When did you first meet your sponsor?

Where did your meeting take place?

When did your relationship begin?

Where did your relationship begin?

When did you last see your sponsor?

Have you kept in touch since?

There are more annoying questions than these, to be sure, but the fiancee visa application has to be one of the most annoying, patronizing, nosy, stupid (not to mention expensive) forms ever created by bureaucracy.

The prize moron question: Do you intend to maintain a lasting partnership? (This after asking me if the marriage is arranged and also after asking if we are in any way related.)

Do bears shit in the woods?

Am I upset? OH BOY am I upset. Here in Toronto there is literally no place for me to sit down with anyone and explain the situation and I'm not about to phone Ottawa for an expensive and likely useless call. Never mind the request for more photos (WHY? WHY? It's not like they're giving me a fiancee CARD after all), a birth certificate, my passport, all the regular hooey, but the questions about my sponsor, which is to say Marcello, are beyond hellacious. WHY does it matter how many bedrooms are in his place? I would sleep, as he knows, quite happily on the floor if needs be (though he is a gentleman and wouldn't let me)...not to mention financial and employment info...

...so I am determined to find a way around this ugly intrusive migraine-inducing BEAST of an application. Only someone with nothing better to do and lots of money could afford to travel on it anyway; there simply HAS to be another way...

...............

In other news, I can't stop buying books! To cheer myself up I got a nice new copy of Persuasion at World's Biggest and tomorrow I'm going up nice & early to the sale at St. Mike's. I have to keep going no matter what, and if I can't be with him then I want to get nice things for our library...