gaining acceptance

It's been an incredibly busy 24hours, but our application for residence in New Zealand has finally been accepted. In now-typical fashion the wording - 'Approval in Principle' doesn't make it seem as though we're finally there, but the following paragraphs makes it more clear;

'Approval in Principle' means that you have almost successfully satisfied all criteria under the Skilled Migrant Category. Now all you need to do is complete these last few steps and I will be able to confirm final approval of your application for residence.

We need to send our passports and a Migrant Levy of £450 to complete the process. The passports will be returned with shiny new visas inside, and then we're done!

Not content with shelling out another load of money, I spent a fair few hours on the phone to various agents trying to secure 5 seats on flights from Manchester to Christchurch on December 20th/21st. I knew this would be difficult, but it was more time-consuming, stress-inducing and hideously-expensive than I expected. But it's now done after a number of games of brinkmanship, and Cathay Pacific won the tender to fly us to our new home by virtue of the fact that no-one else could match the dates. I've never been to Hong Kong before, and I'm looking forward to our 90minute stay there!

Finally, we've booked the removal people to come on December 10th and 11th to ship all our stuff away in a sea-bound container. This gives us a week to clean up before our new tenants move in, but does mean that we'll be possession free until some time in late January / early February. No matter how it was planned this was always going to happen. Luckily t-shirts, shorts and jandals are de rigeur at my new office...

inch vs mile

Confirmation has come through regarding Maddie's medical, and NZIS are now happy that she doesn't pose any financial risk to the already precarious New Zealand economy.

This is obviously a massive relief to us all as it now means that all obstacles have been removed and that the relevant visas can now be processed. Well, they will be once all documents have been compiled and have been reviewed by someone other than our visa officer to ensure that all is present and correct. This is likely to be nothing more than a formality but, well, we're still a distance (albeit a small one) from the final, absolute, gratifying long awaited "yes!". Let's just say we're 99.9% of the way there...

The most frustrating aspect of the delays is that it's hard to move on and organise flights, accomodation, house-buying and school enrollment without knowing an exact date of departure. We've already revised our likely leaving date as now somewhere around the 20th december, but until I get the tickets booked (and these will be the hideously expensive and scarce tickets due to the popular time we'll be travelling) we're still in limbo.

However, we did get some good news regarding accomodation today; a holiday home we enquired about in the Christchurch suburbs has been offered to us for free on the condition that we feed the cats, doves and horses. Apparently the owner is just pleased that a family with kids will be around to do this, and the girls will be absolutely ecstatic about the horses. The house will also be big enough to accomodate our NZ friends who will be coming to stay for Christmas. Which is great.

waiting

I'm back from my month's training in my soon-to-be new job in Christchurch (more on this later), but there are other pressing issues on my mind at the moment.

Today could be - and hopefully is - d-day finally bringing a resolution to the ongoing NZIS medicals saga. This time it's not me, but my youngest daughter Maddie. Her issues have been described by her consultant as (and I quote)

... treated amblyphobia, an exotropia and right homonymous hemianopia.

This sounds incredibly scary - and relates to problems with migration of the brain during development - but basically means that although she can see out of both eyes, she can only see through one of them at a time.

Just like with my own reports, it seems that NZIS are incredibly nervous about signing-off anything that could possibly cost NZ money further on down the line. I can understand this to a certain extent, but they seem to need to hear it three or four times from different sources before they can finally relax and relent.

The final letter from the consultant (and it has to be final because there really is nothing more to say) finishes with:

As she is still young (< 2 years), I would recommend continued attendance at the orthoptic department. I would expect this to require 3 or 4 visits per year over the next 2-3 years. It is likely that patching will be needed to maintain the current excellent vision.

In the meantime we've managed to find tenants for our house, and they move in on the 17th December. So, just like my panic in getting the work-visa - the clock is ticking once again...