This is the deal. Even though I have lived in the UK for the last 20 years, and married to a Brit,I am still Malaysian, no British passport. Therefore, in order to get into USA soil, I need a VISA, a non-immigrant, non working, visitors VISA. No problem, will go onto the US Embassy website for TnT and get all the info I need. It's an all singing and dancing website. You fill in your forms on line, then print it out, make the appoiment on line too, all instructions on paying the fees , all there, what documents to bring with you etc etc, it's all there. Great, fantastic, everything's ready.
I trot off to the embassy with all my receipts, forms and documents, and photographs. Get to appointment on time, was in a room full of people, all trying to get a VISA. My turn came, window E please, faced with a pleasant young man. He looks through all the forms, and starts firing a barrage of questions at me, I try my best to keep up. He then asks for my children's birth certificates, which incidentally I have in TnT but just not with me at that moment, as it was not one of the documents the website said to bring. I voiced this and man became irate, said I am not talking about the website...... ooooh, excuse me,but the website was my guide for what documents to bring.... he said he was trying to establish my marital relationship with my Dave, marriage cert in front of him,married 28th APRIL, 1995!!!! Anyhow, stumbled through that hurdle and as abruptly as he was questioning me,he approved the VISA, YIPPEEEEEEE!!!
Tickets booked,paid for,we are on the plane,OK flight delayed but we are on our way. We had to fill out some landing cards which we did , we got into the queue for immigration, and it was a looong queue,we snaked along, perhaps snailed alone, a it took 1.5 hours to get to the front! Finally, we get to get out of the airport..... or do we??? We are facing the immigration officer, he had a Spanish name. Young, smart in his uniform , dark hair and eyes, tanned skin, good looking but a bit on the small side, definitely not my type.. perhaps he sensed this, took him all about 5 seconds to look at our passports, and say, 3 of you have filled in the wrong form, you, pointing at me, with the VISA, you're OK, you got the right form. What form do we need? The green one,not the white one,OK, have you got some of those forms? No, I haven't, says the officer..... you need to go all the way to the back to fill them out.... Dave says, you kidding me? We have just waited in line for almost 2 hours. Officer calm- all the way back to get forms to fill, then come straight back to the front and I will deal with you all. Phew!
Forms filled, we trudge back to the front, pushing in front of others and feeling like a queue jumper, like the lowest of the low,as we know how long they've had to queue to get to the front. So, a sense of De ja vue descending on us, nice, young immigration officer, so why do you want to come to the United States? Holiday, see some friends,but most importantly,because my daughter wants to go to McDonald's as there aren't any in Trinidad,where we are living at the moment. This was said tongue in cheek, as I was fed up with all the delays and was being facetious. Well, maybe not facetious, but was kinda joking, I needed some laffs, even if it were only me that was laffing. Immigration officer,in a serious voice, so, no Maccy Ds in trini, so, how do you know about Mc Donald's? LMAO boy oh boy. What can one say? Are you serious??? Uhmmmm. Because we have McDs in the UK????? and Malaysia, and Singapore and Germany, France, Belgium, (just naming a few of the countries we've been to), it gets advertised in TnT because we have US channels on TV???? Satisfied with our answers, and after some swish finger print scanning we were let loose.... to collect our luggage and venture out to the Big Apple...... the feeling of relief was immense.
We had a taxi waiting for us to take us to Great Neck where we were staying at a friend's apartment. Saw our first yellow taxi, and they were mostly Lincolns I think, not like the old yellow taxis in the Taxi sitcom. It was warmer than I expected it to be, pleasant coolness that I have so missed since leaving England, and on the journey to the apartment, I felt like I could have been in England, apart from the cars all driving on the wrong side of the road! The flora was similar, blossom trees in bud, waiting to burst into a mass of pink/ white, magnolia trees with velvety pink buds, trees with green buds waiting patiently before displaying the lovely delicate first green leaves of the season, daffodils, spring was definitely in the air.
Our first trip to the US, an adventure has begun........
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