An Exile Begun
My results from the Master’s programme I worked on and completed in September 2010 won’t be available until December 2010, a month after my student visa expires. I was unlucky; the year I applied for my visa, the rules had changed, and while some of my American and Canadian coursemates had visas that expired in January, my application somehow fell under the new rules that weren’t looked at too well by my university.
And so this.
On the 13th of November, I flew out of London, leaving the Hackney environs that I’ve grown quite accustomed and attached to, returning to the humid place that has, by default, become where I’m from: Orlando.
It’s not so bad. It’s just not where I want to be.
So, like a good hero, I hope do my best in completing the trials set out before me by the British Home Office. Instead of slaying dragons, I have to accumulate points in order to obtain the post-study work visa. To do so I have to have a certain amount of money in my bank account (hint: it’s a lot), more money to apply for the visa, and I need to be adrift outside of the UK for a certain amount of time.
It will be a mostly Orlando-based Odyssey, built to make me into a fine suitor for a slice of London.
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I now live back in London and you can follow the scraps of my life here and on London Dear.
