…is a pain in the bum. The instructions say that one can drop off applications at the consulate between 9:30 and 12:30 on weekedays. I arrived with baba’s and my application forms around quarter to ten and got ticket number 58. The counters were up to number 9, meaning that i was in for a long wait. fortunately it was quite an eventful wait. I realised that baba hadn’t signed his form, so had to dash out and meet him in front of his office building which is just around the corner from the consulate. I got back a bit after 10 and they were serving number 20-something.
I then realised around half past ten that I’d managed to drop my photo somewhere. I bolted out the door like a madman to try and find a place that does passport photos. I ended up finding a shop in York Street – quite a long way from the consulate in Bligh Street. Fifteen bucks (!!!!) and 10 minutes later I was on my way back to the consulate trying to do sums in my head to determine whether I’d missed my number being called or not. Thankfully, when I got back at 11 they were still in the 40s and one of the two staff on the counter wasjust popping out for morning tea…meaning that the 40s ground by very slowly. It’s a good thing i enjoy people watching. The Indian consulate attracts a very eclectic range of “customers”….including not a few queue jumpers who attracted the ire and sneers of people who’d been waiting since 9:30. there wasn’t any biffo though.
The unsmiling petty bureaucrat took my applications and money at about half past 11. Thankfully there were no major dramas handing in baba’s application on his behalf – apart from a terse bureaucratic reprimand for not pasting the photos on to the box on the application. So i was on my way. I pity anyone who arrives much later than 10 because they are likely to have to wait until 12:30, only to be turned away at closing time without being served.
They’re ready for collection in a week.
Note to self: next time use the drop box facility. If one is confident that one has completed all the paperwork and is paying with a money order or bankcheque, applications can just be dropped in a box rather than having to take a number and wait.
…seems to have caused a baby boom – at least if our fellow patrons at the Bathers Pavilion in Balmoral were anything to go by.
Saturday was baba’s birthday; the big three oh. We’ve fallen into the habit of going to a posh restaurant each time one of our birthdays rolls around. I realised too late that his birthday was coming up to get a table at our first choice, Tetsuya’s. Choice number 2 was Bathers. We were seated at our table a little after 7:30. On both sides of me were pregnant women and two tables up was a screaming 1 year old (not what one really expects – or appreciates – when embarking on a $300+ meal). Thankfully the screaming little alien and its parents left by the time our entrees arrived.
the food at Bathers was seriously good. To start with Baba had Balmain bugs and blood orange and I had a perfectly roasted quail breast and a mini liver pie. Yum. Mains were rabbit for him and John Dory for me. Yum yum. Dessert was a Lemon Brulee and a ginger and something-or-other tart. Yum yum yum. All washed down with a beautifully textured, balanced and multi-layered Blanc Rhone Valley Chateauneuf de Pape.
Unfortunately the evening was let down by hit and miss service and a particularly mediocre waiter serving at our table. I wrote to the manager today to let him know what our experience was like.
Other stuff that’s going on:
*Wine classes are finished and my appetite for more knowledge and fine wine has been thoroughtly whet.
*I have no discipline when it comes to keeping good bottles of wine.
*I took a bottle of wine back to the bottle shop tonight which was off (oxidised as opposed to corked)
*Spring has sprung.
*M-san came up from Melbourne last weekend and popped around on Sunday afternoon for scones and a cup of tea.
*India is only 5 or 6 weeks to go. We’re looking seriously at going to Sri Lanka for our first week away because the beaches are prittier and I found a gorgeous, cheap little resort on a white sandy beach right down on the South cost.
*Tried to change our flights to Singapore from 747 to a flight operated by the A380…but to no avail 
As I type Condeleza Rice is blowing pre-scripted hot air on Lateline, saying nothing meaningful at all. The yanks brought over 600 people, several planes, helicopters, lots of big cars and hoons with guns. According to a report in today’s paper, the carbon emissions from the american APEC delegation, here for 4 or 5 days is equivalent to the annual carbon output of 2000 typical Sydney-siders. Baba has to carry id and a letter from his company to be able to get to work which is inside the security fence which surrounds the Northern end of the city. The village idiot is staying in a hotel just across the road from his office tower so helicopters and fighter jets are overhead 24/7. I waited 40 minutes for a bus to work this morning. A school girl burst into tears when she found that when the bus finally arrived, it terminated at a junction well before her school. The whole thing is a fucking disgrace. Demonstrators have been told they can’t protest peacefully on public streets. The NSW police have bought a water cannon. The price of capsicums has mysteriously gone up! Snipers are positioned on rooftops.
The “leader of the free world” has come to town and we’re all imprisoned.
The “terrorists” have won. Our freedom and innocence has been taken away.
The utter hypocrisy of it all as they talk in platitudes about “aspirational” targets for peace, erradication of poverty and confronting climate change sicken me and should sicken any right minded person.
Far be it from me to condone violence, but someone should shoot the lot of them.
…the theatre that is. Through a convoluted chain of events, I got a couple of free tickets to go and see Who’s Afraid of Viginia Woolf up the road at Belvoir street Theatre the other night. It was an excellent show. I’d read the play years ago in high school and enjoyed it, and seen the film at that time too, but this was the first time I’d seen it on stage. I’m not a theatre critic, so I won’t attempt to review the show, apart from saying I found this particular portrayal of George to be rather Hanibal Lector-esque in demeanour and particularly in the slightly odd pan-Atlantic accent he had going on. All the other actors did it in plain old Strine – something quite rare for this play when performed in this country apparently.
for a proper review, follow this link to the Sydney Morning Herald: SMH review
In other news, baba and i have almost finished preparing all the necessary documents to finalise his permanent residency application (round 2). In this second round we have to prove that we’re still a dull, boring married couple now that two years have passed since the initial provisional permanent residency was granted. It basically means a couple of stat decs from various friends/family and sending off photos, gas bills, tennancy agreements and other things that supposedly verify that we’re a couple. Fortunately in this country which is now a hotbed of evil right-wing conservatism, immigration is one of the very few areas of law in which same-sex couples have any equality. We may be treated as second class citizens before the law, but at least we’re can be together!
