In a conversation not long ago, we chatted about how much of an agony anticipation can actually be. The idea of an exciting, joyous, happy-making future event is great. Or at least, it sounds great. But when the future-event is not certain (or – worse – is less certain than you think) and when the time-frame is not definite, it can get terribly frustrating and even a little depressing. It also makes you cynical. I have become cynical. After many disasters and disappointments, I’m not at all convinced that this trip will actually happen.

Perhaps in direct response to this – Murphy’s law and all – things actually appear to have worked out. By this I mean that I appear to be all set to leave the country.  After months of waiting and bureaucratic hoop-jumping, things have suddenly fallen into place. It seems.

The last step was applying for my visa at the South Korean consulate. This is really a follow-up step. The process starts (the visa process, I mean – the whole process starts with the SA bureaucracy) when you send all your precious documents (degree, criminal record check, etc.) to the school in Korea. They then submit your paperwork and – assuming you’re not a terrible criminal and haven’t lied about having a degree – get a visa issuance number, which they then send to you. This is perhaps why the process of applying for a visa in Pretoria (at the South Korean consulate) is so peculiarly painless and unbureaucratic – because the initial work has been done already.

Whatever the reason, this last little bit of the process of trying to leave the country has definitely been the least painful of the lot. In fact, it has been very pleasant. Simple, efficient, quick. The fact that this is sufficiently foreign to have me suspicious is probably an indictment on the poor service from SA’s bureaucracy. Alternatively, it’s just because the South Korean consulate in SA are super-fantastic. Or at least, the people I dealt with are.

For a start, they are able to read and respond to an email requesting information on how the process should work. Quickly. Which is a revolutionary idea. The actual application required one completed form, one photograph, some money and a passport. That’s all. No forms in triplicate, no jumping through hoops. I simply dropped off the form, money and photo and passport. I’ve also been having an email conversation with them and when I mentioned that I’m hoping to leave shortly, they rushed the visa through. Generally a South Korean visa will take 3 working days to process here in SA – which is pretty amazingly quick anyway. I dropped the application off on Monday late morning and picked it up yesterday at 10am. Quick and easy.

So I now have a visa. Actually, I now have a visa and a flight. It seems the anticipation may finally, actually, be over in just less than a week. Right now now that fills me with relief and happiness and sunshine and light. I imagine it will become less thrilling and increasingly terrifying as the week proceeds.