Bangalore the Third

I’m back in Bangalore again. I’ve been back since Monday. The only reason I’m here this time is purely to sort out my overstayed visa and make sure I don’t get arrested when I leave the country. A girl got tossed in prison for trying to leave the country with an expired visa a couple of months ago. Fortunately, since I’ve got a few connections over here in the ‘Garden City’, that won’t be happening to me. I’ll get out alright, but until I do I’m forced to stay here in Bangalore; waiting for them to approve my leaving.

I don’t get to spend more time in Palolem and I don’t yet get to see my family, who I haven’t seen for seven months; instead I get to hang around in a city that I’ve seen and I don’t really want to be in. I’m not in a city mood, you see. I really would like to just sit somewhere – quite-like – and just read. I didn’t really do that at the end of my Palolem trip.

Fortunately there is a lot of good book shops here, so I’ve managed to pick up a couple of interesting books; unfortunately, I’m being forced to run around and go see many Indian officials (who all want Baksheesh) to convince them that it is alright for them to let me leave.

It is so annoying that they can keep me in their country against my will. I guess I did technically commit something akin to a crime, so they have the right to; nonetheless, I’m wasting time and money, while losing my patience and my calm.

It looks like I’ll get to leave early next week. One more weekend here. Hopefully I’ll get back before my birthday. It would be nice to spend it with my parents, eating nice food and being well behaved, for once.

Even here I’m being surprisingly well behaved - less than five cigarettes in a day, only one beer since I’ve arrived and no night past midnight. That’s probably pretty normal for most people, but for me that’s quite an achievement.

There’s some bad news, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get into university. I’ve been getting back a lot of feedback that suggests that getting into a Social Psychology Masters degree in Holland is a very difficult thing. You basically need to have focussed very much on getting into Social Psychology in your pre-graduate days. I didn’t know that I wanted to do anything in the field of psychology when I was in Uni. Hell, I was just focused on getting through the damned thing in one way or another and little else. The fact that now I’m fascinated in the field and very driven apparently doesn’t make any difference; instead, all that matters is what I did seven years ago. Not surprising, really. It is a bureaucracy, after all.

I have no idea what I’ll do if I don’t get in; for the last six months I’ve been gearing up to getting in. I better start thinking about it though (even as I send in all my applications and hope for the best), because it’s a real possibility.

If I had similar connections in Holland as I had here, I imagine I could get in. Maybe I should look into building those up; though rumour has it Europe doesn’t work the same way.