"Fine, if you don't ask for details" was Katharine Hepburn's response to anyone who asked her how she was. I have been exerting a similar response to any enquiries about how my visa application was progressing. I seem to have applied for it in the most traumatic way possible; my application being delivered at the eleventh hour, my boss handling the employer side of the application resigning from our company and checking himself into a clinic for bipolar disorder and suicide watch, down to minor irritating issues, such as my passport photo in the envelope of my police check submission in the UK having an ink smudge all over it thus rendering it unusuable. It has been a 'barrel of laughs' and I have been lucky to get through it and not have the nightmarish concept of having to return home to the blistering cold weather of England. I must have spent over $3,000 (£1600) on this entire process. Yet through all the complications I am here. I am staying or should I say, I have the choice to stay.
It will be exactly a year since I arrived on these fair shores next Thursday (5th Feb). Australia Day being the day I unwittingly had my leaving do in my local pub in Herne Hill. I have the opportunity and the flexibilty to do whatever I desire now without a ticking clock buzzing inside my cranium.
Freedom of choice, no matter how inconsequential it is, is worth going out on a limb for.
