Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Monday dash

It is 00:13 UK time and I was supposed to be working on my presentation since at least an hour ago. Oh dear, well I thought rather than me kept browsing through facebook numerous times - it is better to spend my procrastinating time writing in my blog haha.. Today is such a LONG day. The usual catch phrase of "so many things to do, so little time" do seem to suit my schedule these days. To begin with, I was in London this morning to submit my passport at the Schengen visa application center. I, however, did one really stupid mistake by going to the WRONG address .....errr... ok let me start from the beginning... So, me having been living here in the UK for awhile equals to me having experiences the process of applying for a Schengen visa numerous times. This time I wished to apply for the visa via the Netherlands embassy. The NL embassy (and several others EU countries, such as Belgium, Germany, Italy etc) have now started outsourcing a company called the VFS Global , which is basically works like an agent to process visa applications from people like me who needs a visa to visit one of the EU countries. My appointment was scheduled to be at 08.30 am this morning (Monday) in London. As I have no longer lived in London, I thus decided to stay overnight at Yaya and Lala's place over the weekend.. so I don't have to wake up insanely early and catch the first train out from Cambridge on Monday. This morning, me, the ever-always on-time one, of course woke up early and was there about 45 mins earlier from my allocated appointment time. By 'there' I meant I was at the OLD visa application center building - near Soho, Oxford Street..... Apparently the VFS Global have MOVED to another place... Actually, Ryan has notified me the night before as he said "hey tris, the visa application center has moved, isn't it?". My response was "really? (opened the website, copy the address, then enter into google map - ta da the old place in soho appeared) .. so I though nah, seems that it is still the same place. However when I got there this morning, what made me realised I was in the wrong place (luckily!) was that they posted this letter on the door which said basically that they have moved! I was like, shit, I will never make it there on time..aaaa... literally ran to the tube station, hop on the tube to Paddington and then rush out again in Paddington and basically ask people where the hell is this place called the Battleship Building on 179 Harrow Road. It really doesn't help that Harrow Road is LONG.... and the building is located in a pretty obscure place to find if you are a pedestrian (it is sort of underneath the Marylebone flyover, note the word 'sort of'). Anyhow, managed to find it and still on time for my allocated appointment date. PHEW.. so yeah, lesson learnt today : never assume! check and re-check, don't assume you know where you are going just because you have been there before..


Ok back to my presentation :)