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Apr. 27th, 2005 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urocyonThe long-awaited envelope from the Home Office arrived just before 8:30 this morning. Half-awake, I ripped it open, only to discover that whoever has been handling my case has apparently been ingesting some inadvisable substance during working hours: they somehow managed to interpret the application such that (a) I am claiming to be an EEA national, and (b)Ingvar is applying for further leave to remain in the U.K. after marrying me. Correctly listing our respective nationalities on the refusals, no less--besides "correctly" insisting that I leave if I don't wish to appeal, while he doesn't need to.
One would hope that the IND could tell that the application was the other way around, from the sheer bleeding obviousness of it; if they were really that deluded and/or incompetent, no wonder they kept our passports and the like for better than six months. Naturally, their required grounds for appeal do not include anything along the lines of "our staff have not been taking their medication," nor even a more general "gross incompetence". Were it practical, I would reject mail from organisations and people who are not equipped to deal with prefixed surnames, anyway--how difficult should a "Mac-" (or, say, a "di-") name be to grasp? Usually a relatively minor irritant, I'll admit, but I'm primed to jump on any perceived insult today. *shakes head*
Edit: The switcheroo was a rather bizarre, reading-while-half-asleep error. The grounds for my denial were really: "You have applied for a residence document as confirmation of a right of residence as the spouse of an EEA national exercising Treaty rights in the United Kingdom. However, the Secretary of State is not satisfied that your spouse is a qualified person." Ingvar also got denied a residence permit, for which he did not apply, because "the Secretary of State considers that" he has "failed to provide evidence" that he is "a qualified person". (But he can still stay without appealing.) It is not entirely clear how much more qualified one can get than to be a Swedish national, offering a Swedish passport, settled in the U.K., with documentation of a marriage in the Borough of Havering. This is perplexing. Again, six months for this?!
On the other hand, I no longer feel like I'm being held captive by the Home Office; that was beginning to wear. Now I can, presumably, apply for a driving license (though I would have preferred renting a car for a week or so and getting in some practice while my Virginia license was still good here; that's been expired since February, since I couldn't go and renew it). Also, we no longer need to wonder if we'll have our passports in time for a proposed trip to Sweden, unless the Home Office requests that we resubmit the documentation. Argh.
I will also have the "not legal to work yet" excuse to lean on for a while longer, it seems. I've found myself being unreasonably grateful to have it in reserve. I still find it disturbing, the way so many people seize on work as a safe conversational topic--how dull!--much less as a major part of their identities. I would be very upset indeed to realise that I considered that my job, whatever it might be, said a great deal about me as a person. Then again, I do come from a culture in which "What do you do?" is usually taken to refer to enthusiasms and interests, as opposed to paid work--if one can combine them, that's great, but it rarely seems to be the case. I still find it disconcerting, the way conversations so frequently come around to paid employment. I am half-tempted to interpret the questions as I am accustomed to doing--and likely disconcert other people just as much, rattling on about gardening or pottery--but it does seem a bit mean-spirited when people are trying to be pleasant.
I've been pretty bad about kicking myself around over such things, lately. I recognise that trying to judge myself by other people's ill-defined standards is not quite rational, and certainly not useful, but have a hard time helping it. If they seem overly concerned with work, I still have the feeling that perhaps I'm not doing as I should, being unable to discuss my nonexistant current employment--an unfortunately combination of shyness and the aftereffects of having it drilled into me in school that a high-paid job (one appropriate for someone of my intelligence, of course) is all-important, I suspect. It is perhaps more insidious now that my mood swings are mainly under control, I'm consistently able to go out, and I still do not feel prepared for a Real Job.
On the face of it, my mother's observations that, at a given time, some people show more talent for getting out and earning money, while others are better suited to doing other things (just as important) seem eminently reasonable. Division of labor according to talents and current general disposition makes sense, and is rather appealing. This does break down somewhat when you're not living in an extended family situation, with less room to specialise and fewer people to take up the slack--her family even had a designated tomato-slicer, for goodness' sake. More room for discontent is provided by the fact that this sort of work tends to be considered "women's work" these days, and is not accorded the same appreciation, even validity, as when my twice-great-grandmothers were running large farms; it's a bit difficult to explain, but I am uncomfortable having people assume that I've made the choices I have because I'm female, besides being given little credit for it. A lot of it boils down to not wanting to encourage people with truly goofy ideas about gender differences, I think, along with some irritation that it's still considered more acceptable (and is usually more feasible) for women not to have outside jobs. Ideally, I'd say that her approach to labor division is great, but it has some serious flaws when translated to current reality. Shame, that.
I'm feeling a bit silly, again; I have only recently figured out the bleedingly obvious, that a lot of my day-to-day frustrations probably stem from trouble fitting my ADHD Super Butterfly mind to the tasks at hand. This is pretty obviously the case, still not knowing what I want to be when I grow up, since I'm consistently interested in everything, with the ability to do 'most anything that even vaguely appeals (not to sound conceited, but it does away with one useful method of elimination--"What can I actually do?"). Lots of things seem like potentially good ideas, but I never know when I'm going to lose enthusiam and be off onto something else. My family have been singularly unhelpful in giving advice on dealing with this, probably because half of them are even worse than I am, and I haven't run across many suggestions from other people on helping to narrow down the choices; most advice assumes that you have some idea what you'd like to do, going in. I suspect it's a reasonably common concern.
Barely considering this rather fundamental aspect of my temperament seems a bit odd, though I suppose other things have distracted me. Getting my stuff together in general is more pressing, now that I'm not morbidly depressed or waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I've tended to assume that I just wasn't exerting enough willpower to keep things together--a nasty line of thought!--rather than that there was a good reason for it. There's little doubt that I exhibit classic signs. The pediatrician noticed I was hyperactive when I was 2 or 3, but didn't like medication, and this was confirmed as the currently popular ADHD when I was 15, and again when I was 21, when Dr. Dubner decided to try the simple approach of Ritalin before other treatments for my moodiness. It was never considered much of a problem, though, other than getting called down almost nonstop in elementary school. It's a good thing Oppositional Defiant Disorder wasn't a popular diagnosis, at that point. *wry smile*
It's kind of amazing, how selective my retention of what I read about it years ago is. In the meantime, it has hardly occured to me that maybe there's some good reason for leaving things lying around and forgetfulness, other than needing to try harder. That old willpower approach again...urgh. Though I am slightly surprised that some people apparently do not get diverted and avoid running the vaccuum cleaner or washing the dishes, getting absorbed in whatever is currently interesting for hours at a time--that only seems wise! I put my troubles going to sleep off on just being an excessive ruminator, when it's not always worries that keep the mind going when the body is tired. My response to so many other characteristic behaviors has been to kick myself.
At least in my case, it doesn't strike me as a problem, per se--I'm just glad to have stopped avoiding another angle of approach. Having some idea why I keep doing these things--or, at least, that a whole lot of other people do them too--helps. With any luck, I'll be a little more successful at figuring out how to line up my brain with the world at large, rather than just giving myself grief over it.
One would hope that the IND could tell that the application was the other way around, from the sheer bleeding obviousness of it; if they were really that deluded and/or incompetent, no wonder they kept our passports and the like for better than six months. Naturally, their required grounds for appeal do not include anything along the lines of "our staff have not been taking their medication," nor even a more general "gross incompetence". Were it practical, I would reject mail from organisations and people who are not equipped to deal with prefixed surnames, anyway--how difficult should a "Mac-" (or, say, a "di-") name be to grasp? Usually a relatively minor irritant, I'll admit, but I'm primed to jump on any perceived insult today. *shakes head*
Edit: The switcheroo was a rather bizarre, reading-while-half-asleep error. The grounds for my denial were really: "You have applied for a residence document as confirmation of a right of residence as the spouse of an EEA national exercising Treaty rights in the United Kingdom. However, the Secretary of State is not satisfied that your spouse is a qualified person." Ingvar also got denied a residence permit, for which he did not apply, because "the Secretary of State considers that" he has "failed to provide evidence" that he is "a qualified person". (But he can still stay without appealing.) It is not entirely clear how much more qualified one can get than to be a Swedish national, offering a Swedish passport, settled in the U.K., with documentation of a marriage in the Borough of Havering. This is perplexing. Again, six months for this?!
On the other hand, I no longer feel like I'm being held captive by the Home Office; that was beginning to wear. Now I can, presumably, apply for a driving license (though I would have preferred renting a car for a week or so and getting in some practice while my Virginia license was still good here; that's been expired since February, since I couldn't go and renew it). Also, we no longer need to wonder if we'll have our passports in time for a proposed trip to Sweden, unless the Home Office requests that we resubmit the documentation. Argh.
I will also have the "not legal to work yet" excuse to lean on for a while longer, it seems. I've found myself being unreasonably grateful to have it in reserve. I still find it disturbing, the way so many people seize on work as a safe conversational topic--how dull!--much less as a major part of their identities. I would be very upset indeed to realise that I considered that my job, whatever it might be, said a great deal about me as a person. Then again, I do come from a culture in which "What do you do?" is usually taken to refer to enthusiasms and interests, as opposed to paid work--if one can combine them, that's great, but it rarely seems to be the case. I still find it disconcerting, the way conversations so frequently come around to paid employment. I am half-tempted to interpret the questions as I am accustomed to doing--and likely disconcert other people just as much, rattling on about gardening or pottery--but it does seem a bit mean-spirited when people are trying to be pleasant.
I've been pretty bad about kicking myself around over such things, lately. I recognise that trying to judge myself by other people's ill-defined standards is not quite rational, and certainly not useful, but have a hard time helping it. If they seem overly concerned with work, I still have the feeling that perhaps I'm not doing as I should, being unable to discuss my nonexistant current employment--an unfortunately combination of shyness and the aftereffects of having it drilled into me in school that a high-paid job (one appropriate for someone of my intelligence, of course) is all-important, I suspect. It is perhaps more insidious now that my mood swings are mainly under control, I'm consistently able to go out, and I still do not feel prepared for a Real Job.
On the face of it, my mother's observations that, at a given time, some people show more talent for getting out and earning money, while others are better suited to doing other things (just as important) seem eminently reasonable. Division of labor according to talents and current general disposition makes sense, and is rather appealing. This does break down somewhat when you're not living in an extended family situation, with less room to specialise and fewer people to take up the slack--her family even had a designated tomato-slicer, for goodness' sake. More room for discontent is provided by the fact that this sort of work tends to be considered "women's work" these days, and is not accorded the same appreciation, even validity, as when my twice-great-grandmothers were running large farms; it's a bit difficult to explain, but I am uncomfortable having people assume that I've made the choices I have because I'm female, besides being given little credit for it. A lot of it boils down to not wanting to encourage people with truly goofy ideas about gender differences, I think, along with some irritation that it's still considered more acceptable (and is usually more feasible) for women not to have outside jobs. Ideally, I'd say that her approach to labor division is great, but it has some serious flaws when translated to current reality. Shame, that.
I'm feeling a bit silly, again; I have only recently figured out the bleedingly obvious, that a lot of my day-to-day frustrations probably stem from trouble fitting my ADHD Super Butterfly mind to the tasks at hand. This is pretty obviously the case, still not knowing what I want to be when I grow up, since I'm consistently interested in everything, with the ability to do 'most anything that even vaguely appeals (not to sound conceited, but it does away with one useful method of elimination--"What can I actually do?"). Lots of things seem like potentially good ideas, but I never know when I'm going to lose enthusiam and be off onto something else. My family have been singularly unhelpful in giving advice on dealing with this, probably because half of them are even worse than I am, and I haven't run across many suggestions from other people on helping to narrow down the choices; most advice assumes that you have some idea what you'd like to do, going in. I suspect it's a reasonably common concern.
Barely considering this rather fundamental aspect of my temperament seems a bit odd, though I suppose other things have distracted me. Getting my stuff together in general is more pressing, now that I'm not morbidly depressed or waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I've tended to assume that I just wasn't exerting enough willpower to keep things together--a nasty line of thought!--rather than that there was a good reason for it. There's little doubt that I exhibit classic signs. The pediatrician noticed I was hyperactive when I was 2 or 3, but didn't like medication, and this was confirmed as the currently popular ADHD when I was 15, and again when I was 21, when Dr. Dubner decided to try the simple approach of Ritalin before other treatments for my moodiness. It was never considered much of a problem, though, other than getting called down almost nonstop in elementary school. It's a good thing Oppositional Defiant Disorder wasn't a popular diagnosis, at that point. *wry smile*
It's kind of amazing, how selective my retention of what I read about it years ago is. In the meantime, it has hardly occured to me that maybe there's some good reason for leaving things lying around and forgetfulness, other than needing to try harder. That old willpower approach again...urgh. Though I am slightly surprised that some people apparently do not get diverted and avoid running the vaccuum cleaner or washing the dishes, getting absorbed in whatever is currently interesting for hours at a time--that only seems wise! I put my troubles going to sleep off on just being an excessive ruminator, when it's not always worries that keep the mind going when the body is tired. My response to so many other characteristic behaviors has been to kick myself.
At least in my case, it doesn't strike me as a problem, per se--I'm just glad to have stopped avoiding another angle of approach. Having some idea why I keep doing these things--or, at least, that a whole lot of other people do them too--helps. With any luck, I'll be a little more successful at figuring out how to line up my brain with the world at large, rather than just giving myself grief over it.
Immigration stuff
Date: 2005-04-27 09:05 pm (UTC)Re: Immigration stuff
Date: 2005-04-28 09:38 am (UTC)Re: Immigration stuff
Date: 2005-04-28 09:42 am (UTC)Re: Immigration stuff
Date: 2005-04-28 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-29 04:24 pm (UTC)As for the "what do you want to do", I'd poke around the local classified sections, and see if anything appeals. Since you'll likely be choosing from what's available anyway, it seems worthwhile to determine what's out there that doesn't suck.