So here's the verdict. After a long and tiresome and excitement-killing application and long email exchanges, I wasn't able to make it for the Autumn exchange. But, I will be going away to the UK for the student exchange over the Spring and Summer! Yay!
Thinking I had to get a visa, since the website and student exchange handbook suggested, I filled in the thirteen-page application form, gathered the documents listed in the checklist attached to the form itself and marched to the visa application office. Once there, I was told that I had insufficient documents to support my application, and lo and behold, there was another checklist that was located on some obscure page of the website. Also, that bank statement that I spent twenty dollars on, was insufficient. They wanted to know exactly how much was in the account and the transactions made over the past three months.
So I went back home, gathered the rest and went back.. Only to find that they only accept applications until 3 pm. I was there at 3.45 pm. My bad. Didn't see that sign amongst the many other signs posted on the door.
Third time's (hopefully) the charm. Yes! The nice lady let me go down to MPH to take a more recent passport photo at ten dollars because mine wasn't recent enough (even though I look exactly the same as in the photo). But I managed to submit the application form and all.
Then at 5 pm, the office called saying that I'm not elligible for the student visa, but that I should apply for the student visitor visa because I'm still considered as an exchange student, even though I'm going to be there for about six to seven months. They wanted me to come back down again and fill it up on the spot. But here's the catch: the office closes at 5.15 pm. No way I'm gonna make it in time.
So I went back the next day. And after checking the website and filling in the new student visitor application form, I am told that since I am a Singapore Citizen holding a Singapore passport, I need not apply for the student visitor visa (something about Singapore being a Commonwealth country). Argh! Brilliant. I wasted four trips and thirty dollars on nothing.
This whole.. Ordeal.. Gave me a really bad impression of administrations. Yes, I am generalising, but honestly, TV shows and real life experiences have been eating away at what trust I had in organisations and paper achievements. Heck, I don't even trust my doctor nor my dentist!
Kind of reminds me about Giddens and his ideas about modernity. More specifically, his ideas about modernity and trust. Simply put, Giddens thinks that dealings in modernity is characterised by a time-space distanciation where goings-on no longer happen exclusive of the outside world, where events outside our local geographical territory or space affect us, where time and space are becoming increasingly negligible, where social relations become disembedded. And because of this disembedding of social relations, trust becomes a really important issue. Because of this disembedding, people become more and more reflexive of actions. They monitor, assess and re-evaluate time and time again nurturing feelings of uncertainty and insecurity.
The modern society probably would not exist, or at least would not be coherent should the mechanism of trust breaks down. We have trust in paper money. We have trust in diplomatic discussions between politicians and what not. We have trust in health gurus. We have trust in what we read in the news and the internet and hear on the radio. We have trust in our various religions, whatever you individually subscribe to.
But I guess for me, thanks to the media, this advent of new technology and creativity of the modern mind, ironically causes me to lose trust in some of the gears in the machine of today's society. For example, "House" makes me lose trust in doctors, makes me analyse their every prescription to people I know (I realised that my doctor's pretty keen on anti-biotics, just like how everything's caused by Lupus to House). If you think even a little more than what you usually do when you sit paralysed in front of the TV, you'd realise there are loop holes in quite a lot of things, the most classic example I can think of is the programme fails to answer a really important question, especially one that could jeopardise the validity or reliability of the whole content.
Inefficiency and 'blur-ness' of the administrative officers of that visa office really leaves room for doubt of their abilities and capabilities, which is not good since applicants are trusting them with their passports and other original documents like birth certificates.
My mother says the whole saga probably is God teaching me patience. Perhaps.
Besides teaching me patience, I also think God is arming me with yet another reason to praise Him.
Trust.
Like society which cannot function without trust, like more individual, personal relationships which also cannot function without trust, our personal relationships with God likewise cannot function, stand the test of time, grow without trust.
As I look back and reflect, as I stand in the shower at night (which is kind of like a confirmed personal and uninterrupted time with God alone even when the other five people in the house are awake and noisy) and talk with God, I stand in stark realisation that when all else fails, when the world is stripped bare, when I feel so alone and so vulnerable, I am not alone. I am not vulnerable. Because He is not. And because He in me, something that was reminded to me twice by Timmy, and He is greater than anything else ever.
I trust in the Scripture. And I trust in my experiences and conversations with God. I trust that He is Amen.
And you know what the brilliant thing about my God is?
My God is unchangable.
What happens when the world around you collapses?
Perhaps not physically, but more metaphorically.
Perhaps not globally, but more personally, like family, circles of friends.
How much trust do you place in God?
Not in Bible study materials or Quiet Time materials, but in the Bible itself, in the Spirit, in Jesus, in God.
Do you take what you trust for granted?
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