stamp
I successfully received my student visa + Schengen visa in time! *throws confetti* My boss has remarked that the empire's regulation of requiring visa nationals, like myself, to travel all the way home just to get a stamp on the passport contradicts the concern for making needless journeys that only worsens global warming. This I totally agree. Back in the olden days when my cousin M did his secondary schooling in UK, he was able to easily send his passport back to Taiwan, and have his parents renew the visa for him. Today the Home Office is more paranoid about potential illegal immigrant workers and asylum seekers. Anyhow, in Taiwan, I'm super glad that I didn't have to wake up early to queue up in such a long line; moreover, the Sweden administrator made an exception by allowing me one less working day. In some sense I feel like a new person arriving in England, for before I may have been mildly suffering from what Alain de Botton calls a modern day 'status anxiety'. Spending too much time as a visitor in a foreign land can make one a miserable wretch, and perhaps I seek every opportunity to complain to HY about this matter--throughout the course he has been a tolerable saint. Oddly enough, with a simple stamp, I feel pretty excited about the 3+ years of brain-damaging research.