Futures, Changes and Injustices

The Gnomads are preparing to move house. Not one house but two. The Gnomad has secured a job back in the Mundane Kingdom. The Gnomad's are looking forward to a sanity restoring stay in Mundania for a while, and the Gnomadette is particularly excited as she likes the UK very much and both Gnomads are looking forward to being able to apply for a right of abode and probably citizenship for the Gnomadette. One never really appreciates just how good a travel document a British Passport is until one tries to travel with someone who doesn't have one.

The Mundane kingdom is an expensive place to live and to be able to afford this the Gnomad's are giving up their home in the Philippines. The Gnomad's dwelling in the Magic Kingdom goes with the job there, and since that job is going, so will the apartment.

Fortunately in the two years they've been married the Gnomads have not had much chance to accumulate the vast amounts of clutter that seems to appear out of nowhere. Not too much packing and not too much junk needing disposal.

What is more problematic is the bureaucracy that must be gone through to leave the magic Kingdom. The resident and work visa does not give any right to enter or leave the country, these are separate, and the resident and work visa's expiry do not in themselves give a right of exit either. The Gnomads must therefore apply for a Final Exit Visa. To do this requires an array of documents including but not limited to:

A letter from your employer confirming that you have fulfilled your contract and that they agree for you to go.
evidence that your phone (and mobile) is cut off and phone bill(s) paid.
evidence that your bank account has been closed and you have no outstanding debts.
if you happen to own a car this must be sold too before applying for your Final Exit Visa as it will not be granted if you still own a car
Any fines (parking or speeding tickets etc) must also be settled.

The Gnomads had a buyer for their car, a splendid fellow, of Pakistani origin who has been working in the Kingdom for many years. Finally his employer agreed to let him bring his family over to join him (after only 12 years of asking) and so have given him permission to buy a car too (you need permission from your Arabic sponsor here to do just about anything) Having looked at this car and decided to buy it imagine his, and the Gnomad's, disappointment when his employer said that the Gnomadmobile was "not a suitable car" for him to buy and withdrew their permission on those grounds.

I had wondered why you so rarely see 4X4s driven by people from the sub-continent in the Magic Kingdom. It seems that such cars are only considered "suitable" for Westerners and Arabs, not appropriate for people of Asian descent. Mmmmm, what a very fair and egalitarian point of view.

The delay in the sale of the car, of course, delays everything else. To sort out the paperwork involves the production of the Gnomad's Iqama (internal passport and ID card equivalent) several times on each occasion, but to apply for the Final Exit Visa requires the submission of the passport and the surrender, never to be returned, of the Iqama.

Theoretically the Final Exit Visa can be processed in only one day, however in practice it is usual to allow a whole month. the Gnomads travel plans involve leaving the Magic Kingdom in three weeks and would be expensive to change, so the sale of the car (the last hurdle) is becoming imperative.

The Gnomads' current plans involve leaving the Magic Kingdom in the last week of June, going to the Philippines for about seven weeks and then relocating to the Mundane Kingdom for a stay of several years. That all this should hang on the sale of a car worth less than 1,000 UKP is a little frustrating.