mirgraphy

You know you’re back sharing the internets when uploading any file bigger than 100kb will take almost an hour! My brother claimed he’s innocent, but the jury is still out on that one. Day 17 in the visa waiting game and lo and behold I am actually starting to enjoy it. Perhaps after being screamed at by multiple people to just relax and there’s nothing you can do, I finally lost the will to stress out. That being said, I am likely to take up the tense past time once the 40 working days period is over…but we’ll cross that bridge once we get there.

Incidentally, if you ever wonder how many people does it take to process the tens and thousand of visa application sent to the British High Commission, the magic answer is not 42 or even 7, but 5.  It boggles the mind that with over a million pound in surplus from the BHC activities alone they haven’t actually used that money to invest in more people or streamline their system. Then again, what do I know?

In the meantime, I am learning the art of zen from the family dog. He’s mellowed down quite a lot since he turned 3 this year and is quite happy to sit close to me and nap the day away. On happier craft related news, Paul Mietx Egli from Quilt2Go has confirmed that the long awaited Knitminder is finally out! I blogged about StitchMinder last year when the application first launched, now there’s a 0.2 version to update to, but more excitingly with Knitminder you can now keep track of all your knitting projects. There is no integration with ravelry as yet, but I won’t be surprised to see something happening very soon from the sound of things.

The last two weeks had been a little stressful in a completely unplanned way. It all started early last week when I received an email stating that the Home Office had changed the requirements for the tier 1 (general) visa.

…tighten new criteria against which highly skilled migrants seeking entry to the United Kingdom are judged, by raising the qualifications and salary required for tier 1 (General) of the PBS to a Master’s degree and a minimum salary of £20,000

What this meant was that after 1st April 2009, the minimum education requirement for Tier 1 is a Master’s degree as well as a minimum salary of 20,000 per year. It was the first bit that threw me out completely, as with only a Bachelor’s degree and no likelihood of attaining one in 3 months this will take me out of the running completely.

It dawned on me that unless I would like to have any chance of staying within the UK beyond July I will need to virtually rip myself away from my job, my home and head home as soon as I can. It took the next few days to go through all the the different stages from denial, anger to hope. It wasn’t the best 48 hours of my life, but I am hopeful that I have enough points to apply for the visa under the old system.

I was appalled at how quickly they were planning to make the changes, and not happy at all that no further information was available regarding the new requirements. In a lot of ways it felt like a knee jerk response to the economic downturn and I wonder whether they will reverse it in the next three years.

If you are reading this and are thinking of switching to the Tier 1 visa, but do not have a Master’s degree it might be an idea to start thinking whether it would be of benefit to apply for your Visa before the 1st of April 2009. Yes, it’s a nightmare, but it does give you the chance to stay for longer in the UK.