Conspiracy Theory

From Jan 18, 2006 (copied from my friendster blog)

So I'm beginning to think I'm not meant to go to England. Let's see, there's a whole laundry list of things that have gone wrong...I'll start with my UK license to practice. Their web site stated 8 weeks after submission of an application to receive your license. So I sent mine in August of this past year, after having jumped through all the hoops of getting references including a health reference (we'll come back to this), detailing all of my schooling, course by course, getting my diploma notarized, etc, etc. Nicole, if you ever read this, I know you feel my pain. And I get a letter back from the HPC (licensing body for professional healthcare workers in the UK) stating that they received my application, and it will take 12-15 weeks to process. Say what? OK, the time frame has been bumped from 2 months to 3-4 months. Fine, I'm not happy about it, but I'm making good money, and the hospital I'm working at is desperate to keep me (NJ is in dire need of OTs). So I work, I have lots of fun with friends, new and old, and I call the HPC to check on the progress of my application at the 8 week mark. At which point, I'm told it will be 15-17 weeks. Arrrggghhh. Ok, so I'll be "home for the holidays" which is a wonderful silver lining. Not much I can do, other than go back to my life and forget about it for awhile.

November rolls around, and I have an interview! It's a phone interview, obviously, it goes very well, and a few hours later, my agent tells me I've got the job! Drinks are on me! I'll be working at Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone, London...yes, London, in the northeast corner, on the Central tube line. There's a web site that comes up if you google the hospital's name. But hold the phone, I call the HPC again at the 12 week mark, and am told it will take 18-20 weeks to process my application. Mind you, this means by the time 18-20 weeks have gone by, my application will be checked for anything missing, or any errors, and then if it's all good it will be sent to the assessors. 10 days later when the assessors make their decision, assuming they say yes, give her a license, it's actually 22 weeks at that point. So all this time I've just been extending and extending my contract some more at the hospital in Edison where I currently work. Somewhere around sixteen weeks, about a week before Christmas, I call the HPC again. At this point, my work permit is finished and will be sent to me immediately after the holidays. I have a start date of January 30, and I'm looking at flights for the 26th or 27th of January. I thank my lucky stars when I am told 20 weeks (at least they didn't say 20-22 weeks). At this point, I figure it's smooth sailing.

Ha! No such thing. This is Murphys Law at it's best....

By Jan 9, I'm getting worried that the fee for assessing my application has not hit my credit card. I get a phone call from my agent saying, we have to call the HPC again, I just called with a different candidate and they said they were working on applications numbered after yours. So I call the next morning, and am told--- they sent my entire application back to me! Why? Because my Health Reference form was not signed by a G.P. Evidently, "registered medical practitioner" specifically means G.P. and mine had been signed by a P.A.C. And to top it all off, I was also told that when I sent it back to the HPC with a proper Health Reference form, it would go to the back of the now 5-month queue before it would be re-checked and sent off to the assessors.

I received my application back this past weekend, with a letter stating my application was incomplete due to a missing/omitted Health Reference form, with my Health Reference form attached to this letter via paperclip. Oh, the irony. And not to mention the nerve of these people! My agent, wonderful lady, has been talking to a secretary at the HPC for 10 years now, ever since she started assisting healthcare professionals to find jobs overseas. She called up this secretary, found out who was the leader of the international licensing dept of the HPC, and was told how I should address my application so that it goes straight to his desk, and not back into the 5 month queue. In light of this news, I decided to keep my appointment to get my entry clearance visa from the British consulate in NYC today, since I had already received my work permit the day after I found out my application had been sent back.

So last night, I was fooling around with recent digital pictures of myself, to come up with two passport-sized photos. Ok, so that was a bit of procrastination. I went to print them, and our printer was on the fritz as far as color printing goes. I thought, no big deal, I'll go to CVS on my way to work tomorrow morning. As I pull up to CVS around 7:15am this morning, it's closed. So I head on in to work for a couple of hours, and decide to catch the 9:30 train so that I have a little extra time to get photos taken in NYC. There's a 9:30 and a 10:15 train scheduled. However, no train comes through until 10:25. Once I get into Penn Station, I run for the subway and don't have to wait too long. Luckily the consulate is in my old stomping grounds from when I worked in NYC, so I head straight for the 53rd/Lex stop. I come up onto the street and head right into a Duane Reade. They don't do passport photos, but I can try the Rite Aid next door, or the CVS a block a way. It's pouring rain, so I duck into Rite Aid. The woman at the counter tries to tell me they don't do passport photos, but I point to the big sign that says Passport/ID photos above a big pull-down background screen. So she tells me the camera is broken. And I have my camera's memory card, but a lady is editing her photos on the one machine they have, so I sprint for the CVS. I walk straight to the photo counter where I am told they don't have a digital camera. So I stick my memory card in the closest machine, and it won't read it! Several tries later and my photos are up on the screen, I format one into passport photos and have to go track down the lady for the password to print. As she's typing it in she says, you can pick these up in an hour. I think the word "NOooo" pretty much came out as a moan at that point, given that it was 11:45, my appt time at the consulate. She directs me to a Kinkos, and 10 minutes later I've finally got my photos. I sprint through the pouring rain to the consulate, sweet talk my way past the guards and up to the visa section, where thankfully they have not yet shut down the line to talk to the visa agents. As I stop to catch my breath and put all my documents together, I see that they have an instant photo machine in the corner - you know, the kind you see at airports?! AAAAGGGGGH.

Conspiracy Theory. Murphys Law. Bad luck. Whatever you want to call it. So at this point, the only thing I'm missing is my license. But I am hoping to get over there end of February. Actually, I think I will go along with Jenn's idea, and start a pool at my bday party on Friday night, so people can bet on the day that I actually leave. Personally, I may just bet on "not gonna happen." That's a bit too pessimistic for me, but it's damn funny.

Keep smilin, everyone. Lots of love. Allison