Mixed emotions
Weds 2nd May 2013 We have been here at home now for just over 2 weeks and have just under 2 weeks of our holiday remaining. It has been great to see all the family and friends again especially to see how the children have grown in the 14 months since we were last here.
I had forgotten just how bloody hot it gets here during April & May, +30° every day, all I want to do is sleep, have to say Daniel has adapted well and doesn’t seemed fazed at all, although the aircon bill will be higher from now on.
As much as I am happy to be home it has been a fairly stressful trip so far, doing any sort of official business here is such a drama, never seems to run smoothly and because I am aware of this I am usually stressed even before attempting anything. Roxanne is not much help when it comes to anything official as she has always had people to do it for her before or she believes she can ‘buy whatever she needs’ which is probably true but not the way I want to conduct things.
The main thing we wanted to do was to file the papers for Daniel to become recognised as a Filipino citizen, trying to be organised I emailed the Immigration Bureau here in advance and asked them all the relevant questions (so I thought) and they were kind enough to respond with a list of documents required and also saying the papers could be filed at SubPorts (offices) which is ideal as there is one here in our City.
On arriving at the SubPort and explaining what we wished to do they looked at us as if we had come from another planet saying they didn’t process papers there and we needed to go to Manila, I told them I understood they didn’t process but we just wanted to FILE the papers and they would send them to Manila (as explained in the email I received and showed to them), still no favourable response and told us to come back the following Wednesday when an official from Manila would be there and maybe he would take the papers for us.
So the following Wednesday we returned and saw said officer who seemed a bit vague but in fairness made a couple of calls to Manila and then said he would check our documents and if in order would take them for us. This is when we find out the Immigration people in responding to me forgot 1 vital piece of info and that was that we needed to get Daniels birth certificate authenticated at the Philippine Embassy in LONDON BEFEORE we travelled!!!!
Luckily the same officer from Manila on checking our passports explained that because we came through with Roxanne we have Balikbayan (returning Filipino) status stamped which allows 12 months stay, so Daniel is fine and we will try again when we return in January next year..............
I will report some more later but for now I include a few pics of stay so far.
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