JW in NZ

I had a fair amount of trouble getting my work permit sorted for Canada. I applied in plenty of time, but owing to the disorganised beaurocracy that is the Canadin High Commission in London, I only had a passport as of the day before my flight. To summarise, they only communicate via fax, accept only postal orders for payment and open from 8am - 11am. They won't discuss anything over the phone or by email, and they say that they won't in person, though I begged and I think that since it was so late they did. I had to go to their office in Mayfair (an enormous building full of paper) twice before 8am to (just) get it sorted.

All that and they don't actually issue you with a work permit, just an authorisation; you need to get a work permit when you arrive! Most distressingly, the piece of paper I'd worked so hard to get was not read by immigration here; they took it, crossed two lines over the whole thing and binned it. Was given a work permit within a minute or two though.

I dropped my laptop in San Francisco, which was a pain since it ruined the hard disk and cracked the case. Lesson: Don't drop your laptop. As a result though I spent Sunday night at Dad's copying stuff onto it, getting little sleep before going to Mayfair. I got little sleep again on Monday night because I only realised on Monday afternoon that I needed to pack. Got a couple of hours on the plane which is pretty good for me, because I normally stuggle.

Outside the airport, which by the way is the nicest I've seen, I met a guy waiting for the same bus as me, with a pretty much identical set of luggage, on a nearly identical trip. I remember commenting to Dad at Gatwick that there probably wouldn't be anyone else on the flight with so much stuff that didn't pay for excess baggage, but there was. He showed me his hand luggage bag which he explained was heavy since it had his laptop in. He told the airline he had no hand luggage. I proudly explained that I'd slipped past security with two hand luggage bags and stopped short when I realised that I was in fact only now in possession of one of them. I'd lost my laptop. Quite ironic I think that one of the big reasons for me being tired was the laptop and also the reason for losing the laptop was tiredness. Turns out that in a bid to carry fewer bags onto the bus, I'd put it in my suitcase, but had absolutely no recollection of doing so.

The guy on the bus explained that having heard what a nightmare the Mayfair office was, he applied for his work permit when he arrived, and the whole process took five minutes. It seems that they're not so disorganised when you actually get here.

Am staying at a youth hostel for a while and met an unexpected guest; the kitchen mouse. Want to get a photo of him for this site, but that might be tough. Want opinions: