Most of you will know that in a week we will be heading off with Charis Bible College to Sikkim, India. Many of you will also know that we have been having issues getting Carol approved for a Visa to allow her enter the country. Today we finally got confirmation that she has been approved and we await her passport being returned to us in tomorrow’s post.

The Passport

The issue initially arose from Carol holding an Irish passport, as is her right here in Northern Ireland. The Indian embassy doesn’t seem to recognise this dual nationality and so require household bills from 2009 and 2011 as proof of 2 years residency in the UK. Issue being that all our household bills come in my name.

NB – When we moved into our new house, the developers set up our account with Phoenix Gas for us, which means that these bills are addressed to both of us. But due to us moving in November, our first bill didn’t come through till 2010. We sent these off along with our marriage certificate and hoped for the best.

The Unreachable Agency

On Wednesday the agency left a voicemail on our home phone, requesting that we also send them a gas bill from 2009, by Fax. - [ FAX?! I'll make no further remark at the risk of heading off on a tangential rant about living in the 21st Century ] - They left no phone number to call them back on, and after searching their website and calling directory services we discovered that they don’t even have a phone number.

We found a premium rate helpline and called them for help, only to be told to call back the next day at 1pm once the system had been updated. Once again, 21st Century.

After calling back the next day and racking up a full £23 in call charges we were told they were the wrong people to speak to and we needed to get in touch with the processing centre by email. After shooting off an email we decided to just blitz them with every document we could find that proved that Carol has been resident in the UK since birth. We set off for the library armed with sheetloads of paper and handed over some cash to the lovely lady behind the counter who proceeded to send off the fax.

Riiiinnng riiiinnng. No answer. We decide to instead scan the documents and email them across. If this doesn’t appease the embassy, we’re not sure what will.

Enter the iPhone

Jump to this afternoon. We’re sitting in a coffee shop in Banbridge, where we’ve just picked up some new hiking gear for our trip. So far we’ve received no response to our emails, despite requests to urgently ring either of our mobile numbers. I whip out my phone (as you do) and notice I have an email.

It’s a voicemail from our home phone line, which I’ve set up to email me whenever someone leaves a message. The lady calling is clearly oblivious to the emails we sent. She again requests that we fax her the missing gas bill, but this time leaves an email address as an alternative means of contact. Not the one we’ve been emailing.

“We’ll send that as soon as we get to Rostrevor” we say, but a couple of minutes later I decide I’ll just do it from my phone. So I log into Carol’s email account, head into the sent items and forward the 3 messages with attachments to this new email address.

Seconds later, Carol’s phone rings. The lady on the other end has been ringing round, desperately trying to get in touch with us to process Carol’s application. She’s just received our emails and is frantically looking through them for something that will tick the box.

“No, your birth certificate is no good. Not this addressed receipt for a purchase in 2008. This P45 from 2009 won’t help.”

Finally, she finds the third attachment. “Oh, here is an energy bill in your husband’s name. We already have your marriage certificate – this will do!”

NB – I threw this bill in without much thought. It made no sense to include it. They said they wouldn’t accept “mix-and-match” bills. Despite having no gas bill from 2009 and no other bills in Carol’s name, I figured I’d include NIE bills in my name from 2009, 2010 and 2011.

“This will do!” Carol says she sounded as relieved as we were. “If I hadn’t received this in the next hour I would have had to reject your application and return it to you.”

It was another 3 hours before we got to Rostrevor. Had we waited it would have been too late. Little did we know that at the same time Alan was pushing the button to buy our tickets, which had been on reserve waiting for all the Visas to come through. He too couldn’t wait any longer.

Twenty years ago technology like this would have been unthinkable. That I was able to receive a voicemail from my home phone on my mobile phone, log in to Carol’s email account and send an email just in time to ensure we can get to India just blows my mind. No, scratch that, what blows my mind is that this is normal, taken for granted technology. All while this agency has no phone number, requests you fax them and then doesn’t answer the fax. Had we been able to phone them on day one and explain that we had no bill from 2009 in Carol’s name, they could have told us a bill in my name is acceptable and we would have had this sorted weeks ago. All with much less stress and without the extra expense.

All said and done, we can now turn our attentions to getting geared up for some serious hiking once we get to Sikkim. John’s helping us test our new gear in the morning by trekking us half way across the mournes, so I’m off for a sleep to get ready.