It must have been a record breaking silence since the inception of this blog, but I can assure you that it is well justified. In my 13 days of absence from blogging, I have managed to travel 6,663 miles up north, made some progress in what I’m going to do for the next one year and completed my long to-do list before the trip. Apart from all those, I have also discovered new things about myself, like the fact that I think I may possess slightly below average level of intelligence.

I know that some people will rush to refute me on this. All my life people have called me smart. But sometimes I suspect that it was all a cover up, that they are employed by my parents to put me in a bubble and make me think that I actually possess certain level of intelligence. My latest encounter with an instant pass photo box heightened this suspicion.

I was about to apply for my UK visa and I got to the visa application centre before realising in horror that I have been using the same ID photo for the visa application for the past 2 years (and we were supposed to only submit pictures taken within the last 6 months). Not wanting to risk not getting my visa rejected because of some silly old photo, I decided to make use of the instant photo booth facility at the application centre. Although expensive, 12 dollars at the point in time seemed like a pretty good trade off compared to the risk of not being able to enter the UK.

I went to the booth, and tried to follow the instructions on the screen. It seemed easy enough. First I needed to adjust the seat height so that I would be at the correct eye level with the camera. I even pat myself on the back a little for understanding some of the instructions in Japanese. I sat down, pressed some buttons and took the photo.

The result: I was off centre, one of my shoulders was out of the frame and I wasn’t even looking at the camera.

Okay, so it was not as easy as it looked, but there was still the second take. Sweating a little now, I was really nervous that I would screw it up again. I took at least 5 minutes just adjusting the chair level, another 5 just tilting my shoulders upwards and downwards as well as moved laterally to make sure that I wasn’t off centre. After a long arduous attempt fighting with the machine, check out my 12-dollar worth of instant pass photo.

In the end, I had to use back my old photo, but who cares since I got the visa and I’m on my way to Europe now. Woohoo! 😀