No One Receiving


Wherein the narrator receives furtive communications with the Embassy in question.

I checked my voice mail at noon today. A message had arrived about 45 minutes before from a woman named Beth, at the Australian Embassy in DC. Whoooheee! FORWARD MOTION! She asked that I return her call. So I did.

And got voice mail. I left a message, and my number at my father's in San Diego. And I waited a little bit. Decided I'd have a nice AV chat with my friend Dan up in Martinez. Asked him if he'd voted. (He had.) And waited. Then I called again, and left another VM. My sister called and I got her off the line, and used the fax line. (Thankfully my father has two phone lines.)

Waited another 10 minutes, and called again. Waited 10, called again. Etc.

In total, I left four VM messages for this "Beth", and called maybe 10 times, until 2:30 PM (closing time for the embassy in DC) when I called just once more, at 3:00 PM - just in case "Beth" might be working late.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. It appears that they can send calls from the embassy, but they can't actually receive them.

What kind of B.S. is this? Is it enough that I've been waiting five weeks for a visa? Or are there more hoops left to jump through? If the message had been somewhat more informative, I could have perhaps done something to answer any questions they might have, etc., but since the message revealed basically no information WHATSOEVER, not only am I left hanging, I'm left WASTING EVEN MORE TIME.

Thanks DIMIA. Thanks so very much.

I can only hope that this has been inspired by some pressure from Canberra - brought on by Peter Giles (kudos to him) - and that the pressure will continue until the matter is resolved successfully. Though at this point, all I have is hope, because right now, the embassy is just transmitting. There's no one receiving.

Posted: Tue - October 7, 2003 at 07:17 PM        

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