Wedenesday, January 6th, 2021
EM’s visa for the USA will expire on January 19th, 2021. The US administration claims that due to COVID it can only issue a limited number of new G4 visas per organization. I am reasonably sure, it is more of a policy issues as they have ceased to issue G5 visas and for our organization of some 5.000 staff, about half of which reside in the US with their dependents, they issue 35 visas per week.
Be it as it may, guidance from HR is to renew visas outside of the USA whenever possible. As a good corporate citizen, I followed said guidance and requested EM's visa to be issued by the US embassy in Berlin.
I had everything so well organized. The envelope addressed to the embassy and a return envelope addressed to mum. Mum send the passport to Berlin the day after our arrival. Alas, it turns out I put my and not EM’s passport into the envelop. As a result, the first thing we did after quarantine was to repeat the process; this time with the correct passport.
Today the embassy was going to issue the visa just to find that our incompetent HR has send a visa request with my old contract details, which states that my contract ended five days ago. Of course, the embassy cannot issue the visa now. This message reached me as I was leaving my doctor’s office. The entire mess had me so preoccupied that I forgot to get half of the groceries, namely the wine - and it takes a lot for me to forget to buy wine! – as I scrambled to fix the problem. I have now sent a screen shot of my contract extension to the embassy. I doubted this would be sufficient, so I called HR and asked them to send a corrected visa request letter to the embassy. They promised to do so within ten minutes. Now I am waiting for that to happen. Instead of sending a new visa letter they send some silly note about my tenure. Keeping my fingers crossed that this will be suffiecent.
Even if it arrives today, I fear the embassy will not process the visa until tomorrow and only mail the passport back on Friday. I am rather uncertain the passport makes it back in time for our flight on Sunday. Once the passport is in the mail though I shall have better visibility. Currently I am prepared to rebook our return flight to Wednesday, the asynchronous learning day. With all that has gone wrong the only thing to really screw this up would be for the passport to get lost in the mail. I am desperatly hoping that it will not, but somehow this visa process is cursed.
Beyond the visa mess it was a normal lockdown day. I tried to sign mum up for a shot, which did not go so well as the system is not functioning. IT appears that online bookings can only be done next week. I also tried to send a package to the US, but costs are premium at 60 EUR, which I am not willing to spend for a few seeds. I shall try and find a way to send them as a letter.
At least there is some detoxing news on the political front. Based on numbers at 18:00 CET both democratic candidates in the Georgia run off seem to have won their elections. This means each party hold 50 seats in the senate and Kamal Harries gets to cast the deciding ballot in each vote on the senate floor If these results hold, President-elect Joe Biden has a real change to effect change. That would be good news as what the country needs most is a unifying agenda and social justice. With a democratic majority there is a chance for this to come to pass. Moscow Mitch may now longer be able to block debates of policies on the senate floor. While politics is happening, new infections are soaring.
The USA reported 239k new cases over the past 24 hours, bringing total reported infections in the USA to 21.58 million with 365k people dead as of today. Globally reported infections are at 86.6 million. Following up on yesterday’s thread there is an ongoing discussion to delay the second shot so more people can get the first shot. The vaccines provide 50% protection after the first shot and 95% after the second shot, so despite being vaccinated individuals may still contract COVID especially during the first ten days after the shot as it takes at least that long for the body to develop an immune response. I think I would rather wait until I can have the two shots which have at least been tested. 50% is not good enough for me.
I did have another antibody test done today after my OB Gyn suggested whatever I had in January could have been anything. It would be wonderful if the lab came back positive, something one does not want for anything else one can test for!
Research around the new mutant in South Africa is rather disconcerting, as it suggests the vaccine may not be effective with this mutant. This is not good news as it may mean the Aikodoka shall never experience Cape Town, my second love. I will be very sad if I cannot take them to Cape Town.