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Talk about bringing back memories! My hubby is in the process of applying for a tourist visa to go to Pakistan for a month. He's going to visit our coworkers there, check on the ministry and the workers who have been carrying on without us being there, and see if he can't find some of that stuff of ours we left behind and have been missing.
So he sends in the application last week; Monday we get a phone call from the embassy saying they need more documents. This is soooo typical of this kind of process within Pakistan, where you have to present myriad photocopies of your passport, letters of recommendation and proof of financial responsibility -- not to mention answering the constant refrain of "What is your father's name?" Fathers are very important authority figures there, and your father's name figures prominently on all application forms.
What I thought would be a simple process of applying for a visa for a short trip overseas has now become a flashback to all the times when we waited and wondered and worried about how long it would take to get an application through, and whether in the end it would all be for naught.
I shall have to try to compensate by remembering all the miraculous times our paperwork went through successfully, in spite of the obstacles. ;-)
So he sends in the application last week; Monday we get a phone call from the embassy saying they need more documents. This is soooo typical of this kind of process within Pakistan, where you have to present myriad photocopies of your passport, letters of recommendation and proof of financial responsibility -- not to mention answering the constant refrain of "What is your father's name?" Fathers are very important authority figures there, and your father's name figures prominently on all application forms.
What I thought would be a simple process of applying for a visa for a short trip overseas has now become a flashback to all the times when we waited and wondered and worried about how long it would take to get an application through, and whether in the end it would all be for naught.
I shall have to try to compensate by remembering all the miraculous times our paperwork went through successfully, in spite of the obstacles. ;-)
