Waiting waiting...

Mr. O is patiently waiting to hear back from the High Commission in London about his temporary work visa. He sent the LMO + application + fee (a banker's cheque for 150 CAD that the bank here charged him 20 euros to cut -- nobody uses cheques here any more -- why not allow an EU bank transfer between Finland and the UK for FREE? Anyway.) about two weeks ago and it shouldn't take more than a month. About 12 days ago he was ridiculing Royal mail for taking so long to deliver the package. About a week ago he wondered out loud if he could call them to check, since it had been 10 days, hadn't it? Afraid of raising the ire of underpaid and overworked public servants who might take pleasure in slipping an annoying applicant's file to the bottom of the pile (who would do such a thing?!), I told him to chill.

He's not just manic though. Since Finns take their summer holidays very seriously, usually firms here ask their employees to inform them of their holiday plans right after Mayday, which would be right about now. Rather than get into the whole deal with his boss, he gave the dates according to our optimistic plan that he gets the visa and it's all good. Positive thinking et cetera. If he doesn't get it (and there. is. no. reason. why. he. wouldn't.) we had planned that he could take his vacation later, come with me to TO to find an apartment, visit the family etc., and then come back and work for a bit. Which would suck, even by Plan B standards.

So I'm all playing it cool, because I know it's going to be fine, and then my friend in Copenhagen tells me about how the CIC in Ottawa totally botched her application for her son's citizenship certificate, stupid things like spelling his name wrong on the document, screwing up the postal code, etc. In the end it took 18 months or so to get the document, just because of a typo. Not exactly encouraging. It makes me wonder about the people who work there, what sort of hours they work, what they get paid, etc. Mr. O will disagree I'm sure, but Finnish names are kinda hard to spell. And I know from my rewarding experiences with Royal Bank Visa that Canadian input systems don't like funny European address formats. Hmm. I think I'll go distract myself with something else now...