The rollercoaster journey to UK Visa

So it happens that I'm going to CCCU soon, and so it happens that if I want to study in the UK for more than 6 months, I have to get a visa. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Then, I found out a visa is not just a visa - it's made up of various documents, forms, some trivial and not-so-trivial stuff to be collected, photocopied, filled in and whatnot.

Lemme describe the excruciating process of getting a visa together with the rest of Da Demotivated Retards (Alicia, Daniel, Yuges, Banu and yours truly)...

1st step: Forms, forms and more forms
One would have thought that in order to get a visa, you have to fill in just the visa application form.

WRONG!

There are a total of 4 forms for visa alone, and another form for the supporting documents...
- Visa online application form (VAF9)
- PBS Tier 4 Appendix 8 for General Students
- CAS (a checklist for all the documents)
- Student survey

Before doing our visa, we have to get a Certificate of Good Conduct from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so that's another form.

And we did the MAS Grads Card (which enables us to bring an extra 10kg luggage) too, making another form

2nd Step: Wasting paper, killing trees and destroying the environment
The forms are printed out. For all three applications, supporting documents are needed. Innocent papers are used to photocopy the originals and backup forms. That's all.

3rd Step: Journey around Kuala Lumpur
This was the most fun part. On the first day, we went to get our Grads Card and bank draft done. It was quite an easy process as we just needed to bring along RM 976 in cash to CIMB and some documents to the Enrich Centre. The whole process took about 3 hours and didn't cause any headaches at all.

It was a whole different story on the 2nd day. The schedule was to get a stamp and signature from a commissioner of oaths, then go to the MOFA to get our Cert. of Good Conduct. The commissioner was located in Damansara while MOFA was in Putrajaya. So, what did we do?

First, we woke up late, and gathered at 10am. Then, we took a taxi to Damansara and got our forms stamped. Had lunch at KFC while waiting for the uber-famous 'government lunch time' to pass and made a move to KL Sentral. From there, we took the ERL to Putrajaya Sentral and hopped on a bus towards MOFA. The whole trip took about 1 hour and when we arrived, we still had to wait for the doors to open at 2pm. The application process took another hour, and then we took the bus back to Putrajaya Sentral, and another bus back to KL Sentral. Except that we missed the stop and ended up in Pasar Seni, making an extra LRT station x) By the time we got back in IPBA, we were all so tired we could just curl up and sleep on the floor.

On the third day, we finally went to Ampang Park by LRT to submit our application at the UK visa centre at Wisma MCA. It wasn't so tiring as much as unnerving, as there were three security guards at the entrance, and we had to go through body scans and stuff. Comparatively, it was a simple process though, and took just a little more than an hour~

Step 4: Free for All
Yeah, after submitting the visa application, we are basically free to do anything we please. So then, see ya =)