VCT Day minus 4

What a roller coaster ride over the last couple of days!

After the fun of talking with Jeff and Vic over at 2CCR on Monday morning, Monday afternoon was taken up with work , a Board meeting with the Western Sydney Business Connection, and then a hitout on the exercise bike on Monday evening, while we waited for our passports and visas to arrive back from my travel agent.

Tuesday was spent meeting with my friend Trevor Oldfield, President of the Wenty Leagues Club (and then joining the Club - what an impressive array of refurbishments they're undertaking). Later in the day, I dropped Kerry and Fiona out at Macquarie Uni so Fi could attend her Tuesday evening class (she's doing Honours in Ancient History and this semester's class is on historiography). I did this while Tony and I continued to wait for our passports, them having not arrived on Monday or Tuesday and being the subject of some increasingly terse phone calls to the travel agent.

Wednesday was when we got to the top of the roller coaster and headed off down the steep slope. Tony and I went for a good 35km hitout from his place to Parramatta Park, a series of laps round the park (including seven times up the hill section) and then back to his place. We were feeling good enough to reward ourselves with a superb sirloin steak lunch (medium rare), served with a most delicious mushroom ragout and washed down with a very pleasant Margaret River cabernet shiraz. I dropped Tony home and when I arrived home, I was feeling very satisfied with the day. Then the phone call from the travel agent.

We'd already established that the passports had been sent to Caringbah 2150 instead of Carlingford 2118 and held out (vain) hopes that Australia Post would be able to track the passports through its bar coding system and get the passports to us, eventually, and better late than never. On Wednesday afternoon, we officially gave up hope of seeing those passports again, but decided to give one last try to the system (here we break into strains of the old Beatles song "I should have known better ..."). I alerted Tony and it was a restless night with two business days to go until we leave.

This morning we went to "Plan B" - new passports and visas! A series of frantic phone calls between the travel agent, Australian Passport Office (APO), Tony and me and by 2.30pm this afternoon we were being interviewed by a very pleasant gentleman at the APO who concluded by saying "Yes, that's all in order. Your passports will be ready to pick up on Monday". You can imagine our reaction and I'll leave out the curse words that floated through my consciousness at this point as I calmly explained that we needed the passports tomorrow morning at the latest so we can get the Vietnam visas sorted out at the Consulate, which is only open for visas between 9am and 12.30pm. A further examination of our flight tickets and some more enquiries and we're on a tentative promise for the passports to be ready to pick up tomorrow morning at 10am - thanks APO!

We know the passports are being worked on because our good mate Paul, who vouched for us and signed our photos, was rung by two different APO officers in turn to confirm he had indeed signed the forms for each of us in turn (we had been filling these out in the taxi on the way down to Sydney - time was short! - and so he had first hand knowledge of our processes).

In the meantime, we'd had a call from fellow Challenger, Hugh "The Player" Perrottet, to say that he had some Parra Eels polo shirts for us to pick up and wear during our time away. Being Parra supporters for over 40 years, we didn't have to be asked twice and I'm still wearing mine from this afternoon (Go the Eels!). A $200 donation from long time friend and former Macquarie Uni colleague, Richard Braddock, completed the day's activities on another high note.

So here I sit, hoping that all will be well tomorrow, that we can pick up the passports on time and get over to the Vietnamese Consulate before the visa office closes and so close the door on this "interesting" part of the experience. Whew!