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Well, I've arrived in Austrlia! I made it. I am alive! It was pretty touch and go for a while there. Not the alive part, I mean the making it to Australia part... Let me tell you a story of incredible stupidity:

It all began on Sunday morning. As I slowly started packing my things (my flight was at midnight on Monday) I started thinking of what I should bring. Item number 1 that came to mind: Passport. As I headed over to my passport's usual resting place, a disturbing thought entered my brain. "I wonder when my passport expires?" ... as I neared the bookshelf where the holiest of holy travel documents is kept, I became more and more stressed. Since the walk to the bookshelf was only 2 feet, basically what that means is that my stress level skyrocketed to infinite in about 1 second. I frantically flipped through my passport to page 2 (this took a surprisingly long and agonizing amount of time.) Hmm.. 02 APR 08 read the little blue book. "02 APR 08" I said out loud. "02 APR 08". I said it again. In my head, I was trying to figure out what that little string of numbers meant, exactly. In my heart, I knew the truth: My passport was expired.

Basically my initial reaction, which I am proud of, was to laugh. I won't lie, my laugh felt somewhat hollow, devoid of the joy that accompanies true humour, but I did laugh. Then I yelled "Fuck!" and ran out to show tell my roomate my passport was expired. Supidity this important must be shared, immediately. His g/f was there, and as I stood there in shock, she reassured me that it was possible to get a passport in an emergency, in a single day. I had my doubts. It took me like 6 weeks last time, or something like that.

Anyway, I had nothing to lose in trying. I ran through the house, frantically installed Colin's printer onto my computer, and proceeded to complete my passport renewal form. Michelle and I ran to the London Drugs (we didn't actually run) and I got passport photos taken. I arranged a guarantor to sign them (which turned out to be unecessary, using the new simplified renewal process.) I made a series of phone calls to emergency hotlines. Most of my phone calls started like this: "Hi, uh, excuse me, uhm, I'm not sure that stupdity counts as an emergency, but..."

Monday morning, I woke up at 6 am and went to the nearby passport office, which opened at 7:30. I got in line, and was the second person called up (actually, I was the first customer of the day for the girl who helped me) and was done by 7:35 am. Wow efficiency! I love the Canadian passport agency people! Now I had nothing to do but wait. And pack.

I don't really remember what I did for most of the day (I think I shopped for camera stuff for my trip) but I do know that by 2 pm, I had my passport. Amazing! A quick call to Air Canada and I had my Australian tourist visa (oh yeah, by the way, I forgot to look into that, too...)

Colin drove me to the airport (and hopefully made it home again without crashing my car... He hasn't confirmed that with me yet...) and by 11:55 pm, I was in my seat, watching Kung Fu Panda. Lovely!

I bought a little note book (a la Ross) so that during my days of having absolutely nothing to do (a la Ross) I can record what happens. Then I can post it back to you. I need to sort out the pictures though, so I'm a day behind. That's ok, I needed to tell the Passport & Visa story anyway.

More later. I'm off to enjoy the afternoon sun (finally.)

Australian Mitch, out.

We had knives! - MDP, 2008-10-03, 09:25:42 NEW POST! Check out "Fear and Loathing" at the top of the page.

M, 2008-10-06, 03:18:15 glad you're here..check your email or facebook for my number