Hello All
And what a lovely evening it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The date….16th February 2017
The time….11:03 am
The location….Standing in my rented kitchen just about to take the dogs for a walk
That was the time, place and date that the world according to myself and my beautiful wife changed! After years of scheming, saving money to spend massively on visas, wishing people on Australia related immigration groups all the best for getting their visas granted or adding a thumbs up to people taking their appropriately named #airportselfie photos before leaving the UK for a new life down under….WE HAVE BEEN GRANTED OUR VISAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my God (and how many prayers did I send Him for this day to be realised!). The emotions are still setting in! I had one of the dogs on the lead and was about to attach the lead to my horse-like second dog when the phone went – it was my visa agent Maria at Emergico. I picked up the phone with a completely blank brain, I didn’t really know why she was phoning! My brain is rather quick if I am honest (being a doctor of Astrophysics and all that!) but it was definately on holiday today!
“Hello Maria” was my first input to this amazing phone call, “Hello Andy how are you?” asked the very courteous and pleasant Maria. “Oh, I’m fine and you?” was my reply, “all good thanks, we have heard from immigration….” THUMP THUMP THUMP started my heart as time stood still. “You have your visas” came the final part to that sentence. I spluttered and gasped and croaked out “we have our visas?” I could barely breathe! “Yes you have your visas, I shall send you the visa documents via your email, keep them safe, check the FaceBook group because I left a little riddle on there for you and that’s basically it for us”. Even at this point in the conservation I could barely speak, I wanted to scream down the phone but thought it would either freak out my poor visa agent or deafen her – most probably both! I wanted to cry at this point also, my brain was swiftly returned to life by a multitude of emotions going crazy all at once. After a short time, I managed to thank her in a croaky way and the phone call was done.
Next….phone the wife NOW yelled my heart to my head – c’mon son, catch up dumbass (brain taking a little poke there)! On the phone calling directly to Stefania, she answered (something she isn’t really supposed to do at her work) and I blurted out “WE’VE GOT THE VISAS! MARIA HAS JUST PHONED…”, “wait a moment, I want to walk outside and scream” came her reply, which could be heard from me on her phone, in her office as I was yelling a complete load of jibberish at this point!
Well, the basic gist continued from there with a hurried drive up to where my wife works for a celebration lunch. It still hasn’t truly sunk in yet, but it did a damn good job of it when, after dinner, I read the accompanying documentation sent by Australia’s Department for Immigration and Border Protection stating lovely phrases such as ‘working in Australia’ and ‘indefinate leave to remain’ and so on.
So here I am, buzzing like a nutcase on Ritalin typing this post out whilst my beautiful wife sleeps in bed because she will be up at 5am again tomorrow!
This doesn’t mean the end of this blog….oh dear me no chance! This blog will continue because our journey has just begun….WE ARE MOVING TO AUSTRALIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
More to follow, stay good peoples!
EmigratingToOz 