It has been a long time

It has almost been a year since I last blogged here. I've been trying to be consistent with my blogging on Aisyahrower.com but honestly, I'm a complete noob at wordpress and the difficulty just in logging in turns me off from writing. I also feel like it's about time I write regularly since, well, since I decided to write a book. So here I am.

WARNING: This post will attempt to summarise what has been going on for the past year and what I'm up to right now.

Look, I've been wanting to write a book for a very long time but never really got to doing it because I'm the greatest procrastinator around. Finally, things look like they are falling into place when a publisher showed interest in publishing the book and they found me a writer who is keen to write on my behalf. My job now is to start researching, compiling and writing but even then with things "falling into place" I choose to procrastinate. WHY?

To be honest, I don't think it's procrastination. More like, not maximising my time. I'm so tempted to say that I feel I don't have enough time but HELL, I'M NOT EVEN WORKING. So I cannot use that "no time" card. I have all the time in the world right now, I'm just not using it wisely. Not prioritising, not being smart. TIME TO CHANGE ALL THAT AND GET SHIT DONE.

But what have I been doing all these while?

Since I came back from Boston a month ago, I've been doing quite a bit of coaching to get some pocket money. I've been running alot, considering I'm aiming to run my first marathon this year. It's not really just completing the run but I have some goals to meet which I will eventually share (in later posts). I've been meeting up with people, which I don't think is wasting my time away because this will be my last time back home before I move to the US permanently (I know right, how crazy?). I've been settling alot of school and visa stuff- more on that later. And basically, most of the time, I find myself at home, lying on bed, checking my emails, attempting to study, etc. I'm not saying I'm busy but I've just been feeling like I'm in my own little bubble sometimes.

Study- Okay, so I was accepted into a Masters program in Sport Psychology in the US but because I cannot study with a tourist visa, I postponed the program to next year because I didn't think I would be able to get the visa before school starts in September. Meanwhile, I decided to apply for an Advanced Certification in Rowing Leadership which is basically like a masters in rowing where they unload lots of skills on you to groom you to become a "leader" in the sport, whether you choose to be a coach, a rowing administrator or anything involving rowing (except being an official, maybe). The program is held at the Community Rowing Inc, one of the biggest boathouses I've ever been in. The program seems pretty intense and I've always been interested to learn to be a good coach, although I know it's not going to be a career for me. And since I have some time before school starts next year, I thought, why not? There was a hefty price tag that comes with the program but thankfully, using my Olympian card and the fact that I am actually fkg passionate about the sport, I received a full scholarship. I mean, you'll never know where these paths might take you to. And being in Boston, I should maximise the rowing culture there as much as I can. Orientation for the program has already started on 1 July but because I am still waiting for my visa, I probably will miss 1-2 weeks of school. I'm disappointed but I've learnt not to get too worked up over things that are beyond my control. Recently, too many things have been testing my patience and I've been stressing over them when in fact, I didn't had any control over them and should have focused on other stuff instead.

Visa- so the visa situation is finally coming to an end. We applied for the Fiancé Visa (K1 Visa) in January 2019 and finally after 7 months, I was scheduled for a visa interview. I attended the interview today and was told that they cannot continue to process the visa because the medical reports have not been sent to the embassy. This news made me so angry because I went for the medical check-up 3 weeks ago and was told that the clinic will send the reports within 10-14 days. I called and even dropped by the clinic to tell them to submit the medical reports and they merely said sorry for the delay and that they will try their best. The clinic has also received alot of bad reviews online and a 1 star on Google. The sad thing is that, applying for a US visa, we were told to go to this specific clinic. So whether the service is bad or not, we have no choice. The other sad thing is that, I'm pretty sure the staff in the clinic knows that they are getting terrible reviews but nothing has changed. Year after year, more bad reviews are seen online.

Anyway, now all I have to do is to wait for the clinic to send the reports to the embassy. Another waiting game. Since we submitted the visa in January, it has been a long waiting game for us. In America, we were told that we would get notice in 4-7 months, when the documents reached Singapore we were told 2-4weeks till they get in contact with us. Now another 1-2 weeks wait. It has been a long, arduous and bloody expensive journey and if you're not a US citizen and you're marrying one, I wish your process didn't had to be as painful as ours.

I will also put up a separate post on the K1 visa process because I have benefited alot from reading about others' experiences and I would very much hope my experience would help others applying for the same visa.

Soon, I'll be back in Boston and very much soon after that, I'm getting married.

And that's for another day, another story.

xx