  What makes me see red, is when you wait three weeks and then only get a fraction of what they owe you.  The reason given is insufficient documentation.  So you resend exactly the same documentation you did before.  There's nothing else extra you can really send and wait another three weeks and then they pay you.  Why could they not have just paid it the first time around?  Do they think I like to wait 6 weeks for money I've already paid out to be refunded?  More waiting.  I hate it.
One would think with all this waiting around I would have had a lot of time to write.  But here's the thing.  Although waiting has made time drag, time has also sped by so quickly that my two months holiday is nearly over.  How can that be possible?  I'd wanted to finish Hush Baby.  I had two months to do it.  Where has time gone?  Why have I wasted so much time and on what?  I can't even remember.  My goals for this holiday were:  finish the first draft of Hush Baby, work on Diary of a Dancer, take the ferry to Robben Island and visit Nelson Mandela's prison cell, go up in the cable car to the top of Table Mountain and do a Cape Malay Cooking Course.  While I have done some work on Hush Baby, I have not accomplished any of my holiday goals.  Were they unrealistic and inaccessible?  Not at all.  The fact is I thought I had two months to do them in and by my book two months is a lot of time.  Unfortunately time is running out and I have left everything until the last minute.  More frustration.
I did manage to make the time to have my health checks, do a spot of cooking, see some movies and read quite a few books so I guess it's not all bad.  But the things I haven't done are the things I really wanted to do.  I've just run out of time.
Cindy Vine is the author of Not Telling, Defective and CU@8.  All books are available on kindle and paperback at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and the Apple iStore.

A visit to a Tanzanian Hospital

All I can say is that I am pleased I wasn't seriously ill or dying.  If I was I would have died trying to open a file.
My appointment with the visiting dermatologist from the UK was at 10am.  I was told to open a file first.  Nobody actually explained the process of opening a file to me, and believe you me, there is a process!  At 8.30am I stood in a queue that moved forward painfully slowly as there are always people who join the queue from the side, and always join it in front of you.  After fifteen minutes the queue dissolved and expanded sideways into a mass of people all pushing and shoving to get to the front.  After elbowing my way to the front after what seemed to be an unusually long time of jostling, I was told to go to the next window.  Another queue just as wide as it was deep.  Have I ever mentioned how I hate waiting?  And I couldn't even read my Kindle because I had to stand the whole time and try and keep my place by using my elbows to keep out those trying to push in.  Luckily, I perfected the skill of elbowing during numerous train trips to Shanghai when I lived in China.
When I finally got to the front of the second queue, I was told to go back to the first queue.  I nearly burst into tears.  My chest started closing and I could feel a panic attack developing.  By this time it was 10.15.  I had been queueing for an hour and forty-five minutes and had achieved nothing.  Like a sheep I joined the next queue, in my heart knowing it was a waste of time.  If I didn't have this strange growth jutting out of me I would have left.  A kind nurse in another queue asked me if I had a piece of pink paper.  Of course I didn't!  Why would I have a piece of pink paper?  Apparently, they only help people with a pink paper.  You have to first get a piece of pink paper from the department you are visiting, in my case, the dermatology department.  Nobody had thought to tell me this.  Two hours of my life wasted.  I hate that.
The nurse called someone to take me to dermatology, two car parks and three buildings away.
Now clutching the piece of pink paper, I once again joined the queue.  Some people who had been queueing almost as long as me took pity and let me go to the front and push my piece of pink paper through the little window.  I saw why the whole process took so long.  No computers in sight, everything written by hand.  Painstakingly.  Cindy was written down as Cinci.  At that stage I was beyond caring.  It was already 11am.  I had been there since 8.30am.  After handing in my paper I was told to sit down and wait.  At last I could read my Kindle.  After fifteen minutes I decided it might be a good idea to try and find out what happens next.  I once again rejoined the queue at the second window where it appeared you had to pay.  Of course, being a foreigner I knew I would get charged a lot more than the locals.  Another nurse who had been in the queue at 8.30am came into the waiting area.  "Oh Mama you are still here!  I have been and gone, been and gone and am already bringing in a new patient!"  My smile was a little sickly.  It was 11.20am.
The nurse saved my life.  I was ready to slit my wrists if I had to wait any longer in a queue.
She shouted over the crowd, got those in the front to pass back my new file, and escorted me back to dermatology where I could pay instead of at the main hospital area.  $38, not too bad.
The visiting dermatologist was wonderful!  She removed the offending growth, gave me a check-over, froze a few strange spots, gave me a lecture on using sunblock and told me if I didn't use it I'd get wrinkles by the age of fifty.  Um, well actually....
My specimen was put into a very official-looking test-tube filled with formalin.  However, the dermatologist told me that I should not be too impressed, because at the very best there was a less than fifty percent chance of getting the results back from the pathologty lab.  They lose it, or the power is out and the machines can't work, or they forget about it.  So maybe we will never know what was growing out of me!
The whole visit lasted four and a quarter hours.  Isn't life here grand?