We have a trip to Australia coming up. One of her biz trips again.
So we stupidly bought my tickets and booked the hotel for extension and everything.
However, we didn't do my visa yet.
And now we are having issues with my visa to Australia.
Her visa is somehow fine so she's going for work.
But I have a pending visa "in-processing" and it's keeping me at the edge of my seat.
I got rejected for my online application for AZ visa so I have to file a separate more detailed visa application.
We always took for granted that the visa would be a breeze, that we wouldn't have any issues, but now that we've booked everything, but the visa isn't approved, and we have no idea how long the processing time is, it's pretty annoying.
And IF I don't get my visa approved in time, it's going to burn around $700 in the flight ticket.
AND she will have to have to go on the extension by herself.
So I'm really keeping my fingers crossed.
Sure I could pay a fee to move the flight ticket to another time in the year.
But to me that's probably good money after bad money.
Cos, that would mean that we would have to plan a trip specifically to go AZ again just to use my ticket.
Furthermore, we have already paid quite a bit in visa admin fees at this point in time and it really sucks.
$20 for a failed ETA application and another $150 for another more detailed online application which is currently pending.
The thing is, now...
ONLY good scenario : visa is approved on time and I go follow my wife.
Bad scenario 1 : visa is NOT approved again
Bad scenario 2 : visa is approved late
If any of the bad scenarios happen, then the question becomes, is it worth it to delay my ticket and plan a trip to AZ again sometime later this year.
Considering that my wife gets to "enjoy" the hotel room, I'd say I burn half the hotel expenses.
So the current expenses is around $700 for the flight, $170 (half total hotel expense), $170 visa expense.
This money has already been spent.
IF we decide to delay my ticket and plan another trip to AZ, which we would never have planned cos AZ isn't one of our holiday destinations.
Then we would need to spend $200 to adjust the date of my ticket, spend another $700 to buy my wife's tickets, spend another $600 on accommodation, and other expenses in AZ.
This means that to "save" my $700 ticket, I need to spend another $1500 to utilize it.
Of course it also can be argued that it's ONLY $200 cos that's the cost of the date change. And the rest of the expenses are new consumable products.
Alternatively, I could just burn the $700 ticket if the visa doesn't work out and forget it.
Both options really suck.
So I'm really hoping that the only good outcome works out and my visa is approved on time and the trip is smooth sailing.
So where did the problem arise?
Well, we had expected the visa application to be easy and quickly approved so we delayed the application. Furthermore, we booked the flight and accommodation before getting the visa approved.
It's supposed to be a small issue which for most people wouldn't have been a problem, cos most of the time visas are approved quickly and easily. However, for some unknown reason, I'm having issues with my application and due to this, the issue is now more troublesome.
The main lesson here is to not take for granted the small issues, cos you really never know, due to a slight delay in a small issue, it may snowball into something bigger cos even though the issue is small, it might be a very important detail.
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