One down, two to go...

I was prepping my best Brit accent today for our first VISA interview.

First of all, I'm glad we met up (my brother and I) an hour before our actual interview. It gave us some time to look for parking close to the Axa Life Building. Geez! The building has a lot of tenants, and you'd think they'd have ample parking spaces. We ended up parking at the People Support building across the street.

My brothers, in their usual corporate get-ups (polo-barong and comfy shoes), ran across Buendia as the lights were changing. I, on the other hand, struggled to keep up in my two-inch heels. But the frantic jogging was a good way to shake my nerves off. I guess I have some embassy trauma ever since that fateful Canadian VISA application of 2000. Anyway, we arrived just in time. I debriefed the boys about the itinerary, what to say, and what not to say. Irene's been telling me how Mimi was saying the VISA application isn't a huge deal. When we entered the room where they received the documents and did the "interview", I finally understood why. The consulate outsourced some of their VISA application tasks. Filipinos/Filipinas were doing the checking of the documents, so they weren't threatening at all.

The "interview" per se wasn't so tough. The girls just asked if I was ever denied a visa application. She even informed me that since I recently traveled to Australia, they could expedite the processing of my VISA. Unfortunately, since we were doing a group document processing, we had to go with the normal processing route (of 10-15 working days).

Ermin, our trusted travel agent helping us with the VISA processing, said that it doesn't take more than 10 working days for the passports to arrive (we opted for the courier service). *Sigh* I just want to see the VISA on the passport. At least that assures us of one great destination (in case the others don't fall through).

Hehe. Hear pessimist Schmenten talk. Hear pessimist Schmenten rant.

Anyway, Rommel and I sort of celebrated with a Teriyaki Boy lunch at Paseo Center.

Next stop, Swiss Visa Application. This shouldn't be so tough. Ermin said the toughest one could be the Schegen visa application ("Dun nadadale yung iba", he said).

So one down, two to go. I'm starting to think of a contingency plan (Hear pessimist Schmenten talk yet again), just in case.