Well, it seems like it must be time for another update, in the long series of never-ending updates. I say that with some degree of tongue in cheek due to my insistence on asking various VLoggers if anyone really gives a tinkkily rip about any of their 'updates'.

Well, the basic explanation occurred in previous chapters of this update press: I married a Filipino lady, submitted the relevant paperwork in order to get her a Visa so she could come to my 'digs' in New Mexico, then I came here to kill a little time until the government bureaucrats could get off their chair, & out of their cubicle long enough to bring this nonsense to its natural completion. Kill a 'little time'... did I actually say that? Well, in the beginning that is what I thought. What I was eventually to learn was that I was actually coming here to kill a few years until the aforementioned bureaucrats finally realized that I was bloody serious about this, and they might as well give me the Visa as I was not going away anytime soon.

And yes, that was two years ago. Two years of living life to the fullest :-( here in the Third World. Two years and nine trips of 14+ hours across the endless ocean. Two years... and to date, $12,500 in order to spend those 14 hours jammed in a micro-seat, situated in a long aluminum tube.

Also, two years living in what would be described in the USA as an unacceptably small motel room, and two years of having to travel via pedicab, a device with no springs, which leaves you feeling like a well-prepared milkshake.

So, in what might be called 'progress' only in a parallel universe... [FYI: We married 8 March 2023, I filed the unacceptably complex Visa request paperwork 23 May 23, and we finally received an eMail 1 August 2024 stating that we were 'Documentarily Qualified', and that they would be sending appointments for the Medical, and Exit Interview soon].

So, back to the parallel universe, where word meanings seem to be considerably more flexible than they are in the world I live in, as the meetings were something I had to schedule personally, and I only could do that the 1^st of March. So, 'soon', meant to them, 'in approximately 6 months'.

So #2, lacking what would be called 'adequate information', I made the appointment for her medical, on the 10^th of March. Forging ahead, I progressed to the point of setting up the Exit Interview, which could only be scheduled sometime in April. Suffice to say, that since both of these 'appointments' require a 2 hour flight to Manila, that had I had 'adequate information' up front, I would have tried to schedule them both in the same week in order to minimize travel and hotel expenses.

Anyway, as Basil Rathbone says in his wonderful essay on Peter and the Wolf, here's how things now stand:

Sunday we have to fly to Manila (again) and meet more appointments on the 25^th, 26^th, and 27^th.

On April 8^th, we have to fly to Manila again to make her Exit Interview on April 8^th.

Then if the USA gives her the aforementioned 'Visa', in the near future we will be flying to Manila, then flying to LAX, then flying to ABQ, then maybe, Lord willing and the creeks don't rise, arriving back at what I used to call home.

Remembering that both the March & April flights to Manila will be about $250. Hotels for each of those jaunts are about $150. And the final cost to fly to the USA will undoubtedly be in the neighborhood of $1000.

During the time of unquestioned beginning ignorance as to what all would eventually entail, it is academic to say that any sane individual would never agree to take all this on. However, once you find yourself so completely immersed in the bureaucratic pit, and have expended thousands of dollars just to being it about, you are faced with the final reality that you need to just keep slogging and hope that eventually it will be all only a happy(?) memory.

Which is why I say that the thing that will make me joyful to the core, is to see the Philippines in the rear-view mirror.