Cary flew to Los Angeles yesterday to go to the Australian Embassy to submit a passport application for Nicholas. The first passport app. has to be submitted in person. We had to arrange an interview time and I was told to allow half an hour though it usually only takes 15 minutes. I wasn't sure how long it would take Cary to get from the airport to the embassy so I allowed a little extra time in case of traffic. He got there about 45 minutes early and there was no-one else waiting. He asked if he could get it done early but was told "oh no, we have other appointments". Cary looked around the empty waiting room and thought "really, who, the invisible man?" He saw the lady who was going to do the interview buzzing busily in the background and she eventually agreed to do the interview a few minutes early. He stood on the other side of 2" thick bullet-proof glass and gave her the application. She looked it over, went to take a couple of photocopies (she wouldn't accept the ones that I had included even though there was nothing wrong with them!) took the money and that was it. Cary said it took less than 5 minutes!
I'm glad he didn't fly over just for that or we'd have been pretty peeved. After the embassy, he went to an "approved" doctor (there are 4 in LA and none in Vegas) and had his medical done for his Australian Immigration Visa. He said it was in a very very bad part of town. He was the only white person there and he was wishing he wasn't carrying the laptop with him. The process took about 2 hours, but it's done now and he's home safely.
That should be everything we need to do to get him into Australia. The next step is just to wait until they decide to process the application. Unless they're too busy buzzing back and forth interviewing invisible people.
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