Friends this Christmas
I have been neglecting the blog over this blessed season, putting my mind to other tasks. As you can all imagine, of those there are many. There is so much to tell you all about, and I hope the pictures uploaded to Flickr tell the story without the need for too many words. The main purpose of this post is to express warmth and friendship to the Brisbane family. We are so happy to have met up with you, Marianne, Sean and John. Our new friends’ home is just ten minutes away from ours. As I am writing this blog entry, my colleague is starting the process of renewing my work contract. The next step will be a lease renewal and we have discussed moving our residence to the town where our Aussie mates now live. The town has better services – a well equipped school, outdoor play areas, shops and restaurants aplenty. God willing, John and family will still be living there next year, making visiting one another even easier after April.
There are two dampers on the process though. Due to their importance, I am not becoming heated as the potential exists for OVER heating. If I may explain, the one issue is a mute affair really, because I am meaning to buy a second hand vehicle anyway. It is the timing of bonus and sundry, coiinciding with the relocation of our residence that is a bit of a stress factor. This is an easy resolvable. The second is the real blighter. Arguably due to two factors (1) a pressing need for some clowns to relocate old experienced clowns to offices outside of the country and (2) the pressing need to put new clowns in managerial positions all over the show, our wonderful department of home affairs has yet to respond with as much as a scrap of paperwork concerning Inez. The local immigration office (here in Suwon) requires that a birth be registered within thirty days, or we face a one hundred US$ fine for every month thereafter. Reasonable, if you aren’t dealing with total imbeciles and incompetent fools in ones’ homeland as well as office furniture over here. Seriously, the lady was very helpful and friendly and shared with me all her ailments in a friendly manner over the telephone, back in October. Of course, none of the subsequent delays can be attributed directly to her or to any other singular (natural or legal) person. We must all bear the brunt of that, for allowing such a national disaster to continue in our country, a disaster I view optimistically as a “storm-rainbow cycle”. I didn’t want to gripe, and I will not do it frequently, because it will only delay and complicate matters further. But hear this, I will renew my visa and residency along with Sam, Tara and Rei — but Inez may still be waiting for her passport in April 2008.
I asked them very politely for a letter I could present to the Korean immigration, explaining that a passport will REALLY take five to six months to process (bearing in mind, it only takes six days for a Korean to apply for and receive a ten year valid passport). You are imagining a carefully worded letter, bearing the South African Seal? You are cordially invited to revise your expectation, please. The official at Seoul SA Embassy kindly copied the three completed forms and gave me a receipt detailing that I had applied and paid for ‘birth registration’, ‘temporary passport’, ‘full passport’ and ‘unabridged birth certificate’. Oh, she also wrote (scrawled) inside the footer section of the form: The issuing of this p/port will be done after the registration in South Africa +/- 5-6 months. Thanks Miss M.d.P. I understand totally. I feel the same way. Eish! What can we do but shrug it off and hope for the best and count ourselves lucky, we are outside and not inside that mess.
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