White Gold and Red Tape. (830 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: crap:non-fiction
Rating: 2 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Circe <feral_pet.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2004-05-13 07:54:21 EDT
'Nothing is ever easy.' Such a cliche - something my mother always says. That doesn't make it less true.
Ok, yeah, some things are easy. Falling down the stairs is easy. Burning dinner is easy. Spilling my first, precious, badly needed coffee of the day all over the passenger seat of the car is easy.
But the things worth having are never easy. At least, not as easy as they damned well should be.
I met my fiance online. (Brief pause here for the disdainful sneers and the inevitable 'These things never work out'. Done? Okay then.) We talked for a year or so before he came here to meet me. The predictable old pattern of courtship ensued - Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy returns to fuckin' Europe, boy comes back, boy proposes, girl accepts, girl is happy, boy is happy. Boy goes back to Europe again. Okay - maybe not exactly standard, but close enough.
That first excited rush of joy - 'I'm getting married! Yay! Sound the bells, send out the letters! This girl is gettin' HITCHED!' - fails take into account certain unavoidable facts.
For example, the existence of the Australian Department of Immigration.
I'm fairly sure - almost certain, in fact - that this is an entire department staffed by cackling, evil little beasts, whose sole purpose is to make the process hopelessly complicated. Nothing human could have come up with this: We need to have hired a celebrant, and organised the date and place and time of the wedding before - BEFORE - we can apply for him to come here and marry me. Let me say that again: We need to organise the wedding before we can find out if we're allowed to have one. Is it only me that doesn't understand this?
The forms (oh, god, the forms. I have forms piled up on my table. I lost one of the twins the other day - I found her wandering amongst the paperwork, chewing on form 40SP in an attempt to avoid starvation. If I hadn't needed to find a pen, she might have been lost in there for a week) ask very cunning questions in an attempt to trick me. For example: 'Did you enter into this relationship solely to gain permanent residency in Australia for your partner?' I mean, the subtlety in that one had me thinking for a good ten minutes.
I need his identification to lodge my forms. He needs mine to lodge his. We're sending personal information winging over the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound. (If a plane goes down, we're fucked. You can guarantee there'll be SOME really, really important piece of paper on it that we needed - like the receipt for shoes I bought ten years ago, or a list of the contents of my fridge. These people are relentless. I can just picture one of the twisted little creatures snickering to itself as it prints out a form requiring a complete catalogue of my underwear.)
Our phone calls, once rich with intellectual conversation like 'I think your hair is really pretty', 'I kept one of your shirts', and, on one memorable occasion, 'miaow', are now monologues on 'What the celebrant said' and 'Have you sent your passport yet?'.
In the midst of all this, I've finally discovered a way to fulfill my life-long dream of being famous. "And the lead story tonight on Channel Ten news - mystery surrounds the tragic death of a twenty-five year old woman in Western Australia today. She was found dead at her kitchen table, with the words 'I give up' gouged into her forehead in evenly spaced block capitals with a black ballpoint pen. She had apparently choked to death on balled-up immigration forms, which were found lodged in her throat as far down as her oesophagus. Police are treating the death as 'pathetic'."
User Reviews
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-05-20 11:17:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Congratulations. Fairy tale endings (maniacal warlord children and other such things notwithstanding) are always nice.
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2007-05-20 10:51:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2007-05-20 08:03:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I so totally did.
VICTORY IS MINE
We had our 2nd anniversary last month.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-05-20 06:38:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
But you succeeded. Didntcha.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-12-10 14:58:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I LOVE when Aussies complian about any form of immigration.
Submitted by Spookster (user info) at 2004-10-03 14:50:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You could always try and get a New Zealand citizenship.
We have free admittance to Oz and vice versa.
Just an idea...
Submitted by Freakmagnet (user info) at 2004-10-03 14:42:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-10-03 14:25:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, stop whining you....whiner!
Circe: 'oh no, I've found love...let me now find something to complain about!'
Some should be so lucky!
Excuse me while I go to cry now about my inability to find love in a cold cruel word, and my relentlesss and fruitless search for it...
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2004-05-13 20:27:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Tripin - Heh... my fiance's Dutch, as well. When you say 'story book ending', you don't mean stories like Romeo and Juliet, right? What with them both dying and all...
Right?
Submitted by Fixer (user info) at 2004-05-13 11:59:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ainkara (user info) at 2004-05-13 11:30:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...
Submitted by bargled (user info) at 2004-05-13 11:07:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Do away with Government! ANARCHY 4 LYFE
Submitted by TripinDayZ420 (user info) at 2004-05-13 10:45:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good luck. i knew a chick in dallas years ago that met a man from the netherlands on ICQ. they had a hell of a time getting him over here (to the states) but eventually, after much pers...pursav...perserve.... effort they succeeded. he was one of the nicest most genuine people i had ever met and they really did have the story book ending...happily ever after. of course the last time i talked to her was two years ago and he may have turned out to be some kind of sick sexual pervert with a fettish for clam chowder.
anyway, good luck!
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2004-05-13 08:34:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Falco - ok, that made me laugh. Hard.
Coyote - they force people who do that to hang out with the Crocodile Hunter for six months. I'd prefer a sane husband.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2004-05-13 08:21:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This may be a silly question, but what happens if he shows up as a tourist and just happens, by coincidence, to get married while he's visiting? Although the penalty for this is probably having your hands lopped off at the wrist, and then you'd have to wear that awesome ring on your toe...
Submitted by Falco (user info) at 2004-05-13 08:11:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
thats one hell of a pen, where did you get it?
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2004-05-13 08:09:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hehe... yeah, ain't it though?
Submitted by lojope (user info) at 2004-05-13 08:05:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That's a beautiful ring!