12. Flying Singapore to Sydney

This was one of these awkward situations where you’re flight is in the evening and your check-out time is at 12 noon. Therefore you have to find a place to store your bags and you also have to wear your travelling clothes all day in case you don’t have a chance to change. Our other big issue was trying to keep the weight in our cases down and so it was on with the hiking boots, jeans, fleeces and jackets even though it was 28 degrees outside and 90% humidity. If I could have got away with it I would have wore my kilt, sporran and flashes too.

Luckily for us the hotel said they would look after our bags for as long as we wanted which let us tour the blissfully air conditioned malls once more. Between us we had a few dollars left so we were on a mission to spend it. This proved totally fruitless and since we had so much time to kill we took in a movie, popcorn and all.

Within 3 minutes of being in the cinema I was wishing that I was back in the sweltering heat wearing every item of clothing I owned. The place was frozen. I mean cold enough that you could see your breath in front of you. Everyone had come in dressed in shorts and t-shirts and by the end of the film they were wrapped in various assortments of shawls, coats and jumpers. I swear if I’d been in there with an umbrella I would have ripped off the material and tried to fashion a poncho out of it.

Anyway, we soon ran out of things to do and thought we might as well head to the airport even though we were going to be over 4 hours early for the flight. At least we could have a wonder round the place and do all the usual things like try 16 different aftershaves and think about taking up smoking just so we could buy those massive boxes of fags.

But of course nothing ever goes smoothly does it. Let me just fill you in on the problem we had with the visas before coming to Oz. If you’ve read my Oz-Blog then just skip this bit although it might provide a quick refresher on the ridiculous hoop jumping we went through to get those bloody bits of paper stuck in our passports…

12 December, 2006
Mission Impossible!


Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try and find the Australian Consulate in Edinburgh.

I swear that the place doesn't exist.

Isla and I headed through to the 'Burg yesterday as we needed to rectify a faux pas that we made with our visa. We recently updated our passports to those new ones with the micro chips in them so that Big Brother can have an easier time tracking our movements and the powers that be can continue their War of Terror (as Borat put it!) by knowing where their friendlies are so that they can abuse their power by fingering me in the airports (up yours Denver!).

Anyway, the new passports have different numbers which don't correspond to the ones that are on the Electronic Visa acceptance thingy, so we had to head to the Consulate to try and get the numbers changed.

I dare you to have a look on the Net for the Consulate and see if you can find a) more than 1 page with the same address on it and b) a phone number that works and doesn't just go to a crappy info line.

After not baeing able to find it at 69 George St (a derelict doorway) I phoned and 118-118 and they said that is was 93. So we tried this building called Forsythe House and it was just a bunch of accountants. Then I phoned my mate and he looked on the Net again and said that it was 83 (this is on the Australian Government website incidently). But alas, no, There was just some banks and hairdressers around this area. So I phoned another mate who works for the Scotish Exec. and he said that it was 93 (again) so we headed back to Forsythe House and looked again at the brass plated buzzers in the doorway.

Sure enough there WASN'T a sign for the Consulate. There was however, a tiny white piece of paper stuck down with some selotape which said "For Buisnesses not listed here please ring this buzzer" which we did.

The quietest voice in the world said "hello?" which , with my ear pressed against the panel, I could hardly hear.

"Hi, I'm looking for the Australian Consulate" I shouted, assuming that she was probably unable to hear me also, although in hind-sight she was probably thinking "I wish people would stop shouting into the mic down there".

"Wait a moment!"

I wait a moment then her voice whispers back.

"Sorry it's not open today. It's only open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1pm to 4pm".

What a load of crap. Working for the consulate (note I've stopped using a capital letter as they don't deserve it) must be the cushiest job in the world. Anyway, looks like we are going to be heading back there tomorrow. Oh well, a few more hours away from the Neds can't be a bad thing.

13th December 2006
Mission Impossible II

As this image shows, Tom Cruise is a whack-job mentalist. However, he is not alone. It would seem that after our 2nd Trip through to Edinburgh today the people who run the Australian Consulate are also mentalists.

This time we found the place without a problem and were greated by a nice sectretary who said that there were 3 people in front of us and we should just take a seat on one of the nice lobby couches. When I say lobby, I mean it was more of a hallway that had a ridiculous amount of through-traffic from all the other companies that share that building (I counted 23 on the plaquard behind the receptionist) and weirdly they all seemed to use the same receptionist. Although to her everything was "no problem" and by the 15th time she had said that down the phone I wanted to beat her within an inch of her life with the Bill Bryson novel that Isla was reading.

After about 45 minutes a plump girl with less dress sense than colour-blind cave-woman that buys her mirrors from "the Hall of Mirrors" and shops at the Sally-Army called us into The Consultate. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the consulate official showed us into her office and it looked a great deal like this one <-------. There was a single desk, three chairs, a small filing cabinate and a wastepaper basket. I don't really know what the bin was for as the only things on the desk were a pen, a pad of post-it notes (the small ones) and a rubbish plastic Australian desk-flag. There certainly wasn't anything electronic and no sign of a computer.

None-the-less we told the girl of our situation and she said that "The Consulate" only deals with passports in her jumbled accent (actually think that she was Canado-Pole working in the Australian Consulate in Scotland - Mentalists I tells ya!). Instead she phones her head office and they give her the number for some department in the High Commission in London that deals with this kind of thing. So we thank the girl and she says something along the lines of "Good luck wubba weeba and have a bree brinnng great mungbean holiday" like a fat Polish R2-D2/Jar-Jar cross. (She wasn't that bad but I was getting a bit worked up with the fact that we'd spend loads of time trying to sort this mess out and so far not really got anywhere. It's not that I don't like going through to Edinburgh. It's just that it reminds me how shit Glasgow is.)

Anyway we headed home and got into the flat just after 4pm. I pulled the number out of my backpack which was stuck to my passport (don't you love Post-its?) and called it. It rang once then went to an automated message. I'll not bore you with the details but 3 things are important 1) "This is only a message. To speak to a human you'll have to phone our other number 2) their offices are only open 9am-4pm and so it was already closed for the day and 3) the number it gave us to call was a premium rate £1 per minute number! The irony of all this was when Jar2-D2 was writing down the number she told us "Call this one as the one on the website costs £1 per minute beep beep". ARGH!!!

So far this caper has cost us about £40 in train and underground tickets and we are still none the wiser as to what we are supposed to do about our visa/passport mix up. If they tell us tomorrow that we have to go to London I'll... well I don't know what I'll do as we have neither the time, the cash, nor the inclination to go down there, especially at this time of year. I guess we'll find out in about 15hours.

14th December 2006
Mission Impossible III

I don't know why I hate him so much but Tom Cruise is insane. Fact! Also I don't know why I'm wasting so much time looking for JPEGs of Tom being a fool as he really doesn't have anything to do with my Visa (apart from a tenuous link to Mission Impossible and the fact that the second one was shot in Sydney). But I mean look at him!!! He's acting like a damn chimp! Click here to see Tom kill Oprah!

Anyway, 10 Minute phone call and another £10 down the drain.

The premium line does eventually get you through to someone that seems to have a clue but the first 5 mins go a bit like this...

"You've reached the Australian High Commission not-so-hot-line. The answers to most questions can be found on our website. That's www.immi.gov.au. Let me spell that for you w for world, w for wide, w for web, dot for dot, I for idiot, M for moron, M for mongo, I for Insane, dot for full-stop, G for Gawd Almighty, O for obtuse, V for visa?-ha-ha-you-ain't-getting-one, dot for period, A for awkward, U for useless. I'll repeat that for you...

...I'm sure that you get the picture. It's a real money earner for them I think. Anyway, eventually got through to someone who seemed to know their stuff. There was no pausing to look things up on her computer or being put on hold while she asked a collegue. However, she did say that we had to fill in more forms (like that bit in Wayne's World 2 where they try to get the permit for Waynestock) and that we had to send them to the issuing office.

THE ISSUING OFFICE!!! That's the fools who told us to go on this wild goose chase in the first place. This whole thing has been like shopping for shoes with a chick; try 42 pairs on in 13 different stores and then go back to the first shop and buy the original pair.

So, the forms are filled out and scans of the new pasports have been sent and hopefully we'll hear from them by the morning. At least we don't have to take a trip to London (yet!).



21st December 2006
Mission Impossible IV


Yeeeee Haaaaaa!

At last! With one working day left until Xmas I received an email from the Immigration people in Sydney saying that they have updated our visa details. It only took about twenty phone calls and emails to 3 different departments in the DIMA in Parramatta, but it's done.

We are finally and definitely heading to Oz. Now I a really excited. Special thanks to Steve at International Medical Recruitment for leading us by the hand every step of the last 12 months. For you medics out there who are thinking of going to Oz I definetly recommend going with these guys. They really have made everything easy moving to Sydney.

…So as I was saying nothing ever goes smoothly and low and behold while we are checking in for the flight the girl behind the desk says, “You do not have a visa,” WHAT!!! I explain the likely reason is that the electronic visa is probably still attached to our old passports despite what the witch at the passport agency told us. My Singlish isn’t very good and I think something was lost in the translation and there followed lots of “sit over there” and “did you lose your passports?” and “I’ll need to Telex Australia” and “can I see your old passports” (which we luckily brought with us just in case) and “I’ll need to speak to my manager”. I think you get the picture. An hour later the girl was so flustered that I think she just wanted us out of her country and blagged us onto the plane, visa or no.

So then we had the joy of spending 7 hours in international airspace expecting to reach customs at Sydney and being politely told to “Wrack Off,” on the next flight out of Australia. Well, you’ll never guess what happened next. We landed at Kingsford Smith Airport, grabbed out hand luggage from the overhead storage, walked off the plane, went up to customs handed our passports over to “Shaun” (who was build like the proverbial brick dunny)…

…which he stamped and said, “Good on ya mate,” and that was it. After all that stress and uncertainty during the last few weeks good old Shaun just stamped them and let us through. Bonzer ya beaut! We thought this surely must be mistake but once we left the airport and checked in at our hotel we went to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to get the real, non-electronic, visas for our passports. Before I could explain that there might be a problem she had printed them both off and had stuck them onto the relevant page. I was still finishing my first sentence when she was shouting “Next!” and waving forward the person behind us. Truly there is no red tape in Australia.