Diane Mackey's blog

Lordy lordy ... you know your life is a story when the guy at Singapore Airlines excuses himself to 'read the novel of your booking history'. This particular booking history began 14 June back in Istanbul. I worked for a private school who were contractually obligated to pay my flight back to New Zealand at the end of the teaching year. Meanwhile I met Gert and before committing to the process of immigrating to Belgie, we decided we needed to be sure so I changed my original flight home to NZ from 2 August to 15 September 2005. Time passed, Gert and I realised we were serious but that a free one-way flight via Istanbul to New Zealand wasn't as much use to me as I had imagined. A return flight from New Zealand, via the Belgian Consulate for New Zealaders which is based in Australia (for my Residency Permit), would incur some crippling costs, not to mention paying for an indeterminate stay in New Zealand without income. At the 11th hour we discovered the long-term visa application could made from within Belgium ... so we checked, 6-8 weeks blah blah, boring now ... to be processed, they told me.

Well ... being the ignorant bunny I am, I foolishly asked my assorted audience what the Eleventh Commandment was. When Debbie and Gert stopped with their laughter they mentioned 'The 10 Commandments' and it all came flooding back to me ... too late. My facesaving thought of 'Thou shall drink' was stated by Gert and I went back to my writing. Debbie, an old friend from England is over and saving me from madness brought on by being an in process immigrant. But better still, she understands almost every word that I say, even a mumbled mocking. She has even gone so far as explaining the structural linguistic faults in my Kiwi speak ... 'all my 'i's' sound like 'e's' and my 'e's' sound like 'i's'. Of course she's exaggerating however it does explain the Pole and Romanian on the floor laughing over my pronunciation of Brad Pitt ... apparently I said Bread Pet. I doubt this.