Awake in Antwerpen

2am ... why?

I lay down for a while but found myself thinking about my 'rumoured-to-be' final piece of documentation winging its way towards Belgium.

The New Zealand Births, Deaths and Marriage billed the credit card, alerting me to my certificate's flight.

Another birth certificate ...I purchased one a few months ago for my residency (not requiring an attached Apostille). Who can know how it is that one process requires an Apostille when another doesn't.

Apostille this time required to verify that my birth certificate is my birth certificate, and so it goes that they need another birth certificate with attachment for the next step of a New Zealander who has to live here in Belgium for now.

So another birth certificate, with Apostille, to be translated into Dutch again and approved and stamped by the courts, again ...

A profitable business this immigrant business ... for those with ownership rights over my documentation and a few particularly costly rubber stamps.

Sometimes, if I just scratch the surface of me, I find an interesting anger with regard to this process of 'arriving'.

I landed in Belgium almost a year ago.
I've been in process for 9 months however if the timeframe I was given on beginning the process had turned out to be true ... I would have been earning an income and paying taxes for 6 months by now.

It's a crazy old world, writes Awake in Antwerpen.