Efficiency

As some of my readers will know, that is, if I have any readers left after leaving such a long gap between posts, I'm going to be moving to New Zealand later this year. One of the annoyances of the New Zealand visa system is the 16 page health check form they make you fill out - presumably to stop ill people coming in and using up all of their free healthcare. I was slightly irritated by the University of Houston's on-campus health centre's refusal to do this health check for me ("we don't want to take responsibility for filling out the paperwork"... sigh - you're doctors - isn't taking responsibility your job? - anyway...) but managed to find myself a nice friendly family practise near the medical centre in Houston. Having got this and all the other paperwork for the visa together, I sent of the application by UPS on Friday, and being the slightly neurotic type that I am, was continually checking the UPS tracking website until the package arrived in Washington at 2:15pm on Tuesday. To my surprise, I had an email from the New Zealand Embassy only 2 hours later requesting additional details (ok, things I'd forgotten to fill in - it's a 16 page document, who isn't going to make mistakes?) on the health check form. A model of efficiency indeed. Let's hope the rest of the visa process goes through with the same speed.