"In Process"

Last night, sometime around the time I would be getting ready for bed on a Friday night, an email came into my mailbox from the eCAS (electronic client application status) tracker: It appears your application has been updated.

I am certain I couldn't click that email to open it fast enough.  Sure enough, it was the long-awaited "In Process" email, which announced that they received my application on May 19, 2011 (yes, we know!) and began processing said application on February 20, 2012.  Nine months to the day, CHC-Kingston got off their hands and began processing my application.  Hallelujah.

From here on out, the actual processing should go much faster than the sitting around.  Background check, criminality and security checks, and the medical check.  The last one is where I will be held up, as I no longer have a valid medical and cannot be issued a visa without one.

I have decided to wait for the embassy to issue the form requesting that I re-do my medical exam, although I do not strictly have to wait.  It's just that, at this stage, attempts to be pro-active may be counter-productive as some over-zealous and not very well-informed embassy staffer might feel that I should have waited, and proceed to waste my time and money by demanding I use the form issued to me and not accepting the results of the medical I initiated myself.  Nowhere in the Regulations, the Act, or the Operating Manual does it say I have to wait, but some people like to assert their one single iota of authority by insisting on not accepting results of a medical they did not order themselves.

Week before last was such a rough week.  I was greatly upset by the news that a friend had received an in process update.  Naturally, she had applied to sponsor her husband, and having done so in August 2011 (6 months after we filed, 3 months after CHC-Kingston received our file), her husband had gotten his in process update on February 12th, four months after his file was received.  I was stunned.  Here I had sat all this time, and with this kind of time lapse between our applications, and her husband's application was being processed before mine?  The arbitrariness and unfairness of the process hit me especially hard, and I could not be as happy for them as I wanted to be.  I did a lot of exercise in order to burn off the feelings of anger and depression.

To restore my equilibrium, I felt it was necessary to do something more.  So I decided to spring clean.  Yes, a month early.  I pulled out bags and bags of old papers I had been "hoarding" since I came to Kingston to live, and went through a suitcase full of clothing and found that only six pieces in it could still fit or be given away because everything else was hopelessly tight, or too dated.  I cleaned and I threw away things until the apartment felt lighter, and so did I.  I did suffer some mild discomfort at discarding these things, I do not like to throw things away I feel might be useful, but they needed to go.  As things stand now, I won't need to deal with these things when it comes time to make the big move.

And now, it's finally time to accept that I ought to be in a leaving frame of mind, and I need not suppress or question it.  I am hopeful that the embassy does not insist on mailing me my medical request when I live less than a kilometre (less than ten minutes' walk) from the embassy.  I would much prefer to go there and collect it, than to have it take two weeks to go through the mail in the circuitous manner of Jamaica Post.  Efficiency and common-sense are not, however, their bywords.

I am hopeful that everything left to be done will happen in good time, though.  I did not get my wish of a winter arrival, so I am hopeful that spring will not pass before we are together again.